Boeroer

That is also the reason why it's absolutely devastating with Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming by the way. While Effort's Hemmorhaging doesn't trigger Swift FLurry, Poison-Dipped does! It' seems to be a self-reinforcing effect because SF/HBD will add more stacks which in turn might make it a lot more likely to trigger SF/HBD? Can't imagine the interplay with Avenging Storm (funnily enough I didn't test that ). What I can confirm is that the second attack roll from poison dipped will trigger SF/HBD. I don't know if the triggering of the additional DoT stacks does trigger it, too. SF/HBD triggers a ton with the weapon though. You can add Hylea's Talons and the Ring of Molded Flesh for more melee effects - but they don't trigger SF/HBD - at least that was my impression after some hours of running tests with Saru Sichr in the last week in preparation for a new run. Also the DoT lasts a really long time which is cool. It superseded Willbreaker as my favorite Monk/Berserker weapon. What I haven't tried is if an Essential Phantom's stacks with Saru Sichr will get triggered by a hit from my Wizard who's also using Saru Sichr. Guess not, but not sure. If so then Sage with Saru Sichr would be great, too. PS: Poison-Dipped also triggers a Resonant Touch.

Resonant Touch kills will not give her wounds, but if she kills with melee weapons - like with WotW - the 3 wounds per kill are very nice. I recently tried to make her into a Inner-Death user though because her lantern refunds 1 wound and 1 mortification on any kill (ranged, spell, melee, doesn't matter). Used Keeper of the Flame + WotW to give a lot of enemies a lot of Resonant Touches. Those who already died by the direct flail attacks gave Xoti 4 wounds + 1 Mortification - and if Resonant Touch killed a bunch of weaker enemies I got back Wounds and Mortification n so I could finish the remainder with Inner Deaths (it doesn't use your weapons). Inner Death was always meh for me because Mortification usually doesn't refund. But it does with the lantern. I didn't try if killing Many-Lives skeletons with WotW "by accident" with Keeper of the Flame's friendly fire AoE also triggers the refud of the lantern.

The thing that makes a SC Paladin pretty good is Divine Retribution - but only if you have lots of summons in the party... like you have. Especially a Troubadour with Many Lives Pass By + Brisk Recitation can produce lots of summons: 1 very weak skeleton every 3 secs which stay for quite some time with enough INT and PL. If any summon is killed (by whomever) then your Paladin will receive 2 Zeal. I played an SC Kind Wayfarer with this and as soon as he got to PL9 I could spam everything I had because the Zeal was coming in faster than I could spend it in a meaningful way. Casting Brand Enemy on all enemies, giving every party member all sorts of Exortations and other instant stuff, healing of course - and using Shared Flames all the time to buff party member's damage and heal them, too. PS: If you want to revive the Paladin marker builds from PoE times you can use Ring of Focused Flame, Zealous Focus and the Blade of the Endless Paths with the fitting enchantments, wear the Cap of the Laughingstock (probably disable the display which can be done with the eye button over the head slot on the character sheet) and spam Shared Flames against a high deflection enemy.

For me it always only hits 2 additional targets (despite the decription). In the unmodded game I mean. It works quite nicely for a non-Berserker, unconfused Barbarian who wants to utilize Blood Thirst in combination with skeletons - because the "AoE" of Whai Poraga does friendly fire you will absolutely also kill summoned skeletons with it which leads to 0 recovery. And since it only hits 2 additional targets around you no all skeletons get "wasted" at once but one after the other feeds your Blood Thirst. But it's a bid sad that a "smart" Barbarian doesn't boost the AoE size: because it's fixed. A 1-INT char has the same radius with Wahai Poraga as an INT-35 character.

Barbaric Retaliation is good - but it alone would not be enough for me personally. However an SC Furyshaper also has access to Blood Ward: awesome - drains health from all damage from all enemies in the AoE even from DoT-ticks and so on). It is very useful for the whole party, especially for everybody who gets attaced frequently obviously. You can withdraw wards with a Priest and make them invincible - and they will still work fine for you. Driving Roar or Dazing Shout: two of the best single class abilities imo. Foe-only, very cheap (1 Rage), enormous range/AoE, cool debuffs included and great damage. Only downsides: targets Fortitude and does crush damage only. Blood Surge: in combination with cheap damage dealing (Retaliation, Driving Roar or Dazing Shout) this is very convenient to get a meaningful refund every now and then. It is extremely useful if you "accidentially" kill party summons like Many-Lives-Pass-By skeletons because those kills count, too (which is more the domain of a confused Berserker and not a Furyshaper, but still possible to harvest Rage and Bloodlust and Blood Thirst procs). Blood Ward is an auto-pick so you can get it and still pick Barbaric Retaliation, Dazing Shout or Driving Roar (mutually exclusive) and Blood Surge. You'd have to skip Prestige but I'll say any of these is worth that sacrifice. Heart of Fury is too expensive imo (but can be pretty impactful with the right AoE weapons) and so is Instrument of Boundless Rage compared to Roar/Shout (although you can boost it a lot with Ring of Focused Flame and fire related bonus PowerLevel gear such as Magran's Favor+Sun&Moon+Otto Starcat etc.). Both are generally not as good as three or even four uses of Roar or Shout in comparison imo). Anyway: that collection makes it totally worth it for me to go SC Barb, even more so SC Furyshaper. Because the Blood Ward adds so much survivability I even did a successful PotD solo run with a SC Furyshaper - no Megabosses though, it's not suited for some of their "special needs", esp. Huani.

You should def. do everything else before you go to Caed Nua. Basically do all quests before until you can't find any more (the number is limited) only then go to Caed Nua. You will gain most XP from quests indeed. Fighting doesn't give you a lot. I'd still recommend to do all fights you can since new enemies do give a bit of XP but more importantly the loot can help you use or buy better stuff. Disarming traps and picking locks will give you decent XP in the early game. So make sure you disarm every trap and pick every lock you can (don't pick up keys unless you can't pick the locks) even if you could circumvent it. Caed Nua is tough because of a fight right inside the castle. If you managed that fight the game will give you a long break regarding difficulty since you will gain access to a ton of new quests, many of them non-combat.

Don't know about doing well in the story - there literally everything works since it's you roleplaying I guess. Having said that: Priest of Eothas was always intriguing to me because of Eothas being a central part of both games, but since you already get an Eothas-friendly companion with Edér and even a Priest with Xoti it's not that intriguing to me personally anymore to play one in Desdfire. Priest of Berath is cool for both PoE and Deadfire I think. No companion fills that spot - and given your relationship with Berath in the second game I think that's a nice pick. Also mechanically Priest of Berath is nice in both games. I did this "St. Gangrene" build for PoE back in the day with Tidefall as main weapon and maxed might and so on - a melee priest if you will - and it translated well enough to Deadfire where I used the Priest of Breath/Helwalker combo then which is actually pretty cool with the summoned Great Sword and also great with casting. In PoE Priests are the most impactful class in my opinion. In Deadfire that was toned down but they are still very useful. Mixing it up with a multiclass helped me to make the mechanically somewhat bland Priest single class more spicy. Technically speaking I think the single class that does transition best from PoE to Deadfire is the Monk, at least for me. The basic mechanics about wounds and mortification didn't change much while really interesting and fitting abilities were added. And the highest Power Levels are totally worth going for a single class Monk in Deadfire. It's very fun to play in both games with a lot of potent mechanics without "mudding" the clear single class choice of PoE with a multiclass in Deadfire. Multiclassing can still be cool and fun of cause - just saying.

Hello. This is a forum that's mostly run by the community. Developers only chime in occasionally and they don't directly monitor posts or threads unless you tag one directly. Moderating is done by community members as well. So it may be that criticism might not reach the people you intended to reach. Obsidian developed Deadfire for PC only and it was advertised as such prior to release. It runs pretty well there in its current state. Since Obsidian neither planned to develop for consoles nor had much experience with it the publisher "Versus Evil" then took it into their own hands to adapt and release Deadfire for consoles - with a different dev team (that's anonymous to me). That release was done years later than the PC release. So maybe there's still fixing going on (I doubt it though). So, most likely nobody here will be able to help you with those problems unless other PS4-players found a solution for them and either read this or already posted them here. If you want information or help for technical or software related issues for the PS4 version it's maybe best to reach out to Versus Evil via their Deadfire Discord channel. They don't have a forum for such things - as far as I can tell. Also see this thread here, it might be informative:

I guess on could argue that some Barbarian abilities are a bit more expensive compared to Rangers' because Barbarians can regain some Rage with Blood Surge - while Rangers have no refund mechanic at all. Bu then strong Barb stuff like Driving Roar or Dazing Shout only cost 1 while Heartseeker costs 4.

For anybody not wanting to use consumables or per-rest-abilites to get Avenging Storm: Blightheart can be bound to a Chanter - and Tekehu's Stormspeaker subclass has access to Avenging Storm. With Sure-Handed Ila this is quite the fun combo that doesn't require a lot of fiddling and is something fresh for Tekehu after all that Hemorrhaging, puffing Blinding Smokes and stuff. Edit: By the way - shooting you own Many-Lives skeletons will work as well. Easy way to get Corrupting Beauty up right at the start of the battle.

The Battle Axe modal is so good that you should keep it on and not deactivate. Especially once you got Blood Thirst and Barbaric Retaliation. The best subclass for SC Barbarian is Furyshaper imo. The Blood Ward works with all kinds of damage you deal, including the DoT from Bleeding Cuts - but also Barbaric Retaliation, Dazing Shout and so on. It helps a lot with survivability and works for everybody in the aura range. The best damage tool of a SC Barb is either Driving Roar or Dazing Shout. They are both better than HoF - but they won't apply Bleeding Cuts of course (Barbaric Retaliation will though).

Lol wat?

Possible "dark" classes without too much stretching (imo): Paladins Bleak Walkers Steel Garrote Goldpact Knights Rangers all Fighters all Druids Ancient Fury Animist Shifter Barbarians all Monks all but esp. Shattered Pillar Forbidden Fist Priests of Skaen Woedica Rymrgand Magran Wael Wizards all Rogues all Ciphers all Chanter all The only real dark companion for me is Xoti on the reaping path. Every other compaion or sidekick (with enough talks and banter to be sure) seems to have at least some good or benevolent streaks no matter what you do. I would have loved some cruel and deceptive, drake-worshipping Xaurip Companion.

Generally speaking it's fine. The only problem might be that a 4-melee setup will have problems in tight spaces. Meaning they will have issues with movement/reaching the enemies because they might block each other/stand on each other's feet. This an be solved with one or two melee reach weapons (quarterstaff or pike). Either as alternative weapon set which to can switch to or as main weapon choice. Another thought: Priests are extremly valuable in PoE because they have very, very good and impactful party buffs (see Devotions for the Faithful - that spell alone is worth bringing a Priest) and also immunity spells against the most nasty afflictions (called "Prayer against <x>"). So my advice for the first run would be to include a Priest. They are not the best melee warriors - but they can be decent if build right, especially from the second row with a reach weapon. As a ranged character you can totally do that. Enemy shooters might target you a lot more often though if your endurance/HP, deflection AND armor is low though. So it's a good idea to stay stealthed until the enemies have focused fire on your tanks. A war bow is one of the best weapon picks for a ranged cipher. The best war bow for a cipher is The Rain of Godagh Field, but it comes late-ish. Before that you can use any war bow that you come across. Hunting Bows also work. There's an early one (Massuk Hunting Bow) that does a little less damage than the normal Hunting Bows but not only deals pierce damage but also crush damage (if the enemies' armor is more vulnerable to crush than pierce damage). That's a good backup-bow for when you meet very pierce-resistant or outright -immune foes. So, war bow or hunting bow is both fine - and the dps will be better than with any firearm. Firearms have hogher dmagae per hit but lower spd due to their slow reloading speed. They are great to use with special limited attacks like Rogues or Paladins have - because then you'll get the most out of those limited attacks . Cipher's don't have such special attacks so they work best with high dps weapons (like bows). PS: I forgot - welcome to the forum and congrats to the first post.

The higher Resolve the shorter the curse: at 35 Resolve that's -75% hostile effect duration The lower Intellect the shorter the curse: at 1 INT (achievable with the Ring of Mule's Wit) it would be -45% - I don't recommend to dump INT though, because as you said it als has negative effects on AoE size and the duration of benefical effects. Also Resistances don't work well with Forbidden Fist - and the Ring grants some. Besides that there are several items, abilities and consumables that can reduce the duration for a FF without drawbacks. Items will stack their effects, Consumables will not stack their effects. The bold ones are the most important imo: Abilities Clarity of Agony (as you mentioned, -5sec right away and then -50% hostile effect duration) Items Ring of the Solitary Wanderer (-35% hostile effect duration) Strand of Favor (-10%) Cabalist's Gambeson (-10%) Outworn Buckler (-5% or -10% if he bearer is a Darcozzi Paladin - works in an AoE) Burden (up tp -20%) Food/Drink Khapa Leaf (-15%) Khapa Tea (-25%) Mohora Wraps (-30%) Drugs Svef (-25% - don't recommend bc. of added Resistances) Potions Potion of Cleansing Purge (-25%) Potion of Major Recovery (-10sec) Maybe I missed something, but that's about it I guess. Clarity of Agony costs 2 wounds so it's always a tradeoff and you have to consider if using it is worth it. If you want to spam FF ability it often is worth it imo. The Ring is a no-brainer. Best food is obv. Mohora Wraps and I use it as soon as it's sustainable. But Khapa Leaf is always a good and cheap alternative. I wouldn't use Khapa Tea against enemies who do actually use weak poison or disease (see Coral Naga) because the tea makes you immune and thus you won't get wounds from the poison effect - which is not desirable. The effect of the Outworn Buckler seems low and when going solo it doesn't even profit a party, BUT it always gets applied as soon as you switch to it. This stacks with itself, so if you have a hostile effect of 10 secs it will get reduced by 5% to 9.5. If you switch to it again (use a copy of the shield in a second setup) it will reduce the 9.5 secs by 5% and so on and so forth. This even works when the game is paused. You can switch weapon sets during pause so it's possible to reduce all hostile effects to nothing just by switching the shield back and forth. It only costs the switching recovery (one time). A Black Jacket/FF could even circumvent that recovery.

Solo is an official game mode that you have to choose from the game menu before starting a playthrough. It prevents you from adding somebody to the party but you can still meet Edér and talk to him. Once you both land on the beaches of Maje Island you can kill him and he will drop his gear, including the Saint's Armor. No need to do it before then. If you kill him during the ship fight he will be gone but drop no loot. I never tried to kill him right after waking up on he ship - but as I said you don't need to. if you don't activate the solo mode you can still play solo of course (by not adding somebody to your party or just removing them manually) - but it's not "officially" recognized as a solo run (for the sake of achievements for example). If you want to kill a party member you have to knock them out four times to they get more than 3 injuries. This will kill them permenently. But in order to ge the gear you can simply take it from them in the inventory screen and then remove them from the party roster the normal way. No need for killing then. In solo mode the is no alternative to killing Edér (or get him killed by luring several boars to him maybe?) in order to get the Saint's War Armor.

It did a pretty good job on the Percy Gang. Should be useful for generating more portraits for certain PoE-exclusive races maybe (like Aumaua, Orlan, Godlikes)?

Lol sorry, I read the quote and thought it was from @SilverArrowsMPwho just started with a Forbidden Fist, but the quote was from @Waski.

I don't get it. If it's a Forbidden Fist how do the tick damage of Hylea's Talons or the self dmg of scepters like Current's Rush matter?

16 is a suitable level imo.

Hey, there were some nice ones in attempts 8 to 13.

See PM.

You can always use a dagger + modal to increase your deflection against melee attackers (doesn't stack with active deflection buffs though), Griffin's Blade can give a little bit of a damage bonus to offensive spells, Magran's Favor and Sun and Moon can give you power levels for fire spells (or freeze in case of Sun & Moon), Kapana Taga or Squid's Grasp can make you immune to flanking (Rapier + Buckler is a nice combo for a Darcozzi anyway)... there are some more weapons which can make sense to just hold in your main hand while casting.

Paladin/Shifter can be pretty tanky in bear form because of the bonus AR from the several paladin passives and the very good AR of the bear's natural armor. At the same time the damage output is pretty good, too because Ring of Focused Flames + Flames of Devotion leads to good ACC, and FoD/Eternal Devotion lash and Wildstrike lash do stack - and you won't have any recovery penalty from armor. Add Scion of Flame for +1 PEN for FoD attacks. Add Exalted Endurance for more AR and passive healing. Goldpact is cool because the +4 AR from Gilded Enmity goes on top (except Elated Endurance, that +1 AR gets suppressed). A Bleak Walker/Shifter can even add Spirit of Decay to push FoD's PEN to +2. No particularly good idea about Darcozzi/Shifter - but all that FoD+Wildstrike and AR bonus+natural armor stuff also apply to this combo of course. The Fire Shield of Darcozzi's Lay on Hands lasts a long time. It also gives bonus freeze AR which complements Woodskin or Form of the Delemgan which can help you and your party in several encounters.

Maybe not no one, but def. not many. Monk subclasses offer substancial upsides while the downsides can be avoided/worked with. Shattered Pillar is cool for a party imo but not too great solo, especially against single tough foes (see Dragons, Megabosses etc.). It is easier to combine healing + wound generation from getting damaged, getting missed (Imagined Pain) using Enduring Dance (while using Dichotomous Soul to take most of the enemies' hits) or hostile effect expirtion (Forbidden Fist) than dealing enough damage against those foes in order to keep the wounds flowing. It's certainly doable, but in my experience a Shattered Pillar is nicer to play if he can focus on damage-dealing in a party while others tank the enemies. Forbidden Fist, Nalpasca and Helwalker are all well suited for solo. Nalpasca is nice because it has great wound generation even without being hit - but you have to watch out for enemies' Arcane Dampener: it also stops the effect of drugs and sends you into a crash (which is bad). There's enough drugs in the game so you don't need to be super economical, also a single drug will usually last for a whole fight (unless Arcane Dampener hits you). Helwalker is also nice. Not because the higher MIG will give you more damage and healing power (also good, but not superimportant when going solo) but because +10 all-stackable MIG means +20 fortitude. It's very nice to have +20 fortitude in a solo game. Most late-ish game afflictions that can disable you (=doom) will target your fortitude defense. A Helwalker with 10 wounds and Duality of Mortal Presence:CON will gain +40 to fortitude (and of course more health, damage and healing) which can be very useful. Forbidden Fist wants as high Resolve as possible in order to keep all the hostile effects on him super short. He feeds off their expiration so the shorter the better. He doesn't want resistances or immunies (messes with his wound generation). This mechanic pairs well with a solo game - because RES also raises deflection. Thus, a Forbidden Fist naturally tends to be more tanky than the usual monk - you can push that further with a shield + dagger (+modal) setup. For example Tuotilo's Palm allows you to gain extra deflection & reflex based on wounds (interesting for any monk subclass really) while also allowing to use the dual wieldig bonus and two-weapon style. The dagger will raise deflection even further. The Forbidden Fist attack ignores the main weapon and is a primary attack only, meaning yout will not attack with the shield bash either but still retain the fast recovery of your dual weapon setup. The Forbidden Fist attack is pretty strong and useful (enfeebling the enemies means no healing for them for example) and it will put a hostile effect aka "curse" on you (which is very short if you have maxed RES and use some fitting items - such as the "Ring of the Solitary Wanderer" which is perfect for a solo Forbidden Fist) which will give you a wound and healing when the curse expires. It helps to not have too high INT so the curse is even shorter (higher INT = longer curse). Because of all this, a Forbidden Fist usually is quite the defensive character - but at the same time pretty great at offense, too. It is only more difficult to grasp mechanically which repels most unexperienced players (unexperienced with the Forbidden Fist at least). I think most of the more experienced players here would prefer a Forbidden Fist. Its special features are a bit like the devs made this subclass for solo runs. Don't think that's the intention but it feels like it. Stats for a solo Forbidden Fist (rough suggestion, detailed values and a few points here an there don't mean much): MIG: o CON: o / - PER: ++ DEX: ++ INT: o / - RES: +++ You could dump CON and use mediocre INT and later pick Tough and Iron Wheel instead of Turning Wheel in order to boost CON and health. Or you can use mediocre CON and low INT and later pick Turning Wheel to keep INT somewhat mediocre. If you like higher MIG or max PER and/or DEX you can do that, too. A little variation to your liking and enjoyment is more important than some blueprint stats. Little changes are not super impactful. Race doesn't matter too much, but Nature Godlike isn't bad because Wellspring of Life can help you with the Power Level scaling of the Forbidden Fist attack (pushing it over the edge of the next quality tier) and other stuff - and it's on a lot because of Swift Strikes (or upgrades) as you already said - and/or Thunderous Blows. I would avoid a race with natural resistances (Coastal Aumaua, Wild Orlan, Mountain Dwarf, Wood Elf...). Unfortunately a downgraded affliction (via Resistance) causes problems with the wound generation of the Forbidden Fist. Human is good, too. The added ACC can help if things get dire. For other subclasses these stats might look different. For example usually Monks like high INT, combined with Turning Wheel for even more INT.