Boeroer

Cool, thanks. Now... since I can't see the dmg calculation in the combat log: how do I land a 160+ dmg graze with Xoti at lvl 7 when I hit an enemy who's near death? The formula above would result in 120-100*0.25 = 95 slash. PL (4*5% = 20%) and MIG (11, so only +3%) alone do not explain that raise...? What am I missing?

Thanks! But... that cannot be right. Because then a target with 1.2 health or more would receive 0 damage? Usually (when used at bloodied or neart death enemies) Xoti does around 150 -160 dmg. The formula above can't really explain this. Or I'm interpreting that wrong maybe.

Wicked Briars is an awesome spell imo. But maybe a matter of taste. I personally like Furies a lot but I won't use Spiritshift. The base dmg is rather low. The jump doesn't stack with Driving Flight. And a Fury gets its best bonus (+1 PEN on elemental spells) whether you are shifted or not. But if you shift you lose access to bonuses you might get from armor (e.g. Deltro's Cage) and weapon (e.g. PL buffers like Chromoprismatic Staff, Lance of the Midwood Stag, Sun & Moon, Magran's Favior or Lord Darryn's Voulge and so on). So - for your casting capabilities the Spiritshift form does nothing. The basic idea that kills can extend the duration might be nice - I just don't have the wish to shift in the first place. I agree that Helwalker is awesome. Especially if you really do want to stay away from foes. By the way: some spells work with Instruments of Pain - for example Sunbeam which already has a range of 12. It gets a 500% range increase with is... hilarious. But honestly the Barb/Fury is more appealing to me (especially when going for Lord Darryn's Voulge). Especially Berserker/Fury is really good early on bc. of the +3 PEN right away - but you MUST keep an eye on health. Blood Thirst with Storm Spells and/or Nature's Terror is just so much fun. And Lord Darryn's Voulge is like it's made for a Barb/Fury. On one hand you can use the Static Thunder with Carnage even if you bind it to the Druid class and on the other the PL to storm spells is cool and thematically fitting. I think often it's not the sheer power of a character that keeps me playing but the overall fitting "package" - and that includes thematic coherence. And I mean Fury + Frenzy... come on. Also Slayer's Claw + Berserker Frenzy will give you Energized. And that will interrupt foes with any kind of crit roll. Suddenly pulsing spells like Wicked Briars and whatnot become awesome tools for interruptin in an AoE. If you cast several of those enemies won't do a lot. AND you can combine Blood Storm or Spirit Frenzy with spellcasting, either applying a raw DoT with every spell crit or cause staggered with every spell hit. Last not least you can trigger Blooded with your own Berserker Frenzy self damage. Sure, it's tricky - but can also be fun to play around with. I just love Berserker/casters in general.

That's the Deadfire curse.

When you are building a Priest for Damage, Berath is one of the best picks imo. I would absolutely support Kaylon's suggestion that Helwalker/Berath would be a good pick - maybe the best - if you are looking for both good melee dmg AND good casting damage at the same time. Helwalker gets +10 MIG at 10 wounds (absurdly high MIG was a key feature of the St. Gangrene build you played); gets +10 INT, too which is great with nearly all spells (AoE and durations) and both high MIG and INT are especially good with DoT spells like Touch of Rot etc. Also thematically Helwalker and Berath will fit beautifully: Death rites + Berath - what more do you want? Monks also get Thunderous Blows which will grant them universal +2 PEN for weapon AND spell dmg. That's better than Devoted who can only use the PEN for his weapon of choice. The St. Gangrene build of PoE used Tidefall's wounding and beefed it up with absurd MIG (because wounding scaled with it). Unfortunately an identical scaling wounding mechanic is not present in Deadfire, but there are some cool Great Swords and Estocs in the game. One even has a wounding enchantment again (Effort). There's also the Spiritual Great Sword that a Priest of Berath can summon - and it's really good if you get your dispositions right because then its corrosive lash scales up. There are three unique weapons that fit very well thematically imo: Voidwheel: This is great fun if you crit a lot. A Monk can also use Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming to proc crit chains - so the special Necrotic Lance enchantment of Voidwheel might proc more often as one might anticipate. It's one of the most damaging weapons against single targets. The Twin Eels: It's a Berath themed weapon so it fits beautifully. It's not the all-time-best for damage (but still solid) - but it can be a nice support weapon if you kill frenquently because it has an AOE heal on kill. For inspiration how to use this weapon you can have a look here: Valkyrie of Gaun Engoliero do Espirs: It's an estoc and no a great sword but it fits lovely. There's a whole Berath-related quest in order to get this. It's supergood for casting as well because the enchantment "Blade Harvest" procs off of all kills you do, spells or melee. And it can proc itself when it kills, leading to a wild cascade of Ghost Blades killing everything. Imo it's the best pick here - but you have to work for it (quest). They all don't come early though. I would propose that you use the summoned Great Sword most of times until you can get your hands on one of the above (or whatever you like best). I personally would aim for Engoliero do Espirs and then use the summoned GS as backup weapon. The summoned GS stacks its lash with the ones from Turning Wheel and Lightning Strikes (only if you don't use Swift Flurry istead of LS of course) so you will do plenty of single target dmg with that, too.

I don't see a mchanical problem with that - but that doesn't mean it's not there, lurking in the shadows. Would it allow raw damage abilites to overpenetrate then (for example on crit)? I don't think so but I haven't looked at the implementation of raw dmg attacks and how they handle AR (or if they do handle it at all). So far the only "problem" I see that this may cause: it might be confusing to players who see a PEN value on raw dmg ability and think "Wait - why is there a PEN value if it bypasses AR anyway?" Is it possible to give a PEN value (like 6 or 7) and hide it from the ability description?

Jeez you are right. Thanks! How embarrassing. @Amentepcould you please move this to the Deadfire Character Builds forum? Mighty thanks in advance!

Dude... Again: Eternal Devotion gives you a burning lash for everything for some time. That means you'll have a lash on all attacks you will do during that time. That includes spells. --- Scenario: Paladin/Cipher Klaus uses Eternal Devotion with his arquebus. It does some damage and gives him a 10% burning lash for the next 30 seconds. This lash will work with everything that does damage. Now Klaus decided to cast Silent Scream. It has 0 PEN. He hits a Rotghast (named Steve) who has the whimpy burn AR of 4. Silent Scream doesn't care because it's raw, but the attached burning lash will severely underpenetrate because it inherits 0 PEN, too. Peter the Chanter/Cipher noticed the same when he wanted to cast Silent Scream with a shocking lash from Champion's Prelude (Sasha's Singing Scimitar). --- So: of course it seems to make sense that raw dmg abilities have 0 PEN because they don't need any PEN. BUT as soon as you attach a lash to them that lash will inherit the PEN of the ability. If that's 0 it makes the lash nearly useless because it will nearly always severely underpenetrate and suffer the -75% dmg malus. I hope I could penetrate the brick wall with this devoted post.

Giving away Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer: it is a soulbound item. You have to bind it to a specific character and then level it up through certain actions. If you want to use it with another character you have to unbind it, it will then fall back to its basic level and you'd have to level it up again with the new character. Firebrand is only the first level. The belt has some more useful levels of enchantments. I would keep it and use Firebrand as backup against enemies who have a weakness against fire dmg.

No, it also works without mods. The only downside is that when you use the Forbidden Fist ability then you won't get focus from the attack. But you're free to use any other attack in between to gain focus. That's why I suggested Forbidden Fist/Beguiler. Beguilers get focus from casting Deceptions on enemies. If you - for example - cast Phantom Foes in a group of enemies you will get a lot of focus. Enough to cast Disintegration next. You don't have to rely on attacks to gain focus. It still works but the focus gain from Deception spells is much better. Also: once you are ascended as Ascendant you don't need focus anymore to cast spells like Disintegration. So you could ascend while using normal Monk abilities and then use Forbidden Fist ability + Disintegration during the ascended phase. It's all ok. It's just so that with Community Patch it would be even better.

Yes, there are some trolls you can lure the bandits to. Good point.

Yes, but the point was this: if there's a lash attached (see Eternal Devotion, Deltro's Cage Helmet, Shasha's Singing Scimitar's Champion's Prelude etc.) then this lash uses the PEN of the ability it's attached to. In this case it's 0. But the lash itself is not raw dmg. So it will always underpenetrate.

If you didn't already notice: you don't get a lot of XP from combat. Most XP by far comes from quests. Even he most simple ones. You don't need to fight the bandits. You can also just sneak in there and steal the crate from under their noses. If I were you I would also pick up all official companions youc an gt so far: Aloth, Edér ad Durance. That way the fight in the bandit camp won't be that hard anymore. Soloing in the early game includes a lot of pulling and kiting.

The bandit camp is quite hard. Use chokepoints. Block the path to other party members utilizing obstacles/environment. That way enemies will gather in front of the tank/front line and will not move around a lot. I will always start combat with Inspiring Radiance and cast Chillfog simultaneously. Pulsing spells like Chillfog change their ACC on a per-pulse basis. That means that even if you have cast it before an ACC buff that comes afterwards will affect all the following pulses.

I poured me a small Pálinka (from northern Romania I brought with me from our last posting). The first sips were really good but the last two ones were a hellish nightmare, uäch. How can a drink turn from good into urglfx in half an hour? This never happens with stuff like Vodka or Gin but lots of times with Whisky, Cognac, (fruit) brandy and the like. What am I doing wrong?

Cool. I'll be 45 in June.

May I ask how old you are?

My wife is rel. high-ranking and gets more than that. Also being married and having three kids gives you a really decent bonus (of course that gets eaten up by the husband and the kids, but still).

Same here! I even refuse to write mods for Deadfire although I could. Instead I drew icons for a Deadfire mod that somebody else put together - as a treat. Can't do the same stuff all day, nope.

I'll charge from 20€ to 200€ per hour depending on the customer. The average is ~100€ I guess. Of course then I will have to pay taxes, health insurance, social insurance, pension insurance and my expenses from that. At the moment I'm not doing much because Covid and 3 rel. small kids (9, 6 and 4) at home. I briefly studied to become a teacher in biology and German and now I can put that to good use (not really).

I'm a software engineer (or computer scientist). I'm also a certified banker but didn't work in that field for over 20 years now. I've been self employed as software engineer/software architect for the last 12 years or so. The banker/software combo often gets you customers that pay quite well and designing software for those customers is actually not that difficult because most use cases are simple. But I try to work for other, less financially oriented entities - like doing some administration software for the German Basketball Association or the German Association of Sailors or so. Lots of sports associations actually. I played Volleyball and Basketball (2. German Regionalliga) when I was younger and one of my former bosses (still a friend) played Basketball in the German Bundesliga. Yeah... connections connections - so important - which I sometimes loathe. My wife is a diplomat with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Our household income (after taxes and stuff) fluctuates because of me - but it's always higher than 10K€/month.

Cool - should I ever have to move to Sweden I will consider to buy that.

Ouf, I earned more than that right after graduating and working as a research fellow. And that's not considered good payment here... Isn't Sweden also more expensive than Germany?

Yeah, same in Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg or Frankfurt etc. A typical "Reihenendhaus" without garden will be 1.5 million € and moren there. Urgs. I like Berlin. And Lidl is in Laufweite.