Boeroer

The Long Pain is one of the best weapons in PoE. The single target dps is quite insane.

I guess it only has to connect once to verify your copy and afer that you could play offline. Just a guess though. On PC you don't have to be connected in order to play.

In general: everything that is attached to your character, has a duration and gives you any sort of positive effect (buff, summoned item or healing etc.) it's a benefical effect. Note that some cipher "buffs" are not attached to you but to the enemy (like Wild Leech or Time Parasite) and thus are not a benefical effect on you but a hostile effect on the enemy. You benefit of course, but in terms of mechanics (like with Salvation of Time) they work differently.

Yes, it mostly is a hard fight (both: Gorecci Str. and Digsite) because you don't have many options. Digsite is noticably easier with somebody who can mind control (Charm Beasts or Whisper of Treason). Especially at the digsite the beasts have low Will defenses and can easily be charmed, tanking for you.

Agree. Hiravias has a great Spiritshift form (Stelgaer) which is awesome for dps. At high levels (with Avenging Storm active and maxed Wildstrike + Wildstrike Belt) he can do more single target dps than a Rogue (while shifted) while at the same time do massive AoE-CC and- dmg with Relentless Storm and Plague of Insects and the like. Also great fun to play. Only thing is: if you have a lot of micromanagement-intense characters like monks and shifting druids it can become too much. So I often put in a chanter or paladin or something into the mix who usually can function well without lots of micromanagement.

Yes, monk is a very well rounded package: sturdy, great AoE dmg, good single target dmg, speed, replenishablke resources (so more fun abilities to use per encounter) and so on. But actually the most fun I had with a Monk was a melee/ranged hybrid one (although that might not be what the OP was looking for) :

Ok, lower but still in the "decent" category.

Oops, I didn't realize that that might be unclear. Yes, you can upgrade the quality enchtantments. Also Damaging II with Exceptional and so on. But while you can replace quality enchatments with better quality you can't really revert enchantments in general. E.g. if you put a burning lash on a weapon it will always stay there.

Yes

Same protagonist but 5 years after PoE. Another place (on another continent) but same world.

Oh, I didn't realize that the healing scaled so well with Religion, given that it only starts at 10. That's cool then. You are right by the way: Rooting Pain is quite nice on Xoti IF you can manage to kill often (also when you combine it with Endurung Dance and Hylea's Talons or Furrante's Breastplate or Voidwheel or even Keeper of the Flame - although KotF will remove Endurnig Dance and also give you Resonant Touches if you are an SC Monk).

I guess both.

How does she get 4 wounds when killing with Twin Eels? The passive gives her +3 on kill and you can't use the Lantern with a Great Sword...? Besides that: why Twin Eels in the first place? Because of the AoE heal on kill? Wouldn't Engoliero or Oathbreaker's End be better on-kill effects? I wonder if Magistrate's Cudgel wouldn't be good with Xoti since it's bindable to Monk and kills lower level kith on crit right away. Also Death Sentence on Saru Sichr seems to be a fitting thing. Doesn't trigger too often though...

Yes.

@thelee: thanks for the heads-up on the lantern and its wound-on-kill mechanic. That it doesn't need melee weapons is good. Does it only work with weapons though or will it also work with any type of killing blow (like Blessed Harvest etc.)? But still I wonder: why did Obsidian restrict the subclass mechanic to melee only? It's already bad (+1 Wound const is a harsh penalty, especially for cheap abilities like Efficient Anguish etc. - which more than balances out the +3 Wound on kill). Resonant Touch, Rooting Pain, Long Pain, Inner Death (not a weapon attack) - maybe even the AoE of Torment's Reach - won't trigger it. This is a bad decision. Edit: just checked: Inner Death does trigger the wound refill. It is considered a melee attack but not a melee weapon attack. The restirction seems to be that it has to be a melee attack but not necessarily a melee weapon attack. Also the lantern works with every kill (no matter what caused it). So it works fairly well with spells like Blessed Harvest and Pillars of Holy Fire etc. because you can get back Mortification and Wounds (+1/+1) that way. The two +2 PL bonuses are also nice obviously. Edit2: just dabbled around with Xoti as SC Monk and Contemplative a bit. Grave Calling's Chilling Grave (Chillfog) will trigger the wound gain. So if you kill enemies with a Chillfog you will get +3 Wounds from subclass and +1 from Lantern. Since the Chillfog profits from all weapon dmg bonuses (and Monk's lashes) it's a very strong combo. You only need vessels... Morning Star is still my preferred method even if I lose the Lantern. Also because it's very easy to trigger Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming once you use Enervating Blows + Stunning Surge + Body Blows and then do Efficient Anguish. You'll lose the lantern refill but do a lot more killshots because of chained additional attacks. Have tried Sun&Moon but it's not as good in my opinion. One thing though: Blessed Harvest seems to be broken somehow. My tooltip says I can do 160 dmg with it (base + PL + MIG). But when I crit with it (easy since the fortitude is so low) I get very low numbers like 45 or 70 slash damage (no PEN issue). Also the combat log gives me no dmg calculation, the window is empty...?

I had nice results with a Morning Star on Xoti Contemplative as well. Body Blows lowers Fortitude by 25 which is a huge debuff that early in the game. And it helps to land Blessed Harvest a LOT which tends to miss often otherwise. That can be frustrating. Once you get Stunning Blows and Enervating Blows it only gets better (or lower: now -25 & -20 fortitude on top). Also Force of Anguish + Body Blows and friends is just awesome. You can keep most annoying enemies away from you that way. Aaand Morning Star was a preferred weapon of Eothas in PoE, too (besides flails) - so that kind of fits as well. If you choose Willbreaker then it also helps to land Divine Mark and other will spells. Fists are good, too. I honestly gave up on her monk subclass and ignored the wound-on-kill mechanic - which is awful. It's only nice a SC Monk when going full on Whispers of the Wind. Kills with Resonant Touch don't count. It doesn't even work with ranged weapons - only melee weapon kills -which totally is an insult to my best buddies: Hand Mortar & Fire in the Hole. Also not with Blessed Harvest which is a bit of a bummer and not optimal design (theme-wise and mechanical). But seriously: trying to melee-kill-steal with Xoti in order to get 1 or 2 (with that lantern-kill the restrictions of melee are not there I think) more wounds is absolutely not worth the hassle if you can instead just use a decent weapon or fists and use Enduring Dance and Hylea's Talons to give you a steady stream of wounds.

I'm pretty sure I never said that about soulbound weapons on Barbs. What I might have said is that their disadvantages (no lash, no Durgan steel) can sometimes be less significant on a Barb because of Frenzy/Bloodlust/Blood Thirst and that they will proc their stuff more often because of Carnage. So if you want to use a soulbound then a Barb is often the best pick. But that doesn't mean that soulbounds are the best choice for Barbs. Tidefall is very good on Barbs, so is Hours of St. Rumbalt, Tall Grass, Edge of Reason, We Toki, Godansthunyr, Cladhaliath (stunning) and others. General rule of thumb: if it has an on-hit or on-crit effect like draining or stunning and so on - or a proc chance - it's good for Barbs. Carnage has a -10 ACC malus so people think you can't crit often with it. But what they miss is that it gets +1 ACC per level which means that at lvl 10 it has the same ACC as you main attack. And from that point on it will even have better ACC. If you take Accurate Carnage this point can already be reached at lvl 5. So from mid to late game you will actually crit quite often with Carnage. Especially if you lower enemies' defenses with some nasty spells like Miasma and Cursed of Blackened Sight etc. first. The best dps choice is Tidefall. St. Rumbalt is a great mix of CC+dps. Tall Grass/pike is nice because you can stay safe behind the front line which is good in the early game because Barbs tend to be very squishy in the early game (gets a lot better with some levels). Against vessels there's nothing better than St. Ydwen's Redeemer (if you took Blood Thirst). The destroy-vessel proc triggers Blood Thirst and works with Carnage. There are some good monk builds in the build list. Melee Wizard: Spirit Lance is always best in my opinion. The AoE and the very high base damage are too strong. Especially if you can pull together several enemies with Pull of Eora or with a tank so that you can hit a lot of enemies with the AoE. Drawn in Spring is a very good weapon and better in 1:1 situations once it's fully enchanted - but as soon as you can hit more than one enemy the Lance would be my pick. Also I feel it's a bit of a waste to give Drawn in Spring to a Wizard. Drawn in Spring works best with highest MIG and lowish INT Other gear for melee wizard with Lance: everything that gives you dmg bonuses (via MIG etc.), attack speed and INT/AoE size.

Like... dual mortars?

Most fun with a Barb I had with this build: Or what about a monk? Monk is the strongest melee class in my opinion. Melee wizard is fine. You goal should be Citzal's Spirit Lance.

Wow - that's weird. Also doesn't make any sense unless they turned it into some kind of mini Wounding Shot mechanic (which would be pretty awesome and way better than a flat 20% additive bonus). Maybe this was a more recent change because there still were some issues with Stalker's Torc's bonus not getting removed after taking it off and turning it into a DoT fixed that issue - no idea. It used to work as I described and I didn't play PoE for quite some time now. I will just check in game and report back... @mentaltyranny Edit: Ah, so I guess I know what happens now. It seems the game applies the 20% additive dmg bonus to your character every 3 seconds. I tested the dmg output with the help of the console and it really seems to be a standard 20% additive dmg bonus as I said. It won't show on your char sheet under weapon dmg though because the dmg bonus is circumstancial (only applies if the AC attacks your target as well). Another hint was that the description doesn't say something like 20% over 3 seconds like it does with other DoT effects - but instead it says 20% per 3 sec like it does with "pulsing" effects like Beams, Chillfog or Wall of Flame. Sp the "buff" gets reapplied every 3 secs and overwrites itself (doesn't stack). In the end it works just like before and as I said above: a simple 20% additive bonus to your weapon's base damage (no DoT effect). Only weird thing is that the bous gets reapplied every 3 secs. But I guess I know why: in the past there was a bug with Stalker's Troc: if you put it on it gave you the passive 20% dmg bonus - but if you took it off in certain situations the game wasn't able to remove the buff from Stalker's Link and you had it permanently then. The dev team had big troubles in fixing this in a straightforward manner (I guess because the buff wasn't pinned on your char directly but onto Stalker's Link). So I guess what they came up with is that the Torc now refreshes the buff every 3 seconds - and once you take it off it can't refresh that buff anymore and thus it runs out and goes away. Funny workaround - but seems to work. A bit confusing though. So tl;dr: it's a 20% additive dmg bonus only with a funky application.

Dragons terrify you with their aura. Let a priest cast Prayer against Fear and you instantly gain 20 Accuracy. Or use a scroll with the same spell. Adra Dragon can be charmed - if you use Inspiring Radiance (+10 ACC), Devotions (+20), a marking weapon (+10) and then cast Whisper of Treason on her she will most likely kill all other ads for you. She can also go prone.

Not that I know of. But you can give a new copy of that item to you via console.

Can't say I find the plot overly complex. First time players might find it obscure and mysterious - but that's intended up to a certain point.

No, you were not told to go there yet. In fact you were told that it's there but that you are way too week to tackle the Torn Bannermen. It's astonishing how many players don't actually read what the steward is telling them. Stalwart can be done fairly well from lvl 8 upwards though. You should finish that and come back to Concelhaut after that. Crägholt Bluffs are high level content. They just happen to be on the way to Stalwart (geographically). Endless Paths of Of Nua are designed in a way that you can go in and out at any time. You don't have to finish it from top to bottom in one swoop. That's not really possible since you won't level fast enough just by crawling around in there. As a rule of thumb your char level should match the dungeon level. The fight with the Adra Dragon is nowhere near impossible (players do it solo on PotD difficulty) - but it surely is a challenging bossfight if you meet her for the first time. And especially if you are lvl 10 only. But you don't need to fight her to complete the quest. There are other options. You can also do something else first, level up some more and come back later then. You won't break or miss anything.

Critical path = main quest line (Thaos and stuff). High Level = scale the difficulty up. Standard = leave the difficulty as is.