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

[Jedi Exile]

Deadfire is a tiresome game story wise, the pseudo-philosophy and pseudo-theology is just not interesting. Especially just how much it interrupts you, since they took the "story was vague and not connected to the game enough" to mean they should start the game with 3 intros, then interrupt you all the time with it, making the fact that it is not at all interesting even more jarring.

The story never bothered me for some reason. There is enough stuff to do in the game besides story. And I actually found it interesting.

I think the main problem with the Deadfire was that the first game wasn't good enough, it disappointed BG fans who backed it and wanted PoE to be just like Infinity engine games. It wasn't, and it also failed to establish a big enough fanbase on its own, although there were people who did like the game. So when Deadfire came out, nobody cared about it and it was a guaranteed flop no matter how good or bad it was.

 

[Haplo]

Sadly not many people tried the White March expansions. This is some really awesome content there, up there with the very best crpgs.
They could be more positive toward Deadfire then... although also feel a bit disappointed it never quite reaches that level.

 

[JarlFrank]

Deadfire is a tiresome game story wise, the pseudo-philosophy and pseudo-theology is just not interesting. Especially just how much it interrupts you, since they took the "story was vague and not connected to the game enough" to mean they should start the game with 3 intros, then interrupt you all the time with it, making the fact that it is not at all interesting even more jarring.

Holy shit the intros of Deadfire are annoying. Just dump me in the archipelago and give me a ship and let me do things for the factions, give me some kind of pirate revenge plot or something political where I can make my own decisions.

The whole Eothas and Watcher shit was uninteresting as fuck, everything else was cool though.

 

[Haplo]

Well, after you set sail from the beginner island, sail west for Fort Deadlight, forget Neketaka for a while. It's rather cool there, pirate plots start there and its a great location for a low level party.

 

[Nas92]

I've started playing this game, imported my save from PoE1. I get the feeling that PoE1 reactivity is bugged as shit. Already I think the game detected the wrong Durance ending (Eld Engrim alludes to Durance burning himself alive even though that's not the ending I got). I also got the Bell of Berath which I hear you're only supposed to get if you pledged yourself to Berath and returned the souls to the wheel. I only returned the souls but never promised anything, though idk if this is a bug or I've just heard wrong and you can get it without the promise.

 

[Silly Germans]

I find the topics itself very interesting, especially PoE I. The problem was how they are handled their execution
in the game. They failed to explore them in a captivating way, which is a shame. I was sorely disappointed by
the writing and the quests. Most of the time they were neither fun nor intriguing. The setting itself is great but
they seem to lack any imagination how to make good use of it.

 

[Nas92]

Holy fuck, this game is broken as hell. I navigate to my character page and apparently my character is a spirit now. The fuck is this? Apparently, it's always spirit if you pick Ocean Folk. Unfortunately, I don't think I actually get the spirit defenses, although the description does contain a bit about spirits, something about veil-touched or whatever.
Also fuck whichever retard thought enabling AI by default was a smart idea. It's fucking grating because whenever I load there is a chance the game just resets it even if I turn it off, it's happened at least twice now.

 

[Desiderius]

Deadfire is a tiresome game story wise, the pseudo-philosophy and pseudo-theology is just not interesting. Especially just how much it interrupts you, since they took the "story was vague and not connected to the game enough" to mean they should start the game with 3 intros, then interrupt you all the time with it, making the fact that it is not at all interesting even more jarring.

This is a perspicacious take, though Theology is necessarily everywhere and always the work of amateurs, given the subject matter. Likewise philosophy, if one follows the ur-philosopher.

It's just that among all of us amateur Theologians Josh's takes aren't all that interesting. Probably something to do with that too much gaming he did in Uni. If only he could have stayed focused on replicating that experience for the masses instead of protecting us from it due to our inferior capacity for mastering such arcane topics as pre-buffing.

 

[Desiderius]

they seem to lack any imagination how to make good use of it.

The Poz is a Black Hole for imagination.

 

[Desiderius]

Well, after you set sail from the beginner island, sail west for Fort Deadlight, forget Neketaka for a while. It's rather cool there, pirate plots start there and its a great location for a low level party.

That's the thing, Hap, they strongly discourage you from doing that by all but telling you outright you'd be sailing into a death trap. My first time through I was convinced I needed a Spyglass and got to like lvl ten before going there because I didn't want to blow the money to buy one thinking I'd get one as loot somewhere along the way. Then all the other free exploration around the starting island avails you next to nothing as the surrounding islands are scandalously unpopulated sending the message that you'll be sent where you need to go by quests and that anything else is a waste of time. Along with the inane intro it's just a tremendous letdown. As you say, the Pirate Hold itself is quite well done - they should have just vectored you there.

 

[Desiderius]

Sadly not many people tried the White March expansions. This is some really awesome content there, up there with the very best crpgs.
They could be more positive toward Deadfire then... although also feel a bit disappointed it never quite reaches that level.

At the time I thought PoE was the best thing since sliced bread (still love Endless Depths) but should have known something was amiss when I couldn't get motivated to play White March until I "needed" to get a good save for Deadfire. Made it about halfway through WM2, liked it... and didn't finish that either. It was never really clear how it fit with the main campaign. Should have made it an epilogue or standalone like Varnhold.

 

[yes plz]

While the main quest chain is far too short and poorly done, I don't think the faction quest chains are much better. All of the game's content feels sorta half-assed and incomplete. The game feels like New Vegas, if it had ended immediately upon entering the Strip. Entering Ukaizo should've been the midway point for the game, with you having to help claim the city for your faction, deal with the factions you pissed off, uncovering the mysteries of the place, and helping to fix the cycle. Instead, the game ends right as the interesting stuff starts to happen.

 

[Haplo]

I have decided to finally give the Turn Based mode a try.
What do you know, it is fun! Just need to find a way to speed it up a bit...

Also a Bloodmage is great... and multiclassing a mage with an Assassin is pretty cool too (Assasinate from stealth also works with spells, which get a HUGE boost when alpha striking - or attacking after re-stealth later down the road).

Since Bloodmage can (and does) self-mutilate, you kinda need high Con and human seems a nice pick, as you'll spend a lot of time Bloodied - that's +7 Accuracy and +15% damage for a human.

 

[Desiderius]

I have decided to finally give the Turn Based mode a try.
What do you know, it is fun! Just need to find a way to speed it up a bit...

Also a Bloodmage is great... and multiclassing a mage with an Assassin is pretty cool too (Assasinate from stealth also works with spells, which get a HUGE boost when alpha striking - or attacking after re-stealth later down the road).

Since Bloodmage can (and does) self-mutilate, you kinda need high Con and human seems a nice pick, as you'll spend a lot of time Bloodied - that's +7 Accuracy and +15% damage for a human.

Surprised you hadn't tried it already. It speeds up once you start hitting harder, like the old Gold Boxers.

 

[Haplo]

I have decided to finally give the Turn Based mode a try.
What do you know, it is fun! Just need to find a way to speed it up a bit...

Also a Bloodmage is great... and multiclassing a mage with an Assassin is pretty cool too (Assasinate from stealth also works with spells, which get a HUGE boost when alpha striking - or attacking after re-stealth later down the road).

Since Bloodmage can (and does) self-mutilate, you kinda need high Con and human seems a nice pick, as you'll spend a lot of time Bloodied - that's +7 Accuracy and +15% damage for a human.

Surprised you hadn't tried it already. It speeds up once you start hitting harder, like the old Gold Boxers.

To be honest, I've had like 3 characters close to end game before (level 16), but I just played trough the DLCs and finished it for the first time...

 

[Desiderius]

I have decided to finally give the Turn Based mode a try.
What do you know, it is fun! Just need to find a way to speed it up a bit...

Also a Bloodmage is great... and multiclassing a mage with an Assassin is pretty cool too (Assasinate from stealth also works with spells, which get a HUGE boost when alpha striking - or attacking after re-stealth later down the road).

Since Bloodmage can (and does) self-mutilate, you kinda need high Con and human seems a nice pick, as you'll spend a lot of time Bloodied - that's +7 Accuracy and +15% damage for a human.

Surprised you hadn't tried it already. It speeds up once you start hitting harder, like the old Gold Boxers.

To be honest, I've had like 3 characters close to end game before (level 16), but I just played trough the DLCs and finished it for the first time...

I'd get to 10 or 11 I think, twice RT, once TB. Once Maya started one-shotting everything I lost interest.

 

[Haplo]

Well, the enemies in the DLCs are a bit tougher, so I don't think even Maya would 1-shot them easily. Unless they are mages in robes, but even they like to come in packs (and spam you with spells).

 

[DeepOcean]

The general public disliked Dumpsterfire because it and Poe1 were kinda meh.

The general public mostly liked Deadfire to be honest. It had less sales because the interest before it even released was less, not because the game was bad.
All reviews were positive, user reviews were positive, there is no indication anywhere that "the general public" disliked the game. It simply showed that the direction Sawyer got the series was not interesting regardless of how the game played

Depends of what you mean by general public, the really general public that played PoE 1 probably dont even know PoE 2 even exists after the kickstarter crazy was gone and you didnt look cool pretending to like traditional RPGs anymore.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Deadfire is a tiresome game story wise, the pseudo-philosophy and pseudo-theology is just not interesting. Especially just how much it interrupts you, since they took the "story was vague and not connected to the game enough" to mean they should start the game with 3 intros, then interrupt you all the time with it, making the fact that it is not at all interesting even more jarring.

Holy shit the intros of Deadfire are annoying. Just dump me in the archipelago and give me a ship and let me do things for the factions, give me some kind of pirate revenge plot or something political where I can make my own decisions.

The whole Eothas and Watcher shit was uninteresting as fuck, everything else was cool though.

Real talk. Deadfire has a pre-intro intro, the intro intro, post-intro intro, then tutorial fight, then 3 hours tutorial island. It's a mystery why the game bombed, isn't it Josh.

 

[JarlFrank]

Deadfire is a tiresome game story wise, the pseudo-philosophy and pseudo-theology is just not interesting. Especially just how much it interrupts you, since they took the "story was vague and not connected to the game enough" to mean they should start the game with 3 intros, then interrupt you all the time with it, making the fact that it is not at all interesting even more jarring.

Holy shit the intros of Deadfire are annoying. Just dump me in the archipelago and give me a ship and let me do things for the factions, give me some kind of pirate revenge plot or something political where I can make my own decisions.

The whole Eothas and Watcher shit was uninteresting as fuck, everything else was cool though.

Real talk. Deadfire has a pre-intro intro, the intro intro, post-intro intro, then tutorial fight, then 3 hours tutorial island. It's a mystery why the game bombed, isn't it Josh.

Someone should measure the time it takes until you finally get to start playing. The intro was just so long and pointless - all that infodumping before you even create your character, come the fuck on. Nobody wants to be bombarded with some stupid shit about souls for 10 minutes before you even create a char. EXPSOSITION DUMP EXPOSITION DUMP

Nothing, absolutely nothing would be amiss if the game started with you waking up when your ship is under attack. Especially players who haven't played the first game give zero fuck about all that exposition you get before it.

Look at how Baldur's Gate 2 did it. You wake up in the prison of some madman who tortures you because you're the child of a god. He says a couple things to you, then you escape.
The game could have spent 200 paragraphs on explaining who you are, who the god Bhaal is, how you got to this place, that you were an orphan in Candlekeep, that you defeated a guy called Sarevok in the last game, that you...
But no. You wake up with Irenicus experimenting on you, the only exposition you get is "You're the child of Bhaal and I'm doing magic experiments on you." and that's it. Dumped straight into the action.

But PoE2 finds it absolutely necessary that you understand what a Watcher is before you even go through chargen.

 

[Lacrymas]

Story should be earned and good enough to be worth earning.

 

[Delterius]

But PoE2 finds it absolutely necessary that you understand what a Watcher is before you even go through chargen.

a b movie would have eder just say 'remember when you started seeing souls, pretty trip ain't it' and it would be better

oh wait that actually happens in the initial beach nevermind

 

[DeepOcean]

straight into the action.

But PoE2 finds it absolutely necessary that you understand what a Watcher is before you even go through chargen.

They make sure you know what a watcher is but on the first game you play as a fantasy adventurer doing adventury things and on the second game as a adventurer/pirate doing piratey things.If they gonna give you a title at least make that relevant. It is like if on the Witcher games you were a monster hunter that almost never hunted monsters. Being a Watcher is like a curse, you are exposition dumped by living NPCs and by dead ones too.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/560130/announcements/detail/2101433093282896881/

New to Deadfire? Or Returning? Here’s What You Should Know!
We’ve noticed a lot of new and returning fans enter the world of Eora. Here’s a breakdown of what’s new for Pillars of Eternity: II Deadfire that you should take note of before starting.

• There’s two entirely different ways to play. Now with both classic real-time with pause and new turn-based combat, Deadfire builds on the foundation of classic tabletop gameplay more than ever before. You pick your mode from the outset. Warning: there’s no changing the mode once you’ve begun a new campaign.
  
• All DLC is now available. If you purchased The Obsidian Edition, you already have access to all the post-launch content: Beast of Winter, Seeker, Slayer, Survivor, and The Forgotten Sanctum. If you haven’t picked up the DLC, now’s the time! All the major DLCs feature new characters, stories, and more!
  
• The Ultimate - Face a series of challenges with all God Challenges, Trial of Iron, Path of the Damned, and Solo mode enabled.
  
• Go analog with Pillars’ Pen and Paper Rules. The dev team has such a passion for tabletop gaming, the inspiration behind Deadfire, that they penned their own Pen and Paper tabletop rules. Now bring them to your next party.
  
• Join the community! Talk to other Deadfire fans in the Versus Evil Discord channel and make friends at our Deadfire Discord channel!

We’ve noticed a lot of new and returning fans enter the world of Eora

 

[Lacrymas]

There's a lot more new players should know about before starting. Like how to avoid a lot of the pointless bits and how to set up the UI, auto-pause and such in order to not tear their hair out.