Boeroer

That's new!

You can achieve 1000+ dmg with Inner Death and not too much hassle - if you get a good roll:

Yes, absolutely.

Wait what? ROFL! Sorry, there has been a misunderstanding, most likely because I worded it stupidly: I meant: whether the character kills an ally (Berserker killing skeletons with Carnage, Skald/Druid killing skeletons with Wicked Briars) or an enemy, certain effects are triggered. I didn't mean that your allies who kill enemies (for you) will trigger those effects. Sorry @thelee!

Yes, Berserker/Troubadour with Amra and Many Lives is pretty bonkers once you get Blood Thirst. Also with a heal-on-kill pet your self damage isn't much of a problem anymore.

Kana can be very impactful before lvl 9 if you know how to use the White Worms invocation to maximum effect: if you have gib effects (exploding corpses from crit-kills) turned off and fight enemies who leave corpses (basically any enemy except spirits and oozes) you can use chokepoints and pile up corpses there, luring enemies of a map there over and over again and cast White Worms in that pile of corpses while enemies approach. You can reuse those corpses over and over again. They only disappear if you have to reload the map. This can make Raedric's Castle so much easier to conquer and to get all the loot from all the enemies.

Ah sorry didn't read that in time. It's easy: just pick Wildstrike and Greater Wildstrike and Weapon Focus Peasant as well as Two Weapon Style and equip the Wildstrike Belt. Attributes can be balanced, you don't need to min-max for weapon dmaage. The natural weapons' base damage scale in base damage AND quality, making them very powerful in any case. You are now an excellent melee damage dealer and can still cast great spells. If you want you can also pick one of the elemental boost talents (Scion of Flame etc.) - preferably the element you picked for Wildstrike and which you use often with your spells - for me that's shock most of times. So Heart of the Storm in that case. It boosts your spell damage but also the lashes your melee attacks gain while shifted (including the bonus lash from the Wikdstrike Belt). Hiravias is a great Druid, you could simply copy his attributes and pick cat form and you'd be all set. I also made a more sturdy variant with the boar form here: Just for inspiration...

Inspiring Radiance (Priest talent for Holy Radiances) is a very impactful +10 accuracy boost because it stacks with everything, is a fast cast and achievable early. So well done. Also: Survival at 4 (or even 8 if you can manage early) and picking the according acc bonus against enemies ahead when resting. Stacks with everything as well. That's great for all debuffing and damaging spells and of course weapon attacks, too. Then pick a fitting Weapon Focus as early as possible and use a single one handed weapon if you still have problems (+12 accuracy is a HUGE bonus early in the game - later not so much). Then look at the enemies' defenses: if they have high Fortitude then don't use debuffs/disables that roll against fortitude much for example. In general use debuffs that target low defenses in order to bring down defenses even further. You can use Knockdown against low fortitude enemies with high deflection for example. Those are often spirits. Prone targets suffer deflection penalties. Use flanking, too. Having said that: lvl 3 in the Temple of Eothas is too early. The first floor is doable, but the underlying ones are way too hard then.

This is hard to mod because achieving fine control of the underlying 3d models seems to be tricky. Iirc you can hide certain parts of 3d models (for example the chicken wings on the Aldris Blade of Captain Crow), but adding stuff seems to be way harder. I certainly don't know how to do that. I suspect it might be easier to just put male head models onto female bodies. From isometric view it wouldn't be noticable that it's a male head anyway, especially with all the godlike features obscuring parts of the head/face. You can test how that would look with the in-game console: build a female godlike, use the console command to switch to male and pick a male head shape in the char sheet, then switch back to female. You should have a female body with a male head now. Now you can run around a bit with that to see if it looks wonky from the isometric view.

I didn't test that but I'm 99.9% sure that the time of death counts (and whether you are carrying Blightheart at that moment or not) and not the time of casting. So I guess it will work like that.

It does. Almost all "on kill" effects include allies. I don't even recall one that doesn't from the top of my head. Blood Thirst, Bloodlust, Twin Eels, Engoliero do Espirs, heal-on-kill pets, Blightheart... all work with killed allies, too. Maybe the Barbaric Smash refund doesn't... didn't really test that with a (confused/friendly fire) AoE weapon or so.

I wasn't adressed, but yes, Bleak Walker's damage output isn't great besides the 2 FoD strikes - and later once Sacred Immolation is accessible. In general a Paladin's potential for weapon damage is weak compared not only to a Rogue or Ranger but also to a Spiritshift Druid (which do incredible melee damage while shifted AND can cast great spells on top of that).

In PoE all per-rest casters also have at least one thing they can do per encounter: Priest gets Holy Radiance (which is very good when paired with Inspiring Radiance) and can also pick Interdiction (whichalso can get boosted furhter with talents), Wizards get Arcane Assault 2 times per encounter and Druids get Spiritshift (which is extremely good when build for, especially when used with the Wildstrike Belt). So those three "per rest" casters are not useless in easier fights even if you want to spare per-rest spells as much as possible. Priests can even be brought up to Fighter's weapon prowess with the fitting talent (for example Durance can be pretty good with an arquebus). Once they get spell mastery (a select tier 1, 2, 3 and 4 spell per encountner on top of their usual per-rest spells) they even outshine most other classes even in those "easy" mob fights. In addition to that you can also pick a cross-class talent such as Aspirant's Mark - which also are 1/encounter. And you can also pick talents that grant bonus per-rest spell uses. Priest (1) and Wizards (2) can also get rings which give multiple bonus per-rest spell uses. After some levels there's no shortage of spells uses at all imo. If I had to pick between Wizard or Druid I would pick Druid I think - but both are great.

I'd say it's a great weapon in general because it doesn't require any resources to get to superb. For any character who doesn't rely on shooting 100% of times (Rangers, Scouts ;)) it's very nice to have a weapon that doesn't drain your enchantment resources. But because other arquebuses work even better for Scouts' and Rangers' single target damage output (the aforementioned Red Hand and Dragon's Dowry) - and that's why you bring Rangers or Scouts in the first place (most of times) I also tend to give Blightheart to Wizards and Chanters. The +1 phrase on kill (which works with any kill, no matter if ally or enemy, no matter if shot or spell or whatever) of Blightheart for chanters is an especially intriguing feature to me. I recently played a "plague" themed Skald/Ancient and let my summons (first Ancient Brittle Bones, then Many Lives) run into my own Wicked Briars - and that gave me a big influx of phrases all the time I would use to spam the skald-made-it-cheap White Worms (it can target skeleton corpses because Ancient Brittle Bones and Many Lives will leave skeleton corpses). Such tricks are only doable with Blightheart and that's why I really like it. But I'd still not use it for a Ranger- unless Red Hand and Dragon's Dowry (and also Spearcaster, Forstseeker and several more "better" ranged weapons for Scouts and Rangers) are not available for whatever reason. Exception of course if it's a Rogue or Ranger multiclass with Wizard or Chanter. Streetfighter/Troubadour with Aefyllath + Sure-Handed Ila with the help of upgraded Wisps to become flanked + Blightheart for more phrases and instant healing from the Wisps attacks for example is pretty great.

Imo it's not harder. The per-rest mechanic of casters makes it so that you can spam a lot of (more) impactful spells (faster) in tough encounters. Most spells in PoE are more powerful than in Deadfire because they are per-rest. But that also means if you can spam them in tough fights (b cause you didn't use them in easy fights) the fight will be so much easier. Also the Priest's buffs are more potent in PoE1. You have Inspired Radiance + Devotions which is a direct, stackable +30 acc buff for the whole party. Also Prayers counter most disabling attacks of enemies - which are usually the things that make fights extra difficult. Any party is viable. You can play 6 Rogues and be fine if you know what you are doing. Two Paladins and no casters (besides Priest) will make the tough fights even harder because Paladins don't have the tools to crack those fights - unless you give them both a marking weapon + Coordinated Attacks which let's each of them buff any near party member's accuracy with all-stackable +20 points which is extremely potent in the toughest fights. For example Blade of the Endless Paths/Spectacular Spetum for the Bleak Walker and Shame or Glory + whatever other sword for the Kind Wayfarer. Lay on Hands and the Kind Wayfarer's healing are great to survive fights, but because of the endurance/health mechanic of PoE1, healing is not the impactful "remedy" to lacking defenses it is in Deadfire. If you try to outheal everything you will have to rest a lot bc. of low health. Even if only one party member has low health you have to rest. It won't help if 5 out of 6 have still nice health bars. But you have a Priest - and that's the biggest plus you can have in PoE. In general - for an easier playthrough - I would recommend 3 front liners with one dedicated tank who can block chokepoints (like Edér) and two offtanks who catch the occasional rusher for your backline. In my current run I'm using Hiravias with dual hatchets and Kana Rua with a single hatchet (yes, Hiravias is more than capable to fulfill that role). More front liners lead to a positioning mess very often. The pathfinding is not as good as in Deadfire and you might end up with some Benny-Hill-esque sequences where enemies and party members run around each other in circles, block each other and all other sorts of weird things. Three backline characters. As above I'd say the more casters the more easy the fights at the higher levels will become. But any ranged character will work. It's beneficial to not build utter glass cannons for the backline. If you have very potent damage dealers but they have low endurance, DR and deflection they will attract certain enemies' attention. Rogues, Barbs and Rangers are primarily looking for soft targets. If you then have front liners who cannot punish disengagement, you will end up with lots of enemies just rushing by your front line, eating disengagement attacks and attacking your squishies. You can counter that with tactics (don't un-stealth the backline until the front line is firmly engaged by enemies, use choke points and corners, use a lot of disables, summons and mind control) and/or by simply giving your backline a bit more deflection and DR (via items and buffs) so that they become less attractive targets. Even the highest DPS drops to 0 if your damage dealers get knocked out. TL;dr: I'd say your party composition is suboptimal but it's totally doable. You have a Priest - which is a big step towards easier fights. And if you had no issues in Deadfire I'm very sure you will not have issues with PoE - after a short acclimatization phase.

Hi! That uniques can lose enchantments is a known bug which occurs very seldomly. Annoying - I don't think the reason is known because it's very hard to reproduce. I don't know of an easy remedy (except using the console of course, but that will strip that run of achievements). There is another one for party runs (see below). Your second problem is wild. : I think I never read about losing gear to an extend you experienced. Losing one item due to file corruption or sth. similar can happen, but this I the first case I read about (or recall) where a character gets outright stripped of gear. Again: I don't know how to fix this directly/quickly without the use of the console. You can def. fix all this with the use of the console, but as I said you will lose achievements. If you don't care about those anyway it's an easy fix. However I have another (but more complicated) solution that lets you keep achievements: You can export a character who carries all the missing gear from any other savegame. That exported character will function as a "mule". You can hire that exported character as a hired adventurer in your Triple Crown run - WITH gear (pref. as a lvl-1 hireling, get the gear, discard the hireling). You won't lose achievements this way - but it will be expensive as hell even if it's only a lvl-1 hireling because the item quality will increase the amount of money significantly. In this case you can even use the console in that other savegame to cheat the gear into your inventory and enchant it properly for free. Attention: the exported char will be marked as cheated then - BUT you can remove that cheat tag easily from the file of that exported char (it's a plain text file). There's a boolean variable in that file that's easily spotted. "Cheated" iirc or something like that... you simply change its value from "true" to "false"and the exported char is considered "cheat free" again. TL;Dr: Two options: one is free but removes achievements from the run. The second will let you keep the achievements but will cost a very high amount of in-game money. If you want to try one of those solutions and have trouble making it happen please hit me up (just add my tag @Boeroer to any text - or quote anything I said, I will get informed). Else I might miss it. Cheers!

Haha, awesome. And thank you for letting us know.

Btw.: how does @Noqn's bash scaling interact with Tuotilo's Palm? Its bash scales very well with TS/MUT. Scaling with quality as well would be too much (see original Spiritual Weapon of Woedica or original Transcendent Suffering + auto scaling of Spiritshift weapons - those got patched out bc. they were overpowered). Knowing Noqn's excellent work so far I believe he took that into account somehow. Does the mod make it so that only the "better" scaling gets applied maybe? Or the bash of Tuotilo's Palm doesn't scale (except with TS/MUT) at all?

The reasoning is a bit wild here imo. Of course bashing shields don't turn into junk. But that's not the point I was addressing. I believe there's no real debate that a game mechanic which initially works but falls off significantly while you progress is either not working as intended and/or is not designed well in the scope of the game. A game in which most things are designed in a way that they stay viable through scaling or upgrading. Imagine a car that goes 150 mph when you buy it - but after 1 year it only gets up to 50 mph. I would say: "This can't be right, there must be some flaw". A counterargument that would go like "well it still gets you to work and back" doesn't make much sense then. Sure, the car still has a use - but that doesn't mean I shouldn't question the degradation of its top speed, the (engine's) design and the intentions of the engineer who build it. If the devs were fine with such things in general they wouldn't have introduced automatic scaling of summons/summoned weapons and Power Levels etc. We have/had some things that didn't scale properly: summoned creatures who scale their stats but not their weapons (like skeletons becoming more and more beefy but still carrying poor quality swords - or worms slinging low PER projectiles) and other mechanics, too (e g. Arcane Archer's damaging imbued spells not scaling their PEN). Those are almost universally recognized as oversights/design flaws by the devs and/or in this community and addressed with patches/mods. I think bashing not scaling is the same thing. Imo (but this is pure speculation) the devs also realized that and quickly gave bashing shields some special enchantments to make up for that - because it was easier than to overhaul the whole bashing shield mechanics (bc. quality scaling would then clash with Tuotilo's Palm's TS scaling, causing new problems and so on). Again: pure speculation. Bashing shields got some criticism in PoE because of their flawed design and the devs tried to address that in Deadfire; not in a way I would call perfect, but it's way better in Deadfire than it is on PoE. Since there are so few bashing shields this is an okay solution imo. They still work well enough until the end bc. of their special enchantments and the dual wielding bonus - which are more important than the bashing damage itself - but it doesn't mean that the non-scaling bash was an intentional or a good design choice. It's only three shields though, so no big deal. I don't expect a dev team to overhaul a basic mechanic just because of three items which work well enough anyway.

I don't know. I might as well use an offhand Dagger or a Hatchet then. The bashing shield would only be interesting to me if I had a decent amount of primary attacks to spam. I agree. I think it would be easier if dual wielding hadn't that automatic speed bonus but would just allow full attacks (without dmg malus) and allow to profit from Two Weapon Style.

The base offensive stats of bashing shields are pretty low (so they are not as good as any offhand weapon - which is okay). Giving it proper percentage scaling with increasing quality would be no problem. It would just mean the bash keeps its initial impact over the course of the game. Imo there is no good reason to introduce a bash which works okay when you get it - but falls off dramatically the further you progress because the missing PEN scaling is so punishing. Interestingly enough the bashing shields we got do have some additional features which keep them useful - even when the offensive stats start failing. As if something more than just a bash had to be added - in oder to make up for the dwindling offensive output. The Best Defense (which got added later via DLC) has an enchantment that raises its bash-PEN directly - could be the devs realized that bashing PEN not scaling really wasn't cool. When designing such a weapon-like object I would ask myself: would a non-unique item of this kind (a non-enchanted bashing shield in this case - like the original Larder Door in PoE) stay useful throughout the course of the game (if I raise its quality)? And if the answer is "no" then I would discard that design. But ofc that's easy to say: I don't have to make an actual game with tons of decision-makikg, emerging problems, managing resources etcpp. At some point somebody most likely said: "Well it's not awesome - but it's good enough, moving on...". Since all the bashing shields we have contain special features which make them worthwhile (even if their bash drops off in terms of damage potential) I'm not too sad about this. But I would have preferred another design. But hey: at least it's way better than in PoE. Baby steps and so on...

I'm pretty sure that at least the non-scaling of PEN with the shield's quality is an oversight. If a bashing shield is considered a weapon, too (and it seems to be because it works with Two-Weapon Style), all its offensive stats (dmg, PEN, ACC) should scale with quality, too. There is no logical reason why they should not. Therefore I assume it's not intended but the devs simply forgot. I mean there are very few bashing shields in the game, it might well be that a "proper" implementation fell under the table.

*groan* <img src="eyeroll.gif"/>

I guess it's less of a nuisance in turn based mode since you micromanage everybody's movement and actions anyway. But I can't say how use- or impactful it is because I have no experience with the turn based mode. I don't even know how often you could trigger disengagement attacks in one turn against a single enemy.

It's def. not a bug. And it works as intended as far as I can tell. Maybe the devs didn't think about the combo with Riposte and Offensive Parry, but who knows. Is it cheesy? A little bit. But on the other hand the impact is very limited, especially with Riposte alone. You will do better damage playing the usual way instead of running around like a headless chicken all the time, trying to trigger disengagement attacks. That's also pretty unfun to do - it gets old really fast imo.