Boeroer

I think it got nerfed. I played a barb in PotD and didn't find it to be very powerful - but it was still good. I recommend Tidefall plus Sanguine Plate plus Shod-in-Faith boots plus low defl. on your barb. The draining and wounding of Tidefall applies to carnage as well, giving you enormous healing rates and dishing out lots of damage. This is supported by Consecrated Ground from the boots, which will trigger very often (most of the time it triggers twice in about 3 seconds) and making it very hard to knock you out while you get frenzied all the time by your plate. Your health will be very high and your DR too, so you don't have to rest to often. I combined a priest with Painful Interdiction with Brute Force and Threatening Presence on my barb. That way you can debuff your foes' fortitude by more than 40 every encounter. That's the only way Brute Force is worth taking that I know of. But this way it works like a charm. Your barb will cut through mobs like there's no tomorrow. You can still use Jolting Touch scrolls now and then. Or you recruit a second barb with animancer boots and dual stilettos.

Mages are incredibly good in melee, especially if they get lvl 1, 2 and 3 per encounter. It's just a lot of buffing at the beginning of each fight, but then, for the rest of most fights, they are the best melee auto attacker there is. Especially Eldritch Aim, Infuse with Vital Essence, Merciless Gaze, Mirrored Image, Deleterious Alacrity of Motion and, L. Displaced Image are great things to cast while someone's pulling the enemy towards your group. If all is set up, the wizards becomes one of the deadliest and at he same time tankiest melee characters I know of. Combine that with Tall Grass and switch to the very powerful Spirit Lance in tough fights, and bystanders will get mass confused just by observing your magnificence (no, not ingame). He will still do more damage if he spams AOE spells though. But if you want to do it - it's fun and absolutely rocks.

Dex definitely influences attack speed, recovery and reloading.

Maybe. But why on earth is it different on the character sheet? Shouldn't the combat log and the sheet get their numbers from the same sources? If not: WHY??? And if they do: how can this UI bug happen then? It's really frustrating. They fix one bug and produce two other.

I can confirm the bug. Very annoying! In 2.0 I didn't experience this - but maybe I just overlooked it. Now - with 2.01 it's there and pi**es me off... I have no Idea what you are doing there or how awful your code is, Obsidian - but as a software developer I have to say this doesn't give a very good impression.

That's very unlikely but possible with Shadowing Beyond or indiv. stealth. For solo runs that only works with shadowing.

Another point for Tall Grass and Hours of St. Rumbalt: you can get them very early - after Maerwald if you like. You just need coin. Tall Grass is Exceptional and Rumbalt has Accuracy 3 enchantment. That's a big leap in Accuracy right after Maerwald. You can also get Tidefall very early, but the fight is quite tough when you are of to low a level and impossible to find if your mechanics skill is under 10.

I once had a melee cipher with Tall Grass. That also worked well. He did not need to get into the fray and still got some nice focus and damage. With Tactical Meld and Borrowed Instinct (stacks for +40 ACC) on top of the Predatory enchantment (+10% hit to crit conv.) you get crits all the time that trigger the prone effect. Maybe Hours of St. Rumbalt would also be nice in such a setup because it not only has an Overbearing enchantment but also Annihilation, what would make your crits truly devastating and would give you tons of focus. Mind that you can cast Tactical Meld before combat for free - meaning that focus regenerates in less than 1 second after casting.

Then the 2.01 beta patch would serve you well. That's already out. Does anybody know when the final patch will be relased?

I think it's lame. If you compare it to deathblows that stacks with sneak and special attack it stinks. Especially since you can only use it once and under very special conditions.

It is 150% because of sneak attack plus backstab (or used to be - who knows now). Just the +25% from the special attack are missing.

You could try the 2.01 beta patch if you purchased on steam. It contains some bugfixes. Just google "pillars beta patch 2.01" and you will find a link to a forum post that links to the "how to". It's quite simple.

How stupid. Could it be that it worked some time ago? Because I really really think it worked when I tried it. But that was close after release.

I think that's not right. I recall that I used point blank ranged arquebus shots with blindind strike out of stealth to open fights - and backstab worked.

You can check if their stats go up every time you load the game. I think it's a bug. A lot of people complain about this while others didn't experience such high numbers.

But shouldn't you do +150% of base damage? Because of sneak attack + backstab? Or is an attack while using Shadowing Beyond not considered a sneak attack like when you hit out of stealth?

There are some buffs that work out of combat. Tactical Meld for example can be cast before combat. When you start combat you will have +20 ACC and full Focus.

If you can, get Hiro's Mantle from Azurro. He will show up in your stronghold from time to time to sell stuff. You need high prestige (crown symbol) for him to show up early and often. Hiro's Mantle not only has retaliation, but also bonuses to DR, which is great for any melee character. Combine that with Sura's Supper Plate, a unique buckler. The retaliation on that shield stacks with the retaliation of armour or Hiro's Mantle. If you eat Carow Golan (= +4 focus on hit) you will at least get 8 focus when you get beaten without doing something. Vulnarable Attack, Savage Attack, high might, draining and biting whip and everything that effects melee damage also works on retaliation. So you will get a lot more than 8 focus when you retaliate. And since Retaliation always hits and has nothing to do with your weapon, you don't need to worry about your normal melee damage output, your DEX or your ACC. You don't even need to attack with weapons to gain focus this way. Together with heavy armour and some DR rising spells, you can just spam your powers all the time and run around the mobs while casting Ectopsychic Echo or whatever. Just keep in mind that you can't get these items very early.

To get access to Twin Elms one must leave Stormwall Gorge at the lower right or southeast of the map. Then you can go to the Elmshore map and from there you can reach Heartsong which is part of Twin Elms.

Did you go to southeast of Stormwall Gorge and from there to Elmshore first. You can only access Twin Elms via Elmshore.

Level 4 is quite early - if you play on PotD. On easy it should be doable. Just start the fight and run back to the next narrow door. Block that opening with Edér who has to pump his deflection with a shield. The rest shoots a lot or slings spells. That should do the trick.

Raw damage helps a lot. You can get that from Envenomed Strike, Deep Wounds, some cipher powers like Mind Wave and so on. There are also some spells/powers that reduce DR. Body Attunement is one of them. And/or you can use burst damage from firearms. Genereally it's a good idea to do a lot CC (cause prone, stun, paralyze, confusion, charming and so on) so that you can buy time and reduce defenses so that you can crit more often and don't get hit a lot. Best tactic (as always) might be to search for a chokepoint and buff your doorman's defenses like crazy while stacking acc on your damage dealers. Then use CC and tank/shoot like crazy. Another winner might be ectopsychic echo. Even though most of it's damage will be eaten up by DR, a little bit always gets through. DR never eliminates damage completely. You just have to hit a lot. And that is easily done with some CC plus Ectopsychic Echo. You could also try some weapons with anti vessel enchantments. That's all that comes to my mind at tje moment.

No idea - but if trancendent suffering scales as it used to, then you should get +16 acc and something like +60% damage at lvl 14? The wiki is a crappy soirce as usual.

I read somewhere that they make surprisingly good tanks, even on PotD. Somebody also said that a ranger with quick switch Arbalests or Arquebuses and Hold Wall (has speed mod) as the last weapon in row plus swift aim is pretty deadly. You can add the Chanter's reload chant on top of that. And the new multiclass rogue talent of course, if you use your animal companion for flanking.

Erm... it's not the real world date - it's the date in the game. You can look it up when you hold your mouse over this watch like symbol right from your character portraits. Where you also can trigger game speed.