dgray62

Ciphers are one of my favorite classes in Deadfire. They have incredible utility, and I generally have no problem with PEN and getting focus on PotD. The Hammering Thoughts ability helps here, naturally. It's one of the best passives in the game when you play PotD. Soul Blade is my favorite in multiclasses, with assassin, trickster or forbidden fist monk especially. SC Ascendent is great for ranged/caster builds.

Ranger/priest could be a nice combo, particularly if you pick the stalker subclass. Stalker would make you and the pet tankier and ranger would give priest a much needed accuracy boost. Hunter's Fang/Beasts Claw would give you a great boost in accuracy and defense as well for taking on megabosses, if you metagame and prepare appropriately.

Food stacking works in my version of the game, but I understand, based on a comment by Jayd in a recent post, that it doesn't work for everyone. Thanks for reporting on this, Raven Darkholme. I was wondering about this and was thinking of raising the question, but you answered it before I had the chance to do so.

That is good to know, thanks!

I recently downloaded this mod, and tried a priest of Ondra with a mystic (soul blade) multiclass. The "low tide fists" spiritual weapon seemed a bit buggy. I had already selected Monastic Unarmed Training, and was surprised to see that the MUT bonuses were applied to the spiritual weapons. On the other hand, they do not seem to be treated as "weapons." I got no focus while using them, nor was the biting whip damage bonus applied, and was unable to use Soul Annihilation while using them.

This is very interesting, Not So Clever Hound. Where does Elric Galad discuss this? Is the idea that you sneak near the enemies, stand still, waiting for them to see you so that the battle begins without further movement on your part?

That makes sense, Boeroer. Something new to try when playing a sorcerer—thanks!

So do you die if the dragon escapes without you freeing or killing it? I've always done one of the latter options, and have never left the guild mid quest.

Thanks for sharing this with us, Boeroer. You can also generate the removable spiritshift weapons by casting firebrand, which happened to me in a previous run, as I reported earlier in another thread.

Steel garrote/blood mage is the way to go with an arcane knight IMO. On the wizard side, you have plenty of spells that can cause afflictions, which enable you to get the passive healing through autoattacks or Flames of Devotion. The great healing can totally offset the cost of blood sacrifice.

I've been playing this build solo, and have made it to lvl 10 so far. Once you reach lvl 4 and get the Moon's Well you can cruise, since you can out heal almost all damage, while dishing out serious damage with spells. Fortunately, you can reach lvl 4 with almost no fighting just by doing the quests in Port Maje. That said, I agree with Boeroer that an Arcane Knight or Herald would be easier for a first time soloing.

I'm fond of Amra but there are many great weapons in the game. As for shields, each has a unique modal that can be very useful if you build around it.

You can recover from injuries without resting with the luminous adra potion. If you're soloing, you'll have plenty of money to make a bunch of these for whenever you need them.

Oathbreaker in the hands of an assassin attacking from stealth can be very deadly. You might check out the Assassin/Devoted build that Not So Clever Hound recently posted. It's a very effective build. He chose Devoted for the extra PEN and damage on crit. This might be more effective than Blackjacket for an assassin build.

One possible great use of Black Jacket would be to have a couple of weapon slots with firearms, and then the final one with melee weapons. You could open the fight with a couple of volleys from your guns, and then switch to melee. You'd skip the reload with the firearms and also have the reduced recovery penalty from switching weapons.

Thanks! I am playing this solo, as I am not fond of playing wizards who make frequent use of chillfog in parties, since your companions will invariably charge into the chillfog. But I imagine Boeroer's suggestions to try the build with a party might be great with some modifications. One thing I wonder is, if you cast essential phantom while in Spiritshift, would the phantom likewise be in spiritshift form too? If so, that would be hilarious, a super speedy ghost cat! I wouldn't try this solo, but it might be great in a party.

Any assassin build is easy solo once you hit PL 2 and get smoke veil, which is lvl 3 if you're SC or lvl 4 MC. Probably an assassin/cipher ranged striker is the easiest, but many other builds are possible too. Assassin/blood mage is fun for AOE mayhem from stealth.

Yes, the lashes and quick speed mean you can easily deal with foes with melee, but I can see that normally chain casting spells is probably the most efficient way to go. I'm trying it out and am dealing with the dig site foes now, and disposing of them easily. The build takes off once you hit lvl 4 and get the Moon's Well; they just can't harm you as quickly as you regenerate. Prior to that it's a bit soft, but you hit lvl 4 so quickly this isn't a problem. I imagine it just flies from there!

This looks like a great build. Thank you for sharing it. It seems like a very versatile speedy spell slinger. Do you often use the Wildstrike auto attacks too?

Very true. But if you have enough stealth, you'll be able to steal from these places, as the more stealth you have, the longer you'll be out of sight before they see you. You can also use the bounding boots or barbarian leap ability to leap from stealth, and steal before they notice you. And as Haplok indicated, you can use sparkcrackers or arkemyr's dazzling lights to distract them, enabling you to steal even without leaping in.

That's right. But it's viable solo. What you can do is an alpha strike with an arquebus (blightheart would be your ultimate weapon of choice here) with Gouging Strike, then use smoke cloud to go invisible. The damage ticks from gouging strike will keep you in combat, and then you set up to use an invocation like Thrice, which will hit extremely hard. However, if you go this route, do not complete the final upgrade with blightheart, namely, killing 10 enemies with empowered attacks, at least if you want to use the Assassin's Slippers. This is because Corrupting Beauty breaks invisibility.

To really rock with Thrice you'd want a SC bellower or helwalker/bellower cantor as Boeroer suggested. You could add various gear and/or racial bonii as noted above, including the +2 electric PL from Deltro's Cage. Here you'd need to judge however if the high recovery penalty from that armor is worth the +2 PL in this case. For a skald I'd say definitely not, but it might be worth it for a bellower, since you'd be throwing out invocations less frequently that would hit very hard. Another possibility that is viable for a solo run is an assassin/bellower, hitting very hard from stealth.

I think this happened to me with a helwalker/skald cantor build once. I took an offensive invocation at lvl 1 and then a non-offensive chant at lvl 2, but for some reason my phrase cap remained at 2 rather than jumping up to 4. I abandoned the run after that, and haven't seen the bug again since, fortunately.

You make a good point, thelee. The big challenge with FF is the need for very high resolve, which is exactly the opposite of most builds in which resolve dumped. While you can make a nice combo of FF and rogue, as Haplok has done, perhaps the ideal pure melee build for FF is FF/steel garrote votary, due to the extra defensive perks and healing on the paladin side, and the fantastic synergy between the two subclasses. But the nice thing about the FF/trickster is you can keep STR on the lowish side, which gives you extra points to put into RES.

Thelee, I am almost positive that you can get the rare gems without loaded pockets. I almost always take this blessing now, but I didn't used to do so, and I recall getting Adra Ban and Sapphires occasionally. Loaded pockets seems to give you a greater chance for extra loot as well as the low level items, which are great early game and then just a source of extra cash. My experience too is that when you lack enough SoH to steal an object, it is almost always a dagger or stiletto, which aren't worth much anyway.