Rheios

One way might be if they tied it into recovery time on swapped weapons, or allowed faster quick-slot item usage or something. Something that doesn't impact everything but does create a benefit to juggling things out of your belt or using multiple items at once. Or heck, allow using pickpocket unstealthed on a foe in combat to flat disarm them.

I wish there was a clever dialogue option involving Concelhaut when talking with the circle of archmagi. Something like: "btw guys, look who wants to say hello, my pet Concy!" Perhaps in the dlc... Man trotting him around like a show dog to display your superiority is going to make him comically livid. Even more than normal.

Off topic, but why Rauatai for a priest of Berath? The Huana seem far more respectful and dedicated to her eel incarnation, their bounty guy even gives you the bounties in her name. Huana culture needs some changes but that's what Berath's all about and you can be the impetus of better change withing their own society without the almost Galawain-style of strong supplementing the weaker. Still, it probably wouldn't matter in the end to a Berathian anyway. The wheel turns regardless.

While I'm not actually a fan of the idea of actually meeting Nega-Eothas as Gaun, I think there could be something to a death cult, or strange occurrence setting up a growing concern *and* connection to the Deadfire. More and more Deadfire souls cropping up in the Dyrwood as some strange soul-current is interrupting the regular flow into Hel. A sudden surge of slightly dreams among Eothasians calling them to the Dawnstars (Eder complains of them to you via letter - and mentions a voice in them being his old flame's calling his name), and Dawn and Dusk seemingly coming sooner in the last week. Mention of an interaction with a mob of strange individuals wearing masks calling you out to the center of your keep. And then Eothas awakens cutscene. -- Everyone will probably want to just stop there. I'm about to start rambling of some tweaks I think could help things. I didn't intend that at onset but I kindof got lost in rambling. -- The game continues on. But when you interact with Aloth later you discover his coming to the area because of some strange unfounded faction of the Leaden Key. You think maybe its the weird hooded figures that called you out to witness Eothas awakening. When you talk to Xoti though, she thinks they might be a group of militant Gaunites and asked to join out of curiosity and to follow you on your mission. As you reach Tikawara you have your big display and discover, as you pick up companions, that they all have some task relating to this organization interrupting their actions in the area - attacking those trying to mine for Luminous Adra or sinking ships searching for lore on Ukaizo. All the factions are pointing fingers at eachother for being the masked individuals and so each companion has a quest that ties to this secret cult. Xoti ends up being right after a fashion - they're the Eothasian equivalent of the Leaden Key, The Mirrored Curve or something, and have been actively protecting Ukaizo and the Luminous Adra pillars as holy locations in preparation for Eothas ever since St. Waidwyn's death at Halgot. These cultists all get their dreams through Eothas, as opposed to having one unified leader, are appalled at Xoti's visions and hate her for her 'darkness', and actively seek to add as many of their own souls to Eothas as they can as you meet them, and that's what you catch them having done at Hasango. A few of them additionally remain former god-likes (all the remaining godlikes of Eothas), surviving with soul-split like you, and are hold up in the lighthouse trying to fight their way out from the Naga in the area so that they can follow Eothas. You see the end of them, whether by your hand or them sailing off suicide (queue Eder's "nephew" plot -maybe he's even an Eothas-touched turned normal human that you can save, the only one). That gives all the factions a tie in to the main quest for the early game - they can't claim the region until they get rid of this organization. Then you witness the organization being done away with, but the full destruction of the god is presented even more strongly (and the 'strong souls' fueling Eothas are spread beyond your own), inform the factions. They proceed to bicker about it and continue to get nothing done and when left adrift *then* you have your first god meeting, beyond Berath's initial 'find out what he wants' mission, where they discuss what Eotha's plans could be, that it was dangerous of him absorbing all his Godtouched like that - leave the why vague - and Magran reveals the presence of her fort and her plan to blow up Eothas again. The other gods send you there to talk to Eothas - THIS is where they suggest you talk him down - first with Magran's option a last resort because of the damage it might do to the important adra veins in the region. Let you have a full, non-rushed discussion with Eothas and only when he definitely shoots you down and says 'you cannot convince me this is the wrong path' then have Magran pull the trigger. Eothas still saves you - tosses you and your ship away, but he appears to be contained. EDIT: Moved this part out of A and expanded on my thoughts of what its doing. The other gods have a meeting and tell you to go to Ukaizo because the explosion may have damaged the mechanism there even without Eothas's help because souls aren't travelling through Magran's volcano area anymore. This gives a bit of down time to prepare yourself for the big fight being against Ukaizo's guardian, which you are warned of. You wake up in the courtroom talking about Ukaizo and the possible destruction of the wheel there. The factions force you to make a decision of who you will bring with you to help investigate the wheel. This covers all three's motivations for wanting to come with you - Rauitai wants the storms to be stopped, Huana wants Ukaizo's legacy, Valians want the chance to investigate the wheel and its animancy promise, and the Pirates can just want to pirate or found their new kingdom at Ukaizo. A> Regardless the events happen and you go to Ukaizo, turn of rain, fight your fights. And then you get to the machine to find it intact but, instead of a giant bashing on it, there's a man of pure energy standing on the top of the nearby adra spike. You speak with him. Eothas reveals that the volcano actually fused him to the main Adra vein instead of destroying him and he got to come here in a proto-divine manifestation form. He talks about the strangeness of Ukaizo from what he remembers and thanks you for listening to him and coming to speak with him back at Magran's volcano. He stands firm that you can't change his mind, but will concede your conversation (regardless if you argued with him entirely or just talked about it and eve supported him) made him think about his views a bit more and so he'll offer you a boon of a sort, the ability to allow a kith to change some parts of the plan he may have overlooked. You tell him, he thanks you, queue him blowing up the Wheel mechanisms from *inside* as opposed to just hitting the thing. B> Alternatively, after you agree to aid a faction, or agree with none and start heading for Ukaizo yourself (once its selected for sea travel maybe), then another god scene happens where they reveal Eothas broke out of the shell the Volcano had put on him, he wasn't destroyed, and is heading for Ukaizo ahead of you. Then pretty much the above happens, with a tad bit more urgency, you have a similar conversation, and Eothas bashes **** in. For some reason I prefer the less physical approach to the wheel's destruction, but that's me maybe. All that said, I probably wrote that ****tily, and its *way* easier to critique than it is to produce - even on a DM scale I find myself and party occasionally rehashing my own plots like this as failures/having weaknesses - but there's some elements of motivation, side-plot/factional relevance, clarity of purpose and more explicit explanation of character capability that I feel like this at least touches up the roots of. It'll never happen, and probably wouldn't be worth it if it did.

I tend to do them but so far there's been good reason, usually. For the first character I had, a Priest of Berath, the Huana guy sending me 'prayer bounties' and the natural inclination to move things toward their next stages, meant that my character saw the opportunity to take a bounty in similar way as the Huana individual. An offered bounty was a quiet call to send them through their next doorway. My next character will be working for Rauatai but left there for the Dyrwood after his artisan master refused him, so there's not a lot of loyalty there beyond a general agreeableness toward being aggressive. However his stronger general mercenary nature, means he's not above taking some money for some heads. I might stop at certain bounties, and its a bit of a bummer you can't get the full list and then pick and choose but have to go tier by tier, but its not like they're necessary. The next character will probably be way more restricted on them so I'm not super looking forward to hitting him, and the final character may just end up wiping the Deadfire of all life for the ****s and giggles because its less likely the Gods will off their yes-man. But he's a psychotic ****, so getting paid to do it is just gravy.

Ugh, another cloak. Mystic background relation could at least be interesting, although I already played my mystic and was hoping my hunter could get a cool cloak. Eh, no bit deal.

In POE 1 I tended to at least find a few places to use them - a bridge here that I knew I could kite a group through, the stairs of a lord I knew I was about to tick off, before a huge dungeon end boss I knew was coming and was going to try and kite him (ended up ending up getting used on his adds but it helped). Minor places but kindof nice when they were hit right (although so vastly limited in number that high level the number of useful traps was small). In Deadfire most of the fights don't tend to be helped as much at prep-time comparatively and the places I'd really like to use them - ship to ship combat as a nasty 'on-boarding suprise' - aren't an option. Actually the fact that you always end the fight on the top deck, and never go below to sometimes find captives or fight the captain or what not, or get pushed back during a raid to a well trapped corridor or something, is a little disappointing. But they might improve that still.

So you're saying the story is basically following around Trump, but rather killing yourself. I can dig that. Not quite. Eothas isn't caught in nearly as many blatant lies. He's just blind to his own hypocrisy and, for some reason, you can't really point it out to him yourself and Eder gets blown off when he tries. I can kindof see the parallels with that sentence though. Less politically, and more seriously, Eothas's actions legitimately make me question his status as a positive deity compared to even Woedica. *WOEDICA*. Eothas in Deadfire was someone I liked at least on the same level, if not less, than my former most voted 'hypocritical bs deity'. And that's for me, not for my character which I describe below. I can kindof respect Woedica just doing her job as leadership, justice, and vengeance and all that - were it not for her actions not being good leadership, just, or reasonable vengeance of any kind - but Eothas from the moment I heard of him was just chaining together sins against his station, portfolio, and presentation from the onset and when you finally might get a chance for deeper insight why its because of poorly supported guilt over hiding a truth and in complete dismissal of the thousands and perhaps billions his actions will be killing all so he can sleep a bit better at night. (If he sleeps) If he was presented as a heroic but misguided/deceived figure (maybe from another god doing their job at being less savory), maybe, but here he just seems like a really apologetic alcoholic who keeps killing your pets with his car. And primarily only the offing himself on that character. I have other characters working through the game, who will be more flexible, who might have to bend to Eothas's power, and still want to keep doing as they do. That character, with his devotion to Berath and what he saw as his duty, means he was pretty stoic and rational but ultimately rather inflexible in his stubbornness. As I said before, he was a bad character for that interaction. Eothas was either going to have to *genuinely* convince him that it was better for Berath, kith, and the wheel, and not just with lip service but with genuine explanations of improvements vs costs and his full reasoning, listen to him say his full piece and pull back slightly (or hold off) on breaking the wheel until that discussion could happen, or kill him. Ankou was just not going to bend a knee on that issue. Hell if Eothas had asked him to go get each faction's opinion and been pleasant and willing to debate then he probably would have done it - (seriously, would have totally taken the bait, had it been a manipulation) being at least respectful to the gods usually, if only subservient to Berath - but just flat out destroying the wheel and deciding everything without feedback, input, or respect for the kith he was ostensibly "saving" OR those kiths' souls - blatantly offloading their responsibility on people like Xoti (seriously Eothas, Xoti?) - was outside anything he considered respectful, rational, wise, sane, redemptive, or remotely survivable.

I can see the lack of excitement some, but I just think that means they needed to vary the lashes up on unique items a bit more. If you can only add a few elemental lashes, but certain uniques have stronger lashes of a specific element, or more varied lashes that you can't add (A sun-blade style weapon that has a half-fire lash and a half-raw lash or can inflict a burn wound on a crit, or maybe just a club with a weird slashing lash). Alternatively make them take some rarer items so you have to consider it more. I only ever felt the POE1's uniques weren't unique though when they didn't have a backstory on them. That's probably my favorite part about uniques, knowing that they had a place in the world.

Reading the thread and thinking about it, before you go to meet Eothas its definitely made clear you can't beat him (although due to most convention, I can see how people could have taken that as a narrative falsity). Hell the other Gods don't think they can take him even if they absorb all the Godtouched souls and dogpile him. I have no idea *why* that's the case, as he's one god with a bunch of souls he's burning through the power of to even get to Ukaizo by that point and can't be on the top of his game. But sure, we'll accept they're as helpless as they think they are. But the whole time you *do* keep getting told that Eothas may listen to you, nay - probably will listen to *only you* as a fully knowledgeable representative of the kith, about his actions with the wheel. Even going so far as to give you the option to tell Berath, when asked how you want things to change or move forward, that you want things to just stay as they are. Sure she says to consider it more, that the choice may be up to you and that you should think about how to improve things, but that's vague enough to mislead from "no, you'll really be helpless in the greater scheme of things - you can't maintain the wheel or even improve it". All those final conversations made it obvious to me that I couldn't fight Eothas, and that if I disagreed (maybe that wasn't the "mission" but by that point the mission of discovery and soul-recovery is over and you're still hanging around, ostensibly to grant your opinion to Eothas) and wanted him to not damage the wheel that I'd need to convince him or be convinced by him enough to agree and then grant an opinion how he might help the future of things. Of course neither happened on that character. Eothas is as convincing as when a superior at work used tells you that you "wouldn't understand" (try ball-parking how this works, with some work shown for me, you colossal green ****), and you can't try and further argue with him. Heck you never *really* get to argue with him. You can lodge your complaint at Magran's volcano but the giant explosion cuts much more conversation short and you never get a chance to pick back up with him. Overall I'd say Anti-god Eder has more argument dialogue with Eothas than you really do, or at least more pointedly shoots out his hypocrisy, and then Eothas just blows him off, so you'd probably not be much more different. Its just a bit of a trip-up since everyone seems to talk like you should have more impact for some unknown reason. If anything I've grown pretty happy with the suicide option as I've thought more about it. Living in Eothas' world seems too willing to entertain the fancies of that egotistical man-child - although its a little like cutting of your nose to spite your own face, maybe. Still, that character genuinely didn't think kith were as advanced as Eothas seemed to believe, and having an eternal dreamy afterlife was probably better for him than the slow entropy that would doom the rest. The dreaming waking and sleeping loop's at least a cycle for him, as a priest of Berath.

It could be you have to convince the Wahaki to leave peacefully too, as well. The Wahaki are kindof hard up for some 'murder their way out' good times. Hell one of them tries to snap your neck/attack you just for talking to them initially, so to say they're tense is an understatement. Getting them to leave peacefully might allow you to convince him that letting the slaves and the Wahaki go, and sticking to the legal slaving, or something, is more beneficial. I'm not sure myself, I killed him so hard he exploded.

I got the Wael-face, 'Wael?' question and then blacked out and woke up fine.(more than fine, we had the 'good food, good friends/company' buff) If anything Wael seemed amused at the whole thing, even though just earlier he was annoyed that I'd seemed to have lost my sense of wonder compared to when I buried the scroll in POE1. But then again that character was a Priest of Berath, he tended to respect the God's authority in small favors, but only Berath for big stuff so he'd actually always been pretty cordial to the gods by then. (Later he screamed at them, literally the first of only 2 passionate responses he gave all game, to shut up.)

You've been tricked. Easily over 90% of unique weapons had something you COULDN'T enchant yourself. And the biggest loss of the ability to self enchant basic items was that now, without as much of the unique variation (there's almost 2 of every one, depending, but certain characters may just not make the right decisions/find them), you're often stuck with a basic lash-less/target-less weapon if you try and dual wield say - battleaxes. (Whether for rp or jut cosmetic appearance of some weapons). I mean, that's a contrived example for a me, but the point remains that in the old system if one of the particular uniques/soulbounds didn't work for you, you could just make your own. You'd miss out on some cool unqiue stuff, so you almost never wanted to - until you *did* and then in Deadfire its sorely missed. But maybe that's just me.

Reading over the races again they, on the whole, seem very insular, xenophobic even among small differences in culture, and seem to fall solidly into the Pillars trend of culture weighing into them more than race (although for some the culture is entirely their own whereas others involve other, likely more bombastic, races influencing them). So my guess is that they lack the worldliness to become truly wise or experienced on the whole, likely tend to be very conservative and unwilling to accept theories or beliefs not included in their predominant culture or worldview, and just on the whole act like older people from a young age. So far as great knowledge of history - it depends on if they're interested. I image some are, but my guess is that they're more interested in self-reflection and where they fit into the world at that point. Not to mention that they're long lived, its a lot of history, and there's no evidence their physical memories are significantly abnormal for a human, save maybe a slight improvement. So many may actually find themselves *forgetting* most of their lives as they age, or at least having their brains filter more and more "unimportant" information out. Humans start experiencing a perceptional shift for time, unless we really stop and think about it, pretty early on. I know I find myself experiencing time differently at 30 . Elves may last a bit longer, but there's not guarantees of that. Which may be why they are so insular or traditional - less likely to forget something if it stays the same.

Yeah, I never expected to fight Eothas on my first run. Well, until every other decision was just lying over and asking him to be nice in one of a few ways (i.e - the Fight and instantly die option was what I selected). My character *wanted* the wheel and the existing system. The wheel is Berath, or she is representative of its cycles, and as a cleric, a death godlike, and a herald of Berath he was more miffed, probably even than Berath, about Eothas's reasoning and attack on his deity. (And in fact I considered going a different way in the conversation until he does the whole 'I absolve you of your duty'. I know he meant the killswitch but my character didn't think he had the right to be the one to remove what his deity had put in him). It was a bad first character but that I actually lacked the option to straight up reiterate to Eothas I thought he was *still* a dumbass, and for him to blow me off again, at least was a bit frustrating. And so I went with what was effectively duty-driven suicide. I knew I was going to be howling at the night, for all intents and purposes, but I was hoping I could either convince him or have even clearer options to choose the howl.