Boeroer

I just remembered that The Dragon Thrashed doesn't profit from Ring of Focused Flame. Eh... sorry. But if it's about more ACC for the chants in order to interrupt more you can use the Helm of the White Void and use the chant "The Long Night's Drink" istead. It doesn't deal damage but it does work with "Rymrgand's Influence", giving it +10 ACC.

No, the damaging enchantment puts a "damage-over-time" status effect on every hostile creature in the area of effect. It's an auto-hit, it doesn't make attacks rolls so it is not able to critically hit. It just slowly "ticks" away the health of all hostile creatures in the AoE. You can add items that do seperate hit rolls - for example the Great Sword "Effort" with its enchantment "Hemorrhaging". It adds a hit roll of either sicken or hobble to ALL other critical attack rolls you do (including spells, chants, you name it). And the sicken/hobble effect counts as weapon attack roll, so it can trigger other items' hit rolls, mainly Hylea's Talons DoT attack and the Ring of Clenched Muscle affliction - which can also crit. In other words: you deliver "invisible" weapon attack rolls (which don't do damage but apply sicken or hobble) with your chant- and invocation crits basically. This can lead to an excessive amount of hit rolls on all enemies in the chant AoE which raises the cance for multiple crits+interrupts a lot obviously. This can be useful for an offensive Herald. But of course a Great Sword means less sturdyness than a shield.

I forgot: For a support/tank apporoach the resistance chants can be very good, too. They "only" provide resistance instead of immunity - but how the system works they kind of "eat" away afflictions completely. Especially if you use Brisk Recitation. Example: if you have a paralyzed party member and sing the chant "Seven Men, Onto the Deck They Went" the paralyze will get downgraded to immobilized. But once the chant hits again (eiter 6 seconds after of 3 secs after with Brisk Recitation) the immobilized invocation again gets downgraded to hobbled. Then again to nothing if the chant hits again. Since those three chants each provide resistance against 2 attribute afflictions (DEX+MIG, INT+PER and RES+CON) you can make your party quasi-immune to all afflictions by repeating the fitting phrase. Which is not flashy - but can be very useful against enemies who makes heavy use of afflictions.

Mostly true unfortunatly. But if you use an Ancient you'll get the very good Sporelings - they become even better in combination with "Wild Growth" which gives them potent health regenration besides of making them bigger (good to block enemies). Wild Growth has no duration so it lasts as long as the summon it was put on. And then later you can get the Oozes which are very good, too. The bog one for example has unlimited(!) casts of Plague of Insects. Aspect of Galawain is bad unfortunately. That is uncool because it could have been great (look at the Chanter's Dragon for unfair comparison). Wild Growth works with Aspect of Galawain and makes it very big and tough - but its duration is short compared to Sporelings and it's so much more "expensive" (being a tier 9 spell instead of tier 1). Too bad. But tl;dr: when Druid + summons -> use Ancient imo.

Regarding "tricks": an offensively minded Herald (Troubadour) can use Ring of Focused Flame + Dragon Thrashed + Brisk Recitation in combination with Their Champion (Energized) to get +10 ACC for the chant which raises the chance for crits (in addition to the damage the chant does) - which in turn leads to AoE interrupts via chanting. Sacred Immolation also will interrupt via crit when combined with Energized and will also get +10 ACC. Ring of Focused Flame is an early item used by many Paladins - so if one uses that already this "trick" can be an additional way to let it improve your actions. Potential AoE interrupts every few secs can be very impactful on the battlefield, especially when you face multiple enemies who use dangerous abilities (mostly casters of all sorts). Such a Herald can slowly "melt" and disturb enemy groups just by standing around. Add Brand Enemy to the arsenal and later get the Blackened Plate (which can have a life draining aura) and add the interrupts and this can be effective and fun to play imo. Brand Enemy is fast and has no recovery - it is also cheap. So you can apply it to al lot of enemies at the start of battle quickly (it's an auto-hit, too). All those little ticks of damage add up quickly. If you meet fire-immune enemies you have to do something else though (e.g. switch to Soft Winds of Death). However, the invocations Kaylon mentioned, especially Instruments of Death, are usually the more effective approach. Summons are among the best tools any character can use, and Intruments of Death are very good summons on top. The question which route (defensive vs. offensive) is more fun to play has to be answered individually. I personally find puppeteering summons a bit boring - but there is no doubt they are very useful and other players might enjoy steering them around. There's also the chant "Many Lives Pass By" which is very good at summoning skeletons every 6 seconds (or every 3 with Brisk Recitation) which cannot be controlled by the player but run on AI. That's a type of summon that doesn't require any maintenance but is still great at diverting enemies or good as "sacrifice" for special tricks that require allies to go down (for example: if you have a Single Class Paladin in the party those skeletons can trigger Divine Retribution, giving the Paladin +2 Zeal each time a skeleton dies - and they die very quickly - another example is that a Berserker (confused bc. of Frenzy) might kill skeletons with his friendly-fire Carnage - which will trigger his Bloodlust and Blood Thirst).

Single Class Druid has the advantage of getting all spells significantly earlier. Most players seem to forget that this has a noticable impact on most encounters. And then of course you get the spells of Power Level 8 and 9 - of which Great Maestrom is the most devastating one. On top of that you get potential +3 Power Level (if you pick the Prestige passive a PL 9) which scales all your abilites up. You can do very weird but fun things with an SC Druid because of Avenging Storm. For example the Great Sword "Effort" has an enchantment named "Hemorrhaging" which applies an additional hit roll of either sicken or hobbling (iirc) to ALL crits you do (not just crits with the Great Sword itself), including spells such as Great Maelstrom or Avenging Storm (and all their procs). Those sicken/hobbling rolls are considered weapon attacks (sine they originate from the Great Sword) - and those hit rolls will proc Avenging Storm lightnings! Those lightings are considered spells - and when they crit they will again proc a sicken/hobble roll... and so on and so forth. Such a Druid is the ultimate minion wiper and it looks as if Darth Sidious is starting a blitz party again. Or you simply cast Maelstrom on everything in sight which is also sufficient most of times, hehe. At the same time almost all Druids are great healers (except Fury) and have good CC capabilities of course. Multiclass Druids have other advantages - mostly they are more interesting to play imo. Some of my favorite combos are: - Livegiver(Bear)/Goldpact: A great healer and supporter but also a good melee character because you can stack a ton of armor without any recovery which makes you very hard to take down while being a fast attacker while shifted with great damage output (Eternal Flames + Wildstrike lashed do hurt, especially with those Full Attacks and very little recovery). - Ancient(Cat)/Wizard: Sporelings shield you from enemies in the early game which is great. The Cat form provides aweseome casting speed and you will have loads of great spells to cast so you don't even need to use Bloodmage if you don't like it (but Blood Sacrifice + Druid heals is a good synergy actually). With Wall of Draining later you can keep up the spiritshift for a very long time - as well as the self buffs. This can also become a pretty tanky character. - Ancient/Helwalker: the raw DoT spells suc as Plague of Insects and Insect Swarm etc. profit a lot from bonus MIG and also bonus INT - both will add significant damage to those spells through damage per tick as well as adding more ticks. Also the Monk side ives you access to a good ACC buff (Endurng Dacne of Death) which is something the Druid sometimes struggles with (I mean accuracy). So this is a great combination for casting fewer spells but with a lot more impact. Also healing spells that work over time profit a lot from the added MIG and INT. - Shifter/Helwalker: the Boar form of the Shifter has a little quirk - the raw "wounding" DoT which the Boar Tusks deliver don't last as long (or short) as with the other subclasses' boar forms but instead the wounding DoT has the base duration of your Spiritshift(!). If you combine that with Helwalker's MIG and INT bonuses you will apply a wounding DoT effect to enemies you hit in melee that will melt almost enything quickly. If you combine that with the spell Taste of the Hunt it even bevomes pretty dangerous for most bosses. And then you have 3 otehr forms you can shift to if that one expires to finish it up... Spiritshift/Monk has a lot of good synergies anyway so it's a fun combo in the first place. --- There's a lot more Druid combos that are fun and powerful like Druid/Chanter as @mjo2138mentioned - but those above are the ones that I thought of immediately and had a fun experience with.

After starting that thread Ngati's Tusk became one of my most used items in the following runs with all sorts of characters, even an Assassin/Wizard among them. At some point I imported it into some runs as soon as possible. It's extremely good in the later game - but at the same time it's not overpowered (besides the quality - but there are other early uniques to buy that have high quality) when you are of low level because the Hunter of Hunters enchantment scales with a skill that will not be sky high at the beginning.

It's not a Ring, but the cloak "Shroud of the Phantasm" can give you the Brilliant inspiration. It can also be activated out of combat.

If you do that with a little mod instead of altering the original file there will be zero risk of breaking the your (save)game. What you basically do is to create an additional file in a special override folder and then activate the mod in the game. The game will look for the file and "override" the original sickle data with your mod while loading the game. If those changes don't work properly or even make your game unstable you can just deactivate the mod or delete (or rename) the new file. There are some users here who have more experience than me with modding Deadfire and can give you a short, precise rundown on how to achieve that (it's not that difficult). For example @Elric Galad or @Noqn or @MaxQuest (and many more).

If it's about Sneak Attack it would indeed be best to go with a Priest of Skaen and and pick Apprentice's Sneak Attack on top of the lesser Sneak Attack the Priest of Skean can get as a talent. That combination would be nearly as good in terms of damage bonus as the Rogue's Sneak Attack and you'll have the accuracy base of a fighter (which is great). The dispositions of a Priest only affect his Holy Radiance. Mechanically that's not a big loss of you don't need the healing and vessel damage a lot. So you could play a somewhat conflicted Priest of Skean without gimping yourself too much imo (without using Untroubled Faith). Besides that it's not that hard to use a cruel option every now and then and on other situations pick a "neutral" option. Imo one can play a Priest of Skaen without being a cruel psychopath. Skaen has some aspects that also "good" characters could agree with - but the whole package kind of bad. Maybe one could concentrate on the agreeable aspacts and kind of ignore the rest. Maybe your character has set out to reform the church of Skaen, who knows? If the damage bonus from Sneak Attacks isn't important but it's more about the non-combat stuff a "Thief" can do (stealth, mechanics etc.) then there's no need to pick a Priest of Skaen. Just improve the mechanics and stealth skills and pick an appropriate Priest subclass.

Even if you didn't receive any warning that jumping into the pit means endgame with no return: the auto save should give you a means to go back and do the DLC contents then. That's not optimal because you'll have to do the encounter with Thaos again - but it's a reasonable failsafe for players who didn't get how the DLCs are woven into the game and who also didn't get the information that jumping into the pit means that there's no way back. There will always be players who will be surprised by this because they played other games in which the expansions start after the main game (notably D&D games like BG2 and such) - and they assume that this will be the case with PoE as well. It's not great for them to be surprised like that - but what else should the devs have done to prevent it? The description of the DLCs mentions how they work, there is supposed to be a warning before you reach the point of no return and you'll get an automatic save. I think those measures are quite reasonable.

Whatever, let's not dwell on this. The tactic with charming/dominating a dragon and Preservation might help you to prevent future wipes. It's never 100% foolproof, but I think it will help (together with Prayer ag. Fear and so on). Vs. Lagufaeth: besides Prayer against Imprisonment the shield Aila Braccia is extremely good. If you give it to the frontmost character with the best deflection (and boost the deflection up a bit further maybe) the Lagufaeth will shoot at that character, catch the reflected shots and paralyze themselves (they are not immune). This makes Lagufaeth encounter so much easier imo that it feels a bit like cheating. Because misses stay misses and all grazes will turn into misses, too (and get reflected). Also because in general it doesn't cost any resources to use it. It also works against Cleansing Flame from Broodmothers (which wrecked me often enough). And on combination with the Prayer those encounters turn from hard into story mode (sort of).

That's a nice story and you tell it well... ...but the game literally and explicitly warns you (with a popup!) before jumping into the pit that you cannot go back afterwards. And for those players who didn't read the description of the DLCs and also clicked away the warning popup without reading it, the game does an automatic save right before the jump.

Hm, you don't? Prayer Against Imprisonment helps against Adragans. You mentioned problems with being "stunned", but they will mostly petrify you, which is a very nasty affliction: -100 Dexterity -40 Deflection -40 Reflex ×2 Damage taken Prayer against Fear helps against all Dragons' auras - they terrify every 3 secs: -20 accuracy -4 DEX -4 RES Not a Parayer, but Scroll of Defense gives everybody (including figurines and Ogres etc.) +20 to all defense which can make all the difference. Like @Chaospreadalready suggested: what you can do besides using those scrolls is to use stuff like Spirit Spiral, Munacra Arret and Ring of ChHanging Heart to charm or dominate the dragon asap (there's only one of the bog dragons that's immune to mind control) which can buy you a lot of time in the beginning. BUT it's rel. hard to hit if you don't have a lot of accuracy support (a party of 6 chanters usually hasn't). But a Scroll of Valor (+15 ACC) will help. Preservation only helps vs. stunned and prone - but if you encounter these then I would stack two sources of Preservation: for example Ilfan Byrngar's Solace + Blaidh Golan (also suggested by @Chaospread). This will give one character +100 to all defenses when stunned or prone - which can be given to a character who is most likely to get stunned and make him invulnerable for the time he or she is down or stunned. If you excpet a lot of stunning then this can tuen one char into the perfect "bait" tank. He will be very sturdy if stunned and will distract enemies from the rest of the party. A scroll of confusion can mess up a horde of dragon ads pretty badly - and also buy you a lot of time and take away attention from you and your allies. That will not guarantee a win, but it surely wouldn't hurt to use them. PS: I don't recall perfectly, but it may be the Aila Braccia reflects petrify attacks back to the Adragans. They are immune, but what it does is to turn all grazes to misses which improves survivability against adragans and other enemies who throw ranged single target attacks on you. Maybe worth testing beforehand in a non-ToI encounter.

Hm, never had a problem with this. Are you sure you have visited all places with wandering souls? Maybe try some bounding boots and check if you really have been to all places of the map(s). With bounding boots you can shortcut (aka jump) to map areas - where you otherwise would need to solve a puzzle to unlock the way.

Hello! Single weapon is only good in the early game. All other styles are superior (in general) in the late game. It is better against lower-level vessels at least. In the late game a (or two) fully enchanted and "durganized" weapon is usually the best "dps" choice compared to soulbound weapons or summoned ones. Mostly due to the speed advantage of durgan steel. The best alpha strike weapon for Paladin's FoD attacks may still be the arquebus - or maybe two fully enchanted sabres against lower armored enemies. Imo the best weapon for a Paladin (in a party) is a (set of) marking weapon(s) such as Pliambo per Casitàs, Cladhaliath & Shame or Glory or Blade of the Endless Paths and Spectacular Spetum as backup. In combination with Coordinated Attacks you can make your party's fights a lot easier. If you can manage ti dual-wield Cldahaliath with Marking and Shame or Glory that would be the ultimate marking setup. If you would also be a Darcozzi Paladin that would be the cherry on top. You could boost Edér's accuracy by 45 points... With something like Blade of the Endless Paths still 35 points. Better than single wielding Steadfast I'd say. Yes, shield will hit first, then main weapon. For Full Attacks a bashing shield is better than a normal shield. For auto-attacks it's actually worse because dual-wielding speed does not apply to bashing shields and the base damage of bashes is lower than that of your main weapon, lowering your dps overall compared o using a normal shield (because your auto attacks will alternate between bash and main weapon attack insead of main weapon attack only). I'd just save the game and try it out for some time.

Prayer scrolls?

If I'd still play this game: me.

The animation for drinking a potion is longer than the animation for attacking with a weapon - and also the process of drinking a potion is a little buggy and gets interrupted often enough so that you have to repeat the command. Drinkin a potion takes ~75 frames (has no recovery like a weapon attack). The effect of the potion already starts in the middle of the drinking process, not at the end. You can compare that to the frames a weapon attack takes with the tool I linked above. It shows the frames for weapon attacks in the bottom left. If you count normal, non-sped up recovery at 10 DEX, too (animation + recovery from weapon attacks vs. only animation time of drinking a potion + 0 recovery), then drinking a potion is faster than attackig with heavy melee and ranged weapons and slower than attacking with fast melee weapons (daggers and such). But recovery can be shortened with dual wielding and other speed boosts so you can shift that balance in favor of weapon attacks. Nothing speeds up animations (weapon attacks, drinking potions etc.) except Dexterity. All other speed bonuses only apply to the recovery phase. So tl;dr: it depends. But in general I would say that drinking a potion takes longer after a while because you cannot shorten it while you can shorten your weaoon recovery times. And because it's buggy and often takes several tries to actually work.

With auto attacks: yes. With Full Attacks (see the Knockdown ability) the offhand will strike first and then the main hand will strike. Yes, significantly faster. Dual wielding gives you a much shorter recovery phase after each strike. You can shorten recovery of dual wielding even further with Two-Weapon Style (talent). Maybe it's best to play around with the abilities and talents a bit. For that you can use @MaxQuest's attack speed calculator for Pillars of Eterninty: https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/

Hello, an arquebus is also a gun. Did you mean "arbalest" maybe? Several classes can make good use of guns (or arbalests). Paladin, Rogue, Ranger, Cipher, even Wizard... My favorite arquebus build is a Darcozzi Paladin with Zealous Focus, Inspiring Exhortation, Coordinated Attacks and the the pistol St. Garam's Spark (first) and the arquebus "Pliambo per Casitas" (later). It's a geat support Paladin who makes taking down tough foes a whole lot easier for the party. My favorite arbalest build is a Ranger with Swift Strikes, Driving Flight, Gunner, Marked Prey, Stalker's Link, Stunning Shots and the arbelest Hold Wall. With high attack- and reload speed this Ranger can deal nice damage to a single target but even more important lock down a single enemy because of he prone effect the arbalest has - in combination with the stun effect of stunning shots later. The prone effect applies to two enemies if you have Driving Flight. My favorite pistol build is a Priest of Skean with Inspiring Radiance, Divine Terror, Painful Interdiction, Prey on the Weak, Apprentice's Sneak Attack and the Fellstroke pistol. My favorite blunderbuss build is an Island Aumaua Wizard with Arms Bearer, Quick Switch, Penetrating Shot, Coil of Resourcefulness, Expose Vulnerabilities, Combusting Wounds and any four blunderbusses you can get.

You can circumvent the friendly fire easily (become resistant to INT afflictions), Devoted or Streetfighter makes no difference. Counting the self damage is easier with a Devoted indeed. Attribute distribution would work. MIG can be as low as 10. Berserker is one of the few subclasses where high CON makes sense sice it makes managing the self damage a lot easier imo - especially with a Berserker/Streetfighter. My preferred build with Berserker and a Morning Star is Berserker/Helwalker with max CON and Saru Sichr (early unique Morning Star). But Devoted/Berserker with Morning Star is also very nice because of the synergies between the morning star modal and the Devoted's and Berserker's abilities that target fortitude specifically.

Hi! If you give him a large shield and use the modal the Carnage damage from a Berserker is a non-factor. The main concern with a Berserker is whether you can manage the self damage (so it's still fun) or not (then it might become frustrating). Hurting oneself can actually be benefical (see the Ability "Blooded" and the synergy with the Streetfighter's recovery speed) and even Confusion can be used to your advantage - but it's not super obvious how to take advantage of those things. The damage of a Berserker compared to another Barbarian subclass can be significantly higher in certain encounters - and early the same in others. The most important upside of the Berserker (when it comes to damage output) is the +2 PEN via Frenzy (becoming Tenacious instead of strong). Penetration makes a huge difference in damage output if you meet enemies whose armor you would otherwise not be able to penetrate. Underpenetration causes such a big dive of he damage you are causing that you want to prevent it. However - iIf your enemy is "soft" anyway then the difference in damage output between Berserker and reg. Barb is not that noticable. A Devoted/Berserker has insane Penetration (+4) but cannot switch to a more fitting weapon if he meets enemies who are resistant to the damage type of his devoted weapon. Therefore I almost always recommend Morning Star or Pollaxe for such a Multiclass. They both have two types of damage and the more effective one will be used automatically. The Morning Star has he additional synergy of its modal "Body Blows" + Brute Force and Knockdoen/Mule Kick. Pollaxe include a nice soulbound weapon which works very well with Barbs, too (but this can really mess up your Edér with a Berserker's Carnage). So my pick would be Morning Star. But all of the dual-damage-type weapon work well (war hammers, great swords etc.). The surdyness of the Fighter's abilities helps to iron out the self damage of the Berserker a bit. A Streetfighter/Berserker can do an insane amount of weapon damage (in melee naturally, but even ranged) if set up and played right. The damage per hit as well as the attack speed are tremendous which leads to ridiculous dps. But that combo is also prone to getting knocked out. For me it's a ton of fun - but I guess it's not everybody's cup of tea. Here I tried all sorts of weapons and the Morning Star is still great, but because the Streetfighter has good "Full Attacks" (attack that strikes with both weapons) like Crippling Strikes for example it's also nice to use a dual wielding setup. And of course that adds to the already high speed. The most fun I had with a dual dagger setup (Pukestabber + Lover's Embrace). Superfast attacks (I guess it's the highest sustainable attack speed you can achieve in thge game without "cheesy tricks"), good accuracy, lots of fun. Since the Streetfighter/Berserker is not bound to a special type of weapon you can always switch to a different weapon set if you meet enemies who are resistant/immune to the damage type of your preferred weapon set (here: slash damage from daggers). Just use a set of daggers and a set of clubs or stilettos as alternative or whatever.

ROFL