Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire

Make sure you try them at least once for the sound effects alone. It’s super awesome sounding. But I do like the idea that you could fire cannons and hit their ammo store, or how your crew can get better at manning different stations, making tight turns more possible, or gaining more ground when dashing forward. It’s a cool system in theory, but the beta just throws you right into it. Hopefully there is some tutorial/easing into it for the full version, because otherwise I will probably just spam this button myself.

I’ll give it a chance for sure - just happy to have an out.

I just learned something kind of neat, how Party Assist works. So your characters have skills, and if your other party members have those same skills you can get a small bonus to your own skill. How much of a bonus depends on how many points your other team members have. This much I knew before, but it wasn’t clear how it was being calculated. I’ve now learned how those numbers add up.

For instance,

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Myster is the trap disarmer/chest unlocker in the party and has 8 points. Because of the 6, 1, and 1 other party members have it’s effectively a 10. Why?

Because of Party Assist! How to calculate? Add up the scores of the OTHER party members and apply a bonus based on that number.

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So Myster has a 10 because the sum of the other party members Mechanics score is 8 which gives him a +2. So, if you ever aren’t sure where to point a point, consider boosting another party member by learning a new skill!

I suspect it will be pretty rare to have 22 points across an entire party to get +5 though. That’s someone that REALLY wants a super high score in a given skill. I suppose if you were going to make a Drug Empowered Monk and you gave ALL your characters Alchemy you could end up with an insane bonus to your drug usage though, for example, so I’m not going to be surprised with nutso combinations start to surface.

Thanks again for the info, Scott.

That video last night got me more stoked for the full game than I’ve been these last few weeks creating characters. Some of the gear shown was just awesome, and one of my pre-soulbound complaints about the original was the rather boring itemization and crafting. Deadfire looks to address that head-on. I want my cestus though. :)

LOL well that would be pretty cool for sure, fingers crossed, eh?

I just learned another bit of info that was new to me (though I had a feeling this was how it worked) - the stacking rules have been simplified. In Deadfire, active abilities (including Modal abilities from weapon proficiencies) do not stack with each other (if they modify the same thing) but all your passives will.

That’s why (waaay up above in this thread) two different passives that bump Stride work together, and why the passive boon from Nature Godlike to power levels and the bonus Power Level to Restoration spells while Shifted stack. A while back I thought they didn’t but they actually do, including Wizard sub-classes so that’s a little less of a shitty option than I thought (I’m still staying well clear of Wizard subclasses though, unless they change for launch).

Thanks, got em all to date. I have been wanting to do this but I was far too lazy to do any basic research.

That Party Assist is an amazing idea. So often I end up with a character that has a measly 1-3 in a skill while another member of the party builds it to a much higher level (lockpicking is classic). This results in one character doing all the work using that particular skill and the other characters having wasted points. Now, they may not be so wasted afterall. Awesome.

For those that are thinking about picking this up and haven’t played the first (I’m in that group), this seemed like a good overview of the first game. Obviously spoilers.

This is cool because late game in PoE1 it really felt like a lot of the skill choices at level up were wasted unless you were saving up for the next tier of athletics for the heal.

Josh Sawyer tweeted about Druid/Priest spells. The question was why are they all so slow, while the buff type spells and a few select Wizard spells are very fast. Josh thought they had changed it for the beta but would review them post launch. I loaded up the game and indeed, every spell seems to be 3 cast time, 4 recovery (with a few exceptions, but nothing crazy). I tweeted a reply that he liked so hopefully they can make a few tweaks for launch.

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Taking a look at the Witch:

And single class Paladin (Kind Wayfarer healing testing, specifically):

If you enjoy the Witch video and want to see what more crazyness can be had with Power Levels and that build, I later made the same character but with a Nature Godlike to hit +2 Power Level. Here are the various stages of Soul Ignition - base, no buffs (resting) numbers, then max focus (Ascended) while having Fury up to trigger the Nature Godlike bonus of +2 power level, and finally just like the second one, but below half health to trigger the Blooded Barbarian passive of +25% damage, which seems to work with spells he or she may cast as well!

Summary

Wow, that’s a big jump in power there for Soul Ignition.

And for anyone who watches the Witch video, be sure to note the character’s name. :D

I’ve played with the idea of going Wayfarer over Goldpact for my votary build, but that extra armor is hard to give up when using a Helwalker subclass since they take so much damage once those wounds stack up. But one benefits only your toon while the other benefits everyone around you.

Something to think about is with a helwalker you do actually want the wound, and armor reduces your damage/wound intake - however, when healing you retain gained wounds, so if my math is right, very nearly constant healing with flames of devotion (especially dual wielding and with a high Might to generate extra healing) would be a solid way to go. Couple it with a Moon Godlike for additional healing waves and you are set.

Also, don’t forget that at tier…4, I think it is, you can pick up the Mind/Body modal and leave it on body for +10 CON at 10 wounds!

Is that a monk ability? Doubt I’d switch to the godlike race, I want the +2 Might from dwarfs. +75% dmg from a 35 Might is brutal.

Yeah, it was +5 Con/+5 Int at some point, or that’s how I remember it, but it must have been changed along the way? I was testing with with Thunderous Blows with a single class Helwalker and it was nuts, having both those active along with the Helwalker passive from having wounds all at once.

On a side note, I’d like to talk about how awesome “Instant” abilities are that grant buffs, like Thunderous Blows, Disciplined Strikes, Wild Sprint (Barbarian), etc. if nothing else because they trigger WHILE the game is paused, you can just click them and then go about with your planning. God that’s awesome.

Thanks for the info, I know which abilities I’ll be taking for my votary once he hits PL 4.

This link’s chart, if accurate, is a nice reference to use for planning out a build: https://pillarsofeternity2.wiki.fextralife.com/Power+Source

Nice, I’ve been wondering when the breaks happen since the stream they showed had level 18 characters at only power level 8 (if it followed D&D progression it would have been power level 9 (so to speak) at 17).

I did a votary build using Kindly and at level 9 I was healing 25 per unarmed strike. So 50 health pts per use of Flames, assuming both hit, is powerful healing that will only increase as you level up (I had 30 Might from 10 wounds at the end of my test).

I did notice, just for those that weren’t “in the know” the chart isn’t up to date in regards to number of single-class abilities - single class now gains two picks at every new power level, so they are more in-line with how many overall abilities multi-class characters are.