Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pre-DLC Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[IHaveHugeNick]

I give it 5 years tops, given that this is probably last game of this type with this level of effort and production values poured into it.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

I give it 5 years tops, given that this is probably last game of this type with this level of effort and production values poured into it.

last game of this type with this level of effort and production values poured into it.

 

[fantadomat]

I give it 5 years tops, given that this is probably last game of this type with this level of effort and production values poured into it.

Hey,at least we get masterpieces like this one:

 

[Tigranes]

So, I experimented a bit with POTD upscale 1.1 full patch version, and I think the early game difficulty is actually in a really good place - it's just the second half of the game that still becomes bit too easy, an endemic problem in open-ended CRPGs (and CRPGs in general). Especially with the difficulty mod on Nexus, and rumours that a later patch will add custom challenge settings, I think difficulty is now in a good enough place for players to enjoy the game as a mega-SOZ combat robot building exploring system.

Running a custom duo of Paladin/Cipher and Paladin/Ranger with a fair degree of minmaxing now, and the uptuned encounters on the first island can still be brutal if you aren't pulling enemies one by one and cheesing. I expect things will stay enjoyably brutal for a while, before inevitably declining.

Oh, interesting, Inquisitor and Shepherd, sorry maybe I asking too much, but can you share such builds?

Nothing special. The Inquisitor is max Res and then decent INT/DEX, obviously built around Soul Blade's Soul Annihilation. I went for two-handers and specifically Whispers of the Endless Path - sometimes you can get ~3 enemies with that AOE when you do Soul Annihilation, which can mean something like 80 damage per enemy at low levels even with lower Might. But mainly built for survivability with 20 RES, the Elcga lay on hands that prevents death for 5s, and obviously spamming Whispers of Treason.

The Shepherd is a straight up sniper with high might & dex, every equipment & feat that can reduce reload/firing times & increase accuracy. This has been an opportunity to experiment with different weapon types - the Arquebus is probably the best heavy-hitter, but it takes a while to save up to Dragon's Dowry. It's easier to find a decent pistol somewhere in early game - higher accuracy with weapon quality matters more than special traits - before buying Spearcaster (20k) or picking up Frostseeker.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Nothing special. The Inquisitor is max Res and then decent INT/DEX, obviously built around Soul Blade's Soul Annihilation. I went for two-handers and specifically Whispers of the Endless Path - sometimes you can get ~3 enemies with that AOE when you do Soul Annihilation, which can mean something like 80 damage per enemy at low levels even with lower Might. But mainly built for survivability with 20 RES, the Elcga lay on hands that prevents death for 5s, and obviously spamming Whispers of Treason.

The Shepherd is a straight up sniper with high might & dex, every equipment & feat that can reduce reload/firing times & increase accuracy. This has been an opportunity to experiment with different weapon types - the Arquebus is probably the best heavy-hitter, but it takes a while to save up to Dragon's Dowry. It's easier to find a decent pistol somewhere in early game - higher accuracy with weapon quality matters more than special traits - before buying Spearcaster (20k) or picking up Frostseeker.

Thank you very much for answer. Maybe I am stupid, but I was thinking that sniper should have max Perception. Or it's for casters? And which subclasses for Shepherd?

Edit: Did you also tried to multiclass druid? For example with Rogue.

 

[Tigranes]

Yes, defiinitely high Perception. My level 10 Shepherd has ~20PER I think. Sharpshooter is important, I think for the Paladin side it's not a big deal & really up to your preferences.

Druids are a bit weird. The shift forms aren't really very useful at the moment, so it ultimately comes down to how you get the most out of your spells? But with both POE1&2, although I enjoy them, I've never been good at making druids really optimal.

 

[Shadenuat]

Anything with rogue is better than without, eh.

AoE weapon with soul annihilation is interesting. I'm running pure Soulblade now and it kinda sucks. Feels like only good spell is 1st level charm. And without dual you have few options to use that soul nuke. Farming mana using frostseeker and going with a melee weapon after was best I came up with.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Yes, defiinitely high Perception. My level 10 Shepherd has ~20PER I think. Sharpshooter is important, I think for the Paladin side it's not a big deal & really up to your preferences.

Druids are a bit weird. The shift forms aren't really very useful at the moment, so it ultimately comes down to how you get the most out of your spells? But with both POE1&2, although I enjoy them, I've never been good at making druids really optimal.

Thank you very much for help.

Anything with rogue is better than without, eh.

AoE weapon with soul annihilation is interesting. I'm running pure Soulblade now and it kinda sucks. Feels like only good spell is 1st level charm.

Speaking about rogue and multi of him. I want in my custom party to characters, one with mechanic skill for picking locks and other "Sleight-of-Hand + Steallth" character for thieving. I decided to create ranged character for seconnd skill combination and I know Scout (Rogue/Ranger) is very powerful in ranged. However opinions about his sub-classes different from person to person, some people suggest Sharpshooter (because penalty 10% now, not %20) others Stalker or even Ghost Heart. Which in your opinion better? And which stats would be preferable (since some people suggested in guides that Might is obsolete for this build, I can't fucking decide and forums of Obsidian laying in silence)?

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Tigranes]

Anything with rogue is better than without, eh.

AoE weapon with soul annihilation is interesting. I'm running pure Soulblade now and it kinda sucks. Feels like only good spell is 1st level charm. And without dual you have few options to use that soul nuke. Farming mana using frostseeker and going with a melee weapon after was best I came up with.

I mean, in general, I think multiclass is better, and more fun at any rate. I haven't tried Soul Annihilation with the Wahai Pogara [sic] poleaxe, but that should work too? I'm sure that dual-wield would win for faster focus gain and recovery, since dual-wield is nearly always better for everything at the moment, but I used the Deadly Deadfire mod's penetration module (-1 pen for 1handers to make 2h matter more, I believe).

I think for Ciphers the go-tos are Whispers of Treason, then later upgrade it to Ringleader, tack on Tenuous Grasp as debuff and maybe Body Attunement. I haven't really played around with the direct damage spells, do those get focus? No, right? So I guess with Soul Annihilation they become a bit redundant.

 

[Shadenuat]

Thing is Soulblade has bonus to shred spells (cheaper cost) so it feels like I should use them, but they are hilariously weak except probably the high level ones like disintegrate. I use DD too and now clearing Scrublord dungeon at level 6. Will see how it works out.

Meanwhile helwalker monk already outpaced in damage pure evoker and is not going to stop, running around with 10 wounds stunlocking enemies by chaining knockdowns one after another. Balance.

Sharpshooter (because penalty 10% now, not %20) others Stalker or even Ghost Heart.

Not Ghostheart, it's annoying. Stalker can also be annoying because say you want to block enemy with pet and you need it far away. Sharpshooter probably or no kit.

I mean, in general, I think multiclass is better

It's lame. Like dual wielding. Purist life. I'm a fighter = I fite.

Well not exactly but I already played duals a lot.

 

[Tigranes]

I love multiclasses, but I agree that it's stupid how dual wield is so good. It was the same in Dragon Age, where the hands down best killer was a dual-wielding rogue cutting everything into shreds. I'm glad they found a way to make rogues relevant in combat-heavy CRPGs, but it's a bit crazy now with all these fucking Drizzts.

Had a quick try with Spearcaster and the knockback doesn't seem to go very far? I remember POE1 Arbalests could throw people across the room, which was hilarious & useful. Will test more.

I second sharpshooter or no kit. But don't worry too much about super minmaxing. Unless you want to run solo POTD. I'm focusing on coming up with fun, well-defined builds that leverage a couple of cool mechanics (like AOE soul annihilation), and I think after that it's not necessary to squeeze every last number.

 

[Shadenuat]

I understand I larp but sword&shield is such an effective combination yet even in hurr muh history sawyer it's weapon combo for slow dumb tanking losers who can't see enemy behind their shield so can't hit anything. I want sword and shield good at offence. But then again even 2-handed doesn't have anything on dual sabres.

 

[FreeKaner]

Sawyer in charge of balancing, two weapons just attack too fast for no reason at all. There is absolutely no reason why they should attack twice as fast as one weapon, that's just silly.

 

[Tigranes]

These values should be pretty easy to modify, right? What would be a more reasonable set of bonuses/maluses - not necessarily from muh realism but gameplay perspective?

It seems clear that 2h should shine with penetration, with the possibility of going into overpen to get that damage bonus. All onehanders should probably lose 1 pen, and two-handers possibly gain 1. Directly reducing recovery on two-handers might cause havoc (esp. relative to ranged weapons), even if they feel a bit long at the moment. One of the issues there is that if you're using an Arquebus, then you have long reload time but not necessarily long recovery time, and there's plenty of ways for you to sneak in various spells and instant cast abilities inbetween - but for a 2hander, everything is slowed down. Maybe 2handers need slower attack animations and faster recovery? But that's probably harder to do.

Dual wields obviously need to be slowed down and have some kind of meaningful penalty, probably accuracy. Not sure what to do with shields. Just taking out the shields' accuracy penalty doesn't seem smart, but right now the problem is that one-handers with the specialisation feat will gain a huge accuracy bonus as well, so that you can get something like 15 or 20 acc differential. The special shields that act like off-hand weapons, maybe there's an idea there, so that with the smaller shields they don't function as a dual wield per se, but they can proc bashes when you attack? We had something like that in POE1, though it was often buggy.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Dual-wielding is gay anime shit that shouldn't even exist.

 

[santino27]

Dual-wielding like-size weapons is gay anime shit that shouldn't even exist.

FTFY. Parrying daggers were a thing. Dual wielding scimitars or sabres or whatever else is dumb.

 

[Lhynn]

I wish i could dual wield mauls.

 

[FreeKaner]

Simply put, having two weapons shouldn't divide your recovery time. It should instead be a regular bonus, so it doesn't stack so effectively. It's also more sensible, you aren't really attacking twice as fast with two weapons.

 

[fantadomat]

Dual-wielding is gay anime shit that shouldn't even exist.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah, when you doubt if something is real just look it up in medieval art, they never painted anything that was not historically accurate.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Dual-wielding is gay anime shit that shouldn't even exist.

According to google translate :
''you have been careful to hurt or by cholera or because they believed to have to do with foolish person they remained greatly offended if they could give you endless examples which I leave for not departing from the purpose. I say therefore that of the two swords that are adorned, one always deue to give the other to defend the offense, always making sure to first oprar that which then defends the one that offends because first fiide will try to defend if then offend others''
So, the guy has a lot of examples which he won't share because it would be too long a digression from the main point he is making. And then there's a description that you basically have a sword for offense and sword for parrying? Okay, I'm convinced that dual-wielding rapiers, or having a parrying dagger would not be gay anime shit. But it does sound like something that ought to be not too ideal, except for 1v1s.

 

[Shadenuat]

Dual wielding existed but was rare (most people aren't ambidextrous and it's not that easy to handle 2 weapons) and mostly for duels. And it didn't do twice the damage. They would do things like deflect one blade with a left and then attack with a right. If this was in an rpg, it would have been a one-on-one oriented counter attack based fighting style with medium to light weapons.

But it's not like I care if it's in the game or not, what I care is that it's better than anything else. Game is welcoming to teleporting dual wielding rogues and monks with fists that deal damage like you're wielding 2 mauls from planescape, and everyone else is a loser (although 1-handed is useful until you get enough buffs and high quality weapons to hit shit).

Did the pond ambush in scrublord dungeon on level 6 with potd/scaling/dd mod. I could have used those extra 5-10 minutes of my life on something else but shooting self healing undead paladin with 100 defences with frostseeker. Did not feel like I achieved something, honestly.

 

[fantadomat]

Dual-wielding is gay anime shit that shouldn't even exist.

According to google translate :
''you have been careful to hurt or by cholera or because they believed to have to do with foolish person they remained greatly offended if they could give you endless examples which I leave for not departing from the purpose. I say therefore that of the two swords that are adorned, one always deue to give the other to defend the offense, always making sure to first oprar that which then defends the one that offends because first fiide will try to defend if then offend others''
So, the guy has a lot of examples which he won't share because it would be too long a digression from the main point he is making. And then there's a description that you basically have a sword for offense and sword for parrying? Okay, I'm convinced that dual-wielding rapiers, or having a parrying dagger would not be gay anime shit. But it does sound like something that ought to be not too ideal, except for 1v1s.

Well it will be useful for 1v1 or in a fight with a small group,it will be useless in a battlefield. It gives you a versatility and some range,you could use the swords for different things,it is not like you use only one of the swords for attack and the other for defence. It is pretty rare and hard to do,most fighters back then preferred a solid shield,even if they lost some of the possible range,most people don't get that a shield is pretty potent weapon.

 

[Tigranes]

Eh, realism, it's fine to give players ways to mix and match - POE does a great job at allowing you to combine a pistol with a shield, and shit like that, so it's nice to have all those options. The problem comes when dual wield becomes a no-brainer decision.