Boeroer

In Path of the Damned difficulty, encounters have many more enemies. Enemies also get +15 Accuracy and +15 to all Defenses. They can use abilities/spells on PotD which they don't use on lower difficulty levels. Afaik DR is not changed.

I think this decision will lead to less patches. I really want to try a Shapeshifter/Shattered Pillar with Wildstrike Burn and Turning Wheel. >+100% burning lash on those claws/tusks/horns seems to be... awesomest? Also Lightning Strikes on top I guess...

Only with the initial hit I think, but not with the following ticks, no. But this is a quite old nerf.

Your MIG score is awful for a phrase-based chanter with dumped DEX. Raise your MIG to the max if you can, lower RES and CON to 10, it's fine. DEX can be completely dumped. Get a plate armor, hatchet + shield, weapon & shield style, wait till lvl 9, then only put one single phrase of "The Dragon Thrashed" into your songbook and let your jaw drop... just forget your weapons. You also want to take Ancient Memory, Beloved Spirits and Veteran's Recovery. Then you want to get a Belt of Bountiful Healing and survial min 8 in order to get the +40% healing bonus that will work for all three of those regeneration effects. Then look out for an item with Overseeing (Celebrant's Gloves, some rings) and search for the amulet Voice of the Mountaintop (in Dyrford Village). You will cover a huge AoE with continous burn and slash damage while you are very sturdy. By the way: the "Come, Soft Winds" phrase also stacks with itself (like Dragon Thrashed). You can use it until lvl 9 to deal some AoE damage. You only need to place one phrase of it into your songbook. Because phrases have linger time they will overlap and the damage will stack. With lots of MIG and INT even Soft Winds will do ok damage. Remember it's raw damage and it's AoE, it's not too bad. In the meanwhile tank around, heal your chaps passively via Ancient Memory adn Beloved Spirits (same AoE as your chant) and occasionally drop a phantom, cast "White Worms" or "Killers Froze Stiff" from time to time. White Worms can be insanely powerful if you pile up bodies at a chokepoint. Turn off gib-effects in the options menu so that bodies don't explode. It's silly anyway. Corpses can be used over and over again as long as you don't leave the map or reload. This way Lord Raedric is always a one-shot for me. Just don't wear headphones when using White Worms on a huge pile of corpses...

Yes, why not take them into the party, take their gear and then park them in the stronghold?

It's ok if you can deal more than 10 damage per hit via Rooting Pain or retaliation (like Battle Forged) and stand in a crowd. But all in all I think it's quite lame. And a lot of hassle, too.

Runner's Wounding Shot does work with melee weapons.

The tooltip when hovering over them. I always completely ignore that nonsense.

Make a really stupid Goldpact paladin with Runner's Wounding, Tidefall and Enduring Flames. Might work quite well...

Yes. That's one of those weird DoTs where more INT is not good.

If you never encountered an ogre before I presume that you didn't go into the Endless Paths?

When I got the game I played once on normal, canceled that run and started PotD. I had not gathered half as much knowledge as you did (actually I didn't know anything about the mechanics) and it was still doable. Some fights were really tough, but you can always come back later. First time Thaos and Adra Dragon were real challenges for my though, which was fun.

Starts at lvl 4 with 10% and then adds 10% every 3 levels. At lvl 16 your phrases will only take 50% of the original time to finish. Linger time is not affected of course.

Those will give you a nice boost.

You don't necessarily need it. I played all kinds of parties, even 6 rogues with no hard CC and ACC buffs at all and it's all doable. It's just nice to have, that's all.

Not broken. They just nerfed CW so that DoTs don't trigger it on each tick. Also, there are only some DoTs where less INT means higher dps. Most of them work like "more INT = more damage". And the damage increase via INT is multiplicative.

Also, everybody who can lower DR can profit from those two flails with the 10% burning lash. Chanter, even wizard (dual flail + Alacrity + Expose ). Cipher with Body Attunement seems to be the perfect candidate for Starcaller + Unforgiven. Gaun's Share isn't too bad for a barbarian, at least in early game. He grazes a lot because of his mediocre ACC base and Carnage's ACC malus - and the AoE draining is quite nice that early. Also, with Savage Attack, One Stands Alone and Blooded he has some dmg bonuses, for the 10% lashes, too. Also, a low PER fighter with a large shield and Confident Aim comes to mind. Generally they are not bad for the use with a large shield. -8 ACC is hefty and the 30% conversion will help.

What? Weird! Never realized that. That's neat. Another multiclass combo for Deadfire. Did you ever test Spark tSotR with chanter's Mith Fyr?

Do you need a Marking weapon for PotD? No. It's just nice to have one.

Unforgiven is good as auto-attack weapon if combined with Vulnerable Attack + Ryona's Vambr. and durgan steel on shield, armor and weapon. And it comes quite early (basically with Tidefall). The 20% 30% graze to hit is not bad in the early game, too. Starcaller + Badgradr's Barricade is good. You will be fast enough to potentially perma-stun and triggering Thrust oTV all the time. Edit: just saw MAxQuests post and realized that flails have a more powerful variant of "reliable" which is 20%.

Yes, Chillfog, Wicked Briars, Nature's Terror, Spark the Souls of the Righteous and such are still working great, but nowadays DoTs are not. Also, I did a nasty typo with the 300 - I meant 30. Rodriguez called, he wants his Buttercut back...

Combusting Wounds doesn't just add some fire damage to a hit: it applies a burn DoT effect (that does around 5 damage per tick). I believe MaxQuest showed once that every instance of CW does over 300 burn damage against 0 DR with decent MIG and INT. Of course DR lowers this a lot. The good thing is that it applies the same DoT over and over again (stacks) with every hit - and it doesn't matter how puny the hit is. All you need is to generate a lot of hits in a short amount of time (Heart of Fury, blunderbusses, retaliation, missile spells, wall of something and so on). One of my favorite wizard setups is Island Aumaua + Arms Bearer + Quick Switch + Combusting Wounds + Expose Vulnerabilities + 4 blunderbusses. I don't think there are many competitors to single target burst damage. I never did the math, but it feels more powerful than FoD with an arquebus,especially because you can combine it with special attacks: 24 parallel Combusting Wounds instances and reduced DR already wreck almost everything. But then throw in Runner's Wounding Shot and Envenomed Strike for total DoT Overkill... Also, Kaylon's video where he's killing Magran's Faithful with CW + HoF + Vengeful Defeat shows the power of CW (and HoF of course). Edit: lol dammit, I meant 30 burn damage, not 300! :D

Because even on PC the performance of the game breaks down if you put too much stuff into your stash. On the consoles with potentially weaker hardware this issue is even worse. That's why your stash is limited. Don't know if chests on the floor are limited, too, bit I doubt it. It makes no difference for the game whether you sell stuff (it's in the merchant's stash) or put it into a container. The only real performance killer is the party stash.

You should go to WM I asap. The content there is from lvl 8 upwards. Level tehre and come back to Act III later. lvl 11 for upscaled Act III is tough.