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

[Iskramor]

After 5.0 patch and turn based mode i turned my opinion of this game 180 degree.Frame rate and writing are still shit but everything else is good on par with 1 game sometimes even better.So much time and passion has been put in this game and attention to detail for josh to be sold along with obsidian to microsoft lol.

 

[Grunker]

Since a lot of the AoE is not that good in Deadfire I haven't much bothered with it before, but I'm leveling up Konstanten in preparation for Seeker Slayer Survivor (my first attempt at the DLC) and holy tit's that tornado invocation is hilariously good once you upgrade it - and on a Skald, which Konstanten is, it's only 4 phrases! Now ff I can just find a boss fight that has you fighting exactly two mobs...

 

[Grunker]

Just don't cast it if there are several enemies with spell reflection - it will wipe out your whole party. Reason being each "reflection" starts a new tornado with as many jumps left as the tornado had when it the mage. I cast one against a throng of skellies including to skeleton mages with arcane reflection up, and it generated in the vicinity of 100 tornadoes, wiping out everything on the map including my party

 

[Shadenuat]

Out of morbid curiosity tried the TB mode. Don't know what I expected

Ok some fair things:
- If you abhore RTwP definitely pick it, and something like close to hardest difficulty. Just don't start of PoTD, at least with story companions. switch to it later.
- You do things in combat a bit differently. Sometimes. Although not often. Not sure, since collect enemies > stun/aoe seems to work as fine as in RTwP. In fact it works even better~
- It is nice to have all the precision, but I can't say you actually still move a lot in combat. Enemies seem quite happy to target the closest character even if there is a 1 hp one within move>attack distance.

Meh:
- It makes things even easier, especially your ability to chain cc (but at least now you care more about chaining cc a-la dos instead of not)
- Early game is even more boring and grindy as you look xoti doing those 17 damage hits on super boars. TB exacerbates lots of my problems with PoE i.e very repetetive fighting and I honestly fear fighting something like golems with this.
- Classes with great Free Actions are kinda broken. High level Fighter can getoverhere multiple enemies for your AoE in a single turn. I made a mistake of picking Blood Mage who restores spells for small price in HP. So first I prebuffed with everything (free) then restored spells (free) then thrown spells around.
- In the second area (cave) I had mob slowly go around Eder 5 times in a row getting 5 AOO in a row and dying not doing anything. I wonder if it tried to get my Veyla

After feeding Veyla to a dragon getting Veyla from the first island out after hours of fighting super boars inside choke points I larped that she then sailed to Eothas and defeated him with the power of cuteness and ended the playthrough.

I think if you never played Deadfire this mod would really make things more fun for you (and don't forget Veyla and 3 rounds dead = means dead); if you're pretty cold to the game already it doesn't save it in my opinion, just makes it a lot longer.

P.S. Magrans' Challenges are mostly dumb as all hell and slapped on game without thought imo add nothing to it. Some are ok, but others look either like autism or make no sense ("you don't get time to think in a tactical game"). Or stuff like breakable items with unlimited inventory in a game about builds/collecting cool artifacts. Sounds "fun".

 

[Lacrymas]

It's almost as if this game wasn't designed to be TB in the first place. Most TB games we got recently don't understand that TB has the possibility to be faster than RT, you just need to be able to skip animations. Faster gameplay is actually one of the advantages over RT...

 

[Shadenuat]

I'd say that TB game with just abilities is not very fun really after things like DOS1 or X-COM2. It is very shallow. You need prepared actions, counter actions, terrain, elevation, cover. It shouldn't be about just chugging potions and clicking on your best offensive ability.

At minimum game should have less number bloat and every round should count more. Maybe that's why low level D&D is so fun, with its high lethality, high damage, initiative based system.

 

[Tigranes]

Early game POTD TB with story companions - the problem isn't that it's crazy difficult, but that depending on your classes it can be quite slow. E.g. a fighter MC? Yeah, switch to TB after a few levels.

Free actions do become overpowered.

I enjoyed it quite a bit, and might do a solo melee wizard POTD on TB at some point. Feels like compared to RTWP that particular build would benefit from a bit less milisecond fiddling, though the lack of milisecond fiddling or kiting would make it a lot harder as well.

I guess the loss here is, imagine if the game was built TB from the ground up..

 

[Shadenuat]

It's pretty powerful. I was tankier than Eder since level 1. I just slapped heavy armor on myself, dumped dex to 3, maxed resolve, and used staff with +passive (less initiative? who cares lol), magic shield and then Mirror Image which you just recast any time they remove it. Tanked bacon like a fat orlan girl I was.

If you add something like Fighter on top of this + Chanter (classes who don't care for resource and do things every round are great) probably will be able to sit there eating most hits all day.

 

[Grunker]

Shadenuat with regards to pathing, in my current >100 hour game I have seen mobs take unnecessary disengagement attacks maybe 3 or 4 times, so that's not an actual issue. What is an issue is monsters and allies skipping turns when they could actually do something - especially caster AI is not properly updated. This probably influenced 5-10% of all combat I did, so that's an issue.

Free action mechanics are mostly OK outside of a few abuse scenarios, which you can use or ignore at your leisure (another hilarious one is ranger's movement ability that attacks on use... so many of these free action abuse cases could have been really easily mitigated by just making each ABILITY usable only once per turn. So as many free actions as you wanted, but only one of each ability.).

With regards to Magran's, which ones do you consider "OK"? Galawain's is good solely because it adds a little more challenge which is sorely needed, Ondra's is good because it makes enemy ships actual, you know things... then there's the "repair items" one - that one actually changes the game pretty significantly and not only in a microy annoying fashion. It makes you use a lot more of the equipment you find and forces you out of comfort picks.

But besides that, I think they're all pretty much a gigantic miss. And it's odd, because there's a lot of stuff you could have done with less programming time consumed that would make more sense.

 

[Shadenuat]

I activated Galawain, Veyla & 3 turn death. I don't care for ships. Someone likes all the ship content??

I agree they're mostly a miss. Some don't even change things at all much (like darkness which you cancel with picking xoti into party).

 

[Grunker]

As for my personal overall opinion, I am never moving back after having tried TB. It's much better IMO. But I will be adding difficulty enhancing mods and avoiding the obviously broken stuff.

(Also good thing you didn't play further, because then you would be complaining much more after you ran into some actual problems instead of the minor stuff you mention - stuff like Heavy Armor on EVERYONE being a completely obvious choice. At first I thought casters would maybe be interested in Dex and better initiative, but fuck it man. It doesn't even come close to benefitting you as much as just throwing heavy armor on everyone. Or stuff like interruptable enemies being complete pushovers since it is brain-dead easy to interrupt now.)

 

[Grunker]

I activated Galawain, Veyla & 3 turn death. I don't care for ships. Someone likes all the ship content??

I like quite a few of the boarding fights and cannon fights are over in 4 seconds.

But I was asking because you said "some are OK" and I pretty much consider the whole lot of them a complete failure - even the ones I activate are whatever. Pretty much the only one I think isn't a complete miss is the repair one.

 

[Shadenuat]

I think barb also has some op free ability. But hell, even rogue free jumping is really strong when you think about it.

As for armor,

I just slapped heavy armor on myself, dumped dex to 3

yep.

Maybe you're right about repair, did not try it - seems counter intuitive to fun of collecting all the artifacts and trying them out.

I find turning whole game into glorified orlan escort mission kinda lulzy so I used that.

stuff like interruptable enemies being complete pushovers since it is brain-dead easy to interrupt now.

wizard casts spell
pick eder and teleport to wizard (free action)
kick wizard in the nuts
run back somewhere or teleport again (free action)

stuff like this reminds me of DOS2 with wings on everyone.

 

[Grunker]

Edited in an even bigger problem - interrupts. Prepare to lol at Neriscyrlas as her broken OP double Llengrath's Safeguard is never cast because you got a sidekick with a regular ol' arbalest modal firing 2-damage shots at her (the modal interrupts). Or any of her other spells for that matter.

Maybe you're right about repair, did not try it - seems counter intuitive to fun of collecting all the artifacts and trying them out.

It is - it is solely for when you have played through and tried those items, and want something fresh. The penalties and cost of maintainenance is actually surprisingly huge, so what you have to do is kit everyone out with a lot of items sets, only use the extragood stuff when you absolutely need to. Basically it forces you to enjoy interesting items that you previously didn't consider because other stuff was just better.

 

[Shadenuat]

I remember game being absolutely loaded with dozens, hundreds of high quality normal weapons and armor in the endgame however, as after you kill some group you get 12 exceptional swords and armors.

I think mechanics like this just need to be better integrated in the game than just an extra difficulty.

it forces you to enjoy

what a sawyerism

 

[Grunker]

Most bosses have a lot of stacks of Concentration, but with 3 or more interrupters on your team you're good to go. Only the megabosses with insane amounts of Concentration stacks can ignore this issue.

 

[Tigranes]

On Magran challenges:

Galawain is actually cool, and I'd say it's a no-brainer default now for many runs. Spices up the game for beasts to get these properties. Boars exploding upon death may not be the most realistic but it's great for gameplay. Eothas isn't suitable for completionist runs, but it can be an interesting challenge because it helps make the overworld travel mechanics matter, and you now have to pick and choose from the XP/loot out there in building your party. So that's a refreshing challenge from minmaxing POTD parties with the best stuff you can get your hands on.

I can't ever imagine playing with Vela, turning the entire fucking game into an escort mission.

And yeah, conc/interrupt becomes a far easier system to handle in TB. I can imagine many players never noticing it in RTWP, just sitting there plonking away. At one point Maia's entire job was to just sit there waiting to fire concussive shot and interruptlock high value enemies.

 

[Grunker]

Sure Eothas' challenge is sort of an ok minigame, but it doesn't add to a "real" playthrough. If you're looking to augment a regular playthrough, it's Galawain's for a tiny change or the repair one for a drastic one, and otherwise, you're shit out of luck.

I'm playing Skaen's challenge right now and it's the most braindead shit ever. It does almost nothing. It doesn't even prevent you from Perception-spotting stuff outside the limited vision range :/

 

[Shadenuat]

I remember Tranquilizer as best dispel magic in game so I already kinda spammed it often.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Interrupts are truly filthy if you actually set up to maximize them.

Smoothest POTD party I had was using modals from Neketeka arbalet and Furrante's crossbow. With how recovery works, constant interrupts are basically as good as perma stun.

 

[Tigranes]

Even without deliberately buliding for them, I found that Maia Concussive Shot and Aloth with the first-level guaranteed interrupt spell could neutralise most 'small bosses' and even many of the 'bigger' ones.

Easy example - the big Gygaxian vagina worm boss in the Cornett quest. It's a massive difference between 1.0 RTWP, where your dudes are just sitting there sucking up the big "grab & eat slam" attack, or maybe kiting in and out of range furiously to avoid it - and in today's TB version, where you might be able to reliably shut down 90% of them strategically.

 

[Grunker]

I'm tackling the ooze megaboss currently and I imagine it must be an insane hassle without reliable interrupts, I'm not done yet *with* them

 

[oldmanpaco]

I might be tempted to play this again in TB mode but I already have all the chivos.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh I missed that somebody had beaten the Ultimate. Here's his playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/user/Gabr1elLogan/videos

 

[Lacrymas]

So, it's in RTwP (not surprising) with a Priest/Wizard. Which is surprising considering how nerfed Priests are, I was expecting maybe Druid/Wizard or Rogue/Wizard.