Enchantments, costs & benefits - Strategy Question

[whatiflobstersruled]

I realized the hard way that enchanting (for some ridiculous reasoning on part of Obsidian that makes zero sense) costs tons of actual money: I lost 16k on just 3 weapons.

So, questions --

1. Is it even worth enchanting anything, when I need money for literally everything else in the game? I'm thinking: a better ship, unique equipment from merchants, or crafting potions that heal or uncurse me. Assuming that the answer is YES, though:

2. When is the time to enchant? Is there, for example, a level or a quest for which I definitely need to improve my weaponry?

3. What enchantments are best? I admit to this being a lazywebs!question; I have not figured out the intricacies of enchantments/spells/scrolls yet, and understand that this is probably a. dependent on my preferences, and b. something that I will understand over time.

If it helps any, I'm a n00b and therefore playing on Story for this first round -- so far most fights have not been a problem, because my party auto-heals after battle (which I assume is not the case when playing on normal, difficult, or hard).

[Hobocop]

1. Sure, since upgrading your weapon makes it easier to win combats and get money from all the vendor trash you're looting. It's at least worth considering the mutually exclusive upgrades to the secondary attributes of that particular unique item since they tend to be much cheaper than the quality upgrades. Buying a better ship is kind of a trap tbh, since the Defiant is good enough to get you through the entire game, and you get so much food to use for resting that using Luminous Adra potions is nearly pointless.

2. Anytime you feel you have spare cash.

3. Depends on the item in question since the only type of enchant that's shared between items is quality upgrades, and you can't enchant non-unique items anyway. Definitely 100% look up a list of uniques in the game because some weapon types are swimming in unique items such as swords/sabres/greatswords, yet other weapons only have one or two, as that'll greatly influence you enchantment decisions.

[whatiflobstersruled]

Thank you!

1. The ship news are incredibly useful; I have been wondering, because the naval battle intro always tells me I have the better ship --
All I need are upgrades to The Defiant, then?

2. Straightforward. ;) I like.

3. I'll look up the list of unique items -- I've already blundered by choosing bad weapon skills for my party; I should have clearly gone for swords, for example, as you point out.

[Dorok]

1. If you ignore ships combats to only rush board enemy ship, you'll destroy a lot of gameplay elements. I really suggest dig it, and then buy ship upgrades, cannons, and even later another ship. You can ignore buy any equipment in shop. You can do some exclusive crafting upgrades which are the fun part and don't cost much.

2. Try dig ships first, you don't need enchant beside exclusive that are cheap.

[whatiflobstersruled]

Thank you!

What do you mean by "dig it" and "dig ships"? :)

I would like to purchase a larger ship, honestly; I have to flee everything bigger than my boat because I simply cannot survive eight cannons and 20+ attackers on a Junk...

[Dorok]

I mean investigate ships combats, it's not fully intuitive and a quick check can be very misguidding. Also check available sails, hulls, anchors, lanterns, helms and cannons.

The boarding combats are quickly repetitive, but do a few worth it. At first some enemy ships could be a bit rude. For boarding combat a trick is to ensure enemy first attacks are spread on more than one character. If you recruit more companions they will bring reinforcement during a boarding combat.

The game has already many standard combats, so it's fun to try some boarding combats but it's hardly interesting after a few. At reverse, even if ships combats are a lot more simple, there's a good effort on having them rather diversified, through ship attributes, crew, captain level or perhaps some captain are specific, but the AI varries.

The best is start with first ship bounties, enemy captains are rather weak and don't have ships well equiped. One combat ship UI element worth a quote because I don't think it's intuitive, at bottom center you have the relative position of both ships, if you click on it you'll see full details of both ships.

EDIT: A bad aspect is it seems boarding combats bring more bounty than sinking ship, it's an awful design decision, but skip ship combats (not boarding) isn't a good idea, at least not before have invetigate them a bit.

[Sammy]

Never thought I'd see someone complain about something being too expensive in PoE, considering that money practically grows on trees in this game (or rather, ships).

[Dorok]

Nothing to do this WE so let troll PoE2? All your posts are... I prefer believe/hope you didn't played the game.

[whatiflobstersruled]

@Dorok Cheers, mate.

[whatiflobstersruled]

@Dorok Seriously, you're a lifesaver re: trolls, both on ships within the game and elsewhere! ;) I'll dig deeper indeed. It's good knowing that boarding yields more.