MaxQuest

^ I have updated the p.4) of my first post, which could cause this confusion, since I forgot to mention scripted interactions there.

Speaking of passive skills: I have definitely seen Survival and Religion checks during scripted interactions (when you can send 1 party member). But I haven't seen such a check for Streetwise. As for dialogues: afaik they only assist.

From combat point of view: 1). Regarding investing "a little": Some scrolls aren't like the others. In the sense that they don't benefit that much from higher Arcana score. E.g: Withdraw, Circle of Protection, Revive the Fallen. So having just 7 Arcana on 1-2 of your characters is quite enough. As for alchemy - after all the nerfs there is little point to invest into it half-way. I.e. either max it, or don't put any points at all. 2). Maxing arcana has the following benefits: - higher accuracy for Spearcaster - synergy with Arcane Archer - higher PL with scrolls. This is especially great for stuff like Scroll of Moonwell, Meteor Shower, Maelstrom and so on. Stuff that gets increased both magnitude and duration. As for Alchemy: - higher restoration from health potions - longer potions and drug durations - lesser drug penalties (as Kaylon already mentioned) ~ more potent poisons. Although their accuracy is still quite low. Plus many of relevant enemies have either high fortitude or immunity vs poison... There is more info on consumable scaling in thelee thread: here. 3). Sleight of Hand had no in-combat use for me. As for non-combat: it allows to steal Ring of Marksman without killing those sailors (which although is not hard, but might be undesirable RP wise); Aside from that... there was maybe only one check were I would take SoH dialogue option over alternatives. 4). Edit: Passive skills for your party members are useful for: - skill-assisting for MC during dialogue - some scripted interactions when you can select 1 party member for the task (but iirc I've seen only Survival and Religion checks) - also a passive skill is useful for a party member if he has some item that has a property that scale with that skill. Like Giftbearer's Cloak and History. Aside from combat use, there are also non-combat skill checks. Here is the list of such checks for the base game (made by fireundubh). So in order to pass the majority of such checks, Watcher might want to have: - Alchemy: 0? + 15 (assist) - Arcana: 10 + 8 (assist) - Athletics: 7 + 4 (assist) - Explosives: 0? + 9 (assist) - Mechanics: 5? + 4 (assist) (note: this doesn't include trap checks) - Sleight of Hand: 10 + 5 (assist) - Stealth: 4 + 6 (assist) - Bluff: 13 + 7 (assist) - Diplomacy: 10 + 7 (assist) - History: 7 + 10 (assist) - Insight: 8 + 9 (assist) - Intimidate: 10 + 8 (assist) - Metaphysics: 6 + 9 (assist) - Religion: 12 + 0 (assist) - Streetwise: 12 + 8 (assist) - Survival: 6 + 8 (assist) Also it's fitting to remind that skill assists are subject to diminishing returns: companions total skill -> assist 1 -> 1 2 -> 2 4 -> 3 7 -> 4 11 -> 5 16 -> 6 22 -> 7 29 -> 8 37 -> 9 46 -> 10 Here's the original post by nstgc. If party members have 46 combined history it will assist you with +10. On the other hand if they have 22 combined history, 16 arcana and 8 religion, it will assist you with +7 history, +6 arcana and +4 religion. That's 17 assist points instead of 10. Meaning that for such checks it's often better to spread companion skill points relatively even, and also take into account the thresholds. In the end it doesn't matter much if companions have 22 or 28 streetwise, since you will get the same +7 assist. ---------- Additionally, a note can be made about checks in jungle when you can send one character forward for investigation. It's usually a good idea if he has high survival, high perception and somewhat decent stealth; because the game can check two of these at once. And ofc it's a nice idea to rise mechanics on a frontliner with high PER and decent stealth. Sometimes this party-mechanic can be combined with the scout above. Edit: continuation can be found here.

Aye, Archivist is my favorite as well) followed by Battlemaster and perhaps Keeper (for those Broken Balance shenanigans). Unfortunately Archivist is also the one out of reach for modders\

Had some time while commuting, and nothing else to do except imagining what new subclasses there could be) I've liked some ideas and decided to share them. Just because Reaver (Barbarian) Sonance (Cipher) Bladesinger (Chanter) Keeper (Druid) Battlemaster (Fighter) Disciple of Thousand Dreams (Monk) Fellows of St. Waidwen Martyr (Paladin) Priest of Abydon Duelist (Rogue) Aspecter (Ranger) Archivist (Wizard) And am curious now: do you find any of these interesting?

Shieldbearer's Lay on Hands) But it's better to avoid getting that low in the first place. Some enemies (in PoE1 for sure, and I guess in Deadfire too) are checking your current_hp/max_hp proportion, distance, if it's required to run to you, and if they are already engaged, and with all that data select the best fitting target. Against such enemies, they lower you get - the higher the chance to get focus fired. Thus... heal preventively. For that purpose, I prefer lifegivers, kind wayfarers, moon godlikes...

You could also try the "Vindictive Faction Ship Battles" mod - that spawns them from the very start. Note: they switch from neutral to hostile once you reach level 13, unless you have the respective flag.

There ya go: P.S. Do you mind if I'll include them in the next version of my pack?

Oh god... I.. might think about it. But no promises. LESS than no promises)

Pierce/crush, ehh. It's uncomfortable to defend against such. Both plate and brignandine fall short. And breastplate is more effective, but still... On the other hand pierce/crush is a great combination for the player himself. It looked to me that enemies with [highPierce AND highCrush] ARs are less numerous than enemies with [highPierce AND highSlash] or [highSlash and highCrush].

Being able to reduce incoming damage by up to x4, is definitely strong. But yeah, the question is how much AR do you need... Spells generally have 7-9 penetration + 0.25 penetration per PL. Weapons have 6-10 base penetration plus 1/2/3/4/5 for being fine/exceptional/superb/legendary/mythic. On top of that, some martial abilities (like Penetrating Strike) have an innate weapon penetration. Usually the bonus ranges from +2 to +4 PEN. +100 PEN from monk's Empowered Strikes, being an extreme case. And on top of that, enemies get +2 PEN bonus on PotD. I can't check atm ingame. But can theorycraft^^, which might not be exact, but at least something. So: - against lvl 8 rogue you need {6-10} + 2 (exceptional) + 2 (ability pen bonus) + 3 (underpen) => 13-17 AR - against lvl 8 phys damager (without PEN bonuses): {6-10} + 2 (exceptional) + 3 (underpen) => 11-15 AR - against lvl 8 spell-caster: {7..9} + 1 (from PL) + 4 (underpen) => 12..14 AR And if you are yourself lvl 8, in exceptional plate that's 9 AR + 2. Not enough. In such a situation you want to: - squish at least 3 more AR (4 vs estoc enemies) or daze all enemy damage dealers. - terrify, frighten or somehow disable enemies with abilities that have bonus penetration (first of all rogues) - not being crit. So to answer your question: - if you are in heavy armor enchanted with best quality and have +4AR on top of that - you are in a good spot. - but keep in mind that plate has 9AR (5AR vs crush/shock) and brigandine has 9AR (5AR vs pierce/corrode). Edit: there is also the following line in v1.1 patch notes: > Armor and Penetration now scale up on PotD. According to this post it is: +1 AR / 3 levels and +1 PEN / 2 levels (upward only). And these values can be found in global.gamedatabundle: - "LevelScalingArmorLevelIncrement": 3, - "LevelScalingArmorModifier": 1, - "LevelScalingPenetrationLevelIncrement": 2, But if these are applied in addition to the above, it is too much. Anyone know if these apply to all enemy attacks, or only those done with fists/claws?

Ah, that's good I mean, I know that boolean conjunction takes precedence over disjunctive in boolean algebra. But have little idea about how boolean expressions are actually evaluated during runtime. I remember hearing some fuzzy info about the short-circuit evaluations, and the left-to-right approach where the next argument is evaluated only if the previous wasn't false while being an operand in && function (and viceversa: if the previous wasn't evaluated to true while being an operand in || function), and that there can be some nuances in different languages. So just decided to use as a rule: use parentheses! if you want to be clear in intent and sure in result. Do I understand it right, that if Obsidian dropped the parentheses in A && (B || C), the expression had to be rewritten as A && B || A && C? There is something similar with Soul Annihilation damage. It deals phys_dmg and raw_dmg. This raw part - is so to say spell damage which is increased in function of current focus. Yet it somehow gets increased by Sneak Attack, Savage Attack (weapon proficiency), Weapon Quality, Two Handed Style and such.

Tehehe) There is no combat simulator for PoE that I am aware of Was thinking (theoretically) about adding damage values to the mentioned speed calculator. But haven't spotted the fine point yet. I mean, there are way to many variables. If I'll factor only a few - it will be useless. If too many - then it will be a huuuge amount of work, plus it will still be subpar to: - launch the game - spawn the dummies or some specific creatures - and test your actual dps)

Speaking of healbots... I have tried a pale elf Goldpact/Lifegiver. Plate armor, 1h + heavy shield, zealous endurance, blunting belt. It felt like an unkillable monolith with that AR, who can keep his party alive quite well. The amount of rejuvenation stuff he can throw during Cat's Flurry is more than decent. And when Spiritshift has ended start using Lay on Hands and the already mentioned Garden of Life. In addition he can carry several healing/resurrection scrolls, for emergency.

^ Have you tried removing that fighter from the party and adding him back? If the fighter was created before the patch that added Constant Recovery - that could potentially be the solution.

Hats off for a detailed report. It's a rare sight from a first poster with a gibberish nickname) Ha! I knew that it's a bad idea to use different logical operators inside a single ConditionalComponents array (if you use 3 or more components), because without parentheses the order is unclear. For example was modding a "[not in combat] or [stealthed] or [invisible]". And had a random thought of what would I do in a situation when I would need both [or] and [and]? Figured that perhaps using multiple Conditionals is the way... but it's parent (in my case ActivationPrerequisites) is an object not array:

She does to me too. Higher contrast, strict jaw line, rugged skin. Voila, +15 years)

No idea what a pecan color is So here's an attempt in brown: Water-colors here ^ are recolored _convo and _si that were coming with portrait. And water-colors below are the ones made with the help of Aramintai's guide: Curious which ones you will choose.

Whoa, that was fast Grats on the completion and a new journey that awaits in Deadfire)

Here's my attempt: Glad to hear that EDIT: updated the godlike portraits' filenames to include the godlike type.

Khagmas you ninja Btw, I've accumulated a few portraits since the release of Deadfire. Decided to share: All water-colored (with _convo and _si). Example: You can download them here: mod page

^ Just a random thought: try to change AI behavior (between auto, auto-attack, none) and see if something changes.

How do "action speed" and "recovery time" modifiers translate to this turn-based mode?

Here's the list of locations where you can find Durgan Ingots.

^ Forbidden Fist stacking damage bonus is really small compared to the downsides. During the most of the fight you don't actually want to stack it. With the exceptions of: - when you have enough wounds and want to finish that last enemy and end combat. - you really need that Enfeeble on a second target. Btw, had 10 minutes to quickly check a few things with Blood Mage. - might as was already mentioned influences damage taken. Lower might - less damage. - voidward works, and reduces damage taken by 25% as per tooltip. Two voidwards - don't stack. - copperhelm - spell damage reduction does NOT apply to Blood Sacrifice self damage. - defender stance - does reduce the self damage. - death's maw helm - does reduce the self damage. But it looks that when an enemy dies, you get the bonus for a limited time only. - cadhu scalth shield (luminous harmony) (-5% damage taken -> -10% damage taken at 20 metaphysics) - seems to also reduce the self damage (but better test it again). Some damage-reduction effects like food, drugs, buffs do not stack. So far managed to reduce Blood Sacrifice from 63 self damage (tier3) on Aloth (lvl 16, 10 MIG) to 22 (tier3) after lowering his MIG to 3, and using the effects above.