thelee

i have a similar gripe about Marius. You can upgrade Shadow Step so that it basically instakills stunned enemies. When it works it's great! But he'll just waste it on un-stunned enemies or not use it when there are stunned enemies! I tried disabling the setting for companions to use their abilities themselves, but this added way more radial micromanagement than I enjoyed. Other allies have similar problems, but it's less of a big deal w/ e.g. Kai's taunt, because at least he's still taunting. But Shadow Step has an extremely looooong cooldown and it's only really effective if it's smartly targeted! (Same goes for another upgrade that lets it do more damage the less health the target has) I wish there were slightly better smarts for companions, or at least have a system where if I put an ability on my hotkeys that they stop using it automatically.

Sweet jeebus, I must have just completely missed the option. I only ever saw the breakdown option, so I thought lower level mats were only if for some reason I wanted to upgrade extremely under-tiered uniques or something.

You can craft higher tier Adra?????

very important and want to +1 this. a new skill i had to develop with avowed on PotD is constantly glancing at the top left of the screen so I can see where all the red dots are, and (very importantly) what direction they are facing. this makes sure i don't get tunnel-vision on a single enemy while someone is flanking me from the side. also, really good to just pay attention to audio cues. this is probably the only RPG i've played where the random things your companions shout in combat are insanely useful. if Kai says something like "enemy to your right!" i dodge to my left instantly, without thinking.

lower the difficulty if you need easier opponents i definitely cheesed a few encounters on path of the damned, but largely play "normally." Early on you should strive very hard to get your armor and weapons upgraded to fine, it makes a huge difference. beyond that, you really do need to master dodging and aiming.

though with some exploration, you can ugprade several items no problem. it's upgrading across tiers that's really expensive. for this reason i think it's kind of a mistake that hte game was apparently changed to let you upgrade common items across tiers. it's basically a trap. uses way too many resources and basically means you never have to sell items or engage with vendors at all. IMO it'd be better if you had to find uniques or scrounge up cash for a tier up, and upgrading is a system in parallel with that, not in conflict.

it's also baffling because it's apparent that these people must not have played other big RPGs in the past few years. BG3 has probably changed CRPG gaming forever, and did not have a lot of the things I see raised negatively about Avowed not being skyrim-like (e.g. why doesn't avowed have no level cap, respawning monsters, custom enchantments, NPC schedules, etc). did they bash BG3 for those same flaws? More likely they didn't even play BG3. it's fine for people to not have a lot of genre experience, but I wish people had more curiosity and were willing to try out a game on its own merits.

With Avowed, something I've realized is that I think for a lot of people, the only RPG they've spent much time on is in fact Skyrim. There was a Sports Illustrated (?!) preview of Avowed that I found baffling, because it was written by an e-sports commentator who only does RTS's, who admits in their preview that the only RPG they've ever played Skyrim, didn't like it, and their preview of Avowed was "this is kind of like Skyrim... which I didn't like. If you like Skyrim, maybe you'll like it." (I don't mind people having their specialties and genre likes, but for goodness sake, please have some basic familiarity with the genre you're trying to cover for a job. Hilariously, I can't find the article anymore, it only exists on internet archive, so either they or their editor realized what a hack job it was.) But the more social media commentary I see, the more I see people who are like that journalist where I'm starting to realize they literally have no other frame of reference for an RPG. Whether they like Avowed or don't like Avowed, it's in the context of "it's like skyrim in this way... and that's bad/good" or "it's not like skyrim in this way... and that's good/bad." There are literally other ways to make RPGs. "NPCs in Avowed don't have their own day to day schedules" my brother in Christ most cRPGs do not do that.

here's the video link: the youtuber in question had an update and apparently by their findings it's not average, it's literally just the highest tier out of your loadouts and armor. so this would match with your theory. so higher armor only matters insofar as it's better than other stuff you got. so for casters, you can get away with just upgrading armor.

Sure, but I mean in games that have done well with this (BG3 and Deadfire loot) for casters things like weapons are just stat sticks, even if good or useful stat sticks. The ARPG philosophy is that weapon damage and quality is also part of being the stat stick, even if it doesn’t really make “sense” that a better axe helps your fireball. i don’t really express an opinion either way, I have enjoyed both approaches. It’s easier for item design to get lazy with the ARPG approach (BG3 itemization is probably the best itemization in a recent CRPG I’ve seen, D4 is very uninspiring despite everything being “relevant”), on the other side there is risk to have inadequate support for casters getting interesting gear (Solasta or core D&D/Pathfinder). armor is definitely odd though.

Armor being included into offense calculation seems to be assured. There was an unlisted video that got shared with me where the guy definitively shows him changing armor (and only armor), and getting a skull difference on his test target and his black bow ends up doing different damage. Im heading to bed but ill try to remember to link it here tomorrow.

It is definitely unintuitive. In the abstract I get it in the sense that everyone themselves has a “quality level” (normal, fine, exceptional, etc) and it means that casters do not get to bypass having to invest in gear. It happens with weapons in D4 and D3 (maybe other ARPGs) after Diablo 2 had tons of gear that was irrelevant for casters, so it’s not totally foreign to me, but adding armor into the mix is definitely new.

I can now at least give you an answer on that last part. Someone did some testing, and it seems like your equipped gear feeds into a tier level that also determines your spell damage (including how summoned weapons scale). this video shows the testing, with blackbow in particular: so, grimoire quality does matter, as does the quality of whatever else you have equipped along with your grimoire. edit: i followed up with the creator, and they showed that even armor matters (they posted an unlisted video in reply to me showing the test). it looks like the game computes some sort of score based on all your gear (either an average or a total count) and compares that against the enemy to determine damage bonuses and penalties. that's probably what's happening with the enemies, too. so don't skimp out on upgrading your stuff just cause you're a caster or you're good at dodging!

is there really no benefit for a one-handed style play? i would find it a little odd that you would be able to block and parry without a shield and just have an open offhand, but then there's no downside to just having a shield anyway.

this was actually pretty important to use heavy armor. damage reduction in this game has massive increasing returns, so the difference between heavy armor + arcane veil vs light armor + arcane veil could literally be almost a 2x in damage received. (it was more insane before arcane veil got nerfed, you could have 0 constitution and face-tank enemies on path of the damned with heavy armor, arcane veil, and a ring of deflection or something)