Boeroer

There are no fights you have to do solo. Paladins usually favor a stat- and skill spread that is good for a talkative character --> more dialogue options. Orlan Paladin is a bit unusual, but Orlans often get enslaved, so that fits. Ciphers are a lot more common among Orlans than with other races. Also a Cipher with good dialogue options is not hard to build. So maybe Orlan Cipher (melee) may be the way to go. A good weapon to a) stay close to the slave role and b) do good dmg (and thus generate good focus) is to grab Durance's Staff asap (it has a burning lash which is very useful that early in the game) and has two dmaage types (crush/burn). Later, in the first few levels of the Endless Paths, get Llawran's Stick. It has the speed enchantment which is one of the best for dps and focus gain. Enchant it with a lash (best something else than burn because you will keep Durance's Staff as backup - shock is good). Use Llawran's Stick primarrly and from the second row. Skill offensively. Pick Time Parasite. With Time Parasite, Llawran's Stick and some Durgan Steel you will attack with 0 recovery which is very, very fast. One of the best powers of Ciphers is all mind controls (Whisper of Treason etc.) and Amplified Wave.

I don't think they drop the Pillars IP. It might not be a PoE3 with Real Time with Pause though. If you listened to Josh Sawyers Deadfire Post Mortem talk: it sounded like they want to learn from the mistakes they made with Deadfire (I think they identified the biggest problems with it correctly). And to profit from that insights they would need to make another Pillars game - I hope. It also sounded as if Turn Based is the way to go.

He can get back Bond if he becomes brilliant. E.g. a Cipher can cast Ancestor's Memory on him. Or you build a Tactician/Ranger and become brilliant by flanking all enemies (e.g. with Whispers otEP + Mule Kick). There's also a cape which has a 1% chance to trigger brilliant every time you take a hit. Or a Chanter uses "His Heart Did Fill With the Light of the Dawn".

Summon duration can't be prolonged with anything else but INT and Power Level. Fire Stag lasts not terribly long (has a very high staring PL so no big PL bonus to duration) - but longer than Barring Death's Door + 2 times Salvation of Time. So in this case it's fine. You can speed up the Stag with a DEX Inspiration. That way you can get 1 (maybe 2) more explosions out of it. Still not gamebreaking, but fun somehow. You can simply shift+click on the ability and the stag will try to explode as often as it can without you babysitting. You might be able to use this tactic to bomb some encounters from a safe distance that are otherwise a bit risky. Nop idea - I just found out accidentially today and thought it's fun enough to share.

Hey! I found a way to make Fire Stag somewhat useful: Fire Stag has an unlimited use of self-destruct which does good burn/pierce damage in a fixed (friendly fire) AoE. Unfortunately it kills itself with the self-destruct (obviously). So the limitless uses are of little... use. But if you cast Lay on Hands (Shieldbearer) or Barring Death's Door (Priest) on the Stag it will not get killed in the process, allowing it to repeat the self-destruction over and over again as long as the barring effect lasts. This can be prolonged with Salvation of Time. All those spells can be cast on the Stag because it's a "steerable" summon which is not on autopilot and thus counts as "ally".

Eh? His is either exaggerated or you do something very wrong. With the right apporach you won't have many problems with stronghold raids at all. Every attack gets telegraphed long before so that you have the time to travel back and do the encounter yourself. Nearly all of them are extremely easy. If you kill all enemies you won't have any damage to your stronghold and get experience. If you always let your stronghold sort the attacks out on its own there will be damage. I guess you never travelled to your stronghold to aid in those fights? To keep the amount of raids in check: raise your security number. Once you get hirelings for your stronghold (via barracks) and some security upgrades (focus on those ones first) you won't experience many attacks anymore. Up to the point where they don't happen at all. Also you don't want to raise your prestige too soon. I can't remember if that attracks raiders - but the higher the prestige the more advanced the stronghold adventures become. If you level your prestige too fast you will skip a lot of the low level stronghold adventures which could bring you nice unique items. Best thing is to hire folks who have high positive security gain but a negative impact on your prestige (best example Korgrak the Ogre from Dyrford Crossing). TL;dr: do the fights yourself, favor the structures with the highest security gain, build barracks and enlist mercenaries with the highest security gain asap.

The difference is that a Tactician can become brilliant at lvl1 while a Cipher has to level a lot before he can even think about casting Ancestor's Memory (which is also expensive, so you need yo collect some focus first). My Tactician/Barb would always bring Whispers of the Endless Paths with him. Not only is WotEP + Clear Out pretty bonkers in general, but Mule Kick in an AoE gets you back a multiple points of discipline (if you interrupt several enemies with one strike) but also flanks (via disoriented) several enemies so it's rel. easy to become brilliant even without a fellow Cipher or Wizard. Morning Star is one of the best weapon choices for a Brute. Since it can lower fortitude by 25 points and lots of the attack abilites of a brute target fortitude (Knockdown/Mule Kick, Clear Out e.g.) also see Brute Force. If you don't like to switch weapons around a lot then Devoted/Barb with Morningstar is indeed a good choice. Also because of solid base PEN (then even better with Devoted, may even get pushed further with a Berserker) and dual damage type. My preferred method to remove Berserker's confusion is Devil of Caroc's Breastplate. It's a great piece of armor per se. But you can also simply eat a luminous lobster or similar food while resting which would make you immune until you rest again. Or use some Svef.

Certain bashing shields - e.g. Magran's Blessing - don't necessarily need an upgrade for dmg and PEN and ACC - if it has other upgrades that make its use worthwhile. In this case the -3 benefical effect debuff. It kind of makes sense that if you reinforce a medium heater shield with "quality" that it doesn't automatically becomes a better bashing weapon. So... providing fitting and benefical enchantments (or buffing the existing ones) for each bashing shield could make them worthwhile without doing a rel. "boring" blanket-buff for all of them. Afaik there are only 3 bashing shields anyway, right? And Tuotilo's Plam seems to be fine while Magran's Blessing is maybe more a "utility bashing" than dps bashing. That leaves Best Defense: needs better PEN enchantment - or additional PEN enchantment that comes after the first one. needs WAY better dmg boost - or additional dmg (maybe even a lash) enchantment that comes after the first one

That would also work.

Right. You have to take those things into account as well. By the way: Lance of the Midwood Stag can be used by Ciphers as well. The enchantment that gives you Woodskin (conditionally) also unlocks the +2 PL boost (which is universal). Of course it's better to have a party member who puts a fitting effect on your Cipher (since that's more reliable).

I find it a bit sad that the priest class generally is decided into "bland" (bland from a lore point of view) subclasses that are dedicated to a whole god - while the gods have so many different aspects. Look at Ondra<-->Ngati. Another class concept would have been to introduce different priestly "persuasions", like orders or churches. Which may interpret one god's aspects differently even if they worship the same god in the end. Like it is with Xoti (Gaun). Like Catholics and Protestants pray to the same god, but have different "official" lithurgies, beliefs and also different dispositions (if you'd press them into a Pillars mechanic). The motivations, beliefs and disposition of a priest of Gaun might be different from that of a Ardyrian priest of Eothas and a Vaillian priest of Eothas (insert unique curch names). I think this was a missed opportunity for more "in-depth" lore and worldbuilding. Now every Priest of a certain God has to follow that exact same principles/dispositions. While with Paladins and Monks you can always add new interesting orders and cults. You can do that with Priests as well, but now it might feel a bit grafted (if you can say that). Like Xoti feels a bit out of place since her class doesn't fit the "order" of normal Priest classes. Imagine a church of Galawain that focuses on the "pursuit" aspect of Galawain called "Seekers". Stuff like that.

Griffin's Blade gives your spells additive 10% dmg. Lashes are multiplicative dmg bonuses. They are calculated based on the complete "primary" dmg you dealt (so to speak). That means that Blightheart will add a 10% multiplicative dmg bonus to your spells, but it has to overcome the target's corrode AR separately. +1 Power Level adds 5% base damage to offensive abilities (besides the other stuff like PEN and ACC). And that is multiplicative dmg increase as well, but without having to overcome another AR value separately. For spells this often doesn't make a lot of difference since you can't really mix a lot of additive dmg bonuses with multiplicative ones as you can with weapon attacks. Usually it's only the base dmg of the spell, then the additive bonus of MIG and then you can multiply that with either Blightheart's 10% lash or/and Power Level. If you have a ton of MIG (e.g. being a Helwalker) that can make a difference though. Imagine a spell with 100 base damage. You have 30 MIG (+60% additive dmg). That means the spell would do 100 + 60 dmg. With Griffin's Blade you would simply add 10 dmg. Resulting in 170 "primary" dmg. With Blightheart you would take the 160 "primary" dmg and multiply it by 10%. You'll end up with 160 primary and 16 corrosive lash. Still not the world, but you get the point. If you score a crit it's even better since you'll add 25% more additive dmg. Same with Overpenetration (which mostly occurs in crits). At that point the lash really pays off compared to yet another flat additive bonus. Same goes for Power Level bonuses. So if you can get a 10% lash (or a +2 PL increase) compared to an additive 10% increase: always take the lash or the Power Levels. Same when you compare stuff like Biting Whip (10% additive) to Eternal Devotion (10% lash). With weapons + abilities it's more interesting because you usually get a lot more additive modifiers which can then be multiplied by PL and/or lash. This includes weapon quality (fine to legendary or even mythic - or post-mythic with Monk fists), MIG, certain enchantments and stuff like Sneak Attack and whatnot. Tl;dr: Blightheart and Cromoprismatic Staff are better than Griffin's Blade (if we look at spell dmg improvement).

You mean Hitchphallus?

Glawain is actually called "the Clever Hound" (because of his aspects "pursuit" and "discovery"), so...

By the way: as single class Wizard you can still keep the one handed Great Sword from Citzal's Enchanted Armoury. I don't know if it then is not breaking (see Abydon's Challenge), but you can easily make two of those and dual wield them or simply wear a shield and still do two-hander damage. What you do: cast Citzal's Enchanted Armory, then cast Concelhaut's Draining Touch (will replace the Great Sword in your main hand, you will have one handed Morning Star + Draining Touch). Armory can wear off before the fight ends. Fight then ends and Draining Touch vanishes, but you'll get the Great Sword. My starting setup was fist + blunderbuss (offhand) - don't know if that's important. Just did this accidentially while testing stuff. Thought this was fixed but it is not. 100% reproducable for me. Unfortunately the old trick with Armory + Form of the Fearsome Brute (keeping the Breastplate with 11 AR but 0 recovery) no longer works. Maybe that's worth something - don't know.

They simply removed the scaling with Transcended Suffering/MUT from Woedica's fists and kept the quality scaling. Since Tuotilo's Palm seems to be a Monk themed shield it would be fair to just leave it as it is I guess.

Idon't know if it's easy to scale the offensive capabilities of bashing with quality. I guess it would be no mechanical problem though.

Given how late you get that shield an increase of 25% additive dmg for such low base damage (7-10) as an enchantment that requires serious investment is a slap in the face in my opinion.

Diplomacy and brutal honesty don't work well together. I know from professional experience...

Cool. I especially like the combo of making a supertanky Bear with the use of Griffin's Blade. Never thought of that but it makes perfect sense. By the way one could use a hand mortar or blunderbuss to trigger multiple stacks of Hunter's Claw per attack - if you had a melee weapon in the other hand. Maybe this git fixed though. It's still possible to abuse Clear Out this way so I guess tehre's a chance that it's also still possible with Hunter's Claw. Another way is to use Sun & Moon + Keeper of the Flame. By the way: do the additional attacks from Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming add stacks to Hunter's Claw as well? Never tried... Stunning the enemy via Stunning Surge not only gives you a lot more Full Attacks (because you will most likely regain enough Mortification during an encounter) - it also lowers deflection which increases the chance of chaining Swift Flurry/HBD - compared to Dazed which doesn't lower defenses. I would use it in combination with Accurate Wounding Shot (+20 ACC and -10 deflection from stunned is +30 stackable effective ACC). If one uses the Community Patch then Forbidden Fist could also be an option (since you don't want to get hit anyway): Forbidden Fist + Swift Flurry and als Takedown Combo can be nice. Also Enfeebled on an enemy prolongs the DoT of Wounding Shots and all other hostile effects on the enemy. Without the Community Patch the Forbdden Fist ability is not tagged as weapon attack and thus doesn't work with Swift Flurry/HBD and maybe not even with Hunter's Claw etc.

Just checked: Best Defense comes legendary and its bashing stats (dmg, PEN, ACC) don't scale with legendary. They stay basic (0% dmg bonus, +0 PEN, +0 ACC ). Like all other bashing shields it only scales its shield deflection from +4 to +8 with the ledendary enchantment. It does not profit from Transcendent Sufferung or Monastic UT. you can enchant the bash seperately with +2 PEN OR +25% dmg. Which is laughable. I guess this mechanic of bashing is an oversight. It seems Obsidian can't get bashing right (exept Tuotilo's Palm which is an edge case).

All bashing shields profit from quality enchantments, but usually only the defensive capabilities scale, not the bashing ones. Might be different with the Best Defense shield, but I doubt it. Tuotilo's Palm also doesn't scale its offensive capabilities with quality but only its defensive ones. It's special because it is considered an "unarmed" weapon and thus scales with Transcendent Suffering/Monastic UT.

You have to manually install the mod (aka copy the folder into the correct game folder by yourself). It's written in the mod description. Unfortunately Vortex can't handle this mod (any many others) properly.

Fyi I just loaded up a savegame in Mahiri's Metalworks and threw some Sparkcrackers into the doorway between main and back room and the guard moves just fine in order to investigate - which gives me plenty of time to sneak to both chests he was guarding:

Afaik the stealing of high quality gear from chests was made harder in some patches. The guards have better detection and the chests have a lot tougher locks now. This is to prevent low level players to obtain legendary equipment too soon which might trivialize the game (Devil of Caroc, Patinated Plate, Grave Calling etc.). You have to throw the Sparkcrackers somewhere wehre the guard can hear it. So - not too far away. Just far enough that they have to move a bit. They won't run through the whole shop. If you do it like that they should move. Note that only Spoarkcrackers will work, not noisy spells like Dazzling Lights whch would otherwise work perfectly fine to lure enemies from stealth. Neutral NPCs only react to Sparkcrackers. If the gurads don't react then it might be that they are hard-coded not to do so and you're out of luck until you get your stealth up or enough money to buy the items. Also note that you can often pickpocket the key for chests from shop owners or guards. This is often easier than picking the lock itself. You only need high stealth and no mechanics. But there are also cases where there is no key to pickpocket.