How to deal with the Acended Status (Ascendant / Ghost Heart) ?

[Cardiodrone]

Preface:
Hello forum - my first post here after looking up a lot of topics for some help before getting into Deadfire for the first time on PotD right after finishing Pillars 1 on Hard.

--> Deadfire 5.0-something patch, no mods, RTwP

I decided on an Ascendant / Ghost Heart Seer for my PC.
Seemed to be a well-liked combo and made sense to me from a RP POV, taking my Pillars 1 PC and my decisions into account (writing myself a nice little backstory).

At the time of this post I am level 5, started Neketaka and just cleared Lost Dues in Good Faith quest with a bit of luck and a pinch of cheese.
PC (Human / Living Lands) attributes are Mig 15 / Con 10 / Dex 15 / Per 18 / Int 15 / Res 6 —> Pretty standard, I know. I did not want to min-max anything since I like that everything kind of matters in this game.

I am loving my Bear Sprit companion so far as an off tank to help Edér block choke points, being a damage sponge summon to distract certain opponents and one that I can leave behind if I have to flee the fight when I am getting kicked in my behind.
My PC is in the backline with a Rod+Blast to quickly gain Focus.

My Problem:
I am still figuring out my Ascendant side of the PC. Getting to max Focus fast and then spamming spells as long as I can is an interesting mechanic and kind of works so far.
BUT:
1) I often do not notice the moment when max Focus is reached and sometime already 5 seconds of my ascended status have passed before I do and start spell casting.
2) When queing up spells and also when manually casting them it happens, that due to recovery time the ascended status runs out and Focus drops to 0 and therefore the last spell is not cast. Even if I know that it might me the last cast I can get through when I look at the timer in the active effects overview I cannot really know for sure. That means I have to keep an eye on my PC the whole time which is tough in some fights.

Sometimes that spell is an important one that I kind of count on. Also it is frustrating when I miss the start of my ascended status since it takes a bit to reach it again and it is only 20s.
The custom AI and also the auto pause menu do not give me the options I need.

—> I would like at least an auto pause when ascended starts and stops. I know this is pretty custom but this class kind of depends on it a lot imo.
—> Is there anything that can indicate the status without me checking the effects overview all the time?
—> Is there a work around or maybe a mod? (A little pop-up and/or something that can indicate that the one spell will not go through in time.)
—> Or can someone give me any advice on how to deal with this? Is it maybe intended that every class has some kind of thing you as a player have to adjust to?
—> And, since we are in that area: What determines the ascended status time and is there a way to prolong it? Because then I might not worry about the above so much. As of now these 20s give me the possibility of 3-4 spells and that is the same as if I would cast them as a normal Cipher with using whenever there is enough accumulated for a certain spell.

I am no experienced CRPG player and PotD with upscaling is quite a challenge (though a welcome one) and this is ruining the fun a little bit.

 

Any help and suggestions are much appreciated and I thank you in advance.

C

[Cardiodrone]

edit: Massive typo in topic headline. Sorry for that. I cannot edit the post myself. Can someone with moderator status edit Acended to Ascended, please? Thank you.

[Boeroer]

5 hours ago, Cardiodrone said:

1) I often do not notice the moment when max Focus is reached and sometime already 5 seconds of my ascended status have passed before I do and start spell casting.

Besides not noticing, your problem might also be that Rod + Blast has a very long recovery time. You ascend from the shot + Blast - but then you have to wait for a long time until the recovery of the rod is finished before being able to cast. And that cast will also have animation time.

For an Ascendant it's best to ascend with a shot from a reloading weapon (or from a weapon you have short or even 0 recovery with). The reason is that reloading - unlike recovery - can be canceled.

So for example you would shoot with an arquebus and ascend - and then start  casting a spell immediately (preferably one with only 0.5 secs casting time). You could still use a Rod + Blast at first but switch to a reloading weapon once you suspect that the next weapon hit might ascend you. 

In general you want to speed up animation time and recovery times, too - in order to squeeze as many spell uses into the Ascension phase as possible. 

You can prolong your ascended status with more INT and with items that do "+X% beneficial effects duration". Those are Strand of Favor (amulett) and Cabalist's Gambeson for example. Easiest is to find some +INT items and pit them on - and then maybe get a +INT Litany from your party's Priest.

If you have a Priest you can later extend Ascension with the spell "Salvation of Time". And if your Ascendant casts "Ancestor's Memory" (Power Level 7) on the Priest then the Priest can prolong your Ascension for the whole fight. At that point all the recovery/reloading/whatever doesn't matter much anymore. You will cast all stuff for free then. 

PS: not noticing being ascended isn't that bad imo. Unlike other Cipher's Soul Whip which turns off at max focus, yours will even do more weapon damage while ascended. So once you have a good DPS weapon (like Frostseeker) it's not so bad to just keep firing with increased damage. 

Edited March 19 by Boeroer

[thelee]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

PS: not noticing being ascended isn't that bad imo. Unlike other Cipher's Soul Whip which turns off at max focus, yours will even do more weapon damage while ascended.

in fact, IIRC, the increased damage bonus from ascending is universal, so not just weapon damage. so even if you forget, you still will be doing more damage across the board than a normal cipher.

 

though tbqh i would kill for a mod that puts a gigantic dialog box or message the moment you ascend, i do agree that it can be rough to remember in casual situations (e.g. outside of using a weapon ability that basically guarantees you max focus)

[Boeroer]

Customizalbe auto-pause would be a great thing for this and other similar issues with RTwP. Like the customizable AI "scripting" basically (less complicated overall of course). 

[Constentin Lévine]

6 hours ago, Boeroer said:

The reason is that reloading - unlike recovery - can be canceled.

It is not really true, once you get Eccea's Arcane Blaster and you enchant them for Bullet Time, you have a -100% reload time for 5 s (base) ; this effect is not visible in the character's beneficial effects when you point him in combat but you can see it in the C page, in current effects. As beneficial effect, you can prolonge them with usual stuff lie SoT or WoD (i tried to be sure with a mage and Wall of Draining). 

Skip to another weapon keep the effect just like Tempest so you can use an arbalest with Bullet Time on.

Of course, this is a mid game stuff..

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Constentin Lévine said:

It is not really true, once you get Eccea's Arcane Blaster and you enchant them for Bullet Time, you have a -100% reload time for 5 s (base) ; this effect is not visible in the character's beneficial effects when you point him in combat but you can see it in the C page, in current effects. As beneficial effect, you can prolonge them with usual stuff lie SoT or WoD (i tried to be sure with a mage and Wall of Draining). 

Skip to another weapon keep the effect just like Tempest so you can use an arbalest with Bullet Time on.

Of course, this is a mid game stuff..

i'm not quite sure if i understood you correctly, or you misunderstood boeroer

but I just want to say that effectively Bullet Time doesn't work. It says -100% reload time, but there's a minimum reload time for all reloading weapons. If you're extremely slow, you'll notice a speed up, but if you're close to the minimum reload time (not hard to hit when dual-wielding with dual-wielding style) there's barely a difference.

 

but boeroer's basic point is that once you're recovering from a non-reloading weapon, you're stuck waiting for recovery, so I don't quite see how a reload time adjustment would be useful here.

[Constentin Lévine]

9 minutes ago, thelee said:

 

but boeroer's basic point is that once you're recovering from a non-reloading weapon, you're stuck waiting for recovery, so I don't quite see how a reload time adjustment would be useful here.

Yes you are right, I misunderstood the point.. i read in diagonal sometime 

[Boeroer]

Rofl

 

[Kaylon]

Using the AI you can try to use "Focus is at maximum" as conditional and use a spell like Mind Blades (which won't be wasted) or one with long casting time (that way you have 2-3s to react before the spell is finished and switch to another spell if needed). After that you have to learn how many spells you can cast during the ascended phase - also finishing with spells with short casting times helps not losing them.

However when you can fill your bar in 2-3 shots you stop worrying about these things because you will be ascended most of the time. Attack speed is also very important if you want to increase the number of spells you're able to cast while ascended - Captain's Banquet, Abraham + Contender's armor, dex bonuses/buffs...

[thelee]

6 hours ago, Kaylon said:

Using the AI you can try to use "Focus is at maximum" as conditional and use a spell like Mind Blades (which won't be wasted)

is that from a mod? I don't think that condition exists in vanilla; there's like "has 10 focus" "has 20 focus" "has 30 focus"

[Cardiodrone]

Thank you everyone for the suggestions so far.

On 3/19/2025 at 2:03 PM, Boeroer said:

Besides not noticing, your problem might also be that Rod + Blast has a very long recovery time. You ascend from the shot + Blast - but then you have to wait for a long time until the recovery of the rod is finished before being able to cast. And that cast will also have animation time.

For an Ascendant it's best to ascend with a shot from a reloading weapon (or from a weapon you have short or even 0 recovery with). The reason is that reloading - unlike recovery - can be canceled.

--> I tried a Hunting Bow instead of the Rod + Blast and noticed that it didn’t take much longer to ascend - which confused me a bit because I thought the Blast’s radius would ascend me much faster when damaging multiple enemies. I will try also other weapons since a bow is still a recovery and not reload weapon, and see how it feels. Draining Whip also helps in that regard.

---

On 3/19/2025 at 2:03 PM, Boeroer said:

PS: not noticing being ascended isn't that bad imo. Unlike other Cipher's Soul Whip which turns off at max focus, yours will even do more weapon damage while ascended. So once you have a good DPS weapon (like Frostseeker) it's not so bad to just keep firing with increased damage. 

--> The bonus damage while ascended is actually also nice even without casting spells. Especially with Marked for the Hunt.
If I can get my ascended status up to 40 seconds would be phenomenal but I guess it is too in the game I guess. 

---

20 hours ago, Kaylon said:

Using the AI you can try to use "Focus is at maximum" as conditional and use a spell like Mind Blades (which won't be wasted)

--> "Focus is at maximum" unfortunatly is not an available AI condition because my first idea was to do ecatly that: Cast a spell immediateley when ascended because then I have a visual and auditory clue when I see and hear my PC casting all of a sudden. But exactly that is not possible.

On 3/19/2025 at 4:51 PM, thelee said:

though tbqh i would kill for a mod that puts a gigantic dialog box or message the moment you ascend, i do agree that it can be rough to remember in casual situations (e.g. outside of using a weapon ability that basically guarantees you max focus)

--> Yes an auto-pause + notification option for certain conditions would be great, and not just for the ascention. I noticed some other conditions as well.
e.g. let's say Aloth is using Kalakoth's Minor Blights and the cast time runs out eventually. It would be nice to know so you can cast something straight after instead of having him do nothing or auto-attack until you notice.

But then again, maybe that would make the RTwP more like the TB mode, idk.

Thanks again for all the replies.

C

 

[Boeroer]

3 hours ago, Cardiodrone said:

Thank you everyone for the suggestions so far.

--> I tried a Hunting Bow instead of the Rod + Blast and noticed that it didn’t take much longer to ascend - which confused me a bit because I thought the Blast’s radius would ascend me much faster when damaging multiple enemies. I will try also other weapons since a bow is still a recovery and not reload weapon, and see how it feels. Draining Whip also helps in that regard.

Hunting Bow + modal is a great option because -50% recovery is a massive bonus (or better: reduction), making the recovery very short.

And the -15 acc isn't so bad with the hunting bow's build-in +5 accuracy bonus and the Ranger/Cipher's combined accuracy buffs.

Also Essence Interrupter is a fantastic unique weapon. Aamiina's Legacy, too.

The best option imo is Frostseeker, but that's a War Bow. But its "Blast" on crit also generates focus and it will proc very often with high accuracy and Driving Flight, due to it's three projectiles (each of them having the chance to crit and release an AoE blast) without slowing you down like a Rod + Blast will (+50% recovery ).

Al in all I would say that Frostseeker is the best ranged weapon for a Cipher/Ranger. It combines good single target damage but also deals good AoE damage.

Another great option for ascending almost immediately with only one shot is Kitchen Stove (blunderbuss) with its special enchantment "Thunderous Report". That long cone attack does massive AoE damage. If you can hit several enemies with it that often results in instant ascension. 

 

Edited Friday at 12:29 PM by Boeroer

[Chaospread]

3 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Al in all I would say that Frostseeker is the best ranged weapon for a Cipher/Ranger.

Yes. I think also Eccea Arcane Blaster is good with modal, imbued ammunition, fractured bullet and driving flight versus foe sensitive to crush and corrode damage.