Do you often use Empower and/or consumables ?

[Sombrero]

I am wondering if I'm the only one kind of forgetting about Empower and consumables. I tend to hate consumables and spells that work as consumable (i.e almost the entire battle system of the first game with per rest uses). I got used to it now with the first game as you can rest often and the entire rest economy is based around the gameplay so I got around it.

But for Deadfire I simply never think about consumables and rarely want to use Empower.

Consumables are in that tiny icon in the corner which in my opinion should display at all time all consumables. I still hate consumables and would prefer something a lot more streamlined maybe just have few type of consumables that can be used only X time per encounter each (if not only one). With the current system I just use all the consumables on Earth if I ever get stuck on a boss fight (which tends to never be the case towards half of the game as it gets way too easy) but otherwise forget about them.

Empowers feel even more strange as you don't have any proper feeling of what Empower will actually do on the used spell. Some spells don't have duration or set power and can be still be empowered. It just feels weird overall and maybe if I understood better the actual effect of Empower I'd be more keen on it. But I'm still not sold on it.

I wished Empowers were per encounter and not per rest, even if that would mean having "only" one per battle and slightly weaker effect.

What annoys me in particular is that the end of the passive tree is all about Empower effects so I feel even more frustrated now that I reach it and realise I never even use Empower effects anyway.

I'd love to hear about your experience to hopefully change my playstyle and enjoy more those systems.

[Lock]

40 hours in, haven't used empower once or any consumables.

[Wasted_46]

well, from midgame onwards empowered spells one shot anything and everything, so yeah. On the rest of the classes, not so much.

[Hobocop]

I mostly use Empower to get class resources back when I find the few fights that don't end within 10 seconds, overstay their welcome, and turn into a bit of a slog, so I need some class resources to speed it up.

Opening a fight with an Empowered stealth Fireball is pretty good, too.

[Sombrero]

Originally posted by Hobocop:

I mostly use Empower to get class resources back when I find the few fights that don't end within 10 seconds, overstay their welcome, and turn into a bit of a slog, so I need some class resources to speed it up.

Opening a fight with an Empowered stealth Fireball is pretty good, too.

Oh yeah I didn't mention the ressource recovery side of it. I actually use it 90% of the time the same way. When the fight is taking oddly long and I want to have some juice back in.

[Wasted_46]

If you like your delayed fireballs like me (ie- doing 500 AoE damage) then pick up all the empover buffs on the passive tree and shoot them from stealth to end any fight before it begins.

Same for a lot of other spells - Gaze of te Adragan, Cncelhaut's hammer thing, Wilting wind.. casting one empowered, they all pretty much finish any fight on the spot.

[Brian Sirith]

Rarely. The first playthrough almost never.

[UR|wRÅR]

Playing on Veteran. Using empower on my ranger when the companion is damaged and the pool is empty and sometimes on Pallegina as she has lots of useful abilities. Sometimes on casters in very long fights. Consumables are used as in any other games: only healing and only when there are no other options (unless you count food on rest). I never used empower on spells/abilities.

[Sombrero]

I ditched offensive casters of my party and don't have a Wizard anymore so I can't really do that. My only party member who actually cast offensive spells on a regular basis is Tekehu and he can spam so much that I don't feel the need to Empower any of his spells.

And I'm really not a fan of the playstyle "one shot everything and skip the fight altogether". The game is already too easy on classic difficulty as it is (I really need to start over in PotD), I don't feel like making it cheesier.

The thing is that you can cheese fights so badly then if you use that kind of strat. You pile up the cheepest found around and one shot empower all enemies, rest whenever you run out of empower rince and repeat. Sounds like fun ...

[Etagloc]

Originally posted by Sombrero:

I am wondering if I'm the only one kind of forgetting about Empower and consumables. I tend to hate consumables and spells that work as consumable (i.e almost the entire battle system of the first game with per rest uses). I got used to it now with the first game as you can rest often and the entire rest economy is based around the gameplay so I got around it.

But for Deadfire I simply never think about consumables and rarely want to use Empower.

Consumables are in that tiny icon in the corner which in my opinion should display at all time all consumables. I still hate consumables and would prefer something a lot more streamlined maybe just have few type of consumables that can be used only X time per encounter each (if not only one). With the current system I just use all the consumables on Earth if I ever get stuck on a boss fight (which tends to never be the case towards half of the game as it gets way too easy) but otherwise forget about them.

Empowers feel even more strange as you don't have any proper feeling of what Empower will actually do on the used spell. Some spells don't have duration or set power and can be still be empowered. It just feels weird overall and maybe if I understood better the actual effect of Empower I'd be more keen on it. But I'm still not sold on it.

I wished Empowers were per encounter and not per rest, even if that would mean having "only" one per battle and slightly weaker effect.

What annoys me in particular is that the end of the passive tree is all about Empower effects so I feel even more frustrated now that I reach it and realise I never even use Empower effects anyway.

I'd love to hear about your experience to hopefully change my playstyle and enjoy more those systems.

you forget because the game is to easy.

[Sombrero]

From what I gather I'm not the exception then and both of those systems are badly design if nobody ever use them as "intended" (though intention is very vague in this case, as the game is clearly quite open when it comes to how you can play it).

I guess I'll just keep selling all consumables I ever find and use Empower to refill spells on tougher fights.

[Hobocop]

Even more baffling is that there is a high level Cipher ability that gives you a charge of Empower, but unless I'm missing something, you can't ever use more than one Empower charge per combat, and its not like you're ever under any time constraint or hurting for resources to simply rest to regain your Empower charges.

[UR|wRÅR]

Originally posted by Hobocop:

Even more baffling is that there is a high level Cipher ability that gives you a charge of Empower, but unless I'm missing something, you can't ever use more than one Empower charge per combat, and its not like you're ever under any time constraint or hurting for resources to simply rest to regain your Empower charges.

Yeah. And on a tier where other spells are not much better.

[RocketMan]

I only se empower when my hit chance is so absurdly low I can't get my debuffs on any enemies.