Boeroer

Rofl. Hilarious. On the other hand: foes with low Resolve will have longer charm than buff, correct? Maybe cast some Miasma or Psychovampiric Shield first...

Chant's base AoE is a bit smaller. About investment in INT: Depends on the phrase - and when it comes to support phrases: how tight your party usually positions itself when fighting. For example: if you are using an offensive phrase like Dragon Thrashed you might want it to have a bigger AoE than if you are using Ancient Memory. If you usually fight in a close formation you can get away with a smaller AoE with support chants as well.

I want to inform you once again that Obsidian has not much to do with the console ports and thus can't add anything to them.

That is one of their purpose. Second is that you can learn spells from them if you don't already know them. Like at level-up, but you invest some money. You can also write spells that you learned into grimoires. That way you can give yourself a portfolio of spells at your disposal in every fight: you only need to put the right grimoires into your quick slots. For example you could fill one grimoire with damaging spells and the other with self buffs. Now - if you retrain (respec) you will lose all spells you have learned from grimoires and at level-up and pick new ones at re-level-up. But if you wrote all your spells into grimoires before you can pick those spells at level-up you didn't have before and afterwards learn the old ones from your grimoires. That way you can gather all spells but unique ones: Unique grimoires sometimes contain unique spells. Once you learned those spells from the grimoire you can never unlearn them. Even a retraining will not delete them.

Single weapon usage is good in the early game because there you'll have the most trouble even hitting things. One handed usage gives you an instant +12 accuracy which is a lot in the early game (with your base accuracy still so low). LAter +12 is still good, but not that impactful anymore because as you can imagine once your overall accuracy is quite high 12 points isn't that big of a chunk anymore. Let's say you start with an Accuracy of 30 - then +12 is a 40% increase. If you climb to let's say 100 accuracy then +12 is only an increase of 12% which isn't that impressive anymore. It also doesn't help that the best outcome of high accuracy - landing a critical hit - only gives you an additive damage bonus (meaning it's only 50% of your weapon's base damage - this never scales). So critical daamage isn't a multiplicative damage bonus and thus it scales very badly: it doesn't at all. So a critical hit doesn't raise your overall damage by 50%. It merely adds a bit of flat damage: 50% of your weapon's base damage. And keep in mindthat you don't really crit all the time and not that more often with sngle handed usage once yozr basic accuracy is already good. At the same time dual wielding gives you something like a 50% attack speed increase (not really, but just to keep it simple). As you can imagine attack speed is a multiplicative damage factor: if you hit twice as fast with the same weapons then you just plainly double your dps. If you attack 1.5 times faster you raise your overall dps by 50%. This is always the case and stays viable throughout the whole game as long as you can hit reliably (accuracy is good). Then some classes have Full Attacks (Paladins, Fighters, Monks, Rogues mainly) that strike with both weapons. That is powerful. Another advantage of dual wielding. Because of that dual wielding is vastly better in the late game and starts being better right after the early game. Two handed weapons: depends. When it comes to normal attacks and against heavily armored foes they are good. Rapier + Dagger is a good pick for a character who mostly does autoattacks. That can also be a rogue. First of all they are very fast and the rogue's damage boinuses help them to overcome enemies armor better. With Full Attacks they are a bit inferior because those are limited and ususally you want to use them with high damage weapons like sabres because you want to get the most out of them. But with auto-attacks stuff like Rapier & Dagger has better dps. And also there are two early very good Rapier & Dagger in the game. This is also kind of important of course: that you can find good, fitting gear early. Speaking of Rapier & Dagger: I once made a fancy fencing monk with that setup and it worked really well. So that's PoE's character concept in a nutshell: a lot of things work. Fighter can be a good dual wielder. Knockdown is a Full Attack and so is Charge (comes late but is very good). If you build him pure dps he's still no glasscannon but can reach good damage output. Not on rogue level but good. At the same time the fighter will go down a lot less. Dead chars don't deal damage. Good thig about PoE is that it's quite hard to make a trash character. Sure, you can build really powerful stuff - but it's hard to make a truly weak guy. My first char was a Barb and it was great. Next a Rogue: also great. Druid: great. And so on... In terms of fun: everybody is different. I enjoy two handed Barbs, all kinds of Monks and melee Wizards a lot. But Barbs have a special place in my heart. Fighter is good but a bit too dull for me as main character. I can't predict what you might like or not though. But I know there are certain combos that a) are easy to get early and b) were more fun for me than others. Classes that start strong and thus don't frustrate new players are Fighter, Rogue and Monk. Monk is a bit complicated to play for a first-timer maybe.

If you are using the Unity Console to get items anyway you don't need to export them with a character, do you?

Howdy! Normal difficulty is good for the first time PoE player who has some experience with other RPGs. The mechanics are rather complex but on Normal they are forgiving enough. Keeping micromanagement low for most party members can help to focus your attention on your main character who then can be fun even if he needs to be heavily micromanaged (often casters need to be taken care of more than "simple" melee character). Classes with potentially low micromanagement are Fighter, Paladin and Chanter. Chanters are great - but they feel rather slow on normal difficulty. They don't feel that way on Path of the Damned difficulty since fights last a lot longer there and that's when Chanters start to really shine. On normal diff. often fights are over before the Chanter gets a chance to fire off an invocation. But once he reaches lvl 9 that changes. Because he can get a chant then that's very powerful. Also because chants become a bit faster with every 4th level. Before that one can get the feeling he's lackluster (on normal diff). Fighters are easy to play and start strong. Their power curve doesn't climb like casters' though. Fighters can be used to hold the line and tank and to be reliable but not fanstastic damage dealers. Easy class to play Paladins are a bit similar but have more healing and support capabilities. While fighters do consistent damage, Paladins can deal pretty high spike damage but then fall off. Easy to play. Rogues do a lot of single target damage with weapons but are quite squishy. Thus they require more babysitting. Playing a ranged rogue reduces the babysitting. Rogues start strong in terms of dmg output but don't climb like casters. However: on normal there are less enemies and that doesn't shift the focus to Area of Effect abilites (like spells) that much. Meaning that rogues do better on normal than on higher difficulties. Nor difficult to play but needs attention. Rangers are less squishy compared to rogues but not as sturdy as fighters or paladins. They also come with an Animal Companion that has to be steered. So you get two bodies which is very powerful in itself - but steering two bodies means increased micromamangement of course. As with all classes: playing mostly ranged increases your survivability as long as you have party members who can take the heat. Their role is a bit like that of rogues. Easier than rogue but needs attention, too. Barbarians do automatic area of effect damage called "Carnage". They start off pretty underwhelming because they have low accuracy and low deflection which lets them a) miss often and b) die quickly. That leads many beginner to the impression that Barbs are bad. They do start bad but climb a lot steeper than the other martial classes (except Monk, more below). The Carnage ability of Barbs transfers all weapon effects from single target to Area of Effect. That means that if a weapon causes stun on critical hit it will do in an AoE with a Barb. That can unlock crazy powerful passive crowd control and disabling. Also Barbs gain a lot of heralth and endurance per level. After some levels they squishyness is gone. They are beter against trah mobs than gainst bosses. Hard to play in the beginning, easy later on. Monks are the most powerful martial class in my opinion - but they requite deeper understanding of the mechanics and a lot of micromanaegement in general. They start strong and stay strong. Wizards can be great Crowd Controllers and disablers and/or nukers and/or even great frontliners (using self-buffs). They have a steep power curve - mostly due to the fact that they start with abysmal values and only have very few spells per rest. but with every unlockes spell tier they can use more and more spells in a fight and that has a huge impact. Also the more self buffs you unlock the lesser the bad starting values matter. However, althoug they start weak with few spells: some lvl-1-spells are insanely good. If you know them you can have an easier time in the beginning of the game. Not easy to play but nice as main character. Priests are the strongest class if you play with a party. Their buffs impact the performance of the party so much (once you get certain spells) and later they also get very good damaging spells. Having a priest in the party makes a playthrough easier - I guess nobody would argue against that. They can also heal but are not the only class that does that well. At buffing they are top notch though. They have the same shortcomings as wizards: start weak but grow strong. They have some hidden gems that one should use. Easy to play if you focus on the party buffs first. Truly shine when also used as damage dealer later on. Druids can be a mix of melee + casting. They can be very good at both if build right. Due to their shifting ability they don't suffer so much from the lack of spells in the beginning. spell-wise they are a bit like Wizards. Less self-buffs but Spiritshifting instead. Ciphers turn weapon dmg into spells basically. They require a bit of experience and have to beed both good at weapon damage as well as casting. They are quite effective and have a solid power curve. They tend to struggle a bit in boss fights because they rely on weaoon damage to be able to cast spells - and bosses usually don't get damaged as easily as trash mobs. The early official companions are Wizard, Fighter, Priest and Chanter, a bit later Ranger and Paladin, then Cipher and Druid (you can rush to all of them after the early game so this is not a fixed order). Rogue, Barbarian and Monk only come with the White March DLC. Maybe a Rogue would be a good fit for you. Not only is a Rogue handy to have because he's the one with the highest mechanics skill (search secrets, search & disarm traps and pick locks) but he's also fun because his dmg output is high - and if you watch out a bit it's not too hard or complicated to play. Just don't try to build a glasscannon. But multiple instances of the same class in a playthrough is no problem at all - so you couls also pick Fighter or Paladin or whatever. I'd say stay away from Barbarian, Chanter and Monk for now. I prefer them, but they need a bit of experience to value their strength and circumvent their weaknessen.

Tehehe - I just wanted to write about the same trick. I really like the export function since it allows you to use an item that otherwise would come too late to be worthwhile to build a character around. I mean without enabling cheats in the actual playthrough. e.g. I made a fun little Barb focused on Vengeful Defeat who could get knocked out without injury thrice per encounter because I had two Rings of Reset (if you stack the used one with an unused one in the stash the empty one refills its charge). It's not OP and wouldn't be very viable without this little gimmick.

Greetings! First of all: are you in the right forum? It sounds like you are taking about PoE2 Deadfire and not Pillars of Eternity I. If you are indeed speaking about PoEI: it is not possible because pistols are essentially two handed weapons (because reloading requires both hands). So you can't hold pistol + rapier or sabre or something. This is possible in Deadfire where pistols and blunderbusses are now one-handed weapons. If you still insist that you're on PoE ( ) then you can do something like a quick-hands guy: start the combat with two or three pistol shots without reloading (you will switch from pistol to pistol that's tucked under your belt basically like a proper blackbearded pirate and fire it once) and then draw the sabre and go into melee. You could then even pick a two handed weapon or a dual wielding setup (like Rapier + Dagger or so - single weapon style is good in the early game but later on dual wielding is better in almost all cases). I think the better class for this is Rogue since the Fighter doesn't have too many ranged abilities but is focused on melee but Rogue mostly doesn't care if ranged or melee when it comes to his abilites. For such a build you would need Arms Bearer and Quick Switch (the talents) and optimally the Coil of Resourcefulness at some point (belt). If you pick Island Aumaua: even better since it gives one additional weapon set for one more pistol in the belt. You can also skip the multiple pistols and use the pistol normally (fire-->reload-->fire) and only switch to melee setup once it suits you or once you get engaged. This could also be a Ranger by the way. Rangers are pretty well suited for being ranged/melee hybrids. They can fire & reload pistols quite rapidly. The late game ability "stunning shots" is great with ranged as well (and especially) as melee weapons. If the animal companion doesn't fit your personal story then if course it's a bit off. That's both a viable approach and you wouldn't have a gimped character. But wielding pistol + melee weapon at the same time: nono. About an alternative dual wielding build: almost anything works quite well. Fighters are more sturdy than Rogues while Rogues have higher dps output. Rogues have the most Full Attack abilities (strike with both weapons) so they profit most from a dual wielding setup. They are quite squishy though so you don't want to run into the fray with them like you can with a fighter but rather choose a flanking approach. Besides fighters and rogues every class can make a decent dual wielder. See Ranger. Doesn't need to be ranged but works well in melee, too. Monk is maybe the best overall melee class and does not need to go unarmed. Works with weapons as it does with fists, no drawnback. Also likes dual wielding because Torment's Reach is superb with two weapons. But especially for the classes that rely more on spells the weapon setup isn't that crucial to their overall performance.

I once had a hireling (Livegiver Druid) who would suffer from this in every fight. Kicked him, made the same guy (more or less I guess) again in another inn and it was mostly gone.

Mee, too. When speaking about the endless action-abort cycle then AI off seems to be a problem. With AI on I think that bug doesn't show (as much). Maybe that's just my impression though.

I guess I didn't see it because recently I mainly do test stuff with the console in old savegames and don't really do any proper playthrough. I had the feeling that bug was somewhat "playthrough-related". In some I never saw it, in others it occured all the time (often with casters).

For me the "x" for cancelling your current action worked well then. But I didn't see that bug for a long time now.

For a first time player lvl 5 is pretty low for the initial fight in Stalwart. Same here.

Yeah - +2/+2 for Pale Elf and +4 for Fire Gidlike would have made more sense. I personally like mods that only enhance the UI best. Thus I think the Enhanced UI mod is superb and I wouldn't want to miss it. Obsidian should have bought and integrated that mod right away when it popped up. Community Patch also has an UI aspect: it gives all passives their own unique icons which helps a lot to find and distinguish passives visually. I wonder how drew all those fine icons though... The "fixes" of Community Patch are not pushing powergamimg at all. They alter some stuff so it makes more sense. E.g. Forbidden Fist ability gets properly tagged as weapon ability so that it can generate focus and work with Swift Flurry (doesn't do both in the vanilla game which is odd). More conistency with priest keywords and so on. There are buffs (of unreasonably bad abilities) as well as nerfs (e.g. Blade Turning ending on movement to end abuse with forced disengagment - that change got even introduced to the opriginal game with an official patch). Good thing is you can turn on/off all the individual mini-mods separately. So for example you can only use the passive icons and nothing else. Besides those I don't use mods, especially not those which make classes "cooler" or more powerful.

IIrc Aloth can be annoyed sometimes but wouldn't cause anybody to leave if you are not picking extreme choices. Tekehu/Maia/Pallegina: it also depends how you behave towards the factions. RDC vs. Huana is particulary difficult. Edér, Serafen and Tekehu should be fine as long as you don't side with the RDC afair (Tekehu: nono).

It is kind of random. Based on the in-game date you'll get different gear. That's why baldurs_gate_2 said "on day 2". There are spreadsheets that tell you which item you get at which date. There are several of those "random" containers, but not too many.

Joshua E. Sawyer, Obsidian's Design Director

Xoti's Lashing Vines are a hard copy I presume - so you'd have to check that as well..?

Trickster/Beguiler is great - mechanically as well as thematically. Beguiler is my favorite cipher subclass.

You get only XP when fighting enemies you can learn something about. If you fight shadows for the 20th time you gain no xp. You can check your bestiary in the journal: if you unlocked all data for an enemy you won't get any more XP when fighting them. Also XP for fighting is low in general. You get way more XP from completing quests. Doesn't matter how you solve them (as long as you don't fail them). That's why you can avoid fights in the game with stealth or diplomacy or even intmidation and still get the full XP for quests.

Watery Double and other "unique" summons maybe?

You don't need to fight those Shades (they are much more powerful than Shadows). They guard a valve with which you can drain a flooded area which lets you find a key for the shut door. But if you have high enough mechanics you can simply lockpick that door. But after the door there will wait other hard enemies. Maybe it's best to come back later. You can do the whole area + quest with stealth and mechanics. You don't need to fight anything if you don't want to. You'll still get the full quest XP.

Strange indeed.

Yes! You'll need it to not only pick locks and find and disram traps but also to find secrets stashes! The higher mechanics on one guy the better. The easiest way to get high mechanics fast is to hire a rogue adventurer with a fitting background from any tavern.