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

[Molina]

I hope you enjoy the game. I'm stuck in Dyford acte II, and I have to finish all the part II White March...

 

[Lady_Error]

So nobody had the bug where the game crashes every time upon entering the arena under the Engwithian ruins?

Did you guys import from POE1 or start fresh? I kinda suspect that the importing might be the reason.

 

[AwesomeButton]

So nobody had the bug where the game crashes every time upon entering the arena under the Engwithian ruins?

Did you guys import from POE1 or start fresh? I kinda suspect that the importing might be the reason.

It crashed once for me just after going through the narrated part of the quest under the arena. After that it has been ok though.

I imported my PoE save.

 

[Ent]

I want to know who at obsidian has the greatsword fetish. Once again the best weapon group.

 

[Pizzashoes]

Would you call impregnation a fetish? No. Making greatswords great is the same thing. It's in the name.

 

[Lacrymas]

What are everyone's impressions of the Penetration system? Was I right in my evaluation of it?

 

[Tigranes]

all the parts in poe2 where they try to go Fancy (tm)(c)(r) are disastrous, i skip them faster than the narrator can start speaking

What do you mean, as in involved quests like Planar Sphere, Slavers or Haer'dalis's quest? What's fancy in this context?

I think he meant writing style that gets ahead of itself too much.

Yep. Skipping every narration portion in dialogue does wonders.

 

[aweigh]

I still can't help giggling every time I read 'penetration'.

 

[Parabalus]

I thought the game looked great, now I landed on a volcanic tileset - absolutely stunning.

What are everyone's impressions of the Penetration system? Was I right in my evaluation of it?

You have a link to your post handy?

My XP it does its job well - I switch weapons depending on enemy armor, sometimes I tolerate a -1/2. OtoH, enemies beeline pretty hard for my unarmored PC.

 

[Alienman]

I have to say the difficulty have certainly increased for me. I'm not the most expert player, but still. I have four island marked down in notepad now - they are just too hard currently. One ship that I tried to board had invincible iron constructs. That is all nice and dandy, but I'm kinda confused on where to go to progress. I'm hitting walls all over the place. Went to a pirate hideout, hoping that maybe my party is tuned for this area since I got the quest fairly early. Did a couple of tasks, all good, then gets a scripted ambush and all cloth users were gunned down in two seconds flat. Hmmm. Are you supposed to go to the big city or something to get into a flow?

 

[jungl]

games alright, the performance issues on some maps are inexcusable. casters are much more powerful in this one then previous pillars especially with empowered. I had xoti hit one of those iron golems with her pillar spell for 140 damage at level 6.

 

[Shadenuat]

Are you supposed to go to the big city or something to get into a flow?

Big city has lotsa non combat quests and 3 companions so good idea.

After getting full party I am sailing around starting area (port Maje). Clearing isles there with some difficulty but overall doing ok, sank 3 ships including high hp slaver's galleon by ramming the hell out of it with my junk boat.

I'm level 8 here's my grand achievements so far

 

[Lacrymas]

You have a link to your post handy?

I've talked about it in a few places, but the gist of it is that I think it's too binary -

Encourages tedious and automatic micromanagement that doesn't add anything to the gameplay other than tedious micromanagement. Equipping the highest Pen weapon in the off-set and switching to it when you can't Penetrate with your normal one isn't engaging gameplay or much of a choice;

It either makes bosses pushovers because they can't Penetrate you or making your armor pointless because they can (which is a consequence of the binary nature of it);

Fucks over casters which don't have a readily available way to debuff elemental armor or buff their own Pen;

It adds another Accuracy/Defenses-like system, i.e. it's a thing that already exists;

It either creates a need to stack it in every build that does damage and rote, automatic tactics of spellcasters unloading their armor debuffs/Pen buffs at the start of combat, OR it's pointless as a system if the enemy's AR is too low, OR you are always on the fine line between reaching it and not reaching it, necessitating only a single debuff to be cast by a caster every combat, which means it's an unnecessary button to press that can be removed;

Pushes classes like Devoted and Berzerker to god-tier because they have innate Pen bonuses (my Priest/Devoted has 130% Pen on every creature at the start);

Also, this post of mine -

You aren't taking Accuracy into consideration. We are already choosing what spells to use depending on the defenses of the enemies, so adding another thing on top will create situations like a spell having high Penetration and targets Reflex, but the enemy has high armor and very high Reflex defenses. You'd have to debuff the Reflex first (if you can) and then use the spell. You might say we have 10 spell levels' worth of different kinds of spells to circumvent whatever defenses they have, but we have very limited spell selection and using them up on all kinds of Pen and defense targeting spells won't be very diverse; we don't have access to all the spells from the beginning, so this only applies to high-level play, i.e. the last 20% of the game; AND, the most important thing, it relegates the spellcasting to a puzzle-like state in which you are fitting very specific spells to very specific circumstances, forcing you to figure out what spells the developers intended for you to use in any given battle, instead of creating your own tactics.

 

[Mikeal]

 

[Akratus]

 

[Jenkem]

confused about EMPOWER... it says "once per encounter", but then it will not come back until you rest so isn't it really "once per rest" ???!?!!?!?

 

[cvv]

Ok, after all this praise I thought imma gonna play PoE2.

But first - imma gonna actually complete PoE1. Years ago I did finish the base game but got bored and uninstalled a short while into the first DLC.

So I reinstall, load the last save - aaand I have ZERO idea who these people are, what all those items do, how the combat works, what are all the stats, what was the story about and why should I even care. I realized a game like this cannot be just left and picked back up after a few years. You have to either start from the beginning, with all the tutorial help, or watch a playthrough on Jewtube or some such.

There's no way I'm investing dozens of my precious hours to do either so I'll probably just start playing PoE2 and hope imma not get completely lost in the plot and lore.

 

[Sentinel]

confused about EMPOWER... it says "once per encounter", but then it will not come back until you rest so isn't it really "once per rest" ???!?!!?!?

You can use it once per encounter but the charges only refill on a rest. So if you have 2 charges, you can use one charge on 1 encounter. After that encounter is done, you'll have one remaining that you can use on an upcoming encounter. After that you'll have to rest to get them back.

 

[Jenkem]

On my second pass with my Thaumaturge I just noticed that your performance in the initial ship battle can affect what crew are available to find/rescue quest. Specifically, the valian woman died in my first pass, but survived in my second pass and was part of the search & rescue quest. I thought it was a nice touch.

In my wife's playthrough on Classic, Irrena survived, and in mine on Veteran she was killed. The inclined part is that anyone can die in that first combat, including Eder, and they'll be missing from the rest of the game, just like that.

how the hell did you have someone die in the first combat??? might be time for you to just watch your wife play

 

[Jarmaro]

How good are rogues? Are they useful in actual combat except pre-combat sneaking? Were thinking about making it my Watcher Rouge, but then it would be shitshow if he turned up to be useless.

 

[Jenkem]

confused about EMPOWER... it says "once per encounter", but then it will not come back until you rest so isn't it really "once per rest" ???!?!!?!?

You can use it once per encounter but the charges only refill on a rest. So if you have 2 charges, you can use one charge on 1 encounter. After that encounter is done, you'll have one remaining that you can use on an upcoming encounter. After that you'll have to rest to get them back.

oh? I've never seen more than one charge which is why I was confused... haven't really dug in deep to the game yet, just trying builds.. waitin for that patch

 

[Latro]

Romance eligibility "spoilers":

Spoiler

Anyone recruit Maia yet? How is she? (Without spoilers)

I made her ranger/wiz and she's pretty ok, wizard self buffs and pew pew.

Did anyone find any soulbound stuff yet? Where is the sword?

at least voluntary celibates have a good amount of representation in this game

 

[Sentinel]

Anyone know what these highlighted icons mean? I've deduced that the ones on the right are the defense associated with the hostile effect. What does the one on the left mean? The one right below cinder bomb says "Water, Frost", so it makes me think that it's some kind of "Countered by: Water, Frost", however the other ones don't have anything. Is the blue colour supposed to indicate "countered by Will Buff"?
How come this isn't explained anywhere? Fuck sake.

Also I was about to praise Megan Starks for Xoti, and this shit happens

even though I purposely decided not to pick the obvious romantic choice in the previous panel. What the fuck. There isn't even an option afterwards to push her away like an autist.

 

[Jarmaro]

even though I purposely decided not to pick the obvious romantic choice in the previous panel. What the fuck. There isn't even an option afterwards to push her away like an autist.

Is it D:OS2 all over again when people can lick you and you can do nothing about it?

 

[Pizzashoes]

Regarding penetration, I haven't messed with the specific mechanics much. During most fights I just switch abilities if I run into immunities. I have my tank wearing full plate, but he has low Dexterity anyway. The damage dealers wear lighter armor but not cloth. They seem to have some good survivability.

The funny thing about the binary useful/useless nature of armor rating is plate armor really would do nothing against a dragon's breath or claws. Dragonslayers might as well be naked. I love fighter/mages in BG2 for that. They tank better than warriors while wearing cloth.

Also I finally found Ydwin. The party is now 60% elven. I might use mercs to bump those numbers up. Fuck. I can't decide what class for her. I'm not digging Eder as a pure rogue.