So Grim’s Gang has hit the PoE equivalent of “name level” – as they’re all level 11 ish (PoE2 maxes out at 20). Its not clear to me whether they are halfway-ish plot-wise, because I’ve never actually finished the whole thing and there’s DLC and such. But at this point I’ve seen enough to review the basics, update their looks a little, and play with movies!
Rendering
Rendering-wise, I started out with my recent typical style tags of “luis royo dark fantasy“, adding “watercolor” to change up the art a bit. But when I rendered all the portraits I used “smeared painterly” to get the soft effect, and wanted to try that with action scenes and such – while keeping the “watercolor” tag for consistency. The results – as seen in the recent “Storms of Poko Kohara” episode – were *exactly* what I had originally wanted out of “watercolor“.
“Painterly” gets interpreted as emphasizing the “brushwork” of whatever style you are using. So I use it to double-down on the differences between watercolor, oil painting, etc. “Smeared” helps further with softening the look – particular when I want a blurry dream-like effect for things like God Visions and the Spirit Plan. Sometimes “smeared blurry” or “smeared dreamlike“.
Another recent rendering discovery was “exaggerated motion“. I don’t remember how I stumbled upon that. I think I was trying to get more active swimming for an underwater scene. But it can *really* spice up action scenes – particularly combat.
Another trick I learned was “combat stance” or “combat crouch“. I was getting tired of seeing my spellcasters standing bolt upright waving their hands in the direction of the enemy, and wanted something more active-looking. This was one result:
And a final discovery was the rendering of nagas / yuan-ti / snake people. I’ve traditionally used “cobra-with-arms” and the like as a starting point – resulting in about a 25% shot at something resembling what I want. This time around I happened upon using “merman” or “serpentine merman” as the base, and got much better results.
Human Brawler (Fighter/Helwalker Monk)
“A watercolor painterly fantasy portrait of a big burly Turkish barbarian looking intimidating on a medieval dock. He is muscular and 40, with maori face tattoos, loose black hair, a thin beard, wearing scale armored shirt and pants. Luis Royo style.”
Notes:
Grim started out almost overpowered compared to everyone else, but as the others have come into their own things have evened out. He’s still by far the hardest to take down, with a number of passive abilities that scale with how much you hurt him. The more he gets hit, the more his STR and CON increase. And the Fighter passive regeneration essentially scales with both of those… I’ve had a number of fights where I bit off more than I could chew, and everyone went down except for Grim and Star. At which point it was just a matter of how long I wanted to wait before reloading to see if the enemy could whittle those two down faster than they hit back.
Offensively he’s had a bit of an identity crisis. He’s been spec’ed for two handers – preferring great-swords and great-axes. But we haven’t found anything comparable in quality to what we’ve found for Blur and Ace. I recently hit on letting him dual wield FIST/SWORD – and due to the monk multi-class that’s been better. But he’s not really built for dual-wielding. He just saved up enough for a *really* nice great-axe we’ve been eyeing for sale in Dunnage. One with extra abilities that kick in at really high STR (25). Which Grim tends to reach when enemies start whaling on him….
Human Barbarian (no subclass)
“A watercolor painterly portrait of a feisty young irish rogue woman standing impatiently on a medieval dock. She is 22, with freckled skin, short wild reddish bob hair, flashing green eyes, and celtic face tattoos. She wears an armored leather vest over a green short-sleeve shirt and leather pants. She is wielding two sabers. Luis Royo style”
Notes:
Blur has been the opposite of Grim. She started out rather fragile, and has evolved into a real fireball. She leaps into the midst of a horde and just goes *nuts* at high speed with dual sabers. She’s kitted up with every speed enhancing ability/piece of equipment I could find, and she’s an absolute whirlwind of death when she gets going. Until all the incoming attention knocks her flat – as she wears light armor and is nowhere near as durable as Grim. So while he’s been downed twice she’s in double-digits… If she sticks close to Star and Xoti (our most common NPC companion) its usually recoverable. And if I notice in time and have Grim charge in to take the heat off she can make it. But it can really go south in a hurry when – not if – she bites off more than she can chew. Which, honestly, is pretty true to her personality.
“Dwarf” Rogue (no subclass)
“A painterly fantasy watercolor of a short halfling sharpshooter smirking on a medieval dock He is age 30, stout, clean shaven, italian, stocky, with short black toussled hair and a round face, wearing black leather armor. He is holding an arquebus. Luis Royo style”
Notes:
I was concerned about Ace’s viability going in. My previous experience with a single class rogue was a melee/cutlass and pistol build, and she was a real glass cannon who sometimes spent more time running than fighting. And Ace wasn’t even taking a subclass, as none of them fit him.
As it turns out, Ace is actually edging out Blur for most total damage in the party. He leads in almost every offensive category – while actually going down less often than she does. He’s got a number of tools – like smoke bombs – to shed attention when things get hot. He usually stays at long range with an arquebus, switching to twin pistols when things get closer. He’s also the ultimate kill-stealer, as his extra damage to distracted opponents means anything short of a boss that makes the mistake of getting pinned down with Grim or Blur is just asking to get its head blown off.
His big weaknesses to this point have been Undead and Constructs – many of whom are utterly unfazed by firearms. For skeletons and the like he switches to grenades – which can be expensive and inefficient but let him continue to contribute. For spectres and such…. he just hasn’t had a great answer. But in the ruins of Poko Kohara he found a unique pistol that can fire electrically-charged bullets… so maybe that will help.
Human Theurge (Chanter/Lifegiver Druid)
“A watercolor painterly full portrait of an alabama cleric woman smiling on a medieval dock. She is 35, with a plain thin face, short brown unkempt hair, brown eyes, wearing hippy necklaces. She wears a simple cloak over leather armor, and is holding a wooden bo staff. Forehead tattoo. Luis Royo style”
Notes:
Star is the other character I was concerned about going in. Her build is entirely RP focused, with little thought given to system effectiveness. She is essentially a lightly armored druid/bard wielding a staff. Somehow, however, she has pulled her weight offensively, been almost as tough as Grim defensively, while being an amazing swiss-army knife of a support character.
She can easily be anything from melee support, to healer, to battlefield control, to ranged firepower. With no prep required. Her chanter side specializes in AOI “buff auras”, with her most common being either straight passive AOI healing for the group or swirling spirits providing AOI life-drain for combining AOI offense with keeping herself going. Her druid side also specializes in AOI regenerative healing… Which means once she gets going she’s the one character almost guaranteed to always be benefitting from all of that. Toss in that our most common party companion is Xoti – a Cleric of Eothas who *also* gravitates towards a melee AOI buff support role – and the two of them together are almost as hard to take out as Grim. Its almost an afterthought that she can turn into a giant cat and maul someone’s face off if she’s really having a bad day.
Wood Elf Wizard
“A watercolor painterly portrait of an ethiopian elf wizard waiting on a medieval dock. She is 45, with silver face tattoos, sharp exotic features, brown skin, straight black hair, dark eyes, and eyebrow rings. She wears purple hooded wizard robes, and holds an arcane wand. Luis Royo style.”
Notes:
Sapphire is the one character who largely turned out the way I expected. She is typically my “artillery in reserve” – opening with control/debuffs and then saving spell slots to see what is needed as the combat progresses. She is on the fragile side – especially given that most intelligent enemies in Deadfire seem to understand the “gank the obvious spellcaster” strategy. And she’s got nowhere near Star’s durability. But properly protected she’s every bit the centerpiece you expect of a mid-level mage.
And, of course, I’m loving the Star/Grim interplay on this run. They’ll have plenty more opportunity to exasperate each other before it’s all said and done.
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