Boeroer

I just tested it just to be sure and as expected the Forbidden Fist ability doesn't add stacks of Retribution. Funnily enough Keeper of the Flame's burn damage (which does an attack roll against you) also doesn't add stacks. But if you cast Minor Missiles on yourself (auto-hit, no roll) you do get 5 stacks immediately. So what do we make of this?

I can check in the (German) evening if/how it works exactly and report afterwards.

Didn't test this specifically, but if it works anything like Dance of Death and such it will only trigger upon actual hit rolls, not self damage. For example Dance of Deaths doesn't get removed from self damage no matter the source (Alacrity or Sacred Immolation or Forbidden Fist Curse or Mortification of the Soul and so on). So I'm 99% sure Retribution will not get triggered by Forbidden Fist or Hylea's Talons. Maybe it gets triggered by Keeper of the Flame though? Its AoE has friendly fire and even procs Avenging Storm, so it's not far-fetched to assume it also triggers Retribution.

Really weird. Did that fight a lot of times and never saw this. Maybe some unintended interaction of the multiple effects that were going on.

Good point.

I believe if the giant grub grabs you there is a chance that it might swallow you which mean instadeath? I never had that happen myself though - maybe you need to be near death in order to trigger that effect or something. I usually only engage the giant grub with my tank and he doesn't get damaged a lot. Sometimes he gets grabbed - but after some wiggle-wiggle-wrestle then just gets slammed down for a bit of dmg.

First of all you missed your third companion: besides Aloth who's standing in front of the tavern there's also Edér, appr. 20 meters north of Aloth, standing at the tree with the hanged people. In order to get im to join your party you talk to the soul of the animacer dwarven lady that was hanged. After that he will say "seventeen and a half" when you pass by him and that opens up a dialogue where you can invite him to your party. He's a fighter. Then you don't need to do the Temple of Eothas right away since it's quite hard. First do some other quest in town. Some of those will lead you out of town (and back). On the way you will cross Magran's Fork where you can pick up Durance, a priest. He's hard to miss. Priests are the most impactful class in PoE if you play with a party because their buffs are extremely good. Give him Inspiring Radiance as talent since it stacks with everything and +10 accuracy in the early game is a lot and it's usable 1/encounter. You can combine this with Blessing (+5 ACC) - they stack but Blessing is a normal priest spell which means it's a per-rest spell. Then - while it's counterintuitive but still very helpful - you can also pick up Kana Rua (Chanter) at the entrance of Caed Nua. You don't need to go in (it's tough!) but just talk to him and return to town with him. You can go back later. Temple of Eothas isn't easy in general, especially the Shades which you will encounter on the second level are very strong. Besides getting Edér, Durance and Kana I would highly recommend to also hire an adventurer (custom party member) in the tavern for a few bucks - even if he/she's just filling a gap until you find more "official" companions later. Pick what you like. Rogues (high ACC, high DMG), Monks (high ACC, high defenses, lots of resources), Fighters (high ACC, high defenses, auto-heal) and Paladins (high defenses, great healing ability) and Priests (Inspiring Radiance) are quite good at the early levels. What early stuff you want to pick/use: Wizard/Aloth: - Arcane Assault: it's 2/encounter and really not bad. - Chillfog: this spell is the best 1-level spell. It applies blinded which is very strong and does freeze dmg periodically. Even if the enemies are resistant to frost dmg they still get blinded which helps a LOT in the early game. You can cast multiple Chillfogs - they stack. - Combusting Wounds: it will get triggered by every pulse of Chillfog which makes for an awesome combo - especially if you have two wizards who can stack up several Chillfogs. - Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff: it comes with exceptional quality which is very good in the early game and it has enormous base damage. It also heals per hit which is a neat bonus oon top. It's def. the best dmg output you can have for a single spell use in the early game. Durance: - Inspring Radiance as I said. If you have two Priests (Durance + custom) you can haven them both cast this - it stacks with itself. - Consecrated Ground: good healing. You can cast it right before you calsh and don't need to wait for a party member to get injured (because of then it's too late to react). Edér: - Disciplined Barrage: +20 ACC is insane in the early game. Stacks with Inspiring Randiance (+10) but not Blessing (+5) of the priest. - Knockdown: Edér has it anyway iirc. - Weapon Focus <Edér's favorite weapon>: +6 ACC is very good in the early game. Kana: - But Reny Daret's Ghost, He would not Rest: while the Phantom is not that great later in the game it's extremely powerful in the early game. If you manage to stall the fight long enough to bring this out it's often winning the fight for you. - White Worms: this invocation is very impactful if there are a lot of corpses lying around. Every corpse in the area of effect will explode and deal damage. The more corspes the more ridiculous the damage. Corpses don't get cosumed by this - they can explode over and over again. They also don't get removed unless you reload the map (like load a savegame or leave/re-enter the map). So you can imagine if you manage to lure a lot of enemies to a certain narrow spot (for example a doorway) over and over again the pile becomes quite big and often you can one-shot whole groups of enemies with the corpses of their fellows . It's best to let Edér scout forward and then pull enmies towards Kana who's already starting to sing his song so when Edér arrives Kana can directly unleash the invocation. For this invocation you should decativate the "gib" option in the game menu. Gibbed enemies explode on crit-death and will leave no corpse. No corpse = bad. Also certain enemies like spirits and oozes don't leave corpses. This invocation is very, very useful in Raedric's castle which is also in the early game. In the Temple of Eothas it's good on the 1. floor (spiders and stuff leave corpses) but not so much on the second floor because most enemies leave no corpse there. Here the Phantom is def. better. The best general tactic is to use Edér as tank and place him at a chokepoint like a doorway, blocking the way to the rest of the group. Heal him if necessary and do stuff like Chillfog + Combusting Wounds + ranged or reach attacks from behind him. Make shure Chillfogs don't hit him but only the enemy. In gerenal you might find some places that feel extremely hard to deal with. Nearly always those are places you can come back to later. Don't force it. The only encounter which is really hard and mandatory is the fight in Caed Nua (the castle) against some Phantoms. The rest is always optional and you can come back after gaining another level. Often that's all the improvement you need to win then.

There is none - at least on PC. In the Deadfire sequel you can activate a smart camera but not in PoE afaik.

In PoE afflictions and buffs are so strong it's usually not hard to reliably hit enemies even with mediocre ACC. If you bring a Priest you already have +30 stackable ACC through Inspiring Radiance and Devotions that help to land the good CC effects which then make hitting fairly trivial. Also Monks start with a whopping 30 base ACC (like Fighters, Rogues and Rangers). So they can afford to wield a weapon that hasn't the highest ACC. Against very high defenses you can always switch ot a more accurate weapon if you feel the need. I mean Firebrand is not glued to your hands.

I think you should tag some devs on order to get a qualified response. Like @Aarik D or @BMac or so. Maybe there's some easy answer to this question.

I'd say that using a drill to make holes into solids is objectively boring. *schenkelklopf*

That toally depends. Refreshing Finale turns the "x per rest times Empower OR refresh resources" into "1 per encounter Empower AND x per rest refresh resources". Also Refreshing Finale might lead players to actually use Empower frequently instead of saving the use of Empower points for later and then not using any until next rest. Also the difference in phrases after using Encore or Refr. Finale isn't that blatant for a good part of the game (where you don't have a big max phrase count anyway). Only later in the game (once you get access to invocations with 6 or even 7 phrases it will make a bigger difference). Because of those points I believe Refreshing Finale is the better enchantment for the majority of players, especially the ones with no or only a little meta-knowledge.

The point was that besides the food buff all the Power Level buffs you listed are not Corpse-Eater exclusive. They can be used by every character who has some fire ability - even a non-Corpse-Eater Barb. The only difference in your comparison is the food. An informative comparison could be done between a normal Barbarian with ability X and with some good food and the same ability with a Corpse Eater who ate Forbidden Flesh Pie. And if you do that you can see that Forbidden Flesh Pie with +5 PL is good but not really that OP - given that the ability costs 4 instead of 3 rage and that other classes can simply eat different but also effective food (e.g. Crusted Swordfish). It's even worse with the Roars/Shouts because their cost is doubled - which means you can only cast half as many. Even +5 PL will not compensate for that.

But besides the Forbidden Flesh Pie which is supposed to balences out the otherwise rel. weak subclass and has to compete with other good food (like +2 PEN food) all those PL buffs are accessible to any class with a fire ability. Try Meteor Swarm with the setup you wrote down and an Evoker with Firethrower Gloves or a Druid with Great Maelstrom. Instrument of Boundless Rage, even if maxed out by modded Flesh Pie, is kind of weak compared to that.

Exactly - Power Levels only raise durations of summons. And Empowering just adds +5 Power Levels. Hence spending an Empower point for a summon (creatures and also summoned weapons) is... suboptimal.

What about Effort (the great sword)? I mean it has no action speed/recovery speed buff - but wouldn't it work nicely with Predator's Sense? Also the 15% raw DoT lash itself is nasty. Besides that Blade of the Endless Paths is really a great weapon and I always shed a tear or two when I have to decide between it and WotEP (especially when having a Monk with Swift Flurry/HBD in the party). Time to export a character with one of them I guess...

Lol - ah well, was worth a shot.

Argh! I overread the sentence with Berath's and Magran's Challeges. Thanks for the correction. Ok then potion of invisibility doesn't make a whole lot of sense except buying time I guess. In that case another trick maybe: use two pairs of Bounding Boots (one from Benweth's study, the other from Ori o Koiki for example). You can jump while stealthed and coer a large area with one jump (the range is pretty big) and refresh the per-rest uses when stacking the boots in the stash. So you don't have to rest to regain the uses. It's rel easy to "sneak" past anything with leaps. You could even try to time it right and cancel the action while you are in the air, right before you land - but after the char circle appears in the target area. Since Magran's Challenge prevents pausing this will be very hard to get right but it's possible nonetheless. If you manage to do it you will be leaping absolutely silently (no noise on impact that enemies might want to investigate) and you will not consume any per-rest use at all.

Can't you just prematurely end the combat by using a Potion of invisibility or Arkemy's Brilliant Departure? Fight a little, kill some enemies, go invisible (which should end combat) and then repeat with fresh spell uses? Potion of Invisibility doesn't break with DoTs - so if you have the problem that the combat ends too quickly after going invisible (no time to run away far enough) you can apply some DoT (e.g. Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon) before drinking the potion which will keep combat running as long as the DoT is ticking. You'll have more time to retreat before the combat ends then.

"How are you gonna pay for it" is a rather stupid question when all you have to do is to take a look at nearly every other western democracy. The Nordic countries don't run hybrid capitalist\socialist systems by the way. They are running capitalism - but with a more dense social safety net and steeply progressing tax rates and/or luxury taxes (e.g. in Denmark a car will be taxed with 85% up to 150%). In Germany that's called "Soziale Marktwirtschaft" (social market economy) - which sounds a bit like socialism but economists agree that it's still capitalism. Also capitalism != free market economy. Actually unregulated capitalism hampers competition and destroys free market enconomy. Just try to build a car or to run a cell phone carrier: it doesn't matter how good your product would be and what a genius you are: the barrier to entry is just too high because of the needed capital and thus competition doesn't happen. With socialsm the capital goods (e.g. machines) would be owned by the people and companies would operate on them (maybe rent them). In that case the hurdles for entry would be low and innovation and competition would rise - at least in theory. The GDR had socialism - but it wasn't democratic and also they had a centrally planned economy (the opposite of a free market economy) which ultimately broke their neck. Same with USSR basically (but communism + planned ec.). Afaik there hasn't been any serious attempt to establish any corruption-free democratic socialism with a social market economy.

If you have above mod, Dragon Thrashed will get +20% damage - if that's what you are asking for...?

Same. Taking out the sigils after the fights is so much more convenient: your resources refill nearly instantly and your attacks won't break stealth (your recovery is -85%) which speeds up the process considerably - even if you can only scratch the sigil with your attacks.

Ranger/Ascendant usually is a class combo for using Frostseeker.

I played some solo runs recently - which is tedious enough in some fights. I still have no interest in adding even more tedium to that.

Well on the international annoyance scale which goes from 1 = "cool cool cool" to 100 = "'Bother Some: Annoyerance" all megabosses reach a solid 101203 anyway.