Boeroer

WotEP has the enchantment "Run Through" which is 1/encounter and is perfect for Backstabs. If you want to make sure your Soul annihilation lands use Rännig's Wrath + modal in the main hand (+29 ACC) and a fast weapon in the offhand (e.g. Pukestabber). While SA is a primary attack and thus you will feel the longer recovery of the modal, all of the Rogue's Full Attacks will skip the Rapier's recovery and only execute the dagger's. That lets you build focus more quickly but you still keep the very high ACC for Soul Annihilation so that it doesn miss (and wastes all the focus). Or you use Sun & Moon: it has two flail heads that each do a seperate attack roll. Sou you have twice the chance to not miss. Ad if you hit your SA with the first flail head the second one will already regenerate focus.

Ooze 2 min, dorugudan 5 min seems like an extreme exaggeration if you count it in actual in-game time (which is the time you should keep in mind if you want to estimat how many scrolls you need).

If you look at the raise of traffic this forum has seen since 5.0 - and the amount of posts that evolve around "The Ultimate" you might change your mind and think that the PR stunt wasn't so little. Even if players don't plan to do the challenge themselves they might be interested to read about it and to follow the players who are trying to do that. I didn't say that it only was done because of PR reasons. But usually creating a challenge with rewards (see Scavenger Hunt) is there to get attention. I believe this one is not different, even if there might be additional reasons to create that challenge.

Some more questions: Can you cast Beetle Shell on Vela (guess not)? If yes: do enemies lose interest? I also guess not. But maybe it's worth checking? Would there be any way to cast Cipher's Statis Shell on Vela? e.g. if you are confused (hello Tactician)? Wouldn't mind control spells like Whisper of Treason or Puppet Master help to pull enemies away from Vela? I guess there's no trick that allows you to cast Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure on Vela... ?

Oh - it was that way round? Also good. But yes - you have to have one melee weapon equipped - else no AoE*AoE magic with Clear Out. Using Clear Out with Blinding Smoke fomr Hand Mortar should be pretty nice for a Tactician.

Honestly: when I said that I had PoE1 in mind where you had to deal at least 10 dmg in order to add a stack. I just unconsciously assumed it is the same for Deadfire. Maybe it's not though. Cool thing with the two stacks. Very good to know. By the way: all dmg dealing abilities that originate from weapon procs will not only profit from quality enchantment of the weapon and other stuff, they will also work with weapon-only restricted effects: e.g. Frostseeker's AoE will trigger Avenging Storm, it stacks Resonant Touches and so on. Same with Watershaper's Focus (Ondra' Wave - used to be so at least) and Engoliero do Espirs (Blade Feast). So maybe there are other weapons that are great for stacking Resonant Touches with weapon procs?

Yes he does. He said so in his post. That's why I ask if it's really a bug - since the mod breaks the behavior that prevents bad things from happening.

I wouldn't even try it for 10K EUR. It's a little PR stunt and that's fine. Deadfire needs more attention. I like theorycrafting around the challenge though. If we (as forum in a collective approach with providing tipps and tricks) can help a forum member to succeed that would make me happy somehow. If he/she's not a jerk I mean. 😋

I guess the synergy is that ResTouch also gets build up by the frost AoE of Frostseeker. So in theory (if every arrow crits) you could stack 6 ResTouches. But why should you be able to create more stacks with it than with a blunderbuss? Dual blunderbuss with Full Attack should put 8 stacks on the target instead of 6. But you need to overcome a certain damage threshold. If your blunderbuss pellets can't penetrate or the dmg rolls are too low then it will not stack anything I suppose. Maybe Frostseeker has less problems in that regard?

Afaik Knockdown/Mule Kick never worked with ranged weapons. What I could get to work was Clear Out (and upgrades), Hunter's Claw and Whirling Strikes. I simply put one melee weapon into the main hand. While this makes sense with Full Attack abilities like Whirling Strikes it still works (or worked?) with the primary-only Clear Out. For Clear Out you put a melee weapon into the offhand. You will then walk up to he enemy (since melee ability) but instead of the offhand melee weapon you will execute Clear Out with the main hand ranged weapon. At least that was the case pre 5.0. But sincethe patch notes don't notice it... Unfortunately I didn't take a video from it. But with Hand Mortar + Blinding Smoke + Fire in the Hole + Chain Shot and Heaven's Cacophony's Avenging Storm you could to pretty bonkers things (and also break your graphics card) since every AoE hit from Clear Out triggered the usual AoE attack from mortar (including Blinding Smoke and additional jump of FitH whioch all trigger Avenging Storm). Flagellant's Path, Whispers of the Wind and HoF and soms others always worked with ranged weapons, even when dual wielding two ranged weapons or using two handed ones. So what about Tactician/Troubadour with Grave Calling? By the way: does Vela profit from Ancient Memory? Or Her Courage Thick as Steel? If yes this could be used to lower the amount of needed Withdraw scrolls? Can you cast Statis Shell on Vela? I suppose not but who knows?

Is this a bug though? Usually you can't save while holding summoned weapons/being shifted since summoned weapons disappear/spiritshift ends with the end of combat.

I have no idea how Obsidian wants to determine if somebody used a save copy or not. Afaik there's no way to do that. The video footage will have cuts - because you can't do the challenge in a single day (if you have at least a rest of a real life). So that's also not suited to proof you didn't cheat. Of course they could always disqualify your attempt on a whim because they don't believe you did it properly... but dealing with it highhandedly also doesn't feel right. Imagine there's some player who can indeed pull it off properly but they just don't believe him... the frustration and anger will be enormous given how much energy you'll have to put into this in order to be successful und not to viloate "the spirit of the challenge".

I've experienced this for a long time (since Sept. 2018) and also reported it. But it seems to be difficult to reproduce it. Some playthrough I see it all the time, on the other not at all:

Use Troubadour/Skaen then with Grave Calling.

Also: this

Speaking of cheese: What about Chanter/<whatever> with Grave Calling, using the good old "kill your own skeletons for foe-only Chillfogs" trick? Would for example trigger Brilliant Tactician all the time, deals damage, reduce enemies' ACC... also those Chillfogs triggers Avenging Storm by the way (like Blinding Smoke and basically all attack rolls that originate from weapons I guess).

I'm not sure if they disqualify you if you use this bug or cheese with Brilliant/Stealth. It's not intentional and this might not be "in the spirit of the challenge". Maybe one could ask first if this is viable before dumping hundreds of hours into it? Because it is tempting.

It is fixed. As I reported in the corresponding bug thread.

Thinking about Abydon's Challenge I remembered my solo run with a melee Geomancer who summoned Concelhaut's Draining Touch for his Essential and Substancial Phantoms. It won't go away after a hit when on a Phantom and it can then attack pretty reliably with +12 ACC (one handed), high base damage - and targets Will by default. Would it break with Abydon's Challenge? Do summoned weapons break?

What also was strong on solo PotD for me, compared to most other builds I tried was a melee Geomancer (Stalker/Wizard). But I didn't try the megabosses with it. Was real smooth will all other bosses - without any resting bonuses and consumables.

I also can't remember seeing anything. I thought that maybe at least the paladin orders have some heraldry - but I found nothing. The only thing is the gods' symbols - and those I used for the priest subclasses (except Gaun because there is no official one that I know of). That made Priest subclasses' icons very easy.

Maybe they could have left the cursor unchanged and still allow disarming the trap.

Same

If depends how often Xoti gets hit. If she does get hit often I would wait until you can take Enduring Dance and then retrain, not before.