Boeroer

No, not really. See, the raw damage of Soul Annihilation (I'll call it SA from now on) doesn't rely on the damage your weapon is doing at all. It is solely based on the focus you dump into it and then gets amplified by damage bonuses (Might, Sneak Attack, Deathblows and so on). So for SA's impact it doesn't really matter whether you use a fat great sword for it or a dagger. What is more crucial is that you don't miss (or graze). And for that weapons like Rapier, Spear, Dagger and Club are great because of their +5 accuracy bonus. Some special weapons like Sun & Moon are also great because it has two attack rolls bc. it has two heads that strike seperately (two chances to not miss or graze). It is true that SA is a primary attack and thus the dagger won't be used for it - but that doesn't mean that the dagger has no impact at all: because you are dual wielding your recovery will be shorter (just from the fact that you are wearing two weapons - on top you could be using Two Weapon Style for additional speed). That shortened recovery does not care whether you use a primary attack like SA or a Full Attack like Crippling Strike. Full Attacks get a -35% dmg malus though - that would be not good for SA, its raw dmg would be diminished. But for your rogue attacks a two weapon setup like Rapier+Dagger is often still better than a two hander (or a single weapon) because the Rogue has so many good Full Attacks. So you don't need to worry about that in combination with SA: it's totally fine. For more confirmation: one of the best weapon combos for Trickster/Soulblade is considered Sun & Moon + Tuotilo's Palm (or another bashing shield) for the same reasons I explained above: you keep high speed bc. of officially dual wielding, you have a good main weapon that hits often and in case of bashing shields the primary ttack makes sure you don't even use the weak bash but can attack with the good main hand weapon mostly - and on top of it you get nice defense because not only does the shield give you defensive stats by itself, but bashing shields work with both Two Weapopn Style (bc. they are weapons) AND Weapon & Shield Style (because they are shields). Your setup is not far off: Rapier & Dagger are better for Rogue's Full Attacks and not detrimental to SA. You don't get the defense boost of a bashing shield, but your Full Attacks don't suffer from a weak bash. It would (both). Furtunately it only starts once you switch to the weapon set. It doesn't matter that the start of combat already happend. For the weapon the combat starts as soon as it gets switched to - so to speak. So using a ranged weapon at combat start and only afterwards switching to the dagger totally works. However: if you switch away from the dagger the buff will instantly vanish and it won't even come back if you switch back to the dagger. It does! Unfortunately the +2 PEN only counts for the weapon attacks of Marux Amanth (including Corona of the Soul) but nothing else (not the Rapier's attacks and also not spells for example). It does that. But so would Smart or Acute (like from Tactical Barrage - both grant +5 INT). The potential powerful effect of Brilliant is that it restores spend class resources like Discipline or Focus. And - and that's what's really impactful - used spells (for Wizard, Priest and Druid). It is significantly more potent to gain +1 spell use back per 6 secs instead of just 1 Discipline or +10 focus (which can be regained anyway) or phrases of Chanters or wounds of Monks (same as focus - they come back easily anyway). It's easy for Ciphers to generate 10 focus without being Brilliant. It's less easy or impossible for other classes to regain 1 Discipline, Guile, Zeal or Rage or so... so Brilliant can be nice for them - but it's still only 1 point and you cannot do that much impactful stuff with it so it takes time to regain a meaningful amount. On the otehr hand: one wizard spell per 6 seconds is... great. You can simply spam Shadowflame every 6 seconds or so - or you can be a Priest and regain Salvation of Time every 6 seconds and use that to prolong all buffs of the party endlessly... So Tactician/Cipher is not bad by any means - it just so that it feels like a bit of a waste to not pair a Tactician with a caster in order to form a Multiclass instead of a Tactician/<insert class that regains resources anyway> if you know what I mean.

I don't remember every questline and the individual steps etc. - but usually you get some XP for intermediate steps of a quest and the biggest portion at the end of the quest. So following those intermediate steps usually means more XP. If the questline has a lot of intermediate steps that all give a little bit of XP it can add up. Now it's up to you to decide whether that additonal XP is worth your time and attention - or not. Imo somtimes it's worth it and sometimes it's not*. Def. depends on what you like to do and what annoys you. Anyway: there's def. enough XP in the game to max out the levels before the endgame, even witout doing every addendum/side stuff. This is especially true if you also have the expansions installed (White March I and II): it's supereasy even with rushing through the game to max out rel. early. * Example: when dealing with Raedric you can side with Kolsc and get some xp for interacting with him, then do all the small XP-stuff you can do to reach Raedric (talk to the wizard in the basement, talk to the Priest, gain access to the secret door and whatnot), finally approach to Raedric and then flip: get some XP for siding with him then and agree to kill Kolsc. Then go and talk to Kolsc again, kill Kolsc (XP), return to Raedric, get XP for completing the Kolsc task but then kill him, too (again more XP)! I think that is the max. XP you could milk out of the whole Raedric questline - but at the same time: is it worth all the effort and all the time you spend running around? And also: Doesn't it feel weird and not in line of you really thought your char would do (role-playing wise)? And then also: barreling through the castle directly and killing Raedric might net less XP overall, but you'll get a ****ton more valuable loot from all the enemies in the castle - and better equipment (or money from selling that equipment) can be as important/rewarding has getting more xp. So what's more efficient? Sadly "it depends"... But I hope my point came across somehow.

Oho, my favorite Cipher subclass! I don't think so - I shooed them around a nearby lake today (was a ~10km walk), so the kids are pretty knackered now and will leave me alone.

Hello! Forgive me if this text is a bit of a structural mess, I wrote it while having breakfast with three howling kids. I was on the phone so there will be weird typos, too. Here we go: The Debonaire cannot engage (at all - that also means no Persistent Distraction which is a great Rogue ability for melee chars. You can pick it but it will do nothing - a trap if you will) and has disadvantages if he's facing melee opponents when no allies are nearby. So using that subclass for a dedicated melee character is a suboptimal approach imo. It's better for a reach weapon or (short) ranged weapon setup. Nevertheless: it's doable - and if it's more about RP vibes than power gaming it will be okay I guess. I personally would pick Trickster/Beguiler. Beguilers do get focus from casting Deception spells, but they also keep the ability to get focus via weapon dmg. The restriction that this only works if the target is afflicted is a non-factor: even if enemies have 0 affliction before you cast a deception on them you will get focus because the affliction of the deception spell itself will be applied first before this "does he get focus?" check is made. So you always get focus from Deception spells if you hit with them properly. And stuff like Persistent Distraction immediately unlocks the focus gain in melee, too. During actual playthroughs with a Beguiler - where you would start with a Deception like Phantom Foes and Secret Horrors anyway - I didn't have any issues where I didn't generate focus. Not once (that I noticed). Thus, the Beguiler is an excellent cipher subclass. Trickster is excellent for melee chars because it's a great combo of defense (via self buffs such as Mirrored Images) and offense (Sneak Attack and so on). The lower Sneak Attack makes almost no difference because it's only a 10% malus which stays that way even though Sneak Attack itself scales with Power Level. So while you level up the little malus becomes less and less noticable compared to the scaling bonus you'll get. For melee combat one could also consider a Soulblade/Trickster (or Debonaire). Nothing prevents Soulblades from casting Deception spells etc. - but on top they get a very potent melee attack which is Soul Annihilation and which profits from Sneak Attack, Deathblows and also crit dmg bonus. From the powergamer's perspective Tricksters/Soulblade is a very appealing combo. Seeker's Fang is exceptionally great with a Cipher because the soulbound-enchantment that adds the DoT is very powerful. Comes late - but once you get it I would stick to it. Rännig's Wrath is great. Imo overall the best rapier (if you factor in that it comes early). I would use it until I get Seeker's Fang (which will be very late). Once you get Seeker's Fang and soulbind it, it will ask which class you want to bind it to. This will be binding (pun intended) and you could only change that by severing the soulbind and bind+level up anew - ugh). So pick the Cipher route! It's best. The DoT works incredibly well as I said and your questions about it can be answered with: don't worry, it works on hit and crit, it stacks and it's awesome. Debonaire/Cipher problems again - or rather pure Cipher problems: If you hit charmed enemies (with Deception or weapon) you will not get any focus(!). But Aspect of the Spider and all other weapon stuff will still apply even to charmed enemies (or party members and other allies). Rogue's DoT attacks (Ring the Bell, Gouging Strike, Toxic Strike) stack with the Fang's DoTs and this melts away any foe in no time. For the second weapon I'd recommend one set with a Dagger (look at Marux Amanth, you can bind it to your Rogue class) or Lover's Embrace. The Frenzy from Lover's Embrace stacks with everything by the way - so it can make you noticably faster. The other set can be stiletto like Rust's. It's a great weapon in general but it's true that the pierce dmg can be limiting at times. It's not that hard to get it with a full party. Especially if you use stuff like Gouging Strike and Lover's Embrace against dear Rust from stealth and in the following battle in the cave have charm and dominate... Just switch the weapon set if you encounter certain resistant enemies. As you might know in Deadfire underpenetration is a severe, severe problem for your dmg output. Much more crippling than it was in PoE. So make sure that your Penetration is always equal or better than the enemies' armor rating - else your dmg will be ridiculously low. You can witness that against certain enemies sich as Steelclad Constructs etc. For style I would say use one set Rännig's Wrath + Rust's and the backup set could be Griffin's Blade (looks flashy like a Rapier but is a sword) + Lover's Embrace? Something else - there's another problem I recalled: charmed enemies flip back to hostile. So in general it's better to dominate them instead - I mean if want to attack them during the mind control phase. Debonaire (if you pick that) won't get crit conversion against dominated enemies(!). Only charmed ones work. That means: on one hand you will almost always land a crit on a charmed enemy - but on the other hand it will flip back to hostile immediately. Why would one want to trade one of the best CC effect in the game (turn a hostile entity into an ally) for a little bit of additional weapon damage - without even getting focus for that? That's another reason why on paper Debonaire/Cipher sounds great but mechanically I'm only lukewarm about it, especially a melee variant who wants to land melee crits. It's hunting crits nicely (with a lot of micromanagement I must say) - but this tactic is actually detrimental to your party's overall performance - compared to just leave the enemy charmed as long as possible. You could only attack charmed enemies who are about to flip back anyway (duration's up) bit that adds even more micromanagement and becomes rather tedious (speaking from experience). Ah, one good thing: One nice synergy about Debonaire/Cipher is charm + Disintegration (or Soul Ignition). Suffering those pure DoT spells doesn't flip charmed enemies back! Because it's not a real direct damage attack but instead a "status effect". The game doesn't trigger the "hey, that charming dude hurt me - so I'm gonna be hostile again" check. Crits are benefical for pure DoTs, too - so that's a synergy. I'm not questioning the preferences you deducted from that - but looking at that passage: don't you want to take a little look at a Darcozzi Paladin as potential multiclass option? I mean from a role playing perspective? Paladin/Cipher is a nice combo in general anyway - but on top the favorite dispositions for Darcozzis are clever and passionate... I mean... Also Rapier and Dagger are kind of the classic Darcozzi weapons (besides Rapier + Buckler I guess). Flashy Vaillant fencer and all. Adds sturdyness, support, healing and very nice accuracy with Ring of Focused Flames + your Eternal Flames ability (the lash of it applies to direct damage spells, too). Rest: I personally don't like Ascendant too much. It forces you (kind of) to act in phases: loading phase and casting phase. That detrimental to versatility as I like it. An advantage for more weapon-heavy approaches is that its Soul Whip's dmg bonus doesn't turn off when focus is full Asis the case with other ciphers - but instead it gets even stronger. So one could use the Ascendant as weapon dmg booster only - but that's weird somehow and also a Soulblade would still do way better than that. I also don't like Tactician too much, especially with Ciphers. First of all I'm not a big fan of the Fighter unless it's a tank or at least tank-ish. Second of all it adds so much micro in a party setup (for solo it's great). Third issue: a Cipher gains very little from becoming Brilliant. Classes like Wizard, Priest and Druid profit the most from multiclassing with Tactician imo. Cheers!

Hmm... a little more context (map, party composition and level etc.) would have been helpful. My guess is that you stumbled into an area that is supposed to be done later (aka you might be underleveled - as @Chaospread already suggested).

That was @Noqn And he meant "Diplomacy" instead of "Disposition" in the last sentence I guess. But anyway I think that leveling Intimidate instead of Diplomacy is the way to go for a Steel Garrote.

Hello! If you put a dagger in your offhand you will be dual wielding (fist + dagger), you will attack with fist and dagger alternately (when using auto-attacks) or at once (when using Full Attacks like Stunnung Surge) and you will get the speed bonus. If you use Primary Attacks you will only use your fist (no alternation). If you put the dagger into the main hand you will get the accuracy bonus for single weapon usage and only attack with that dagger in all cases. If you do primary attacks only (like Force of Anguish for example - those are attacks that only use the main hand) you would still get the speed bonus and the deflection bonus of the dagger but not attack with the dagger itself, circumventing the damage malus of the dagger modal completely. For a solo Monk the much better option to get similar but higher benefits is to use the bashing shield Tuotilo's Palm (Two Weapon Style + Weapon & Shield Style BOTH apply) instead of a dagger. You can use the same tactics as with the dagger but the defense bonuses will be a lot higher and also the unarmed accuracy will be higher - while the speed bonus still applies.

The stats are fine imo. Summoning weapons does not break ABD. I just recalled that Blood Sacrifice does break ABD - because you are dealing damage. It's self damage but it still counts unfortunately. I don't remember if the self dmg from Deleterious Alacrity of Motion also breaks ABD - but I guess it does.

It's in these grimoires: Arkemyr's Grimoire (loot when killing Arkemyr) Arkemyr's Illuminating Discoveries (reward from Arkemyr for completing the quest "Berkana's Folly") Bekarna's Celestial Grimoire (Forgotten Sanctum stuff) Celestial Grimoire (Forgotten Sanctum stuff) The first two can be obtained as soon as you can either kill Arkemyr or complete Berkana's Folly. If you kill Arkemyr before completing Berkana's Folly the quest will fail, so I wouldn't do that even if it might be easier to kill Arkemyr instead of completing that quest. If you complete the quest and kill Arkemyr afterwards you can get both grimoires. The latter two are high level stuff as the placement in the Forgotten Sactum indicates. You can complete Berkana's Folly easily even if you are severly underleveled with an Assassin/Bloodmage if you go solo (or park the party outside of enemies' attention range), wear Bounding Boots (or have high stealth), Lover's Embrace as single weapon and use Gouging Strike as well as Smoke Veil (or Shadowing Beyond). Simply stab an enemy from stealth with a Gouging Strike and then retreat and hide - until the enemy is dead. Rinse an repeat. It will take a while because most of it is waiting - but's it's rel. foolproof even against the hardest enemies in that quest. Good thing that you can obtain that quest so early - just rob Arkemyr's vault asap. It's a piece of cake if you use the "wear Arkemyr's old robe" approach. So, all in all you can get Arkemyr's Illuminating Discoveries pretty early if you are willing to invest some idle time. Lvl 13 will be totally fine. Maybe you can even do the quest without all that stab and hide stuff and just brute-force it with a good party composition. But if not: stab and hide always works. You can use Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon. DoC Breastplate only works with weapon crits. The effect of Healing Hands (superearly gloves) can be prolonged with Wall of Draining. Same with the healing from Blightheart shots. Any form of damage you deal (except from Wall spells) will cancel the invisibility of Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure - poison DoTs included. So if you put any DoT on an enemy (like Toxic Strike for example) you cannot profit from ABD while the DoT is ticking. ABD will break on the next dmg tick (as soon as an enemy suffers dmg). Shadowing Beyond and Smoke Veil won't do that. They break on grazes/hits/crits you roll against enemies. That's why I consider the use of DoTs + ABD as antisynergistic if you don't cleary separate a "debuff/CC" phase from a "damage dealing phase with DoTs" in combat. But since the CC/debuff spells donÄt last forever and you might want to refresh them it's not that easy to separate imo (unless the fights are rel. short). Also, DoT's dmg doesn't profit from Assassinate. So, best to go invis. with ABD, debuff the enemy into the ground and emerge from invisibility with a hefty direct-dmg spell like Shadowflame or so to deal the maximum damage with an Assassinate-crit. After that the DoT stuff can start without interfering with your invisibility.

I don't know what you mean with low endurance or godlikes' endurance bonus. Do you mean healing? Like the racial ability "Silver Tide" of Moon Godlikes? Animal companions do not benefit from any equipment enchantment that only applies to your ranger (like Might +1 or something). But if you are a Moon Godlike and trigger a Silver Tide because you drop below 50% endurance for example, then your boar companion would get healed by Silver Tide like any other party member in range would get healed, too. Equipment like "Shod in Faith" boots also work well for a ranger: if the healing (Consecrated Grounds) of the boots gets triggered it will heal the animal companion and other party members. But in general: Animal Comanion and Ranger are two totally seperate characters. No individual stat buff the Ranger gets will be transferred to the Animal Companion or vice versa - unless explicitly stated otherwise like with the abilities "Marked Prey", "Defensive Bond" and "Vengeful Grief" (and those are the only abilities I recall that apply to the ranger AND the animal companion).

Merciless Companion gives your animal companion +30% additive weapon damage, Apprentice's Sneak Attack gives your character +15% additive weapon damage. There is no stacking (on one character). You will not profit from Merciless Companion and your animal companion will not profit from Apprentice's Sneak Attack.

Iirc the original initial project name on Kickstarter was something like "something something Eternity" which they changed to Pillars of Eternitity because it sounded cool. Later they came up with the whole Adra stuff being quintessential for the way the world works and I guess it was no coincidence it fit the name nicely. The devs speak about this in the documentary:

Nope. Except Many Lives Pass By - they "stack" with other summons. For the rest it's either Essential Phantom xor Chanter summons.

? First of all: in 99% of cases your party can start the encounter stealthed with only the tank unstealthed. So a wizard tank can just unstealth and let the enemies come while casting self buffs. In cases were this doesn't work the wizard tank can just run towards the enemies and take the first few blows and start buffing once they engagaged. It's not like a wizard with a general defensive setup gets one-shot without buffs or anything. I played even Aloth as SC Wizard "tank" and it works well enough (unless countless Arcane Dampeners kept getting dropped on him - which can become a problem). My main issue is that all the self-buffing becomes really tedious and at the same time pretty boring at some point.

Yeah - the good thing about Fassina's Druid class ist that she has the cat form for her spiritshift. This can be used to cast very quickly at the start of combat: no armor penalty and cat flurry (on top of Alacrity's DEX bonus etc.) let you cast a lot of spells during the speed buff duration - like the ones @kronozord mentioned for example.

In the early game you don't need them so much. Later she can use items such as Reckless Brigandine and Kapana Taga & shield for 4 engagement slots + Essential Phantom for another 4. Wouldn't be my preferreed role for her either though. When I am using Fassina as SC Wizard I almost always end up with gear (Ring of the Marksman, Helm of the White Void, High Harbinger's Robe etc.) tailored towards the use of the Blackbow + Essential Phantom - because it's just so efficient and effective in most encounters on top of the other spells.

For the late game a Bloodmage/Ascendant is one of the most "straightforward" powerful Cipher combinations you can have (without exploiting unintended behavior of certain items and other very cheesy apporaches). The main reason is that the Bloodmage can have unlimited casts of Wall of Draining which can be used to prolong the ascended state endlessly. That's endless casting of Cipher spells for free, including Ancestor's Memory for your whole party (think of your party's Priest who can then use Salvation of Time to keep the whole party brilliant for the entire fight). On top of that you can of course prolong all other sorts of buffs (accuracy, defenses, inspirations - you name it) and healing over time (Minor Lay on Hands from gloves and/or Blightheart's healing pulse for example). Another very strong combo with Ascendant is Ranger/Ascendant with the Frostseeker warbow. Some prefer Ghost Heart, I would prefer Arcane Archer. It has one of the highest and at the same time "easy to get" accuracy ceilings of all class combos which is important for the bow (it relies on crits) and it does great single tarter as well as AoE damage (from the bow's AoE itself as well as the imbue shots of the Arcane Archer) and has very good focus generation so you can ascend all the time. Then you can decide if you just want to keep shooting while ascended (while ascended the Soul Whip damage bonus doesn't turn off like with other ciphers but instead does MORE weapon damage) or cast cipher spells for free with absurd accuracy (for example crit-dominate half of the enemy group or whatever). This takes off much sooner than the Bloodmage/Ascendant variant - and while it doesn't have the gamebreaking potential the Bloodmage/Ascendant has, it's still an extremely efficient combo for a party until the end of the game. Besides that, my personal absolute favorite Cipher subclass is the Psion - either single class or obviously paired with some other caster like Wizard, Priest, Druid or - yet again my favorite combo: Chanter (more spec. Troubadour). Psion/Troubadour, while being very useful in any party, is also one of the best solo class combos. Just a all around fun, versatile and strong combination in my opinion. It was one of the most enjoyable characters I played during my active playing time with Deadfire - and usually I'm a fan of Monks and Barbarians in this game, so that's extra special. Another very fun combo for me personally was Beguiler/Furyshaper with the Willbreaker as main weapon. A very good debuffer and crowd controlleer if you have good acc buffs in the party (usually a priest) and later in the game also a great damage dealer with the weapon. Also thematically very nice for an MC imo because the main theme of both classes fit nicely imo. I personally am not a big fan of the Soulblade although Soul Annihilation is obviously a great and powerful ability. But it also leads to very one-dimendional builds imo and you really have to work to get away from that. If that's not a problem then any martial/Soulblade combo is great. Trickster/Soulblade with Sun & Moon+Tuotilo's Palm (or any other bashing shield) is very good and so is Streetfigher/Soulblade with Sun & Moon+blunderbuss. Also Bloodmage/Soulblade is very, very good - mainly because of the combination of Citzal's Spirit Lance and Soul Annihilation as well as the fact that Wall of Draining can prolong the Soul Blade's bonuses he gets on kill (+max focus for example).

Yes, but not during combat. I mean you can change the scaling option during combat - but this won't take effect until after the combat ends. Yes, you can pick the same savegame from PoE every time you start a new Deadfire run. It doesn't get used up or something like that. Edit: whoops, forgot: Hello and welcome!

I have played all of those combinations (except instead of Assassin/vanilla Wizard it was a /Bloodmage and another time an /Illusionist). --- The best trick for the Assassin/Wizard is to use Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure and then cast super accurate debuff and disabling spells before finishing with a big damage spell. Because Arkemyr's BD gives you invisibility that doesn't break - unless you deal damage - you can cast all sorts of CC/debuff spells while staying invisible. To stay more true to the Assassin theme you can also try to do backstabs with Concelhaut's Draining Touch (highest base dmg weapon in the game) from invisibility - but it's fiddly business... --- Assassin/Bleak Walker (or any Paladin subclass) can be nice because you can stack 3 "neverending" damage-over-time effects: True Love's Kiss (from the Dagger Lover's Embrace) + Gouging Strike + Brand Enemy. From stealth you will use Gouging Strike with the Dagger, get Assassinate's 25 bonus accuracy, combined with the +5 accuracy from Daggers and +12 accuracy from one handed use. Very difficult to miss that one. Since attacks from stealth have -85% recovery time you can immediately follow up with Brand Enemy which his an auto-hit (so it cannot miss). You can then turn invisible and hide and wait until the enemy dies. This works with almost every enemy in the game, so it's a great tactic for solo. For a whole party imo an Assassin/Break Walker will become too boring if you just stick to that. But if you lean into the support role a little more and just take out the nastiest enemies of an encounter it can still be fun. --- SC Assassin can be very good if you use Vanishing Strikes (the invisibility of it doesn't break at all) and pair it with Gambit. For this to work really nicely you need as much INT as you can as well as items and consumables that prolong benefical effects. Because Vanishing Strike's invisibility is short you want to boost it as much as possible. It also scales with Power Level, so make sure to take Prestige. You also want to be very fast to be able to squeeze as many Gambit attacks into the invisibility phase as you can in order to profit from Assassinate and Backstab. Which needs high DEX. High accuracy and therefore PER is also good because you want to crit a lot (see Gambit refund). A very fast setup is dual daggers with Pukestabber and Lover's Embrace under the influence of Alkohol (as resting food). Combine with Aegor's Swift Touch and that hood I forgot the name of and other gear that grants either action speed or recovery time cuts. An armor like Miscreant's Leather in combination with a pet like Abraham can be faster than no armor. When all is set up you will have a very rogue-like char with powerful single target damage. Perfectly suited to hunt down certain "high priority targets" and neutralize them quickly.

First of all: what is grok/grokking? Edit: nevermind, googled it. Some things work exactly that same as in PoE, some don't. If you want to know what's going on I recommend reading @thelee's GameFAQ for Deadfire. It's in-depth but still brief enough and well-structured with lots of details that you would only grasp after hundreds of hours of playtime otherwise: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599 Imo: the main thing to know about is Armor vs. Penetration. In order to truly understand how important this is, take a look at the part where the math behind underpenetration (and any other dmg malus) is explained. --- Casters like Wizards, Druids and Priests still have a development curve where in the early game they have very little options per fight - but tend to collect an big pile of impactful spells/abilities the further the level progression advances. Like in PoE, but less pressure on balance because in general they can't cast 4 very strong spells per tier/rest which would make short work of even the tougher enemies. Instead they can cast 2 (less impactful) spells per tier per encounter. I think that made the encounter design a lot easier. Classes are more balanced than in PoE and there's a ton of great viable option with whatever class combo. Building a party like you described is still very much possible. One character that immediately comes to mind when reading your description is "Herald" (Paladin/Chanter). The things that are different from PoE and which one should really grasp imo: - PEN vs. AR (very different comp. to PoE). Both very important stats, maybe the most important besides accuracy and defense. - bonus and malus calculation (see "double inversion" - bonuses are the same as in PoE - except speed/time, maluses are handled in a multiplicative way most of times) - Power Level mechanic (low-level stuff scales very well and stays viable) - Concentration vs. Interrupts (completely different, way more impactful) - Stacking rules (item bonuses all stack) - health and healing (no health/endurance like in PoE)

Berserker/Skald with Blightheart and Ancient Brittle Bones and/or Many-Lives Skeletons can do this: Don't mind the monk abilites in the action bar: it was a test character cobbled together with the console. Confusion makes sure that Her Revenge hits your skeletons also. Every kill triggers Bloodlust and Blood Thirst, prolongs Blood Storm and gives +1 phrase via Blightheart - doesn't matter if skeleton or actual enemy. Barbaric Roar is a nice additional ranged CC tool because unlike invocations it doesn't pause chanting at all. Of course Her Revenge will also hit your party members in this configuration, so watch out. Chants don't affect party members in a bad way even when confused - so that's safe. For Many Lives confusion doesn't matter at all anyway (besides duration, but you're going to kill them off way before they disappear anyway). With this setup you want to stick to Her Revenge and not use Eld Nary! Berserker/Troubadour also works that way. Her Revenge and such will be twice the cost - but you will be producing phrases with Brisk Recitation twice as fast AND produce twice the Many Lives skeletons for killing on top. So Berserker/Skald or Troubadour is a matter of taste in this case I guess. --- What also works really well for Skald is a dual dagger setup with Pukestabber and Lover's Embrace and all the speed buffs you can get. SC works, but multiclass also of course (Barb, Monk, Ranger...) --- Another great phrase generator for a Skald is Mohora Tanga. Since it's DoT can proc itself and is considered a melee weapon attack it makes gaining a phrase from crit almost certain instead of only 50%. Great with Ranger as second class (high ACC). --- Saru Sichr has two attack rolls instead of one (1 physical, one DoT). This can be good for a SC Skald but is even better for a Skald/Barb: Use Body Blows and Spirit Frenzy as well as the Long Night's Drink to destroy enemies' fortitude defense and use Brute Force to always attack that low fortitude then. The Morning Star attack will then crit more often and the DoT (also considered melee weapon attack) which targets fortitude naturally will do that, too. Easier to get phrases that way and great debuffing along the lines. --- Skald/Black Jacket is also nice if you want to use a mix of weapon effects, for example Wahai Poraga for skeletons crits, Sasha's Singing Scimitar for that empored invocation and Blightheart evey time you suspect an invocation to kill an enemy. Just switch with 0 penalty as soon as you think one of that setups is advantageous in the next moment --- Troubadour/Mage Slayer with Effort+Hemorrhaging, Hylea's Talons and the use of Come Soft Winds & Dragon Thrashed in combination with Blood Surge and the Champion invocation is one of the few setups where I like to use both DoT phrases. They will cause procs of Hemorrhaging on crit. So basically Effort's Hemorrhaing enchantment procs with everything that crits, even chants. Hemorrhaging is considered a weapon attack which procs Hylea's Talons DoT (which is a melee attack). This also procs the Mage Slayer's spell disruption effect on the enemies. Their Champion (energized) lets you interrupt with every hit. So you basically will have a walking interrupter and spell disrupter who does that all just by singing. This also puts a load of DoTs on the enemies (Hylea's and Blood Storm on top of Come/Dragon Thrashed). And on top of that the weapon damage of Effort is pretty great, too.

That's correct. It's a charged spellbind, not a regular one. You can summon Rot Skulls 4 times in total and then it's empty forever. The +18 Fortitude is still sweet though. There are some other items that also have charged spellbinds: https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Pillars_of_Eternity_enchantments#Charged_Spellbind

indeed Yes, when he would be using Blightheart then his kills will give him +1 phrase. This is pretty cool in combination with Her Revenge since it only costs 2 phrases for a Skald and stays viable thoughout the whole game. But of course his weapons crits won't generate phrases then because it's a ranged weapon. But the combination of low cost and phrase on kill (on top of the normal phrase generation) is pretty fun. Later Eld Nary's Curse is also a great option to kill enemies quickly and retrieve phrases quickly for the next "Curse". Yes, in case the Skald uses Wahai Poraga he can "accidentially" hit his own skeletons. Kills don't do much for him then - but crits against the skeletons will be able to generate phrases for him. And since those Many-Lives-Skeletons have truly abysmal deflection he will crit them often. It's an easy way to generate phrases faster even gainst very high defense enemies. I would advise to use the "fixed" Wahai Poraga of the Community Patch which works like the description says - and not the vanilla one (hits less targets than described).

As @dgray62said, Gunhawk might not be the optimal choice of subclass, but I think it would still be good. The Bird is a great animal companion (better than all other ACs) and it cannot be stopped with engagement - which makes positioning and flanking with it a lot easier. So that should work well. Regarding Grimoires: since this combo needs quite some abilities from the Ranger side I tried to only learn very few spells and do the rest with Grimoires. I don't have a particular grimoire in mind right now - it's too long ago and I can't recall which spells are in which grimoire, sorry. I tend to hoard all grimoires I find though and then pick a nice collection for random encounters and some special collections for certain tough fights (for example I'd make sure to have a grimoire with Combusting Wounds against Neriscyrlas and so on). But a ranged Geomancer Maia with the Red Hand for her & her Phantom should also be powerful I think?

For me it would be Troubadour. I like to be able to switch from long linger time to Brisk Recitation. Beckoner Bellower + empowered Invocations does truly great things. I just find Troubadour better for parties - and more versatile in general. What about SC Skald (offensive Invocations +Blightheart for example - or Many Lives + Wahai Poraga...) - or SC Beckoner? Double upgraded Ancient Weapons (8 instead of 4) have impressive offensive output and cc capability. Even at lower levels stuff such as double wurms grills most enemies (as long as their PEN is still sufficient).