M4xw0lf

Resistance/Immunity to intellect afflictions (the aforementioned upgraded DoC Breastplate and Modwyr) or any Intellect inspiration will do. With my current Brute, I didn't even get the upgrade for Int. affliction resistance on DoC, because of the fighter talent Tactical Barrage. Set the AI to cast that one first (more precisely, set a condition of 'self: has int inspiration' for the use of Frenzy), and you'll never have to worry about confusion.

Thing is, I WANT Maia and Pallegina I find they enhance the game experience a lot due to all the ties they have with various people. Or do you mean I should not bring them to the audience with the queen where they will leave? Does it prevent them from leaving if they stay on the ship for that?

Out of the three options, pure Barbarian is the least squishy, so probably best for running from fight to fight with reckless abandon. The other two will always need healbots nearby or go hit and run.

Well, Might always affects damage, but I'd say you can make a decent Witch with 14-15 Might instead of 20.

Berserker/Fighter with Refreshing defense + Unbending is tough as nails. Didn't even take unbending on my current Brute, and he still was knocked out only 2-3 times across the whole game (with all sidequests/bounties). Also, wouldn't a Howler with Troubadour (-> linger) give decent self-healing?

Let's just keep it and call it Concelhaut's overpowered materialization.

Does it scale with the summoner's or the wielder's power level?

As long as I'm not bamboozled once more by Pillar's ruleset, Penetrating visions will do absolutely nothing for you, because most Cipher spells deal raw damage and don't bother with penetration anyways (apart from the fact that you won't use many damage spells anyways).

Unfortunately there's no Herald and no Scout replacement :-/ Filling the gaps with Eder and Konstanten gave me similar survivability, but wrecked my damage output.

Ok, this is a spoilery forum, but I'll just repeat the warning - lots of endgame spoilers. So, after doing my first run without siding with anybody, I'm now set to get every faction ending. I started with the Huana end - and was immediately tempted to ditch it again. I knew/strongly assumed Maia wouldn't stay. But two sentences later I also have to dismiss Pallegina, wtf?! That's 40% of my party, which was a well-tuned machine, torn apart without a warning! Plus Pallegina was super important as tank/support/healbot. And both Maia and Pallegina carried some of the best gear and just took it with them! Well that's basically it, just venting a bit. Managed to kill the guardian with Eder (Fighter) and Konstanten (Chanter) as replacement, but it was tough.

But not before baluns is achieved.

Always take Whisper of treason. For melee Witch I don't see much point in taking Cipher talents/spells apart from the level ups where you have to, it lets you cover the talents that benefit the melee aspect of soulblade, like hammering thoughts, draining whip, and more focus to start with. If you want to do some spell damage, Ascendant would be better I guess.

Yeah well, that's true of all invented beings, ever.

At least not 'everything is a sword', amirite

Maybe it depends on the crew size of the enemy... not sure though. Also one of the things they may have changed with patches. As I said previously here, I solved all the sea battles this time around by sinking the enemy ships.

Your 'parked' party members will be randomly selected to participate in boarding combats, and they will use the gear and level you left them with. So yeah, stripping them naked and not levelling them up is bad for that.

Yeah, uniques are now cooler than soul bounds. They need to be reworked, re-imagined even. Let them react not only to our class, but even more to our dispositions and maybe even faction relations.

That would explain it...

Same for me actually... I played Pillars 4-5 times completely and NEVER ONCE got it. Maybe I always killed all the Fampyrs before talking to the boss Fampyr? But I think at least once I went to him first.

More XP, yes. Loot? I discovered that is not the case. By boarding you have a chance of getting a cannon (like vailian hullbreaker which are very rare and only one can be bought) plus for some unknown reason, sometimes a unique item from naval combat disappears when either boarding or smashing to smithereens. The loot table also differs for equipment when done differently. It used to be more loot in the launch version. You definitely can also get unique items upon sinking ships (this time I got the Kapana Tanga by sinking the ship, last time I didn't get it through boarding - however, I got the Black Isle flag last time, but not this time) - there definitely is some randomization in place here. And I think you generally get more money from sinking (at least this, too, was the case at launch). I think you're right about the cannons though, I believe I didn't loot a single one after sinking every named ship on the map. That part at least makes sense, cannons are not great at floating.

I would think something more simple like a *POPULAR* tag would work better. Too many people will think of the stars as ratings by default, if they skip over the blurb at the top of your post. This will also reduce your workload, as checking each build on a regular basis to recalculate the stars could get quite tedious. So something like 10+ likes, or 2/3+ pages of discussion earns the popular tag (rough numbers but you get the idea). Yeah, I also think the stars are easily misunderstood as rating of the builds' strength.

This is still a thing. I absolutely can't bring Maia to Fampyr encounters atm, or she will be permanently dominated and wreck my party, especially since there are now no more easy options to evade charming afflictions altogether. Resistance against intellect afflictions (dominated -> charmed) doesn't really help.

There is a console command that opens character creation for your main character, I just don't remember it off the top of my head.

I always multi Pallegina and Tekehu with Chanter, because their no-maintenance buffs and healing are just too awesome. I also let the AI use 'killers froze stiff' and enjoy hordes of paralyzed enemies for large stretches of every fight. Their damage output isn't great, but that's ok, because they make the party super durable.

In my current playthrough, Maia (scout) is just edging it over my main character in terms of damage (all characters with customized AI, which does a very good job), and she's comfortably in front on enemies killed. The Red Hand is responsible for this, mostly - she is pulverizing lower level vessels with Red Hand's double tap upgrade and driving flight ability.