Let's Play Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

[VoxRationis]

Sorry about the hiatus. I got a little absorbed by a few other games.

Part 24:
After leaving Galawain's isle, we wandered about for a little, looking for likely places to find blackwood logs. After not finding any in the sorts of places we expected to find them and then finding one in a random cave protected by an "ancient lich battlemage," it became clear that the description provided in the inventory screen is not actually going to be a good predictor of where they're located. I caved and looked them up online, and sure enough, they're located in a bunch of strange places that aren't particularly related to things like menpwgra or the Rathun. It also turns out that two of them are found in Crookspur and Fort Deadlight and we just missed them somehow, so we go back to those places. In the dungeons of Crookspur, we find a group of Wahaki that we had missed the first time round, who have apparently been sitting alone in their cell this whole time after we killed all the guards. Amazingly, they're still alive after all this time, and they demand to be released so they can take their vengeance upon their captors. Ryndara releases them, and they go off raging against the long-deceased guards of Crookspur.

This leaves two logs, one in the skull-shaped rock formation to the north, near Junvik Village, and one in Splintered Reef, far to the southeast.

First, we return to Neketaka, bringing back word to Sanza about the island with the ancient lich. He tells us to explore the far northwest. We'll go there, but we decide to travel southeast first. On the way there, we notice that the Island of Wael has changed, with a number of tentacles sprouting along the path to the sanctum in the center. We collect various sorts of meat from them before entering the temple, which now has a staircase leading down into a deeper level.

When we get down there, we meet none other than Llengrath, and shortly thereafter, Tayn and Fassina, Arkemyr's apprentice. We learn that Llengrath has tracked Maura, she of the Seven Hills and master conjurer of tentacles, to this place. Aloth expresses discomfort with her particular field of work, which is amusing given that I've given him Maura's Writhing Tentacles in every playthrough I've done of this or the first game. Together with Concelhaut's skull following us around (though he refuses to weigh in on things, claiming that he wants to preserve his dignity), we are now in what is basically an unofficial Circle meeting.

A violent tremor shakes the room and we see large tentacles writhing, the very tips of a much larger entity we can see lurking below. This, it is theorized, is the body of Wael, currently dormant. It was thought that the gods had destroyed all their physical bodies after that mess with Abydon, but it seems that Wael, true to form, has kept a secret (although not a terribly well-kept one, since the body is "hidden" in an eye-shaped island under an eye-shaped temple filled with puzzles and traps, which seems like a fairly obvious "Wael is here" sign). Based on a book Maura left behind, it would appear that she is attempting to wake Wael's body in order to fight Eothas. Tayn seems rather unconcerned about such a course of action, while Llengrath thinks of the high odds that something will go horribly wrong. Though plenty concerned about that, Ryndara is more concerned about what happens if Maura succeeds: her plan at this point is to let Eothas destroy the Wheel. More imminently, if the gods are given a viable alternative to using her as their agent, Berath will probably kill her summarily, if Wael doesn't to protect the secrets Ryndara has learned. It looks like we're probably gong to be fighting at least one more archmage: Maura if we can't persuade her to desist, Tayn if he decides he wants to help her, and maybe even Llengrath again if she decides once more that Ryndara has learned something that can't be permitted. Considering that we never set out to be the enemy of the Circle, we've certainly done our fair share of damage to it.

But before we can get to any of that, we first need to find Maura. Llengrath and Tayn, despite having schlepped all the way out here, don't want to delve deeper into the temple complex, so they insist that we go ahead as a scouting party. Tayn warns that it's filled with "creepy librarian types," but they ignored him so long as he kept out of their way.

[Morty]

As I dust off my playthroughs, inspired by this one... it really annoys me how XP sharing works in this game. By the time you reach the endgame, some of your companions can be two or three levels behind you. In the first game, you could send your companions off on adventures to catch up while they weren't in your active party. Not so in Deadfire. I'm not sure why they don't just share the Watcher's experience directly.

[VoxRationis]

I did notice that some of my companions were lower level than others. So far, though, it's only been a level here or there, though; I seem to have lucked my way into a good rotation.

[VoxRationis]

Part 25:
Fassina offers to join us. We agree, and after some deliberation, we take her on as a wizard/chanter (with the intent of having a dedicated summoner, as none of our current group really leans heavily in that direction). Fassina, interestingly enough, has the conjurer subclass, which means she can't cast such spells as Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights; no wonder he's so hard on her as an apprentice. We briefly chat with her (and she warns us not to trust the good intentions of the Circle) and with some of the imps before heading off into the Archives, one of the wings of the facility. Once there, we are greeted by eyeless* librarians who are cleaning up corpses. One of them explains to us that we are not to go upstairs or take any of the books. We ask about the corpses and are told that a masked figure killed some of them while passing through in pursuit of Maura; both went to the eastern stacks, which we are told should be avoided, as they are "contaminated." A quick glance in that direction reveals what the contamination is: large fungi have started growing up around some of those stacks, and a cluster of spore-infested librarians lurking in that direction. They seem a bit tough for us, so we'll try to see if there's some other way around. Knowing Wael, there's probably some trick or something, so we pick Maia to sneak around the restricted section a bit. Fortunately, that enchantment on her armor incentivizes keeping her stealth score maxed out, so she's pretty adept at slipping past people, even though the librarians are disturbingly high level.

We come across a sealed door with two lecterns before it, each shaped to hold a book and inscribed with a clue as to the book's contents. Maia prods around until she finds two books, and then the rest of the party sneaks through to the area as well. One of them turns out to be the wrong book, and it takes some artful dodging for Maia to search through enough of the bookshelves to find the right one. Only once we are into the restricted section do we realize that "upstairs" probably meant here, and not the section of the central stacks we just spent so much time keeping through (which was, after all, a flight of stairs above the librarian who warned us not to go upstairs). We also discover that the contents of these books are odd. Some of of them mention aspects of Engwithan history (Engwith's rivalry with an orlan "empire" and a three-way pact between it, Ukaizo, and a third state unfamiliar to us), aspects of history which surely would have been purged by Thaos. Others mention things which should have been hidden, such as the tying of Old Vailia's decline to a cat which accidentally poisoned a duc with a dead mouse. Another seems like an alternate history text: it describes the death of Saint Eder (!) at Evon Dewr at the hands of ten wielding the Godhammer. We learn of dark things like the idea that titans require a "seed" for their construction, something to give them form. One book is titled "The Man Who Would Be Skaen" and describes a Skaen-like figure in Engwithan history. The question arises, is "would" in that title in the sense of "intended" or in sense of a future tense marker? Is it connected to the seeds of the titans? If this is how the gods' bodies were made, what would Wael have been made from?

We move through the restricted section and use these tomes of history to open another such lectern-operated doorway. During the moment when everyone's attention was focused on the door, however, the librarian in the room walks over to where Aloth is sitting and discovers him. This prompts a difficult fight, as the librarian summons forth a fampyr priest, a steelclad construct, and a flame naga. Aloth gets stunned and nearly focused down, but manages to slip away. Fassina pulls her weight with summoned ogres and Ancient Memory to gradually heal us. Ryndara is actually shushed by the librarian and only manages to use a few of her spells, and contributes to the fight by wading in with the Whispers of the Endless Paths. We manage to come out on top, get a few neat items, and slip through the door into the back of the Central Stacks. This area proves to be filled with traps, forcing us to rest before continuing on.



*Not Eyeless, but simply regular eyeless individuals, though it's interesting that there's an overlap here. It makes a certain sense for the followers of a god of mysteries, though I was also sort of expecting many-eyed creatures.

[Morty]

The books at the library are sometimes hilarious and sometimes carry very interesting implications, like the mention of Yezuha. If we ever get another Pillars game, I expect Yezuha to play a prominent role. Maybe it'll even be the game's location.

The wizard subclasses being modelled after D&D spell schools was disappointing and annoying. I'm not sure if it's been fixed, but early on the benefits simply weren't worth losing some spells. Not to mention how random it feels - you're better at these arbitrarily-chosen spells but can't cast those arbitrarily-chosen spells. I would much rather they were more similar to Blood Mage, which was added in a later patch. I've also seen a mod where wizard subclasses go along the lines of being better at AoE while worse at damage etc.

[VoxRationis]

I'm not sure about that. I feel that while I might not want to take a wizard subclass so as to have versatility, if one wants to make a thematic character, the specialization of spell selection is a good way to define them. Fassina definitely works as a character (though it is amusing that she can't cast some of her master's spells, as I mentioned before.) And it's not as though all of the other subclasses are particularly well-designed. The dedicated summoning chanter subclass actually has a drawback regarding summoning, rather than a penalty to something else, and if I recall correctly, the penalty is reduced duration for summoning spells, which is a pretty steep penalty given that I normally summon things to act as meat shields, so it's a problem when they disappear, something which will happen more frequently with that subclass.

[Morty]

I'm not sure about that. I feel that while I might not want to take a wizard subclass so as to have versatility, if one wants to make a thematic character, the specialization of spell selection is a good way to define them. Fassina definitely works as a character (though it is amusing that she can't cast some of her master's spells, as I mentioned before.) And it's not as though all of the other subclasses are particularly well-designed. The dedicated summoning chanter subclass actually has a drawback regarding summoning, rather than a penalty to something else, and if I recall correctly, the penalty is reduced duration for summoning spells, which is a pretty steep penalty given that I normally summon things to act as meat shields, so it's a problem when they disappear, something which will happen more frequently with that subclass.

Subclasses are definitely hit or miss in general. In the particular case of wizards I just don't like having to give up two schools to become better at one, chosen by the game to boot. Like in 3.0 D&D. I don't feel like they're particularly thematic either, except maybe Evocation and Illusion. Which spells qualify as which school is a bit all over the place.

[GloatingSwine]

The dedicated summoning chanter subclass actually has a drawback regarding summoning, rather than a penalty to something else, and if I recall correctly, the penalty is reduced duration for summoning spells, which is a pretty steep penalty given that I normally summon things to act as meat shields, so it's a problem when they disappear, something which will happen more frequently with that subclass.

AFAIK it's 1/3 Reduced duration and 50% less HP but you get twice as many per cast. Which means they'd be better for burst damage but worse for meatshielding.

But that on top of making them 1 phrase more expensive means they wouldn't be able to maintain constant uptime on a meatwall in the way ordinary chanters can. (Meatwalling with the ogre summon is very good for the megabosses, they have 616HP each at level 20 so they can stand up to being chewed on pretty damn well).

[VoxRationis]

Part 26:
We explore the upper part of the Central Stacks for a bit, discovering a room filled with (besides traps) items associated with previous Watchers, including the lower half of my Steward. Ryndara had assumed the statue was lost to the deeps and most likely broken into fragments. How in the world did they get ahold of it, and why is there a room dedicated to Watchers? Ryndara, fresh from learning of the deep and sinister connection she has with Ondra and well aware of Berath's continued nature, wonders if the state of being a Watcher is connected to Wael. Does the many-eyed pain in the neck see everything she does?

We take everything in the area that's not nailed, down, including catalogs, as it has become clear that this place accumulates the knowledge that Wael does not wish the world to know, and Ryndara greatly wishes the world to know it. One of the catalog lists includes Bekarna's observations, which include "astronomical heresies"; apparently, they've been logged in the quarantined section of the Collections. That might explain her disappearance as well. We make for the quarantined section, figuring the librarians won't mind too much if we clear out their spore infestation for them.

We delve into the infested section, noticing the gravitation these spores have towards the volumes of the Annals of Llengrath which are stored here. The fights are difficult (we're definitely making things harder on ourselves by doing this), but not without reward: we discover Bekarna's grimoire, currently drained of magic, as well as a set of enchanted plate armor which we managed to disarm mere seconds before it was able to animate and attack us.

We eventually discover a massive luminescent spore growing around the final volume of the Annals. It introduces itself as Llengrath, but acts in ways unlike that of the archmage we know; clearly, it's developed an identity from the essence around the books. Ryndara attempts to treat with it, in spite of Fassina's warnings, but when it becomes clear that it has little desire to not assimilate others, and has a grand plan of infesting Wael's body, things break down into violence. It's a tough battle, as the spore tendrils it draws up around it have ranged attacks and aggressively focus their fire, but we manage to pull through. It's a good thing that I gave Pallegina the hit-once-to-uncharm ability that she had in the last game. We find Maura's grimoire and the last volume of the Annals.

One of the catalog notes we find suggests that a subject was taken into the Collections, and that the subject had a spyglass among their effects. Deducing this to mean Bekarna, we start to backtrack before heading into Wael's Oratory, even though we've discovered the spell needed to enter. We've found word that the Collections are guarded by vithrack, which could be a problem, but we've managed to deal with vithrack in the past, and we have their contract in hand, which could potentially give us a bargaining chip if we play our cards right.

On our way through the antechamber, we stop to talk to the two archmagi. We discuss two primary topics: the Annals of Llengrath and the prisoners in the Collections. Tayn wants us to use a spell he has penned to restore memory to the prisoners. When we ask about it, however, he admits that it won't necessarily restore memories to their original owners, which sounds like a facially bad plan (though it would be fun to organize a "escaped from the Collections" support group and listen in on their meetings). Llengrath, however, believes that their lives are too shattered for releasing them to be a mercy and that they should simply be killed. Both give us a scroll that will execute their respective plan if read in a place where the prisoners can all hear it at once. We also discuss the Annals of Llengrath. Tayn tells us that Llengrath's desire for them stems from an ulterior motive, but we've read them all and understand their contents reasonably well, and they don't seem to contain anything too threatening, so we give them to her, sharing with Tayn the insights we glean from them as a compromise (and to keep Llengrath honest). Then we press through to the Collections.

Here, we hear screams and see a prisoner attempting to leap into a pit and being restrained by a vithrack. The poor man's protests are silenced, replaced with a droning acceptance. Seeing this place in person makes Ryndara rather less inclined to treat with the vithrack here, in spite of her usual inclination to diplomacy. In spite of the difficulty of fighting high-level vithrack, we'll have to kill the wardens and free the prisoners here if we can.

[Morty]

I do like how Wilder races are treated in Pillars. They're frequently at odds with Kith due to innate traits, but there's none of this "inherently evil" nonsense D&D perpetuates. I think it's even acknowledged that the "kith" and "wilder" categories are arbitrary. They're all separate species, but the kith are similar enough to each other to have created intermingling civilisations.

[GloatingSwine]

There are also plenty of examples of Wilder individuals living among Kith, you can even get some for your crew. I spent the whole game with a Xaurip as my cook.

[VoxRationis]

Xaurips and lagufaeth really get short-shafted in that regard by their inability to speak most kith languages; it makes it far harder for them to peacefully interact with kith than it is for ogres, naga, vithrack, etc.

[VoxRationis]

Part 27:
I try a couple of times to fight my way through a group of vithrack and brainwashed prisoners, but the encounter only ever gets so far before wiping my party. In particular, I have no real answer to the luminaries' use of Minoletta's Missile Salvo. My current party roster was chosen mostly for roleplaying purposes. Eder, my best tank, isn't in the group, and without Xoti, we don't have a lot of burst healing. Pallegina and Fassina provide steady trickles of healing over time with Ancient Memory and Old Siec's Hunger, but it's not really enough to allow the group to recover from the sheer damage the bands of vithrack can put out. Therefore, we continue with our earlier plan of sneaking through until we can find some non-combat options.

We sneak past one group of vithrack and find a series of exhibits: a clan of xaurips, a group of "icebound Rathun," a crew of Vailian sailors. Eventually, we find Bekarna. The plaque by her door says that her "infraction" was a "prohibited revelation." Inside, she is chasing stars about in a state of confusion. She responds to our inquiries, however, showing enough clarity to ask us, in a roundabout way, to restore her. Unsure as to how we might do that, and highly skeptical of Tayn's approach (especially as it becomes clear that many of the memories in this place wouldn't even be those of kith), we continue on. The whole party is disgusted and horrified by this place.

We see two tall pillars labeled "Mouth of the Organ." Thinking these might be linked to the mind-dampening effect of this place, we try destroying them from afar with Rolling Flame. Unfortunately, Aloth gets spotted at one point while doing this, prompting a fight. It's extremely difficult (in part because everything has preposterously high armor and we even see resistance to raw damage once again), but we narrowly pull through. Part of this appears to be because this time, the party was spread out enough that the vithrack warden did not use the missile salvo. (This was a mistake, to my mind; though it would not have affected the whole party this time, enough of the party was clustered together that the spell would have made mopping up the survivors much easier.)

Heartened by this victory, we try the other group again. That fight ends up taking a few more tries, but I finally figure out a viable approach: minimize melee contact and trap the group in a web as they cluster in the doorway, thereafter pumping the area full of as many AoE effects as can be mustered in as short a time as possible (previous attempts had gotten too mixed up in melee to allow this strategy). The warden and luminaries fall to this barrage, leaving just some drawn-out but unchallenging mop-up work. We continue past to the lift below.

[Morty]

I seem to remember that the best way to deal with Minoletta's Missile Salvo is to interrupt the casters before they can get it off and focus-fire them into oblivion. Which isn't as easy as it sounds, of course, because those damned vithrack have good armor in addition to magic powers.

[VoxRationis]

I'm usually pretty mindful of using interrupts (and Maia is excellent for getting them off if she has a shot available), but the vithrack also stacked concentration severely. I think the warden had four instances of concentration on at one point.

[GloatingSwine]

Since you have your Pallegina as a chanter, now would probably be a good idea to go and respec to get the upgraded ogre summon if you don't have it already.

A hell of a lot of very difficult fights can be made a lot more tolerable if the enemy's attention and damage is focused on a 1200HP meatwall of ogres.

I was using Serafen for this DLC and the Vithrack Luminaries just got an angry barbarian to the face so they didn't get their casts off (leap then spirit tornado shuts them down, and Echoing Shield turns off enemy concentration), and my main character was a nigh-unkillable Paladin with something like 120 in every defence and 18 armour class and a hell of a lot of regeneration.

In general I tend to find for harder fights the more chanters you have the better. (I had Konstanten, Vatnir, and Fassina all as chanter or chanter multi).

Spoiler: Forgotten Sanctum

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Especially the last boss of this DLC, which can be a nightmare if you don't approach it properly, the best way to do it is to tank it with ogres and hold your party back and only use them to burst down the adds, because if you think the AoE problems from a few Vithrack are bad, letting too many adds spawn in that boss fight is nightmare times. Helpfully the ogres also do crush/pierce and the boss of the DLC's armour is weakest against Pierce

Spoiler: Megaboss

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This strategy also lets you relatively safely handle Belranga the Crystal Eater Empress, just have two chanters dedicated to producing ogres and keep your party around the edge of the arena. Ogres are immune to Shattering Scream so they will stay tanking and can't be picked up so her grab doesn't affect them. With four she won't get them all paralysed together and start shooting you and paralysing you for Shattering Scream.

They work against Hauani o Whe as well, but it doesn't need two groups to tank it, better to have one and at least one other chanter spamming drakes to damage it whilst everyone else stands at the back with crossbows and their modal with someone chanting Swift Handed Ila to get as many interrupts as humanly possible to try and prevent it reforming

[Morty]

I'm usually pretty mindful of using interrupts (and Maia is excellent for getting them off if she has a shot available), but the vithrack also stacked concentration severely. I think the warden had four instances of concentration on at one point.

They do have many concentration stacks. I think I dealt with it using hard CC - stuns, knockdown, paralysis. Planting Eder in their face and having him keep them on the ground worked alright.

[VoxRationis]

I had Fassina summoning ogres in a few of the attempts, and I wasn't terribly impressed by their performance (especially since they're vulnerable to mind control). Their speed and action speed is just so slow that they have difficulty actually engaging the enemy, much less actually dealing damage once they're engaged.

[GloatingSwine]

The point of them isn't to deal damage, it's to take damage. If the enemies are hitting an ogre they aren't hitting your characters, and you can just keep replacing them forever because chanters use a persistently renewing resource to cast.

[VoxRationis]

Part 28:
The party comes across the lift, a large sac of webbing manually hauled by a large spider. Oddly enough, it's obedient and non-hostile to us. One would have expected the vithrack to be able to train it to distinguish intruders from their own number, or even to not train it at all and merely command it mentally when it suited them. Putting aside Aloth's distaste, we ascend first and find ourselves in a vithrack colony. We see egg sacs being guarded by vithrack brutes but also a large residential nest sac. Slipping by the first patrolling brute, we enter said sac and are confronted by an elderly vithrack named Sissak. Ryndara puts her silver tongue to work before he and his guards can attack, interrogating him as to why he would fight, and gets the conversation onto the topic of his contract. Sissak's ancestor, not he, signed it, and Sissak's understanding of the terms is flawed. When we show him the contract, which is for service in perpetuity, and not until a set time, he becomes understandably upset. However, Ryndara argues that the contract was always invalid because Wael's body has been dead, contradicting another clause of the contract. The elder vithrack joyfully proclaims that he is free to lead his people away, deep into the earth, and we get away without another major fight. Ryndara is a little torn at letting those complicit in the horrors here to just walk away (she intends to double back into the library and kill the librarians), but the vithrack were as much prisoners as jailors and were contractually bound, so a little pragmatic pacifism might be in order.

After this, we take the elevator down into the depths, there to confront whatever we can find. We see more librarians, floating eyes, and a couple of other enclosures. We also see a flesh construct control device, strange and fleshy. There was a manual for that somewhere, so we head back to the Collections to look for it.

Edit: We also, having found a soulbound robe that we gave to Ryndara, started looking for a horn mentioned in the item description, so we tried seeing if it was in the Rathun enclosure. It was not, and the Rathun were very hostile. Fortunately, though they had plenty of ice magic, they didn't have concentration-granting effects, so our rear-line people were able to interrupt them frequently. In addition, they all gathered near the door of their enclosure, and Delayed Blast Fireball works wonders on fire-vulnerable targets.

I really must say once more that it is truly refreshing to be able to avoid so many fights in a game. My playthrough of the first game left me with the impression that the possibility of minimizing combat was mostly a theory rather than a practical reality.

[Morty]

The Robes of the Weyc are one of those items that you really wish weren't in such a late location. There's a bunch of other such items in Forbidden Sanctum, like the one and only unique crossbow that doesn't require helping slavers.

[VoxRationis]

I didn't realize there even were soulbound items in this game until I got here. It seems like a very late stage to put them in.

[Morty]

There's five of them outside the DLC. Then the DLC add seven in total. They do feel less prominent than in the first game and putting them in such late locations really is odd. My Watcher did use a soulbound sword he found early on until the end, though.

[Keltest]

There's five of them outside the DLC. Then the DLC add seven in total. They do feel less prominent than in the first game and putting them in such late locations really is odd. My Watcher did use a soulbound sword he found early on until the end, though.

I loved the sword you could find that would talk to you and act as if you were in a relationship. That was pretty great. Less so if you wanted a cool sword for one of your non-watcher characters, because it could only be used by the watcher until you maxed it out, and doing so required dealing damage and getting the finishing blow on kith, something extremely problematic if you were, say, a bow ranger.

[Morty]

I loved the sword you could find that would talk to you and act as if you were in a relationship. That was pretty great. Less so if you wanted a cool sword for one of your non-watcher characters, because it could only be used by the watcher until you maxed it out, and doing so required dealing damage and getting the finishing blow on kith, something extremely problematic if you were, say, a bow ranger.

Modwyr is pretty great, yes... unless your Watcher happens not to be using swords. Since you can't give her to anyone else. And swords have an overabundance of uniques as it is.

[Keltest]

Modwyr is pretty great, yes... unless your Watcher happens not to be using swords. Since you can't give her to anyone else. And swords have an overabundance of uniques as it is.

Well, you CAN give her to somebody else, once you complete her quest line. She stops being a soulbound sword and becomes a unique one that isn't restricted to the watcher. The problem, like I said, is that it requires that you use her on the watcher first.

[Morty]

Well, you CAN give her to somebody else, once you complete her quest line. She stops being a soulbound sword and becomes a unique one that isn't restricted to the watcher. The problem, like I said, is that it requires that you use her on the watcher first.

I forgot that everyone can use her after the quest. But yes, getting to that point is rather complicated if your Watcher isn't a melee fighter.