thestigma

Also worth mentioning that you are not really supposed to be able to disable those traps (well, most of them anyway). The traps present a obstacle that you can solve in one of three ways: - Find a different path around it - Use someone with at least lvl1 mechanic to disable a narrow path of traps that makes it barely possible to squeeze through (some of the traps are easy to disable - making it possible to Indiana-Jones your way across) - Disable the traps via lighting the pillars in the adjacent room Of course if you want to do extreme optimization - you can leave the traps and then disable them all later when you can come back with more mechanics skill, as all traps do give some xp reward... -Stigma

I think there was a bug that got corrected in 1.04 about that ... -Stigma

Is that actually an option - to go back and defend your keep yourself every time it comes under attack? I haven't had invasions yet. I think I'd prefer to do them myself if that is a possibility - especially if that means saving money too. EDIT: it is also very unclear to me what prestige actually does.... security I suppose lowers the risk of attacks, but all I know about prestige is vaguely that it "increases the chance of positive events". I'm not at all sure what that entails. -Stigma

This thread is kinda long now so I havent read though it all - but basically there is nothing wrong with a melee cipher. The main problem is just that a cipher will never be tank-worthy (and hardly even suitable to off-tank) unless you heavily sacrifice the actual strengths of the class by wearing heavy armor and stacking deflection stats. If you do that then your spellcasting and offence will suffer, and you will be left with a very lackluster cipher. If on the other hand you run your cipher squishy and just make sure that he is never the focus of attacks while meleeing then it works just fine. Dualwielding will net you a ton of focus and do pretty decent damage too - which you further augment with your spells - and you get to really take advantage of those "line AOE" spells. Doing this works, but it is very finicky and hard to pull off reliably - and if the AI goes for you then you will probably just die so... it's a very high risk high reward kinda thing. Meanwhile a ranged cipher remains highly effective and is many times easier - which is exactly why it is so poular. -Stigma

Hmm, so since income is tied to turns but expenses are tied to real-time, essentially you will want to minimize how much you rest/travel if you want to optimize use of the stronghold? I read that the stronghold is a bit of a money-sink no matter how you handle it though. It is a bit of a weird mechanic for sure. -Stigma

The stronghold seems to operate on realtime, as well as some sort of "turns" , but it is never explained what a turn is... they just pop up in the events log seemingly at random, and I can't see any obvious pattern to it... -Stigma

Just equip it - it works like a second weapon essentially (still works with shield-talents, but doesn't work with dual-wielding talents, so it's not REALLY a weapon either... its sort of both) As far as I can tell it is just a free extra low-damage attack. -Stigma

I think I've seen an entrey for one other shield with this effect somewhere on a wiki (I try not to spoil myself TOO much, so I'm unsure of the details) Ideally what we should have had was a more developed enchanting system (and crating in general perhaps). The enchantment options you have currently are often very unexciting... I think a cool idea would be to have a way to deconstruct items and research them to gain access to new types of enchantments - sacrificing good items as well as sinking a lot of money and rare components into it - but getting access to otherwise unique attributes for enchanting. Takes a bit of balancing to do right, but it beats the very flat one-button-crafting that is used now. -Stigma

That logic is valid for a lot of games, but not really in PoE. Lots of very powerful items you can get early and will remain useful forever. I think the blunting belt you can buy (cheaply) from Gilded vale is a good example, but just one out of many. Also - you have to consider that enchanting can increase many base stats, so there is much potential for low-end gear with unique abilities you don't find elsewhere to be very powerful when upgraded - possibly being better than much of the "higher tier" gear you get later on. -Stigma

Hey all, If you are familiar with the "larder door" that you can get early on in the game, it is a large shield that grants the "bash" ability, so that in some ways it acts as a second weapon as well as a shield (but apparently it does not act entirely as a second weapon in some ways - like not qualifing for dual-wielding talents and such...) My question is - since this shield has a very unique ability of being able to add an extra attack (even though it is small), is it worth enchanting up as an endgame item? How does it affect your attack speed relting to your main weapon? If it just adds bash but otherwise does not affect your primary attacks at all it seems like its purely positive to have, but if it is eating into your primary attacks then it would scale very poorly as the damage output of bash is quite poor compared to decent weapons... Anyone with detailed knowledge of the game mechanics able to answer how this works out? -Stigma

What he said^ What you referred to is the master staircase that lets you skip back past all the levels so you don't have to go up and down through a ton of loading screens. The entrance to level1 is through that doorway that was forcefielded before you speak to the throne-spirit. Also a small correction - the ruins are called "The Endless Paths of Od Nua". Caed Nua is the keep that sits above it. -Stigma

Even if it doesn't reduce reload speed it surely reduced the cooldown - and the cooldown is typically much longer than the actual reload for the shot, so I don't see why that isn't viable. Besides - with a chanter you can buff the reloading speed too if you want. -Stigma

Well, it's for dealing damage when not casting obviously... I mean, you don't have unlimited spells, and when you do run out of spells you aren't well suited to much aside from ranged DPSing what you can. If I wanted a pure range-DPS I'd do a ranger or ranged rogue I guess, but that's not really the question. -Stigma

Hey all, What do you think is an optimal build for a wizard (for POTD) when it comes to weapon choice? You can go blast, which nets you weak AoE on auto-attack, including decent DR override, although implements in themselves do seem a little weak-ish. I guess you can maximize blast by using a scepter/wand as they are fast - but I don't think blast scales by their damage, so more attacks = better. Alternatively there is the option of guns. Guns are pretty good on their own - but they also combo with so many things. There is the marksman trait (more accuracy is king), and gunner for faster reload - also the chanters faster reload chant is golden for a party with many guns. What opinions are there on this? -Stigma

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