Boeroer

It comes and goes like the tides. As soon as there's some new info about Avowed or Josh's current (smallish) project there will be more traffic. I remember when Deadfire got released it was so much I almost got overwhelmed. Only lasted a few weeks though.

Don't do it?

Open world is a blind alley.

Well I'm always here so feel free to post stuff.

Becaaause it's not a Pillaaars gahaaame

Why that? Both thave the same amount of talents available.

Bittercut is great because it not only has an alternative damage type (corrode/slash) but also works with Spirit of Decay which gives it +20% dmg in all cases (no matter whether corrode or slash dmg gets applied).

Fleshmender's AR is too low. Put him into heavy(er) armor like Devil of Caroc or Bloody Links or even Brigandine/Plate. Even 1 point of AR can make a big difference, 2 or 3 are huge leaps in survivability. The Fleshmender's regeneration can't compete with higher AR if you get attacked frequently. Also use Savage/Stalwart Defiance. I like to use mind control like Whisper of Treason etc. against enemies who attack the Witch. Works very well if you are wielding clubs + modal or The Willbreaker.

Blood Thirst will get removed with your next attack no matter the duration I believe.

Predator's Sense is for the Animal companion so that's not related to the Ranger's attack speed. Ranger can have quality enchantments on his weapons (e.g. superb for +45% dmg) and stuff like Apprentice's Sneak Attack and also crits (+50%) or even Annihilating weapons (crits do another +100%). Since DEX is a multiplicative damage increase it's better for auto-attack dps than MIG in most cases after the early game/towards the mid/late game. However, MIG can get you more damage (not dps but one-time damage) with stuff that has limited resources - like Flames of Devotion, Wounding Shot, spells etc. So you get "more dmg for your buck". Also MIG is kind of mandatory if you employ a wounding weapon since wounding damage scales with MIG. In the end it doesn't matter THAT much though. A few points here and there in DEX or MIG hardly makes any difference. The attribute system isn't that impactful (which is intended).

By the way: Chanters won't stop chanting even if withdrawn by a Priest. So you can block a doorway with a withdrawn Chanter who's still singing phrases while withdrawn, and once he emerges from Withdraw he's usually ready to cast an invocation. Also Preservation items (+50 to all defenses when stunned or prone) will trigger when withdrawn, giving the Chanter +50 to all defenses minus the stun debuff. Even +100 if you stack a preservation shield with another preservation item. Now you ask why that's any good because the Chanter is withdrawn anyway. I only say "Defensive Mindweb".

I think it would be best to switch to Story Mode for the early game. Always better than giving up. You don't seem to have experience with this sort of RPGs and the early game is hard for somebody who doesn't. After Act I the game becomes a lot easier for many players and you could then increase the difficulty to easy again (you can switch whenever you want). In general the rule of thumb on the road to success is: stack accuracy to deliver reliable debuffs, then deal damage. Using brute force is inefficient. You can hit a lot more reliably in the early game with an accurate weapon (dagger, spear, rapier, club) or a flail which you use in the right hand and nothing in the left. This will give you +5 and +12 accuracy which is a huge plus in the early game. I'll name a few things that might help you in the early game: Use flanking! That means attack an enemy in melee from two sides. This reduces the deflection of the enemy. Aloth ("dude who uses magic"): use the spell Chillfog. It is very strong and applies it's Blinding effect every few seconds so it will hit eventually. Also use Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff. It's very good in the early game and it gives great value for only one spell use. Also use Arcane Assault after Durace buffed your accuracy (see below). Durance (Priest at Magran's Fork, you can travel there and pick him up at any time): use Inspiring Radiance and Blessing. Edér should use Disciplined Barrage. It has a huge impact in the early game as well. Travel to Caed Nua without any fight and pick up Kana Rua. You don't have to enter Caed Nua, he's standing in front of it. Use the Phantom summon with him. If you can stay alive long enough so that Kana can call the Phantom you should win the fight a lot more easily. Also most quests can be solved without fighting. If you can sneak a bit you can turn in some quests like the blacksmith's shipment. Other quests (against the grain) can be solved with just being reasonable and not trying to escalate everything. One character level can make a big difference in perceived difficulty. Hope it helps. PS: wise decision not to go into the bear cave.

I guess so but I would need to test that as well. I just prolonged a Bellower's +7 PL buff to 343453456346 secs or so. It doesn't stack with the next one - but still it's cool to always have +7 PL for your invocations. I wonder if I can manage to prolong Whispers of the Wind's invisibility as well...

Swift Aim does work with melee weapons. Viscious Aim doesn't. DEX is the only thing that shortens the actual attack/spell animation (and also the recovery). So it keeps being useful even if you reach 0 recovery. 1 point of DEX will always speed you up for 3% (which when attacking means a 3% multiplicative increase of dps) - no matter if you have recovery left or not (because DEX reduces animation time as well). When using already fast weapons with few animation frames (e.g. daggers) the impact of a few points isn't that obvious but you will be faster: Let's say you have two daggers and 20 frames animation time and 10 frames of recovery each - so 30 frames total per attack at 10 DEX. If you set dex to 20 you will have 15.4 frames / 7.7 frames = 23.1 frames --> 30% faster. Now let's say you have the same two daggers and 0 recovery (for whatever reason) and have 10 DEX: your attacks will take 20 frames to complete. With 20 DEX they will only take 15.4 frames. That's still a 30% multiplicative dps increase. +10 MIG would only give you a +30% additive damage increase which is worse (leaving healing power and DR issues aside for now). So it doesn't really matter if you have 0 recovery or not, DEX still works for you all the same. As a Rogue for example (plenty of additive dmg bonuses that help with DR already) it's a lot better to raise DEX than MIG.

was that only achieved by re-equipping Strand of Favor??? Edit: I just tried it - it's multiplicative! I didn't know that. So after some time it climbs really quickly obviously. Too bad it doesn't work with stuff like Avenging Storm from Heaven's Cacophony. It gets removed as soon as combat stops.

Besides shock-AR buffs (Tekehu has access to Weather the Storm as Stormspeaker by the way) and spell reflection or resistance (Xoti's Lantern can give a party-wide buff) you can completely protect a party member with Deltro's Cage: Shock Shield lasts for the whole encounter (no duration) and turns all lightning damage into 50% healing which can make sure that one party member is safe (e.g. Xoti who must revive others from time to time - or whoever).

<open console> iroll20s <enter> <reopen console> giveitem ITEM_PET_BACKER_Troll_Grog

It's not bad on my machine (Linux by the way) - but compared to other contemporary games it is really not the most smoothly running game there is, especially if you are playing for too long (some cache runs full then, player log file becomes enormously big which takes a big toll on IO) or frame rates start to drop once you have a lot of VFX going on at the same time (like lots of lightning or fire effects or stuff like Mirrored Images etc.). The first problem you can reset by restarting the game every once in a while (not great but works) but the latter is not really solvable unless you skip VFX-heavy stuff. Compared to PoE the loading times are really short for me.

It works if the enemies have actual buffs on them (also can be "hidden" buffs that naturally come with the enemy - so sometimes it works even if you can't see a buff on them). Before that if just always added 5 secs of benefical durations and 15% speed no matter what the enemies had. That was the fix actually. It was a bit bugged before.

Preferably with Scordeo's Trophy (Strategic Blitz) maybe so you can stack some melee recovery bonus before closing in with Scordeo's Edge. Every once in while you could even fire a shot at distant enemies if Blade Cascade won't proc soon enough or so. By the way the recovery bonus from Strategic Blitz doesn't stack additively: you can't reach 100% with it. When I tried during the tests above I had more than 10 stacks of -10% recovery (maybe 11) but combined that resulted in "only" -68% time ((0.9^11-1)*100 I assume) .

I also think so. As long as you are not using stuff like Wall of Draining or Salvation of Time I would keep Scordeo's Edge in hand (unless slash immune/very resistant enemies that can't even be penetrated with the sabre modal). By the way Blade Cascade doesn't remove the recovery from switching - that would need a Black Jacket + Quick Switch. It only removes "real" recovery.

Sword of Daenysis + March Steel Dagger is so fast at some point (some other speed buff, Durgan Steel, Two Weapon Style etc.) that you get to 0 recovery and on top use Vulnerable Attack (and still be at 0 recovery). Spelltongue + Drawn in Spring is also good - especially for Rangers bc. of Predator's Sense (wounding from DiS automatically unlocks Predator's Sense). You can test attack speed setups here: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/

You can use the pet named "Grog" - it instakills any party member on knockout. It also removes engagement from the game though. Maybe that's something you don't want. While the Critter Cleaver can separate the pet skills from the appearance it cannot split the single skills - else it would be optimal to separate the engamement immunity from the instakill. But I'm sure that somebody can do a mini-mod that adds Grog's insta-kill-effect to the game as a general rule or creates an item (pet, ring, trinket or whatever) which has the Grog's instakill effect.

Okay, checked those Karabörü's Bloody Momentum: self-stacking: no - it only prolngs the effect if you reapply it. That is very hard to do anyway because it only triggers on 33% of crits. So I wouldn't bother with that. stacking with Rust's Bring Low: yes - total deflection buff then -15. Rust's Poignard's Bring Low: self-stacking: nope (same as above) Sanguine Sword: Prepare the Offering: stacks with Bring Low and Bloody Momentum (-30 total) Blood Gift's self-stacking: only prolongs, no parallel stacks

Unfortunately there's no rule that is obvious to the player (maybe to the devs though). Usually an effect that comes from items does stack with everything (except active abilities/spells that an item adds to the action bar). But sometimes it does not. For example the +50 deflection bonus of Veiled Hood (Mask of the Weyc) does not stack with the +50 bonus of Escape but with several other deflection buffs iirc. Maybe because it's the same underlying effect - I don't know. Wheter an effect stacks with itself or not is also often a mystery until you test it. For example while Bleeding Cuts (Battle Axes' modal) DoT stacks (so that you get a lot of parallel instances) the DoTs of Stalker's Patience, Effort and Boar Tusks do not stack (only the duration gets prolonged with each renewed appliance). Iirc Bloody Momentum has no stacking limit (because it has a rel. short base duration this shouldn't make it incredibly exploitable). Edit: this was false, see below. Bring Low does not stack afair. Edit: correct, see post below. Blood Gift's healing should stack with other healing but I didn't use that weapon in a really long time. Edit: Stacking with other healing: yes, with itself it only prolongs, see post below. If you meant any deflection debuff that's Prepare the Offering - but it's per rest so maybe not. Edit: it's 1 per rest so you can't stack it with itself anyway, see post below. Scordeo's Trophy does indeed stack its recovery bonuses without limit. If you use Wall of Draining you can reach an absurd number of stacks but at some point it's not working anymore because there's some hard cap because of the reloading animation I think. I will just fire up Deadfire and test Karabörü, Rust's P. and Sanguine Sword, then we'll know for sure.