Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Area of Effect and Safe-zone

Many effects have a set Area of Effect in the game and most hostile effects affect both enemies and allies alike. There’s a catch to this in a quite significant way though. Any bonus improving the size of an Area of effect does it by adding a safe zone to the effect. This safe zone is the part of the effects that can only affect enemies but not your party.

The image below shows in red the base area of effect of the spell with the added safe zone thanks to the bonus Area of effect provided by varied sources.

You can see that my character on the left, in the yellow area representing the safe zone won’t be affected by the spell. On the other hand, my other character right in the middle of the area of effect in red will be affected by the spell.

And here is a little image to show an interesting fact about areas of effects that could be misleading.

Here you can see in red the base area of effect of the spell with no modifier at all. The first ring of yellow circle represents the area of effect with +80% area of effect modifier while the second circle adds 20% more on top of it. This means that the yellow part of the area should double the overall area of effect of the spell.

So why does our area of effect doesn’t seem that much bigger ?

It’s simply because it’s a surface and not just a simple line. The yellow circle is indeed twice as big in surface as the red circle even if our eyes doesn’t necessarily perceive it as such. The isometric view makes it even more misleading as they are not full circles since the view isn’t strictly from above.

So yes investing in area of effect can be beneficial but don’t expect to cover the surface of Eora with a single spell either, remember that it will always be surfaces. (And just for information the spell used in the example (Tanglefoot) is a spell with a particularly massive area of effect, few spells have such a big area of effect to begin with.

You May Also Like

Low FPS / lag / poor FPS in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Fix Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Adventurers Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Armor Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Aumaua Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Combat Log Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Engagement Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Godlike Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – New Gods of Deadfire Achievement Guide Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Orlans Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Relationships Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Companions Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – How Do I Import My Pillars Of Eternity Save?