Boeroer

Watch out guys! Ancient Memory and Beloved Spirits is still bugged. It turns off once you cast your first invocation and won't turn back on. This is no problem for chanters who only chant The Dragon Thrashed - but for this build it's quite bad because it uses invocations and is dependend on the healing. It works in the first 10-15 secs of combat (when usually you suffer the most) and so it's not a complete waste, but it surely is not working as intended. So decide for yourself if it's worth taking. Most likely you will be better off with two other (defensive) talents atm. Just use postions (Regeneration) or scrolls (Moon Well) instead. I didn't realize it because the tremendous self healing of Veteran's Recovery + all the healing mods of >100% masked the fact that it turned off after some time.

It's the secret ORBUG* modifier! It's related to not so secret OUCHWHIP** I guess. )* Obsidian's random buff for unarmed damage glitch )** Obsidian unknowingly creating (an unbelievable buggy mess of stinking) horsecrap (every frickin' time) when introducing patches

It's really really sad that two nice guys in this forum manage to fix a bug so quickly which is in the game for more than a year - and OBS can't. Come on, OBS, seriously? I didn't realize that this bug is there because I mainly use tanky, passive chanters who only chant "The Dragon Thrashed" all the time and don't use invocations at all. Ok, cool, for those chanters this bug is no problem - but for any other chanter it's very bad. I don't get it why this isn't fixed.

That would have been... superawesome.

Deadfire Archipelago = pirates. The barb companion you can have is also from there - and guess what: she used to be a raider (aka pirates who pillage on land ). For a pirate you should use Deadfire Archipelago and raider. Since you don't want to minmax anyway, the bonus point from culture doesn't really matter. By the way - later on you can get headgear that looks like a pirate's headscarf. It gives you +2 survival which is not too bad there's better headgear, but +2 survival can be really handy to reach certain levels of camping bonuses (for example bonus healing or ACC bonus) earlier in the game and with less skill points. If you want how it looks like, take a peak into the build "The Immortal Martyr" in the list. He wears that headscarf thing.

Way too much kiting. Solo PotD runs are difficult enough - at least against bounty groups and such.

Right - also Carnage's ACC malus and the barb's low starting ACC may be reason why it works quite well.

Hm... How about a druidic brawler? Deflection is not too bad, ACC is not good, he can use Spiritshift but even after it runs out he can still pack a punch. Taste of the Hunt may be OK with fists.

Or Rhymrgand - because of Aurochs/Stag carnage. That would be so cool. Carnage on a priest - even a weaker one would be great.

Well - low ACC seems to be no problem because grazes/hits/crits don't make a big difference. Wizard or priest brawler anyone?

Concerning dwarves: boreal dwarf for an offensive approach, mountain dwarf for a defensive one. Some people say that the racial feat of mountain dwarves is weak, but I don't think so. Actually there are a lot of enemies who use attacks that are either disease or poison. Those attacks (like poison clouds of iron constructs, attacks of several other vessels, oozes' ranged attacks, wood beetle poison and so on, several corrode and raw damage spells) can be pretty nasty. It's a good thing to have higher defenses against them. Having +15 ACC against primordial and wilder foes is also nice. Some of the toughest mobs are wilder/primordial (ogres, lagufaeth, adragans, delemgans and so on). Lore wise I think that hammers belong to mountain dwarves.

Yeah - but monk's fists seem to have higher base damage (10-15) than normal ones...?

And you could look for a potion of Fleet Feet or craft it. Although for this fight it's of no use because you can only drink it after combat starts.

You will have to use aggressive and cruel answers a lot with a Bleak Walker. Keep that in mind. The additional corrosive lash talent for FoD is ok. With the rigjt weapon it can add a lot of damage. And if you find the sabre Bittercut in Russetwood/WM, you'll have one of the best weapons in the game (in my opinion). You can even take Scion of Flame AND Spirit of Decay then. Take a look into my monk build "Monksterlasher" why. Also works with a piratesque Bleak Walker.

Then use sugar - and movement speed bonus from camping. You only need 3 survival for that if I recall correctly. That should give you +3 movement speed.

Basically it's just the Monksterlasher as a paladin with Firebrand instead of Bittercut and without Spirit of Decay.

I don't know if Novice's Suffering and Transcendent Suffering are handled differently. Maybe you're right - but I think the monk gets so many lashes because things like Savage Attack are ineffective. Maybe Loren Tyr can clear this up with a glimpse into the code. Edit: edited after you edited.

@Livegood118: Nono - lashes are a totally different topic. Lashes' damage is calculated with the damage you roll before it hits DR. Here every #dmg mod and stuff will be included. We're only talking about all the abilities and talents that add +x% to the weapons base damage. Those are things like Savage Attack or Reckless Assault and stuff likethat. Those +20% will be calculated with the unarmaed daage without Novice's Suffering bonus. So it's like 5 to 8 base damage * 1.2 + Novice Suffering instead of (5 to 8 base + Novice's Suffering) * 1.2 So those talents (Savage Attack and all that +x% damage stuff) are quite useless for anybody who uses fists. @Dr <3: Yeah, lashes are the best for this I guess. Maybe that's the main reason the monk gets lashes and no damage mods like fighters or rogues. Lashes work perfectly well with this mechanic. Maybe a paladin would do good damage with FoD fists...

It can still be good to use weapons from different weapon focus groups. You can use Gallant's Focus instead of weapon focus. It's only 2 ACC difference and works for every weapon.

As I said: since it's both in the same weapon group, you can use pistols for enemies with high DR and blunderbusses for enemies with low DR. But sadly sou will not know how many DR the enemy has before the combat starts - because it's your first run. A save choice would be Weapon Focus Soldier with arbalests, arquebuses (both great for FoD shots, arbalests also knock down the enemy when you crit - with FoD and Sworn Enemy this happens often) and war hammers. Those do damage like maces, but without the DR reduction. Instead they have two damage types (crush or pierce) which I - personally - like better than 3 DR bypass. The hammer will roll damage agsinst the DR that is weaker. In a lot of cases the difference is higher than 3, making it better than 3 DR bypass. It's also very convinient if you meet enemies who are immune to pierce, crush or slash damage. Also, dual wielding hammers looks better than dual wielding maces - but less good than dual wielding stilettos or sabres.

For solo play yes. With a chanter buddy you could have life leech and a burning lash for your fists. Hm, maybe a drunken chanting brawler would be nice... By the way: how does Heart of Fury with fists look like?

Yeah - but as Loren Tyr pointed out: blunderbusses with FoD are very weak against high DR targets - even if you use Lead Spitter with Penetrating Shot (=12 DR bypass) because the FoD elemental lash and also the lash enchantments don't profit from those DR bypasses - only the initial piercing pellets will bypass DR, not hte elemental lashes. So the burning part of FoD will just evaporate. You have to lower the enemy's DR directly (not stack DR bypass) to make blunderbusses with FoD worthwhile against high DR targets. For soft targets they are awesome. But then: no need to lower DR anyways.

No, besides stilettos there are also all estocs (5 DR bypass) and all maces (3 DR bypass). There's one special estoc that has even 8 DR bypass (Drake's Bell, first bounty quest) as well as one stiletto that has 6 (Bleak Fang, late game). And all guns have inherent DR bypass (pistols and arquebuses 6, blunderbusses 4) Then there are some unique weapons that have DR bypass as special enchantment: - Sword of Daenysis: a rapier with 3 DR bypass, also speed enchanted. Early to get and a great weapon - also together with the March Steel Dagger (speed enchanted). With those two you can play a duelist themed character who hits superfast. - Cat's Claw: a sword with 3 DR bypass, late game - Hearth Harvest: a hatchet with 3 DR bypass, early/mid game And other ranges weapns like two bows and a rod and whatnot.

True - although a blunderbusses is by far the best weapon to use for FoD when you meet foes with low DR (like ghuls, most enemy wizards and such). So the ruffian group is not bad for adapting to different enemies: pistol for the guys in thick armor, blunderbuss for the soft ones. There are some nice pistols out there. The base damage is not as good as those of arquebuses, but the uniques have really nice enchantments. Same with the blunderbusses. Arquebuses don't have such a nice variant of uniques. What you can do in order to make blunderbusses work against most targets is to have party members who can lower DR - like fighters (Sundering Blow, -8 DR, late), chanters (Hel-Hyraff, -5 DR, early), wizards (Expose Vulnerabilities, -5 DR, early), cipher (-7, Borrowed Insticts, mid). I don't know if all those stack - and if it's all worth the fuzz.

It's just an outlook what will become of this fire paladin - of course you don't start with all that stuff. I'm only watering his mouth. I won't dump DEX with Two Handers, true - but you don't need superhigh DEX to make them work. Your main damage source will be FoD and you only have 2 of those per encounter. But with Firebrand those two hits - especially with Scion of Flame - really hurt a lot. Battle Forged - here the +4 DR - is not bad in the early game, too. It's not as powerful as Silver Tid from Moon Godlikes but it scales better with level and fits the theme. You can of course use dual wield fast weapons like stilettos instead and use guns for FoD. It's just that the optics of a aumaua sized Fire Godlike with a giant burning sword are quite... cool?