Boeroer

Yes. And as I said: if you can understand them then the language is not the problem. It's more likely you didn't talk to the right spirit yet. This will unlock the option "I am enemy of Of Nua" at the door, which will open it. If you don't get that option you have to search and talk to more spirits. The one in the room with the secret door/sliding wall (you can only open with Maerwald's knowledge) has the most tricky dialogue options and the code phrase you can get from him (and which has to be inverted in order to open the door) can be missed easily. The spirit in the bottom right who destroys the machines will tell you that he inverted the door code (from pro Od Nua to anti). You have to talk to those spirits in the right order and I guess you need to check the door first, too. This isn't too trivial since some (dialogue) options can be missed easily.

You can have both: fire two arquebuses with FoD and help killing stuff and then switch to weapon + Outworn Buckler. The shield IS too good to ignore it - so don't. In fact I like Outworn Buckler's and Little Savior's stackable heraldic aura so much that I often decide for two shield users in order to stack both auraus - for +10 to all defenses. And in certain encounters you also might want to use Aila Braccia as your shield (against Lagufaeth or Thaos for example). Since White March you don't even need to take Quick Switch to have decent switching speed because there's the Coil of Resourcefulness in Russetwood. An example how it can be done: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/89995-class-build-counselor-ploi-charming-paladin-supporter-tank/ Another variant would be to use a dual wielding setup just for FoD and then switch to the buckler in order to spare a weapon slot, but two arquebuses are better. In a party your tanky paladin doesn't need all the defensive abilities or talents and still be tanky enough without them. He can do without Superior Deflection or Righteous Soul or whatever. You gain great alpha strike ability by losing a bit of defense. It makes playing the paladin more interesting and also more versatile. It can be of immense value to kill the enemies' priest or cipher or wizard right at the start of a battle. And if you can do that with an otherwise very defensive party member: even better. In fact it's so useful that I sometimes use an Island Aumaua and add a third arquebus for Runner's Wounding Shot. It's not mandatory of course and you can skip FoD entirely if you want and still build a nice paladin - but I would never say FoD is useless or not worth the points. Also, your judgement about the paladins' special talents is not what I experienced. For example Kind Mercy and Sword & Shepherd are so strong that it's totally worthwhile to build a whole character concept around it. And of course Darcozzis' Inspiring Liberation which stacks with everything can be very good in certain fights. Bleak Walkers' talents I consider to be the least powerful ones. For the question what lash to put on Rumbalt (with a fighter). It depends what your other party members use since fighters have no preferred element I can think of. You might want to have all elements used in your party, so if you already use fire with a paladin and/or priest you might want to take corrosive lash or freezing or shocking. I forgot if you want to use Stormcaller. If you do, then I'd put a shocking lash on Rumbalt. Lashes work especially well against targets whose elemental DR gets reduced.

Yeah, right. Hm... whatever - if you can communicate with the spirits and also can communicate with the door then the language is not your problem. If you can't talk to them but somehow managed to solve Heritage Hill without learning the language then something is screwed up with the quest line.

What poor accuracy with FoD? Paladins have 25 starting accuracy and FoD has +20 accuracy and also +1 accuracy per char level. If you combine it with Sworn Enemy, Weapon Focus and Zealous Focus you will nearly always crit with FoD. FoD + burning lash + Intense Flames + Scion of Flame leads to an additional lash damage of +120% (lash damage, not weapon base damage like Deathblows which is a lot weaker. With Merciless Hand and Firebrand or an arquebus he will deal way over 100 damage per FoD use which will most likely end most dangerous foes like priests or other casters. So I'd say FoD is superhandy - if you don't want to be a turtledin.

Yes, that's what my first question was about. I thought it's not possible to solve Heritage Hill without learning the language. But maybe I'm wrong.

No, you have to know the Engwythan language in order to pass the door to the Guardian of Od Nua (yellow animat who drops Edge of Reason). You can't understand the spirits and the door ("I am enemy to Of Nua...") if you don't speak Engwythan. That language can only be learned from Icantha. Same with the lvl 8 fampyr who drops Argwe's Adra. There's only a peaceful solition if you learned the language from Icantha. At least it used to be so...

If you want to use Rumbalt for the whole game I would not put any slaying enchantment on it but aim for the highest quality enchantment possible. Don't remember if it's possible to put legendary + lash on it, but I guess. Lash is a no brainer of course. And once you can have superb I would put it on and replace Accurate III. Only if you want to keep Accurate III I would think about slaying.

He? How can you finish Heritage Hill without learning the Engwythian language from Icantha?

Nope.

If you feel that it's difficult at the beginning: that's OK. Act I is the hardest part. After that it gets easier and easier (with a few bumps).

It's totally viable in PoE - the summoned weapons will give you a great outcome of a single spell use. They are powerful and last very long. And nothing stops you from nuking everything to the ground with AoE spells, too - if you feel like it.

Fig is also a publishing platform, so I guess it will be published via Fig. Given that Feargus is part of Fig I would be very surprised if this is not the case. I also think they have to publish via Fig because how else are they supposed to handle the crowd-investments? https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire/invest

Mechanics 10 + stealth mode is required to find Tidefall in the drake's nest. A lvl 8 party should have no problems with Cail the Silent.

I would also use Rumbalt and even push INT to the max. High INT is so awesome with Constant Recovery, Disciplined Barrage and crits with Knockdown. Also the prones from Rumbalt will last long. I would also use Bonus Knockdown and Clear Out. Clear Out is supergood with high INT but bad with mediocre or low INT. Keep it for the tough fights and it can really make a difference.

In my opinion the two handed variant with focus on Citzal's Spirit Lance with Savage Attack, Two Handed Style and also Apprentice's Sneak Attack is the most fun. If you take the Doemenel route and use afflictions like Curse of Blackened Sight (or whatever causes long lasting afflictions) before you attack and follow the summoning of the weapon and Alacrity with Martial Power then the damage is almost obscene. If you use Veteran's Recovery, Infuse with Vital Essence and Concelhaut's Siphon you're sturdy enough for melee even without prebuffing. The summoned weapons are pretty strong (also in terms of ACC bonuses) and you don't necessarily need to buff your accuracy yourself either. Priest who does some party buffing anyways is nice though. Wizards are always versatile. No matter his you build them. A dual wielding wizard is also fun because you can reach 0 recovery very quickly due to Alacrity. But even that can't compete with Citzal's AoE damage. With Hardened Veil + Wizard's Double + Alacrity + the lance + Martial Power you can do most bounties alone. Dual wielding is limited to single target damage and thus you will find yourself using spells all the time because attacking with sabres is just inferior. BUT as I said it can be fun. In my last play through I did a wizard specialized on Novice's Suffering and all touch based spells (Jolting Touch and so on). Novice's Suffering works well with Martial Power because its flat damage bonus gets boosted by MIG. It was supposed to be a gimmicky build, but it worked surprisingly well. Martial Power also boosts Veteran's Recovery like crazy. And the best thing: spellcasting is blocked, but spell binding items still work. This leads me to another option for dual wielding. Two times Flames of Fair Rhian, Spell Mastery Fireball, Amulet of Summer Solstice, Sun-Touched Mail, Animancer's Boots, Taluntain's Staff in second slot, Ring of Wizardry for bonus spells lvl 3 and the talent that gives you one additional spell of lvl 3. Scion of Flame... This leads to a wizard who can cast up to 16 Fireballs per rest, 9 of them with Martial Power, 6 Sunbeams and 3 Jolting Touches with Martial Power. This is also quite nice. And you'll have the dual sabres and can attack with high speed.

Besides that 0 recovery doesn't mean max attack speed. It's just a big step towards that goal. There's also the attack animation. It might be shorter than the normal recovery, but you only can influence it via DEX. I won't argue what is the best DEX value - I think this highly depends on your playstyle and what characters you use. I, for myself, don't usually build high DEX guys but prefer MIG, PER and INT for most of my characters.

A dual wielding barb with Frenzy + Bloodlust + Blood Thirst comes pretty close to 0 recovery quite early without special equipment. Not all the time of course, but you can get away with low DEX if you don't wear too heavy armor. But DEX also reduces the attack animation quite a bit. So the difference between a 3 DEX barb with 0 recovery and a 20 DEX barb with 0 recovery is visible. Of course, as I said, once you get HoF and do it right you can totally dump DEX and won't see much of a difference because most enemies are dead or heavily injured anyways. For normal casters I'd say DEX can be pretty crucial. My favorite dump stat is RES.

Barb with Dragon's Maw is a solid choice. Also works nice with HoF. Did playthrough and a build around that, it's in the build list (Golden Dragon). However, if you're looking for max HoF power, not much beats dual wielding the heavier one handed weapons. It doesn't matter that much which ones. Sabres have +20% damage, Maces are good because of the +3 extra DR, hammers are good because of the two damage types, spears have higher ACC and battle axes are annihilating. Swords again have two damage types. Concerning early to mid uniques which do something for HoF then sabres have Resolution + Bittercut, maces have Ravenwing, hammers have Shatterstar, spears have Vile Loner's and Cladhaliath. I would say that sabres (one of then Bittercut at least) and war hammers are the best choice for HoF. The best two handed weapon by far in my opinion is Acuan Giamas (a morning star). It has wounding, which is one of the strongest enchantments in the game, and steals spells from casters. This means you can cast the stolen spells for a given time as many times you want. Steal Calling the Word's Maw from an Ogre Druid and cast it with Blood Thirst... Or with Deathblows... or Disiplined Barrage... But this weapon comes so late that it makes no sense to build a character around. You can retrain once you get it though. It's OK to spec around morning stars though if you manage to get Mabec's Morning Star from Azurro.

You forget that the ACC bonus of fists doesn't work with any special attack (Torment's Reach, Force of Anguish and so on - maybe a bug, but it's like that). So I'd say a monk with fists totally needs high PER. Not for auto-attacks though. It's the biggest drawback of monk's fists besides that you can't enchant them with lashes and durgan steel. A paladin might start with lower deflection than a fighter, but paladins gain defenses with every level of Faith and Conviction. Add Lay on Hands and most paladins can be sturdy frontliners if they don't have to entertain all the enemies. Since most paladins have high MIG and INT, I would nearly always use Lay on Hands and also Veteran's Recovery if I need to use LoH on other party members more often.

DEX 3 and RES 3 on the Barb is absolutely OK once you hit lvl 11 and pick Heart of Fury. DEX does nothing for Heart of Fury and this will be your main damage skill. If you combine it with Blood Thirst and Bloodlust, you will have a 0-recovery-attack after HoF and +20% speed because of Bloodlust (stacks with Frenzy). I like to do HoF + Barbaric Blow + autoattacks. Dual sabres is a good pick for Heart of Fury. My favorite is Bittercut + Spirit of Decay and a corrosive lash. Also take Vulnerable Attack and everything that raises damage per hit (not necessarily DPS). And absolutely give him a Ring of Searing Flames if you don't have a wizard who can cast Combusting Wounds on the enemies who will get hit by Heart of Fury. You want max MIG + PER + INT, rest CON. Shod-in-Faith is good. Check out Cape of the Master Mystic on the barb. Positioning for Heart of Fury is supernice while invisible. At higher levels the barb's endurance is so high that you don't have to babysit him. I recommend Veteran's Recovery, too. It's great with max MIG and INT. Check out Binding Rope on the barb: enemies who struck him get stuck which will raise the chance of doing crits with Heart of Fury and Barbaric Blow. If you use annihilating sabres with Barbaric Blow and land some crits, the damage will be awesome (+150% crit damage). Blaidh Golan is nice. A good combo for paladin + fighter is: Paladin with Coordinated Attacks + marking weapon (Shame or Glory/Cladhaliath) + Outworn Buckler or Little Saviour. Fighter with Disciplined Barrage and Hours of St. Rumbalt or Tidefall. A dual wielding fighter is also nice because of Knockdown being a Full Attack and because Charge is better with dual weapons. But a two hander is also good. It doesn't matter that such a paladin doesn't do much auto-damage. He will raise the fighter's accuracy by +30 just by attacking+flanking the same target as the fighter. The fighter will then attack with +50 accuracy - he will even knock down dragons reliably if he needs to. If the fighter has low INT take Tidefall (and Runner's Wounding Shot, too), if he has high INT then Rumbalt. If you give the paladin Munacra Arret and Sworn Enemy, he can crit-charm a lot of enemies (including dragons) which makes some fights supereasy (Ploi build for details). Sanguine Plate might be better on the fighter. I really like arquebus + burning lash Flames of Devotion + Intense Flames + Scion of Flame. It lets you one- or two-shot most annoying casters before switching to weapon + shield. They make a good front line tandem together.

Did you check if it works in combat? Watch the combat log and hover over an interrupt message in order to see your interrupt value that was used for the dice roll. Sometimes it's just the GUI that doesn't show things right. If you are over 75% endurance your interrupt value should be lower than at 75% and below endurance. Also, you didn't get the description right: it says +1.8 move speed while over 75% endurance and +21 interrupt when under 75% endurance.

Cool! Second Wind is totally broken. When you use it while Battle-Forged is on you will hit yourself with burning retaliation. This will kill you at higher levels.

It shouldn't stop combat as long as there are still (uncharmed) enemies left. But maybe you are right. I can't think of another reason. Such wondrous healing doesn't occur when my party members get charmed. Unfair!

By the way: the mechanics skill does nothing for seal spells' accuracy.

Mysterious... did you have a chanter with Ancient Memory in the party or something? I guess not...