I’m not displeased by the delay at all, but surprised it was announced so late. May will definitely be a better month for free(er) time and that gives me more time for Guild Wars 2 before I make the switch. If it makes my first run as smooth as possible, that’s a good thing. Still maxed out on my excitement for Deadfire.
I strongly suspect there will be another (and massive) beta update because now it does truly feel like there would be time to take feedback into account before launch. It didn’t seem like that would be possible with no new beta update and only 3 weeks from launch. But 7 weeks…? Hopefully we’ll be getting more news soon.
Josh Sawyer’s response to the statement,
LOL he’s funny :)
I think the delay is for the better. Ship combat needed quite a bit of work.
I had totally forgotten this was supposed to be out in 3 weeks. That’s okay, I’m busy anyway. Get it right IMO!
“As you have probably guessed, Deadfire is a huge game - significantly larger than the original Pillars of Eternity.”
erm, oh dear. I have 40 hours in Pillars 1 and still not that close to finished. One for the retirement backlog I feel.
I put some time in this morning playing with some multiclass combos. So far I tried two and found them both really cool!
Trickster (Rogue) multi-classed with Illusionist (Mage) makes for an interesting character. Trickster subclass for rogue gains some useful illusion spells as he levels up but at the cost of not dealing as much backstab/flanking damage. However, when coupled with an Illusionist mage (not great at non-illusions spells, evocation effects have a longer recovery time for instance, and enchanting is entirely out of the question, but illusions are cast at a higher level and are more long lasting/harder to resist) we have some fun with the Spellblade class.
Here is my Spellblade using Jolting Touch and having recently been struck, triggering his Reflexive Mirror effect (once per fight, if he gets hit, he gains a +30 (!) deflection bonus for 66 seconds).
Here he is casting Dazzle on some enemies:
The problem is I should never have made him a melee guy. He’s not as effective as a normal rogue would be in melee and I could/should have given him a bow or a pistol or something and let him hang out in the back ranks, befuddling enemies and staying out of harms way. I didn’t even give him armor, for crying out loud, nor a shield. So he was basically made of paper and died every time I tested the fight. Live and learn.
The second combination I tried was a fighter (unbroken - bonus armor when wielding a shield, extra engagement, really tanky) coupled with a Cipher (no subclass - I just don’t know enough about Cipher’s to really feel confident testing them out like this with a subclass mixing things up as well) - just a solid, reliable front line fighter with a heavy shield and plate armor that can also drop shit like Mental Binding and has some powerful buffs for his allies as well. Lilke a psiconic cleric?
Anyway, just a quick little half hour of futzing around with the character creation tool. I would have thought (especially with the delay) we’d have gotten a new backer beta with the changes Josh Sawyer was talking about over a month ago “coming to the backer beta” but so far nothing has been announced, so I’m just having a bit of fun with multi-classing. I’ll try a few other combos through the weekend, I think.
And now something a little wacky. Or, what I would have assumed would be wacky, but actually works really well - a Ranger and a Wizard combo. In reality, this is kind of a dream pairing, as Wizards want to be in the back row, and Rangers can do very well from there as well with a bow and being able to bring their own tank along. This class is called a Geomancer.
The first thing you might notice is my animal companion (a bear) is… a ghost. This is a sub class called Ghost Heart, the backstory is your animal companion has already died and is a spirit and as such you cannot suffer from bonded grief or any drawbacks to losing your companion, but nor can you heal it or revive it. Instead, you have to summon it and it only lasts so long. But I’ve yet to have a fight where it wasn’t around for the duration, and the summon effect is very quick.
For the mage side, I went with an Enchanter (which gets a fairly useful ability but not a flashy one - once per battle you are completely immune to a dexterity ailment, like Slow - this is okay, but I hope they revisit some of the mage subclass powers as losing two spell schools just to be immune to a DEX affliction isn’t a great trade off, though I believe Enchantments are cast at a higher level and have a longer duration, which is probably the big draw here). I picked up Eldrich Aim (bonus to accurace and converts some misses to hits), as well as a Bulwarch Against the Elements and Merciless Gaze, which converts many of my hits into actual crits.
Also, it looks cool!
I just want to say I enjoy your notes and class experiments. Please keep them up. I’ll be holding off on Pillars 2 since I haven’t finished the first one…
I also enjoy what you’re doing.
Enough to ask that if I were to buy this on steam now, would I get access to the backer beta?
I’d be interested in messing around with the classes.
Thanks guys! I’ll put a little more in this afternoon. Actually, I guess I could record some footage of my testing, as well. That might be a little more fun.
To your question BBB - you can get into the beta, but not by simply pre-ordering I’m afraid, rather it’s a $20 add-on item on the official site, in the Obsidian Backer Beta.
E: Here is a link where I talked about buying addons a little while back (it’s the same principle)
https://eternity.obsidian.net/backer/addons
I’m not 100% sure if you buy the beta backer code ala cart or not though. It’s possible. I’m also not 100% sure it would be worth it as I don’t know for sure if we’ll get another update and this current version is several months old now.
Then again we are almost two months out and I know from AoW3 you would have some valuable insight into the mechanics/systems on the display, I’m sure. It’s kind of a toss up, but that’s how I got access anyway.
I had found out a little more about importing a save game state and/or starting a game of PoE2 in general for those interested.
You have two options, to start with. Import an existing End Game save or not.
Regardless of that choice, you still create a new character (race, class, sex, etc.) so you are really just importing the game world state so to speak - as in the choices you made.
If you don’t have a save game you will instead be able to either pick one of a few presets…
Or alternatively, actually drill down and set every single variable by hand if you desire (or lost your save and/or wanted to go with most of what you liked about a save but change a few things).
A number of choices, small and large, carry over. It sounds like an end game save will have just a few small reactions here and there not covered by the manual choice screen, but they are largely flavor for those choices.
Hopefully that should cover everyone! I have three end-game saves for characters I really enjoyed, but damned if I could really remember all the choices I had made, or even really notice what was carried over and what was new to PoE2 anyway, so I’ll probably just manually answer all the questions. My favorite character (my Druid) was a party of entirely hand-made characters so that would be boring to import anyway, never having done a single companion quest that game. :)
This game is showing so damn much promise. Just wish it wasn’t set in so much of a tropical environment. I’ll get over that and still enjoy the game, but I’m probably too Euro-centric when it comes to my fantasy RPGs.
Well, there might be quite a lot of variety in the Deadfire region so maybe that’s what you are hoping for? The beta alone has a desert setting, tropical (as you’ve seen), several under ground areas (like dungeons), it’s pretty expansive.
We were told that “very soon” we’ll start seeing locations in videos being put out officially that show off more of the “biomes” the game will take place in, actually, because someone complained that “everything that’s been shown is in the beta” so I guess that’s being addressed.
Last night I was asking on the forums about how the Interrupt mechanic worked now, because I have a vague sense of it but I didn’t really understand it. It’s actually pretty slick, and having been shown how it works I’m a big fan.
First let me refresh you on how it worked In PoE1 - or at least how I remember/understood it worked (it’s been awhile).
You had interrupts happening every time an attack was made. Some attacks had a higher chance to interrupt and some a lower chance, but the end result was always the same - each time you attacked and scored a hit, you also rolled an interrupt check against their interrupt defense and if you succeeded, the current action they were in the middle of would take a little longer. The problem I had was I wouldn’t really notice it was happening except when I’d be yelling at my screen “why haven’t you cast that damned fireball yet?” or something only to look through the log and see a ranged guy kept hitting my mage and resetting his casting time on the fireball, for instance. So it wasn’t really obvious it was happening, in my opinion, and until you did notice what was going on it was just annoying.
In PoE2 they made interrupts more powerful, but more rare and easier to plan for and counter. Now, an Interrupt actually cancels the action completely, and takes a use away from that action. So if you are in the middle of casting your last level 3 spell and get interrupted, your spell is spoiled AND you are out of level 3 spells! Nasty, and something you’ll very much notice the effects of. But, no longer is EVERY attack an interrupt. Now, specific abilities list on their card if they can interrupt and the circumstances for it. As an example, Strike the Bell (a Rogue ability) can interrupt if it scores a hit (but NOT if it merely grazes).
It’s a powerful ability I kind of ignored up until now, because it costs two points of Guile and I didn’t realize the entire purpose is to interrupt someone! So if you see an enemy queuing up a nasty spell or powerful attack, Strike the Bell and see if you can’t make them lose it entirely!
Another example is Knock Down. This interrupts even on a graze, because all it takes to send them prone is a graze and being knocked on the ground interrupts/cancels the targets action as well!
To strengthen this example, I actually found in my screenshots a picture of my Knock Down effect from a fight actually interrupting something, in this case a Delemgan was conjuring a Blight creature, and my fighter stopped it! I assure you this wasn’t intentional, but it’s something I’ll keep my eyes peeled out for going forward.
But, how do you stop an interrupt? Well, in PoE2 you have a status buff called Concentration, and each application of Concentration you have applied provides a temporary protection against an interrupt. If you have Concentration, and would be interrupted, instead you lose Concentration (one layer of it - I think you can have multiple Concentrations at once). Here is an example from the combat log when I was protected thanks to the Concentration provided by Confident Aim.
Every class has several options to create concentration for themselves (or others) plus there are other ways, such as a potion of spirit shield (+3 armor, provides concentration), that anyone can use in a pinch.
So there you go, a little insight into the Interrupt/Concentration mechanic! I like it, and now that I know more about it I’ll try to keep it in mind when I’m testing/playing the upcoming beta build update.
The fighting wizard build I’d linked in the PoE thread was geared hugely around its ability to interrupt constantly. It was a cheese mechanic that looks like Obsidian felt the need to fix for the sequel.
Yeah, I remember trying to take advantage of it and not finding it was really useful, but I was probably just building my character wrong. Usually it was just annoying/frustrating/fiddly in the first game, I think this new take on it will be a lot more interesting to play around with.
They brought the mechanism from under the table to its surface where players can use or counter it, which is cool.
My wiz I built would probably hit 5x every 4 seconds, with an interrupt in the high 90s. Enemy spellcasters fell like wheat.
Haha! I mean, broken yes, but awesome.