Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire

Yeah, I had seen that last night and felt like it was kind of cheesy, but I love that sort of thing is possible. It’s a fun looking build. I’ve seen a few of this guys videos, I wish he’d narrate and explain what he’s doing, though.

Not sure English is his native language. My biggest gripe is the frenetic mouse clicking. I have to pause constantly because of the way he jerks the mouse back 'n forth so much, it’s hard to see exactly what he’s doing otherwise. Terrible way to make a video showcasing stuff to viewers.

Man, you guys are making it hard to wait - is there still any place where you can buy into the beta build?

I’m now wondering how an assassin/barb build would work, coming out of stealth with barbaric blow rather than flames of devotion hitting mobs?

Thanks for all the info and videos, Scott!

Reading the Gloomhaven thread had me itching to buy it (BUT THAT WOULD BE NUTS) so I went back to the original Pillars of Eternity instead. I’d played maybe 15-20 hours when it came out before drifting off to some other game. Took me a couple hours to get reacquainted with every single character, item, spell, weapon, quest, tool-tip, and map but I’m glad I took the time.

I played through the main story and about half the character quests in a few weeks. Lastly, I did all the bounties to finish leveling up. Then I completed the final encounter and game only to discover that I couldn’t go back and mop up a few remaining quest lines like Caed Nua. (I wish they had given me the “Are you sure you wish to proceed?” warning at the end game.)

I went back to an earlier save and mopped up some more side quests and Caed Nua. Now I want to get through the end game and the lengthy closing credits again so I have a save game to use when I start PoE2!

Problem being, I got totally hooked on Divinity: Original Sin II. Going back to that tough final battle feels like a bit of a chore. Especially when PoE2 lets you micromanage your starting point to such an insane degree.

Oh, this is such a woeful conundrum! I have a feeling Gloomhaven and Kingdom Death Monster have been very good for Obsidian and Larian.

I think if you backed it you can buy the Beta access add-on, not sure if you didn’t back it though?

https://eternity.obsidian.net/backer/pledges

You’re so welcome! I’m glad it got you back into the first one, Pillars of Eternity 1 is some of the finest RPGing I’ve done as an adult.

I can imagine that would work really well. I also wonder if you could dump CON as well as RES since the goal seems to be Stealth–>Kill something from Stealth with Barbaric Blow–>Smoke into Invisible–>Rinse and repeat until you are out of enemies or Guile/Rage, so in theory nothing will even be attacking/damaging you. Does Barbaric Blow cost 1 or 2 points? That might be the biggest limiting factor.

Yeah, it was really terrific. I haven’t been that addicted to one of these Baldur’s-Gate-style RPG’s since Icewind Dale back in 2000. I remember walking home from brunch with my wife on a rainy, pre-fatherhood Sunday and I was so giddy at the prospect of having nothing but guilt-free hours of Icewind Dale stretched out in front of me that I started singing a song. It went, “Ice-wind DALE, Ice-wind DALE.” Over and over. Those were the lyrics.

PoE was the first and only RPG since then to give me the same “I can’t wait to get back to it” feeling. So, I composed a new song and sang it to my wife. It went, “Pillars-of Eterni-TEE, Pillars-of Eterni-TEE.”

Yep, barb blow costs 2, which makes a huge difference in the usability of it. Good call. Also, the pally’s aura gives +5 to accuracy, which helps counter the great sword savage blow hit to accuracy, plus there’s the sworn enemy, which has 0 recovery time. The barb’s main benefit, frenzy, isn’t as easy to sleeve in. So paladin seems to synergize better.

That’s a thought on con, trading some points for higher perception and its accuracy bonus. I imagine the Youtuber went with moon godlike for the healing wave, but with potions a dwarf with its +2 might could be another way of maxing out that dmg as you come out of stealth.

Edit: I’ll join in with the PoE love. It wasn’t perfect, but it came really close to hitting all the check boxes for me. I put in over 200 hours with it, which is why I pre-ordered the CE for Deadfire, along with the DLC and unpainted miniatures options. I should add, though, that the game didn’t really shine until White March. Lots of little bug fixes and balance changes that really improved the game.

Dual Wielding Wands Test (Result: Success)

Dual Wielding Pistol Test (Result: Success)

You obviously took the two-weapon spec to reduce the negative impact of dual wielding, right? Be interested what the dmg output is like since dual wielding hits accuracy and thus increases the odds of grazes/misses compared to lower fire rates but higher accuracy.

That is me thinking out loud, Scott, not hinting at another video on your part.

Edit: Dual pistol using cipher/chanter is a thought.

Does Focus generation still get hugely nerfed for ranged attacks? Otherwise, yeah, my DW Cipher in POE1 is an absolute monster.

I think I prefer the boreal dwarf for the Holy Slayer build. More Might, better athletics, and the race ability of Hunter’s Instincts, which can turn your misses into grazes and the latter into hits. Athletics also offsets the moon godlike’s healing ability. Also took Scott’s advice and stole a few points from Con and put them into Perception for higher accuracy.

Edit: 10 minutes later and I’m leaning toward island aumaua because of their ability to not wade through slog battle zones. Hunter’s Instincts is limited to very specific mob types, and the dwarf’s starting attributes are no better since the +1 con is negatived by the -1 dex for this build. So this Holy Slayer starts with:

Might 21
Con 8
Dex 18
Per 15
Int 13
Res 3

I think I went with laborer to have a few points in Athletics for Second Wind since this build is a real paper cannon. Let Eora fear the coming of. . . Zedar the Apostate. :/

Definitely.

Dual Wielding wands is possible, but doesn’t seem super viable on a pure-mage. Given the better damage output of a Pistol, that’s probably a better prospect, but then again I can see the only wand user in a full party ending up with two very good wands by the end game and suddenly it may be a more attractive prospect.

@inactive_user I can’t say about Cipher vs. ranged focus gain, but I can say they doubled focus gain accross the board and in my testing with the sub-class that gets huge boons when at max focus (including his spells being free) I got up to 130+ focus fighting one target very, very quickly. That’s in melee though, to be fair, I haven’t tried a ranged cipher yet. If I think of it I’ll give it a shot later tonight.

Dual pistol cipher/chanter would be awesome crowd control if built for it.

I just tested and dual pistols were generating 12-14 focus per shot and daggers were doing about 7 per shot, so if anything ranged was generating more. I assume it’s more based on speed of the weapon than if it’s ranged or not?

E: Looks like it’s based on damage - pistols were hitting for 20-30 damage and daggers were only doing around 7 or so (too low penetration against the targets). So that seems to work very well!

My god. That sounds insane. The only thing remotely balanced about my Cipher is that he has to survive melee (really not that hard, with the many horrible things he can do to enemy brains) to do all the things he do.

It might be in the hands of a better Cipher player. My party wiped and I couldn’t get much done, despite having access to lots of my spells. That fight was super hard and I had made her level 9 as well. She was a Cipher/Rogue and I thought she’d be kicking total ass but I could NOT take down the chief in the end. Only survivor left, had him down to like 10 health, but then he darted/paralyzed me and TPK. Dammit. I think I CAN win that fight, but it’s going to be a tough one.

I don’t know how the Cipher worked before, but here it’s just another mage but whose spells come after earning the resource pool. In that, spells take a bit of time to cast and the enemy was ready with interrupting attacks when trying to dominate something, or paralyze/immobilize a group. Again, I may just suck with Ciphers (and building them)!

I played a cipher up to around level 14-15 out of my many play throughs of the first game and if you avoid using the class for dmg and focus on crowd control, the rest of the party just mop the floor with whatever enemies you’re fighting.