Boeroer

I think I wouldn't put her into Patinated Plate but rather Reckless Brigandine - and give her Tuotilo's Palm. Alternative to SC Mortar Monk: Mirke as Shadowdancer with dual mortars (+modal) and dual blunderbusses is also very good. Instantly unlock Heating Up with Powder Burns and unlock Sneak Attacks and Deathblows easily with Blinding Smoke. Stunning Surge is also great here. Toxic Strike with +10 INT and in an AoE is also devastating, as is Arterial Strike on combat start on a group of lured enemies.

No. Same patch.

There are no enemies in the Drake fight who can engage, so I guess your impression comes from the Stagger affliction alone? The enemies deal a bit less dmg bc. of reduced MIG. If MIG drops below 10 it means they even get a damage malus (negative dmg modifier). Due to the inner workings of Deadfire's damage calculation process, this is more severe than just getting one's damage bonus reduced (so try to never drop under 10 MIG). So maybe some of the beasts in that fight (I suspect panthers and wurms might have only mediocre Might) have mediocre Might - and giving them -5 via Stagger does impact their dmg output more than is obvious. What often gets overlooked with Writ of Consumption (and Writ of Engagement, too): it targets Will but lowers Fortitude by 10 points (bc. it applies Sickened). Like with Ryngrim's Enervating Terror (Wizard), such spells can be very useful to crack a tough enemies' defenses open. High fortitude enemies usually have lower Will - and being able to lower Fortitude by attacking Will can be very good then. It can make a hard fight easier for party members whose strongest offensive abilities target Fortitude (see Disintegrate, Plague of Insects and such). Using both Writs against enemies with high Fortitude but low Will is a great way to overcome their defenses. Stagger + Sicken - and the Fortitude of those enemies is already at -20. Besides that: there are a few enemies that do use potions, one example is Torkar (an ogre with a bounty on his head). I didn't try to prevent him from emptying his bottles with Writ of Consumption yet - but I guess it would make the fight significantly easier if Torkar couldn't chuck down his seemingly endless supply of potions. But maybe it's just a healing ability of his that only has a potion drinking animation, don't really know. In general it's true: that anti-consumption feature of the spell doesn't do a lot for you. It's way cooler for hostile Priests of Woedica who fight against you, heh.

The only thing to know about the spiritual weapons in general is that the lash scales with your reputation/disposition. If they match the preferred ones of your deity the lash will grow stronger. If you collect opposing reputation points it will become weaker. Monastic Unarmed Training used to work with Woedica's spiritual weapon - but that combination was so strong that they patched it out quickly. Doesn't work anymore.

If you have skeletons in the party (from a fellow Chanter) you might want to stay confused in order to "accidentially" kill skeletons with your friendly fire Carnage and Riven Gore. This triggers Bloodlust, Blood Thirst, Cleave and heal on kill (pet) and takes the Brute to a whole other level. But you cannot let party members come near you then if they have low health. They have to stay out of the Riven Gore range (same as Carnage range) or else they might get destroyed by it. That's not getting knocked down - they actually vanish and are removed from the party instantly. If you don't want to do that then Devil of Caroc is indeed a great pick (to get rid of the confusion - but also because it's a great armor with great enchantments in general). I would always use a main tank (not this guy, usually a fighter/something with Defener Stance and a large shield) and let him unstealth and getting attacked first - while the others prepare from stealth (casting buffs etc.). Only after most enemies settled on the tank I will send in the others (like this guy) with offensive stuff.

Sorry, the quote tags got messed up hard and I cannot fix it. Some text got lost, argh. Anyway: play it like a Rogue/Flanker and not like an offtank. Only unstealth the tank at combat start if possible. Create a fortmation that lets the tank lead with a good amount of space between him and the rest of the party. As I said: It is a squishy character - but that's part of the build idea. Everyhing you do to mitigate the self damage only opposes the steep scaling of the same. It will never be a really sturdy character - just more sturdy than a combo of Berserker + Helwalker would suggest.

In the opening post I composed a list of things you can do:

Undead boss tag team "Droste-Hülshoff & Grützmacher" incoming!

Yeah, a slower flavor. They creep up on you.

I cannot think of any class combo with Chanter that wouldn't work well from the top of my head. Since Chanter is so versatile it should work with any class really.

Wound generation comes mostly from Enduring Dance (of Death). It's a ranged build first and foremost so you will not get attacked as much as a melee monk which keeps up the Dance. And with a Nalpazca you get wounds from drugs, too of course. Stunning Surge (which makes sure you don't get hit too often) doesn't cost any wounds. With a Helwalker wound generation isn't a big problem either, you just have to watch out more: due to the increased damage taken per wound, if you get hit you gain more wounds than a vanilla Monk. But usually you want to avoid taking hits and generate wounds from Enduring Dance of Death. I played this as Helwalker first and I had no real shortage of wounds. Sometimes I had to wait a bit longer for Whispers of the Wind than with a Nalpazca. But it's not a big problem because until Whispers of the Wind you don't use them much for active abilities because Stunning Blow/Surge is so good with mortars. Yeah sorry, good point. I forgot to include the weapon set with two random scepters (I picked the scepter proficiency right at the start) for backup because I didn't use it later in the game. But it's useful in the earlier stages. I will edit that. I also retrained into the Long Pain (instead of using scepters) but then decided scepters is good enough as backup. Especially later - once you get Resonant Touch - you don't really need the crush backup anymore, because the stacks of Resonant Touch are dealing raw dmg - and they don't care if you actually dealt much damage with the mortars or blunderbusses. A raw dmg stack per graze, hit or crit is applied anyways.

What I don't get is: lots of players say that dual unarmed+iron fists is so great. But in my experience it's worse than most dual weapon setups, def. worse than dual daggers or sword + dagger (which I also tried for comparison). Don't know what I missed...

Hi, as the title says: daggers attack faster than fists. I find that odd. I wanted to play a monk-ish character and use Iron Fists, but started with dual daggers until I had the right level. That turned out to be pretty fun (once you get the hang of melee combat in general) because you can stab so fast you let single enemies not much of a chance. Then I picked up Iron Fists and ran around with that... aaand I retrained right back to dual daggers because the fists felt so very sluggish in comparison. Even though that means I have to upgrade my weapons all the time - which is a pain ita imo (atm the only real gripe I have with the game). I didn't clock it but it seems swords have about the same speed as fists at the moment? With Barbaric Shout and decent Stamina I can fill the stun bar of any enemy with rapid stabs in a comp. very short timeframe. It takes longer with fists and I get interrupted more often. Fists also deal less damage because they have zero enchantments (such as +10% fire damage etc.). It also seems that Iron Fists is bugged a little bit: it doesn't seem to apply 100% of times if you retrain into it? At least when I tried it out again later I would only get measly damage per hit. And the character sheet said I have common fists. But maybe a restart or reload would fix that, didn't try. With another savegame where I retrained a high level arquebus guy into iron fists tier 3 it worked though. Anyway, what do you think: should jabs and punches with your fists be slower than stabs and slashes with a dagger?

Hi, I think MIG 15 will be fine. I mean maximum damage (more base dmg from the cumulated Power Levels and then more additive damage with max MIG) would also be doable I think. If you can control enemies enouch so that they don't hit you often you can do with a lot less RES. Or you could use a large shield and raise PER but lower DEX and RES at the same time. Reflex will be hiugher, Accuracy and Deflection will roughly stay the same and you can channel some more points into MIG. Weapon & Shield Style lets you apply the shield's bonus to two defenses while the acc malus only gets substracted once. You will be slower, but with higher PER you can find all secrets. Same-ish Deflection but higher Reflex might even be a motivtion to lower CON a bit more, especially if you pick up Cadhu Scalth and invest in Athletics for even higher Deflection.

You're welcome.

I don't think so. Would be an ok solution for me.

So, did you try it?

"Character builds, Strategies [...]" Waiting to even look at unique items until I get higher quality gear sounds like a strategy to make the game easier to me. At least it's a strategy this info will lead to. In the PoE and Deadfire forums this would be the subforum where I would look for stuff like this. The report on the "loot uniques" mechanic immediately leads to behavior how to play the game in order to make the character better. Essentially it's the same as discussions about random loot tables, Strand of Favor, Attack Speed, Lash mechanic, PEN vs. AR etc. in PoE and Deadfire. In addition to that it also helps that this subforum permits spoilers. Discussing these thing in the General subforum (which is supposed to be spoiler free) is therefore not ideal for users who don't want to be spoilered. If it helps I would've no objections to rename the subforum to "Character Builds, Strategies and Mechanics - as well as a lil' bit of the Unreal Engine".

Yeah, that's correct. And while clearing all (timed) effects after combat is an idea I generally welcome, doing that might not be 100% practical - because of unguents (and also drugs) which you can consume out of combat and are also intended to be useable outside of combat (for helping with skill/attribute checks).

Hey @SChin, did a little testing, loading up a bunch of threads in multiple tabs and so on and also using the phone - and now the forums work fine again for me. The reaction thing with the posts can happen from time to time, but it only happens very rarely for me - except for the last two weeks or so where it happended more frequently. But today I didn't encouter that problem yet.

Very cool, thank you! Although... maybe the title should say "[...] unreal engine [...] instead of unity engine.