Boeroer

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.

Bu when you get some some sort of lock and can't proceed (and it's the game's fault not yours) I guess it's fair game to just explain what is/was happening, kill the game process and reload. I'm pretty sure that's ok. I mean better to try it and take that chance than scrapping the run altogether.

Interrupts in general are more easy to utilize (to full effect) if you use them on enemies who are using abilities with long(ish) execution times (mostly spells). Those usually have a big impact on the encounter (think of Arcane Dampener). It's better to spare some interrupt capability for such situations when you see that an enemy starts casting stuff. Good examples: Neriscyrlas casts Llengrath's Safeguard, Concelhaut casts Arcane Cleanse and so on. Interrupting a quickly executed attack ability is usually very difficult to time and not worth the effort. If you want to prevent enemies from using their offensive abilities a frightening or terrifying effect is great. Those are pretty easy to come by (see Wizard) and they often work really well with AoE Will debuffs (Miasma of Dull-Mindedness and/or an AoE strike with clubs + modal). The enemy won't lose the ability costs though like they do with an interrupt. The good thing about Full Attack with Tuotilo's Palm is just that you have two chances to apply any effect (like afflictions). Due to the -35% dmg loss of Full Attacks and the low dmg of the bash I also guess you won't see a substantial damage increase. But stuff like Stunning Surge is better if you have two chances to apply stun or even crit with it (regaining resources). I mean better than with a normal shield. For me the best part of Tuotilo's Palm is the enhancements that boosts unarmed attacks, mostly the accuracy enhancement. It also applies to the shield itself by the way. But or course that's only a viable option if you really use your fists (primarily) and not another weapon. Great point about Primary Attacks (like Force of Anguish) + bashing shields. Often overlooked I guess.

The basic principle (triggering Blood Thirst with a heavy hitting weapon and thus rendering attack speed unimportant since you skip recovery) can be done with other weapons as well. There's just no other weapon which has that much dmg per hit until the late(ish) game when you have access to the highest quality enchantments and Durgan Steel. I would not use Tidefall with this approach. I mean if I had somebody else in the party who could use it. Tidefall is one of the best dps weapon in the game - but it is so because of the awesome wounding enchantment. Unfortunately kills that are done by the wounding DoT effect will NOT trigger Blood Thirst. It's frustrating if that happens. Better give it to a teammate (e.g. a Rogue). Alternatives are: Hours of St. Rumbalt, Abydon's Hammer, Drake's Bell, St. Ydwen's Redeemer (against vessels), Justice (has two lashes), Tall Grass and so on. Even a sabre like Bittercut works well since it hits relatively heard if you also pick Spirit of Decay. But generally there's no better option for quite some time into the game than Firebrand. Being a Godlike is not mandatory at all. I just thought it's a nice touch with the whole fire theme and all. It doesn't add a lot to the basic principle of the build besides that kills via Battle Forged retaliation also trigger Blood Thirst. You can totally use another race and wear a helmet or other headgear.

Thanks a lot. I wanted to add that the whole other stuff of the Community Patch (everything besides the icons) was initiated and done by @MaxQuest and @Phenomenum. I merely took part in the discussions. After the discussion (here in the forum) there was an open poll about the suggested changes and only changes/fixes with enough "yes" votes were included. I played with it (+ Enhanced UI mod) and can very much recommend it (both). You can easily deactivate certain certain aspects of the Community Patch. It's structured in a way that you can "turn off" changes that you don't agree with but keep the others.

Concelhaut ist probably doing the same as you guys: cheesing with Brilliant.

It works like always. If your stealth skill is too low to sneak up on them (a few points can make a huge difference) you need to use Sparkcrackers to lure them away so your thief can quickly sneak up on the chest. Note that guards will have a circle where they hear and a cone where they can see. It's a lot easier to sneak up on them (or what they are protecting) if you don't cross their vision cone. Also, when guards walk their hearing circle is smaller as when when they stand still. Most chests (not all) can be opened without a reaction from guards. So you can pick the lock in plain sight. Only when you take the items inside it will be treated as theft. You only need to manage to reach the (open) chest stealthed. If the items inside are not red you can take them without somebody noticing. Best practice is to have one char with all-in mechanics (who's opening stuff) and another with all-in stealth (who takes it).

But the two separate attacks of the individual flail heads have lower base damage - and Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming only repeats the individual hit of one single flail head, not the whole strike. So the enhanced dps percentage with Sun & Moon + Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming should be less than with a spear. I did a similar build but with Rännig's Wrath since Rapiers have +5 ACC out of the box (like spears) but Rännig's Wrath has an additional +4 and can utilize the modal which gives you additional +20 ACC. Good thing about spears though is that there's one that does pierce/slash and not only pierce damage.