McQuirk

All this talk of solo builds and POTD and I'm sat here struggling to figure out how to beat them even on Veteran with a full Lv20 NPC party - I mean, I haven't even got to the point of being able to kill enough spiders to land a decent hit on Belranga, and can't damage the ooze one enough to even cause the split never mind survive to actually kill them. Is there a thread somewhere with dedicated strategies that work, which aren't all about min-maxed solo builds? YouTube videos all seem to be about solo builds too. I'm aware that I need to change up my tactics somewhat, but surely they can be defeated without recourse to a min-maxed custom party?

This looks good on the first view but then again Llengrath's Grimoire has mostly only spells for self buffing. So it ends up just being a buff self, summon spear and auto attack build or am I wrong and miss something? Depends on how you develop the character. It can be specced that way or you can select other spells as you level up and use the spells in the grimoire to free up the points so you don't have to select the buffing spells from the tree. There are also some useful abilities such as Stunning Blow, Force of Anguish and Skyward kick from the Monk tree which give you a nice bit of damage and CC using the AoE from the lance. Combine with Bounding Boots to get Leap from the Barbarian tree to make positioning an absolute dream. It's fun and very flexible. You can respec to a caster build using the defensive abilities from the monk tree, or as a self-buffing ninja lancer. You can also use the ranged fist attacks ability with it. Several options really. Another excellent variant is to use Spider Silk Robes and Helm of The Grotto Deep, then you can inflict hilariously efficient poison damage using the monk's combat prowess combined with the wizard's self-buff. It's a Jack of all trades - the only thing it lacks is healing.

Sage - Shattered Pillar/No subclass wizard Use self-buffs and summoned weapon Citzal's spirit lance. Just use fists until you get high enough level to cast it. Llengrath's grimoire for sale in Wizard shop in Periki's Overlook. Good access to various monk abilities, wizard spells for when you need them, can off-tank, DPS, a bit of CC. Lots to do, and lots of ways to respec if needed.

Thanks for this. I thought I understood this game pretty well but I'm still discovering things I had no idea about. Starting to feel like I've barely scratched the surface!

I've been using a variant of this that takes no wizard spells at all during level-up and instead relies entirely on Llengrath's grimoire. This frees up the points for Monk abilities and passives. The only problem it really has is with pierce resistance in which case I just use the fists. In answer to the boots question, I like Bounding Boots to get the Leap ability from the Barbarian tree - it applies a decent-radius AoE daze affliction and makes it magnificently easy to get your lancer into perfect position, or leap out of the fight if things get sticky. Nature godlike works really well due to the fact that the sage is almost always buffed, but there is an argument for a non-godlike with Helm of The Falcon to reduce the recovery time even more.

Ok, what did I just see? As far as I can tell, it's Enduring Dance, Lightning Strikes, Power Surge (from the amulet?) and then... Whispers of the wind? Combat log goes so fast I can't see what happens! Then it pauses while you activate resonant touch and they all die. My mind is blown. Is there a class build for that character anywhere?

I'm wondering if your problem is not that you can't heal fast enough but that some other aspect of your strategy could be improved? Perhaps you could be making better use of various "escape" abilities (e.g. smoke veil, shadowing step, dimensional shift, withdraw, barring death's door...), or things like leap, flagellant's path, charge, into the fray etc to get your strikers in there. Abilities to break engagement e,g, mule kick, efficient anguish, skyward kick, clear the path, out of the fire... There are loads of ways to avoid characters being focussed down, it's just a question of figuring out how to use your squad as a coherent whole. To answer your question, potions and scrolls of major and miraculous healing are useful to get you out of a tight spot. Pre-emptive heal-over-time spells: Moonwell, Consecrated Ground, Symbol of Eothas, and paladin and chanter abilities. Also you can get a seriously large radius heal from Minor Intercession or use spell shaping to get a smaller radius but more powerful version. Greater Lay on Hands, a large single-target heal but the range is pretty short. Death prevention: barring death's door is the spell you want, or withdraw for emergencies (scrolls again). There are other tactics too - a fighter with refreshing defense and Charge, always enter combat from stealth, fighter goes in and tanks while the party buff themselves in stealth mode. Once the buffs are up, the rest of the squad can get stuck in. You can start most fights this way and it's a great way to draw the attention to your tank. I dunno dude, like heals are a sort of emergency measure for me - I kinda feel like if you're relying solely on healing to keep your squad in the fight, you're missing out on a whole toolbox of other strategies.

I quite like this one for the brute. Heals while you fight and revives you when you're knocked out with the enchantment added. You have to get most of the way through Beast of Winter to get it, however, and you'll need to be fairly high level already, so that makes it a bit less tasty. https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/The_Twin_Eels Another good choice is https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Lord_Darryn%27s_Voulge which is much easier to get (pretty much from the moment you get the ship after Port Maje) and has some tasty options.

Do you mean this? https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Lord_Darryn%27s_Voulge Which bow are you referring to? Thanks

Hi all I'm having some real trouble with The Animancer's Folly endurance trial - in particular the Steelclad Constructs From reading around the web there seems to be a general idea that this challenge isn't too difficult but I'm struggling with it. I'm playing on Veteran, level 20, with the following party: Main: Wizard/Shattered Pillar Monk - built around self-buffing and using Citzal's Spirit Lance for AoE damage and CC Eder: Fighter tank Aloth: Wizard, AoE DPS and CC Xoti: Priest - healer/buffer Maia: Scout - single target burst damage and can insta-kill most vessels with Red Hand arquebus enchanted with Double-Tap My initial strategy for this was to have Eder tank while Maia uses Red Hand to pop the constructs and the rest buff/cc as needed. This works brilliantly with Maia's accuracy and hit-to-crit conversion buffed as high as I can get it (basically every + accuracy or +hit-to-crit passive I can take, then Dire Blessing, Marked for The Hunt and using Ishiza to flank etc), and also the bouncing shot passive which results in most of the constructs just popping. Problem is this doesn't work for Steelclads since they are higher power level, and I'm struggling to find the abilities, weapons, strategies for taking them down quickly enough to not die. Tried this 3 times and it always ends in the same way - a grinding attrition of doing minor to no damage against the Steelies while they slowly beat down my squad. In all 3 fights I've ran out of empower points and ability uses, leaving me with no option but to set all my characters to auto-attack and just hope they win! Can anyone point me in the direction of any strategies that will help me get the steelclads down more quickly? I'm open to squad changes, respec, custom characters - anything that will help, because I can't for the life of me beat this £$%!-ing challenge! Cheers for any tips! McQ

Regarding this... It turned out my firewall started auto-sandboxing the game after the update, which interfered with the keyboard controls. How stupid do I feel now?

That's correct. I fixed the problem by exiting the game and the restarting it and the keyboard works fine again. This happened because to install the DLC Steam started the game up and then I tried to continue playing from there instead of exiting and restarting. That was the first thing I tried. Exited and rebooted, restarted PC. Tested with several different game saves and characters, even uninstalled and reinstalled the game from scratch. I am using the Steam version. Still no keyboard function.... Anyone? Any suggestions at all?

Thanks for this, I feel reassured! My first port of call was youtube, but I can't seem to find any up to date videos about character builds except for one guy Nerd Commando, who seems to be all about min-maxing, so I guess I just got the impression it was necessary for PoTD. Good to hear an alternative viewpoint. I do quite like the idea of having a stat that is a little bit reduced - it does make things slightly more interesting in some ways. I was thinking about a ranger, going for a sort of fast attack-speed thing. Kinda like Legolas, but with a wolf instead of a Dwarf as a pet.... Any thoughts on a good stat distribution for that?

I've had a problem with this update borking the in-game keyboard controls. Since installing the update, the game is running just fine and all the point-and-click stuff works perfectly, but the game is not detecting any input from the keyboard. Anyone else have this issue?

I've been wondering about character building from a perspective of not min-maxing, mainly for the Watcher. Like many, I'm planning a run in preparation for Deadfire, and I don't want to really dump any stats for the main character. Has anyone got any experience of playing PoTD with lets say 'balanced' characters? Any character builds that don't require dumping a stat? The idea would be that you can reduce a stat by a couple of points but that's all. Basically, I've hit a situation where I want high mental stats for the dialogue choices, and don't really want to play as a passive tanky character, but no other builds I can come up with seem likely to work without dumping resolve. Just finished a playthrough on Hard as a Cipher with base stats of M10 C8 D9 (8+1 Elf) P18 (17+1 Elf) I18 (17+1 Old Vailia) R15 Which got to the following by Sun In Shadow. M13 C11 D9 P20 I20 R19 I'm basically wondering if PoTD is playable with this sort of stat distribution or if min-max builds are necessary. I don't mind min-maxing for hired adventurers but I'd prefer to avoid it with the main. Any build suggestions here? I'd quite like to avoid Ciphers or Rogues as I have already completed playthroughs with them but I'm open to anything!