Boeroer

Hi and welcome! Priest of Woedica (Deadfire) has very nice debuffs. But there isn't one in PoE. And doing Woedica's bidding is a bit of an evil path most of times. I'd say Priest of Berath then. Has a nice mix of debuffs and alternative dmg (corrode instead of fire). And of course it fits very well into the Deafire storyline.

Cool!

Sorry, no idea, I didn't try.

Trickster/Steel Garrote uses Riposte + Offensive Parry and all the deflection bonuses you can find. Offensive Parry causes the dazed affliction automatically so the Steel Garrote passive unlocks kind of automatically, a well as Sneak Attack. So you dish out quite nice melee damage even when you are not actively striking. You can of course apply DoTs in a cone, too. And yes, pretty tanky but also good dmg output esp. against common (melee) mobs. Assassin/Bleak Walker is great solo but is also nice in a party for alpha strikes and "part time solo fights". You can take on a lot of way overleveled enemy groups with that one guy and whittle down the enemy before you party steps in, too. Strike from stealth with single handed Lover's Embrace + Gouging Strike (+42 ACC altogether, it's hard to miss), follow up with Brand Enemy (auto-hit), then vanish and wait in hiding until the enemy dies (pretty quickly from 3 unending DoTs). Once you feel comfortable you bring in the party, too. For normal fighting you can use Pukestabber+Lover's Embrace with high speed and nice FoD+Ring of Focused Flame accuracy and also stack Ring the Bell + Gouging Strike + Brand Enemy - and later also Toxic Strike. But the true potential is the ability to take down very tough enemies with a strike and hide tactic.

Ahhh - cooldowns:

I played an evil Assassin/Bleak Walker (focus on True Love's Kiss + Gouging Strike + Brand Enemy) and enjoyed it very much. Might as well have been Assassin/Steel Garrote. Trickster/Steel Garrote also isn't bad imo. Did that with Whispers of the Endless Paths (Offensive Parry). How about an evil Herald with Steel Garrote/Skald or Troubadour or so? Combining Steel Garrote passive + Old Siec maybe?

Hi! Weird, I never ever heard about that one. Unfortunately I have no idea what might fix this. First I would try to verify the file integrity with Steam. If that doesn't yield any results I would try to completely purge the game from my computer and reinstall it anew. But maybe you have already done that? Sorry if that's not helping. PS: It may be that this 5-minute explanation will not get played at all if you are offline...?

I wouldn't say that. Fire Godlike is also not bad imo there's no helmets with bonus AR iirc. Stacking AR can be a very good tactic - and +1 all-stackable AR can make a lot of difference. Death Godlike is very good with certain setups (mainly with Barring Death's Door and Wall of Draining or Salvation of Time). Moon Godlike grants some occasional minor healing - but that's a racial ability that's is indeed pretty lame imo.

But you became a necromancer instead. Also not bad imo...

Community Patch's solution is really too good. I think I wrote about that after I played a decent amount of Psion hours and iirc correctly also talked with @Elric Galad when he wanted input about Soul Mind with BPM. I also played Psion without mods and found it to be fine. It's still my preferred cipher subclass (then Beguiler) even then. The reason is that the action economy is so much better if you don't have to attack with weapons in order to get fuel for casts - and at the same time don't have to hit enemies at all which makes this subclass more useful against the tough nuts in the game. With a full party you can avoid to be damaged frequently pretty easily. Again decent deflection (and not having the lowest AR of the party) helps not only against occuring attacks but also disincentivizes enemies from attacking the Psion in the first place. If you then focus on mind control and other disabling CC (and as MC: also summons!) you make getting damaged even less likely. All the while you generate focus without doing anything (chanter style). Imo a caster/Psion hybrid is better and more entertaining. Being able to alternate between Focus and other resource pools and you never have to wait for resources - but the SC route grants access to impactful stuff like Puppet Master a lot sooner which is also good. I did NOT use Time Parasite much with SC Psion - because it messes with the timing of casting times/recovery and focus generation too much. It doesn't do much good if you suddenly have to wait for focus because you cast too quickly. The focus for Teim Parasite was better spent otherwise imo. Perfect spell for SC Ascendant though.

Wellspring of Life works like a passive. It stacks with everything.

?? I find it works extremely well in practice - at least with the Community Patch (it changes Soul Mindin a way that not receives damage stops the focus gain but receiving a critical hit). The best Cipher subclass for me personally. Soul Mind (Psion focus gain) scales with Power Level. It starts with 1 focus per second. Iirc it's +1 focus per second for every 2 Power Levels. So an SC Psion with Prestige and 2 more Power Levels (for example Wellspring of Life + Stone of Power's Power Surge) will get you to 7 focus per second if I'm not mistaken. I played an SC Psion with a small shield and weapon & shield style (less crits agains me - also less attention from enemies) and focus on Whisper of Treason and Puppet Master and I couldn't spend my focus as fast as it came in at some point. Keep in mind that Soul Mind regenerates focus even while you are in recovery or run away, are prone etc.

No, both scale with Power Level. But for whatever reason the Monastic UT fists always scale with the Single Class Power Level progression - even if you have a Multiclass. Which is nice for multiclass chars of course: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/monastic-unarmed-training And yes, universal Power Level buffs like Wellspring of Life (Nature Godlike) can increase both fist types (every 2 PLs with Monk, every 3 PLs with Monastic UT). A Forbidden Fist can use Lord of the Forest (from the Lace of the Midwood Stag) for +2 stackable PL and use his Forbidden Fist attack (it scales like Transcendent Suffering). That's one more scaling step. I usually use Wellspring of Life with Stone of Power for another easy scaling step. I think if you gain Acute or Brilliant from an item (like Least Unstable Coil) it's also stackable?

You didn't play the Forbidden Sanctum?

Imo it's neither worth worrying about what's in that room - nor is it worth it to use cheats to get it. The item that's in there is: By then you'll will most likely have better stuff than that. It's only interesting for very special (niche) builds.

This is the case with all bonuses that say -x% recovery time instead of +x% action speed. The pistol modal, Gunner, Opening Barrage (Scordeo's Trophy) and so on. Action speed buffs is something like Frenzy. Action speed buffs apply both to casting/animation time and recovery time, but in order to calculate the effect on recovery, action speed buffs must be converted in a form where you can combine them with those recovery time buffs. So in the end all action speed buffs also get converted into -x% time numbers. You can see that when you check the actual attack time and recovery time of the equipped weapons (see img below). The percentage which is shown there will be lower than the action speed ability says in its description. For example: While Frenzy is a +25% action speed mobifier the tooltip will say that the recovery bonus is "only" -20%. That's just because of the mathematical conversion from "+speed" into "-time": So when you see something like +25% action speed just keep in mind that it's less impactful for your recovery than -25% recovery time would be. -50% recovery time is a very big bonus. +50% speed would also be not bad (especially for spells that have a long casting time - because action speed buff apply to both casting/animation time and recovery time) - but on the tooltip above it would translate "only" to ~-33% recovery time. That's not what I was aiming at to explain, but nevertheless that is correct. It's the reason why speed buffs/recovery time buffs have linear returns in Deadfire (instead of increasing returns in PoE) and you can never reach 0 recovery by stacking all sorts of speed/time buffs. But the returns are not diminishing - they are linear. So it's worth it to stack those buffs. However: in case of reloading there is a hard "bottom cap" or floor value that you cannot break. The reloading animation cannot be sped up until a certain value (I don't remember the value in seconds) and you will reach that pretty soon with Gunner, pistol modal and Opening Barrage+Driving Flight. Once you hit that floor every additional speed buff/recovery time buff is a waste when it comes to reloading time for the pistol. For your casting however there is no floor so you can stack Opening Barrage for your ascension like there's no tomorrow and it would still speed up your recovery after casting a spell. The good thing with Opening Barrage is that it's not doing like -5% recovery time, then again -5% recovery time and so on but indeed adds up the 5% before applying them to your recovery "for real". So stacking 2 Opening Barrages truly translates to -10%, 3 stacks = -15% and so on. Otherwise the enchantment would be a lot worse. Yes, I guess it's a little mistake by the devs. Some weapons have effects that are not limited to the weapon usage itself. Lover's Embrace is one of them.

I know it's a bit nitpicky, but it's -x% recovery/reload time instead of +x% recovery/reload speed. Mechanically that's quite a difference and -50% reload time is much better than a +50% reload speed buff would be. But yes, the shortened recovery time from Scordeo's Trophy is very nice to have when reaching the ascended state. It is benefical to then pick spells with short casting time but longer recovery time - because Scordeo's recovery time buff only applies to the latter. Stuff like Mind Lance or so... lances go pew pew pew! Griffin's Blade only applies its recovery buff to the attacks made with the Blade itself - so it's not really helpful for shooting. I don't think you need that anyway because you most likely will hit the reload animation floor (can't speed up reloading anymore beyond that) with all the reduced reload time buffs you already have. Still works for +10% spell damage though, so not a bad pick. You could also think about Tuotilo's Palm in order to keep the shooting speed high while having better defenses. Or use Lover's Embrace + dagger modal for +10 melee deflection without any drawback - and the Frenzy effect is universal, meaning it also procs off of your pistol shots. It would stack with Scordeo's Trophy's recovery buff so you could cast even faster while ascended. And since Frenzy is an action speed bonus it also speeds up the casting animations (unlike recovery buffs). Xoti's Sickle with maxed Religion and Urgent Harvest is also a great speed buff for casting if you stand near a slain enemy. And it also provides melee deflection. The Soul Reaper dmg bonus only applies to the sickle itself - but it doesn't matter how you kill enemies to get the stacks for it. It is possible to gain up to 30 Religion for a max bonus of +80% dmg with the sickle (killed 4 enemies while ascended for example) - and that can come in handy once you get attacked in melee. Pretty nasty dmg from the sickle then and pretty good focus gain then, too.

Unfortunately you cannot. It used to be that way in the early days - but that got patched quickly.

Have a look at this table: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1384851536 As you can see the Bear is not far behind the wolf in terms of damage but way ahead in terms of tankyness due to the higher health and the +2AR - which is a big deal, especially if you also use Resilient Companion + Pain Block for additonal +4 AR so it makes it worthwhile to stack AR on him for being tanky. The Wolf is better as a dps companion - but you are not looking for dps from your animal companion if I read that correctly. The Boar is also pretty tanky because he has the biggest health pool and on top has a constant health recovery during combat. Compared to the bear (and wolf) his dps sucks though. But if that's not your focus anyway you could give him a try, too. With Pain Block his health regeneration will be nice. Seers can make use of the nice synergy of Takedown Combo + Disintegration (and Soul Ignition). Both spells don't count as actual damaging attacks but are considered status effects (which conveniently deal damage). Thus they don't remove the Takedown Combo effect on the enemy. Usually you will use Takedown Combo with your Animal Companion on an enemy, said enemy will get an effect on him so that the next attack roll against him gets +100% damage and then the Takedown Combo effect gets removed. But if you aply Takedown Combo and then use Disintegration (or the other way round, doesn't matter) all the damaging ticks of Disintegration will get the +100% dmg bonus while the Takedown Combo effect will NOT get removed until it runs out, basically doubling the damage of Disintegration (or Soul Ignition, works the same - or even both).

I never saw one.

Tested this now - it only works with crits from the sabre itself.

I didn't test that specifically tbh. I only tried to maximize crits with the weapon itself. But iirc Dire Talon was not on the list of weapon which get triggered universally which @Constentin Lévinecomposed. But I can try later. I have a bit of free time today. Edit: since an Essential/Substancial Phantom uses an exact copy of your weapon a way to produce more Wurms might be to use a Wizard/sth. with the Dire Talon and summon said Phantom near a weak enemy. Maybe... don't know if it's worth it and warrants the summoning time. A Monk/Ranger with Swift Flurry and Mohara Tanga in the offhand + Dire Talon in the main hand produces a lot of Wurms in a given time though.

If it would be a multiplayer online game I wouldn't play it. I very much prefer single-player games - but if it had optional co-op (or hooks for modded co-op) I wouldn't mind of course.

I don't know. He worked on the Pillars TTRPG rules in his free time after Deadfire's release.