Dorftek

Withdraw works just the same as invisibility.

Doing any scripted interactions that says "blabla hours passed" will drop your buffs.

Rather they just kept swinging at ya if your their only target.

Blinding smoke or whatever it's called on the mortar. Extra pen on crit on scordios. And both legendary.

U don't have to fight anything at the digsite. That place is just a barrier that is set there to make ppl believe that POTD will be really hard but the truth is THAT'S as hard as its gonna get because of the lack of ACC vs their beefed stats. Sneak around and just walk into the arena and forget about that silly encounter. I soloed them once just because I wanted to have done it once. But since then I always, ALWAYS sneak past them

Wow this sounds very boring :D (no offense)

DoTs do not break stealth now

I love ghostheart rangers but as mant2si said they are for multiclassing

To be fair any class has the "I win button", u just need invis potions or withdrawal scrolls.

The fact that soloing doesn't feel like gimping yourself doesn't change the fact that it is exactly the same principle: you are deliberately restricting yourself in order to improve your gameplay experience. There is no grand difference between leaving out party members and leaving out certain skills or consumables. The "I get all the loot and money" argument is just hogwash. There is plenty of good loot and money to go around so that's hardly much of a difference, and in any case: you control the entire party, if you want to give all the best loot to your own character and distribute whatever remains among the party. Secondly, I have at no point in this thread disputed that Arcana and Alchemy are powerful (though "completely failed to deliver" is just nonsensical hyperbole). I have in fact quite explicitly not disputed this. But that is not the point. The question is not whether Obsidian screwed up or not, nor whether they will fix this at some point or not. The question is how players bothered by these issues are responding to it, and why. Because let's assume as a hypothetical that the officially released game as it stands at the current 1.1 version is it: there will be no more updates, and the option for modding doesn't exist. There are balance issues that some people, such as yourself, are clearly bothered by. As the game is it its fixed and final state, there are therefore two main options: - make some relatively simple changes to how you play (eg. putting no points in the Alchemy skill, using poisons and potions as is) to create a more balanced and enjoyable game play experience for yourself - whine about how the game is broken, bemoan the evil fate that has befallen you, curse the Obsidian Gods, and generally take no responsibility whatsoever for improving your own lot It baffles me that anyone would go for the second option, unless a game is broken beyond fixing (which it clearly is not). Why wallow in your own victimhood if you can so easily do something about it yourself? Well to be fair wether or not I play solo or in party is completely beside the point. The focus of this thread is on consumables and how they make class synergies feel underwhelming. How they make certain builds and even whole classes feel underwhelming. A simple "don't put points in it" isn't good enough. Players who rely on them can still play on a lower difficulty setting and accept that maybe POTD isn't for them. Like stated before, the hardest difficulty isnt for everyone, it's a setting for those who play the game several times who want to play the game for other reasons then story. Creating clever builds for example.

And again though, if that's the type of character you like playing, what's stopping you from doing so? A compulsive need for excessive optimization at the expense of enjoyment? That's certainly the sense I'm getting from some people in this thread. If Alchemy + poison is too overpowered for your taste but you still want to use poisons, why not leave out the Alchemy and just use the poisons without it? Or only take some points in Alchemy, just enough to make the poison feel the right level of potent to you? If I have to do that to be able to enjoy the game on the highest difficulty using only one character I'd dare saying that obsidian have completely failed to deliver a difficulty setting for the ppl who enjoy playing the game for its combat and mechanics rather then just the story of it, how can you not see that? Deliberately gimping yourself is the very opposite of fun. I might as well play on story mode and just never lvl up or use any unique gear, same thing just a more extreme example. And before u say it I don't feel gimped just because I play one character. I feel like I play one character who get all the good loot and all the money to himself. The character I made is my character, the others are only companions and not my own.

Well monks only make a full attack on the target and not every target caught in between like charge did. If I am not mistaken. Charge was a cheaper heart of fury available much earlier. Was pretty messed up. Especially when you also consider that cleave was a passive heart of fury that they also had

I like consumables too but they are currently brokenly strong. I too fear that obsidian will overnerf them like they did with most gear already. But they need to tune it a bit and I hope they don't over-do it like they did with gear. Arcana for example, I can't make myself play a singleclass wizard or a single class fury or even a priest because I sit there at character creation looking at their spells and skills and I think to myself "nope, nothing unique here, I can be a better spell nuker with a fighter+assassin". The casters suffer because their best nukes wich they get very late can already be used by any class regardless of multiclassing and they will be even more lethal then if they were used by their specific caster class as a chosen spell, wich also means ud have spent a precious ability point on it (if u aren't a wizard). To add more salt to the wounds casters have really crappy passive skills. The most potent scrolls aren't even expensive to craft, they use very common materials that can be bought from 2 merchants in perikis. Poisons kill anything unless they are immune, nothing in the game is strong enough to outlive it by far. This is sad because it cheapens the experience and I am someone who always loved playing glasscannon assassin type characters who poison their weapons. Not fun in this game at all.

Fampyrs can be killed with poisons and withdrawal scrolls Skellies and Darguls cannot tho. But I'd bet that u can kill them with a decent explosive skill and lighting bombs. Just gotta boost ACC beforehand

IMO yes but this is because the main point of this build is to crowdcontrol and inflict rogue afflictions in AoE. When hitting a crowd with stunning surge u will never run out of Mortification points. The higher chance to crit with the effects the better, Toxic strike is expensive to use but very lethal with this build. However, if i could have two AoE mortars id dual weild them without a doubt to take advantage of the full attacks. If you check out the video i posted on Beinas bounty u'll see what i mean. I first only made this build with the handmortar to have fun with Arterial strike in AoE, monk was at first only picked for the +10Int in mind, but when i got stunning surge i decided to make this a build and post it because it was so strong. Its also tons of fun to play i'd highly recomend it. For singletarget i use Scordios Trophy + modal. Edit: Just made this video just to show u what i mean

Streetfighter/Unbroken. Lots of engagements to spread persistent distraction. Massive action speed boost from heating up and armored grace. Shield + handmortar to hobble and blind in AoE. Good passive heals from fighter to buy time. Deadeye drugs for tougher fights (still worth it even with low Alch) Rogue gets to pick deep pockets. Abraham pet or the +1 Arcana pet. That's how I would do it I think but I tend to never ever use shields because they screw with my accuracy, and I like accuracy I'd max out perception. The rest of the stats are slightly less important honestly.

Alch and arcana and explosives are kinda out of hand right now yeah. So are figurines. However if gear and abilities were brought up to the same level and the game was then balanced around that I wouldn't mind but it is quite boring when classes don't really matter. The gear in this game is quite boring too honestly. There's only a very few items in the game that gives u the feeling of being "unique". Where are my unique battleaxes? Where are my frost enhancing items? Decay-type items? Nah, in deadfire u go strictly shock or burn! Why can't Lifegiver druids summon creatures? They are called LIFEGIVERS lol. Oh well I don't have time to rant anymore my phone is about to die

There are a couple of items that give Dex affliction resistance (a pair of boots and the necklace Serafen gives you), and the Wood Elf race gives Dex affliction resistance (so Aloth has it). Shark soup gives immunity to all Body Afflictions, so that's the best option if you need total protection. To keep that up all the time, you'd probably need to do the no rest strategy though, which means you can't rely on per-rest abilities for the build if that's the way you go. Oh right the food how could i be so blind?! :D U sir are a legend! Thank u!

No its not. Nothing is "too squishy" for solo really. Only on the first island where ur options are very limited. You either build a very tanky character for solo, or u make a character with good CC and dps and u use good positioning and stride to round up enemies. The game has tons of options for u to solve encounters other then "tank and spank".

Good stuff man. I had a quite similar idea but it's not usig that weapon and I need to find a way to be completely safe from paralyzis before I can make it work. Anyone know of any items to help with this? I know a fighter can pick Unstoppable to greatly reduce the risk but I really don't fight for what I had in mind.

yeah any level 10 build can take the boss with maxed out alchemy or arcana. they are basically godmode. To other people, it's fair game but to me i consider them cheese. That doesn't mean it isn't fun. Heck, even the solo potd build I posted uses maxed out arcana to take advantage of avenging storm. You don't even need a party for the encounters you've posted. They are just all one meteor show/great maelstrom away from dying + withdraw to keep you alive. Or since you are running an alchemy build, Handmortar + stone joint (it's the most op alchemy potion) then use invisibility potion and wham wait for them to die. I do know of a build who can solo the last boss + all the encounters you've listed without any cheese though and that's with level scaling mod from Nexus. So far no one has posted anything like it so that's good! Thinking of posting but I'm afraid it might get too popular and you know how Obsidian likes to nerf popular op stuff. The poison only applies once, so handmortar and stonejoint doesn't work in AoE, only on primary target.

Really? How do u know?

Yeah I hope they don't overnerf alchemy but they definitely have to adjust the scaling of poison. Because as of right now high alch+poison+withdraw wins u almost every boss fight in the game with zero risk.

Lol posted in wrong thread sry.

If you play with a party absolutely! I played solo tho so I had to settle with the handmortar, wich is plenty good anyway