Boeroer

Hi! Indeed! With a Pale Elf etc. you'd want to focus on fire and ice spells. I think I mentioned the crossed patch (unique headgear), too. It comes from a stronghold adventure and makes you immune to blindness. It's perfect for a Pale Elf who likes to stand in their own Chillfog (no blindness from it then. Also Rymrgand's Mantle would be great for such a Wizard. It's a random drop. If you use this with Chillfogs and other ice spells they will heal your endurance instead of harming you (if you have enough freeze DR). But your health will suffer nonetheless. Therefore it's very good to use Infuse with Vital Essence to heal your health back up, too. You have to check which spells you would like to use (for example Chillfogs) and which defense they target. Chillfogs targets fortitude, so you want that high. But if you want to blast Fireballs without regretting standing in their AoE you need high Reflex (and Burn DR), not high Fortitude.

That is not true. They stack multiplicatively/probabilistically. 30% (Berserker) and 25% (Fighter) and 15% (one handed style) would result in ~59% overall. That is because the game goes through every applicable conversion ability you have, one after the other, and tries a conversion roll. If that's successful the process stops and the conversion happens. With applicable I mean if you roll a hit the game will only go through the conversions for hits. And then it's done. So only one conversion can happen! The game doesn't allow graze to hit and then again hit to graze. Only one conversion. So even 100% graze to hit + 100% hit to crit on a character cannot convert all the way from graze to crit. Exception: if one conversion happens on the character's side and the next one on the enemies'. Example: a Fighter with Confident Aim attacks a paralyzed target. He rolls a graze, but it gets converted to a hit. That hit gets "applied" to the enemy and because the enemy is paralyzed (25% hit to crit received) the game checks conversion again and in this case it works and the hit gets converted to a crit. I guess all conversions get put in an array, list or directory in the order they were achieved. And then the game loops through the array and checks every conversion effect on you in that order - it will use the first conversion that rolls successfully. I don't think they get sorted (like hit to graze first and then hit to crit conversions). But I cannot say for sure.

I had most fun with the WotEP when I used it with a Steel Garrote/Bloodmage. I didn't use it to deal AoE damage but to drain health from melee enemies at the same time as casting spells (and using Blood Sacrifice). With Offensive Parry you daze enemies automatically which unlocks the Steel Garrote drain. You can then "passively" parry melee enemies and gain health from that and don't need to take action to heal yourself so often (good for your action economy). Against single targets (or when I wasn't tanky enough with the WotEP) I used Concelhaut's Draining Touch with the Grimoire switching trick so the Draining Touch never goes away during fights (with a large shield of needed, else with a club+modal in the offhand to lower enemies' Will for the Draining Touch (targets Will instead of deflection). This is also a great weapon setup in combination with Miasma + Ryngrim spells against mobs: they disengage and get wrecked by the hefty disengagement attacks which drain health (Draining Touch + Garrote). Again: disengagement attacks don't use any action time so you can cast spells instead. Obviously this isn't really a melee character in the traditional sense. It's more like a way to deal weapon damage and heal in the process without wasting action time but use this to cast (more) spells. While casting spells with you as the center (like Torrent of Flame for example) I really like Inspired Beacon (one of the few characters where I felt it was worth its heal cost). Naturally an Arcane Knight can become very tanky because of the combination of self buffs + Paladin passives. Not a striker though, so maybe it's not fun for somebody who likes to strike actively - then the aforementioned Soulblade/Trickster ist much better and also fun to play.

Just for emphasizing the healing/regeneration theme ("Vigorous Warthog"). Returning Storm is a fine pick for spell mastery in general.

That's what I meant with "if you really know what to do". Who thinks Raedric's Castle is difficult to clear out doesn't really know (yet) what to do imo. To me it's a fairly easy (but lengthy) step in the early game - and the reward is very high (bc. of masses of loot). That makes the following encounters even easier. Imo PoE encouters can be cracked open more easily with the right tools while Deadfire's might be generally easier to manage for somebody without much (meta) knowledge, but imo they are also less prone "to get played" as much as the PoE ones. I guess also because PoE has some weird, obscure mechanics (besides obscure stacking) which can make a big difference but is hard to discover. One exception on Deadfire are naval battles. Those can get tricked very easily (if you know how) and can get you superb and unique loot along with gold and XP extremely early (which makes the rest of the game easier, too). But in Deadfire, if you follow Benweth directly after meeting Furrante, then immediately go to Dunnage afterwards and think "ah okay, off to the Hanging Sepulchers" right away, you will get wrecked so substantially you might want to abandon the game. This can even happen if you meet Eamund the Fox on Dunnage right after solving Benweth and doing some "running around" quests on Dunnage. Eamund's party will be very hard to beat and it will feel very unfair because there's no indication that Dunnage might have such difficult battles beforehand. But if you level up in Nekataka with some non-violent quests before, mayne do a few easy ship bounties etc. and then go to Dunnage, suddenly Eamund is a joke and the Hanging Sepulchers aren't that bad afterwards. If you solve Arkemyr's Manor peacefully very early and then sail to Berkana's Observatory right away, the Torn Bannermen will crush you. If you manage to beatvm them with tons of resting and resources anyway, Concelhaut and his friends will finally bring you down. And imo he cannot really be tricked unless you are willing to pull out Lover's Embrace, Gouging Strike/Brand Enemy and are willing to exploit a pair of Bounding Boots. If you are lucky on your first run you won't even notice all that and think that Deadfore is easier than PoE. And I would say on average it is. But I've also read many rants from unlucky new players who complained about those perceived unfair difficulty spikes. And they had not many problems with PoE before. It can happen in PoE, too (cannot count the amount of rants about Crägholt Bluffs) but to a lesser extend because the game is less open. TL;dr: it depends.

Weird. I hope there was no secret "fix" because that would turn Vanishing Strike from decent into *pfffrrrt*. Unfortunately I cannot try it out atm because I'm on vacation and won't be back until September 7th.

I played PoE recently again after playing Deadfire for a long time. I just think Deadfire has more ups and downs. This also has a lot to do with how you progress. Imo it happens more frequently that you run into encounters which you are either under- or overleveled for. For example if you do Hanging Sepulchers too early (which can happen if you follow the Benweth/Furrante quest line too rigorously) it will wreck you. And if you don't go to the Vallian Ambassy early and get to Poko Kohara late - it's a cakewalk. This can also happen in PoE - but it's not as open and therefore the risk of that happening is lower overall. I also think that PoE's begining isn't very hard compared to Gorecci Street etc. IF you really know what to do. The enemies are more "playable", meaning their AI seems to be a lot more limited than Deadfire's. Imo

Nice. I don't know enough about Unity3D to anwer that question unfortunately. However I know that there are plugins for Unity3D which allow to use Arabic and Farsi. For example: https://github.com/Konash/arabic-support-unity Hello @Aarik D, is this of interest to you and your colleagues maybe? Cheers!

Hi, I once did a melee Stalker/Goldpact Knight which was very sturdy and used his very high accuracy potential (Zealous Focus, Stalker's Link, Flames of Devotion + Ring of Focused Flames, Marked Prey, Accuracy Wounding Shot) to deliver the deflection debuff of the Blade of the Endless Paths (-4 deflection on crit, stacks 5 times, also gains accuracy throughout the fight with every second). The result is a "marking" character with sturdyness, nice single target dmg and support who stomps a single enemy's deflection into the ground (for you, the party members and the wolf, too). It worked very well as frontliner.

Helm of the Falcon looks real nice with Devil of Caroc's Breastplate imo.

If you go with Reckless Brigandine: as headgear I'd recommend the White Witch Mask then. It looks good with the tribal-looking brigandine imo, it gives your illusions a +1 power level boost and it can cast Ryngrim's Rep. Visage for you 1/rest (automatically if you drop below 50% health). While this combo looks a bit weird on most races it fits super well for a "Mataru" themed character (so any type of Huana Warrior) imo. I don't know, dabateable. If you really like the weapon then bringing it to legendary makes sense. But I personally often don't even bring my favorite weapons up to superb and they usually work well enough. But if the rest of your party isn't very reliant on weapons and/or weapon quality (because they use mostly spells, have a weapon that comes superb or legandary or use soulbounds or summoned weapons) then I will def. bring my few favorites up to legendary (or even mythic).

PS: here's the list of permanent effects: https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Status_effects_(Deadfire)#Permanent_effects

There is no general rule like "if you want to get the best stuff you have to be cruel" like in PoE (Gift of the Machine, Effigy's Resentment). Instead it's more diverse. There are some interactions where you can only get some stuff if you have a certain reputation (or if you don't have a certain one), like Nature's Resolve where you cannot have the cruel or agressive reputations (because then the fitting dialogue options won't show up). Nature's Resolve only lasts until the next rest though iirc. I cannot give a general direction to which reputation/disposition nets the overall best rewards because I don't remember. I can only say that the rewards are so insignificant (unless you are doing a n-rest run) that it's noth worth bending over backwards in order to get them (imo). There are also very few permanant effects in general. If I think about it: none of them requires a certain disposition. For certain nice unique items you need to get a bad reputation/relationship with a certain faction (see Gipon Prudensco for example).

Oha, that would have been much cooler than her just waiting casually on top of that tower. I guess release came faster than anticipated (as always ;)).