Boeroer

You can use them like hired muscle for only the digsite and afterwards remove them from the party and park them on your ship. They will help in boarding fights but otherwise won't be in your way. They cost a bit of money to hire but compred to what you will loot and collect afterwards it's not really a lot of money and well worth it imo.

You are not doing anything wrong - except maybe the order of fights. Both of those areas are just very tough for beginners. Try do gain as much XP as you can before you go to the digside and hire one or two adventurers before. The enemies in Gorecci Street are very tough. It's normal to get beaten by them. You can circumvent both fights with sneaking. Since fight's don't give a lot of XP but quests do, it's not a loss to sneak past some enemies instead of fighting. You can enter Gorecci Street from the south - then sneaking past the looters is very easy. For the fight at the digsite a Druid adventurer with Charm Beast (lvl 1) ist very helpful. The skeletons in the digsite are tough as well. They are only optional though - you won't miss much if you can't beat them. You can try after solving the catacombs of the digsite - ususally you will gain a level while doing this so afterwards the skeletons should be easier to beat.

Yeah. The list of crits is only Red Flag Flying. The actual dmg starts down below as ususal. She also uses Boltcatchers which makes it even more complicated to figure out what happens. I'm just happy this lead to a rel. early hit or graze and didn't crash the game again. I'm also using a SC Druid with Mask of the Grotto Deep and Effort, Hylea's Talons etc. and wanted to get Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak. I withdraw him once he cast Avenging Storm and some pulsing spells. Then he not only blitzes enemies but also puts a DoT on them and stuns them (which adds two additional rolls as well). Cool stuff. so great against annoying mobs, especially with dual Tanglefoot (huge AoE). Against the bosses he doesn't crit so often. But that's what the poking lady is for.

ROFLMAO poking the dragon... This is during a proper playthrough. She (Stalker/Nalpasca with Mohora Tanga) is dong this without even Heartbeat Drumming. Swift Flurry in combination with Red Flag Flying is enough. For this to reliably work on the big bosses I use a Morning Star with the party's Berserker/Helwalker (including Spirit Frenzy and Enervating Blows), Ngati's Tusk with Hunter of Hunters with the Priest/Troubadour with max Survival+Cap of the Laughingstock and the pike modal (didn't even use that here, was still preparing buffs...), Blessing, Devotions (didn't get to that either) and Cap of the Laughingstock and of course Marked Prey + Stalker's Link, Survival of the Fittest and Accurate Wounding Shot.

I prefer the convenience of a Mage Slayer/Troubadour with Effort. Add two stacks of spell disruption every 3 secs just via chant - and of course a ton of stacks with invocations like Her Revenge is cool. I also thought about combining Mage Slayer and Priest of Woedica. Cast a writ of sorcery to immediately stop casting and then piling stacks of spell disruption "passively" so that the casters can't cast even ifthe writ runs out. But 3 stacks of Spell Disruption right at the start of the battle against a far away caster also do have their merits I must say... *takes notes*

When I use Entropy with Mohora Tanga I just get a crashed game. And very reliably so...

I had no Driving Flight for that test but managed to easily get to 22 after that screenshot (with another spawnded dummy). With Driving Flight it gets even more easy of course.

Persistent Distraction also has no hit roll by the way.

The Geomancer @masterty66suggested is even good enough (alround) to go solo. I used it with the Willbreaker, too and gave the Phantom Concelhaut's Draining Touch which lets it do considerable damage. Generally I would consider Sage (Monk/Wizard) to be one of the most enjoyable Wizard multiclasses. Stunning Surge with Spirit Lance... :chef's kis emoji A very good one is also Assassin/Wizard, especially if you focus on non-damaging CC effects and use Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure to stay invisbile while casting CC spells with very high ACC (Arkemy'r Brilliant Departure doesn't break as long as you don't deal damage - wall spells excluded - you can deal damage with those and still not become visible). With Wall of Draining you can later stay invisible for the whole fight. Not oly does this give you amazing ACC but it also makes you invulnerable basically. The good thing is that this char works well right off the shelf. Casting a good CC or damaging spell from stealth will grant you +25 ACC from level 1 which is really useful even without invisibility and whatnot. Then you can get Smoke Veil rel. early for some more high-ACC casts and then finaly you can get Arkemyr's Brillant Departure from Arkemyr later on. Wizard/Psion is another combo I like. Wizard/Priest is also a great multiclass which can be extremely tanky yet offensively useful as well. Finally a Wizard/Druid can be made into a very sturdy melee spiritshift character with tons of spells and very respectable melee dmg with the help of Zandethus Draconic Fury. Bear Form + Spiritshield (and Llengrath's Safeguard) + Form of the Delemgan, Blunting Belt and Dragon Pendant will give you absurd AR values with 0 recovery penalty.

Hehe - you can use Scordeo's Trophy in the main hand and Mohora Tanga in the offhand. Enchant Scordeo's Trophy with Strategic Blitz - you will get -10% melee recovery per hit with the pistol. If you attack with the spear in melee and trigger SF/HBD with the Red Flag Flying you will shoot with the pistol autimatically, adding some stacks of the recovery bonus for the spear. That way you not only get the dual wielding/two weapon styl bonus for the spear but also the Strategic Blitz bonus, making you stab like a sewing machine at some point. In addition to that you get the flexibility of a hybrid weapon setup of course.

You need gear that raises defenses and AR. - Shield (I would recommend large shield because the modal is top for a tank): Cadhu Scalth is great with a skill focus on Athletics and Metaphysics. Bronlar's Phalanx is also very good but comes later than Cadhu Scalth. Shining Bulwark with Rear Guard is nice, too. Add Weapon & Shield Style obviously. - Ring of Protection and Entonia Signet Ring (rel. early) - Cloak of Greater Protection of Deflection (very early with Port Maje shopkeeper via Berath Blessings) - Bracers of Greater Deflection (late) - Armor: Nomads Brigandine, Reckless Brigandine, Magnera's Chain, Patinated Plate, Casita Samelia's Legacy - that sort of stuff. - Weapon: Gladiator Sword (top visual combo with Bronlar's Phalanx for Gladiator vibes), Kapana Taga (top visual combo with Cadhu Scalth and Reckless Brigandine for Huana vibes), Baradatto's Luxury (nice with Shining Bulwark and Magnera's Chain to get a more "dwarves" look I guess)... If you want to help your phrase generation a bit more I would pick up Sun & Moon. It gives you two chances to crot per strike which enhanced the phrase generation for a Skald such ad Konstanten. An alternative is Mohora Tanga (the Red Flag Flying DoT counts a second weapon attack that can crit). Spears also have a useful modal for a tank (+1 engagement). I guess for a Howler tank engagement is important. You can get that with the Barb's Shout (+3), but you have to actively shout and sped Rage (and an ability point) in order to hold that up. Imo using Cadhu Scalth (+1), Reckless Brigandine (+1) and Kapana Taga (+2) is best in terms of Engagement and also top on terms of defense. You get +4 engagement which is enough - and if you feel the need to raise that you can barb-shout for 3 more. The looks are not everybody's Cup of tea though.

The CP mod adds reasonable adjustments that make the game better without overdoing it as some mods do imo. I would totally recommend it. In addition to the mechanical adjustments it also adds unique icons for every passive ability - which otherwise share a lot of the same icons which is confusing and annoying while leveling up. Without CP you constantly have to hover over the icons so that the game can tell you the name of the ability. Put an end to that with the CP's passive icon pack (it's included with the CP mod, no need to install it separately). CP is a modular mod - that means you can install different "sub mods" individually and don't have to install the whole package if you don't want to. In addition to that I'd also recommend Spherical's Enhanced UI mod (doesn't alter mechanics but only adds useful, small UI features and bits like tooltips for some mechanical terms, inspirations, afflictions and so on - without altering the UI design itself) - I wouldn't want to miss that even now that I know the rules in and out (mostly). In addition to that I also recommend @Noqn's Carnage AoE indicator mod. It adds an AoE indicator so that you can actually see where Carnage will apply. In the vanilla Deadfire game this is not visible unlike in PoE1.

Highest AC should be Ranger/Cipher I found a way to use the spear's advantages with Swift Flurry but mostly prevent the crashing: put in into the offhand. Red Flag will still proc itself numerous times - but from those red flag attacks a main hand attack is triggered with the other weapon which seems to break the infinite cycle at some point. I'm still one-shotting weak enemies, but the game didn't crash so far. Could be cool with a main hand weapon that does something special on crit - like Sungrazer or whatever. Edit: a hand mortar in the main hand is kind of funny: each proc of Red Flag Flying from the offhand spear seems to trigger an AoE shot from the main hand?

I also tried Monk/Fighter with the spear and Clear Out + Mob Stance: due to the multiple chances to cause a chain reaction it very often closes my game even if the enemies are decent. Wonder if there's the possiblity to prevent that crashing with modding.

I assume that you have the same main menu as the PC version. If so you can check your installed DLCs there: "B" = Beast of Winter "S" = Seeker, Slayer, Survivor "F" = The Forgotten Sanctum

I'm doing a playthrough with a Berserker/Helwalker with Saru-Sichr and with a Stalker/Monk with Mohora Tanga and both work very nicely, although you really have to use another weapon than the spear when you face very weak enemies. Else the game will instantly close. *!crit overflow!* I picked Magistrate's Cudgel as a backup weapon. Far less chains against weaklings but no game crash. Against tough ones the spear is great though. I now also tested the pike "Wicked Beast" and it's way better than I initially thought. It's not snowballing as crazily as the spear, but the Hounding effect that gets applied has several different variants and during a crit chain all of them can get applied. The knockdown/prone effect of hounding gets prolonged by INT etc. so it's not uncommon for the enemy to be on the ground for over 8 secs. The rest is also useful. The "Bad Dog" self damage of the pike can be annoying, but it's not too bad and actually helps a monk to get wounds (if not Shattered Pillar or FF). You only have to make yourself immune to interrupts because else Bad Dog will interrupt you which is the real annoyance. I used Rekvu's Fractured Casque with a weak injury (acute rash) to make myself immune. And then it's a real nice weapon for a Monk/Ranger with Swift Flurry/HBD. Also because the pike modal (-10 deflection) helps, the Hounding effect targets Reflex (and not Fortitude like Saru Sichr's and Mohora Tanga's effects) and with Instruments of Pain you will have the awesome melee range of 11 meters.

I would compare Maelstrom to Meteor Shower because I think that those two are more similar/comparable in size an "feel" - and also Meteor Shower is potentially more devastating than Missile Salvo (bigger base and proc AoEs, higher base dmg, longer duration, more potential for PL boosting than Missile Salvo). At least when I was testing and comaring both Missile Salvo and Meteor Shower the latter was able to kill groups of random high level enemies with one cast while Missile Salvo could not.

Also Clear Out hits the initial target twice which makes it even pretty useful against single targets. The circular AoE of Clean Sweep is bigger than HoF's. Clear the Path has a broad, long line as AoE (del. longer than the 5m the wiki notes) which is not affected by INT - so you can use that with a dumb fighter and not lose AoE size. Clear Out + Morning Star is nice, but I don't like that Clear Out itself already targets fortitude. So you have to overcome fortitude in order to lower fotitude. In that regard HoF is better because it targets Deflection (or Fortitude if it's lower with Brute Force).

I forgot that CP added the ability and that it's not in the vanilla game. I'm not the only one it seems: it's even in the official wiki: https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Vielo_Vidorio

As @Constentin Lévineshowed: they stack. But keep in mind that the AoE of Shared Flames i pretty small. Your AA/Bleak Walker shouldn't stand too far away from Pallegina if she's using Shared Flames. Her ability "Vielo Vidorio" stacks with other reloading/recovery buffs if I'm not mistaken and has a bigger base AoE than Shared Flames. And imo 20% recovery bous is better than +15% burning lash (with a smaller area of effect).

You could open combat with a mortar shot with Gouging Strike + modal and then switch to the melee setup. That way you will apply the neverending DoT on a bunch of enemies, not just a single one. In solo fights I find this very useful since they usually last a lot longer than with a party and the endless but low-ticking DoT pays off its cost. It works best from stealth when you first lure many enemies to a spot with Dazzling Lights (Guile gets refreshed if you don't start the fight too soon after casting it. Don't hit anybody with the AoE, just place it somewhere the enemies should go to). Basically enemies are hitting each other. It ends when you run - NOT when you use Escape or Flagellant's Path or Bounding Boots. You can prolong the base duration of 3 with INT and Power Levels and so on. The redirected attacks don't count as misses. It will prevent Ripostes entirely but can be a lifesaver if you can keep it up long enough.

Not gear, but the biggest impact would have a Chanter in the party with Sura-Handed Ila. It will add 20% recovery bonus AND 20% reload bonus for the arbalest (yes, both things from that one phrase will stack for reloading weapons). This makes a huge difference in reloading speed. A friendly Troubadour (or another chanter with really high INT) could even run Sure-Handed Ila and Aefyllath with no gap for you, which would be the perfect chant setup. Aefyllath stacks with Eternal Devotion (or Shared Flames). Gear: Acina's Tricorn imo is the best headgear for reloading weapons. It's easy and early to get. Ring of the Marksman is also very good for you and is also easy and early to get. You will crit a lot, so the Necklace of the Harvest Moon might be interesting to you (also easy to get /early item). Aegor's Swift Touch for the hands Sash of Judgment for the waist The first two are most impactful I think. A thing about any arbalest: When stacking eough reloading bonuses (see above) you can perma-knockdown enemies on hit with the arbalest's modal despite its reloading malus - which is extremely useful against nearly all bosses and nasty casters.

Hi, normal difficulty lets you get away with all sorts of characters, so no worries. The official companions are build in a way that a normal diff. playthrough is possible with not much trouble even if your main character was a complete disaster. Attribute point distribution is not as crucial as in many other RPGs. It can make a difference of course, but a few points here and there won't have an effect on the validity of your character. Other than that you can totally be a diplomatic Paladin focusing on roleplaying and dialogue and story - but still play a good supporting role during fights. There's one tip for a supporting Paladin that I found to be super helpful in fights: it's the combination of a marking weapon (you should automatically get one when you pick the faction that I think you will pick naturally as a Paladin) with the Paladin ability "Coordinated Attacks". Both do the same: they give the nearest ally who also attacks the same enemy as you +10 accuracy (big bonus). Since they stack it's in fact +20 accuracy (huge bonus). This alone can make the Paladin very helpful in fights "passively" without him even doing much damage by himself - and it doesn't cost much in terms of money or ability points. I made a little character build for such a diplomatic Shieldbearer paladin who is pretty useful in fights, too. It might be a bit too detailed and riddled with special terminology - but maybe it will give you ideas:

Helwalker's MIG bonus is a passive. So Thunderous Blows + Helwalker's MIG bonus should result in +15 MIG as well. If you have two Willbreakers (for example by using an Essential Phantom or Watery Double) you can even apply the stacking Will debuff of Willbreaker twice as high. Also important to say that weapon modals are not passives (unfortunately) - and chants aren't either (you said that) althoug they stand on the passive side of the ability tree (which is very misleading imo).