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Now is the best time to play Pillars of Eternity 2, easily one of the greatest games of 2018
- Thread starter Durante
- Start date
Both are vast improvements over BG/IWD and much better about minimizing the chaos of battle and giving you a greater sense of control/clarity, especially Deadfire which also includes the aforementioned Tactics/Gambits system ala DAO/FFXII. PoE sadly only has a very basic AI system with a couple presets and no customization like Deadfire though.
There is also the fantastic IE mod for PoE that lets you change a ton of stuff about combat, like making all spells/abilities Per Encounter and lots of other small tweaks.
OP
OP
Absolutely. Usually in RPGs, I make up my mind about people and factions and that's it. Nothing in the questlines or dialogue really changes how I feel about them, because there just isn't so much nuance to their motivations.
PoE2 is very different, I can't really pick any single faction I agree with above all others. And not because they are all repugnant -- that's a trap some games fall into -- but because several of them have some actual justification for their attitudes and behaviour.
I fully agree with this. It's exceedingly rare that I find basically everything I do in an RPG so satisfactory.
That's also a very good point.
I don't feel quite that severely about it -- I can happily play D:OS2 still -- but yeah, especially large-scale battles in purely TB systems just drag on very needlessly. The late-game can become a chore, and so can the later phases of any battle where you basically already won but still have to play it out turn by turn.
And it's hard to accept that when I know I could reach the same level of tactical finesse and decision-making in a fraction of the time in a RtwP framework. Honestly, whenever I read many of the complaints I feel like people just aren't good enough at it - or maybe unwilling to engage with it and give it an extended try.
RtwP thoughts
I posted about this in a prior Deadfire thread where I think the major issue with RTwP is that it is a combat system that requires the player to spend some amount of time learning the basics of it which few are willing to do. It's really an education problem I think for most people. They never take the time to actually learn how the combat and various systems work and when they get thrown into combat they get overwhelmed.
The games themselves do no have tutorials and really the combat system itself as well as the games in general really don't lend themselves to tutorials either. Manuals no longer exist for the most part in this digital age and people aren't that interested in reading through documentation either anyways. Which is all a real shame as just a bit of reading and a couple hours tops of methodical playtime paying attention to every detail of combat is more than enough to familiarize yourself with 80% of what you need to know to get enjoyment out of the system.
I think some of this falls on the devs themselves as it would be very beneficial if they created a few really well done How To vids demonstrating the basics of combat in straight to the point ~10 minute videos. Fans of the genre kind of already do this for them actually and many are quite good, though a bit disjointed and long winded often. You'll never likely get through to the majority of players, but it's at least something.
Even for me prior to PoE I knew how these games worked in the broad strokes, but just kind of bumbled my way through without really taking the time to understand how things worked, but being a lot older now and anticipating the launch of PoE I actually took the time to read through forum posts on mechanics and watch vids from people in the Beta and for the first time I really understood how the combat and everything worked and because of that I immediately was in love with PoE at launch and only grew to love it more with each major update. And it really didn't take any time at all. Just reading a couple well documented and presented threads on the Obsidian forums taught me everything I needed to know about Attributes, recovery and so on.
Dear god the oil fields. It's not even that it's difficult (I had to cheese a certain idiot out the way though) it just drraaaaaaggggs.
But yeah I'm replaying PoE2 as a fresh wizard for the last dlc :P fun so far.
I do think that the game covers a wide variety of game knowledge. You can just be a strong fighter with a couple big weapons and mathblast your way through pretty simply, or you can be a Chanter that summons lots of tiny skeletons and, using a specific weapon with a specific upgrade, fight by killing your own skeletons thereby summoning twice as many imps that are more powerful still. Or you could use that same weapon and take the other upgrade on the tree and instead your dead skellies summon a frozen fog AoE, which you can build against being basically immune to and utilize the fact that the enemies in the fog are blinded and flanked to chop through them.
I swear 80 % of my reloads on that battle came from that gentleman's "suicidal" tendencies :(
I myself am in the process of completing my ideal POE 1 paladin run (working through the white march atm) to import into POE2 for my ideal POE2 paladin/fighter run on version 4.0 :)
RtwP thoughts II
I'll second Sinatar's earlier post on the combat. I strongly prefer turn-based combat to RTwP. Before PoE, I'd only ever come to a grudging truce with RtWP combat. But Deadfire's combat is among the best I've played. Durante covered the UI earlier, and others have mentioned the party AI and AI customization options. I'll add that the speed slider is a godsend for players like me who struggle with RTwP. I found that the slowest two speed settings felt much more comfortable for me. The slower wind-ups made for an almost ATB-like experience, where I could focus on one character at a time, pause as his/her "turn" came up, and then shift my attention to whatever character's action/recovery cycle was up next.
Agreed. When all factions are equally repugnant (or at least so repugnant that the moral distinctions become trivial), it takes the interest out of choosing. Deadfire has multiple factions a person playing a morally responsible actor could plausibly choose. I also happen to like that it's not (at least in my view) perfectly symmetrical, and there's at least one faction where I am inclined to say, "that's too far, you lot are clearly worse than the others." This was something I admired about New Vegas with Caesar's Legion. Sometimes having a faction that is plainly terrible sharpens the tradeoffs among the other factions (for example, the NCR's conflict between its democratic-state-like virtues and its bureaucratic corruption/overreach vices is more interesting when it is contrasted not just with some kind of wild west libertarianism but with some of the more vicious organizations that can spring up in the wasteland). Deadfire doesn't have anything as extreme as the Legion, but it doesn't obsess over putting the player in perfect equipoise. As long as there are multiple reasonable factions, it's okay if one or two will be, for some players at least, less reasonable.
I think it depends on what you mean by bland. The writing in Deadfire is significantly more frequently witty and humorous than the first game, and just much better refined all around. It's still a game that tells a serious, grounded story about sometimes mundane topics, though.
Class system, modding, patches
Thanks for making this, Durante . I was going to do the same thing when the last DLC dropped but didn't get the chance to throw something together. You already hit most of the points I would've talked about, but I gotta go in more on a few things:
The class system is probably the best we've seen since Final Fantasy Tactics, possibly ever.
Look at this:
Your Druid/Monk could be a shapeshift-focused melee combatant that utilizes the Monk's martial skills to maximize your beast form's power. Or, you could put a rifle in its hands, park it on the backline, and amp up the Druid's fantastic healing with the Monk's super steroids while taking potshots when you can. Or, you could focus on a single skill in the Druid tree that lets you summon a flaming greatsword and combine it with those steroids (including added burn damage) for a flame-based melee warrior. Or you could figure out any number of other ways of combining the two classes, and that's before you get into the itemization side of things, which opens up an entirely new dimension.
I think the real magic of Deadfire's system is that unlike most other games, classes have true synergy. Generally with classes/jobs/trees it feels like yeah, you're using multiple skills that work well together, but they're just building blocks standing side by side. When you have a great multiclass in Deadfire, it feels like the two classes are snapping together into something specific and brand new.
The modding catalogue is strong, and modding things yourself is super easy
I lied before. Not every multiclass is equally strong. Priest multiclasses are notably more niche because of their long cast times and lack of meaningful passives. It's a real shame, because Priests have a number of great martial buffs, inquisitor-style Condemnation/Punishment skills, and deity-based summoned weapons that would work great for an offensive multiclass. So, I modded their cast times and opened up an entire new branch of great multiclass options. All it took was opening up the right file or two and doing some ctrl+Fs, ctrl+Cs, and ctrl+Vs. And if you want to get real deep into it, Obsidian has put out extremely detailed documentation on how to do it.
If you don't want to crack out Notepad++ yourself, there's already a pretty large and high-quality selection of mods out there to help you tailor the game experience however you want. Difficulty mods, unique items, new subclasses, UI enhancements, rebalances, cheats, racial and background alterations, y'know, whatever. It's all there, and it adds a ton to the experience.
The DLC and patch additions have been uniformly fantastic
With the launch of the third and final DLC last week alongside patch 4.0, what was one of the game's biggest weaknesses at launch - endgame content - is now one of its greatest strengths. Beast of Winter was an excellent, well-rounded new area with a chunky chunk of story, combat, and rewarding lore/world-building. Seeker, Slayer, Survivor is the ultimate addition for combat/build junkies like me with the toughest combat challenges in the game -- and that many of them are repeatable is just the greatest. I haven't gotten very far into the newest DLC, but it's a eldritch horror Cthulu tentacle megadungeon that's already proven in previews to be extremely interesting. And possibly sadistic.
Putting all that aside, the stuff that they've added to the base game for free has been impressive. Five megabosses, 10 god challenges, a bunch of extra free DLC, and a bevy of rebalancing and enhancements that have earned the patch number 4.0 means that even if you aren't springing for the DLC -- you should -- the base game has you covered.
It'll be $50 tops for the game and all its DLC in the next week or so. Don't skip it!!
The class system is probably the best we've seen since Final Fantasy Tactics, possibly ever.
Look at this:
Literally every class here, every multiclass here, is strong, unique, and interesting to play. Layer the weapon and subclass systems on top of that, and it isn't just that every class/multiclass is its own singular thing, but that each can be played in a huge variety of different ways.
Your Druid/Monk could be a shapeshift-focused melee combatant that utilizes the Monk's martial skills to maximize your beast form's power. Or, you could put a rifle in its hands, park it on the backline, and amp up the Druid's fantastic healing with the Monk's super steroids while taking potshots when you can. Or, you could focus on a single skill in the Druid tree that lets you summon a flaming greatsword and combine it with those steroids (including added burn damage) for a flame-based melee warrior. Or you could figure out any number of other ways of combining the two classes, and that's before you get into the itemization side of things, which opens up an entirely new dimension.
I think the real magic of Deadfire's system is that unlike most other games, classes have true synergy. Generally with classes/jobs/trees it feels like yeah, you're using multiple skills that work well together, but they're just building blocks standing side by side. When you have a great multiclass in Deadfire, it feels like the two classes are snapping together into something specific and brand new.
The modding catalogue is strong, and modding things yourself is super easy
I lied before. Not every multiclass is equally strong. Priest multiclasses are notably more niche because of their long cast times and lack of meaningful passives. It's a real shame, because Priests have a number of great martial buffs, inquisitor-style Condemnation/Punishment skills, and deity-based summoned weapons that would work great for an offensive multiclass. So, I modded their cast times and opened up an entire new branch of great multiclass options. All it took was opening up the right file or two and doing some ctrl+Fs, ctrl+Cs, and ctrl+Vs. And if you want to get real deep into it, Obsidian has put out extremely detailed documentation on how to do it.
If you don't want to crack out Notepad++ yourself, there's already a pretty large and high-quality selection of mods out there to help you tailor the game experience however you want. Difficulty mods, unique items, new subclasses, UI enhancements, rebalances, cheats, racial and background alterations, y'know, whatever. It's all there, and it adds a ton to the experience.
The DLC and patch additions have been uniformly fantastic
With the launch of the third and final DLC last week alongside patch 4.0, what was one of the game's biggest weaknesses at launch - endgame content - is now one of its greatest strengths. Beast of Winter was an excellent, well-rounded new area with a chunky chunk of story, combat, and rewarding lore/world-building. Seeker, Slayer, Survivor is the ultimate addition for combat/build junkies like me with the toughest combat challenges in the game -- and that many of them are repeatable is just the greatest. I haven't gotten very far into the newest DLC, but it's a eldritch horror Cthulu tentacle megadungeon that's already proven in previews to be extremely interesting. And possibly sadistic.
Putting all that aside, the stuff that they've added to the base game for free has been impressive. Five megabosses, 10 god challenges, a bunch of extra free DLC, and a bevy of rebalancing and enhancements that have earned the patch number 4.0 means that even if you aren't springing for the DLC -- you should -- the base game has you covered.
It'll be $50 tops for the game and all its DLC in the next week or so. Don't skip it!!
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PC Gamer awarded PoEII as the Best RPG of 2018. https://www.pcgamer.com/best-rpg-2018-pillars-of-eternity-2-deadfire/
Great post! I actually haven't explored Deadfire's mods yet. But it's something I'm looking forward to down the road.
Echoing all of the positive comments about the game here. PoE2 is a tremendous achievement in the genre and along with Pathfinder kingmaker has made 2018 the best year for isometric wrpgs since 2000. I'm playing both right now and they are absolute wrpg nirvana. I never imagined that I'd get to play not just 1 but 2 games that meet or exceed the BG2 standard released at roughly the same time.
Have to echo this. I mean it is somewhat weird point to concentrate on, but the UI simply fantastic. Definitely one of the best I've ever seen. It is extremely informative, and does that without taking any more space than it needs to. Been playing PK lately, and while I really enjoy that game as well, I've wished multiple times that it had half as good as UI as PoE2 does. In PoE2 it is very simple to keep eye on everything that is happening in combat and otherwise.
Yes, in 2019.
Their last update said it's still on track I believe same with the other console versions.
Did they patch in controller support for PC? If not, I gotta wait for consoles. Can't wait to play though
Got the GOG versions of their games (no drm for sure, maybe it's the same on steam but GOG was right there and a sure thing), especially the free Twitch Prime Tyranny (looooong intro, need to try to get to some actual fighting). I liked Pillars 2 , but stopped playing it.
Did they fix the summoner chanter (Beckoner) subclass to make it so Troubador is not the best summoner sub for chanter? I would probably start over for that alone. Beckoner could be good enough late game but the nerf to it's ability to summon (cost more) hurt it early and maybe mid game.
Did they fix the summoner chanter (Beckoner) subclass to make it so Troubador is not the best summoner sub for chanter? I would probably start over for that alone. Beckoner could be good enough late game but the nerf to it's ability to summon (cost more) hurt it early and maybe mid game.
No, but I've played several hours using in home streaming and the top rated controller config on Steam. It's perfectly usable imo.
Does anyone know of a good synopsis of PoE 1's lore? I played through it once, a while ago, and ultimately just couldn't keep interested in the game's plot or how it presented that plot. I'd be interested to check this out if it gets discounted in the Steam sale, but I'd love to get Clif's Notes on all the ersatz-Faerun-ass plotting about gods and souls and destinies.
I'll wait for the Switch version since my backlog is killing me. However, if it turns out to have some shortcomings that sound disappointing to me, I'll go for the PC version.
You can get the Obsidian Edition of the game off of gog.com for 45 USD right now. That includes the base game and the season pass that has the three DLCs. So, everything that Durante was waiting for plus some extras.
https://www.gog.com/game/pillars_of_eternity_ii_deadfire_obsidian_edition_release
https://www.gog.com/game/pillars_of_eternity_ii_deadfire_obsidian_edition_release
It's way better than the mediocre first game, which you are safe to skip btw. The intro to Deadfire actually does POE1's story better service than the actual game did.
I was a backer for the collectors edition. I decided not to play it a launch considering how much PoE 1 improved over time. I wanted to wait for the definitive time to play. Still not sure if I want to play it now on PC or hold off when it comes out on Switch.
I found it to be even worse lol. Played through all of Neketaka and can't think of a single character that resonated with me beyond that one goldpact knight and MAYBE Tekehu in his less flamboyant moments
fuck this game for the game breaking bug i had after release, then i had played Pathfinder and had less problems with, then i found out Tower of Time existed
Thanks for making such a great new thread, Durante.
I finally finished up my single-class Helwalker this Saturday which I had saved at the final area - I had stopped playing until all the DLCs came out - and just plowed through it so I could start anew.
Running a ranged Ascendant/Furyshaper Witch; I hit level 8 last night and grabbed Red Hand then upgraded it to Twin Shot. I'm running on Vet with all content upscaled. The Drake at Poko Kohara wrecks me so I'll go back when I get a few more levels.
Essence Interrupter is the next item I'm aiming for but that's down the line since I'm low on money.
This is the first time I've run a ranged character as a main, let alone a cipher. Really digging it so far and it can only get stronger.
I haven't played the DLCs but I'll get into them when I hit 14 or 15.
edit: Just remembered my only real gripe with Deadfire is that the quest and bounty xp is still too generous in my opinion. My first run through, I felt that I hit 20 about two-thirds through the non-dlc content. In PoE1, I don't remeber leveling this fast. I understand that there are mods to alleviate this (or alternatively just don't do everything), but would rather not go down that route.
I finally finished up my single-class Helwalker this Saturday which I had saved at the final area - I had stopped playing until all the DLCs came out - and just plowed through it so I could start anew.
Running a ranged Ascendant/Furyshaper Witch; I hit level 8 last night and grabbed Red Hand then upgraded it to Twin Shot. I'm running on Vet with all content upscaled. The Drake at Poko Kohara wrecks me so I'll go back when I get a few more levels.
Essence Interrupter is the next item I'm aiming for but that's down the line since I'm low on money.
This is the first time I've run a ranged character as a main, let alone a cipher. Really digging it so far and it can only get stronger.
I haven't played the DLCs but I'll get into them when I hit 14 or 15.
edit: Just remembered my only real gripe with Deadfire is that the quest and bounty xp is still too generous in my opinion. My first run through, I felt that I hit 20 about two-thirds through the non-dlc content. In PoE1, I don't remeber leveling this fast. I understand that there are mods to alleviate this (or alternatively just don't do everything), but would rather not go down that route.
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I'll try my hand at it (please forgive any typos). I am also doing this on my break without referring to the wiki, so please feel free to correct me:
Setting:
The story is set in Eora, which is a world where people's souls get reincarnated through a "wheel of souls". Meaning that at your death, your souls goes through the wheel, and you get reincarnated into your next life. There are multiple races such as your adaptable humans, the strong and mighty Amaua, the nimble elves, the very cute orlans, and the god likes who can be from any race, but their quirk is that they have been blessed by a got at birth and thus take on properties from said deity (For example, someone blessed by the bird goddess would have a feathered head). To my understanding, your soul can be reborn into any other race, or even into an other lifeforms, such as an animal or a dragon even (there are several quests that revolve around this theme). There is a particular field that seeks to understand the process through which souls are being reborn, and it is called Animancy.
The lead up to the story:
There are several deities that oversee the world of eora, and at a certain point, one of the chief deities called Eothas, decided that he wanted to reveal a secret of the gods to all the mortals, and he possessed the form of a mortal man as his avatar to lead his holy crusade. That man became known as St. Ydwen. However, the other gods were not keen on this plan, and thus influenced their followers to fight against St. Ydwen and his followers. This ended in a showdown where 12 followers of another god called Magran used a bomb called the godhammer to kill the avatar or Eothas. In the wake of their leader being destroyed, the followers of Eothas were hunted down and persecuted as heretics (What would a mediaval world be without some witch hunts). However, a few years later, people started to notice that children were being born without a complete soul (remember how each soul goes into the soul wheel and gets reincarnated). This was known as the hollowborn curse, and many feared that this was divine punishment for killing a god (eothas). The animancers, despite their knowledge of souls, have so far been unable to cure the hollowborn children who grow up to be mindless husks.
POE story:
Act 1
The hollowborn curse has been going on for a little bit now, and you are a traveler who is looking for new opportunities in the region devastated by the curse at the behest of a local lord. You 1) fall sick, 2) your caravan get attacked by bandits, 3) those who survive get killed by a mystical storm, and 4) you barely escape it to witness a strange ritual by masked men which rips the souls of your last two companions, and somehow gives you the ability to read and touch other souls. Now the issue is that this ability threatens to rip your souls to pieces, so you set out to find a cure and make yourself "whole".
You make it to the town of gilded vale, where you meet Aloth a wandering mage, and Eder an animal loving fighter who fought in the saint's war. There, you find out that you are a Watcher (one who can remember his past lives, and see the soul of others) and that the only way to cure yourself is to find other watchers. Lucky for you, there is one such man called Maerwald who lives in an old castle Caed Nua! On the way to find that watcher, you meet Durance the priest (Who happened to be one of the makers of the godhammer bomb) and claims that the goddess magran told him to help you, and Kana the chanter (who is also looking for Maerwald to ask him about lost civilizations.
You meet Maerwald, and he has unfortunately been driven crazy by guilt over the crimes he committed in his past lives. In between trying to kill you and failing at it, he does tell you that the masked man you are looking for belongs to a cult called the leaden key, which was last seen in the city of Defiance bay. You also become the owner of Caed Nua, since Maerwald was the previous "master" of the keep and your interview with him was lethal to one of the parties involved.
Act 2
On your way to defiance bay, you meet Sagani the ranger (who is looking a man in her tribe to honor her traditions), and you may also murder the lord whom you were supposed to get a job from, as it turns out that he is a bloodthirsty tyrant. You get to defiance bay, work with factions in the city to track down the leaden key, and meet Pallegina the paladin (who is working for the Vallian republics, another country in the POE universe, and is sent as an emissary to another tribe in the dyrwood).
It turns out that the man you are after is called Thaos, and that he was been working with the leaden key to frame the animancers for the hollowborn plague by sabotaging all of their attempts to find a cure, on behalf of the goddess Woedica. In the process of tracking him down, you meet Hiravias the druid (who has the unique ability to shapeshift into a beast that is an omen of bad luck) and Grieving Mother the cipher (who is trying to cope with her inability to save children affected by the hollowborne plague). Right when you are about to denounce the actions of Thaos and the leaden key, he manages to kill the duc in charge of defiance bay, and the city is engulfed in riots as this was the tiping point for those blaming animancy for the hollowborne plague and wanting it to be abolished. You and your party choose to let the people of defiance bay resolve their differences, and keep going after Thaos.
Act 3
You pursue Thaos to the Twin elms village, and this is where the story gives you a huge exposition dump:
-Thaos has a similar ability to yours and he remembers his past lives whenever he is reincarnated, but he can also make his soul jump from body to body to make others do his bidding
-He has been working for the goddess Woedica to sabotage the work of animancy, and he is the one behind the hollowborne plague. He has been using machinery from a forgotten culture (the Engwithians) to siphon souls out of the soul wheel and use them to power up Woedica, his godess. The side effect is that any soul from the wheel which was supposed to go to newborns was sent to woedica instead, hence the hollowborn babies,.
-Speaking of the engwithians, the so called Gods are actually engwithians who used their machinery to absorb an untold number of souls, granting them godlike abilities at the cost of the lives of their civilization. It is not clear at that point if they created the wheel of souls, but it seems that they created machines that could redirect souls from the wheel of souls into themselves to give them their godlike powers.
-Thaos has been stealing souls for Woedica over many lives, and there where two of his disciples who ended up playing a major role in the story. A woman called Iovara, and YOU, the main character (*gasp*).
-Iovara found out about the true nature of the gods, and decided that she wanted the world to know the truth. Thaos sent you as a spy to undermine her, which led to you betraying Iovara, and her ultimate death.
-Fast forward many lifetimes later, and Eothas decided that he wanted the world to know the truth about himself and the other gods, leading to the Saint's war.
The Finale
Now you are in the Twin elms, you finally understand your relationship with Thaos, and you find out that he has jumped in a pit to power up a super powerful engwithian machine that would sacrifice enough souls to Woedica to allow her to become the most powerful of the Gods and rule them all. The other gods want you to stop him, and you want him to undo what he did to you at the beginning of the game so that your soul does not get torn to shreds in between your past lives. In exchange, you promise to return the souls of the hollowborn children that Thaos stole on the terms of the deity you made a pact with.
You make a deal with one of the gods to get their blessing and chase Thaos down the engwithian ruins. You catch up with Thaos, get into an epic showdown with him and his two giant constructs, and return the stolen souls to the wheel to restore balance. You have saved the world, and your soul is no longer at risk of being torn apart (unfortunately, you do not get Thaos' awesome hat).
The Lead up to POE2:
Now remember that keep you won at the beginning of the game when Maerwald tried to kill you? Sooooo it turns out that there was a giant made of adra stone buried underneath it (adra is a special material which has the ability to absorb souls and can be used like a "soul battery"). The God Eothas, whom everyone though was dead, decided to possess said statue, rudely destroys your castle and sucks up a bit of your soul before wandering into the deadfire archipelago and causing all the types of problems that Giant stone machines cause to regular size people when they step on their homes and also have the ability to suck up their souls. Since he took half of your soul with him, you and your merry companions have to chase him to the deadfire archipelago to see if you can politely ask him to return your soul to you.
The story is set in Eora, which is a world where people's souls get reincarnated through a "wheel of souls". Meaning that at your death, your souls goes through the wheel, and you get reincarnated into your next life. There are multiple races such as your adaptable humans, the strong and mighty Amaua, the nimble elves, the very cute orlans, and the god likes who can be from any race, but their quirk is that they have been blessed by a got at birth and thus take on properties from said deity (For example, someone blessed by the bird goddess would have a feathered head). To my understanding, your soul can be reborn into any other race, or even into an other lifeforms, such as an animal or a dragon even (there are several quests that revolve around this theme). There is a particular field that seeks to understand the process through which souls are being reborn, and it is called Animancy.
The lead up to the story:
There are several deities that oversee the world of eora, and at a certain point, one of the chief deities called Eothas, decided that he wanted to reveal a secret of the gods to all the mortals, and he possessed the form of a mortal man as his avatar to lead his holy crusade. That man became known as St. Ydwen. However, the other gods were not keen on this plan, and thus influenced their followers to fight against St. Ydwen and his followers. This ended in a showdown where 12 followers of another god called Magran used a bomb called the godhammer to kill the avatar or Eothas. In the wake of their leader being destroyed, the followers of Eothas were hunted down and persecuted as heretics (What would a mediaval world be without some witch hunts). However, a few years later, people started to notice that children were being born without a complete soul (remember how each soul goes into the soul wheel and gets reincarnated). This was known as the hollowborn curse, and many feared that this was divine punishment for killing a god (eothas). The animancers, despite their knowledge of souls, have so far been unable to cure the hollowborn children who grow up to be mindless husks.
POE story:
Act 1
The hollowborn curse has been going on for a little bit now, and you are a traveler who is looking for new opportunities in the region devastated by the curse at the behest of a local lord. You 1) fall sick, 2) your caravan get attacked by bandits, 3) those who survive get killed by a mystical storm, and 4) you barely escape it to witness a strange ritual by masked men which rips the souls of your last two companions, and somehow gives you the ability to read and touch other souls. Now the issue is that this ability threatens to rip your souls to pieces, so you set out to find a cure and make yourself "whole".
You make it to the town of gilded vale, where you meet Aloth a wandering mage, and Eder an animal loving fighter who fought in the saint's war. There, you find out that you are a Watcher (one who can remember his past lives, and see the soul of others) and that the only way to cure yourself is to find other watchers. Lucky for you, there is one such man called Maerwald who lives in an old castle Caed Nua! On the way to find that watcher, you meet Durance the priest (Who happened to be one of the makers of the godhammer bomb) and claims that the goddess magran told him to help you, and Kana the chanter (who is also looking for Maerwald to ask him about lost civilizations.
You meet Maerwald, and he has unfortunately been driven crazy by guilt over the crimes he committed in his past lives. In between trying to kill you and failing at it, he does tell you that the masked man you are looking for belongs to a cult called the leaden key, which was last seen in the city of Defiance bay. You also become the owner of Caed Nua, since Maerwald was the previous "master" of the keep and your interview with him was lethal to one of the parties involved.
Act 2
On your way to defiance bay, you meet Sagani the ranger (who is looking a man in her tribe to honor her traditions), and you may also murder the lord whom you were supposed to get a job from, as it turns out that he is a bloodthirsty tyrant. You get to defiance bay, work with factions in the city to track down the leaden key, and meet Pallegina the paladin (who is working for the Vallian republics, another country in the POE universe, and is sent as an emissary to another tribe in the dyrwood).
It turns out that the man you are after is called Thaos, and that he was been working with the leaden key to frame the animancers for the hollowborn plague by sabotaging all of their attempts to find a cure, on behalf of the goddess Woedica. In the process of tracking him down, you meet Hiravias the druid (who has the unique ability to shapeshift into a beast that is an omen of bad luck) and Grieving Mother the cipher (who is trying to cope with her inability to save children affected by the hollowborne plague). Right when you are about to denounce the actions of Thaos and the leaden key, he manages to kill the duc in charge of defiance bay, and the city is engulfed in riots as this was the tiping point for those blaming animancy for the hollowborne plague and wanting it to be abolished. You and your party choose to let the people of defiance bay resolve their differences, and keep going after Thaos.
Act 3
You pursue Thaos to the Twin elms village, and this is where the story gives you a huge exposition dump:
-Thaos has a similar ability to yours and he remembers his past lives whenever he is reincarnated, but he can also make his soul jump from body to body to make others do his bidding
-He has been working for the goddess Woedica to sabotage the work of animancy, and he is the one behind the hollowborne plague. He has been using machinery from a forgotten culture (the Engwithians) to siphon souls out of the soul wheel and use them to power up Woedica, his godess. The side effect is that any soul from the wheel which was supposed to go to newborns was sent to woedica instead, hence the hollowborn babies,.
-Speaking of the engwithians, the so called Gods are actually engwithians who used their machinery to absorb an untold number of souls, granting them godlike abilities at the cost of the lives of their civilization. It is not clear at that point if they created the wheel of souls, but it seems that they created machines that could redirect souls from the wheel of souls into themselves to give them their godlike powers.
-Thaos has been stealing souls for Woedica over many lives, and there where two of his disciples who ended up playing a major role in the story. A woman called Iovara, and YOU, the main character (*gasp*).
-Iovara found out about the true nature of the gods, and decided that she wanted the world to know the truth. Thaos sent you as a spy to undermine her, which led to you betraying Iovara, and her ultimate death.
-Fast forward many lifetimes later, and Eothas decided that he wanted the world to know the truth about himself and the other gods, leading to the Saint's war.
The Finale
Now you are in the Twin elms, you finally understand your relationship with Thaos, and you find out that he has jumped in a pit to power up a super powerful engwithian machine that would sacrifice enough souls to Woedica to allow her to become the most powerful of the Gods and rule them all. The other gods want you to stop him, and you want him to undo what he did to you at the beginning of the game so that your soul does not get torn to shreds in between your past lives. In exchange, you promise to return the souls of the hollowborn children that Thaos stole on the terms of the deity you made a pact with.
You make a deal with one of the gods to get their blessing and chase Thaos down the engwithian ruins. You catch up with Thaos, get into an epic showdown with him and his two giant constructs, and return the stolen souls to the wheel to restore balance. You have saved the world, and your soul is no longer at risk of being torn apart (unfortunately, you do not get Thaos' awesome hat).
The Lead up to POE2:
Now remember that keep you won at the beginning of the game when Maerwald tried to kill you? Sooooo it turns out that there was a giant made of adra stone buried underneath it (adra is a special material which has the ability to absorb souls and can be used like a "soul battery"). The God Eothas, whom everyone though was dead, decided to possess said statue, rudely destroys your castle and sucks up a bit of your soul before wandering into the deadfire archipelago and causing all the types of problems that Giant stone machines cause to regular size people when they step on their homes and also have the ability to suck up their souls. Since he took half of your soul with him, you and your merry companions have to chase him to the deadfire archipelago to see if you can politely ask him to return your soul to you.
The ONLY reason I haven't gotten around to this yet is because I still haven't finished POE1 and I want to import my character :(
Also even on my SSD the load times on my POE1 save are ridiculous! Which really puts me off going back to try complete it .....
Also even on my SSD the load times on my POE1 save are ridiculous! Which really puts me off going back to try complete it .....
If you know what you'd do you can always recreate the character in the Deadfire save builder and go from there. It's hard to go back to long games you haven't played in awhile, and the long load tulles definitely don't help.
I think it helps if you turn off Autosave as that takes up a big chunk of time when transitioning locations. Also clean up your save folder I think helps, but really there's only so much you can do as the game progresses as the deeper you're into it the more convoluted your save becomes and thus increases load/save times.
Thankfully Deadfire is a lot faster on all fronts with this and even at the end game is still way faster than PoE ever was.
You're welcome Benj! The story was fresh on my mind since i just replayed it less than a month ago.
PoE isn't as bad in this regard, but in my most recent playthrough I still hit the level cap before finishing White March part II, and I hadn't done any Twin Elms stuff either. I'd recommend anyone playing Deadfire to use the -30% xp mod from Steam workshop.
Thanks for the suggestion. Is it alright to add it in the midst of a playthrough or do I need to start anew?
I haven't tried it myself, but the mod's author says it is ok. Though it won't remove any xp you've already gained.
In the middle of a Dos2 play through with my friend. My backlog of these games consists of Wasteland 2, poe1-2, and ShadowRun R-HK or whatever the last one is. Dos2 is the first one to really grab me so I think I have the bug to play more of them. I knew I'd like them they just take a lot of time to get into for me.
Apparently I played 27 hours of this, though I don't think I came anywhere near to finishing it. Not sure why I stopped playing it either, to be honest. I was enjoying the story, even if I still don't fully grok the combat. Last thing I remember doing was making a monk character who ran around with no clothes on punching people.
It's strange since a lot of other Obsidian games have pretty good writing/characters
I'd very much disagree that this (and the first game for that matter) have bad writing and bad characters. It has a certain tone or theme or aesthetic to the writing that doesn't sit with everyone, though.
Can't agree more. I backed Deadfire, played it at launch and loved most of that experience.
Now that all the dlc is out I am running through it a second time. Deadfire is really well written for a video game, the combat is fun and there is tons of content to play through (plus sea shanties!!!!), really don't understand why more people haven't played this gem yet.
Now that all the dlc is out I am running through it a second time. Deadfire is really well written for a video game, the combat is fun and there is tons of content to play through (plus sea shanties!!!!), really don't understand why more people haven't played this gem yet.
The writing absolutely has issues. Like at the start where the old sailor comes into the cabin and the narrator goes *In pops some old fuck who's drunk and smells like shit* and the statue head immediately goes "Boy you old fuck, you sure are drunk and smell a lot." What was the point of that description if it's going to be regurgitated in dialogue right after? Or going into absurd detail about how old and wrinkly the dwarf is when you already have a portrait of his old, ballsack face. Or all the simpleton dialogue options like mime farting into Xoti's ear or putting the sword in Rymrgand's face. Honestly I wound up defaulting to *shrug* or *say nothing* half the time because the other options were always so embarrassing or insipid.