Crucis

Jerek, maybe it's just my play style, but to me, Arms Bearer is a must have talent, and I really need a good reason NOT to take it, rather than the reverse. I usually don't take it with Durance, for example, because he only has 2 favored weapons (sword and arquebus), and any other weapon type would take a serious accuracy hit, so I usually don't bother with the extra weapon slot for him. But most of the time, I like having my characters carry 2 melee weapons covering 2 different damage types, and one ranged weapon. I prefer having significant flexibility in my choice of weapons.

To be honest, I don't disagree. Personally I'd prefer plate to simply have a steeper recovery penalty, either 55% or 60%, but a -1 movement could work too (and could be offset by the talent if you wanted). I just got distracted is all Honestly, one of my gripes with armor in PoE is that there's too much incentive to play one's characters either all-up armored with plate or go to the other extreme with very little armor. The armor system doesn't give any particularly good reason to play medium armors other than doing so for more role playing reasons, like I do. I wish that there were some factors in the armor system that created an incentive for some characters to wear medium armor, other than what special effects some enchanted medium armors might have. In my most recent party, I could have had Sagani wearing one of the good padded armors to get a lower recovery, but I decided to stick with her wearing hide armor (the Superb hide armor, in particular) for role playing reasons. It just felt right for her character as both a ranger and someone from a more woodsey culture to prefer wearing hides to wearing a more "civilized" set of padded armor. On a side note, I think that it would have been nice if there'd been a set of "padded" armor or even "robes" that looked like the Tundra clothing you could buy in Stalwart (along with the Tundra hood). It might have been technically "padded armor" even if it looked more like a bunch of stitched together hides. It would have been a nice touch. Regarding a small movement penalty for wearing plate, frankly, I don't think that it's really much of a penalty at all most of the time. Maybe it's just my own play style, but I tend to let the enemy come to me. And as such, movement speed tends to matter very little to most of my characters. Oh, I played Zahua in my recent party, and played him as a light armor wearing, who wore the boots of speed as well as took the Long Stride monk ability to give him great foot speed. And he often used that great speed to zip past the enemy into their rear to engage enemy spellcasters and archers. But generally, I don't worry about foot speed with my front line types.

Well, playing a priest PC is one way to get around having Durance in your party.

Good stuff, Jerek. I guess that I just think that having plate armor reduce a character's overall movement rate a little would be a nice balancing factor compared to lesser armors, as well as injecting a small degree of (semi?) realism into the mix. Not a huge deal.

Or you could play a Bleakwalker PC and use Durance as your "evil" priest, since it doesn't seem like being in a party with a Bleakwalker PC would bother him much, if at all ... though I can't speak for any of the other Companions.

Viconia was cool. Most characters in BG games had a redeeming qualities to them. Same can't be said for poor Durance -> F* ugly, F* annoying and boring religious NPC, still have to keep him around while "learning the ropes" cause hes damn useful. Learn from that Obsidian! When you're going to make an NPC that most players have to stick with, at least make it a pleasant one. Himself, without spoiling anything, religion is a major factor in PoE's storyline. Beyond that, priests are, well, PRIESTS!!! Of course they're going to be religious in nature! How could they not be and still be priests? To me, a "priest" who wasn't religious would be one without any priestly powers because his deity wouldn't bless him with those powers due to his or her lack of faith. I will say that you arguably have a point about how he could be a more pleasant character. But then again, Durance wouldn't be who he was if he was any other way. Without going into any details, I'm not sure how well a "pleasant" priest NPC would interact with the main storyline. In a story that didn't include so many religious elements in it, a pleasant priest would probably do just fine. The thing with Durance is that he is ugly, annoying, and unpleasant. But most people also think that he's very well written as well. Might it have been nicer to have a pleasant priest Companion? Perhaps. It just seems to me that the Durance character is better suited to the story PoE tells than a pleasant priest could be. But if you don't like the idea of having a "religious" Companion in your party, then I'd suggest that having a Companion priest isn't going to be a good fit.

One thing that I've kind of wished existed was a step between fully realized Companions and mercs that you create entirely on your own. Note that I fully understand that there's only so much that the devs could do with the time and resources they had, and that this wish would probably have never been made regardless. But what I've sort of wished for was to have some sort of intermediate semi-premade mercs Probably with their own portraits, and probably using pre-set voices from the existing voice selections. And probably with their own fixed attributes, race, class, along with a little background history. But otherwise being barely a step above regular mercs. No banter. No personal quests. Essentially a partially pre-made merc. And maybe spread them around at the various inns around the region. For example, maybe a rogue named Lily might only be found at the Salty Mast, while a ranger named Rolf might only be found in Dyrford's inn. Why? Because sometimes one can't come up with a character concept that floats your boat, and some of us might not like creating little merc robots that had no personality, even if that "personality" is nothing more than I list above. Anyways, like I said before, I know it won't come to pass and like never would have. But I think that it might have been a cool idea regardless.

Well it depends on exactly what you mean by designed. Certainly no one ran the calculations to optimise it perfectly, but a process of trial and error improved the designs slowly but surely so that late medieval plate was surprisingly cleverly designed. Don't forget that this was something designed to protect people from death and, until the very latest periods where plate was fielded, primarily to protect the lives or rich people. That gives a good reason for your artisans to design the absolutely best plate they can in order to secure the lucrative business of selling this stuff to the nobility. But even before that people were aware of the importance of distributing weight to some extent. Generally when wearing a mail shirt or hauberk a warrior would wear a thick leather belt tightly around their waist and allow the mail to sag over it, taking the weight off their shoulders and putting it onto their hips thus making it far less tiring to fight in. Generally speaking when it comes to situations where peoples' lives are on the line technology improves pretty fast. You can find any number of videos of people wearing reproduction plate and running, doing cartwheels and other acrobatic things on YouTube. People tend to overestimate the weight of a full plate harness: they'd typically weigh no more than 25kg (about 55lbs), often less (particularly for suits designed for fighting on foot) and this would be distributed over the whole body both by design and necessity as you pointed out above. Of course going for long periods of time wearing 25kg of gear would be tiring, but the evidence is that over shorter periods of time it doesn't limit mobility much at all. Now of course, the only people wearing plate would have been professional soldiers of some sort, so whilst not necessarily Might 18+ characters it's probably fair to assume they were of above average strength and endurance and had trained wearing their armour. As a side note, plate worn for jousting tournaments was much thicker and heavier. You might wonder why you wouldn't want the absolute best protection in battle but the answer is simply that it has to be a compromise. This heavy jousting armour probably did slow the wearer, and it definitely reduced vision, two things that a battlefield soldier couldn't afford. Actual field plate would be thinner in less important areas, focussing it's protection on the head, neck and torso. It also made heavy use of cleverly designed slanted surfaces which made it very hard to strike a square blow against the plate, and naturally angled in such ways to direct blows away from vital areas. It was actually really clever stuff. Partly certainly, but the body armour, weapon, spare ammunition, grenades, small med kits etc. all add up to a surprising amount of weight. A. Given how costly I'd imagine that plate armor was, I'd expect that its use was somewhat limited to noblemen/knights. B. And rather than thinking in terms of "distributing weight" in the modern sense, it wouldn't surprise me if these medieval plate armor designers were thinking more in terms of good balance (but I could be full of hot air on that). And as you point out, designing armor in such a way as to make it difficult to land blow squarely. C. I'm not sure how one would define a "professional soldier" in a medieval setting. Oh, sure, some knights would probably qualify. But so would a bunch of plain ol' soldiers and I doubt that they were wearing plate. I'd think that it would be too costly to outfit dozens or hundreds of medieval grunts in plate. Even chain mail or breast plates might be too costly to be used in large numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if those professional grunts were wearing something closer to leather armor, simply due to cost issues. I will say that it wouldn't surprise me if some noble's house guard was outfitted in snazzier but more costly armors, if only for appearance's sake. D. Re Modern solders. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me that, even after losing their backpacks, the other stuff they'd be wearing still added up to a not insignificant amount of weight. But the things you mention are necessary items in combat. And I have little doubt that modern soldiers train while wearing all that gear to get used to the weight while moving. E. Even if a person wearing plate retains a significant portion of their agility, etc. that's not the same thing as saying that plate wouldn't slow down a person's actual running speed while wearing plate compared to a similar person wearing lighter armor. In short, I have a hard time believing that a person in plate would be able to keep up with a person wearing padded armor, assuming that the two people were equally fleet a foot without armor.

I agree that on the whole, triggering an insta-kill on tougher vessels is more valuable than against lesser vessels. I will say in defense of using it against lesser vessels that the second upgrade level does require you to kill 10 vessels (or 50 enemies). So if you happen to be going through Durgan's Battery while you're in the midst of the upgrade process, you'll obviously be very happy to insta-kill any vessel you can to get those 10 kills.

Probably not a bad idea, KDubya, though there are some really nice weapons in there that would be painful to give up on, like the Persistence hunting bow and the saber (Resolution?) that are both found on level 4. Honestly, while I like some of the soulbound weapons, I'm not a fan of the soulbound concept itself. I don't like having to go around changing my play style and doing crazy things just for the sake of empowering these weapons. Like having to play the user of The Redeemer in a way to get them knocked out in battle 4-5 times and revived in battle. With my last party, I just about had to play Pallegina, my Redeemer user, without any armor or any other accessories, just to get the enemy to knock her out. (I wouldn't play her naked. Maybe that makes me a prude, but I put her in a set of Valian clothes.) And the thing with having her wear no armor was that offensively, it almost made her more dangerous in a way because she had no recovery penalty, so she was swinging the Redeemer that much more often. For a while, it was easier getting kills than it was trying to get the enemy to please, please, please knock her out so I could revive her. And all those kills requirements are a pain too, because IMO it wrecks the team dynamic. Normally, I have my party working as a team, and it doesn't matter who's getting the kills or the damage as long as the enemies are defeated. But with these kill requirements, you have to just about stop the rest of your party from targeting certain enemies just to allow the person with the soulbound weapon to grab the kill. And even then, sometimes, characters will ignore what you tell them to do and attack the wounded character anyways. And then when all's said and done, you end up with weapons that are either nearly game imbalancingly OP, like the Redeemer, or you end up with very underwhelming weapons. Don't get me wrong. I love The Redeemer. I love the "Holy Avenger"-ish quality of it. The glowy greatsword of power. I just wish that it wasn't quite so OP with its anti-vessels insta-kill ability. Takes a lot of the challenge out if the game, IMO. I dunno, maybe my luck was just bad but I found the redeemer quite underwhelming and I was even trying it out on a Barbarian. It didn't proc very often so two handers like Mabecs Morningstar still felt better. I'm having similar experience with stormcaller on my ranger right now, it rarely procs but the shock dmg and shock DR reduction makes it worth it. The soulbound mace looks utterly useless. The grey sweeper was decent on barbarian. Greenstone staff I haven't tried yet but all in all I'd say that the soulbound weapons aren't OP and are generally worse then durganized unique weapons such as Tallgrass/Persistence/Tidefall/Drawn in spring etc etc Stormcaller seems to proc often enough for me, but I agree that it's normal, constantly on abilities are quite excellent all by themselves. Simply being a Piercing/Shock weapon all by itself is quite special. And the -6 Shock DR is a nice bonus as well. As for The Redeemer, I haven't used it as an all the time weapon. I'd have Pallegina switch to another weapon when there were no vessels around. Usually either Tidefall, or the God(something) hammer (to use with the Outworn Buckler). The Grey Sleeper, like many other soulbound weapons, is unremarkable. I will say that it's a bit amusing when it summons some vessels to fight at your side. Honestly, at the levels you'd be fighting at with the Sleeper, I'm not sure that those vessels are good for anything but cannon fodder. But they're still mildly amusing when they appear.

I don't use the flameblade from those gloves, because I never REMEMBER to use it. It's why I just plain dislike items with spells that are bound to them, because they're only useful *IF* you remember to cast the bound spell. Which I almost never do. On top of that, if you look more closely at the flameblade, it doesn't have any accuracy bonuses, IIRC. So using it will cause you to incur significant accuracy "penalties" later in the game when you're using nothing worse than Exceptional or better weapons. As for the Redeemer, we will have to agree to disagree. I think that its insta-kill of vessels utterly trashes game balance in those latter parts of the game where there are vessels that are supposed to be extremely difficult enemies. The Redeemer just turns those battles into jokes. Seriously, I've played two parties through to the end and fought Thaos with Pallegina armed with The Redeemer. And both times, she completely blew away Woedica's Judges so quickly that it removed even the slightest hint of challenge from the battle. I'll admit that when there are no vessels around, The Redeemer is nothing special. But when there are, it's a virtual insta-death machine. And that's the problem. It's completely imbalanced. Instant death for vessels. Merely a nice, but unenchantable Superb great sword against non-vessels. I honestly think that the Redeemer would have been a better, more balanced weapon if it didn't have a singular focus on vessels, but was just an all-around excellent weapon. Instead of (when fully upgraded) being a Superb weapon, maybe it should have been a Legendary weapon. And instead of Holy Power castable 3/rest, make it +2 Might whenever it's wielded. (I just don't like bound spells that are only useful if one remembers to cast them.) And so on...

I have a hard time imagining that plate was designed to distribute its weight, etc. etc. That seems like much too advanced a concept for the middle ages. I suspect that the degree to which weight happens to be distributed is merely a natural consequence of putting some armor on every part of the wearer's body. And frankly, I find it hard to believe that carrying that much weight of armor wouldn't be cumbersome and reduce one's mobility. Oh, I suppose if one was a 18+ Might character, the weight of plate armor might seem barely noticeable. But I'd think that a more average person would find plate to be very encumbering. Of course, any sort of attempt to codify this would probably be more complex than it's worth. As for modern US soldiers, I don't know exactly what you mean by "kit". But if you mean their backpacks, wouldn't they take them off before they were about to engage in actual fighting (assuming they were able to do so)?

It'd be nice from a balance perspective as well, since plate armour has 2 more dr than brigandine for the same speed penalty (and doesn't follow the 1 dr for 5% malus like everything else) I personally don't understand why Brigandine has the same recovery penalty as Plate. I don't see why the devs didn't shift it down to 45%, and drop all other armors down by 5% at the same time, so that there was a single type of armor at each increment of 5% between 0 and 50% recovery.

1. I disagree on the Redeemer. I think that its anti-vessel insta-kill ability is utterly imbalanced to the point of being game breaking. It should be replaced with the standard vessel "slaying" effect of (IIRC) +4 accuracy and +25% damage. That would fix the problem quite nicely. 2. Another big problem I have with the soulbound weapons is that because you can't upgrade them yourself outside of the soulbound process, you lose out on the most important upgrade, the Durgan steel upgrade. 3. I agree that Stormcaller and the blue scepter are probably the two best (and easiest to get) soulbound weapons for regular and constant use. Actually, I suppose that one could say the same for Abydon's hammer, but since you get it so late in WM2, it's of limited use, depending on how early you actually do WM2. The soulbound armor is nice enough, but not really all that special IMO. And once again, it loses out because it can't be durganized. 4. As for the Soulbound shield being the best shield in the game, I'm not so sure I agree. I tend to think that the Little Savior small shield is outstanding, and the Outworn Buckler is very close (when upgraded to Superb), and both can be further upgraded with Durgan steel. Having both the Little Savior and the OB in play in a party means a +10 to all defenses for everyone close by, and that's nothing to sneeze at. And for their users, each is (assuming the superb upgraded version of OB) +25 DEFL shield (+8 for being a small shield, +12 for being Superb, and +5 for the Herald effect), with no accuracy penalty. Sure, they may not have the snazzy effects that the dragon's max shield has, but I like the simplicity of them. The not needing to cast bound spells to get the full value out of the shield. So, honestly, I'll take the Little Savior over the Dragon's Maw every time, for that reason. Not to mention that Little Savior isn't limited to only 2 classes ... 2 classes that I might prefer using a two handed weapon. Heck, I got the Dragon's Maw shield with my recently completed party and fully upgraded it. And proceeded to set it aside because I just liked my fighter using a 2H weapon more than a 1H weapon with this otherwise very nice shield. I'd spent the entire game prior to picking up the DM shield with my PC fighter using Estocs. And he felt almost nerfed being limited to using a 1H weapon. Oh, I suppose if he'd gone thru the game as a sword and board fighter, I'd have seen it differently. But he didn't. Oh well.

While priests are exceptionally useful, it is entirely possible to get along without one. In the party I just completed, I ended up putting Durance in my "reserve" and used a full party without a priest, relying on Pallegina for combat healing duties instead. I will say though that if one does intend on using a paladin in place of a priest in a party, it helps a lot if you take certain abilities. Lay on Hands/Greater Lay on Hands for healing, Aegis of Loyalty for dealing with Charmed, Dominated, or confused team mates, and Reviving Exhortation for revivals. And either Zealous Focus or Zealous Endurance. A well built paladin can cover some of the biggest holes left by not having a priest in the party. And in addition to this, the new-ish Second Wind self-healing ability that comes from the Athletics skill also helps in this regard too, since it's often a character's first option for healing lost END (at least if the character has enough points in Athletics to make Second Wind strong enough to heal a decent amount of END). And the upside here is, that if you are able to get comfortable with a party without a priest, you may end up with a more capable offensive fighting force.

Probably not a bad idea, KDubya, though there are some really nice weapons in there that would be painful to give up on, like the Persistence hunting bow and the saber (Resolution?) that are both found on level 4. Honestly, while I like some of the soulbound weapons, I'm not a fan of the soulbound concept itself. I don't like having to go around changing my play style and doing crazy things just for the sake of empowering these weapons. Like having to play the user of The Redeemer in a way to get them knocked out in battle 4-5 times and revived in battle. With my last party, I just about had to play Pallegina, my Redeemer user, without any armor or any other accessories, just to get the enemy to knock her out. (I wouldn't play her naked. Maybe that makes me a prude, but I put her in a set of Valian clothes.) And the thing with having her wear no armor was that offensively, it almost made her more dangerous in a way because she had no recovery penalty, so she was swinging the Redeemer that much more often. For a while, it was easier getting kills than it was trying to get the enemy to please, please, please knock her out so I could revive her. And all those kills requirements are a pain too, because IMO it wrecks the team dynamic. Normally, I have my party working as a team, and it doesn't matter who's getting the kills or the damage as long as the enemies are defeated. But with these kill requirements, you have to just about stop the rest of your party from targeting certain enemies just to allow the person with the soulbound weapon to grab the kill. And even then, sometimes, characters will ignore what you tell them to do and attack the wounded character anyways. And then when all's said and done, you end up with weapons that are either nearly game imbalancingly OP, like the Redeemer, or you end up with very underwhelming weapons. Don't get me wrong. I love The Redeemer. I love the "Holy Avenger"-ish quality of it. The glowy greatsword of power. I just wish that it wasn't quite so OP with its anti-vessels insta-kill ability. Takes a lot of the challenge out if the game, IMO.

I picked up the Unlabored Blade and decided to go through the upgrade process with my recently completed party. And after completing the 3 stages of it, I was seriously worried that I wouldn't have enough enemies left in the game to get it fully upgraded. And I was about to just put it aside and forget about it, when it occurred to me to go on a hunting trip across the Dyrwood. Basically, I went all around some of the maps around Dyrford area looking for animals to kill. Dear, bears, boars, whatever. And that got me about 2/3'd of the way to the 1500 damage. Then I went to the gorge and totally lucked out. There was a group of puddings and spores that I'd somehow missed, so I had Devil take them all on 1v1 ... And because he was immune to being confused, she could just wade into them, ignoring the spores, while the rest of my party just laid back and cheered her on, until I saw that she'd gotten the 1500 damage needed, at which point the rest of my party joined in to get the battle over with sooner. I did this before going to the monk abbey. And honestly, I don't know if she could have gotten it done there, because the process of getting the 1500 damage needed in that final stage using a weapon that's got a -8 accuracy and -33% damage penalty would have been painful. Possibly making Devil nearly useless against the monks. But using a weapon with those penalties against Bambi, Yogi, and friends was a lot easier, even if it was a little hard on the wildlife population of the wilderness around Dyrford.

Not that I've noticed. There doesn't seem to be any special benefit to using the matched set. But that's ok. One thing that does kind of stink is that I usually have Pallegina in my party, usually wearing one of those popular heavy armors. But because she's a god-like, she can't wear any of the matching helmets. Upside though, Pallegina looks really, good in either the green plate armor or the white shiny armor. (I'm not a fan of the red armor myself, but I know that many are. I don't like the look or the frenzy benefit.) On a side note, I think that the -1 to movement speed penalty on the White Crest Plate is a great idea for all plate armor. It's a way to make wearing plate armor have a "cost" without having some sort of DEX penalty or something else. And after all, plate armor should be heavy and cumbersome, so a movement penalty seems like a small price to pay for the level of protection that plate armor offers.

Vulnerable Attack is probably best for lower base damage 1H weapons to increase their ability to get some damage past the enemy's DR. OTOH, if your character is high Might using a big ol' 2H weapon, getting damage past the DR is less of an issue, and Savage Attack is probably the better choice.

Some comments in response. While I don't agree with everything you say, good post (the recent one regarding WM1/2), madscientist. 1. Regarding IWD, personally I loved the IWD games because I enjoy the heavy fighting. And while story is important to me, I also tend to view it as the way to tie all the battles together. 2. Regarding the WM story line, I do tend to agree that it seems a bit out of place within the time line of the main plot. It seems to me that the WM story line might have been a better fit if it occurred after the end of the main PoE plot, similar to ToB to BG2. It also seems to me that this would have served to help with balance issues during the main story, because all the WM story line's XP would be earned after the main story ends. 3. I agree about the thing where enemies "stand around and wait for you". In truth, they still did this even in the BG1/2 and IWD1/2 games. That said, I think that IWD2, in particular, had a number of battle scenarios that were very interesting in their own way. The PoE battles are just too cookie cutter in their general set up. I would strongly suggest that the devs had looked back at IWD2's larger battles for inspiration in this matter. 4. The Eyeless. I agree regarding the insta-kill weapons. IMO, the insta-kill weapons are OP and unbalancing. Assuming that your party has one person using Abydon's hammer and another using The Redeemer, you have two weapons that can insta-kill Eyeless, not to mention The Redeemer can insta-kill Woedica's Judges in the final battle vs Thaos as well. Plus there's an anti-spirit Insta-kill morning star hidden away in the court of the penitents, though the spirits on those two maps prior to the final Thaos battle hardly require an insta-kill weapon to be taken down with relative ease.

Frankly, the OP's question points to what I see as a flaw in paladin order designs. The paladin orders' unique abilities are all rather weak compared to Pallegina's order. Not that it's at all like to happen at this late date, but paladins need more variety in the abilities related to their choice of order. And these order abilities need to be higher level abilities, not just some weak low level abilities that are hardly worth the trouble to take. It might also be nice if the pally orders had an ability or in-class talent similar to priests where their order had a favored weapon or 2, or a favored weapon focus group. Heck, I'm not a fan of the weapon group concept, but going with it ... I'd rather have an order have a favored GROUP rather than a couple of favored weapons from different groups. That is one thing about priests I don't like, i.e. having favored weapons from different groups. Side note, I think that it's a bit unfair right now that Skaen priests get 2 favored weapons from the same weapons group while the other priest orders have favored weapons from 2 different groups. This means that Skaenite priests need only take WF Ruffian and they get a +6 accuracy to both of the favored weapons, along with the in-class talent that gives a +10 accuracy bonus to those 2 weapons. If weapon groups remain a thing, orders with 2+ favored weapons should have those weapons come from the same group. OR no orders should have their favored weapons from the same group.

In the run through I just now completed, Azzuro didn't even first show up until very, very late in the campaign, after I'd completed WM1, IIRC. On the upside, for the first time since I've been playing this game, he sold me the Superb shield, instead of an endless string of Rimecutters, Wurmwulls, and lesser stuff. (About damned time.)

Whine, whine, whine, whine, whine. And would you like some cheese with that whine? In BG2, the dragons didn't have buddies harassing you while you tried to fight the dragon. That makes a HUGE difference. In BG2, you could spread your party out all around the dragon without fear of a dragon's buddies catching those individual party members by their lonesome and smack them down. In PoE, you need to keep your party somewhat together to defend against the dragon's buddies. And at the same time, that also ends up making your party more vulnerable to the dragon's major attacks. Also in BG2, you would buff your party up with a gazillion spells to practically make yourself invulnerable. However, this process was, IMO, horribly boring!!! I hated having to have to cast that many spells before any decently difficult battle just because one felt it was necessary if one wanted to not get trashed. In PoE, you can fight a dragon with barely any buffs. About the only one I think one really "needs" is the protection from fear, level 1 priest spell or scroll. Anything else is optional. I think that the only thing that's horribly balanced here are the minds of those who are constantly whining.

Yeah, that particular bounty battle is nasty as all hell. With my current party, I beat them in my first attempt, but it was ridiculously close. My Fighter PC and Zahua were the last two on their feet against two of them. Don't remember what those last 2 enemies were. They weren't the casters or chanters. And they had DEFL's that were sky high, so I was having trouble getting hits on them. Thankfully I was finally able to land a blow here and there and finish them off, but not before my PC and Zahua were on their last legs. It was that close. Honestly, I don't particularly like this fight. Not because of the difficulty of the enemies. What I don't like is the location. The ground is very restricted, and that ruins blocks your view of your characters if the fight ends up behind it. At least with the other bounty fights, the battles are in somewhat more open and easier to use ground. This ground just stinks. Oh well.

OK, I just finished the Llengrath battle on my first try. (I don't count my encounter with Llengrath with my last party because I talked my way out of fighting that time.) It was a tough fight, but I've had tougher ones. For all Llengrath's reputation in the game lore, she didn't seem particularly tough at all. And the dragons themselves didn't seem any tougher than other dragons in the game. That said, it was a tough fight and it came down to the larger green bog dragon (who was "nearly dead") vs Sagani who was pretty badly wounded herself. Everyone else in my party was down, and I don't have Sagani built with any Lore so she couldn't revive anyone. All she could do was run and shoot, run and shoot. And against a dragon with a high Lightning DR, so unless she triggered returning storm with Stormcaller, she was doing around 3-5 damage per shot. Thankfully, she wears boots of speed, so she could easily out run the dragon. But frankly, this one on one, Sagani vs the Bog Dragon was boring as all helI. I guess that I just don't find anything enjoyable about running around the map kiting a single enemy. And this 1v1 engagement told me all I needed to know about why I'd hate playing the game solo.