Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[Roguey]

NOBODY IN THIS THREAD PLAYS THIS GAME, they instead talk about its popularity or something.

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE NOBODY ON THE INTERNET KNOWS WHICH CONDITIONS LEADs TO WHICH VERSION OF THE WATCHER ABILITIES??

I know that in Eothas conversation what you tell to him gives you different version of phantom of the lost depending whether you reach out to your soul, souls of the lost or talk to Eothas but I have no fucking idea what adjusts the Visage of Death's herald.

Can you NERDS STOP TALKING ABOUT FALLOUT AND TALK ABOUT THE FUCKING GAME

Mass tagging will get you in trouble but you could always individually ask the following: DemonKing Crichton Spectacle Rean Riddler Feyd Rautha Cosmo Lady Error Joni Odin von Hassenstein TemplarGR Ivan Agesilaus Vityaz Doktor Best Mazisky Jimmious Projas pomenitul Haplo Quillon Sherry Niklasgunner John Keel frajaq Alpan jf8350143 Safav Hamon Sailor Woedica

 

[aweigh]

you can use the console to give yourself whatever watcher ability... and yes, i am just being annoying, i know this isn't what you asked.

 

[FreeKaner]

This is some 4-dimensional, triple-checked and double negative skill interaction during this one conversation. I actually think it depends on your first and last answer but also whether you angered Berath during the conversation as well.

Fucking hell. I just want to get my roleplaying going.

 

[Riddler]

Does nobody in this thread play this game and hover over their watcher abilities?

Never hovered over the abilities. Never had a reason to.

If they were somehow meaningful or needed I might've had but there is no indication that they were upgraded I didn't need them so why would I go tinkering around with a system that neither announces it presence nor is needed for any encounter in the game?

Honestly, I have barely read through any of the abilities, I have a glance at the key words and then just approcimate what they do and that is enough for practically every encounter in the game. I don't even understand the inspiration system at all and I managed to make it through PotD+ all three dlcs with few reloads after the first island.

There is an massive overload of similar (and often practically identical)abilities in PoE1+2 and there is no reason to go through them unless one plans a solo run or something.

 

[FreeKaner]

Okay it seems you get something different if you only speak when Berath asks you questions.

 

[MajorMace]

Another good example of how unintuitive the systems are : Resistance to afflictions.
Say you get an item or ability that gives you resistance to dexterity affliction.
If you want more info : the game will enter into lengthy details about inspirations (buffs) and afflictions (debuffs) tiers (1-2-3) - how resistance downgrades any affliction received by one tier - how any inspiration directly counters any affliction regardless of the tier of either one of these two.

(on top of this, you also have counters based on keywords : Fire/Ice, Poison/Antidotes etc....)

Jesus fucking christ, what the fuck did I just read.

While, when you do the math : Resistance to dexterity affliction means you can't - ever - be paralyzed or petrified. In other words : it's good for everyone in your party.
Resistance to Intellect afflictions means you can't be dominated (which is exactly like Charmed, except that your charmed dude uses his abilities) : in other words, you WANT your spellcasters to be resistant to Intelligence afflictions.
Resistance to Strength afflictions means you can't be stunned, but it's super weak since the tier 1 affliction already means you can't engage : in other words, this resistance is dogshit, don't take it.
Constitution afflictions are weak and can be disregarded (at least in the base game).
Resistance to Perception afflictions means you can't be blinded : in other words, it's very good on your backline (because of the range and recovery time) unless you want to blind yourself to avoid gazes from enemies who are, themselves, immune to blindness.
Resistance to Resolve is also good on everybody : you can't be terrified (which is the actual good old fear effect).

Here's an educated table on Resistances :

Strength : Weak. Immunity or counters (through inspirations) however are very good on your frontliners.
Dexterity : Strong. On everybody.
Constitution : Weak. Also it depends on the difficulty level, and I have no idea if dlc's high level content makes it relevant - it might very well.
Intellect : Strong. Especially on your spellcasters : because goddamn if your cipher/druid/wizard/priest gets dominated, be certain he's gonna make the sky fall on your face and wreck everybody.
Perception : Okay. You don't want your rangers and spellcasters to see their range halved and their recovery fucked. Mind that - in theory - it could be a valid strategy to blind yourself to fight specific enemies though.
Resolve : Strong. On everybody.

Obviously, it's mostly based on my experience back then. Things might have changed at high level, especially with dlcs.

 

[Alpan]

stuff about the inspiration/affliction system

While I've been agreeing with you so far (at least on the last few pages), I don't see your point here. What you're describing is really a result of the power level discrepancies between afflictions. The underlying system is extremely easy to understand (but maybe could be signaled better in the UI -- see the enhanced UI mod that solves this issue, for instance), and improved on PoE 1's clusterfuck approach.

 

[MajorMace]

The system is easy to understand Alpan.
My point is that "you're resistant to dexterity afflictions !" isn't all that clear when you haven't dived into the systems in detail.

In short : I would have put a clear wiki link for the whole "Resistance to X affliction" and clearly outlined the key info : You're immune to the tier 3. Instead, the game throws a big ass wall of text at you, and it doesn't even concern the specific resistance you're benefitting from, but the whole mechanics.
You need to check, in the game's present state : the affliction info window, the specific stat window, other windows if you're not certain what stuff like Penetration/Engagement etc means (as a newcomer to the game). It's not surprising to read people say "Okay I found some resistance to dexterity item, whoop-dee-doo the fuck I give" because what comes to their mind is the "downgrade by one tier" mechanic. In actuality, they found something that makes them immune to paralysis, that's a p.big deal. But it won't be perceived as such most of the time.

PS : I play the unmodded game indeed. Maybe some mods make this much more intuitive. Don't mind my rant in such a case. Although, mods don't change the state of the vanilla experience, obviously. And let's not pretend people usually don't prefer to experience the vanilla version before tinkering with mods.

PPS : I strongly agree that the whole systems, as long as I'm concerned, feels much better than the first game. Especially in how impactful some buffs/debuffs actually are.

 

[FreeKaner]

You are not immune to tier 3, it gets downed one level. Meaning you are not affected by tier 1 ones too. However yes never getting affected by tier 3 ones is very strong.

 

[MajorMace]

You are de facto immune to tier 3, since they're downgraded.
You can still be affected by tier 1, at the condition that the tier 2 was originally thrown at you.

I see Resistance as partial Immunity, basically.

 

[FreeKaner]

Also I did try a lot of things but I am not sure what exactly is the conditions for getting an ability. I seem to have only alternated between not getting an upgrade at all or getting specifically Mien, I am not sure how the others are gotten. Possibly it is a weighted calculation against first and last options. Something like if you picked option 2 and also chose these you get this specific thing or something like that.

 

[Safav Hamon]

There are none. It's unintuitive, boring, and hard to balance.

Deterministic round based initiative systems are the best.

 

[FreeKaner]

There are none. It's unintuitive, boring, and hard to balance.

Deterministic round based initiative systems are the best.

That makes it boring and predictable. Randomised rounds based on initiative are best.

 

[Curratum]

To me, randomized initiative each round / rolls at the start of each round, are one of the pinnacles of stupidity in D&D. I can almost understand why you would want it in a PC game where the computer does all the rolls and math instantly but it's still a stupid complication to me.

Feel free to mark this with cuck and decline.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Determinism > RNG for tactical gaming. You always know the order of battle, and can plan strategies around it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

To me, randomized initiative each round / rolls at the start of each round, are one of the pinnacles of stupidity in D&D. I can almost understand why you would want it in a PC game where the computer does all the rolls and math instantly but it's still a stupid complication to me.

Feel free to mark this with cuck and decline.

D&D has a lot of stupid mechanics — many because the game is designed for people sitting at a table and not being implemented as a system for a computer game.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Determinism > RNG for tactical gaming. You always know the order of battle, and can plan strategies around it.

Or change the order to suit yourself, I agree. But then initiative is generally the most important stat as soon as you hit a high enough threshold. You generally get abilities that are so strong that if you manage to go first you can press the I win button. D&D can be played like that. I like the middle option of Initiative + rand_num.

 

[aweigh]

Is "deterministic initiative" what Wizardry and Elminage use, where it's controlled by AGI stat and then race + level + class modifiers, with no dice-rolling involved?

If so, then I agree to an extent: at the top-end it becomes the most important thing, being able to always go first, because enemies will wipe you on the 1st or 2nd rounds if you don't. I don't personally mind this if encounters are balanced with this in mind but not all developers are as capable as the ones behind Wizardry and Elminage.

 

[Curratum]

Public service announcement - games where the enemies wipe you on the first round if you lose initiative are shit.

 

[Lacrymas]

I managed to reproduce the bug on story mode. Basically, what happened is that I killed Mokeha in Satahuzi, which prompted the Storm Speaker to attack me, but I didn't kill her, I sneaked past her. Which means she couldn't be on the beach, but I'm also thinking, since I didn't kill her, any failsaves about the ship relating to her death don't trigger. Quality QA. I'm going to try to kill her with my main character to see if this will jolt the proper triggers.

 

[Sabotin]

I've played this months ago and was kinda disappointed, made it about 3/4 (?...lv13) before losing interest.

Doing it again now with all the dlc and after playing a bit more it seems much more enjoyable.

I'd say the key were 3 things:
- Dial down my autism regarding being optimal and knowing everything. I don't get the intricacies of keywords/counters, afflictions inspirations, action speed/delay and whatevers... it's kinda confusing and too complicated to keep track of it on 5 chars + dozen enemies every fight? But it's enough to know that keeping many buffs up is good and they gotta be recast more often. Armor type you can take just depending on how close to enemies you are, robed melee for that top DPS don't really fly. It's more about staticstical advantages/disadvantages in fights than specific things.
- Delegate the instacast buffs to AI. This goes with the previous, then you don't need to put attention to who has what buff/debuff in your party as much.
- Shift button. Probably the biggest thing to countering combat annoyance with all the active skills is that you can chain commands. Mark+shiftclick blinding+shiftclick accurate+shiftclick attack. Saves lots of trouble and makes the whole thing feel more BG-like with virtual rounds.

Now just wish that DLC stories are a bit better. The main path seems kinda random and divorced from the world. The big giant seems gone after the first island, only remembered in that low budget pirate play. Dramatic moments seemingly randomly inserted ("SHOW THEM WHAT YOU ARE" at arrival at Nekataka had me checking if I missed something or enountered some bug for example). Well maybe there's a payoff nearing the end. Hopefuly it won't make me go ".........ok? And then?" like PoE1 xD. Did I mention it feels random?

And hopefuly they toned down the foreign words as well. I still can't get away from the feeling of reading a fan-translated work. You know, when there's no exact transference of meaning and they leave it untranslated, regardless of clarity or flow. "Oh no, a yao ate my shimei, I must escape with shixiong and go seek help from laoshi, but he's thousands of zhang away!" It's funny when it's actually aknowledged in a quest, they could have made it a part of the world instead of just spraying it everywhere.

One thing that's hard to wrap my instincts around though is the mishmash of abilities and spells. My tank is a wizard wearing plate and wielding a dagger and small shield. Using monk martial techniques to shoot guns faster. Paladins outbuffing a priest. Barbarians using rage to improve spellcasting. Etc. Countering stereotypes is on thing but at least have classes gravitate toward archetypes or something.

To finish on a positive note I really like the unique items. There's something for everyone and you have different flavors for similar roles. And the abilities granted are often actually unique and not just copy/paste of spells.

 

[Lacrymas]

When I killed the Storm Speaker, the NPC which is supposed to spawn in her place in Vilario's Rest spawned and I can continue. Quality game.

 

[MajorMace]

Lacrymas you're gonna love what's coming if broken quest strings irritate you.
Wait for the Slavers/Natives intricate questlines

The main path seems kinda random and divorced from the world.

It is. Utterly.
On top of being uninteresting.

 

[Lacrymas]

Random broken quests usually don't, but the main quest on the first island more than half a year after release and being unable to continue is a bit much even for me to handle.

 

[Mazisky]

Deadfire won RPG of the year from the world's longest running PC gaming magazine (30 years).

I remember playing a Doom demo included in that magazine on my 386. Im old