Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[MajorMace]

(what a shit change).

As usual, there is some thought behind it. In PoE there were full immunities to certain damage types. Here it's more granular. Though I don't remember ever consciously casting an inspiration in order to counter an affliction.

Only one that mattered iirc was vampyr's gaze towards the endgame. Or some affliction they use.

 

[Haplo]

Yeah fair enough, the thing that bugs me the most is that some of the debuffs are fantastic and some are complete ass. Like confusion does almost nothing now. Yes, it changes foe aoes to general aoes, but so what? That is so niche that it usually doesn't matter. However, when you expect it to work more or less like in POE which worked more or less like in D&D, it totally screws you when you expect some crowd control out of it, it does nothing, and your party gets murder-raped by a pack of whatever.

Well Confusion is interesting. I didn't use it much either, but it is very effective on certain enemies who are weak to Intellect afflictions. For example a giant cave grub boss in Old City.

Plus it enables some interesting tactics when used on your party members. Like using a no-save Withdraw on enemies to remove them from battles. Or making Grave Calling Chillfog hurt your party and summons - mass killing your skellies, rapidly destroying everything and making your graphics card explode. Or using Amra greataxe as a Brute with a chanter (again) summoning skellies for you to passively kill via Carnage and trigger free Cleave attacks from Mob Stance plus resetting Recovery via Blood Thirst. The Obsidian forums are full of creative uses of Confusion.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Yeah fair enough, the thing that bugs me the most is that some of the debuffs are fantastic and some are complete ass. Like confusion does almost nothing now. Yes, it changes foe aoes to general aoes, but so what? That is so niche that it usually doesn't matter. However, when you expect it to work more or less like in POE which worked more or less like in D&D, it totally screws you when you expect some crowd control out of it, it does nothing, and your party gets murder-raped by a pack of whatever.

Well Confusion is interesting. I didn't use it much either, but it is very effective on certain enemies who are weak to Intellect afflictions. For example a giant cave grub boss in Old City.

Plus it's enables some interesting tactics when used on your party members. Like using a no-save Withdraw on enemies to remove them from battles. Or making Grave Calling Chillfog hurt your party and summons - mass killing your skellies, rapidly destroying everything and making your graphics card explode. Or using Amra greataxe as a Brute with a chanter (again) summoning skellies for you to passively kill via Carnage and trigger free Cleave attacks from Mob Stance plus resetting Recovery via Blood Thirst. The Obsidian forums are full of creative uses of Confusion.

That is pretty interesting and sounds great. I have noticed that many things are really a matter of adjusting to the changes, like at first I hated how slow it was but there are things I like about it now. Either way though, the changes to confusion are fairly dramatic in how you would go about using it. It was incredibly ineffective for what I was trying to do with it, even though it would've been a reasonable use of the affliction in the first game.

One thing I've been wondering is with the revamp of the skills system where you only get 1 point per level but there can be party assistance, what sorts of skill levels do you need? Like, should you be specializing guys in 1 or 2 skills or should you be expecting to spread out? I haven't really been able to tell since except for mechanics, everything seems ok with just 1-2 points so far. Mechanics, I think has needed around 3-4 at times which I assume could ratchet up pretty quickly. I'm still early on and may restart again just because I've been figuring out the nuances of the system now, though this guy is fairly interesting (max con SC dwarf helwalker monk).

 

[Haplo]

Yeah, max Mechanics ASAP. Also get some party assist points. And some balms for +2. For early & easy access to some extremly potent "free" equipment.

Otherwise I tend to spread the skills among other characters. Think its nice to have at least one with Stealth - although note that the "mechanic" doesn't necessary need to actually open the chest just the lock - and usually its opening the chest that triggers enmity. So its okay to have the Stealth guy separate from the Mechanic. Might be nice to have a couple of points of pickpocket on him also (7 buffed, I think?) - there's a nice ring you can steal early in Neketaka and I prefer to deal with it peacefully.
There are also a couple of items that scale off certain skills - usually these bonuses are not that huge, though.

 

[TedNugent]

So far I have found mechanics and stealth to be the primary useful skills, followed by athletics for certain scripted encounters to avoid injuries, but it's not strictly necessary.

With mechanics, you can disarm traps to reach difficult areas, open chests and get things like sapphires and unique weapons, pick important locks, etc. One perfect early example is the vault in Queens Berth.

You may want to get a second character with a lesser amount of mechanics and an adequate amount of stealth so that you can squeak past guards and steal items from vendors. For example, with a spark cracker, you can grab patinated plate, worth 30k from the merchant from a crate sitting right next to him. But you don't need as much stealth as you do mechanics. I would aim for at least 15 group mechanics on your primary lockpick by level 9. You can usually walk up and pick locks with them in broad daylight and then steal it with your stealth character afterwards. There is treasure sitting right in the middle of every city and you can take it under their noses.

I don't even know what the other shit does, nor do I care. I like having athletics as a point dump for a free backup heal. On rare occasion, alchemy has shown up and the threshold for skill checks is usually enough low anyway that the base for certain classes is enough.

As far as conversation checks, I've picked a favorite persuasion for each character to pump one, and my PC usually has enough with that to pass the skill checks I've encountered so far. I imagine at some point 7 or 9 skill level isn't sufficient, but oh well. The checks rarely do anything important anyway.

 

[Nikanuur]

Yet another stuttering workaround (almost working)

Run the game, get to the Task Manager (ctrl+alt+del) ---> click the "Details" tab, find the Pillars of Eternity II in the list ---> right click and select "Affinity", unclick all but 1-2 cores. You may want to experiment which cores to leave selected, but for the sake of simplicity, just try the first two selected, the rest unselected.

Hope this helps. For me it's still not 100% but it helped me to a point where the game micro-stutters scarcely or not at all. Prior to this solution (tried everything else I could google or think of), the game had been stuttering every 4 seconds or so. Pretty crazy.

 

[TedNugent]

Wow, stumbled into this island at level 14 thinking, cool, gonna dew some quests and get some XP, and a dragon shows up. Nope. Fucking nope, lol.

Dude's walking around with 20 armor with a 70 second buff. Spells just bouncing off this dude, lol.

I put up a good fight but dude just reheals himself once I run out of spells.

Is this guy one of the cunts you guys were talking about?

 

[Haplo]

Don't think so...

Umm, did you perhaps enter the 1st DLC area with Nersiclas dragon?

 

[Nikanuur]

So far I have found mechanics and stealth to be the primary useful skills, followed by athletics for certain scripted encounters to avoid injuries, but it's not strictly necessary.

With mechanics, you can disarm traps to reach difficult areas, open chests and get things like sapphires and unique weapons, pick important locks, etc. One perfect early example is the vault in Queens Berth.

You may want to get a second character with a lesser amount of mechanics and an adequate amount of stealth so that you can squeak past guards and steal items from vendors. For example, with a spark cracker, you can grab patinated plate, worth 30k from the merchant from a crate sitting right next to him. But you don't need as much stealth as you do mechanics. I would aim for at least 15 group mechanics on your primary lockpick by level 9. You can usually walk up and pick locks with them in broad daylight and then steal it with your stealth character afterwards. There is treasure sitting right in the middle of every city and you can take it under their noses.

I don't even know what the other shit does, nor do I care. I like having athletics as a point dump for a free backup heal. On rare occasion, alchemy has shown up and the threshold for skill checks is usually enough low anyway that the base for certain classes is enough.

As far as conversation checks, I've picked a favorite persuasion for each character to pump one, and my PC usually has enough with that to pass the skill checks I've encountered so far. I imagine at some point 7 or 9 skill level isn't sufficient, but oh well. The checks rarely do anything important anyway.

Haplo said it already, but I"d also like to add that stealth is just great. I haven't had such fun with high stealth (7 +), and high(er) sleight-of-hand in any other game tbh. The former means the PC can sneak on people from behind, in broad daylight, with the detecion bar hardly even rising. This can net the party not only the riches, but particularly some hard-to-come-by enchanting ingrediences and unique magical items. Especially when one targets nobles / well-dressed NPCs.

 

[Nikanuur]

Anyway good night / morning, and stay in perspective. Preferably with something like this on your hands.

 

[TedNugent]

Ah, that bastard is pretty tough.

Also, what does this game have against priests? It's like they neutered them after they were OP in the first game, and basically made them shittier mages. Since they pretty much have the only efficient healing spells, it really smarts. Even at level 15, monoclass Xoti only has 2 spell casts per tier...

 

[Haplo]

Ah, that bastard is pretty tough.

Also, what does this game have against priests? It's like they neutered them after they were OP in the first game, and basically made them shittier mages. Since they pretty much have the only efficient healing spells, it really smarts. Even at level 15, monoclass Xoti only has 2 spell casts per tier...

Well, they were much stronger in PoE1. But are still very useful in Deadfire. Its just that they only unlock serious firepower quite late, with Storm of Holy Fire, the various Symbol of... spells, Spark the Souls of the Righteous and such. They can actually become very dangerous aoe nukers - mainly late game and SC, though. At lower levels their support is great, though. Devotions of the Faithful has been (rightfully) balanced, but is still very useful. Salvation of Time is essential for the support of various tactics of mine, such as prolonging Cipher Ascension or Fighter Unbending - can also be used for more exploitative things like prolonging Barring the Death's Door and keeping a character Near Death with various bonuses active - and probably using a Cipher with Ancestor's Memory Brilliant to keep recasting it. Suspending/countering afflictions is very handy also.
So yeah, PoE1 Priests were powerhouses, in Deadfire less so. But they still provide awesome party support and and very valuable party members IMO (absolutely Single Class for me - can't wait for Salvation of Time AND their best offensive spells come late).

 

[Parabalus]

Isn't a good amount of the Ultimate runs priest based, specifically Salvation of Time abuse?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Anyway good night / morning, and stay in perspective. Preferably with something like this on your hands.

I wake up every morning with a cannon in my hands.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Grabing your dads dick in the morning isn't something to brag about bro.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Grabing your dads dick in the morning isn't something to brag about bro.

You sleep with your dad? That sounds worrying.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Not if you work in the morgue.

 

[Nikanuur]

Gee, that 12th level Giant Grub fight under Neketaka... I don't recall fighting this monstrosity in my first play-through. It took me "only" 5 tries, hour-and-half of time totaled, and min-maxing everything including creating new drugs and poisons. 7th level chars on Veteran. Idk if that is some big achievement in general, but I felt it. Phew. The end though, very unceremonial 12 damage hit from a wizard's rod :3

Spoiler

The key was to ommit fighting the spawing grubs and grublets actually. Who would've thought... Other than that, spamming blindness and other debuffs on the big worm, summons, and Xoti not fighting but casting all the defenses from most of the scrolls I've had stashed helped.

 

[Haplo]

A Cipher is really good there. That monster is weak to Intellect Afflictions so a basic level 1 Whispers of Treason Charm will... Dominate it.

 

[TedNugent]

I'll admit, I'm probably being a tard, but I haven't used a single scroll or potion yet, and I eat rice every rest because I'm a money-grubbing Jew

At least I'll have a stockpile for when i actually decide to use them. I figure, if I can brute force my way through an encounter, why waste valuables?

I do love those consumables that give you extra skill levels to your utilities, though. It helps you pass certain skill checks or get higher situational lockpicking/stealth. I used a ton of those thief ones to get into the Valian family vault in Queens Berth.

 

[adddeed]

With that kind of thinking you'll just end up beating the game with a thousand unused scrolls and potions.

 

[TedNugent]

With that kind of thinking you'll just end up beating the game with a thousand unused scrolls and potions.

Yeah, that's what I did in PoE1.

To be fair, I'm also taking care to get every combat encounter I can. For example, I isolated and killed Benweth, then decided to clear out his entire fortress just for the dropz and for the fun of it. Similarly, one of the few NPCs I've really liked, the Goldpact Knight and crew; it was a shame, but I had to murder him for his gearz. Same with the naga, conned them then murdered them. Was going to murder the water dragon, but I found out you lose out in a shit ton of Huana rep so I went the alt route.

If there's not a reason to use a crutch, I'm not going to. So far, my only two stopping points have been the Fampyr island because I refused to take Copperhead's distraction, and the death dragon. I'll reevaluate if I can't get through them after trial and error/gaining XP/upgrading gear. I'll probably end up using some potions and scrolls there when I feel like I'm ready. Doing some side quests instead.

 

[Haplo]

Generally I only use potions and bombs on the starter Maje Island, mainly on the Excavation Site and Gorecci Street. They do make a difference there.

But I do use special food throughout the game, particularly on my main character. Some nice stuff can be bought from the foodtruck in Neketaka Serpent's Crown district, its pretty cheap and it might even be unlimited, AFAIK.
The rest of the party can have a bowl of rice
J/K, I give them some leftovers sometimes.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh right, this never came out on Switch:

 

[Diggfinger]

Oh right, this never came out on Switch:

Switch could barely run Outer World anyway, no loss