Boeroer

The ranger Ody Kellen and his wolf (nick: Ryder) were two mercenary buddies from the Saint's War. They decided to stick together and open up a dogfight business in Ondra's Gift, Defiance Bay. After some time they realized that most of the fights where poorly choreographed and they lacked a real champion to attract wealthy, pleasure-seeking and gambling-addicted people. The two friends decided to offer a more exciting bet: they would climb into the pit together and defend a pot of gold against any other two opponents who challenged them. Trained and hardened by the war, they were an excellently coordinated double team and always managed to defend the pot. After some time, they where called Riptide and The Pit Fright and their fame rose. Kellen, who loved to fight at close range with blades instead of using bows, would cleave deep wounds with his great sword. That would put Ryder into a blood rage which nobody could withstand. At the same time, Kellen would watch out for rabid Ryder and heal his wounds with magic he learned from a brilliant, but mentally inept druid. The druid once told him that the Dyrwood was formerly known as the Drywood because it used to be so swampy - obviously this guy was batsh!t crazy. M'Ray Batsh!t Crazy, to be precise. They two pit fighters were so powerful that word of their prowess (and their gold pot) reached the Living Lands. There, a woman who lived near a dormant vulcano heard about the two pitfighters and their big fat pot of gold. The locals called her "The Drake's Ambassador". However, her master, a very clever, fiery, proud and greedy drake (on the brink of becoming a Fire Dragon), demanded that she travelled to Defiance Bay and won the purse for him. "No sooner said than done", said the Drake's Ambassador - and just did it: She went to Ondra's Gift and challenged Riptide & The Pit Fright alone. The two friends answered that a two-on-one would not be fair - but they accepted on condition that anybody could join the Ambassador during the fight. The pitfight started and the Ambassador turned out to be a formidable defender and terrifying warrior who furthermore wielded powerful fire magic. She also was able to confuse and charm the wolf (remember his nick, Ryder?) during his blood rage. He turned against Kellen... who barely survided the merciless (and vicious!) attacks of his own companion. But soon after that Kellen was able to hit Ryder with an unshackling kick in the butt. That brought Ryder to his senses and with even more rage he jumped at the Drake's Ambassador and wounded her severely. Defeat was staring her in the ugly face when she let out a terrible screech into the sky (we could name her Screaming Mimi for that)... ...and Hell-Gyraffe crashed upon their heads! The Ambassador's master knocked them all down and burned their skin and fur with his breath until they finally surrenderd. Man, that really hurt! Not only physically, but also emotionally. Standing inside the remains what was once their prospering, gold potted livelihood, burned and bruised, Hell-Gyraffe offered them a deal: "Go to the Searing Falls, take my Ambassador with you, search the cave of Cail the Silent (who's quite talkative by the way - so maybe he has the same humor as the druid mentioned above) and slay him. Bring me the burning hot stone he hoards - everything else you find there may be yours. Do that and I will give you back half of the gold you lost today. With no other alternative left (that didn't include hard, honest work or some bootlicking), Riptide and The Pit Fright agreed and set off to the Searing Falls. On the way, Ryder peed like a thousand times at the Ambassador's leg until she dominated him with her frightening, monocled gaze and let him fetch dried xaurip poop all the time - which was not too dry because the dyrwooden path was quite swampy... =================================== Riptide & The Pit Fright =================================== Difficulty: PotD v. 2.03 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Ranger & Wolf -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Pale Elf® -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Deadfire Archipelago - Mercenary -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats: MIG: 18 CON: 10 DEX: 20 PER: 10 INT: 17 RES: 3 <- wtf? Yes, only three -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Stealth 1, Athl. 3, Lore 10, Mech 0, Surv. 10 -------------------------------------------------------------- Abilities/Talents (a=auto, !=important, r=recommended): Elemental Endurance (a) Marked Prey® Stalker's Link(!) Predator's Sense(!) Swift Aim® Wounding Shot Defensive Bond Play Dead Weapon Focus Soldier® or Gallant's Focus Vulnerable Attack or Apprentice's Sneak Attack Savage Attack® Two Handed Stylec Merciless Companion(!) Vicious Companion(!) Resilient Companion(!) --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (* = additional echantments by me; ! = essential, r = recommended): Weapon set 1: Tidefall(!)(Freezing Lash*, Durgan Refined*,) Weapon Set 2: arbalest or arquebus Boots: Shod-in-Faith(!) Head: Tempered Helm Armor: Heldrik's Coat®(Durgan Refined*, Perception+2*) Neck: Stalker's Torc® Belt: Bluting Belt® Rings: Ring of Thorns® & Ring of Protection (Ring of Unshackling if you fight against charming/dominating enemies) Hands: Gauntlets of Swift Action® or Gauntlets of Accuracy or Gauntlets of Puissant Melee or Bracers of Enduring Quick slots: scrolls (Moonwell, Revival), potions(Iron Skin, Spirit Shield) and so on --------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings! This ranger build is a melee one. It's dps focus is on the animal companion, which is a formidable damage dealer if you manage to activate all it's special abilities in a fight. So, this ranger's task is to do that as often as possible. In the best of cases the enemy is constantly afflicted with a status effect which allows sneak attacks (in this case called Merciless Companion) AND suffers from a DoT effect. At the same time the animal companion - although he's quite sturdy compared to past versions - should be kept alive while he's doing it's work. And last but not least he himself should not go down. At the same time it would be a big bonus if our ranger would cause some good damage, too. All this should require as little micromanagement as possible. Phew! What a statement of requirements! How can our ranger achieve all that? If the ranger's using melee weapons, he and his pet can easily flank the enemy - that qualifies for sneak attacks. A weapon with the wounding enchantment would activate the Predator's Sense. A draining weapon would heal the ranger and help him to prevent knockouts. That calls for Tidefall. This great word also does some really nice damage (Swift Aim for speed, Two-Handed Style, Savage Attack and Stalker's Torc for the win) and is superb. I also used Vulnerable Attack. Now I think that Apprentice's Sneak Attack might be a better alternative, but it's tricky to determine without a lot of testing. Vulnerable Attack works like a flat +5 damage bonus per hit and also applies when you only graze. But it also slows you down. Apprentice's Sneak Attack might result in more dps, but only if you manage to flank your foes all the time. You decide - I can't say which is better. Glanfathan Stalking Boots would fit nicely - but I just don't have the space for it. Vengiatta Rugia would also be nice - but it's too thin for this build. Well - you always have to make compromises I think. I also thought about putting on Sanguine Plate and take Vicious Aim instead of Swift Aim. That would result in +13% speed (+33% minus 20% instead of +20%) and would grant us +17 ACC in comparison as well as +20% damage. Sounds great! But honestly I still don't know if Vicious Aim even works in melee (description says no) and I like my high attack speed a lot, so... Please try it out if you like and report if that's better - I'm very curious. We also want to hit/crit our enemies and not graze them - so why the low PER? And Swift Aim without Swift and Steady on top of that? Luckily, a ranger with Stalker's Link gets +10 ACC when he's attacking the same foe as his pet - and we always want to do that anyway. Secondly, the foes will always be afflicted with "flanked" for the same reason. That's the same as another +10 ACC (or -10 deflection). Together with superb and Weapon Focus we'll have an effective ACC-bonus of +38 points. Swift Aim is -7, so we end up at +31. That's enough for us. We don't rely on any on-crit effects. I didn't even take Swift and Steady because of this. Talents are very rare if you want a dps pet (but plenty of abilities!). You can take Gallant's Focus instead of Weapon Focus if you also want to buff your pet's ACC a bit - I didn't. The points that you don't invest in PER will be used to max out MIG (buffs Tidefalls pierce/slash damage, Tidefall's DoT, Tidefall's healing and Consecrated Ground's healing), DEX (we want attack speed!) and INT (buffs duration of Tidefall's DoT, Consecrated Ground's healing, Wounding Shot's DoT and Marked Prey). But how can we heal the pet without using scrolls or other partymember's abilities all the time (which means a lot of micromanagement and would lower our own dps)? Our two buddies will stand very near to each other during fights - so we can use the Shod-in-Faith boots - they come with the endurance pump! All you have to do is to lower your deflection a bit in order to receive a nice crit in the face. As soon as this happens, you will get ehaled by Consecrated Ground and your pet will also be healed. Very nice! Now you're not only doing tons of damage together (a rogue turns pale in the face of this damage output) without even using a single special attack! All you have to do is to position your two friends and let them autoattack. Against tough foes use Marked Prey and/or Wounding Shot - but normally you don't need that. Even heavy armored kith will just explode after a few hits. At the same time your double team is also quite sturdy. You can absolutely use them as offtanks. The ranger has a high starting deflection - so the dumped RES doens't hurt as much as you would think - deflection is still around 60. Thats not good, but not superbad for a Two Hander either. Remember that you get healed by Shod-in-Faith and Tidefall all the time. Just watch your health bar. Use DR+ items to improve your survivability because you want to get hit and you will be. The rest of your defenses are like 90, 110 and 70. Your will defense is low - and that's the weak spot of this build: if your pet gets confused,charmed or dominated and turns against you, you will face hard times. You're lucky that you can stand some bites because of all the healing, but it really hurts. You can also be turned and then all the nice synergies go down the drain. That's why I chose the Tempered Helm: it gives you +10 defenses against this at least - while also buffing your defenses against paralyzed and the like. Heldrik's Coat gives you +30 against prone attacks which is very nice because lying prone on the floor will also end the flanked affliction and your pet's dps would suffer. The rest is standard I'd say. It was a pretty powerful build and turned out way better than I thought it would. As I said: they explode! Cheerio!

I guess that nobody finds this as awesome as I do?

Sometimes the encounter starts slightly before the shot falls. Then you'll only have one use left. It has to start after the shot falls. It's best to use an arbalest since it's range is longer. And maybe high DEX helps too. The shorter the animation the bigger the chance that the shot falls before encounter starts. Same thing with all per-encounter-abilities that you can use out of combat: Tactical Meld, Tenious Grasp, Wounding Shot and so on. I used this with two paladins and tried to start encounter with two FoD shots at the same time. If they have the same weapon type and the same DEX and you Pause while giving commands even that works.

I just found ot that all the "Missile" scrolls work with Penetrating Shot (not a big surprise, they are called missiles for a reason) - but even better: they also work with Driving Flight! This turns all your Missile Scrolls into AoE spells. Concussive Missiles is very cool: they explode on impact, doing AoE damage, and continue to fly and explode another time for even more AoE damage. Bounding missiles bounce around like hell. This is - who guessed it - totally awesome with a Ring of Searing Flames or another source of Combusting Wounds: with Missile Barrage (=9 projectiles) you don't only cause 9*5 = 45 extra burn damage to one target from combusting wounds - you cause two targets to suffer 45 burn damage! Whooha! Stunning Shots don't work with this by the way.

Maybe I was lucky - I didn't experience this at all.

If you "console" them with the name gaintlets_of_swift_action, then you'll get the ones that do +15% attack speed. They have a missing enchantment description in the tooltip though - maybe they took them out of the game. I never found them since 1.05 or so. The other ones I also never found. Keep in mind that I accumulated over 1500 hours of gameplay...

Please don't deprive Deprive the Unworthy of this cool feature and don't damp Arcane Dampener! This thing actually makes them worthwhile in the first place. Maybe you could just tweak the duration of both and nerf the autohit of Deprive the Unworthy (there's a bug report for that). That would make them still very useful but not so "overpowered" like it's now.

^ Dammit!

Do you have a druid in your party? With Persistence and all his DoT spells he can stack a ridiculous amount of DoT effects by himself. Well... he won't hit a lot with the bow I think. Recall Agony is a really good point. The damage output of CW alone will get doubled (even if the damage from Recall Agony itself would be tiny) if you combine it with DoT effects. Man... now I really want to try a new cipher build with a wounding weapon. Will this never end?

Firebrand + 20 might + FoD + Intense Flames + Savage Attack + Two Handed Style + Apprentice's Sneak Attack + Scion of Flame + Vulnerable Attack + Ryona's Vambraces = monster burn damage from hell. I think it's 29-44 * 2.55 * 1.2 + 8 = 96-143 for a normal hit and 184-278 for a crit (Firebrand is annihilating). Now substract burn-DR. These aren't exact or tested numbers. But it should be around that value. Too bad FoD has only 2 uses per encounter (3 if you start encounter with FoD from stealth).

Rogue = maxed mechanics. That's all there is to know.

It strenghtens your deflection, your will denfense and your concentration. Deflection is good for not being hit - concentration is good IF you get hit: it prevents that you get interrupted, e.g. while you are casting Lay on Hands on yourself or an ally. Will is imporatant if you don't want to get mind controlled or terrified (or whatever affliction targets your will) by enemies. If your Paladin is the main character (and only then!) his resolve also influences what answers he can give in conversations with npcs. Some answers you can only choose if your resolve is high enough - some others if your perception or your intelligence or might is high enough. There are lots of cases in which resolve matters in conversations. It opens up other paths through the dialogue tree. That's all I think. This hasn't anything to do with paladins though. It all apllies to every class. There's nothing special about the realtionship between paladins and resolve. However - from a roleplaying perspective one might think that paladins should have high resolve.

I don't like that for a "real" playthrough. Somewhat destroys my motivation. Don't know why...

Ok, just tested: Arcane Dampener and Deprive the Unworthy both remove immunities to afflictions: Immunities to damage types won't get removed though. Works with the Ring (Arcane Dampener) as well as the wizard spell and the paladin ability. It's like before the patch if you cast this on a dragon. This makes my life much easier since I don't like to build pure tanks. This way the good old repulsing seal trick still works.

Ok, I did a test against the sky dragon... And this: Says it all. I didn't manage to land a terrify on him because my chanter was stunned so often that his phrase-counter stayed at 3... grrr. What doesn't work: immunities to damage types (corrode e.g.) don't get removed. Repulsing Seal works just fine - like before. You just need the Ring or a wizard or a paladin now. By the way: Deprive the Unworthy is still a auto hit without ACC check or whatever.

Yeah, it's really nice. +33% Damage output with FoD. Doesn't work always - sometimes the encounter starts with your animation, not when the shot falls - but most of the time it works.

Easy way to get the achievement, right?

For me CON would be ok at 8, but I would lower RES a bit and put it in DEX (if it's you main char). High PER is good - paladins only have mediocre ACC. Also, for a DPS-Paladin, I also like to go for Island Aumau + Arms Bearer + Quick switch + Intense Flames + 3 arquebuses + burning lash + Weapon Focus Soldier + Scion of Flame + Forgemaster's Gloves. Then I add some Stealth. That way you can open the fight with a FoD-shot (for more than +100% burn damage, which is alot), then the encounter starts and you will still have 2 uses of FoD for the other two arquebuses. Then you switch to a Great Sword. If you need extra dps in tough fights, cast Firebrand. The low INT is not so good for that, but it's just a backup option, so...

You're welcome!

It strongly depends what you want to do with your paladin. Stealth: If you want to use your Paladin as a quick switching Alpha-Striker with Flames-of-Devotion-shots from two or three guns, then I would recommend high Stealth (up to 8 maybe). Because: if you open the encounter from stealth with a FoD-shot, encounter will start AFTER the shot falls and you will still have two uses of FoD - which makes 3 uses for one fight. That can be quite important if you put all your effort in maxing out FoD damage. Athletics: don't need to be higher than 3 or 4, so don't waste too many points on that. You can go higher if you want to unlock Athletic-related dialogue- and scripted-sequence-options. Maybe in this case you need 5 or 6 (maybe somebody else knows better). Lore is useful up to a value of 10 (or 8 if you have an item that gives +2 Lore - there are some). With 10 Lore you can use all scrolls there are. The dialogue options you get from high Lore stop at lower values - I think 6 but I'm not sure. In my opinion nobody needs more than 10 Lore. Mechanics: I you want your paladin to be that traps and secrets guy, then you have to max this. There will be no room for other skills. If not - skip it entirely. Survival: If you want to use consumables a lot (they are very powerful, but some people don't like the kerfuffle) then it's a great skill. If you don't want to use consumables, skip it. I recommend 8 or so. I usually go for 8 (or 10) Lore, 8 Survival, 4 Athletics and the rest I put in Stealth. That's for a "normal" paladin who doesn't do anything with traps and locks of course.

It's not truly random - they place these items based on the ingame date. So on the third day of a month a chest will contain item X, on the fourth day item Y and so on. There's a spreadsheet for that. Although it didn't work for me. Or did they chance the way "random" items are distributed?

So right. Priest's Crowns of the Faithful & Barb = big love. Not only this buff is great for barbs (like limaxophobiacq pointed out - and it truly is). But also Painful Interdiction + Threatening Presence + Brute Force is a great combo. Throw an invocation-based chanter with the lvl-1-concentration-phrase plus the lvl-2-frightening-phrase (or use Devine Terror) into the mix - who also uses the terrify-invocation. He will smash the concentration of foes on the ground while debuffing their ACC which helps staying alive enormously. People often prefer things like stun/paralyze and so on - but forget that these things do not last very long. Constant Sickened (barb), Frightened (chanter) and occasional Weakened (priest) and Terrified (chanter) are very strong, long lasting debuffs that help your offense AND defense and make your barb a true AoE interrupt monster. Now give your barb maxed DEX and INT and put on a Ring of Overseeing, the Dunryd Demon, one of the long-interrupt-but-average-speed weapons (the Vile Loner's Lance is truly great since it has 1 sec interrupt, inherent +5 ACC AND causes -5 defenses on hit with carnace, that's like +10 ACC to all your hits). These three buddies rule the battelfield. The huge AoE power-interrupts will stunlock every mobster around the barb, the others can just walk around and finish them off. You can add a glass cannon rogue or ranger with max damage per hit to clip them all one by one while they jerk around. It's fun and low micro. And your rogue will not collapse every 5 seconds like he used to. Maybe you guessed it: I totally love barbs. :D You can build them in so many ways and they have such great synergies with other classes. Maybe I will once do a [PARTY BUILD] instead of a [CLASS BUILD].

Try an interrupt build with either Shatterstar or the Vile Loner's Lance. Both have a huge interrupt bonus (1 sec instead of 0.5) that's kind of secret since it's not a listed enchantment. If you add a small shield, put on a not-too-thick armor and enchant these three with durgan steel. Take Interrupting Blows and use Frenzy and Yell/Shout and it's awesome. Both weapons you can get early, and you don't need superhigh carnage-ACC for a solid interrupt rate. The shield adds survivability. It's true: barbs are bad at the beginning and are item dependent. But they are so much fun later on.

If all immunities can be damped with Arcane Dampener, then "Hello again Repulsing Seal, where have you bee... whohaa" says the dragon.

Update: I'm too tired to test that today. Will go to sleep now...