Ichthyic

Something else you can use the fox for is if you have a cipher in the party, have the fox running around behind enemy lines and target it with one of those beam spells that ciphers use. This way, you don't have to risk a normal character. Of course, if one has a monk (say, Zahua) in the party with a cipher, monks are quite fast runners and you could so the same thing. Oh wait.... would that make a monk and/or Sagani (well, her fox) useful? Oh the humanity! That strategy also works great with Pallegina built as a runadin, with her huge defensive scores and disengagement aura (which also gives her the same +2 move as a monk), you can have her run right *through* enemy groups trailing the level 3 cipher beam, and she will take little if any damage usually. you can even give her the cloak of the cheat, which turns grazes into misses, and gives her an escape use per encounter, which means zero engagement as she runs through the crowd.

Those telling you that you shouldn't use monks as ranged attackers seem to have forgotten the new level 7 skill they have, which is basically a HADOUKEN on steroids. as for wounds, have your own party toss a friendly fire weak aoe spell on them, and they'll get all the wounds they need. there's a good video of this kind of build. let me see if I can find it. edit: here you go: Ranged monk build STILL using fists! ....go to youtube, watch this link /watch?v=EIZya2Qa0NA

it speeds up your exit if you have sufficient perception to notice the falling beam, and then choose to prop it up before going on to save the two people. then, even with low con, you can *just* make it back out, exhausted from smoke inhalation. just did it 5 minutes ago. Aloth is a good choice for this, if you didn't mod his stats. bring a prybar.

I tend to roleplay more than powerplay (hell, you can actually solo the game on POTD if you want that kind of challenge). with that in mind, I tend to follow the idea that the companions start off with their own builds in mind... and just expand on those. whatever they come equipped with... that becomes their focus. for example, Hiravias' primary story revolves around his Stealgar shapeshift abilities, so it makes sense to pump his shapeshifting skills. no matter what difficulty you play at, if you stick to the directions each companion seems to already be going in (indicated by the equipment they carry, or the stories they tell), you won't go wrong. even if you keep Sagani with a hunting bow and never give her any firearms, or leave pallegina with a primary focus on great swords... you will do just fine. I get that some want to spend hours thinking about the design of each character, and that's cool, but for someone reading this thread and thinking about playing the game for the first time... don't worry too much about it. You don't HAVE to, if you would prefer just moving through the game and the storyline. and that works, even if you decide you want to start your first run on the hardest difficulty.

just curious... was your druid wielding a hatchet when he attacked himself? I find my characters will randomly attack themselves after a combat is done if they are wielding a hatchet. why? who knows. it's pretty consistent though, and at least 2 different characters have experienced hitting themselves in the head with a hatchet. I either have to swap weapons, or save/reload to get it to stop/

patience? we waited over a year for the devs to simply add the option to disable autosaves on area transition. fail. still no way to do this, and still have the problem of ever increasing save times on transition as the game goes on. sorry, patience is for a year ago, around the fourth patch, after everyone had been asking for this feature already for months.

don't know if it's the same now as it was back in patch 1.4 days, but I figured out that the best DPS was with dragon/death chant mix, and summoning the orgre twins. the damage those two ogres add to single targets is HUGE, and they stick around for quite a while. also tough, I can't even recall anything short of a full grown dragon taking them down before their timers ran out. they end up doing far more damage overall than any of the instant spells, even if you manage to get two cold fingers touching the same target. plus, of course... they tank. after comparing all the spells, I never used anything but them and the mass paralysis... and even stopped using that in favor of having Kana just use scrolls of paralysis whenever needed.

does Korgak make an appearance if you have him as a hireling?

"It was in response to "How very Christian of you." your attempt at false equivalency is noted, and laughed at. why do you even bother? ... perhaps you'd be better off with the old "I'm rubber, you're glue!" standby? because that's what you've got so far... the argument a 5 year old makes. again.. ugh.

"How very atheist of you." ugh. what a stupid thing to say. really.

Did anyone ever figure out what the lead key you get off the cult priestess at the end of the woedica temple in the catacombs does? you don't need it to open any doors there, and I never figured out what to do with it in my first playthrough either.

all fixed after GoG patch install madness.

yeah, that's one of the reasons I said this was a relatively easy "fix". this has been known for a long time actually; some of us edited those files just like that way back before version 1.4 even. *shrug* but hey, those that want to insist that 'tis hard and the devs MUST focus on what they want them to focus on can continue onwards as they wish of course.

That is kind of hypocritical since this argument applies to everyone except the devs, you included. Who are you to judge that implementing companion respec is a better way to spend dev time? Besides, he has an actual objective point why dev time can be spent better somewhere else: Companion respec was never and is not officially support at the moment. A lot of officially supported things have bugs at the same time. The priorities are pretty clear. And the argument that it is an easy fix in your opinion is a slippery slope as well - if it is so easy to fix that several people have already done it, use a mod from those people and let the devs fix the complex bugs no one else can fix. I DIDN'T make the judgement... YOU did. I was pointing out that you have no real info to even begin to make such a judgment. i at least took the time to figure out how the mechanics of the game actually work. so, yeah... and slippery slope? wtf? you don't even know what that means. run along and play.

resurrection... for the person who mentioned minor blights... the point of that spell is to build a blast wizard. very boring, but very effective. you take all the blast skills for penetration and damage. focus on wands in your skill spec. minor blights basically functions as a wand, and gets all the benefits from any talents you have. so.. yes, your blights "blast" and each of those blast hits is also a blight. when you are under the influence of alacrity (from spell or potion) you basically are casting a fireball with rotating elemental damage every second for 90 seconds. this gets even better at level 7, when you get Pull of Eora, and you can fast-cast that outside of combat to clump your enemies while you buff yourself for blight blast fun. however, like I said... it gets boring after a while, and is fairly situational... though even with single targets you still are doing good damage most of the time.

Likely another requirement. The wiki said you need benevolance of 3 but I have 4 and it did not work. She just said the gamble is too high still and left. This is on a new game. Tried it on my older save game where I did most of the main game stuff and it still did not work at benevolance 4. I don't know that the trigger is. Even bribing her just makes her not attack me and she still fights on his side. confirmed. there is a bug where in some games, no matter how you resolve the initial conflict in the pub with Emery, when you leave the pub and go back in, you will see her group just standing there, and not interactable. if that happens, I think it does not trigger the correct result for the battle. that's where I'm at too. think this bug has been previously reported and is being acted on, but not sure.

For those not liking the nerf to focus for cipher ( I sure didn't), there is a mod over at Nexus Mods that changes your resting focus level back to half your max focus level (leaves the nerf to max focus level in), this makes it so you can cast your max level of cipher spell at the start of a fight, before you need to generate focus again. if you also take the greater focus talent, you will be able to cast your highest level spell, plus a level 1 spell before needing to start generating focus. I find it very well balanced given how you add 10 focus per level of spell now. you can't spam your powers, but at least you can USE them when you get them. anywho, I highly recommend it.

any problems with deciding to sell her prisoners from my dungeons to use for experiments instead?

...nvmd, I guess the wiki is good enough.

Has anyone posted a list of the soulbound weapons and their abilities per level? grinding abilities is so tedious... want to know if it's worth it for any particular weapon.

voice of the mountaintop does nothing; well, almost nothing. check it for yourself. roll over a chant phrase with your chanter... that will show the the radius. now equip the VOM amulet. see any changes? it's a *tiny* increase to max range same with overseeing, btw. The problem is that the base chant radius is too small. effects that give "+20%" only act on that tiny base radius, and so the effects are minimal. basically, VOM increases radius about the same as if you added 1 point of int. that's it. overseer even less. bottom line... don't waste your precious equipment slots on overseer or VOM. boost your int, or use defensive items instead.

I know Voice of the Mountaintop was not really working correctly as of patch 1.4, but it still doesn't look like it has changed as of patch 3.01. it does not measurably increase chant radius at all. anyone have different experiences with it? otherwise, I will resurrect the previous bug thread from a year ago that the devs ignored.

oh, one minor point to add: make sure you use a low level chant BEFORE you a big AOE damage chant, otherwise you likely will miss all the enemies as they will not be in range when you start chanting. took me a while to realize that, and it hasn't changed in 3.0. it *should* be the case that enemies entering your aoe then get affected by the chant, but that's not the way it works. they have to be within range before the chant starts.

frankly, from what I have experienced, the changes to the chanter are very very slight in practice. your chant radius is still way too small, the bonus 20% from "voice of the mountaintop" still does not work correctly, intelligence boosts to radius are still too small, and you still rarely manage to get a summon out until you are very high level, or in the longer fights. Damage from dragon chant actually seems nerfed, if anything (enemies seem to have much more DR to fire), and is no longer the reliable melter it was. basically, I just use Kana for minor buffs, an off tank, and to use all those items and scrolls you find/make. it's much MUCH more valuable to have him using scrolls of paralysis rather than waiting for him to be able to invoke it using his spell version. there are plenty of easy to get weapons/items with spell abilities (like the estoc you can buy from the crucible knights in defiance bay), and then there are also all the items with summon creature on them. so, he plays with all the gadgets, while everyone else actually uses their skills and abilities. it works. plus... I just like having the big guy around... his comments are frequent and humorous and keep the game more lively. but yeah... I think chanters as individual characters are weak, and still weak after 3.0 now.... if you build a PARTY of chanters... that could be devastating as they all complement and buff each other and stack various damage chants. I often thought to try that on a replay; just haven't got around to it yet. If it were me, I would add a talent that is like the bonus spell levels for wizards/priests, but in the chanter's case, gives you 1 chant counter per level you take of it. so, at say level 3, you can take a level of "Quicker Invocations" and you would then start combat with 1 chant counter already. then you can pick another level of this every 4 levels. so one at level 3, level 7, and level 11, for a total of 3 chant counters you start combat with at level 11, should you choose those talents. this would make invocations SOOOO much more useful. As they are now, they rarely change the tide of a fight and usually just a finisher. this also would work far better than the increased chant speed method they are using now.

Actually I do get to decide or at least contribute in deciding which way the lore should go, That is the scariest thing you have ever said.