Boeroer

Zandethu's Draconic Fury is a nice spell but not mandatory at all. Other nice unique grimoires with special spells are Ninagauth's Teachings or Concelhaut's Ironclasped for example. Instead of Daconic Fury you can also cast Citzal's Martial Power - but only after you cast Wall of Draining + all the buffs you want.

I mean if you find some cool mechanics for TB mode you can post them right away if you don't want to do a full build writeup. I'm always happy to read about fun, cheesy and effective stuff, TB mode or RTwP. Or post a build that worked well for you in TB mode. Imo it's always interesting to read that stuff - even if I won't play in that mode.

Yes, but being occasional isn't a disadvantage per se. It depends on what the occasion is. If it doesn't work in normal fights where you don't really need the added defenses but makes the really tough fights easier it's just a good passive. It's like Brutal Backlash: it doesn't do much in most fights but makes the hardest ones ridiculously easy. Very occasional but yet very good. Now I don't consider Silver Tide to be a great racial ability - because you can make the argument that if you constantly get beaten down so it procs you might be doing something wrong in the first place. And if you don't need it much but only in tough fights it's... tadaa: occasional. ;)

Battle axes are fine but there aren't many unique ones and they come rather late. However Magran's Favor + Slayer's Claw is an excellent combo once you get them. The Battle Axe modal "Bleeding Cuts" is very good - so good acually that it's usually worth keeping it activated at all times even though it slows you down. But the raw damage over time stacks and every time you hit again the current stacks tick immediately for raw damage. It gets even better once you pick Blood Thirst.

Hi, for a Berserker I would pick Human: Fighting Spirit: you will drop bellow 50% health often which would trigger bonus accuracy and damage. It's not limited like in PoE1 but procs every time you drop below 50% and stays on as long as you are below 50% Fighting Spirit stacks with Blooded (Barbarian passive ability) you retain the headgear slot most portrait options available Weapon choice: Since you want to use the Devoted (and not use Monastic Unarmed Training I assume) swords are - generally speaking - the better pick because they have two damage types: slash and pierce. With sabres you would be limited to slash damage. If you meet enemies with high AR against slash damage and even slash-immune enemies, you would be forced to either pick Monastic Unarmed Training and use your fists or switch to backup weapons and suffer a pretty nasty accuracy debuff because they are not the weapon type you are devoted to. However, sabres arguably have the better uniques. Scordeo's Edge is especially good for critical hits (up to +20 accuracy due to "Adaptive") and the enchantment "Blade Cascade" is very nice, especially in combination with Blood Thirst and Cleaving/Mob Stance. Another awesome sabre is Grave Calling with the enchantment "Grave Bound" which is also amazing at generating crits (paralyzed enemies get a 25% hit to crit conversion against them). You can steal iw very early if you wish. It also comes in legendary quality - which is pretty bonkers tbh. Spares you expensive/rare resources since you don't have to upgrade it yourself. And there's several other cool unique sabres on the way. Sabres have the most (and most impactful imo) uniques in the game. One of them, the Animancer's Energy Blade, even deals less dmg but is faster than normal sabres and does raw damage that bypasses all armor. This would be a great backup weapon for you btw. Swords also have nice uniques - Modwyr is great - but not as good as sabres imo. My recommendation would be to go for sabres and either live with the accuracy malus in the few cases where slash damage would suck (maybe use spears, rapiers, daggers or clubs since they have an innate +5 accuracy bonus) or pick Monastic Unarmed Training to have good fists without accuracy malus as backup. Those also scale automatically and spare enchantment-related resources. Devil of Caroc's Breastplate is perfect for you. You can steal it very early. The enchantment that makes you immune to confusion needs Vithrack brains. You can buy those in several shops occasionally, so watch out for Vithrack brains in shops all the time and buy some asap. You can even "wait" in shops: every new day the shop's "random" stock of enchantment resources gets reshuffled. Attributes (you only gave 77 points and thus lack 1 point btw. - I guess you didn't include the culture's bonus point): Berserker's self damages scales steeply with levels AND with Might and all other universal damage bonuses (Blooded for example). Because of that it's not a bad idea to NOT raise MIG too high since you also will get +5 while frenzied. You can safely lower it to 10 if you wish and not gimp your performance. You can also add some MIG back with items (all item effects stack in Deadfire unlike PoE1) and food+camping or resting bonuses from taverns. CON at 15+ is a good thing for a Berserker to give you a bit more leeway with the self damage. At the same time DEX is more impactful for DPS than MIG. So I wouldn't drop it too much. I would put 10 at least - but would be comfortable with 15+. PER 16 is solid. In Deadfire all secrets and traps will be discovered by Perception (not mechanics like in PoE1). Most official companions don't have high PER so it's on the main character to provide solid PER (if you want to find all sorts of secrets and traps). Of course PER also promotes crits. INT 14 is good. Carnage grows with INT - but Carnage isn't as good as it was in PoE1 so you don't need to push it too much. It's nice for longer durations of course (Frenzy, Disciplined Strikes and so on). Unbending is much(!) more powerful with high INT. So you could go higher and would still get benefits. But there are also several +INT items - should you want more. RES not only influenced deflection (which is already low due to Barb + Frenzy and thus you can forget about it in the first place) but also influences how long hostile effects stay on you (including your confusion btw.). Because of that I would like to put it at 10 in order to not get a malus (increased duration of enemies' hostile effects they put on you) - but 8 is okay since there will be items/food, inspirations etc. which can lift you over 10. So altogether my attributes would be (I guess): MIG 10 CON 15 DEX 15 PER 16 INT 14 RES 08 Of course a few points here and there (for example taking away points from DEX and giving them to MIG like so: DEX 12, MIG 13) does also work well. It doesn't matter too much compared to the impact of abilities and gear selection. Since your character will be good at offense but will need constant healing, I would recommend to use a pet that grants healing on kill. Abraham for example has such a property and also makes you attack faster in armor. Devil of Caroc's Breastplate also has some healing capabilities (on crit). Also some gear that grants resistance to damage works nicely against Berserker's self damage: Death's Maw helmet, Voidward Ring... Cheers!

Yes, if Heodan doesn't get injured during the fight and the following scripted interaction then he doesn't need to rest - which avoids the whole situation. But minor spoiler: Next minor spoiler:

Very nice. 👍🏻 I assume this mod only works for the Windows version, is that correct?

You have to actively attack an enemy in order to engagement to "snap" and activate. At that point it will also not only engage the enemy you targeted but other enemies in 0.8m range (if you have enough engagement slots). It is easier to engage enemies if your tank scouts ahead and the rest stays stealthed with a gap (of at least one character circle's width) behind the tank. That way the Tank will initiate combat and will briefly be the only one visible to the enemies - and all enemies will attack him. This allows the tank to easily engage multiple enemies before the rest of the party becomes visible. Once enemies have picked a target they rarely try to switch and leave. If you open the fight with the backline however, the enemies (especially those who got hit by the backline characters) will do anything to reach that party member, tank in the way or not. Then your tank can only stop them if a) you didn't deactivate the "stop on engagement" option in the game options menu and b) you attack them with the tank and enough engagement slots as I said above.

No, I would just try it out with the help of the console. It also depends on the amount of your CON and if you have stuff like Tough, an Amulet of Greater Health, damage resistance from items like Death's Maw, Voidward and food (Rice for example) etc.

PS: I usually like Deleterious Alacrity of Motion a lot because the +100% movement speed + immunity to engagement is crazy (besides the action speed bonus) and the self damage grants constant wounds but is low enough to be manageable.

I guess as soon as you get Ninagauth's Shadowflame you won't use other Evocations that much. Especially with full Enduring Dance bonus and 10 Wounds + Thunderous Blows when it covers a fairly big area and the paralyze effect lasts for a while. Shadowflame + Merciless Gaze + Citzal's Spirit Lance + Stunning Surge is a very nice combo because accuracy and crit conversions will be high, defenses debuffed and you can even convert from graze to crit with an Aware buff from a Priest or so. The AoE of the lance will be big bc. of Turning Wheel so you will crit with most strikes. Very cool for Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming, too. I find Pull of Eora super useful to pull as many enemies together as possible and be able to catch a lot of them with a following Shadowflame or such. Stealth offers -80% recovery time - so its possible to open with Pull of Eora and immediately after cast a Shadowflame. That's why I would put some points into stealth. You don't need many in order to stay hidden long enough at the start of battle. Of course for a Bloodmage Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon is very useful. The only healing spell of the Sage. Essential Phantom will inherit your Spirit Lance (or Concelhaut's Draining Touch without dispelling it on hit) which is pretty cool. It does not inherit Monk fists so it's better to summon it when you carry a weapon. A very potent spell, Concelhaut's Draining Touch, if you are willing to exploit it. If you don't learn it but instead cast it from a grimoire and then immediately switch to a grimoire that doesn't have the spell, the Draining Touch weapon will not get dispelled after a successful hit. It has tremendous base damage and drains health, targets Will instead of Deflection and weakens on hit. Combined with a club+modal in the offhand (-25 Will on hit) and Miasma of Dull-Mindedness (-40 Will) you will crit a ton with Draining Touch and have lots of chances to trigger Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming. But it is an exploit... All sorts of pulsing damaging spells (Chillfog for example) and DoT spells (Necrotic Lance and such) scale very well with the increased accuracy, MIG and INT. What else (besides all the nice self buffs)? Hm, I find Fan of Flames is overlooked and actually is pretty dope - IF you can make it so that you don't hit your allies all the time. It scales well with Power Levels with its pretty high base damage, it profits a lot from the added MIG, INT and also the PEN of Thunderous Blows. The only thing that sucks is the friendly fire tbh. It's also easy to buff its power levels further with a pet (Otto Starcat, +1 fire power levels), Magran's Favor and Sun and Moon as stat sticks (+4 fire Power Levels) and Evocation bonuses (Firethrower Gloves).

I wouldn't use too much MIG because you will get up to +15 from the Helwalker side (Helwalker passive + Thunderous Blows) and that, combined with the +5% damage received per wound, leads to Blood Sacrifice doing a lot of damage (scales with Might). Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, too. Imo 10 MIG is enough. You will not get a damage malus (which would be multiplicative and that's bad) yet you somewhat control the self damage a bit. CON on the higher side is not something I consider often, but here it makes sense. Monks have a big health pool and half of it goes into the multiclass, so the effect of CON leads to a fair increase of health in absolute numbers. Imo high INT is a must for any AoE weapon such as Citzal's Spirit Lance. For Race I would pick Human because of the Fighting Spirit passive. Due to Blood Sacrifice you will find yourself bloodied or near death fairly often and the increased accuracy and damage (also self damage though!) are nice to have then. Everything that heals is nice, especially if it heals "on the fly" such as Devil of Caroc Breastplate (on crit) or a pet such as Abraham or even Cajux. Even better: using Cajux for yourself (20 healing on kill) and Abraham for Eder (effect for every party member: 10 health on kill) for a combined +30 health on kill (base value) when you kill an enemy. Stunning Surge is extremely good with Spirit Lance - if you can hit multiple enemies. It's a free AoE stun attack then basically. Zandethu's Draconic Fury (unique grimoire) is a great spell for a melee Sage.

Wild Orlan is great against dragons and drakes (and everything else that emits an aura against Will) since their fear aura procs the defense buff every 3 secs.

I'm not a big fan of the Cipher class in general but I really like the Psion - and I really like the Psion/Troubadour, too. It's one of my most beloved class combos: The Ceaseless Siren