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Man, I haven't had any time to hang out here in ages. What's up everyone? Baby due in two months. I'm stressing out like crazy.

Empty words from Epic. They're practically owned by China and have no platforms for people to speak out.

I actually waited a few seconds thinking something may be loading.

When you think the "high ground meme" can't go any further...

Or using Binding Web to root them in place. A few Wizard "tricks": Concelhaut's Draining Touch: one of the best weapons in the game: targets Will instead of Deflection --> cast stuff like Miasma (-40 Will) and Dazzling Lights (-10 Will, stacks with Miasma) and maybe use a club + modal (-25 Will) weakens on hit --> -10 Fortitude debuff and reduces enemy's health by 25% drains damage as health (20%) does corrode damage (works with Spirit of Decay: +1 PEN) usually not so great because it dissipates after one hit or crit - BUT: Neverending Draining Touch: don't learn it but use a grimoire that contains it cast it from that grimoire, then switch to a grimoire which doesn't contain it (important). --> it will stay with you for the whole fight (doesn't go away after hit/crit) Draining (Essential or Substancial) Phantom: if you cast Draining Touch and then summon a phantom it will inherit the weapon and it will not go away (on the phantom). phantoms with Draining Touch do great damage (for a summon), weaken the enemy and heal themselves in the process. meanwhile you can lower Will on the target with the methods I mentioned above: lots of phantom-crits then Combine with Draconic Fury: Zandethus Draconic Fury works very well with Draining Touch (since you will be in melee anyway). Not only will the damage be better due to the two lashes (both multiplicative dmg boosts) but also it can terrify your attackers which then will be weakened and terrified (-10 Fortitude, -10 Will, -10 Deflection) Kalakoth's Minor Blights: smallish AoE but all AoE hits do the same damage roll as the initial one Uue it on a phantom and it will stay for the rest of the summoning duration and will NOT cycle through the different damage types. Instead it will stay with the elemental damage it had when you summoned the phantom. That way you can determine the element with which the phantom will attack. Can ver very useful against certain immune enemies. You can pick from four elements (just wait for the right one and then summon phantom). Rekvu's Fractured Casque: immune to interrupts if you have an injury you can injure yourself easily with Necrotic Lance: Cast it until you go down - works out of combat. You can also let party members hit you and only delivere the last blow with Necrotic Lance. Only the knockout damage counts and determines your injury. You'll only get an "Acute Rash" which is a very minor injury which doesn't hamper you much. You'll gain total immunity to interrupts. That includes interrupts from Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry and Slicken - that means you can stand in your own Slicken and nothing will happen. Your Pull of Eora will still pull you around but not interrupt you. A Mag Slayers disruption will do nothing against you (not that I ever encountered one who did this to me, but still... ). Rekvu's Scorched Cloak: Fire attacks heal you instead of dealing damage. Same tactic as with the Casque: Necrotic Lance. cast fire spells on yourself (Fireball, Delayed Blast Fireball, Wall of Flame etc.) and get healed a bit while your enemies die. If confused you can also cast Combusting Wounds on yourself which - combined with Wall of Flame - makes for a superb healing source (but maybe too finicky to use it often) Upright Captain's Belt: makes you immune to push & pull effects combine with Fracured Casque and run around in your Pull of Eora + Slicken Area totally freely and unhindered while everybody else just gets messed up completely Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure: makes you invisible for quite some time this invisibility will not break prematurely (as most other invisibility effects) if you don't deal damage. That means you can deal CC and debuffs from invisibility. If you are an Assassin that means constant +25 ACC. For a SC Bloodmage it "only" means being untouchable while casting non-damaging spells, but still awesome. Wall Spells don't break that Invisibility either (since they are "hazards") which means you can totally kill enemies with Wall Spells (Combusting Wounds + Wall of Flame or Wall of Many Colors etc.) without becoming visible. Also the attacks of your phantoms (with Draining Touch or Minor Blights or Spirit Lance etc.) will not break your invisibility Regenerating Bloodmage Use regeneration items like Tree Trolls Stiched, Ring of (Greater) Regeneration, Voidward and Fleshmender armor and eat fresh fruit at rest (+25% healing - or similar) as well as getting a Physiker's Belt and Bonesetter's Torc for better healing. You will be able to spam one single powerful spell endlessly without going down from self damage - for example Ninagauth's Shadowflame. Cast - Blood Sacrifice - cast - Blood Sacrifice - and so on Wall of Draining As @Raven Darkholme already said it's an often overlooked spell. Especially in combo with Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure: Draining Wall will not break the invisibility and prolong it like crazy. You can cast Walls and CC spells without ever becoming visible again. God mode so to speak. Minoletta's Piercing Sigil stun and dmg retaliation on getting hit), Zahndetu's Draconic Fury (terrify retaliation on getting hit) and Cloak of Death ("withdraw" and DoT retaliation on getting hit) don't stack their effects but mess each other up. Just decide for one. Concelhaut's Corrosive Skin + Brilliant Departure: Cast it on a tough enemy from stealth and then use Brilliant Departure, then move away from sight. It's a great Assassination spell. The enemy will not see you, your invis. wil not break from the DoT and the enemy will die. Rinse and repeat. You can take out whole groups one by one with that tactic. Citzal's Enchanted Armory: gain permanent one handed (!), scaling Great Swords: Cast Enchanted Armory and then swallow a potion of Form of the Fearsome Brute. End combat (by winning while the form persists). Once the combat is over and the form ends you will keep the Great Sword. You can do that as often as you like and e.g. give your fellow party member two Great Swords for dual wielding. Or wield one with One Handed Style and modal on (+30% damage without losing ACC compared to a normal Great Sword). Blightheart: one of the few items that can raise spell damage: a wizard can get +10% corrosive lash (that's multiplicative dmg) for his damaging spells when wearing it. Great stat stick for a nuker. That's what I remember from the top of my head. There will me more for sure.

Here is a picture of them when they were older Pretty cool looking

am not a vampire fan, but we couldn't help recall the james earl jone reading o' the raven for the simpsons. have james earl jones, ian mcshane or christopher walken read most edgar allan poe or other spooky stuff would be gold. david tenant is ok too. HA! Good Fun!

just tested it on PotD, doesn't look like it works for me

NewsThump - We wanted to help out in Normandy, but we had bone spurs explain the Kurds

Fraud Guarantee sounds like a race horse name.

My daughter made dinner the other night, so it is finally starting to pay off, guys.

David Tenant reading Vampire Stories for Halloween Although probably not the fan base for it here.. but you never know who might want ot pass it on.

Its come to my attention that this is apparently a real noodle scratcher. But I forgot one of the foundational tenets when communicating via text on the internet, which is "there are two kinds of people 1) those that cannot extrapolate from incomplete data 2) So ima clarify point by point as best I can: 1) Monthly stipend; a candidate is offering 1k per adult in your household. For me this will equal 3k per month. This equals 36k per year. This equals 288k over the course of an 8 year presidency. For me, 288k is better than 0k. I cant think of any better way to explain that. 2) UHC. For me, getting free UHC is better than me paying medical/dental/vision insurance. I cant think of any better way to explain that. 3) Reduced mortgage. For me, paying 10% less on my mortgage is better than paying the full mortgage. I cant think of any better way to explain that. 4) School loan forgiveness. For me, paying nothing for my child's education is better than paying a lot for my child's education. I cant think of any better way to explain that. I hope this rights the ship.

Agreed, but then again, there are alot of people here with wives/girlfriends aswell, which boggles ones mind O.o'

Pfft. I wanted to be the recreator of Germany, not some puny Preussen!!!

This reminds me of Icewind Dale 2. There was a book in the game entitled How to be an Adventurer that you could use for XP and the description was pretty funny: "This ludicrously huge and heavy book - more a compilation of volumes in a single binding than anything else - claims to be an extensive manual on the "the fine art of adventuring." Its many chapters include: - Henchmen: Loyal Companions or Seedy Pack-Mules? - Making Your Kit Work for *You* - 101 Uses for a 10' Pole - Catapults: Yes, That's as Far as it Shoots - Getting the Most Out of Your Party's Thief - Today's Tinderbox - It's Not Just for Lighting Torches Anymore - Dungeons to Tackle: - Stinky Pieter's Halls o' Poorly Guarded Gold - The Caves of Soundly Sleeping Monsters - Archmage "Loose-Bowels" Wozley the Milksop's Enchanted Item Warehouse - The Wooden Citadel of Darmos the Old and Crippled - Uncle Fralin's Tool Shed - ...and more! - Dungeons To Avoid Like the Crotch-Rot: - The Iron Fortress of Blodax, Devourer of Souls - Dominara the Erinyes' Nine-Layered Brothel of Violent Emasculation (No Slaking... or Slating... allowed) - The Crimson Hell-Pit of One Billion Miserable Deaths - Uncle Fralin's Bedroom - ...and more! - Your Lantern and You - Twelve Uses for Twelve Iron Spikes - 99 Uses for That Little Hammer That Comes With Twelve Iron Spikes - Face It, You're Actually "Neutral Evil" - The King's Lovely Daughter: Look But Don't Touch - Don't Put Your Hand in That Dark Hole ...and over eighty more information-packed chapters covering all aspects of adventuring, from hoarding to spell-casting and bold heroics to arse-saving cowardice." Face It, You're Actually "Neutral Evil" is the one that stuck with me. If we're being entirely honest then we have to admit that in most cases between two different options most of us will pick the one which yields the more XP.

Nice, I'm stealing that. -What's your roleplaying style? -Bethesda

One of the easier overlooked spells is Wall of Draining. You can prolong any buff wit it, including broken item buffs like Mind over Matter or Potion of the Final Stand. It works on any enemy including those who don't even have buffs to steal. And there is some cheesy ways to get additional duration out of it like using Pull of Eora to make the enmey having to cross the wall again and again to get to you, or simply making them walk towards you ON the wall.

Thank you both very much! This information has helped me understand playing the monk significantly more. I appreciate your responses.

Well, I've spent 1 more hour with the game. It started to give little bit of sense, and very soon after my yesterdays save, Prussia started war with Austria, first I've sided with Austria, and I was obliterated within few minutes, after reload, I've sided with Prussia, And I was able to annex 8 more provinces from different German states, and I made it among Great Powers I have slowly started to build up my war ruined economy, and prepared to fight against one more German state in the south. Then out of the blue Prussia started war against France, which I've joined, but immediately after the war, Prussia got event, in which they unified Germany. For me, that was immediate Game over I could resist the unification, but having only 14 provinces against this juggernaut would be just a fast Game Over as well I was still able to end up on 9th place in the prestige ranking, which meant 1 place away from staying as Great Power. The biggest negatives in the game, is very weak diplomacy. You can't offer diplomatic annexation to your neighbours, nor ask for reinforcements. The major power in the war must feel like to offer you their units, if you need to defend against big enemy as well. And so on... Anyway, now that I understand the game little bit more, I would probably try to play with some other country, and try to be more warmongering, Thinking about some South or Central American Country. We'll see how it goes.

"What use is freedom of speech, if you are unable to speak."

That's great! lol Every now and then, I admit I'll just go gonzo and slaughter everything in sight, but that's typically when I feel lazy and I'm not serious about playing at the moment. On the other hand, if the design team is good enough to create characters I dislike, I'm tempted to kill them off. That is to say, if there's an important person in an organization and he starts to get under my skin, I'll start to talk and sometime respond with outright hostility. Also, I love well-done evil dialogue. I'm basically Dudley Do-Right in games, but I get real laughs out of the snidely whiplash dialogue. Sometimes, great dialogue isn't evil per se. I laughed out loud last night when I came across Eothas and one of my options was like: "You stole my soul, you jackass!" Not evil at all. I was tempted to choose it because I kind of felt that way. Still, I thought it was better to problem solve. Hey, Gloomseeker, your post was entirely understandable. I was quite tired and perhaps not thinking very clearly. If I'd been speaking, I would undoubtedly have been slurring my words. Instead, I'm afraid I slurred my typing. EDIT: I almost always just kill off slavers. Rat bastards.

I have a couple of complaints about Deadfire but I'm too lazy to detail all of them. I will cite merely two, and probably not the most irritating two. First, can Aloth not target one enemy with a handful of his mates in the target area? I like boarding battles, but the AI is idiotic. Now, for the impetus behind this post: I like Maia. Honestly, she's not only a cool NPC but also a useful companion in battle. That reposition and shoot is awesome. Essentially two attacks every round for most battles. However, "forecastle" is pronounced "FOLK-SiL." Come on, damn it. She's a sailor! Meanwhile, I finished *a lot* of the game and it's simply brilliant. I really loved the first game, but the alacrity with which the population jettisoned the gods was simply amazing. The new game addresses that really well. Bringing back Eothas is simply brilliant. I'm not using spoirel tags for that because 1, the game has been out forever and 2, Eothas' return is a fundamental part of the game from teh outset. I like the fact that the most 'politically correct' solution *not* always works best. This is truly a phenomenal game. Seriously, any game that steals sleep so I can keep ahead of project deadlines has something going for it. It's addictive in every sense, both good and bad. EDIT: not at my best, but I added a word that makes all the diffrerence to the meaning.

Must be preparing for a career in politics.

Another surprisingly good weapon is St.Droga's Skull - it comes with 20% burn lash and also 20% chance to proc burn dmg (50% dmg of the sabre) in a large AoE. Overall it's like a 20% lash weapon with 10% AoE dmg.

Keeper of the Flame (with lots of Religion) is also great because of the AoE. You can prevent the self (burn) damage and Resonant Touches with Rekvu's Scorched Cloak and turn it into healing. Doesn't generate wounds then of course.

A Nalpazca monk with Hylea's Talons can regenerate easily 5 wounds every 6s. With the adra ooze pet (which will prolong your invisibility for another 3s) you can basically spam WotW while staying invisible all the time. If you don't want to play a Nalpazca you can also use a scepter with modal activated + Aldris Blade which will generate a wound with every hit (from self damage) and heal you at the same time (heals on crits) or Voidwheel+Voidward (generates wounds on hit and heals on kills, the ring prevents taking too much raw damage). Also if you don't play godlike you can also add the Mask of the Grotto Deep which adds another powerful dot on hit from invisibility. PS. Keeper of the Flame can also help with wound generation but the AoE damages friendly targets and adds resonance to them (yourself included) which is a bad thing if you plan using Resonant Touch..

Depends on the enemy (and how they are positioned). There are an awful lot of enemies which have weak crush AR. For those fists are one of the best options. But there are also some very powerful combos with Resonant Touch, most notable maybe blunderbuss and hand mortars because they apply so many hits with a single attack. It's pretty wild with WotW as you can imagine. I made some videos on that. Same with Keeper of the Flame with its AoE (watch out: self damage) or Sun and Moon (double attack roll). Also everything that has special on-hit chances like Karaböru or Sungrazer can be very nice (if enemies stand together). However - looking at the pure stats of weapons the fists will always be great weapons against enemies that are vulnerable to crush. As I said Battle Axes are good with WotW as well because the recovery malus for Bleeding Cuts doesn't matter during the execution of WotW. Also check out Hylea's Talons which add a lash to your melee attacks while they can put a mild dot effect on you (generating wounds). Good item for a monk. Same with Ajamut's (or so) Stalking Cloak: it stuns with every attack from stealth or invisibility and gives an ACC and dmg bonus as well. You are invisible during WotW so... Another thing as soon as you get WotW: you won't use stuff like Raised Torment or Stunning Surge and most other abilities a lot then (Efficient Anguish I would keep since it targets fortitude and can be handy against enemies with high deflection but low fortitude). So you might want to retrain and take mostly non-attack abilities besides Anguish and WotW.

The original post for this build is underdeveloped in some ways – it doesn’t have specific gear recommendations, for instance. I’ve been playing and honing a build based on this one and have made it my own. I wanted to post it with all its details, but I want to give credit to Climhazzard for turning me on to the central mechanic that defines it (pairing Exalted Endurance with Ancient Memory, high might and intelligence, stacking healing bonuses). So I thought I’d post the full build here in this thread. The first decision you have to make is whether to do a no-rest run or not. The chief benefit of a no-rest run for this build will be the ability to use the Blessing of the Dawnstars (+50% healing, gotten in Port Maje), at the cost of giving up per-rest abilities. In the below build I’ve assumed that you will in fact be resting. If you do a no-rest run, that will also affect which affliction resistances you’ll use and whether you want Aegis of Loyalty, since on a no-rest run you’ll probably have a great food buff like Captain’s Banquet up on all your characters which might give them immunity to some afflictions. Here’s my take on the Healing Wall. The Healing Wall =================================== Difficulty: PotD v. 4.0.1 -------------------------------------------------------------- Solo: not intended for solo -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Paladin (Shieldbearer)/Chanter (Troubadour) -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Coastal Aumaua (for Might affliction resistance and Might bonus. And you are a cool giant.) -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Get one that boosts Might or Intelligence. I made mine a philosopher (from Ixamitl) for RP reasons. -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats: Max Might and Intelligence, everything else at 10 Skills: Passive: Diplomacy (for the scaling Captain’s Favor heal on the shield and RP purposes); Active: I went Athletics for the many watcher-only athletics checks in scripted interactions and the great Second Wind, but Arcana might be the best for abusing high might with scrolls, which I don’t like to use. Weapon Proficiencies: Large Shield, Sabre, whatever (medium shield might be useful) -------------------------------------------------------------- Abilities (!=important, r=recommended, (a) automatic) PL 1 (levels 1-3) Paladin (a) Lay on Hands (!) Deep Faith (!) Chanter Soft Winds ® Skeleton summon invocation ® PL 2 (levels 4-6) Paladin Zealous Auras (!) Weapon and shield style ® Inspired Defenses Chanter Wurm summon invocation ® PL 3 (levels 7-9) Paladin Greater Lay on Hands (!) Chanter Ancient Memory (!) Combat Focus Two Fingers of Daylight (could substitute Aegis of Loyalty for either of these) PL 4 (levels 10-12) Paladin Exalted Endurance (!) Mental Fortress Chanter Ogre summon invocation (!) Mith Fyr chant ® PL 5 (levels 13-15) Paladin Practiced healer (!) Iron Gut Clear Head (could sub any or all of liberating exhortation/reviving exhortation/inspired path for the 3 affliction resistances I’ve selected) Chanter Rapid casting PL 6 (levels 16-18) Paladin Inspired Path Chanter Eld Nary invocation Quick Summoning Ogre summon upgrade PL 7 (levels 19-20) Paladin Stoic Steel Chanter Mercy and Kindness (!) Ancient Weapons summon ® --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (!=important, r=recommended) Weapon Set 1: Sasha’s Singing Scimitar (r - +Refreshing Finale, Companion’s Prelude), Shining Bulwark (! - +Defensive Beacon (!)) (Alternative shields: Lathandria’s Devotion, Cadhu Scalth) Weapon Set 2: Watcher’s Blade/Animancer’s Energy Blade, Shining Bulwark Head: Horns of the Bleak Mother or Blackened Plate Helm (better yet, use a regular Vailian Tricorn and have the biggest, bushiest beard you can and look awesome) Back: Cloak of Greater Protection/Deflection (or maybe Badrwn’s Cover) Neck: Necklace of the Harvest Moon or Bone Setter’s Torc (!) Armor: Blackened Plate Armor (! - +Life in Death (!), +Usher’s Visage) Waist: Physicker’s Belt (!) Hands: Gauntlets of Ogre Might/Woedica’s Strangling Grasp (!) Rings: Gaun’s Pledge (!), Chameleon’s Touch or Ring of (Greater) Regeneration Boots: Footprints of Ahu Taka (!) Pet: Prissy (! - +10% healing done) Strengths of the Build: Constant Party-Wide Regeneration: The Core Idea The central idea of the build is to stack constant party-wide regeneration effects. There are three: the paladin’s Exalted Endurance aura, the Ancient Memory chant, and the Life in Death upgrade to the Blackened Plate armor. To support those regeneration effects, we want to maximize might and stack +healing gear, which is why I’ve chosen the belt, boots, gauntlets, pet and necklace we have. We also want to maximize intelligence to make the auras as wide as possible; also, 20 intelligence allows us to use a second chant as Troubadour (I use Mith Fyr until getting Mercy and Kindness at level 19) without any downtime for Ancient Memory. The amount of healing we can achieve with this setup is just massive. (Some of the comments worry that you don’t get good healing until Mercy and Kindness at level 19; that’s not true at all. I don’t even feel the need for Mercy and Kindness once I get there.) As the playthrough goes on, we can switch in and out some of the +healing gear to hit breakpoints; for Ancient Memory’s healing per second, the game rounds up when you get halfway between a point – so if you hit 1.5 healing per second, the game rounds up to 2 per second, whereas if you are at 2.3 the game rounds down to 2, so we might as well drop (say) the Bone-setter’s torc for a while because the +10% doesn’t make a difference. Power Level affects the healing, so recalculate regularly. Since this healing never runs out, this is a perfect healer for a hardcore deadly deadfire PotD run where fights take forever and ordinary druid or priest healers run out of resources halfway through the fights. Resource-using heals Since we’ve stacked +healing gear and might, we can also take advantage of other ways to heal. We have two types of those: per-encounter and per-rest heals. Per-encounter: We have two per-encounter heals, Greater Lay on Hands (which as a Shieldbearer also prevents death), and the chanter invocation Two Fingers of Daylight. (I confess I rarely use the chanter invocation, since I use my phrases for summoning.) Per-rest: We also have a total of five significant AOE per-rest heals (in addition to our own Second Wind): 2 casts of Restore from Gaun’s Pledge, 1 cast of Captain’s Favor from the Shining Bulwark shield, 1 Moonwell from the Necklace of the Harvest Moon (if we are using that instead of or before we get Bone Setter’s Torc), 1 from the Watcher ability Sympathy for the Lost (I always get this one, look up the responses you need to get it). All five are boosted through the roof with all the might and +healing gear. The Harvest Moon Necklace’s Moonwell is almost laughably good on this character; really, all of them are, and I love how fast-casting Gaun’s Pledge is and how useful it is to have a fast-casting AOE heal instead of just single-target with the Lay on Hands. Party buffing and enemy debuffing In addition to providing all the healing your party will ever need, we can take advantage of the large AOE boost from high intelligence and central location in the battle as a tank by getting other constant party-wide buffs. There are four: +1 AR from the Shining Bulwark, +1 AR from Exalted Endurance, stacking action speed from Sasha’s Singing Scimitar Companion’s Prelude buff, and the Mith Fyr chant (until you get Mercy and Kindness at level 19, and frankly you might decide to stay with Mith Fyr at that point anyway). We also get two ways to debuff the enemy. One is the Usher’s Visage upgrade to the Blackened Plate Armor which is an aura that gives -1 AR to enemies. The other is the Eld Nary invocation, which may seem like it doesn’t fit in this build. But since we are using Sasha’s Singing Scimitar anyway for the party-wide action speed buff, we might as well get the Refreshing Finale invocation, for a free empower use every fight (that refunds 3 phrases). Empowering the summons doesn’t do much. But an Empowered Eld Nary is a great fight opener, and then we can still start summoning pretty soon after. Tankiness One of the coolest things about this character is that it is a healer that operates best planted right in the middle of the fight. Defenses, as is typical for a paladin, are through the roof, and the Large Shield modal is very useful. I open fights by telling this guy to run to where I want my front line to be, activate the modal, and then start summoning and healing. He can still engage while casting. With the gear and ability choices I’ve made, he has 5 affliction resistances: might (from race), resolve (Horns of the Bleak Mother helmet), perception, intelligence, constitution (paladin abilities). This guy basically doesn’t get hurt much in my experience, even while planted in front of all the enemies (the summons probably have something to do with that). If he gets hurt more in your experience, go ahead and use a Ring of Greater Regeneration on him. I think that’s affected by all the might and +healing gear too (though I’m not sure about that right now, since I don’t feel the need for it and use Chameleon’s Touch instead.) Summons As Boeroer is fond of pointing out, summons aren’t there for the damage. They are more helpfully thought of as a form of very flexible crowd control: they can distract enemies, fill holes in lines, absorb punishment, flank, get summoned next to casters and provoke the casters into casting on them instead of the rest of the party, and much more. This character has 100% uptime on the summons. The Ogres are the best at that distraction/absorption job (due to their size, their health, and the fact that they can engage enemies, unlike the wurms), while skeletons and wurms will hold us over until we get the Ogres. So with this character you really get three tanks for the price of one (himself and 2 Ogres).