Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire

That’s right. There were no massively deep dungeons or areas to explore in Deadfire.

A few aspects I didn’t comment on were reputation, companions, and voiceovers.

I thought the voice work in Deadfire was exceptional and enjoyed every bit of it, no annoyances for me at all. The times the narrator took over, my only complaint was that they inserted things like ‘he said’ after another voice finished their spoken lines. It felt out of place and was totally unnecessary. They could easily have left the text there (for the readers), but the different voice made it quite clear who was speaking.

The companions weren’t fleshed out like they were in PoE1, and I’m talking about those that had personal stories. I didn’t take any sidekicks along (those will be for future plays), so I didn’t miss their interactions. One big fail for me was having a ‘romance’ with Xoti that could have had a lot more meaningful impact on the story but after reaching max rep with her about half-way through the game, there was practically nothing to talk about. The same went for Aloth, Edér, & Serafen (my other companions) who all had very short personal stories with little impact. I liked how the stories in PoE1 seemed to stretch almost the entirety of the game; they should have done the same in Deadfire.

The reputation wheel was, to put it simply, messy and unnecessary. Would have been so much easier just to have a list with words to represent the rep numbers and a trending direction, with perhaps some detail of the why rep is going the way it is (e.g. sunk all their ships!, worked for them for free!, etc). It also seemed too easy to reach max rep levels, but that may have been before they fixed it in the patch.

Anyone considering a 2nd or 3rd play through, a fun little class is the Marauder. Combine a berserker barb with a streetfighter rogue, go frenzy with battle axe in both hands, and crippled strike is a full attack that costs 1 guile. It’s damn effective.

I discovered they added a skip intro and start option for new games, which bypasses the spirit walk and plops you down in front of Beraths’ dwarf servant.

My single most desired feature, given that I’ve started and deleted about a dozen characters now.

Started another new toon, this time a Herald (kindly wayfarer + troubador) based on a recent RPG Division build, but I’m using Sasha’s Singing Scimitar and twin blunderbusses using their modal since I took Clear Head as a passive. The Brisk Recitation modal builds the chants quickly, which with that scimitar gives a nice speed boost to the entire party. Plus with the blunderbusses I’m always close so the front line benefits from the chants and the healing from flames of devotion. It’s a fun build.

Started another a few days ago toon, this one again based on RPG Division videos. But I started with a sage (wiz/monk) going poison dmg with the snakeskin grimoire from Sansa’s map store and switched to wiz/assassin. His monk build generates a lot of wounds,but the monk doesn’t have good 1pt full attack abilities for a tanky wiz. The assasssin with crippling strike does. And coming out of stealth with cobra strike or some poison spells is nasty stuff. If you pump alchemy really high, it increases poison dmg by quite a bit, so much so a nerfing is probably inevitable.

Excusethe typing, onvacation using the wife’s laptop and my big hands hate laptopkeyboards.

I had recently started a second run through, this time with a dwarf monk, and am attempting to select dialogue and make other choices that are the opposite of what comes naturally to me (i.e. the dwarf is a self-absorbed ass and, although not psychotically evil, doesn’t do anything except for personal gain). It’s pretty tough playing against type like that and I find myself cringing and hesitating over the choices I make. Sure makes me feel bad, so I guess I’m doing it right. But I wonder if I can find it enjoyable not to be the hero of the people in a 70-80 hour game. We’ll see if I can keep it up.

I’m pleased to see they keep putting out more content and smoothing out the rough edges for my second play though late July when the first expansion drops! I’ll probably cover the game with some sort of “check back in” type video once that happens.

I have a lot of builds that will play the new content as it comes out, probably over a dozen and only my Votary has finished the game. Going through a bit of withdraw on this Sun morning. But I’m at Naples, FL, down at the clubhouse and its pool, so can’t complain too much. We’re gonna take a boat down to Key West and stay for a few nights, never been and there’s lots to do and see down there.

Edit: on the downside, the clubhouse’s Wifi speed is.7 mbps according to speedtest.net

Not sure if it’s due to the recent patches or what but I picked up my old save from a month or so back to finish up the last 3-4 hours of Deadfire this weekend and the final battles really kicked my ass when in the past I was just blew through everything w/ minimal intervention.

I ended up just bumping down the difficulty a bit for the last major fight - I think the game is now unbeatable in ‘classic’ mode if you’re playing primarily via AIs

That’s great, Scott, I’ll look forward to seeing it.
Meanwhile my second playthrough is on hold too.

Probably my first post-vacation build, though I think I’ll go Corpse-Eater and Nalpazca just to make a cannibalistic drug addict. Will definitely take Frenzy for the earlier levels and then respec when Fit and Strong can be gained via other abilities at higher levels.

Well, the latest patch nerfed alchemy’s usefulness to my Sage build, so that toon will be started over. They did give wizard subclasses some love though, reducing the cooldown penalty on non-specialty spells. Fortunately they didn’t touch Citzal’s spirit lance since I plan on using that extensively for a future Sage build.

Big patch dropped today, v1.2 - here is a video that goes into some details, but tons of great QoL stuff.

Heh, I scoured those patch notes because of a future build I plan on creating once I’m back home.

Yep, broken for me too. But if you go into the AI editor from the main screen rather than the inventory window it still works fine (the 3 buttons for auto attack, no AI, AI, just right click on it).

I couldn’t figure out the AI editor even after watching Scott’s video.

I doubt I’m alone.

It’s worth doing so, really cuts down on the micro-mgmt of the party. Abilities that you hit every fight, it’s just nice to have the AI activate those for you. My new Sage build (wiz/monk) makes big use of it since I hit about 5 abilities/spells before wading into combat, and that will go up once I hit level 13 and start using Citzal’s spirit lance.

So this is going to be happening very soon…

I assume we’ll get details on the 2.0 patch they said they were dropping alongside this DLC and all the content and QoL updates it will bring any day now.

e: More info here?

I’m off to bed, but I’ll dive into this tomorrow morning for sure.

Wonder which will arrive first: the physical contents of the CE or the first DLC?

Mini patch today fixed the AI screen and other minor UI bugs.

So I get back home from vacation and I’m a little annoyed at how many of my builds have been heavily nerfed by patch 1.2. So I revert back to my evoker, who was only around level 10-11. He’s now 19th and is a complete beast. With PL 13 for evocation spells (base 10 + 3 for evoker/gloves/nature godlike), Wilting Wind empowered (PL23) annihilates most of the screen. The spell has a huge diameter and has one of the highest dmg ranges of any spell in the game. It’s insane. I thought my Votary was a good build, but nothing compares to a straight-up evoker with the right gear (get the chromoprismatic staff from Nemnok and cast swift feet, lhengrath’s, ironside, and citzal’s martial prowess and then laugh as your toon whack-a-moles everything in range).