My 25 hours mark impressions [spoilers within]

[IndiraLightfoot]

Some quick facts about my first playthrough:

 

Difficulty: PotD

Basic premises:

- Custom AI is supposed to do all stuff it can automatically. A few things and items need to be done/used manually.

-Any companion/sidekick picked up cannot be rerolled.

-No level scaling

 

I picked a female mountain dwarf  (thx Aramintai): Fighter/Bleakwalker.

 

 

I set Resolve (despite the goldstar) and Reception to 3, and maxed out the other stats.

She fights Two Weapon style with sabre and sword.

 

Yep, I had a plan - certain characters that I wanted to take along. Let's say that the game made me change that plan big time.

 

And I hadn't planned to see Eothas but in the flash of lightning in the dead of night, it certainly cracked me up.

 

Edér, I really did want in my party. My character Racqonia and him are the frontline of the party.

I made him a fighter/rogue - and he also uses Two Weapon style: battle axe and sabre.

 

 

After 25 hours, I'm still not tired of him. He's got my back.

Oh, and I adore the generous amount of Choose Your Own Adventure scripted interactions. They are so much better and evenly distributed and interesting than in PoE1.

 

In fact, Edér's soothing voice calms me down. He and I collect pets, and we really love that.

Speaking of pets. We've found over a dozen, and the one we've chosen is the dog Toby (+1 Perc on me (4, yay!) IIRC, and party wide boost in HP).

 

 

I was lucky in so far that I did use the history setting app, since I had so many PoE1 playthroughs under my belt, and so far, after 25h, I haven't seen anything that isn't correct.

 

And deadfire has much more reactivity in dialogue options, scripted interactions and even bark strings than in PoE1 when it comes to race, background and such. I really like that! My character is from the Living Lands, and she's a labourer.

 

And the game won't let her forget that she's a dwarf.

 

Straight away, in the first town square of Port Maje, I picked up Xoti and I made her a single class priest.

And I dig that you got to see Eothas footprints on the overland map and on that dig site, so neat!

 

I soon noticed that Edér really liked her while we cleared that dig site. We also found Aloth in the cage, and I made him a fighter/wizard.

And watch how funny he can be (read his comment in the log!)

 

We followed the advice in Port Maje to seek out the heart of Deadfire, Neketaka, where we should talk to the queen. Also, I figured that more companions and sidekicks must be hanging out in that city.

As soon as we left port, we ran into Serafen, which I also recruited.

 

We arrived in Queen's Berth, and in accordance with my typical CRPG playstyle during a first playthrough, I thoroughly scoured that first city map, except for the shipwright corner (as we didn't have any money to speak of), and in like the first house I entered - the Wild Mare - I found one sidekick I had planned to have in my party, Konstanten.  I mean, come on, he is a cool dwarf! I made him into a Howler (Barbarian/Chanter). Bye, Serafen!

 

Then we went north, or rather up, the city, and reached Periki's Outlook. Second house to the left, I met Fassina. My meta knowledge told me that she was a sidekick, and she was way cooler than I had expected, even better than Aloth, so I just had to get her somehow.

I immediately did her a favour, by solving the problem with her stealing ex-lover.

It got me running on the map.

First, further up (where I talked to the queen on the way). To my delight, I got the opportunity to recruit Pallegina.

I made Pallegina into a Herald: Paladin/Chanter. Goodbye, Aloth.

 

Then down to Brass Citadel and back. Still no go. She refused to join. I reported it as a bug on the support forum, and there Aartz was kind enough to give me one spoiler hint. There was another thing you could do for her - by harassing her neighbour and employer, the archmage Arkamyr.

Two NPCs squabble outside. I sided with the one from Brass Citadel.

But first I had to scour Periki's Outlook, and began with the neat posh bathhouse to the right. So classy! (Amreo resembles Clint Eastwood a bit.)

 

And lo and behold! There were lots of cracks, and one of them were not of the cheeky, but the sneaky kind.

 

I entered the cellars of Arkamyr's Manor, but Racqonia's smashing of the wall made all the alarms go off, and my party consisted of ill-equipped level 4 characters at the time. To my horror, the Archmage Vault Quest was marked with three red skulls!

 

But I refused to give up, after one extremely hard fight the party reached level 5, and in this manor I had the CRPG time of my life (almost)!

I had to use Scavenger superfood and extreme kiting in order to assault ironclad automatons one by one.

Soon enough, we managed to open the Vault and at least plunder some of its spoils.

Josh, really? How deep does your frog helm obsession/fetischism go?

 

This meant that I could recruit my beloved Fassina, and her quests and even the reactivity afterwards are almost like that of a companion. Well done, Obsidian!

Later in the Gullet, her imp was drunk and cranky, for instance:

Unfortunately, I had to drop Xoti, although I ound her to be an excellent companion so far. Well, there will be more playthroughs, mark my words!

 

 

First odd fact: Only after 8h or so, I realized that Bleakwalker paladins need to follow their codex or get penalized. Let's just say I began to play more aggressively and violently, and even performing rare acts of cruelty vs peeps my char reckons deserved it.

So, when we left the map, we were assaulted by some weird foul-mouthed tough gang that my Bleakwalker felt just had to be treated harshly.

 

There are a lot of key-NPC dwarves so far in the game. Great! And they notice me as a dwarf too:

 

I managed to zig-zag my way to the Black Market in the Gullet, and then i kept on behaving cruelly, killing a group of Goldpact Knights just because they had boat tickets that I needed.

I even volunteered to go down into the pit to check out the old city ruins, since a certain fence boss wanted me to find stuff there.

I stumbled upon a talking sword for Racqonia, amazingly enough, just in some recess hideaway!

 

And my pianola of AI-controlled group began to shine when they reached level 6, with lots of summons (I bought two figurines as well, just in case).

Notice how Konstanten and I, as dwarves, are almost immune to these weakened state. Scoff!

 

We are making a mess of most stuff down there, and when I came across yet another powerful dwarf.

 

Well, I got tired of her after she presented her options for me: Either I gave her 30,000 coppers or did some elaborate theft on her behalf, just to help some old man in the Gullet. I didn't have the time for such nonsense. I simply began to kill her and her entire fleet of pirates, watershapers, cuthroats, thugs, sorcerers, healers - you name it - they all must die, since I'm an aggressive Bleakwalker!

Haha! Edér and I are healing faster than the thug!

 

 

Suffice to say, I've come a lot of further into the game, but I won't spoil anymore than I already have for you.

 

Perhaps I'm just giddy with excitement, but this is one of the best CRPGs ever, if I go by the first 25h. It's up there with BG1, BG2 and NWN2, for sure.

What a superb game! Much, much more open and varied as far as quests and maps go, and the city of Neketaka makes everything city-like in PoE1 seem like shabby hamlets.

Edited May 11, 2018 by IndiraLightfoot

[InsaneCommander]

I didn't read everything because I don't want to spoil what I haven't seen yet. But I share your enthusiasm!

[Jayngo]

Should be posted under the spoilers forum, not here.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Oh? Isn't this the Stories (spoiler warning) forum?