Eternity Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Pre-Release Thread [BETA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Infinitron]

BG2 didn't get rid of your equipment.

???

 

[Lacrymas]

???

You could get back some of it is what I meant :p Didn't Drizz't even get pissed at you if you had his scimitars?

 

[HoboForEternity]

Here are two fanmade maps of Eora I hadn't seen before:

good looking map, but the position relative to the equator doesnt make sense because that way the white march wont freeze over and dyrwood would be tropical. The dyrwood continent should be way north, the archipelago shoukd be nearer to the equator.

That, assuming eora is similar to our own planet climate wise

 

[Infinitron]

Here are two fanmade maps of Eora I hadn't seen before:

good looking map, but the position relative to the equator doesnt make sense because that way the white march wont freeze over and dyrwood would be tropical. The dyrwood continent should be way north, the archipelago shoukd be nearer to the equator.

That, assuming eora is similar to our own planet climate wise

The Dyrwood is known to be to the south of the equator since the PoE Kickstarter, so maybe the entire continent is further south. The Deadfire Archipelago isn't tropical, remember it has Eskimo Dwarves.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Oh my bad then. Thanks :3

 

[Sizzle]

Why would they get rid of our equipment?

Harder to balance the game if we have +4 equipment right from the start.

People here are expecting some sort of rid-you-of-your-loot scenario right at the beginning of the game because that's the way BG2 set it up, and PoE was always closest to the BG series out of all the IE games.

I haven't played WM yet, so maybe there's a narrative explanation (what are soulbound items?)?

A special type of item introduced in TWM (though you can get one during the new Keep quest introduced in patch 3.0 even if you don't have TWM installed) http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Soulbound_item

Here are two fanmade maps of Eora I hadn't seen before:

good looking map, but the position relative to the equator doesnt make sense because that way the white march wont freeze over and dyrwood would be tropical. The dyrwood continent should be way north, the archipelago shoukd be nearer to the equator.

That, assuming eora is similar to our own planet climate wise

The Dyrwood is known to be to the south of the equator since the PoE Kickstarter, so maybe the entire continent is further south. The Deadfire Archipelago isn't tropical, it has Eskimo Dwarves remember.

Sawyer recently answered that question somewhere (in the Director's Commentary Twitch streams, I think) - even though most (all?) of the Easter Reach is south of the Equator, the reason the White March is so cold is because it's way up in the mountains.

And yeah, Eora does differ to our planet in some ways - like the two moons it has.

 

[Lurker King]

Darklands map

Pillows of Eternity map

MAKE MAPS GREAT AGAIN

 

[Maculo]

Why would they get rid of our equipment? I haven't played WM yet, so maybe there's a narrative explanation (what are soulbound items?)? BG2 didn't get rid of your equipment.

The soulbound items are "legendary" items you bind to one character. If you fulfill certain conditions (kill 10 vessels, be revived in combat 5 times, rest in a sky dragon's layer), the items gain new effects (spells, chance to cast holy fire or lightning strike on hit). You can remove the item from a character, but it loses all the additional effects and you have to start over. An example is Abydon's Hammer, which grants passive fear, 4+ might, unique spells only tied to the hammer, and it does decent damage. Another example is Stormcaller bow, which has a chance to cast a lightning strike/stun on a target.

In addition, there are WM items that grant a lot of free spells, effects, and stats. For example, there is a grimoire that grants wizard spells to none wizards (slicken, shadow clone, etc) or the horn that summons 3 ogres per rest.

While I think WM made an improvement in terms of itemization, I can see it becoming over the top.

I am curious how PoE2 will handle soulbound weapons and equipment. My priest currently has Abydon's Hammer, the 4+ intellect ring, the 4+ dexterity ring, and the 4+ might helm. On one hand, it was funny torching the Alpine Dragon and Concelhaut with Shining Beacon and Divine Storm(apparently Shining Beacon stacks?). On the other hand, starting with all those items could screw up the difficulty curve.

Thinking about this, if they decide to get rid of all the equipment, there are some ways they could tie that to the seafaring plot.

For example: the game starts with you on the boat, with all your hard hoarded fancy items (if you imported the save, or else a nice selection of class-specific equipment - similar to how Throne of Bhall did it), there's a storm/attack/whatever, and the ship starts sinking. And then you have a choice (maybe depending on your Might/Athletics score) on how many pieces of loot you can save, while the rest of them will go down with the ship. Maybe later on in the game you could even retrieve some of them from the sunken wreckage.

Something similar to this was done in Realms of Arkania III - Shadows Over Riva when you were in the underwater kingdom.

So long as the answer is not "amnesia" I think I will be okay. I just don't want to lose Abydon's Hammer, because its awesome.

 

[2house2fly]

Ambushed by a fearsome glowing figure, your clothes and equipment incinerated, you are left for dead, saved only by your Watcher powers allowing you to draw essence from the surrounding woodland. You awake naked and reduced to level 1, and set off to find your attacker, ultimately revealed to be a proto-avatar of Eothas.

 

[Maculo]

Also, I am finally getting around to finishing my playthrough and I am wondering if Concelhaut dropped a plot hint:

Spoiler

With high lore, you learn that Concelhaut wants your soul, because he believes a watcher soul will let him manipulate time. Specifically, it would allow him to reverse time. I found it odd that Concelhaut linked Watchers with time or existing outside of time.

Time traveling plot incoming?

 

[Sizzle]

Also, I am finally getting around to finishing my playthrough and I am wondering if Concelhaut dropped a plot hint:

Spoiler

With high lore, you learn that Concelhaut wants your soul, because he believes a watcher soul will let him manipulate time. Specifically, it would allow him to reverse time. I found it odd that Concelhaut linked Watchers with time or existing outside of time.

Time traveling plot incoming?

Spoiler

I sure do hope not. Time traveling plots almost always end up stupid.

But talking about that quest, I interpreted it that Concelhaut wanted to use it more for his own goal of (somehow) achieving true immortality.

 

[Maculo]

Spoiler

I sure do hope not. Time traveling plots almost always end up stupid.

But talking about that quest, I interpreted it that Concelhaut wanted to use it more for his own goal of (somehow) achieving true immortality.

Spoiler

I also attributed Concelhaut's motives as an attempt to obtain immortality, but he did seem to attribute a watcher's ability with time. Alternatively, the Watcher soul would allow him to obtain enough magic power to manipulate time, although I interpreted the lines to focus on time manipulation itself and not magic accumulation.

 

[Lacrymas]

Harder to balance the game if we have +4 equipment right from the start.

They could go the BG2 route and only allow certain items to be imported (ironically enough, Helm of Balduran was one of them and it was fairly OP) or they could just balance for +4 weps and give fresh characters generic +4 ones.

 

[Sizzle]

Spoiler

I sure do hope not. Time traveling plots almost always end up stupid.

But talking about that quest, I interpreted it that Concelhaut wanted to use it more for his own goal of (somehow) achieving true immortality.

Spoiler

I also attributed Concelhaut's motives as an attempt to obtain immortality, but he did seem to attribute a watcher's ability with time. Alternatively, the Watcher soul would allow him to obtain enough magic power to manipulate time, although I interpreted the lines to focus on time manipulation itself and not magic accumulation.

Spoiler

Went through that conversation on YT. He says he wants the Watcher's soul because it's more powerful than an ordinary one. Nothing about it being intrinsically connected to time.

Though that's not to say something like that won't happen in the sequel

 

[Maculo]

Spoiler

Went through that conversation on YT. He says he wants the Watcher's soul because it's more powerful than an ordinary one. Nothing about it being intrinsically connected to time.

Though that's not to say something like that won't happen in the sequel

Spoiler

I thought about that, but it did not make sense to me at the time. Compared to a dragon's soul or even a mass quantity of souls, I did not think one watcher soul would stand out. My conclusion was that either a watcher is tied to time or a watcher is capable of connecting to something grander. Either way, something ridiculous must be in store if a single watcher's soul can lead to time manipulation.

Edit: Did Obsidian change Concelhaut's dialogue? I checked a YT video of it and the dialogue options were different.
Edit: I checked another YT video that had the same dialogue choices as mine (3.03). The dialogue is different. Specifically, it does not mention the strength of a watcher's soul from the get-go.

I agree with you now Sizzle. He is after the watcher's soul as a medium as opposed to the watcher's soul being tied to time. The "medium" aspect also explains why he cannot substitute a dragon soul or a shit ton of souls for the same effect.

 

[Sizzle]

Spoiler

Went through that conversation on YT. He says he wants the Watcher's soul because it's more powerful than an ordinary one. Nothing about it being intrinsically connected to time.

Though that's not to say something like that won't happen in the sequel

Spoiler

I thought about that, but it did not make sense to me at the time. Compared to a dragon's soul or even a mass quantity of souls, I did not think one watcher soul would stand out. My conclusion was that either a watcher is tied to time or a watcher is capable of connecting to something grander. Either way, something ridiculous must be in store if a single watcher's soul can lead to time manipulation.

Spoiler

Probably that. I mean, at the end of TWM2, you basically decided what would happen to a god - Watchers probably have the strongest (individual) souls around.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

New day - new picture.

 

[Infinitron]

Sounds like a native leader of the Deadfire Archipelago.

Seems unlikely to be a companion? Perhaps it's true that these past few teasers haven't been companions.

 

[Sizzle]

Could be at least some of them are just major characters.

 

[santino27]

Twitter accompanied the image with the # 10... no clue what role the #s serve. 26 seemed like the announcement date, but no idea what 10 is.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

Twitter accompanied the image with the # 10... no clue what role the #s serve. 26 seemed like the announcement date, but no idea what 10 is.

The number of times the Codex will review the thing, of course!

 

[Infinitron]

January 26, 10 AM PST?

 

[Prime Junta]

So...

Something attracting a lot of interest has arisen in the Deadfire archipelago, drawing the Vailian and Rauatai fleets there. They're locked in a standoff, currying favour with the local tribes in order to break it. This is related to an exploitable resource called "the luminous." Also, Eothas the god of light returns, and gods in general are playing their games with mortals.

The plot thickens.

 

[Sizzle]

So...

Something attracting a lot of interest has arisen in the Deadfire archipelago, drawing the Vailian and Rauatai fleets there. They're locked in a standoff, currying favour with the local tribes in order to break it. This is related to an exploitable resource called "the luminous." Also, Eothas the god of light returns, and gods in general are playing their games with mortals.

The plot thickens.

Apart from the gods stuff (I can see why they feel they have to continue with it, but personally don't give a shit about the Eoran pantheon), that sounds like a really cool idea for a sequel - lots of politics, and potential C&C with various factions (which was one of the weakest parts of PoE1) vying for control.

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeah this does seem more interesting – not to mention, less depressing – than a plague of dead babies.