Boeroer

If you are in a party, you can use a Berserker/Wizard to cast Confusion on everybody and build around a completely bewildered party. And then you can cast Pain Link on enemies (who get attacked by enemies you charmed - or on charmed enemies who get attacked by other enemies), attach Antipathetic Field to party members, Ectopsychic Echo to enemies, Amplified Wave on enemies, Withdraw and Dimensional Shift on enemies, Grimoire Imprints on party members, Combusting Wounds and Brand Enemy on the guy with Rekvu's Scorched Cloak and so on... Edit: what happens if a confused Priest casts Hand of Weal and Woe on a guy who has Rekvu's Scorched Cloak? Does that guy get the healing and 20% of fire dmg as healing, too? Same with Divine Immolation...

WhooooAAAAa! I used Withdraw in so many different situations (also unintended ones) and did the same with Berserker Confusion - why the F did I never think of this and combine both? It doesn't even require a hit roll when cast on enemies then... Really nice thought, thanks!

Yeah, that seems to have been a nice idea initially - but they either didn't manage to implement it or took it out at some point and didn't change the description. At least that's my impression. I always only see the dmg from the initial cast, no additional procs off of other vessels. Even when I'm test-fighting a ton of cre_dummy which are vessels, too.

Yeah, it's tricky. Also Belranga is difficult to do that way because her initial defenses are so high that it's hard to even graze her without killing some spiderlings first. But you can only apply Lover's Embrace's DoT "True Love's Kiss" from stealth. So what I did was to use miss-to-graze food and Gloves of Greater Reliability and did a lot of reloads until I grazed her directly after the Leap, hehe. Dorudugan is the easiest imo. Takes forever but requires no attention. Just start the fight, apply True Love's Kiss, vanish/retreat/hide and then do some chores (I mean you as player).

Barbarian is one of the fastest attackers even without Blood Thirst - just because of Frenzy. And he gets certain dmg bonuses (besides higher MIG), too. But against megabosses? Meh... not good imo. No class without refreshing resources is good against megabosses is my experience. SC Barb can get back resources via kill (Blood Surge) but in most megaboss fights that's not an option as you already said (against Belranga it works well enough though). I did a solo Furyshaper run - and while most encounters were cool because of the amazing Blood Ward the megabosses didn't work out at all for me (but I admit I din't try very hard because I hate those endless encounters). What you can do is use Lover's Embrace from stealth (Leap works very well here if you cancel it mid air to maintain stealth while landing near the target) to kill most of the megabosses and then use a potion of invisibility and retreat+hide. It's impossible to really kill Huani that way but for the rest it can be an option (didn't try with the Sigilmaster though).

It should.

Not really needed.

Monks can heal via items and consumables (which are kind of mandatory for a solo run anyways). An item which might help is the Abraham pet (healing in kill) which is good anyway. Monks can increase their defenses quite a lot. they get Duality of Mortal Presence which raises either CON or INT (you can even change that mid fight) which means up to +20 fortitude or will Defense. Crucible of Suffering is an all-stacking +10 to all defenses. Swift Strike raises DEX by 10 points. Players often forget that every inspiration raises a defense by at least 10 points. I would also try a Forbidden Fist with high (maxed) Resolve and Tuotilo's Palm and a non-crushing backup weapon (e.g. Battle Axe). They are quite sturdy and have build-in healing (whenever a hostile effect expires). You want max RES and all other gear that reduces hostile effect duration (e.g. Ring of the Solitary Wanderer). That way your curse and all other hostile effects will expire very quickly, doing less damage (if they do in the first place) than they heal you. A nice synergy with a high RES forbidden fist is Imagined Paint where you get wounds if enemies miss you. This also works if you simply disengage or leave their melee range and they miss. Here the armor Nomad's Brigandine is very useful but it's by no means mandatory. But it also raises deflection against melee a bit so it's a good pick imo. A Forbidden Fist has slower would buildup in the early game but it's very reliable later on.

I got it even earlier with a solo Assassin/Goldpact Knight. But it's kind of a timing puzzle and requires the (ab)use of Bounding Boots to stay clear of all the mobs. The easiest way would be to export a character from another savegame who already has the staff - and then import that character as hireling into your new game.

I mean... It's rel. high raw damage in a big AoE. No resistances, no immunities and a defense which is the one you can debuff the most (servus Club + Miasma) an usually isn't the highest one to begin with. it's certainly not OP - but now that I know that it works on your own vessels/spirits it's certainly less meh than before.

Another way is to use the Belt of Magran's Chosen with multihit-weapons so a Flame Blight appears sooner or later (the more hit rolls the sooner). This blight will be hostile so AI will immediately target it with Screaming Souls (may result in raw friendly fire!). You cannot do "vessel OR spirit" conditions with the AI but you can combine several negated AND conditions (not kith AND not pirmordial AND not wilder AND not beast) which leaves only vessels and spirits to cast Screaming Souls on. This works somehow - but I don't like that you can't automatically target an ally.

No you can't.

I was already thinking about a Wizard/Cipher because of the Will defense and Miasma oDM (and the phantom). But yeah: lots of steps to cast before you can fially use Screaming Souls. Better to let somebody else do the "summon vessel or spirit" and "casting Miasma" parts. I found out because I'm currently testing an SC Psion for my AI-improved, all-SC run and I already have an SC Chanter (and that SC Berserker with Twin Eels in my testing session who makes great use of the skeletons). Seems nice to be able to add some big raw dmg AoE to that at some point. But my original plan was to just spam mind control per AI. At some point the Psion generates focus a lot faster than I can spend it with Whisper of Treason or Puppet Master. And it's both very effective and easy to script. I guess you can't order the AI to cast Screaming Souls on a friendly vessel, can you?

The combination of Helwalker/Bellower makes sense as well. The high MIG works very well with the higher base damage due to increased power levels. Also with +10 INT you can achieve complete overlap of phrases without being a Troubadour. Dichotomous Soul cannot be used at the same time as other summons. Only exception: the skeletons from the phrase "Many Lives Pass By". They don't count towards the summoning limit. It can still be useful because if you don't have enough phrases for chanter summons you might have enough wounds for monk summons. So the summon uptime might be higher.

Afaik Blights are spirits, too. Essential Phantom could also be one. Didn't test that.

It's cool but simple. Gilded Enmity just replaces (or overlays, don't know) all the materials on the 3d models with a golden one - which is very easy to do. It doesn't matter what character model and which item models are currently visible. Else it would have been extremely complicated to implement the effect for all armor/headgear/cape/character model combinations. So - a lot of time wasn't needed.

Ah! Yes, you do!

Spells in this case: Wizards', Druids' and Priests' spells, Chanters' invoctions as well as Ciphers' focus-fed powers. Everything else you can use while shifted. You can def. use Gilded Enmity while shifted. Gilded Enmity + Spiritshift Bear gives you enormous AR with 0 recovery penalty. Great mix of offense and sturdyness. Gilded Enmity + Spiritshift Cat lacks 2 AR but lets you attack a lot faster. You can stack Eternal Devotion with Wildstrike which will give you good dmg output. Also the Spiritshift Boar of the shifter class is implemented with a little quirk which lets the raw DoT which is attached to the tusk attacks last a lot longer than with the normal (non-shifter) spiritshift and makes it very good in combination with high INT and against tough enemies.

Hello! It may be that this is already widely known but I never read about it, so here it comes: You can cast Screaming Souls on vessels only right? This limits its overall usefulness. But not if you have a chanter because you can cast it on your own skeletons. High raw damage in a big AoE - and all you need is one teeny skeleton. It won't even get harmed, that poor thing.

Ranger/Cipher with Frostseeker becomes really good as soon as you get Borrowed Instincts. There's no other class combo that gains as much accuracy - and that's great for using Frostseeker. Also: Driving Flight.

Yes, to use scrolls.

I think that depends on whether you want to kill the Megabosses or not. The rest should be possible if you don't rely on your resource pool too much (because you have no reliable way to refill it besides an empower point). But with enough arcana most things are possible.

Äh wat? Anyway - if you don't like it because of certain issues but don't like the solutions to those issues either then I guess there's nothing we can do and it's best to play something else.

One could argue that you could drop RES and deflection items entirely and invest in the other attributes and items in order to raise the non-deflection defenses more - since deflection can be brought to similar heights just by using those two items. But of course you'd have to play with a quite unbalanced defensive setup for the majority of the game. I mean the Mask is from FS and Wall of Draining also comes rather late for multiclasses. Don't think it's worth it. I was looking at it from a "look how high my defenses can go" point of view - not from a practical one.

Probably "Jäger der Jäger" which would be the literal translation. That's kind of worse, hehe. It's very difficult to translate "Hunter of Hunters" close to the original without it sounding weird in German. They should have translated it as "Jägermeister".