Boeroer

In this case it's simply based on my enjoyment. Therefore I first need to try it (in most cases). Of course it's not much fun to play an underperforming character in CRPGs (while it can be fun in TTRPGs) as well. But the opposite - like playing a character who has a win-button build in - is also no fun. It's a tightrope walk - but the rope is rel. thick I think. I can have fun with a lot of characters. One key is some interesting, effective mechanics but not too much repetitive micro (like using 123 buffs every time combat starts), another that I personally discovered some nice things about my character build and also that I can somehow connect to the character. That includes a somewhat believable appearance, motivation and backstory - even if it's just a rudimentary thing in the back of my head. So playing a Huana Debonaire in Patinated Plate with Fair Favor, rapier + flail and using the drunk pose... not for me. Anyway: some stuff just feels too strong for me to enjoy it. I don't say other players shouldn't enjoy them - just play how you like it of course. It's just my personal preference and it's complicated. There are even exceptions: I consider SC Monk with dual mortars pretty OP in a party setup for most fights - yet it was so much fun to play.

I don't find it too cheesy to hire a specialized Paladin to fight the Messenger in order to get Vatnir real soon. You're meta-gaming already to get this companion sooner than usual - and then it's just another small step to hire a fitting Paladin for that special task and say farewell to that special dragon hunter afterwards.

I simply don't use it. For the same reason I don't use Deltro's Cage Helmet much and also not Salvation of Time, Barring Death's Door, Wall of Draining, Brilliant in general, Thunderous Report, scrolls and Streetfighter with blunderbusses. It's fun to find out about it and use it for a short while - but boring af in the long run. I never even once used the Strand of Favor trick in an actual playthrough.

With Community Patch all wonky DoTs (that I know about) got their mechanics and descriptions fixed.

If you have a Paladin with Brand Enemy you can take out the Messenger at lvl 5. Neryscirlas is vulnerable to fire damage, Brand Enemy is an auto-hit and it lasts until the fight is over. Once Llengrath's Safeguard kicks in the burn damage will no longer penetrate and thus it will take a very long time to kill him. But I tried 10 minutes ago (just to be sure) and it worked. Maybe backing it up with an Assassin + Gouging Strike would be good.

Right. Skald with Blightheart is very good although it doesn't get any phrases from crits. But +1 phrase from kill (no matter how you kill) is often half the cost of his offensive invocations (e.g. Her Revenge). But don't underestimate the power of the crits. If you build around it (by using high ACC, crit conversion and most importantly high attack speed) you can produce so many phrases that you can't even spend them fast enough. At least against enemies with non-stellar defenses. A Skald/Streetfighter with Pukestabber + Marux Amanth, Miscreant's Leahter, Blackblade's Hood, Two Weapon Style and Confounding Blind, using Killers invocation to paralyze and then using his dagger will swim in phrases as well as deal great weapon dmg AND be rel. sturdy with Mith Fyr + Old Siec. It's fun to play. Actually I will use summons with a Skald. Partly because your max phrase count depends on your most costly invocation. And since Ancient Instruments of Death are very good but also quite costly for a Skald they have two purposes: first of all just be awesome summons of course - but also set the max phrase counter to 7 (6 normally +1 for Skald). You don't have to summon them in every fight, but when summons wohld really make things easier for you (like in boss fights or with tons of enemies) you can use them. For the aforementioned Streetfighter/Skald I will use the upgraded Whisps because they will make me superfast if I use them to fire at myself (only if I'm not flanked by enememies of course). So Skald + summons isn't that wild imo.

Looking at chanter subclasses in general I think most here agree that Troubadour is the most universally useful subclass. It can do it all very well. If you want to focus on invocations then activate Brisk Recitation. If you want overlapping phrases then don't activate Brisk Recitation. Skald is nice if you want to mostly focus on offensive invocations AND expect to crit a lot with melee weapons. You can achieve overlapping phrases witgh a Skald as well if you max INT, stack some INT gear and food and become smart. If you mean AoE damage: multiclass Paladin has Sacred Immolation and multiclass Fighter has Clear Out. Not really "plenty" but something's there. Multiclass Paladin also has the Beacon "tree" which is AoE cc/debuff. Kind Wayfarer/Troubadour with Ancient Memory + Exalted Endurance + White Flames is a very effective offtank who can keep the whole party healthy passively while doing good CC (e.g. Killers Froze Stiff) and damage (Her Revenge, Flames of Devotion). Because defenses will be good and regeneration and AR can be very high you can savely use dual wielding when offtanking. I'd suggest dual sabres. One of them should be Sasha's Singing Scimitar so that you can use Empower once per encounter which is fun imo. Second sabre can be St. Drogga's Skull until you find something you like better (e.g. Scordeo's Edge). There's plenty of unique sabres. Backup weapon could be something with a different damage type, I'd suggest crush damage. So maces, clubs or flails. You can also mix sabre with swords or whatever. If Fighter I would pick Devoted/Skald. I'd use Disciplined Strikes for more crits and cast Killers - and then attack the paralyzed enemies for great phrases generation. I'd use Sun & Moon + Sungrazer as main weapon set and Rännig's Wrath + Pukestabber as backup set and go for good attack speed yet good AR with Two Weapon Style, Devil of Caroc Breastplate + Abraham pet + Armored Grace.

I would try it from lvl 8 on. That would usually be before Act III. At lvl 8 it should still be a challenge. Some of the later White March maps my even be a bit too hard. But you can go and leave there whenever you want. You don't have to "solve" the White March in one go. See it as an addition to the open world map, not as a separate expansion. You cannot play it after finishing the game. Once you beat the main game's end boss it's game over --> ending slides. So please do not finish the main game first. It's even said in the DLC description when you buy it. PS: Cräghold Bluffs is extremely hard for a lvl-8 party. It's late game material. Don't try to solve it before WM.

Tagging @Noqn:)

Right. It's even better with more egagement slots (= more disengagement = more wounds + more disengagment attacks) - so make sure to pick Persistent Distraction and pick up some gear that raises engagement (e.g. shield, spear + modal, Kapana Taga, Reckless Briandine, Ring of the Clenched Muscle, Blackened Plate helmet and so on) or let a Priest cast Champion's Boon onto you or whatever. Keep in mind that you need at least 1 engagement slot to profit from Parting Sorrow (also on kill). No engagement = no wound. Means Debonaire and ranged wepons won't work with Parting Sorrow at all.

They should sell in a bundle

I wouldn't mind if the injury occured after the beneficial effect of the potion runs out (sort of a crash effect). And it shouldn't be a random injury imo but fatigue. It just fits. Afaik fatigue usually only occurs via scripted interactions so it would be unique to get it from a consumable.

Since Nalpasca Monks gain wounds from drugs and since you can also use Mortification of the Soul and/or Enduring Dance it's not a big problem. You can also wear Hylea's Talons (gloves) which can be obtained quite early. They have a chance of putting a little DamageOverTime on you which helps generating wounds (this does not remove Mirrored Images and also doesn't remove Enduring Dance/Dance of Death). As in PoE1 you can use whatever weapon you want and be effective. There's no mechanic that makes weapons less viable than fists. AI: I believe so. For Soul Annihilation it doesn't really matter whether you dual wield or use a two hander. With a single handed weapon however you will miss less often with Soul Annihilation. Misses with Soul Annihilation are a bit frustrating because you'll lose all your focus but deal 0 damage. Just pick what you like best I'd say. Two particular weapons are quite nice for Soul Annihilation: Whsipers of the Endless Paths - because first of all it has a cone AoE and with Soul Annihilation you'll apply raw damage in that AoE (and the sum of the raw dmg is higher than your focus), secondly it has Offensive Parry which is neat because a Paladin/Cipher can actually have pretty high deflection. If enemies miss against you in melee you will retaliate and this gives focus(!). So you can gain focus while parrying and then use that focus for your offensive stuff. Sun & Moon: it hits twice with every attack. This means you'll have a better chance to not miss. Also, when the first attack roll hits and dumps all the focus into raw damage, the secons attack roll already regains focus which is convenient. Skald profits quite a bit from Fighters' Disciplined Strikes. Devoted also profits from crits especially - so my pick would be Skald. Here again Sun&Moon is a good weapon because 2 attack rolls per attack means 2 chances to land a crit an regain phrases. But everything that attack quickly and has high ACC works well. Killers Froze Stiff is great with a Skald because it's so cheap for him - and the hit-to-crit conversion paralyzed enemies suffer from is ideal for Skald. And that stacks with Disciplined Strikes - so crits are very common. Offtanking is no problem with a Fighter/Chanter. I'm not a big fan of Rogue/Chanter because I don't see as many synergies there. You can set the AI up to cast all buffs at the start of combat for you. Citzal's Spirit Lance + Clear Out is brutal. Also Unbending + Wall of Draining makes you basically immortal. Bloodmage is the best wizard subclass for melee multiclassing imo. How much? Don't know. It's pretty good though. For most players it's just a little too boring for most of the game I guess. But using Shared Nightmare + Time Parasite + Amplified Wave when ascended is def. a killer combo. Same as SC Ascendant basically: It's a bit plain during the mid game - but later on you get to the really good stuff. For example Eld Nary's Curse + Sasha's Singing Scimitar + Empower is really powerful with a Bellower and you can pull it off every encounter. Also Bellowers get really long durations with their summons so that's a viable strategy, too. But Eld Nary's Curse is just bonkers with all those power levels.

Yes, this can happen if you have a lot of benefical and/or hostile effects on you and/or if your screen resolution isn't very high. There's a mod that you can install which removes a lot of unneccessary entries from that window - for example bonuses from taverns, food bonuses and so on. You can find it here: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/370

Better than pureed brains, isn't it?

Why that?

You can export a low level character with those rare gems. If you hire that character into your other savegame's party (with items of course) it will cost money but you'll have those gems. It's like a shop basically but instead of buying the gems directly you buy the guy who has them. Plus: you can do that in any tavern, port etc. You have to export from an uncheated run though. If you obtained the gems with the help of the console and then export them, that character will get marked as cheated. If you import him your game will be marked as cheated as well.

With a party? Every class combination is able to complete the whole game including DLCs just fine. There's not a single one that wouldn't work. Fighter/Cipher or Fighter/Druid are no exception.

Josh was playing another Pillars TTRPG session of his Dyrwood campaign yesterday. It seems to be in a state where you can already play.

Heh. Unfortunately you can't pickpocket the armors. You can only loot them from their dead bodies.

Indeed. It's possible to go solo on PotD without any meta-knowledge I guess - but you'd be reloading savegames a lot.

@Tagazielis monitoring the PoE and Deadfire forums I guess. Sometimes - when stuff is discussed here and the wiki gets altered shortly after - it was me. Not this time though.

If you solo the game you know that this fight only happens once you had a certain interaction with Harker. You'd simply wait with that until your level is higher. Eamund the Fox isn't that difficult if you're not so underleveled.

Stunning Surge refunds Mortification if you crit. With the three projectiles of Frostseeker + Driving Flight you'll have 6 chances to crit at least once. So it's very uncommon to NOT get the Mortification refund. Ghost Heart cannot use his Animal Companion and Dichotomous Soul at the same time. Both are summons. The Arcane Archer can have Animal Companion + Dichotomous Soul at the same time. Also Arcane Archer's Imbue:Eora and Imbue:Web are both very good to pull enemies together into one spot - then the AoE of Frostseeker works even better. You can start with an Imbue:Web from stealth and follow up with Eora directly after. This creates a field where enemies can't move AND get pulled to the centre. Driving Flight makes the effects proc twice per shot! The Animal Companion can just be used as bodyguard (not much abilites besides maybe Resilient Companion needed) or be used to get more ACC via Stalker's Link. Then the risk of AC's knockout is a lot higher until you get Stunning Surge. Stunned enemies don't hit your animal companion most of times. The PEN issue of Imbue:Fireball and Imbue:Missiles become serious on PotD. But as Helwalker/Arcane Archer I wouldn't use both anyway but only Web and Eora and then only Stunning Surge as main attack ability. It's very strong and you def. don't need Fireball or missiles for damage. Another issue with missiles and fireball is that with Frostseeker only the first projectile (of the three) will proc the effect and the other projectiles get omitted completely. This is a bit stupid and another reason why I wouldn't use both Missile and Fireball but only the CC imbues. They are perfect for this Frostseeker setup. "The highest dps" is open to debate because there are so many ways to achieve high dps and it depends on the situation. For example a Monk with Whispers of the Wind and Resonant Touch and Hand Mortar (+Blinding Smoke) does tremendous dps because Blinding Smoke triggers Resonant Touch. He can create 40+ Resonant Touches to a group of several enemies with one use which means 1000 raw dmg to every one of them (if not dead already). It hasn't the same effect on single targets that stand alone though. So... depends (like most of times). But the combo Arcane Archer/Helwalker with Frostseeker is no doubt really good and also fun (which is most important imo). Also because it's quite flexible and useful in more than just one way. Great CC, summons, damage, interrupts, nearly unlimited resources - all great stuff.

Right, not in a normal party setup etc. - but in special circumstances maybe. Like: if you are a solo tank who gets only grazed by enemies it could make a huge difference I guess. Also it's not affected when healing would be. For example if you are weakened your healing would be severly hampered but the dmg shield will not. All in all I don't consider it to be great. I don't use it myself 99% of times. But I guess you could create real balance problems with a 25 point shield and 5 Chanters - so maybe that's why it was lowered. As I said it used to be 25 but was nerfed. Which indicates that it was too strong. Does Her Courage prevents Mirrored Images, Iron Skin, Dance of Death, Soul Mind, Gilded Enmity etc. from stopping/deteriorating maybe?