hugin7

I have exhausted all conversation options with Vicent Agosti in Vailian Embassy, yet "The Forgotten" task was not offered. I am not sure if this is a bug or if there are undocumented prerequisites for this task and found no clues in walkthroughs, etc. Has anyone come across this issue and/or managed to resolve it?

I have exhausted all conversation options with Vicent Agosti in Vailian Embassy, yet "The Forgotten" task was not offered. I am not sure if this is a bug or if there are undocumented prerequisites for this task and found no clues in walkthroughs, etc. I attempted to upload my save file, but its size is 2.5MB and uploads are limited to only 1MB. How can we upload save files if the upload limit can only support early-game saves?

Excellent question re: other debuffs. I've been concerned about the same thing, though it's a bit harder to set up a test, since tool tips and combat logs might be out of line with actual in-game calculations.

There are timers for manual resolutions of stronghold attacks. Also, stronghold adventures expire. That's why I am concerned about bounties. I meant that there is no timers in quests and tasks. Stronghold events have timers that are either based on game world clock or stronghold turns. Thanks, good to hear that bounties don't work this way.

Good to know... what about earlier?

There are timers for manual resolutions of stronghold attacks. Also, stronghold adventures expire. That's why I am concerned about bounties.

Where?! Is there a reliable way to get Dyrcaps? The herbalist mentioned above doesn't sell them.

If we purchase the Warden's Lodge stronghold upgrade at an early level and delay the completion of bounties, do they expire? In other words, are bounty quests timed events that must be completed within a certain number of days, or do they remain in your queue indefinitely?

This is not related to debuff priorities. Regardless of which debuffs are applied or their order, the following appears to happen: 1. The game tracks all debuff durations in tool tips. 2. The moment the first debuff that disables a unit expires, the game frees that unit without checking whether other disabling debuffs are still in progress. 3. Despite the fact that the unit is freed, tool tip still shows remaining duration on existing disabling debuffs. The issue can be reproduced easily with Prone + Paralyzed, Paralyzed + Prone, Paralyzed + Paralyzed, Prone + Prone, etc. I do not see how this could possibly be intended behavior. The issue presents itself as a classic bug in the algorithm in step 2 - the code needs to check whether a unit has any existing disabling debuffs before setting it free, rather than let it go the moment any disabling debuff expires. Personally, I find this issue extremely unpleasant, since I run a CC-heavy party. Out of all of the bugs I've encountered in this game, this is the one that I consider the highest priority - almost everything else can be avoided by reverting to an earlier save file. I have had to adjust my play style just to avoid accidentally refreshing CC. I suspect that RNG-based CC, such as that of arbalest crits, could also interfere with stronger CC. Having enemies you believe to have paralyzed for 13 sec suddenly wake up due to a random 1 sec Prone effect is a poor user experience. I am also concerned that I've received no response from Obsidian on this bug after having it open for nearly 3 weeks. I've received communication regarding more benign issues and a simple "we will add it to our bug database" would go a long way.

This is happening with different forms of CC. Furthermore, if you accidentally hit the same enemy with multiple forms of CC, they can essentially become CC-immune prematurely. For example, 12 sec paralysis + 1 sec prone can result in enemy running free after 1 sec... really? Also, the tool tips show that the enemies are "Paralyzed," etc., so there is clearly a disconnect between the tool tips and what actually happens. This is a poor way to handle CC, which creates an unpleasant experience, so I sincerely hope this isn't intentional.

The issue has not been resolved as of Patch 1.04.

This is precisely the type of trade-off that must be avoided in a well-designed game, in line with what I mentioned above. With the current game design, players are being put in a lose-lose situation, while developers are unable to balance encounters properly due to their inability to anticipate how rested the party is.

This, a thousand times. You can always backtrack for free rest, so iroll20s/rest is not really a cheat, but a time-saver. There is no rule or guideline that states that you should rest only every x encounters, so why self-impose a rest limit or waste your personal time to trudge to an inn/stronghold? Paying for rest costs coppers that could otherwise be saved and spent elsewhere. Saving spells keeps you from unleashing the full potential of your party on a regular basis. If you are not taking full advantage of resources available to you, you're not playing optimally. PoE's game design puts the players in an awkward position of having to choose among potentially unpleasant options. At one extreme, a well-designed wizard-heavy party tears through everything as long as the player is not averse to resting frequently. The game is clearly not balanced for this, yet does nothing to prevent a persistent powergamer from employing this play style, since one can always rest for free the easy way (iroll20s/rest), or the hard way (backtracking). The same wizard-heavy party struggles with trash if the player self-imposes stringent rest limits. At another extreme is a cipher-heavy party, a rest-hater's paradise. This type of party feasts on trash and although it's not as strong as a wizard-heavy party for the most challenging encounters, it can still easily handle anything PotD has to offer, along with a clear conscience for those who self-impose rest limits. A pure powergamer might choose a wizard-heavy party and take advantage of free rest. While this is not technically cheating, challenge would be lacking. A rest-averse player might go cipher-heavy, compromising their power for the most difficult encounters. Unfortunately, the latter party can still tear through PotD, but that's beside the point. It would be nice if the game didn't force the players to make such choices and allowed us to play optimally without resorting to cheats or testing our tolerance for drudgery.

Yet another example, with latest hotfixes installed: cast Wizard's Slicken to make enemy Prone. When the duration of Prone is nearly over, apply Paralyzed via Cipher's Mental Binding. Even though different effects are applied, the enemy still "comes to life" and attacks the party despite being Paralyzed successfully.

Good info all around. I've heard about the druid spell too which seems like a great "start of the chain" to debuffing tough opponents down into the beatable range (talking about POTD here, as hard isn't really hard enough to warrant that level of tryharding unless you are fighting way overleveled content). I think that another good good debuff starter is painful interdiction (priest talent + expanding talent). Weakness is a huge debuff on typical spell resist stats, and interdiction is huge AoE, fast, one-pr-encounter, and also has +15accuracy (with another talent,empowered interdiction, possible to buff that even further making it crazy accurate). Short of the unresistable druid spell I think this is one of the best "defense breakers" I've seen in the game that gets you a way into landing further spells - and being able to use it once pr encounter is really powerful for any party that uses spells. I will have to think about carrying around a few eldritch aim scrolls... Those could be real clutch in a tough fight. -Stigma Druid's Spreading Plague attacks fortitude with a +10 accuracy bonus. Where did you get the impression that it hits automatically?

repulsing seal doesn't have a huge acc bonus. what it does have is synergy with mechanics. the priestly seal spells count as traps. therefore, if you have high mechanics skill, you get the same boost to your seal spells as you would get for setting a trap. this synergy results in potential near guaranteed crits with seal spells for priests who max mechanics. *shrug* go figure. HA! Good Fun! This appears to be false. I just tested Repulsing Seal on a priest with no points in Mechanics. I then used the cheat console to add 10 points in Mechanics and retested. The accuracy score for Repulsing Seal in the combat log was the same regardless of the priest's Mechanics score.

Once your stronghold is improved and generates a positive income, is it essentially a source of infinite funds? For example, could you continue resting/traveling between areas to burn in-game time to produce unlimited taxes?

Is that official? As I read the explanatory text it mentions "ranged weapons", otherwise it would be a really good talent. Thanks for the posts guys. I've seen a few situations where spells or abilities that apply to ranged weapons/attacks also apply to spells. Unfortunately, as I just posted above, something went wrong with my tests form Marksman, leading to incorrect conclusions. Now that I think of it, my tests were done before the last patch, so perhaps the issue was a stealth "fix," rather than an error in my tests. Either way, Marksman doesn't work with most spells at this time.

I was under the impression that I thoroughly tested Marksman for spells and figured that your experience was either due to interactions between the Wood Elf racial and Marksman, or simply not standing at least 4m away. However, I retested out of paranoia and found that something must have gone wrong with my previous tests. I tried different types of spells: Fireball, Minoletta's line, Confusion, and Blights. To my surprise, only Blights was affected by Marksman. I'm positive that I've tested more spells in the past. I finally noticed that one of my subjects has Gauntlets of Accuracy (+5) equipped - I suspect that I overlooked this item and it threw off my tests. Sorry about the mix-up. Marksman still has some value for Blights, but no longer seems so attractive.

Many excellent points, pi2repsion. A huge determining factor in what's optimal for a wizard, and whether a wizard is optimal for a party in the first place, is the player's view toward resting. A lot of players seem to forget that the game allows you to rest for free at any given time. Others don't want to take the time to rest, or self-impose a morality system where they limit themselves to resting every x encounters, where x varies for every person. Last I checked, no such guidelines were imposed by Obsidian, nor did they implement any serious measures to limit resting, other than make it tedious. The "tedious" aspect of resting can be mitigated via the "rest" cheat code. It's quick, free, and doesn't actually make you more powerful, since it only saves you the time it would take to return to an inn or stronghold. Therefore, I don't consider it a cheat, but a time-saver, though this is a point of contention among players. As far as +1 spell slot vs. elemental damage talents are concerned, here's some food for thought, with PotD difficulty in mind: 1. Wizards' functions include CC, debuffing, self-buffing, and nuking, roughly in that order of importance. Helpless enemies are easy kills for every party and don't fight back, while debuffed enemies are easy kills and fight back ineffectively. 2. Since nuking is low on a typical wizard's priority list, elemental damage talents might be under-utilized. Also, each one only applies to roughly a quarter of elemental damage spells, which doesn't even include nice raw damage spells, such as Malignant Cloud, or single-target non-elemental damage spells, such as the Minoletta's line. Therefore, on average, each elemental damage spell boosts the wizard's effective DPS by <5%. Scion of Flame is the likely exception, since Fan of Flames, Rolling Flames, and Fireball seem to be the go-to early damage spells, so its value is much greater than that of other elemental damage talents for most builds. 3. Early in the game, spells might be tight. For example, around level 5, you have 10 spells without +1 spell talents, but 13 if you take 3. This increases wizard's capabilities by 30% across the board. This includes CC, debuffing, self-buffing, and nuking. Naturally, you can use all of them on nuking, if you wish. They can be the difference between casting 5 x Fan of Flames vs 4x, an increase of 25%, which is greater than the 20% damage increase from Scion of Flame. 4. Wizards' casting rate, especially when using Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, allows them to burn through spells very quickly. An extra lvl 1 spell, for example, could lead to Eldrich Aim + Slicken + Chill Fog + 1xFan vs 2xFan in a matter of seconds. The difference between 1 or two Fans can be over 50% of overall damage, and the latter is only possible with an extra spell. 5. Later in the game, when 20+ spells are available, 4 extra spells might still increase your capabilities by about 20% across the board. However, by that point, you will be using a greater proportion of high-level spells. 6. All of the above is moot if encounters tend end in a few spells, and no spell level is exhausted under any circumstances. 7. On the flip side, perhaps there are no encounters that would cause you to dip so deeply into your spell pool that you would run out of spells - everything could be dead well before you want to cast that last spell. This brings us back to the discussion that started this post - what is your philosophy on rest? Having more spells would keep you from having to rest more often, but if you're not averse to resting, who cares? ...And if you're the type to self-impose limits on rest, the effectiveness of your wizard can drop dramatically, likely to the point where a cipher becomes a better choice. However, a rested wizard, fully buffed with Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Eldrich Aim, etc., unchained from having to budget spells for later encounters, can sling powerful, accurate spells faster than any other caster and is a beautiful thing to behold. At this point, I've only generated test encounters via the cheat console and haven't truly played the game, so I'll refrain from making too many specific recommendations, but hopefully, the above discussion helps to stir up ideas and different perspectives. I will mention that, outside of Scion of Flame, it seems that most elemental talents would likely be under-utilized even in a nuker build. Blast/Penetrating Blast have fantastic synergy with Blights, but you might not get much mileage out of them if you use other spells to nuke before mopping up with Blights auto-attacks - again, this depends on how much you rest and use your spells to nuke. Finally, don't neglect Marksman - it affects spells and its accuracy bonus makes everything you do more effective.

It doesn't appear to be a matter of syntax. For example, the following is not working: removetalent player tln_bloody_slaughter_talent Does this actually work for you? Yes I sadly had to remove some trash talent and switched it for Bloody Slaughter. Just make sure to find your actual in-game name # example main char Vorad > FindCharacter Vorad # should show Player_Game(Clone)_0 for your main char and something similar for npc > RemoveTalent Player_Game(Clone)_0 tln_Arcane_Veil > AddTalent Player_Game(Clone)_0 tln_Bloody_Slaughter_talent Try to capitalize the words as above, it worked in my case. The way I see it is that class talents do not require the "_talent" in the end while general-type talents they do require it. FindCharacter command was the missing piece - thank you for this fantastic tip! I verified that these commands even work with racial abilities, allowing us to effectively change race. In combination with IEMod and these commands, we can effectively respec companions to match hirelings in every way. There is no reason to have to make an unpleasant choice between running an optimized party and companion banter/interactions.

Caster cipher without heavy armor would die shortly after casting first spell. In this build you get the same benefits as regular ranged cipher, but are much tankier and generate focus 5 times faster, which means you can spam spells and that fact ironically makes this build better caster then your "caster cipher". Cipher spells have very good casting speed so heavy armor would make it maybe 0.3 sec longer which is nothing. What do you describe by most challenging fights? If it is single strong enemy you can debuff/CC him and kill easily. If it is alot of average/problematic enemies, position yourself with beam at corner/doorway and tank them with retaliate (for focus generation) and keep spamming CC. If there is 1 strong enemy and thrashes for help, just focus that enemy (disintegrate or CC + aa), thrashes will die by themselves (and they will actually help you with focus). So far I havent had encounter (finishing act III on PotD) where I was against alot of top tier enemies at once. Playing 3 man group and it is boring easy. At this point I think 5th tier spells alone make cypher God-like, he has everything there - strongest CC in this game (which also deal damage because of confused enemies fight each other), strongest and largest AOE damaging spell in this game (which is also CC) and strongest single target damage spell in this game. You can even initiate with disintegrate (need some stealth points) on the most problematic enemy and run away to corner or kite until that enemy die. There is so much ways of dealing with each invidual encounter. That makes this build very flexible, interesting and fun to play. Thank you for confirming that this build was tested on PotD. Looks like the enemy stats I've read about must have been exaggerated - apparently, you either fight packs of weak enemies or strong enemies in manageable numbers. With the amount of CC, buffs, and debuffs available in this game, there are many ways for a smart player to make PotD cakewalk, and it seems that this build is no exception.

Is this on PotD difficulty? I've seen a lot of feedback regarding enemies on PotD having 80+ accuracy and >80 damage per hit. If your deflection is 100 and your DR is 34, suppose you're getting attacked by 5 enemies at once every 2 sec/enemy: 35% of their attacks will graze. .5 * 80 = 40 - 34 DR = 6, so you will take 16 damage from grazes via the 20% minimum damage rule. 20% of attacks hit for 80 - 34 = 46 damage. Average damage/attack, counting 45% miss rate = .35 * 16 + .2 * 46 = 14.8. Damage taken/sec = (5 enemies * 14.8 damage)/2 = 37 DPS. At this rate, the character will drop in about 3 sec. Perhaps what I've read regarding PotD enemies' stats is exaggerated and most enemies are feeble by comparison. Otherwise, this build seems to be rather risky, and minimizing melee exposure or increasing crowd control would decrease risk at the expense of retaliation damage. And of course, rogue or any other char would survive? Cipher atleast have some cc to disable them. If they hit so hard, use confuse and let them kill each other. I dont know how did you came out with these numbers. 80 damage every 2 sec enemy that shows up in number of 5 is abit off. Ogre attacks like once per 10 or more seconds. Other, stronger enemies you just wont meet 5 at a time. You can always farm up to level 5 spells and make most tougher fights trivial with that long lasting jumping confusion. Big enemies have low will saves so it will crit most of the time for like 50 sec duration. As I mentioned, it's entirely possible that there are no packs that strong in the game. Still, it sounds like you're mainly in melee when cleaning up trash, but for tougher encounters, you have to CC most/all of the enemy packs like more typical casters and/or hide behind tanks. This not only keeps you from making use of retaliation and limits your PBAOE opportunities, but since you're wearing heavy armor and don't have maxed dexterity, your overall cast rate for CC spam will be much lower than that of normal cloth/high dex casters. I'm am not saying that this is a bad build - in fact, I can see its potential on most encounters. However, it appears optimized for trash, rather than most challenging PotD fights, and you still haven't answered if it was tested on PotD. For the most difficult encounters, you'll be mostly in caster mode, but other casters should outperform you for reasons stated above. Overall, I agree that this is a versatile and fun build for solo/small groups, but in full party of specialized characters, there are more efficient ways of CC-ing, debuffing, and nuking dangerous packs.

Is this on PotD difficulty? I've seen a lot of feedback regarding enemies on PotD having 80+ accuracy and >80 damage per hit. If your deflection is 100 and your DR is 34, suppose you're getting attacked by 5 enemies at once every 2 sec/enemy: 35% of their attacks will graze. .5 * 80 = 40 - 34 DR = 6, so you will take 16 damage from grazes via the 20% minimum damage rule. 20% of attacks hit for 80 - 34 = 46 damage. Average damage/attack, counting 45% miss rate = .35 * 16 + .2 * 46 = 14.8. Damage taken/sec = (5 enemies * 14.8 damage)/2 = 37 DPS. At this rate, the character will drop in about 3 sec. Perhaps what I've read regarding PotD enemies' stats is exaggerated and most enemies are feeble by comparison. Otherwise, this build seems to be rather risky, and minimizing melee exposure or increasing crowd control would decrease risk at the expense of retaliation damage.

Does PoE force players to budget significantly, or do we end up swimming in coppers by a certain point in the game? Do we end up with enough cp to fully enchant multiple guns/character, purchase hirelings, upgrade stronghold, etc., or do we always face limitations? For those of you who have beaten the game, what was your final cp count and were you conservative/liberal with your spending?