Pillars of Eternity II - Developer Playthrough

A new update has been made available for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, including a new video.

We know we promised you an update that would focus on the audio of Pillars II, and you will absolutely get it... soon! Long story short, between a new baby coming into our Audio Director Justin Bell's life, as well as finalizing the expansive game that Deadfire is, we've had to shift some things around. Before we continue, we want to congratulate Justin on the new addition to his family, and give a huge shout out to the team behind Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire who have been doing awesome work to bring the game to all of you in just a couple of short weeks.

Since we rescoped this update, we talked to some of the Pillars II team members and asked them about the exciting things they've done in their playthroughs of Deadfire. We don't want to show them all, but here's a sampling of what you can do when Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire launches on May 8th.

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More information.

Cases:

1. Firecrackers during solo playthrough. We can solo? erm… but… did we really buy the game to solo it?

2. Plant en explosive in one's pocket so they explode. Fallout 2 expansion, yeeees!

3. Defiant is pay2win shuttle in Star Trek Online. Was at least. So to avoid copyright infrigment or whatever, kudos to most important option of renaming!

4. League of Legends gapcloser skills are in the game. Who'd have thought that. I'm so excited. Lemme uninstall LOL.

5. Naming islands is free. No, you don't have to buy it through microtransactions. Wait… Why exactly do we need to know that?

6. Dialogue is voiced OMG, I'm buying two game copies because of that!

7. Trashmob moves during your spell channeling… No problem, you can retarget it without losing channel time. (No) risk&profit design I bet by Josh Sawyer.

8. NPCs are not standing still but are now doing their whateverness. Animated. Gothic was released in what year?

9. Still angry EA shut down Pet Society servers? Worry not! You'll be able to have your own pet society in this game!

10. A broom you can't ride and fly with. Damn.

11. Lilarcor made in. No sorry it's his sister. If swords can have gender.

12. Not sure if this one is in, but other shanties are:


13. Grown up chibi mode, yay! Like:



Here's hope at least the story won't be seen it already.

joxer said:

Cases:

1. Firecrackers during solo playthrough. We can solo?

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The first game even had an achievement for it plus Path of the Damned and Trial of Iron (ironman) at the same time. 0.2% of Steam users have it…


and I personally though the Charge looked like Divinity Original Sin Battering Ram..

Well, take a pick.
It's just that from Obsidian I expect originality. Just not in form of forcing checkpoints on PC of course.

Well soloing a party based rpg is the ultimate challenge. For me it is not attractive, but it is a thing. In baldur's gates it actually makes the game easier in some ways as you don't have to manage loot as much and you gain xp much faster. You just better know the ins and outs of each encounter so your char won't get disabled!

My take thus far:

Positives: multi-classing; class specialization; expanded skills; better ambient behavior & animation; higher class levels; even better graphics; non-combat casting and thievery
Negatives: limited spell selection in combat; longer casting times; no combat damage unless you get injured; multi-class balancing issues; spell damage may move back to Might; smaller party size

Still waiting to see about walkpathing.

rjshae said:

limited spell selection in combat; longer casting times

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Spell selection in combat isn't that limited anymore, they increased the amount of talent points you get through leveling up in the last beta which are used to buy passives, abilities and spells depending on the class.

Casting times were rebalanced in the last beta, they aren't that long anymore for most spells. There is also a new passive for spellcaster that reduce casting time (by 10% if I remember properly) on top of dexterity and action speed boost affecting both casting time and recovery (aka you want your caster to have high dex).

rjshae said:

spell damage may move back to Might

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It was moved back to Might already, Resolve reduce affliction duration now (it's capped, you can't reach 100% reduction).

Well a week today and we can play it.

It looks great to me, I loved the first one.

First mod I'll install/make is for the NPCs to stop moving around, unless of course they are clearly marked in the map where they are, I hate searching for NPCs.

azarhal said:

It was moved back to Might already, Resolve reduce affliction duration now (it's capped, you can't reach 100% reduction).

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I hated that from pillars 1 and I wish they didn’t change it back. Muscle wizards make no sense considering every other RPG system on the planet ties magic use to some kind of mental stat.

delijoe said:

I hated that from pillars 1 and I wish they didn’t change it back. Muscle wizards make no sense considering every other RPG system on the planet ties magic use to some kind of mental stat.

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Yep, so much this.
There's no way to build the classical wimpy wizard.

delijoe said:

I hated that from pillars 1 and I wish they didn’t change it back. Muscle wizards make no sense considering every other RPG system on the planet ties magic use to some kind of mental stat.

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Their excuse was even funnier. They said Might is not physical strength but your "Soul Powah!".
Then people asked them why do Guns also get bonus damage from Might? They didn't have an answer so a Soul Powah Guns meme was born.

azarhal said:

It was moved back to Might already, Resolve reduce affliction duration now (it's capped, you can't reach 100% reduction).

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Aaaaaaargh!
Oh well. Still looks great and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Josh doesn't look particularly impressed holding up the code at 4:02. Funny stuff. However, the scavenger hunt isn't really something that interests me conceptually. I like discovering my items by genuine in game merit.

As a backer of both games and someone who completed the first game + both expansions on Path of the Damned, I'm naturally quite excited for Deadfire. I love party based games made in this long storied tradition.
That said, I don't think I'll be playing from day one and will instead read the impressions and reports here with curious interest.

I'm having a short sabbatical of sorts from RPGs for the moment at least; having fun pursuing competitive MAME gaming online and exploring Australia's steadily growing arcade scene. Basically returning to the roots of gaming really. I'll be back exploring RPG worlds soon though, no doubt. *eyes his backlog warily*.

Morrandir said:

Yep, so much this.
There's no way to build the classical wimpy wizard.

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You can dump Might you know. It's not like it's a prerequisite to casting spells.

azarhal said:

You can dump Might you know. It's not like it's a prerequisite to casting spells.

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But doesn't it directly affect spell damage?
But still you're right... you could build a wimpy wizard not as a damage dealer but for buffs or crowd control.

Morrandir said:

But doesn't it directly affect spell damage?
But still you're right… you could build a wimpy wizard not as a damage dealer but for buffs or crowd control.

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You can still do a respectable amount of spell damage even without a high MIG by applying it peanut butter fashion using larger AoE and/or longer durations. You just won't be as effective against individual tanks, damage-wise.

Doesn't damage scale with level in PoE2?

I didn't realise MIG was back in play for magic - I thought a lot of people didn't like it and they had acknowledged that and quietly shuffled it out? That was certainly what I believed...but I haven't been following all the finer details, and I wasn't part of the beta. If damage does scale with level (for magic) that would be great -

rjshae said:

You just won't be as effective against individual tanks, damage-wise.

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The difference between high/low might against tanks (i.e. high armor rating) is a lot less than in POE1. You can't bulldoze through armor rating with high damage like you could with damage reduction in POE1, the damage reduction is in % instead of being a flat amount that is subtracted from the damage you deal.

rjshae said:

Doesn't damage scale with level in PoE2?

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It scale with power level which is tied to character level (along spell penetration and duration). There is 9 power levels over 20 character levels (7 if multi-classed). Empower, certain sub-classes and the Nature godlike passive increase power level for certain things, some afflictions and debuff reduce it.

Also, for those wondering, spell damage was moved to Resolve for one Beta to try to boost Resolve usefulness. Lots of people complained about it because certain classes *cough*Cipher and Paladin*cough* and certain multi-class combo were negatively impacted by having half their class abilities depending on Might for damage and other other half being tied to Resolve for damage. I personally think the complainers were mostly min/maxers that couldn't max and dump anymore though.

I still think it's just trying to reinvent the wheel. What's wrong with good ol' Strength, Intelligence, Constitution, etc?