Kardgar

Swift Aim lets you stay permanently like this, where as frenzy or some other short duration buff has to be managed. It's the set it and forget it no recovery setup. I don't know that anyone else can achieve this. It's a shame most of the speed enchanted weapons don't have any fun effects on them do make this setup more diverse.

After reading this I decided to mess around a bit with this on my Ranger 26 dex Two weapon Style Swift Aim Vuln Attack Cautious Attack Gauntlets of Swift Action Durgan Refined Plate Durgan Refined Rime Cutter Durgan Refined Strike Hard No recovery bar

I tried the solution linked in that thread, unfortunately it didn't help. I am using the latest version of IEMod - 5.1 Beta. Fortunately there wasn't a lot of time invested in these saves and I simple redid everything to get there. I appreciate you looking into this for me.

good setup, some general thoughts. Early on the priests will need to supplement with melee. Late game they won't need it, and I recommend taking the extra fourth level spell so you can stack shining beacon. This pretty much melts everything in mass. There are a couple of fire immune mobs in Craghodlt that you'll need melee for so you might require a respec to sort that place out. Late game I'll open with a trap at max range and shoot an iconic projection off into the fog off war. This will agro whatever pack you're fighting. You immediately get one or two buffs up depending on the encounter and you've basically won. Crown of the Faithful is fantastic, nothing like 35 resolve to ensure some staying power, toss up avatar and spam two shining beacons and another trap and you've won. You can reasonably do 3-4 fights per rest. I did something similar as you've described and ended up dumping all melee prowess in favor of full defense late game since I was all spells at that stage.

I have perhaps ten or twelve different characters (and corresponding saved games) and have not changed configuration for any of them. I play across two different machines depending on where I am. I've had zero issues loading any of these previous saves on either machine. I run the most current version of IEMod using their launcher. Recently on a new character all four of the saves, 3 auto's and one quick save will load, but there is no party or options available, simple the Raedric Hold Map (where I was when I last saved) paused. I've read through the various work arounds and fixes and haven't gotten anything to work. Can anyone test these saves or have any other ideas? I've disabled cloud sync I've deleted the temp folders in users/local and users/locallow. I've deleted the save directory entirely. I've verified integrity of the game cache. I've uninstalled and reinstalled. I emailed the saves to my other machine and tried them on there with the same result. Link to the file - https://www.dropbox.com/s/rovouq6xl3s9h23/fc61d664-dde0-46f2-95c5-214062b1ca88%20quicksave.savegame?dl=0 Appreciate any assistance.

And that druid will melt your face if you're solo and first arrived in Defiance Bay

There's a backer NPC at Madhmir Bridge who has a pistol. I think this might be the first one available outside of the one in Readric's Keep. Generally I killed most anyone with any items worthwhile and take no effort in dispatching. After having done everyone's quests there is no point in leaving anyone alive. However the vast majority of NPC's have near worthless items on them.

I'm doing this setup now, all six full tank mode. I just run into a room and wait until things die, it's hilariously effective and fun. There's a big power drop off while you approach level 9, but once you get there, it's silliness.

Probably a dumb question, but: aren't Boots of Speed after the point of no return, near the end of the main quest? Do they show up somewhere else? They do show up before then. I make a bee line for them from the Bloodsands as soon as I have access to Chapter 3.

I haven't ever seen this mentioned but a Ranger doesn't have to fight the ghosts in the throne room. You stealth your pet forward to trigger the forced dialog which will open the door, you send the pet to the stairwell in the now opened door to die. Ghosts reset, and you stealth right downstairs, fight avoided.

I never wore armor on my Ranger until I got Durgan's Steel as I wanted max speed, you could use Angio's Gambeson from Dyrford for the haste use it has (1 per rest). I recommend you focus on getting levels and getting those core skills first then go through and pick up all of the various accessories you want. You can do it before, it'll just be a lot more reloads with the second choice. You can use the +3 dex cape until you get a ring of thorns. You buy the cape from the Doemenel vendor after a trivial quest. Lots of easy exp in Defiance Bay, you'll be level 9 without breaking a sweat there.

A couple of things. You gain more experience when solo, so you'll level up faster than your full party play through. It's not hard to get to 11 with minimal combat utilizing stealth through a lot of the game. Low level I recommend using a fine warbow with vicious aim, and penetrating shot early on. I used a fine one until Defiance Bay then picked up Borrisain from the vendor. I used that in conjuction with a fine hunting bow and alternated out a septer from the Ondra Septer quest (attack speed). You'll want the septer for pierce immune mobs such as blights. You'll do mediocre damage with almost no staying power and very few tools in the toolbox. Early solo game Ranger is all about Figurine summons like most solo potd runs. Beetles, Shadows and Adra Beetle. Keep the wurm/horn and others in your inventory to swap out once you've used the others but need to press on without a rest. Your whole early game goal is to avoid combat when possible (at least those you can't win without breaking a sweat and get to chapter 3 where you get some major items for a solo speed setup. Unfortunately for the Ranger your pet is not very good at stealth and makes life harder than that of the rogue for getting through areas. This mechanic can be circumvented in a manner by leaving your pet behind on places where you just need to go in and out to get a key or a quest item. On any quest where you have forced dialog or forced interaction your pet will teleport to your location and you can avoid the need to stealth the pet through with you. Alternatively you can send your pet ahead to pull enemies out of the way and run them a different direction then you stealth through. That's how I got the remains in Eothas Temple without killing all of the slimes/spectres. Same with the Adra septre pieces in Ondra, just drag the mobs away and go get and get what you need and get out. The Boots of speed pretty much guarantee your survival provided you can run. I use +1 movement talent and sugar or farmers spread early game until I get these. You'll need to dig up the unique loot/day spreadsheet someone made in order to locate these items, or download IEmod and use the loot shuffler feature to shuffle loot on reloads to get these two items. The gauntlets and max dex will have your speed north of 50% and one potion of deleterious alacrity of motion you're doing double damage. Once those two items are secure you can go get Lenas Er (http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Lenas_%C3%8Ar) and respec and drop vicious aim and penetrating shot and get swift aim and steady swift aim. With the built in -5DR on that bow, it's more than enough to punch through and pushes you up to 70% base speed. From here forward things are now much easier and will continue that way until stunning shot/twinned arrows. I would hop over to the expac and then get the stormcaller, afterward you can do pretty much any content with minimal risk, although prepare to kite. Stormcaller changes the whole field for you now that you do shock damage and you aren't faced with very many mobs that have high shock armor. Unfortunately you lose swift aim with twinned arrows, but thats the price you pay for double arrows. After you have the above setup you can focus on beefing your pet up, wolf or antelope (or whatever you like) and focus on managing where you fight. The worst scenerio you want to avoid is letting your pet die where mobs spawn or originate, it will stay dead until you clear them all, and in most cases will be to much pain in the rear to do so without the pet to hold agro while you stun and otherwise murder them. So you send the pet forward and agro and then run it back to you. You fire at the pets target or have them attack in sync and stunning shot goes off once on the target and once on the bounce, then stormcaller procs and the whole pack is stunned. Rinse repeat until the pet is low or things are dead. If the pet is low prepare to fall back. Back out of vision of the mobs and let them return to their location. Walk forward and your pet will get up. Repeat the process This will not be necessarily on a lot of pulls, most pulls you end up stun locking and critting everything into the ground, but fights with sirens/banshees/wizards and those horrible lagufaeth's, you'll just have to focus on the nasty ones and pull and reset until you can manage. A final thought on all of this, a large part of all of this is just experience with the content and know how mobs/quests and mechanics work. My very first Pillars play through was on POTD/expert with a solo wizard. It was a fun way to learn in my opinion. I have actually had a party once in the game, six Rangers if you can believe it, it was obscene.

I think there is an important distinction between solo beating the game, and being able to solo complete any content. Most any class can solo beat the game, however beating any content is another story entirely. I've solo'd the game with a Druid, Paladin, Cipher and Ranger. The druid was the most outright powerful for AoE trash packs, but requires a lot of levels and resting after almost every fight, until you get past level 9, but in practice it still requires a lot of resting, because you tend to open with AoE hard disablers, stun/petrify etc and will need to rest for the next fight. On long fights you can run out of juice and be stuck shooting a bow or running for your life. There are a wide range of mobs who can do no damage to specific blights you can summon so you'll be using this to your advantage. Unfortunately blight summoning is random, so it make take several reloads or summons to get this right, but it's hilarious when it works. Fight the fire dragon with a fire blight and laugh. Late game you get some serious surgical strike capabilities with casting Calling the Worlds Maw (Petrify) combined with Sunlance or some other potent damage spell for big 250 damage hits. The Paladin was pretty easy, but it's damage/AoE capabilities are low until immolation and so is a slog in the early game. The Cipher really doesn't shine without allies as a lot of powerful cipher abilities require ally targets, you can use figurines for this, but then you'll be resting every fight or every other fight. Boeroer makes some good builds and I used his Backlash Bedlam Cipher to do retaliation damage while summoning figurines to get your beams and amplified wave off. Survivability is low in encounters with lots of magic/disables, the setup I used was very gear dependent and isn't what I would call easy. My top pick is the Ranger who starts off the slowest but once they get stunning shot (level 11) and the Stormcaller bow (White Match Expac), boots of speed(Chapter 3), it's pretty much top dog in my opinion. There was nothing I couldn't kill with this setup. The Ranger basically facilitates a free tank who requires no resting and who will instantly revive once you leash/get out of combat. The trick is to never fight where the enemies spawn/originate. Pull them back outside of their original LoS and fight. Should your pet go down run away and break combat, and once you walk near your pet he'll be up again and you can re-engage. Stunning shot, driving flight and the stormcaller bow, just locksdown enemies, you pick up the pet talent for additional damage against foes with status effects, hobble, stun, paralyze etc, and it's more damage on top. If I had to make a recommendation it would be the Ranger. The Ranger will be weak and have limited tools for quite a while. I would focus on leveling on quests with no or minimal combat, Once you're level 11 things start to shine, and by the time you have some key skills and items, nothing can stop you. I focused on max attack speed for the stormcaller/stunning strike stuns. So Something like this Early game more defensive build/Balanced build Late game High Might Low Con (I don't like going lower than 6- Max/Near Max Dex Max/Near Max Prec Int - Whatever availability points you can toss in to boost status duration Low Res (I don't like going lower than 6- Stormcaller bow Clothing Armor (Can swap to whatever Robe you like once you get Durgan's Steel) Gauntlets of Swift Action (Core Item) Boots of Speed (Core Item) The remaining items you can mix and match to get the right stat balances you need Dex 3 item Might 3 item Prec 3 item Cloak of the Frozen Hunt (10% ranged damage) Archers Bracers (10% ranged damage) important Talents in no particular order for late game apprentice sneak attack* (you always have a debuff on every mob) wounding shot* driving flight* stunning shot* twinned arrows* WP Peasant marked prey (late game for big targets) Pet Resilience merciless companion vicious companion stalker's link binding roots