TheMetaphysician

One other cool thing about the Mourning Gloves that I noticed, which in hindsight is actually stated in the description but surprised me nonetheless: at the end of fights I often had 120 seconds or more remaining on the duration of the effect. What that means is that when a kill is made the gloves don't simply refresh the duration of the effect (like Deep Wounds or Wounding work); they actually add a new full duration ON TOP of what is remaining from the old duration. So just a few kills early in the fight will make the effect last even for long fights. I imagine that will be useful in dragon fights; kill some adds, and the effect will be there even if it takes a long time to kill the dragon. That actually seems to be stated in the item description. It says you get "+20 seconds on kill" of the various effects. That literally means "+20 seconds", not just "20 seconds".

Well, I just fought the fight again wearing both a ring of deflection and a ring of protection (+9 to deflection and the other defenses, respectively), and cast reinforcing exhortation on the monk. The Mourning Gloves +5 bonus to all defenses stacked with ALL of those bonuses (at least according to the tooltip in my character sheet). So it looks like Mourning Gloves stacks with absolutely everything, and doesn't suppress or get suppressed by anything. Or am I missing another general category that it could fit into? That makes that item really, really good, IMO.

The speed works. With 2x durgan enchanted Rimecutters (and no armor recovery penalty) you have a very short recovery; with the buff the recovery disappears completely... Ok, I ran a few tests with the Mourning Gloves (just using the eye-test; I don't know how to count frames like many of you do), and made one significant discovery: the attack speed buff on kill from the gloves seems to stack with Swift Strikes! I assume that means that it also stacks with Frenzy, since the speed buff from Swift Strikes is suppressed by the Frenzy that is triggered on Sanguine Plate. That must mean that the engine thinks of the Mourning Gloves bonus as an equipment bonus rather than a spell bonus that is cast by equipment (like Sanguine Plate's Frenzy is). If that is so, to my knowledge that makes the Mourning Gloves the only equipment-based (non-weapon, non-spell-based) attack speed buff other than Gauntlets of Swift Action. Is that right? Am I missing any other equipment? Given that the gloves also heal you on kill, that may make them the gloves of choice if you need to stack attack speed to get down to 0 recovery. My (admittedly unscientific) test went as follows. I fought the group in front of the tower in Heritage Hill with my monk, who had 20 dex, regular leather armor (30% recovery penalty), dual-wielding regular spears, with two-weapon fighting. I fought once without Mourning Gloves, in which the monk had a significant recovery bar before activating Swift Strikes and a shorter but still existent recovery bar after activating Swift Strikes. I then loaded and fought the same fight, same gear, with Mourning Gloves. With Swift Strikes active, after the first kill (when Mourning Gloves triggers), he had no visible recovery bar at all. (I'm guessing that doesn't mean 0 recovery; it just means close enough to 0 recovery that the bar doesn't show up for the naked eye to see). One more possible implication that I haven't tested: if the engine thinks of the Mourning Gloves bonus as an equipment-based bonus rather than a spell-based bonus, then the +5 to all defenses should stack with spells and abilities, but shouldn't stack with other defensive equipment (like rings of deflection and protection). I haven't tested that yet.

Can anyone verify whether Mourning Gloves actually work? When my monk kills someone, it doesn't show on his stat sheet that he has the 10% speed increase. I assume it would be suppressed by Swift Strikes, but it doesn't even show up and say suppressed (like effects usually do). And can anyone tell whether they actually heal the character when you kill something?

I got: Swaddling Sheet (cloak): Recall Agony 1/rest, Overwhelming Wave when critically hit 1/encounter. The wave is Foe AoE only (I don't remember if regular overwhelming wave is foe AoE). For me, this was in the same group of adventures as Nidhen's Finger (which is a cloak, by the way; very confusing), posted earlier in this thread. Security and Prestige around 30. It is really cool if you put it on the same character you build around Shod-in-Faith, like AndreaColombo's Lady of Pain build or a low-deflection monk type, which is my current character. Nature's Embrace is another good item for that (casts Woodskin in an AOE when critically hit). Put all three items on, and he gets a lot better when he is critically hit, which is basically every fight. Could add the Binding Rope and the soulbound breastplate that triggers a lot of stuff when hit (or just ol' Sanguine Plate that triggers Frenzy when critically hit). Maybe also the gloves that trigger holy meditation when critically hit. An astonishing number of effects will happen when you are hit! Many of them go well together, too. Who needs action speed when your enemies are triggering your actions for you?

I think I'm a little confused about how Stronghold adventures work. Maybe you guys could help me out. (I really want that binding rope for my PC monk.) I understand that stronghold turns pass when you turn in quests. But when are stronghold adventures triggered? Do they randomly appear on some stronghold turns and not others? Or do they always appear at set intervals of stronghold turns? Also, what determines the "level" of stronghold adventures? (That is, I assume that some give better items than others and some are more major than others. Is that so?) Is it prestige, security, or some combination of them? Or does it just escalate the more stronghold turns you have, independently of prestige and security? I played through this game once, and I wish the stronghold mechanic had been a bit more transparent. I only discovered that stronghold turns pass as a result of quest completion from this forum, not from my in-game observations.

If it isn't hard to fix this, I'd also appreciate it being fixed. The reason is that being able to change the companion stats increases the replayability of the game for me. Custom companions aren't nearly as fun as the story companions, but I also like to try out new builds and parties with companions, and sometimes (not always) that requires changing some stats. (Of course, any bugs with the supported parts of the game take priority.) Thanks for listening!

How do you get the Helwax mold? Is it a particular stronghold quest? If so, which one -- so I can keep an eye out for it?

I have a similar concern, and I posted a question about the IE mod in the character builds forum. But then I also figured out a way to nerf xp just using the console (google how to do that, if you don't know how). It will disable achievements for the game if you do so, though. Check out post #3 on this thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84320-ie-mod-and-30/

Thanks for the reply! A couple of weeks isn't bad at all; I may just wait around for it to come out. In the meantime, I did think up a way (2 ways, in fact) to mimic the IE mod's nerfed experience table just using the console; initial testing suggests they work. I thought I'd share them in case anyone other than me is interested. They are: (1) Whenever your characters first gain enough experience to level up, before leveling them up, subtract them down to only halfway between the last level's XP number and the new level's xp number. (You can use the "AddExperience" command with a negative number to subtract xp. You'll also probably have to look online at an xp table to remember the last level's xp number, as it will no longer be shown on your character sheet.) You will no longer be able to level up. Do that once for each level and you get the -50% leveling pattern, as each level takes half again as much xp to complete. (2) Alternatively, right AFTER you level up, subtract an amount of experience equal to half of the xp needed to reach the NEXT level. You will not drop back down a level because you've already gone through the level-up process, despite the fact that you are now below the required xp for that level. That will mean you have to gain half again as much xp to get to the next level (for every level except the move from level 1 to level 2). This one seems better for two reasons. First, the first approach will involve hearing the "level up" sound, getting excited, and then realizing that you can't actually level up half the time. This one has no such issue. Second, you don't have to look online at an xp table or otherwise remember the last level's xp number; all you need is the next level's number, which is on the character sheet. I'm intrigued by these options, in part because you can wait a few levels before implementing them. The first few levels (say, until about level 5) certainly don't need any more challenge, especially on PotD. It is the later parts of the game that need level-slowing, at least for completionist types who try to plan out powerful builds. I might wait until level 5 or so to start implementing them. And if you wanted you could actually implement a harsher nerf than 50%, or one that escalates or otherwise varies by level, or anything you want, really. It would be cool if we all put our heads together and figured out the ideal experience nerf for completionists to maintain a difficult challenge throughout the game. The downside is fiddling with the console at every level, and losing access to achievements (which I don't care about, but some do). It might break immersion, and make you feel like a cheater. But if you just create a policy before embarking on a playthrough, and stick to the policy religiously, it isn't really different than just adding a rule to the game, and so shouldn't make you feel like a cheater.

Francis, in post #16 of this thread, kaylon says that the hammer destroys eyeless on crit and does +10 accuracy and +50% damage to eyeless. I'll bet those are the two abilities you are inquiring about, the on crit effect and the passive, respectively.

Do any of you guys have a guess as to how long it will be until there is a version of the IE mod that works with 3.0, based on how long it has taken in the past or on other info you might have? I'm a completionist, so the ends of games are always less challenging than I would like, and I'm thinking that all the XP getting dumped into the game with the expansions won't be sufficiently offset by the level scaling for me. So I really want to wait for the -50% exp nerf in the IE mod. But I'm also chomping at the bit to get started. I played through it once when it was released, and act 3 and 4 were too easy for my taste. Alternatively, any suggestions on how to recreate the -50% XP nerf without waiting for the IE mod? I don't care about achievements, so I'm happy to use the console.

Thanks for posting all of this stuff, guys. I especially prefer to know what the final versions of the soulbounds do before I commit to leveling them. One piece of info I haven't seen is this: to which classes does that soulbound dagger bind?

To which classes can Abydon's Hammer bind? That looks like a must-have for the big enemies in this expansion, so I hope there is a lot of flexibility.

How exactly does this work? Do you get the per-encounter spell at the same level that you previously would have gotten all the spells of a level as per-encounter? (In that case, you would get a level 1 per-encounter spell at level 9, a level 2 per-encounter spell at level 11, and so on.) Or do you get the per-encounter spell as soon as you have spells of that level? (In that case, you get a level 1 per-encounter spell at level 1, a level 2 per-encounter spell at level 3, and so on; and you'd eventually get level 6 and level 7 per-encounter spells, which you couldn't get before.) If it is the latter, then this isn't really a nerf or a buff; it is just a change. It would actually make casters more powerful before level 9 and maybe less powerful after (but, again, that would depend on the details of the build). A per-encounter Citzal's Lance and Citzal's Martial Power would really buff the melee wizard build.