PoE2 Finally beginng Deadfire

Pillars of Eternity II

Philistine

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I spent about 3 hours on character creation, and still not sure about it. I want a balanced party using only full companions. I don't want to change any of the returning companion's classes. The wiki says Aloth doesn't get along with any of the priest types, and he's the only wizard and there are no companion single classed rogues. I would have preferred mt main to stay a fighter as I was in POE 1, but to avoid Aloth's bs I went with wizard. Which companions should I get for balance and fun?
 
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I played through the entire game with both Aloth and Xoti (aka a priest type) and it wasn't an issue. Nobody leaving the party or anything so drastic. Maybe they bickered a bit, I don't remember. Play the class you want to play.

As I recall, my favorite companions to have along were Xoti, Pellegrina (paladin) and Serafin (barbarian by default, but I made him a cipher).
 
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If you wanted a Wizard companion, there is an alternative to Aloth, a crafty wizardress called Faesina. I personally took her in my scripted companion playthrough. I don't want to spoil you, but if you follow the natural questline, you find her pretty early in the game.

I don't know what difficulty you plan to play on, but my suggestion for a balanced party that can beat every combat encounter, including megabosses, in Path of the Damned difficulty, considering you will be going wizard with the MC:

Eder: Fighter
Pallegina: Paladin
Xoti: Cleric
Maia: Ranger
Serafen: Cipher

I'd suggest to build Eder defensively, raise his deflection and engage count as much as you possibly can. Pallegina can be built to have strong offense and quite efficient spot healing thanks to Lay on Hands, which also applies strong buffs to the target to give them a little extra well-needed durability. She can also pick up stragglers that try to get to the backline and her defenses are pretty great in general. For more sustained party healing and curing Xoti does the job. Your MC, Serafen and Maia can have pretty pure nuker builds, focus on getting your penetration as high as possible so that your hits always get through, which is what matters, really.

I truly envy you having never played Deadfire before, to this day still the best CRPG that has been released since BG2, if we ignore DOS because of being a genre of its own in a way. If only I could forget it all to play it as if it was the first time! Good luck and have fun!
 
I loved the first game and imported my save so I played Deadfire with the old crew, i.e. Aloth, Pallegina and Eder. As for the new companions I liked Xoti a lot who is basically a "must-have" as a Priest anyway because of her healing powers. I also don't remember any real issues with Aloth.

My Watcher, who was a Wizard in the first game, was turned into a Cipher for Deadfire. Aside from me wanting to give that class a shot, this seemed like a very fitting class for roleplaying reasons, too, if you think about it.

I played through Deadfire and all DLCs on veteran difficulty in turn-based mode with that party. I obviously had Serafen in the party until I got Pallegina.
After picking up Pallegina, I only took the other companions (Serafen, Tekehu, Maia) on their companion quests but the main crew was Watcher (Cipher), Eder, Pallegina, Aloth, Xoti with their respective default classes (Fighter, Paladin, Wizard, Priest).

There is generally no right or wrong as far as the companions are concerned in my opinion. You should be able to make just about any combination work pretty well unless you want to play on PotD difficulty but from what I have read even PotD is significantly easier than it used to be in the first game. Just play the game and enjoy :) .
 
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I'm playing on the easy mode one step up from Story mode. I don't really enjoy combat, and there is no achievement reward for difficulty, so no reason for anything higher.
I have Eder - fighter and Xoti - Priest so far.
I didn't like Pellagina in the first game, and I've started as a wizard so no Aloth. I think my other 2 will be Serafen as a witch, and Tekehu as a Druid.
 
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I've had a bit of a sailing disaster! On my first encounter with an enemy ship I sailed towards it until I got into point blank range then opened fire. I took raking damage injuring 4 crewmen on the way in and failed to score any damage with my close range shots so after a few rounds I sailed away and escaped. After exploring some islands ship morale hit zero and the crew mutinied. At this point I reloaded to a recent save where I still had 20 morale and high-tailed it straight to Neketaka. I'm at 15 morale and not enough money to buy good food or drink so I can set sail again. I've been doing things in the city trying to drum up more cash. Any other ideas how to get out of this mess?
 
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A good way to increase morale is to hunt down smaller pirate ships, or even merchant ships if you're too desperate, and share the booty with the crew. That will give you some revenue as you loot the ship, and significantly boost crew morale. You gain more morale if you defeat the ship in boarding combat than by destroying the ship, as there will be more loot to be shared.

There is cheap booze and food like ale and rice that don't have a great positive impact on stats and morale, but won't drain it either, so go for those and keep well supplied, if your crew goes hungry or thirsty, you will lose morale really quick.

Other than that, stay away of threats like bigger ships or storms, even in the best case scenario in which you escape unscathed, it will typically have negative impact on your morale.

If worse comes to worst and your crew goes on mutiny, there's a great opportunity too. You can beat the mutinees and get a huge morale boost and a perk on top of that, for being a bloodthirsty captain!
 
A good way to increase morale is to hunt down smaller pirate ships, or even merchant ships if you're too desperate, and share the booty with the crew. That will give you some revenue as you loot the ship, and significantly boost crew morale. You gain more morale if you defeat the ship in boarding combat than by destroying the ship, as there will be more loot to be shared.

There is cheap booze and food like ale and rice that don't have a great positive impact on stats and morale, but won't drain it either, so go for those and keep well supplied, if your crew goes hungry or thirsty, you will lose morale really quick.

Other than that, stay away of threats like bigger ships or storms, even in the best case scenario in which you escape unscathed, it will typically have negative impact on your morale.

If worse comes to worst and your crew goes on mutiny, there's a great opportunity too. You can beat the mutinees and get a huge morale boost and a perk on top of that, for being a bloodthirsty captain!

So jealous I absolutely loved this game. I thought all the companions were awesome. Can definitely do anything you want on easy mode. Fond memories of Maia blasting with a giant rifle, Palligina blasting with her sun wrath fireballs, Serafen blasting with his hand mortar, and Tekehu turning into a freaking land shark. Lol so great.
 
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I've manage to earn a discount on supplies, so after I finish a few more land quests I'll buy some +1 food and +0 drink and set off to see if I can sink some pirates. I've been reading up on sea battles to see how to-hits are calculated. Would have been nice to know cannons have a minimum range before my first!
 
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So factions... I've gotten a few quests that require me to screw over one faction or another. I haven't done any of them so far because I don't have a beef with any of them (except pirates), but my OCD hates leaving quests open. Will I have to pick a side Piranha Bytes style? Can I work with more than one? How much content do I miss by not doing faction quests?
 
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I didn't go far enough in PoE2 to tell. I was stranded by a giant golem and left the game on the side for a little while (now, the "little while" is getting a very "long while"...).

Another question that often comes to mind is whether doing all the quests may bring too much XP and make the game too easy (or the opposite, is leaving side quests a risk to make it too difficult?).
 
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Still haven't picked a side but I'm leaning towards Huana. I'm L17 so decided to go off and do Beast of Winter. Had a hard rp decision though with the 3 ghosts. Reap their souls is what I should do Xoti (is my waifu) but that makes the later fight hard and I barely survived the first time. Get them to help makes the fight easier but I still think it would be too hard for me. Send them to oblivion is against my beliefs, but it allows me to bypass that fight altogether. I decided to go with the oblivion option (curse my craven soul :disappointed:) rationalizing that as a religious Watcher, I should respect Rymrgand's wishes in his realm, "when in Rome..."
 
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Sometimes balancing role playing with meta-game issues (difficulty, cool items, wanting to do all quests, etc., etc.,) can be difficult :)

I played the game twice but plan on going back again since it has been a long time since I played. Somewhat waiting to finish the first one first as I want to properly carry over a character into the second.
 
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I've only played through this game once, and when I replay this gem I fully intend to spend much more time sailing the salty seas!! Arrgggh, the life of a pirate is a sweet one, maties! Enjoy your romp through Deadfire. -)
 
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