Been looking forward to this one, it's out now but I've got several visitors coming by in the next 2 months so I don't think I'll be able to dedicate the time and attention that a game of this size requires. It's kind of like reading a book halfway and picking it up again months later and realizing you forgot half the plot. So I might wait until after the summer when they patched it.

Reviews so far are very promising though:

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/pilla ... i-deadfire

Been playing this on and off for a few weeks now and it's really good so far. The world is beautiful, the story is interesting, the combat feels a lot better than in the original Pillars and the voice acting is great. The game also features a lot more of the "choose your own adventure" style moments where you can use your party's particular skillset to overcome certain obstacles or find shortcuts. They're a lot of fun.

I'm playing as a multiclass Priest of Wael / Unbroken warrior. I'm basically the main tank using illusion and priest spells to gain defense for myself and keep enemies engaged, while throwing out some healing and buffs centered in myself once in a while too (which also benefits the other, more offensively geared warrior). I make sure that I invest my skills into quickly cast spells, for obvious interrupt reasons, heh.

The setting kinda works two ways for me: the travelling around from island to island by boat (or even on the islands themselves on foot) is definitely more interesting than just clicking on a region and 'going there' as it existed in Pillars 1 or say BG2. But I'm not sure I care a lot about the ship management and combat on top of all the other stuff yet. To be fair I haven't really bothered with it much beyond providing normal food and water for my crew to get around, and the odd ship combat, but it seems pretty convoluted compared to the old stronghold stuff. I will say one thing though: at least you don't need to backtrack 2 days to go past your stronghold for some BS tax collecting and a random mission. So in that sense, it's infinitely better haha.

Have it, will play it after Shadow of War (which is a mind boggling 95gb download. Had my pc running for two nights to get it downloaded).

95GB? Holy crap. I might actually have to clear up space for it when I finally buy that game.

Heh, that's pretty insane. Deadfire is 45 gigs too but that's still somewhat reasonable compared to that shit haha.

So how are you liking it so far Peltz? Saw you made some headway already.

I'm getting pretty deep into the later stages of the game I think, level 16-ish. The story's been really interesting and I like the deadfire as a setting too. It doesn't appeal as much to me personally as the colder, snowier setting of The White March, but hey. They did a hell of a job fleshing out the Deadfire regardless.

They just released the first DLC, The Beast of Winter. Which is set in The White that Wends, a region I am very curious about. It's also one of them "in-story" DLCs, so it just adds to the normal game world instead of providing a separate campaign after the events of the main game. So seeing as I haven't finished it yet and am quite happy with the game so far I may actually pay the full 10 euro price for it. Yeah, crazy, I know.

So far its ok. I went as a caster/offensive druid for the main character. He's one of the subclasses of druid that has no access to healing spells. Most aoe damage spells with some summons as well. Party is Eder, Xoti, Aloth and Maia. Eder is full fighter, Xoti full priest, Aloth full mage and Maia is a Ranger-Wizard with selfbuffs. If i could i would roll Eder into a fighter-wizard as well.

As for the progression, i've been to Neketaka and gotten the quest to visit the something due west. I also did some bounties and Tikawara and Poko Hara. I think my party is around level 9.

Hahaha J, maybe I'm coming out of my years-long "I got too many games to play already, not spending more than 8 euros on a game" funk?

@ Peltz, you can retrain your own party members no? For Eder. Or maybe it just means you can pick all their skills again, not the classes.

My party's a little different from you but not all that much. Full priest Xoti, full (offensive, two weapon) fighter Eder, full wizard Aloth and full cipher Serafen. I wasn't soo sure about Serafen at first but he's won me over, both in terms of personality and abilities.

I'm an Unbroken (defensive fighter) / Priest of Wael (illusion + buff) multiclass myself. Was a bit scared of how it'd work out but it works pretty well. I draw the aggro and take the beatings with high constitution, defense and illusion spells and other buffs, while Eder moves around does massive DPS. And the other three do crowd control, damage and buffing/healing of course.

Since Wael is the god of revelations, mysteries and secrets it's also fun to roleplaying this mysteriously aloof character. I will uncover great secrets and then bury them for no reason than that I don't think they should come out. Which is how Wael would have wanted it.

Saw you finished the game Peltz, congrats! What's your impression of it?

I already finished the main storyline and am working on the Beast of Winter (which is very, very good so far). I'll give my overall impression once I'm done with that too.

I have decided however to wait with another (super evil) playthrough until all the DLC is out. Not because I wouldn't enjoy another run already, because I would. But because if it's more of this before-the-end-of-the-game integrated DLC then I prefer going in clean.

A quick overview:
Difficulty - normal
Party - Druid (int), Fighter (con/str), Priest (int/???), Mage(int), Ranger/Wizard (per)
Ship - sloop

Reload due to death - 2 or 3 times. Once i was defeated by the Fampyr's because I couldn't figure out who was charming my party, the rematch didn't go so well for them. Once i was defeated by a Principi Galleon who was clearly too high level, I boarded it, killed all the rabble but in the end was defeated by 4 very high level enemies. I was also defeated in the skirmish before reaching Ukaizo but that could be considered a broken game mechanic.

Towards the end once i bought all the expensive items and enchanted them my party was very overpowered. Once my druid managed to cast the aoe stun it was chop-chop-enemy-explode-fight over. While classes like cipher and chanter sound interesting in the end they are a bit gimped because the fight is over before they get to cast anything useful. Even my wizard used his bow most of the time because there was no point in casting spells, they would've either hit my own party, there weren't enough of them that close to each other and mostly because they were dead by the time the spell went off. I remember trying to cast a kill spell like 3-4 times and every time the target was killed.

Overall I think its a much better game than PoE 1. The main story was completely "don't give a fuck" but some of the other quests were good. I really liked the payback on the annoying pirate you meet in the first fight. But either i'm getting old or i'm too focused on the DPS that I didn't get much satisfaction out of the game. Still I will probably go back to it one more time, ditching all the scripted party members for the 'build your own' ones just to see the carnage they can cause. Probably lots of multi-classes as well.

Did you get killed by the fampyrs at ? That's a pretty tough area yeah. I went there pretty high level without level scaling and struggled quite a bit with their constant charm gaze attacks. I never really had trouble when boarding and entering other ships (in fact I though it was much easier than fighting them on the seas) but then I think I never really fought high level enemies. Maybe some of the in the late game but that's it.

You never upgraded the ship? I bought the galleon and completely decked it out but in the end I didn't use it too much, so I could have stayed with the sloop really. I just liked having the space and feeling like a boss with a big ship with lots of cannons.

As for the cypher and chanter being gimped, yes and no: you're right that they need time to get going, but they have a distinct advantage over classes like fighters or mages or priests: their x amount of uses per ability never runs out in a battle. A cypher can theoretically cast his highest level attacks over and over again, while even a lvl 20 mage only gets 1 level 10 spell slot (vanilla) per encounter. Which is for the best, as some of the lvl 10 spells are ridiculous yeah. My wizard had the missile salvo one which basically tore apart every enemy except the real damage soakers and bosses.

Like you, I was a bit overequipped and OP by the end of the game because I did most quests and turned off (approximate) level scaling. There's also so much money in the game....even after buying the galleon, outfitting and enchanting all of my characters with sick gear I had over a 100k left by the end of the game. Again though, I did loot pretty much everything in the game.



Like you I'm gonna reply the game as a very evil character and become the terror of the seas, raiding other ships and trade lines. Btw The Beast of Winter is really good, with some tough fights you might enjoy. I'd wait until it was slightly discounted though, as it's not super big (like 4 hours if you're quick). But otherwise highly recommended.

Party: All custom characters - Druid, Fighter/Barbarian, Cypher/Cleric, Paladin/Ranger, Wizard/Ranger.

I'm currently replaying the game in turn-based mode and I like it a lot more. This way the spellcasters get to be more useful. I think I set the difficulty on 'hard' but I have to check once I get home.

In turn-based mode the positioning of characters actually makes a difference. The ship boarding fights still see your main character being hit up to 9 or 10 times in the first turn so high piercing resistant armor is a must in those fights.

Don't think I've had any party wipes this run. The fight with the kraken was a close one with 3 characters knocked out.

I probably should have rolled the druid as multiclass as well. The shapeshifting is kinda bullshit and the high level spells lack oompf. Either a ranger or a barbarian. Paladin is actually pretty good dps as well. Mine does constantly 40-90 damage with a two-hander on a variety of opponents which is a lot. Should probably experiment with the monk class. That pirate lass from Fort Deadlight whose name I can't recall atm, did about 100+dam per round in ship fights when piloted by the ai.

So I paid a visit to my luvly fampyr neighbours and they didn't take too kindly to it. No party wipe but it was a close call. I was down to my fighter/barbarian and ranger/paladin. So that's 5 knockouts since I have 2 animal companions from both rangers, total of 7 characters. I resurrected my healer and druid at one point with the paladin and threw in some summons to soak up damage and soon enough the fampyrs were lying dead on the ground. That fampyr priest has some nasty damage spell, it immediately took out one of my summons with 2*120 damage and then nuked my mage the same way.