Boeroer

ROFL

Hello and welcome. It works just like it used to. There were no changes to the workings of those particular abilities of the (Darcozzi) Paladin and also the items didn't change. For a ranged "marker paladin" you can use three diff. unique ranged weapons, you can find them here: https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Marking The earliest ranged one is still St. Garam's Spark (pistol). For good shots with Flames of Devotion (and no weapon switching) however the arquebus Pliambo per Casitàs might be the preferabe choice ifyou want to squeeze everything out of your alpha strikes. It's pretty difficult to get that weapon early though.

The animation doesn't really matter in this case - it's mostly cosmetic (except when we look at attack speeds). Torment's Reach - despite looking like a kick - does use your main hand weapon. Stuff like Skyward Kick is also animated like it was done with your foot but uses your weapon anyway. On the other hand Forbidden Fist looks like it is done with your fist (which is a weapon) but it doesn't use your actual fist, but I digress... With Swift Flurry/HBD the only thing that matters is whether the attack and damage roll - under the hood, in game logic - are done with a melee weapon (fists count as weapons, too) or not. With Torment's Reach and most other attack abilites this is rel. easy to check on the tooltip of the ability in the action bar or even better in the combat log (where you can rel. easily deduce which weapon or other damage effect was used by the damage type and other infos around the rolls). There are some abilities that are more complicated to figure out, but fortunately Torment's Reach is relatively straightforward: it is a melee weapon attack, executed with your active main hand weapon (called "primary attack"). At least that's true for the initial attack of Torment's Reach that hits the first enemy: it can trigger Swift Flurry/HBD. Note that additional attacks from Swift Flurry or Heartbeat Drumming do not repeat the attack they originated from (in this case Torment's Reach). Instead they execute an invisible (no animation) standard attack with your main hand weapon - so it does NOT repeat Torment's Reach with all the cone AoE and so on. Now - the cone AOE of Torment's Reach/Raised Torment that follows the initial attack roll - and which eventually hits other enemies behind the initial one - is NOT a melee weapon attack. Instead it actually is implemented as a spell-like effect. Thus it does NOT trigger Swift Flurry/HBD. You can check that in the combat log when the attack rolls for the cone were made. --- Addendum: for easier assessment it is good to know that every attack ability that says that it is done as "Primary Attack" or "Full Attack" (see its description) is 100% using your active weapon(s) - and if that's a melee weapon then it's a melee weapon attack for sure and will trigger Swift Flurry (see below example of Torment's Reach). Ouf, got carried away a bit. I hope that answers your question (and was not too elaborated/confusing).

Hello and welcome! Those are absolutely fine. They would be fine even for higher difficulties. The changes that were made with 5.0 etc. didn't invalidate normal/reasonable character- and companion builds. Maybe some powergamey stuff took a hit, but usually what was viable before still is viable now - when it comes to a full party and so on. Solo playthroughs on PotD difficulty or even Ultimate challenge etc. which require special tricks are another story.

I don't think that it's finished yet.

Combine with Boots of Speed and you're back at normal move speed. Maybe one can add additonal ways to profit from the self-induced hobble? There should be other items that trigger something useful on getting hit or crit... What usually makes self-healing tricks less potent (without resting too much) in PoE is that they only affect endurance but not health.

Wizard/Psion (Cipher subclass that regenerates focus on time like a Chanter generates his phrases) sounds like a combination that could be fun for you. However, it is not great for melee combat but is focused on casting. But it's extremely versatile and useful in general and for me was a lot of fun to play. Wizard's defense buffs make it easier to not get hit (stops the focus gain briefly) and later the best defense buff of the Cipher (Borrowed Instincts) even stacks with most of the wizard's self buffs (see Mirrored Images, Arcane Veil etc.). Vanilla Wizard/Psion works well. Another good Hierophant variant could be Bloodmage/Soulblade - because the Soulblade's attack "Soul Annihilation" works very well with Citzal's Spirit Lance (a wizard-only summoned pike that does AoE damage naturally). Great mix of defense, melee and casting. Also works as vanilla Wizard/Soulblade. --- Trickster/Soulblade in general is a good combo, you cannot really fail with it. Good defense with fantastic offensive capability.

Fast Assassin is intended for party play on hard. No idea if it would also work for solo. It might... The following one is dedicated for solo on Path of the Damned difficulty (which makes it viable for normal difficulty also): https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/94414-class-build-the-sprightly-scorpion-potd-solo-stun-locking-rogue/

Ah - doing it the other way round. Very good.

Hello! They are the same as the solo builds for the last ~6 years. The game didn't change since Dec. 2017. I think in the build list here in this forum you can find several solo builds that are still viable for the latest game versions (3.0 to 3.07). Most builds name the game version. If they are for Path of the Damned difficulty then they surely also work for the lower difficulty settings.

Hi! You can go to Remaro asap if you wish. Or wait for it until it's on the way - for convenience. There is no diff. fighting involved (if you don't want to) and it's done very quickly. My personal order would be to do Arkemyr's vault (very easy if you use a certain non-violent way, involves disguise), then Cornet's Call (imo it's easier than Hanging Sepulchres), then Sepulchres. Then Motare O Kozi or Poko Kohara. As long as you can win red skulls are no problem though. For example a certain Lagufaeth dude on Tikawara is labeled as high level - but since he's all alone it's actually not really a difficult fight.

As I found out OP means scrolls. The link shows the location of grimoires very well (it's a nice list), but none of them can be purchased. They are gained via quest or looting (containers of all sorts, including dead bodies...;)). Unfortunately the fandom site for scrolls is not that comprehensive (there are many more scrolls in the game than grimoires I guess and some are also random loot) - and I don't remember every place where you can purchase scrolls.

Do you mean scrolls? Scrolls can be bought in various places. I don't recall every shop that has scrolls for sale, but there are several. Wizard spells (which only a wizard could learn) are inside grimoires. Grimoires are usually not bought but found (loot, drops etc.).

if you ask me the chance is near zero. The Fandom version is pretty comprehensive and thus the motivation for setting up another wiki should be pretty low in general.

Yeah, I noticed when I was watching the documentary again after posting that comment. But I was too lazy to edit my post afterwards. "Project" doesn't sound very fantasy-like imo, so I prefer Pillars of Eternity.

It did work for me on stuff like Rotghasts and other vessels (male) reliably. Especially sure with Rotghasts because the cre_dummy objects I use as targets for console-based testing sessions are Rotghasts, too.

Ha, I didn't know that.

I don't really know. But I noticed that most of the "monsters" where it's kind of hard to determine (for example Rotghasts) seem to be male. So I suspect there's more male than female enemies in the game. But I'm just guessing. Never tried to verify that. Afaik all enemies seem to have a gender. Or maybe the game just defaults to male if there is no gender given.

The second flail head usually generates enough focus with all the dmg bonuses so that you can endlessly spam SA - which is a big dps increase. That way you also circumvent the shield's bash altogether while maintaining the dw speed bonus and getting good defense without any drawback offensively. This allows you to spend all your Guile for the defensive stuff (because not needed for offense). Besides that a flail is generally a low damage-per-hit weapon - but high enough on dps because of the shorter recovery (3 secs instead of 4 like the heavier one-handers).

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention somthing about a certain Dagger: Lover's Embrace has this Frenzy enchantment as I already said which stacks with everything. Well, the even better part is that it can get triggered by ANY crit you do (against the specified gender), be it from your Rapier, Dagger, spells or whatever. So it procs a lot more often than one might have thought initially.

No, not really. See, the raw damage of Soul Annihilation (I'll call it SA from now on) doesn't rely on the damage your weapon is doing at all. It is solely based on the focus you dump into it and then gets amplified by damage bonuses (Might, Sneak Attack, Deathblows and so on). So for SA's impact it doesn't really matter whether you use a fat great sword for it or a dagger. What is more crucial is that you don't miss (or graze). And for that weapons like Rapier, Spear, Dagger and Club are great because of their +5 accuracy bonus. Some special weapons like Sun & Moon are also great because it has two attack rolls bc. it has two heads that strike seperately (two chances to not miss or graze). It is true that SA is a primary attack and thus the dagger won't be used for it - but that doesn't mean that the dagger has no impact at all: because you are dual wielding your recovery will be shorter (just from the fact that you are wearing two weapons - on top you could be using Two Weapon Style for additional speed). That shortened recovery does not care whether you use a primary attack like SA or a Full Attack like Crippling Strike. Full Attacks get a -35% dmg malus though - that would be not good for SA, its raw dmg would be diminished. But for your rogue attacks a two weapon setup like Rapier+Dagger is often still better than a two hander (or a single weapon) because the Rogue has so many good Full Attacks. So you don't need to worry about that in combination with SA: it's totally fine. For more confirmation: one of the best weapon combos for Trickster/Soulblade is considered Sun & Moon + Tuotilo's Palm (or another bashing shield) for the same reasons I explained above: you keep high speed bc. of officially dual wielding, you have a good main weapon that hits often and in case of bashing shields the primary ttack makes sure you don't even use the weak bash but can attack with the good main hand weapon mostly - and on top of it you get nice defense because not only does the shield give you defensive stats by itself, but bashing shields work with both Two Weapopn Style (bc. they are weapons) AND Weapon & Shield Style (because they are shields). Your setup is not far off: Rapier & Dagger are better for Rogue's Full Attacks and not detrimental to SA. You don't get the defense boost of a bashing shield, but your Full Attacks don't suffer from a weak bash. It would (both). Furtunately it only starts once you switch to the weapon set. It doesn't matter that the start of combat already happend. For the weapon the combat starts as soon as it gets switched to - so to speak. So using a ranged weapon at combat start and only afterwards switching to the dagger totally works. However: if you switch away from the dagger the buff will instantly vanish and it won't even come back if you switch back to the dagger. It does! Unfortunately the +2 PEN only counts for the weapon attacks of Marux Amanth (including Corona of the Soul) but nothing else (not the Rapier's attacks and also not spells for example). It does that. But so would Smart or Acute (like from Tactical Barrage - both grant +5 INT). The potential powerful effect of Brilliant is that it restores spend class resources like Discipline or Focus. And - and that's what's really impactful - used spells (for Wizard, Priest and Druid). It is significantly more potent to gain +1 spell use back per 6 secs instead of just 1 Discipline or +10 focus (which can be regained anyway) or phrases of Chanters or wounds of Monks (same as focus - they come back easily anyway). It's easy for Ciphers to generate 10 focus without being Brilliant. It's less easy or impossible for other classes to regain 1 Discipline, Guile, Zeal or Rage or so... so Brilliant can be nice for them - but it's still only 1 point and you cannot do that much impactful stuff with it so it takes time to regain a meaningful amount. On the otehr hand: one wizard spell per 6 seconds is... great. You can simply spam Shadowflame every 6 seconds or so - or you can be a Priest and regain Salvation of Time every 6 seconds and use that to prolong all buffs of the party endlessly... So Tactician/Cipher is not bad by any means - it just so that it feels like a bit of a waste to not pair a Tactician with a caster in order to form a Multiclass instead of a Tactician/<insert class that regains resources anyway> if you know what I mean.

I don't remember every questline and the individual steps etc. - but usually you get some XP for intermediate steps of a quest and the biggest portion at the end of the quest. So following those intermediate steps usually means more XP. If the questline has a lot of intermediate steps that all give a little bit of XP it can add up. Now it's up to you to decide whether that additonal XP is worth your time and attention - or not. Imo somtimes it's worth it and sometimes it's not*. Def. depends on what you like to do and what annoys you. Anyway: there's def. enough XP in the game to max out the levels before the endgame, even witout doing every addendum/side stuff. This is especially true if you also have the expansions installed (White March I and II): it's supereasy even with rushing through the game to max out rel. early. * Example: when dealing with Raedric you can side with Kolsc and get some xp for interacting with him, then do all the small XP-stuff you can do to reach Raedric (talk to the wizard in the basement, talk to the Priest, gain access to the secret door and whatnot), finally approach to Raedric and then flip: get some XP for siding with him then and agree to kill Kolsc. Then go and talk to Kolsc again, kill Kolsc (XP), return to Raedric, get XP for completing the Kolsc task but then kill him, too (again more XP)! I think that is the max. XP you could milk out of the whole Raedric questline - but at the same time: is it worth all the effort and all the time you spend running around? And also: Doesn't it feel weird and not in line of you really thought your char would do (role-playing wise)? And then also: barreling through the castle directly and killing Raedric might net less XP overall, but you'll get a ****ton more valuable loot from all the enemies in the castle - and better equipment (or money from selling that equipment) can be as important/rewarding has getting more xp. So what's more efficient? Sadly "it depends"... But I hope my point came across somehow.

Oho, my favorite Cipher subclass! I don't think so - I shooed them around a nearby lake today (was a ~10km walk), so the kids are pretty knackered now and will leave me alone.

Hello! Forgive me if this text is a bit of a structural mess, I wrote it while having breakfast with three howling kids. I was on the phone so there will be weird typos, too. Here we go: The Debonaire cannot engage (at all - that also means no Persistent Distraction which is a great Rogue ability for melee chars. You can pick it but it will do nothing - a trap if you will) and has disadvantages if he's facing melee opponents when no allies are nearby. So using that subclass for a dedicated melee character is a suboptimal approach imo. It's better for a reach weapon or (short) ranged weapon setup. Nevertheless: it's doable - and if it's more about RP vibes than power gaming it will be okay I guess. I personally would pick Trickster/Beguiler. Beguilers do get focus from casting Deception spells, but they also keep the ability to get focus via weapon dmg. The restriction that this only works if the target is afflicted is a non-factor: even if enemies have 0 affliction before you cast a deception on them you will get focus because the affliction of the deception spell itself will be applied first before this "does he get focus?" check is made. So you always get focus from Deception spells if you hit with them properly. And stuff like Persistent Distraction immediately unlocks the focus gain in melee, too. During actual playthroughs with a Beguiler - where you would start with a Deception like Phantom Foes and Secret Horrors anyway - I didn't have any issues where I didn't generate focus. Not once (that I noticed). Thus, the Beguiler is an excellent cipher subclass. Trickster is excellent for melee chars because it's a great combo of defense (via self buffs such as Mirrored Images) and offense (Sneak Attack and so on). The lower Sneak Attack makes almost no difference because it's only a 10% malus which stays that way even though Sneak Attack itself scales with Power Level. So while you level up the little malus becomes less and less noticable compared to the scaling bonus you'll get. For melee combat one could also consider a Soulblade/Trickster (or Debonaire). Nothing prevents Soulblades from casting Deception spells etc. - but on top they get a very potent melee attack which is Soul Annihilation and which profits from Sneak Attack, Deathblows and also crit dmg bonus. From the powergamer's perspective Tricksters/Soulblade is a very appealing combo. Seeker's Fang is exceptionally great with a Cipher because the soulbound-enchantment that adds the DoT is very powerful. Comes late - but once you get it I would stick to it. Rännig's Wrath is great. Imo overall the best rapier (if you factor in that it comes early). I would use it until I get Seeker's Fang (which will be very late). Once you get Seeker's Fang and soulbind it, it will ask which class you want to bind it to. This will be binding (pun intended) and you could only change that by severing the soulbind and bind+level up anew - ugh). So pick the Cipher route! It's best. The DoT works incredibly well as I said and your questions about it can be answered with: don't worry, it works on hit and crit, it stacks and it's awesome. Debonaire/Cipher problems again - or rather pure Cipher problems: If you hit charmed enemies (with Deception or weapon) you will not get any focus(!). But Aspect of the Spider and all other weapon stuff will still apply even to charmed enemies (or party members and other allies). Rogue's DoT attacks (Ring the Bell, Gouging Strike, Toxic Strike) stack with the Fang's DoTs and this melts away any foe in no time. For the second weapon I'd recommend one set with a Dagger (look at Marux Amanth, you can bind it to your Rogue class) or Lover's Embrace. The Frenzy from Lover's Embrace stacks with everything by the way - so it can make you noticably faster. The other set can be stiletto like Rust's. It's a great weapon in general but it's true that the pierce dmg can be limiting at times. It's not that hard to get it with a full party. Especially if you use stuff like Gouging Strike and Lover's Embrace against dear Rust from stealth and in the following battle in the cave have charm and dominate... Just switch the weapon set if you encounter certain resistant enemies. As you might know in Deadfire underpenetration is a severe, severe problem for your dmg output. Much more crippling than it was in PoE. So make sure that your Penetration is always equal or better than the enemies' armor rating - else your dmg will be ridiculously low. You can witness that against certain enemies sich as Steelclad Constructs etc. For style I would say use one set Rännig's Wrath + Rust's and the backup set could be Griffin's Blade (looks flashy like a Rapier but is a sword) + Lover's Embrace? Something else - there's another problem I recalled: charmed enemies flip back to hostile. So in general it's better to dominate them instead - I mean if want to attack them during the mind control phase. Debonaire (if you pick that) won't get crit conversion against dominated enemies(!). Only charmed ones work. That means: on one hand you will almost always land a crit on a charmed enemy - but on the other hand it will flip back to hostile immediately. Why would one want to trade one of the best CC effect in the game (turn a hostile entity into an ally) for a little bit of additional weapon damage - without even getting focus for that? That's another reason why on paper Debonaire/Cipher sounds great but mechanically I'm only lukewarm about it, especially a melee variant who wants to land melee crits. It's hunting crits nicely (with a lot of micromanagement I must say) - but this tactic is actually detrimental to your party's overall performance - compared to just leave the enemy charmed as long as possible. You could only attack charmed enemies who are about to flip back anyway (duration's up) bit that adds even more micromanagement and becomes rather tedious (speaking from experience). Ah, one good thing: One nice synergy about Debonaire/Cipher is charm + Disintegration (or Soul Ignition). Suffering those pure DoT spells doesn't flip charmed enemies back! Because it's not a real direct damage attack but instead a "status effect". The game doesn't trigger the "hey, that charming dude hurt me - so I'm gonna be hostile again" check. Crits are benefical for pure DoTs, too - so that's a synergy. I'm not questioning the preferences you deducted from that - but looking at that passage: don't you want to take a little look at a Darcozzi Paladin as potential multiclass option? I mean from a role playing perspective? Paladin/Cipher is a nice combo in general anyway - but on top the favorite dispositions for Darcozzis are clever and passionate... I mean... Also Rapier and Dagger are kind of the classic Darcozzi weapons (besides Rapier + Buckler I guess). Flashy Vaillant fencer and all. Adds sturdyness, support, healing and very nice accuracy with Ring of Focused Flames + your Eternal Flames ability (the lash of it applies to direct damage spells, too). Rest: I personally don't like Ascendant too much. It forces you (kind of) to act in phases: loading phase and casting phase. That detrimental to versatility as I like it. An advantage for more weapon-heavy approaches is that its Soul Whip's dmg bonus doesn't turn off when focus is full Asis the case with other ciphers - but instead it gets even stronger. So one could use the Ascendant as weapon dmg booster only - but that's weird somehow and also a Soulblade would still do way better than that. I also don't like Tactician too much, especially with Ciphers. First of all I'm not a big fan of the Fighter unless it's a tank or at least tank-ish. Second of all it adds so much micro in a party setup (for solo it's great). Third issue: a Cipher gains very little from becoming Brilliant. Classes like Wizard, Priest and Druid profit the most from multiclassing with Tactician imo. Cheers!

Hmm... a little more context (map, party composition and level etc.) would have been helpful. My guess is that you stumbled into an area that is supposed to be done later (aka you might be underleveled - as @Chaospread already suggested).