Crucis

Minsc would have probably been better suited to being a Berzerker fighter kit than a true Barbarian. As for Jimmy's point, I'm not buying it because frankly, nearly every other non-spellcasting class is aimed, however loosely, at being melee combatants. So I see not one bloody thing wrong with rangers being skewed towards ranged combat.

^This!!! It's ridiculous that a character can squeeze between 2 other characters before an encounter begins, but after the first shot is fired, he can't squeeze back thru that same gap! But also, pathfinding out of combat has its own issues. The one that really gets me is this. Say that your party is slowly moving down a narrow passageway in a 2-wide column, and the passageway is too narrow for the characters to move with their normal intervals. What often happens is that the guys at the back for reasons that make absolutely no sense whatsoever end up squeezing thru the formation and moving in front of the guys in the 1 and 2 positions! This needs to be fixed. IMO, no matter what the nature of the paths your party is moving through, the relative positions of the party, 1 thru 6 should remain the same. The #5 guy should never ever move in front of the party just because the terrain is too narrow for the normal formation. If that means that the formation has to be strung out more, then it should do so. The guys at the rear of the formation should always STAY at the rear of the formation unless ordered to do otherwise by a direction action of the player.

And don't forget those "Second Chance" items. Those always come in handy, too. OW ! i ran 4 Second Chance items that playtrough also ! :D Ring of Wonders Eder's Armor ( enchanted it all the way up to exceptional and used for whole game on Battlemage ) Rogue Knight Quest Armor and cloth armor with second chance Edit : about Intellect Rogues and barbs . Well Barbarian does AOE carnage that is better than most of aoe's wizzard can get because its free and auto proc so intellect here is a beast stat to increase it even more . Rogues are quite the opposite , they do no aoe but they got sneak attack and they have limited debuff's for sneak attack( 2 Cripling Strikes for the most of the game only +fearsome strike at lvl 9 which is 1 per rest) so you want to keep them rolling as long as possible thus you need duration from intelect ( this is more of a ranged rogue thing also i think because in melee you want defenses even with a rogue and melee rogue can debuff just by flanking the enemy himself , but for ranged rogue Intellect is one of the 3 main Stats ) You're not getting the point. OF COURSE, in the PoE system it makes sense to have a solid INT on a Barb. That's NOT the point. The point is that the very idea of a smart barbarian is dumb! And a stat system that encourages such an utterly counter-intuitive, counter-stereotypical vision of barbarians is just plain dumb. Put another way, I don't blame players for using the PoE system as it is. I blame the PoE devs for creating the dumb system in the first place. Heh , you really believe there were no Intellectual barbarians :D ? This discussion happened somewhere on the forum alrdy lol Also i couldnt blame dev's for this attribute system , there are a ton of other things that you should blame devs for this is a very minor compared to lets say encounter design A few things.... 1. Oh there were certainly the occasional intelligent barbarian. But INT shouldn't be used in any way to improve a barbarian's ability to do damage. INT should be a stat that enhances non-combat things for a barbarian, such as talking abilities, or skills such as Lore. 2. As for blaming the Devs for the attribute system, sorry, but I think that it all starts with the attribute system and builds from there. It's part of the foundation of the game. And if you don't get it right, everything else is affected by the flaws in that system.

And don't forget those "Second Chance" items. Those always come in handy, too. OW ! i ran 4 Second Chance items that playtrough also ! :D Ring of Wonders Eder's Armor ( enchanted it all the way up to exceptional and used for whole game on Battlemage ) Rogue Knight Quest Armor and cloth armor with second chance Edit : about Intellect Rogues and barbs . Well Barbarian does AOE carnage that is better than most of aoe's wizzard can get because its free and auto proc so intellect here is a beast stat to increase it even more . Rogues are quite the opposite , they do no aoe but they got sneak attack and they have limited debuff's for sneak attack( 2 Cripling Strikes for the most of the game only +fearsome strike at lvl 9 which is 1 per rest) so you want to keep them rolling as long as possible thus you need duration from intelect ( this is more of a ranged rogue thing also i think because in melee you want defenses even with a rogue and melee rogue can debuff just by flanking the enemy himself , but for ranged rogue Intellect is one of the 3 main Stats ) You're not getting the point. OF COURSE, in the PoE system it makes sense to have a solid INT on a Barb. That's NOT the point. The point is that the very idea of a smart barbarian is dumb! And a stat system that encourages such an utterly counter-intuitive, counter-stereotypical vision of barbarians is just plain dumb. Put another way, I don't blame players for using the PoE system as it is. I blame the PoE devs for creating the dumb system in the first place.

"Will" is a defensive stat, used against mental attacks. Will defense items can be useful on just about any character. INT is useful for any character that does some sort of damage over time, or has some other sort of effect over time. The higher the INT, the greater the time the effect endures. Focus for ciphers is increased by getting hits on enemies with physical weapons. Blunderbusses are particularly good at this because they fire 6 pellets in a single "shot", which means that you can recharge Focus quite quickly the more of the pellets that hit the enemy. As for the attributes seeming to be messed up, I agree. It seems to me that the PoE devs were trying to differentiate PoE from DnD and decided that stats were one place to do it. Frankly, it just seems to me that far too many of the stats are counter-intuitive. Might (aka Strength), Con, and Dex ought to be important stats to front line fighters. It just seems bizarre to have Resolve and perception trumping Might, Con, and Dex for those frontliners. Bizarre. Or the idea that a cipher ... a psionicist ... should care about Might seems really weird. I could go on, but you get the point.

This makes a lot of sense, except for rangers and Fan of Flames. Because FoF isn't foe only and Rangers aren't front liners, this spell doesn't seem all that well suited for Rangers, except perhaps in desperate situations. I see FoF as better for true front liners, like a Fighter who can use the spell to deep fry the enemies who are in his face.

Sorry, Atchod. Not buying what you're selling.

The same is true for the staff that's hidden on EP level 3 where you need to put the Resolution saber in a statue's hand to open a hidden door. Also, I fully agree about getting unique weapons with lash effects. I can add those effects myself. Unique weapons that use effects the player can add only makes those weapons less valuable. The ones that are really good are those with effects that the player CANNOT add himself. Also, I agree that any treasure items that are that well hidden and tricky to get should be really, REALLY good items. Speaking of that particular saber, The Flames of Fair Rhian, regardless of whether one likes Fireball or not, I'm not really fond of spell bound effects on weapons like this. (Wizard's staffs are a bit of a different animal, and bound spells on them make plenty of sense to me.)

I agree. This is just plain silly from an RP standpoint. From a powergaming PoV, it only makes sense to increase a barb's INT. Just a little more silliness from PoE's stat system. Much as I really like this game, the way they use stats seems really .... well .... silly. It seems like the devs wanted to differentiate PoE from DnD in this regard, but ended up just doing something that seems rather counter-intuitive and dumb. Barbs that care about maxing out INT? Fighters carrying more about PER and RES than Might, CON, and DEX? Wizards caring about Might at all? Paladins with no Resolve?

And don't forget those "Second Chance" items. Those always come in handy, too.

Ah, that must be the "key" to this room. I've looked it up in an online strategy guide, and it says that there's a hidden switch in the pedestal in the middle of the round room, next to the hidden room. But my Rogue who I had at 12 in Mechanics couldn't find that switch, so that much be the reason why. Thanks. Have to remember that next time.

Will, Reflex, Deflection, and Fortitude are all defensive in nature only. So priests need int for making their buffs and debuffs last longer and might for magnitude on heals and attack spells. ACCURACY is what a priest needs to land his spells with hits and crits instead of grazes and misses. One of the strongest ways to boost (effective) accuracy is to debuff the specific defense that you're about to roll against. For skills: * every char should have at least 2 Athletics and the frontliners should have more. Because fatigue penalties really suck. * One character MUST have high mechanics, but all the other characters can skip it. * Your background choices in character creation can be very important. It's easier to reach high levels of a skill with the right background. * Having a party-wide 2-4 stealth lets you bypass encounters you don't want to fight and pre-position yourself advantageously. * Lore and Survival: Lore has a lot of dialog options in the game associated with it, Survival has less. Since both affect consumables, and you only have 4 slots for them, I'd recommend choosing 3 of your chars to have high lore for the scrolls, and 3 of your chars to have high survival for the potions. Advanced tips: * Priests get no bonus to the mechanic skill, but they have some of the best spell-traps. If you build one instead of using durance, consider choosing a mechanics background and make him your trapper, because the skill will also boost his spell traps. * Give your Mechanics char more stealth than the party average. Then he can get closer to the enemy when pre-placing item-based traps, and he can skulk around friendly homes and palaces, robbing them blind without getting caught. * Consider giving all characters 2 lore. That costs 3 skill points maximum and grants access to level 1 scrolls. Level 1 scrolls are not weak. * I personally feel that scrolls are better for single-target characters and frontliners, while survival is better for casters and barbs. Why? Accuracy potions affect the fight much more when you're making several attacks at once. Some comments. 1. I believe that 3, rather than 2, is the minimum that all characters should have, since that reduces combat fatigue by 90%. 2. 100% agree on Stealth. There's no point in trying to move your entire party stealthfully close to the enemy if one of your party has no stealth and stands out like a searchlight. 3. Agree that 2 Lore is very useful for every member of a party. For example, casting the Fan of Fire (Flames?) spell can be difficult from the back line with the rest of your party in the way, but a front liner is perfect for using that spell (from a scroll). 4. While scrolls may seem better suited to someone other than a mage, one suggestion I'd make is if you have a Revival scroll to revive a knocked out character and has a relatively high Lore requirement, I suggest NOT having the priest carry it. Why? Because it's likely that the Priest will have this spell in his spell inventory already, and having a different character capable of doing a revival is a good fallback option ... particularly if it's the priest who needs reviving. (Had this happen last night in the battle vs Thaos. Was damned convenient to have Grieving Mother carrying the Revival Scrolls, let me tell you!) 5. Even if you have a dedicated Mechanics master other than a priest (such as Durance), it's not necessarily a bad thing to invest some points in Mechanics for a priest who isn't the party's mechanics specialist because of their trap spells. You probably wouldn't want to invest a huge number of skill points in it, but some points might be worth the investment. Regardless, I do agree that there's some good synergy when it comes to the Mechanics skill and the Priest class, due to their trap spells.

If that's the room I'm thinking of, I couldn't figure out how to get into that room either. And I had a dedicated maxed-out Mechanics skill Rogue in my party, who was probably at level 11 or 12 at the time, since I delayed doing the final levels of the EP dungeon until near the end of the game. I looked and looked and looked for a secret hidden (i.e. purple highlighted) switch or anything else that might trigger opening that rather obvious "secret" door, and could never find a thing, sadly. So I'm rather curious as well.

Most important aspect of going ranged DPS imo. Also, because you want to wear simple clothing anyway, you can put on some of the more "fancier" ones and look like a pimp while cruising around saving the country There's just something ... wrong ... with the idea of a Ranger pimping around the country wearing those silly looking Vallian duds. Seems to me that a proper ranger needs some less citified clothes.

Thaos is basically a level 12 Priest with really high Attributes. He starts the fight by buffing himself, then his statues, then continuously cycles through level 7-8 Priest nukes, stopping only to heal or reapply buffs whenever they wear off. At least one of the nukes is an area DoT that does not show up in the combat log (probably level 8 "Spark the Souls of the Righteous"). If you neither disable him nor force him to heal/rebuff, he has more than enough nukes to wipe a level 12 party on Hard (e.g. by casting Cleansing Flame on all of your party members in turn, repeatedly). It's worth noting that without his buffs, neither Thaos nor his statues are very durable. Arcane Dampener and Cleansing Flame really shine here. In the two times I've fought this battle, Thaos doesn't hang around for very long. I nail him with everything I've got and he almost immediately transfers himself into one of the statues. I don't see what advantage he gains by doing this, other than his normal body becomes untouchable and appears to heal up for when he jumps back into his body. The statue his soul is in doesn't seem any more powerful for his presence (though I could be wrong about that). Regardless, even though it wasn't intentional (at least the very first time I fought this battle), if you hit Thaos hard and fast and get him down to "Near Death", you can force him out of his body and stop him from casting spells ... which seems like the best strategy for a party, since as powerful as the statues can seem, a really high DEFL tank can avoid taking a lot of hits from them, while the rest of the party can focus on Thaos. And keeping Thaos from casting a lot of spells in this battle is a GOOD THING.

I'd also say that part of the problem is players who think in terms of "DPS" or "decoys" and so forth, rather than just playing rogues or rangers, or wizards or fighters or paladins, and so forth. And regardless of whether some classes do have abilities that "can" be used in melee or at range, I'd suggest that most of those classes have a strong predisposition towards them being melee combatants. I still have no problem with the idea of a class whose primary focus is ranged physical combat.

I just did the final battle with my second party, and won it the first time. Come to think of it, I beat Thaos with my first party the first time as well. Both parties were maxed out on their levels, and the game was on Normal difficulty. The first time (first party) I won this battle, I had 3 of the 6 in my party down for the count, and finished him off with my Ranger PC, Aloth, and one other whom I don't recall (probably Durance or Eder). In my second party, Durance was the only one knocked out and that was early in the battle, but Grieving Mother has a couple of Revival scrolls and used one of them to get Durance back on his feet and in the battle. This time, What I did that worked out surprisingly well was to have Eder engage the statues in melee (with saber and shield to get max DEFL), while everyone else was pounding on the statues at long range with ranged weapons or spells. And when Thaos pulled himself back into his body, I had my ranged force turn and focus on him, while Eder kept the statues busy. Eder got a little banged up, but it wasn't anything that some major healing potions and spells couldn't patch up real quick. I made a number of equipment shifts before triggering the final battle. For a while, I'd had some speed enhancing items on Eder and my monk PC. But I switched these speed enhancing items off of my tanks and onto my squishiest characters, so that they could get away from the statues ASAP. I wasn't worrying about Eder running away or running to anything. He was going to stay there and hold his ground. But I desperately needed to get Grieving Mother and my custom (ranged) Rogue out of Melee range ASAP. And in the battle, that tweak worked out quite well. They got well away from the statues and out of the area of effect of those hammers. Regarding the OP's problems taking a level 8 party into the final battle, it shows why you need to do some of the side quests to build up your party for the eventual encounter with Thaos. Going in under-tiered will be rather painful.

Without even reading the 1.05 patch notes, it would be silly for the devs to let you change Durance's choice of deity. After all, his entire character and dialogs are built around him being a priest of Magran.

I haven't read the patch 1.05 notes closely, nor really intend to at this time. As for saying that no other class is really locked into melee, I think that you're off base on that. I don't recall monks nor barbarians having any ranged class talents. Ditto for Fighters and Paladins. This isn't to say that they can't do ranged combat, only that they don't have class ranged talents or abilities, which tells me that they are rather locked into melee combat. So frankly, I see nothing wrong with a class that's skewed toward ranged combat, such as Rangers. (And learn the difference between "then" and "than", and "effect" and "affect".)

One possible answer. I tend to play in a rather role-playing style, so I tend to not see magical implements as something that should be used by anyone other than wizards, and I suppose Ciphers and perhaps Chanters. And maybe a priest that was being role played as a backline spellcaster who didn't even wear much of any armor. OTOH, the idea of normal non-spellcasting combatants using magical implements seems wrong to me. At least outside the normal stereotype for a fantasy setting.

So nobody found this yet? This is a very tricky one to find. You can't just find it by the normal method of slow searching and so on. What you have to do is have the Resolution sabre in your PC's inventory (NOT equipped). You get this sabre on level 4 of the Endless Paths dungeon. Then what you do is go to the THIRD level of the EP dungeon, do to the north or northwest corner of the map. There's a small room there with a stature of Od Nua that you can click on. Normally, the 2 "conversation" options are "Examine the statue" and "Leave". But when you have the Resolution saber in your PC's inventory, a 3rd dialog option becomes available .... "Put the saber in the statue's hand" (or something to that effect). This causes a secret door very nearby to open, behind which are two small rooms. Llawran's Stick is in the trapped sarcophagus in the first room. You can take the Resolution saber back, but be warned. If you've added some enchantments to it, they'll be lost because the game is giving you back the original version of the saber. I know all this because I just took a saved game from a couple days back and went down to the 3rd level of the EP dungeon to figure this all out. This is probably one of the trickier things that people have to do to get a hidden item, and certainly one that can be easily overlooked. Interestingly, the sabre's description does give a rather obtuse hint that it might serve this purpose.

IIRC, from what I've read in here, a Spell Striking effect only triggers once per encounter (unfortunately). Spell Striking: Jolting Touch is an excellent effect, since it zaps a number of nearby enemies with strong amount of shock damage (see the Jolting Tough spell for the exact numbers, I suppose). I actually added a +25% shock damage effect to Cloudpiercer because it felt like a really good extra bonus from a roleplaying perspective. Is it better than Borresaine? I don't know. I think that I like it better, but I'll admit that that's not the same as knowing whether it's really better or not. Of course, as you pint out, Cloudpiercer's availability is more limited than Borresaine's, to take that for what it's worth. I will say that the Stunning effect's time seems rather limited on Borresaine. 3 seconds, IIRC? The Rain of Godagh Field warbow is technical better than the other warbows, being as it's a Superb weapon. OTOH, I found it rather boring since it didn't have any other interesting effects (besides, Speed, IIRC). Speaking of Marked Prey above. When you say that it will become a "free action", do you mean that it can be used an unlimited number of times per encounter?

I thought that I read that in the next PoE patch, they were going to allow parties to rest anywhere in the Stronghold as if they were resting in Brighthollow, with my assumption being that this would be a way of avoiding 2 load screens to get to the bedroom to rest. Regarding Resting Bonuses: What I'd like to see done is to merge all the resting bonuses. At worst (or best), it's just a bunch of +1's to various stats and skills. It's not as powerful as the +4 INT bonus for the inn in Brackenberry, or the +2/+2/+2 bonus to 3 stats for the Celestial Sapling inn. Whenever you repair one of the buildings in the SH that has rest bonus attached to it, add that bonus to the other bonuses you might already have, until you've repaired everything and have the max bonus. This would give the player a really serious incentive to fully repair the Stronghold.

Generally I agree about comparing the Endless Paths estoc vs the "Fine Estoc" that was fully tricked out. However, I have some caveats. First, since both swords have a Superb enchantment, that cancels out. Secondly, while the bonus vs Kith is a "vs specific enemies" bonus, it is against a very large and common group, i.e. Kith (which is also why it's worth 4 enchantment points rather than only 2). And secondly, the +25% corrode damage is a 100% of the time thing. OTOH, I'm not sure how valuable the Speed enchantment really is in this game. A x1.2 speed equivalent should mean that you get 6 attacks in the time that you previously did 5 attacks, which isn't exactly all that amazing. IMO, it seems to me that for a Speed enchantment to be really good, it'd need to be closer to a 1.5 multiple, so that you'd be getting 3 attacks in the time you previously did 2 attacks. Right now, I'm not even sure that a x1.2 speed bonus is enough to turn a Slow weapon into an Average speed weapon (for example). I will agree that Marking should be an excellent weapon enchantment, if it works. I don't know that it does. I suppose that I should check the math on succeeding attacks on the same target by allies to see if it is being applied. *IF* it does work and is being applied, Marking should be one of the better enchantments out there, as long as you make certain to have allies attack the marked target, of course. Another question might be ... how long does the "marking" linger? I don't know, and PoE doesn't say.