Boeroer

Shields (medium and large ones) lower your accuracy universally. Spells, chants, weapon attacks etc.: it all suffers from the shield malus. Usually nothing besides your weapon attacks profit from single weapon usage (+12 accuracy). Offensive chants are an exception (and most likely that's an oversight and not intended). Weapon quality etc. does not influence chants' accuracy. Also one handed style (crot conversion) doesn't work. Only the single one handed weapon usage that gives +12 ACC works. I don't remember if all offensive chants without exception profit from the +12 accuracy. Dragon Thrashed certainly does profit. Iirc "Come Soft Winds" also does - so I assume the frightening "Lo" chant also works like that. But that's easy to check in the combat log.

Hi and welcome! First time I read about that quirk. I suspect it will be very hard to reproduce.

Yeah, that's a good tip: creating some anti-kith, -wilder, -vessel weapons from regular fine, exceptional or even superb ones is not a bad idea. Sometimes you find some exceptional stuff early (for example if you take on Crägholt Bluffs way too early but manage to kill two or three enemies there before having to retreat) but don't want to replace your dear unique weapon. Then it's nice to turn it into an exceptional special weapon against <insert enemy type> for relatively cheap and combine it with the testing bonus from survival to great effect against certain encounters. One example: the Dweller bounty is pretty tough, but with a survival bonus vs. primordial and fitting weapons it becomes def. easier.

Yeah, that's a good tip: creating some anti-kith, -wilder, -vessel weapons from regular fine, exceptional or even superb ones is not a bad idea. Sometimes you find some exceptional stuff early (for example if you take on Crägholt Bluffs way too early but manage to kill two or three enemies there before having to retreat) but don't want to replace your dear unique weapon. Then it's nice to turn it into an exceptional special weapon against <insert enemy type> for relatively cheap and combine it with the testing bonus from survival to great effect against certain encounters. One example: the Dweller bounty is pretty tough, but with a survival bonus vs. primordial and fitting weapons it becomes def. easier.

If you are using offensive chants with Kana, a large shield is not such a good idea bc. the -8 accuracy hurts the already not very high base accuracy of offensive chants. Interestingly enough (only with offensive chants) you can use a one handed single weapon which grants +12 accuracy for weapon attacks but also for offensive chants. I give Kana plate armor and a single hatchet and only switch to hatchet + small shield when he's under duress. Your Kind Wayfarer should focus on heavy hitting one handers to maximize the potential of his FoD strikes. You only have 2 per encounter, so it's best to squeeze the most dmg out of that - also in regards to Strange Mercy (heal on kill). The mechanic of lashes (have to overcome 1/4th DR separately, no MIN damage, DR bypass does not apply) makes it so that higher base damage (heavier one handers) are much better with FoD than the light ones. Not so great: flails, daggers, fists, stilettos, hatchets, clubs, rapiers Better: sabres, spears, hammers, maces, swords, battle axes But of course it's best to use the weapons with the highest quality and with the fitting weapon focus first of all. Because if you miss your lashes will miss, too. And if you graze the lashes will have less physical dmg to be based on. Unique enchantments don't make a big difference that early in the game (see Gaun's Share). War bow on Cipher is great. There's a unique war bow in Copperlane (merchant) named Borresaine which is good. I would only switch to a gun (arquebus) for alpha strikes against weak enemies at the start of battle if that's what you want. Too much hassle for my taste, but it can give you an edge. For Ranger the best two weapons are Persistence (get it asap, it's rel. early in the Endless Paths, use MIG gear and buffs because wounding scales with MIG) and Stormcaller (White March). Before that Sagani's Massuk Hunting Bow is good because it has dual damage - unlike normal bows. So usually, on average, it will roll better dmg numbers than anything you can get before Persistence because it picks the lower DR to overcome (pierce or crush). You will get the same with Stormcaller (shock/pierce) but way better. A nice thing about Persistance is that it automatically unlocks Predator's Sense of the Animal Companion. And in PoE the Animal Companion's base(!) damage scales with level. This means the bites of the fox will reach pretty high dmg per attack (albeit slow) which works very well with the +50% dmg bonus of Predator's Sense. Never forget the Animal Companion. I personally love to give Durance the best arquebus I can find, Weapon Focus Soldier, Gunner, Marksman and Magran's weapon talent that grants him +10 acc with sword and arquebus. That talent lifts him to the accuracy of fighters alone and makes him a pretty good shot, especially if he opens combat with Inspiring Radiance. Later I even give him Runner's Wounding Shot and Interdiction. The reason is that this lets him contribute really well to fights even without casting one per-rest spell. His RES is already high so his deflection usually isn't the lowest one in the party, meaning he usually doesn't get bothered by enemy rogues/barbs/rangers a lot. So I can afford to give him no shield etc. As backup I use a sword + shield setup (sword also has +10 acc) or Firebrand from Forgemaster Gloves (3/rest,works with any weapon focus and with the magran talent's +10 acc, too). Best enchants on weapons is lashes and quality. If you can get a speed weapon that fits your weapon focus etc.: great. Wounding, too. Marking weapon on a Paladin is great, pick Coordinated Attacks then, too. For example your Kind Wayfarer can wield Shame or Glory + another sword. Most other unique enchantments aren't that important quite frankly. If you plan to pick an elemental booster talent (Scion of Flame etc.) you should put the fitting lash on a weapon. Scion of Flame -> burning lash. The lash on the weapon then gets boosted from 25% to 30% (*1.2). Lashes are a multiplicative dmg bonus, so this is good. For example a Paladin with FoD and Intense Flames (50% burning lash and 25% burning lash) should also pick a 25% burning lash for the weapon itself if he plans to pick Scion of Flame. This would boost his lashes to +60%/+30%/+30% which is great. If you don't want to pick one of those talents you can put whatever lash on the weapon. Sometimes it's good to have some alternative damage and not put everything into one element - just because you might meet resistant foes. --- Btw: a Kind Wayfarer's best setup usually is dual wielding because of White Flames' healing procs. BUT with Strange Mercy (heal on kill) it can be better to use Firebrand (from Forgemaster Gloves and/or Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer). It's does enormous base damage and gets boosted by Scion of Flame (because it deals burn damage). With FoD and Intense Flames it deals enormous(!) damagee per hit (but only proves one healing with White Flames). You can kill enemies very quickly with Firebrand - and while White Flames' will only proc half as much (2 instead of 4 times) you will have a lot more procs of Strange Mercy.

no idea. You can cheat in a lantern without that enchantment (giveItem command) and check if there's a difference.

Hey wow @thelee, this one is for you! @Noqn: awesome!

You open the in-game console (check out the key binding in the game options) and type iRoll20s <enter> (console will close) (reopen console) SetPlayerGender Male <enter> To change it back to female you type SetPlayerGender Female You only have to type the iRoll20s command once to unlock cheat commands such as setPlayerGender. But it will disable achievements! So if you want to keep those and just try it out: don't save after doing this - or save it under a new name. That way your former savegame will not get marked as cheated and you can continue with it after trying out the male heads, achievements intact. But if you want to keep the male head model on a female character I'm afraid you have to accept the loss of achievements - or get a mod that does this for you (it won't disable achievements).

Takedown Combo +100%

Hah! Happy Birthday!

That's new!

You can achieve 1000+ dmg with Inner Death and not too much hassle - if you get a good roll:

Yes, absolutely.

Wait what? ROFL! Sorry, there has been a misunderstanding, most likely because I worded it stupidly: I meant: whether the character kills an ally (Berserker killing skeletons with Carnage, Skald/Druid killing skeletons with Wicked Briars) or an enemy, certain effects are triggered. I didn't mean that your allies who kill enemies (for you) will trigger those effects. Sorry @thelee!

Yes, Berserker/Troubadour with Amra and Many Lives is pretty bonkers once you get Blood Thirst. Also with a heal-on-kill pet your self damage isn't much of a problem anymore.

Kana can be very impactful before lvl 9 if you know how to use the White Worms invocation to maximum effect: if you have gib effects (exploding corpses from crit-kills) turned off and fight enemies who leave corpses (basically any enemy except spirits and oozes) you can use chokepoints and pile up corpses there, luring enemies of a map there over and over again and cast White Worms in that pile of corpses while enemies approach. You can reuse those corpses over and over again. They only disappear if you have to reload the map. This can make Raedric's Castle so much easier to conquer and to get all the loot from all the enemies.

Ah sorry didn't read that in time. It's easy: just pick Wildstrike and Greater Wildstrike and Weapon Focus Peasant as well as Two Weapon Style and equip the Wildstrike Belt. Attributes can be balanced, you don't need to min-max for weapon dmaage. The natural weapons' base damage scale in base damage AND quality, making them very powerful in any case. You are now an excellent melee damage dealer and can still cast great spells. If you want you can also pick one of the elemental boost talents (Scion of Flame etc.) - preferably the element you picked for Wildstrike and which you use often with your spells - for me that's shock most of times. So Heart of the Storm in that case. It boosts your spell damage but also the lashes your melee attacks gain while shifted (including the bonus lash from the Wikdstrike Belt). Hiravias is a great Druid, you could simply copy his attributes and pick cat form and you'd be all set. I also made a more sturdy variant with the boar form here: Just for inspiration...

Inspiring Radiance (Priest talent for Holy Radiances) is a very impactful +10 accuracy boost because it stacks with everything, is a fast cast and achievable early. So well done. Also: Survival at 4 (or even 8 if you can manage early) and picking the according acc bonus against enemies ahead when resting. Stacks with everything as well. That's great for all debuffing and damaging spells and of course weapon attacks, too. Then pick a fitting Weapon Focus as early as possible and use a single one handed weapon if you still have problems (+12 accuracy is a HUGE bonus early in the game - later not so much). Then look at the enemies' defenses: if they have high Fortitude then don't use debuffs/disables that roll against fortitude much for example. In general use debuffs that target low defenses in order to bring down defenses even further. You can use Knockdown against low fortitude enemies with high deflection for example. Those are often spirits. Prone targets suffer deflection penalties. Use flanking, too. Having said that: lvl 3 in the Temple of Eothas is too early. The first floor is doable, but the underlying ones are way too hard then.

This is hard to mod because achieving fine control of the underlying 3d models seems to be tricky. Iirc you can hide certain parts of 3d models (for example the chicken wings on the Aldris Blade of Captain Crow), but adding stuff seems to be way harder. I certainly don't know how to do that. I suspect it might be easier to just put male head models onto female bodies. From isometric view it wouldn't be noticable that it's a male head anyway, especially with all the godlike features obscuring parts of the head/face. You can test how that would look with the in-game console: build a female godlike, use the console command to switch to male and pick a male head shape in the char sheet, then switch back to female. You should have a female body with a male head now. Now you can run around a bit with that to see if it looks wonky from the isometric view.

I didn't test that but I'm 99.9% sure that the time of death counts (and whether you are carrying Blightheart at that moment or not) and not the time of casting. So I guess it will work like that.

It does. Almost all "on kill" effects include allies. I don't even recall one that doesn't from the top of my head. Blood Thirst, Bloodlust, Twin Eels, Engoliero do Espirs, heal-on-kill pets, Blightheart... all work with killed allies, too. Maybe the Barbaric Smash refund doesn't... didn't really test that with a (confused/friendly fire) AoE weapon or so.

I wasn't adressed, but yes, Bleak Walker's damage output isn't great besides the 2 FoD strikes - and later once Sacred Immolation is accessible. In general a Paladin's potential for weapon damage is weak compared not only to a Rogue or Ranger but also to a Spiritshift Druid (which do incredible melee damage while shifted AND can cast great spells on top of that).

In PoE all per-rest casters also have at least one thing they can do per encounter: Priest gets Holy Radiance (which is very good when paired with Inspiring Radiance) and can also pick Interdiction (whichalso can get boosted furhter with talents), Wizards get Arcane Assault 2 times per encounter and Druids get Spiritshift (which is extremely good when build for, especially when used with the Wildstrike Belt). So those three "per rest" casters are not useless in easier fights even if you want to spare per-rest spells as much as possible. Priests can even be brought up to Fighter's weapon prowess with the fitting talent (for example Durance can be pretty good with an arquebus). Once they get spell mastery (a select tier 1, 2, 3 and 4 spell per encountner on top of their usual per-rest spells) they even outshine most other classes even in those "easy" mob fights. In addition to that you can also pick a cross-class talent such as Aspirant's Mark - which also are 1/encounter. And you can also pick talents that grant bonus per-rest spell uses. Priest (1) and Wizards (2) can also get rings which give multiple bonus per-rest spell uses. After some levels there's no shortage of spells uses at all imo. If I had to pick between Wizard or Druid I would pick Druid I think - but both are great.

I'd say it's a great weapon in general because it doesn't require any resources to get to superb. For any character who doesn't rely on shooting 100% of times (Rangers, Scouts ;)) it's very nice to have a weapon that doesn't drain your enchantment resources. But because other arquebuses work even better for Scouts' and Rangers' single target damage output (the aforementioned Red Hand and Dragon's Dowry) - and that's why you bring Rangers or Scouts in the first place (most of times) I also tend to give Blightheart to Wizards and Chanters. The +1 phrase on kill (which works with any kill, no matter if ally or enemy, no matter if shot or spell or whatever) of Blightheart for chanters is an especially intriguing feature to me. I recently played a "plague" themed Skald/Ancient and let my summons (first Ancient Brittle Bones, then Many Lives) run into my own Wicked Briars - and that gave me a big influx of phrases all the time I would use to spam the skald-made-it-cheap White Worms (it can target skeleton corpses because Ancient Brittle Bones and Many Lives will leave skeleton corpses). Such tricks are only doable with Blightheart and that's why I really like it. But I'd still not use it for a Ranger- unless Red Hand and Dragon's Dowry (and also Spearcaster, Forstseeker and several more "better" ranged weapons for Scouts and Rangers) are not available for whatever reason. Exception of course if it's a Rogue or Ranger multiclass with Wizard or Chanter. Streetfighter/Troubadour with Aefyllath + Sure-Handed Ila with the help of upgraded Wisps to become flanked + Blightheart for more phrases and instant healing from the Wisps attacks for example is pretty great.

Imo it's not harder. The per-rest mechanic of casters makes it so that you can spam a lot of (more) impactful spells (faster) in tough encounters. Most spells in PoE are more powerful than in Deadfire because they are per-rest. But that also means if you can spam them in tough fights (b cause you didn't use them in easy fights) the fight will be so much easier. Also the Priest's buffs are more potent in PoE1. You have Inspired Radiance + Devotions which is a direct, stackable +30 acc buff for the whole party. Also Prayers counter most disabling attacks of enemies - which are usually the things that make fights extra difficult. Any party is viable. You can play 6 Rogues and be fine if you know what you are doing. Two Paladins and no casters (besides Priest) will make the tough fights even harder because Paladins don't have the tools to crack those fights - unless you give them both a marking weapon + Coordinated Attacks which let's each of them buff any near party member's accuracy with all-stackable +20 points which is extremely potent in the toughest fights. For example Blade of the Endless Paths/Spectacular Spetum for the Bleak Walker and Shame or Glory + whatever other sword for the Kind Wayfarer. Lay on Hands and the Kind Wayfarer's healing are great to survive fights, but because of the endurance/health mechanic of PoE1, healing is not the impactful "remedy" to lacking defenses it is in Deadfire. If you try to outheal everything you will have to rest a lot bc. of low health. Even if only one party member has low health you have to rest. It won't help if 5 out of 6 have still nice health bars. But you have a Priest - and that's the biggest plus you can have in PoE. In general - for an easier playthrough - I would recommend 3 front liners with one dedicated tank who can block chokepoints (like Edér) and two offtanks who catch the occasional rusher for your backline. In my current run I'm using Hiravias with dual hatchets and Kana Rua with a single hatchet (yes, Hiravias is more than capable to fulfill that role). More front liners lead to a positioning mess very often. The pathfinding is not as good as in Deadfire and you might end up with some Benny-Hill-esque sequences where enemies and party members run around each other in circles, block each other and all other sorts of weird things. Three backline characters. As above I'd say the more casters the more easy the fights at the higher levels will become. But any ranged character will work. It's beneficial to not build utter glass cannons for the backline. If you have very potent damage dealers but they have low endurance, DR and deflection they will attract certain enemies' attention. Rogues, Barbs and Rangers are primarily looking for soft targets. If you then have front liners who cannot punish disengagement, you will end up with lots of enemies just rushing by your front line, eating disengagement attacks and attacking your squishies. You can counter that with tactics (don't un-stealth the backline until the front line is firmly engaged by enemies, use choke points and corners, use a lot of disables, summons and mind control) and/or by simply giving your backline a bit more deflection and DR (via items and buffs) so that they become less attractive targets. Even the highest DPS drops to 0 if your damage dealers get knocked out. TL;dr: I'd say your party composition is suboptimal but it's totally doable. You have a Priest - which is a big step towards easier fights. And if you had no issues in Deadfire I'm very sure you will not have issues with PoE - after a short acclimatization phase.