Zoso der Goldene

After playing as a Wizard on PotD for maybe 10 hours, I can say that I understand the attempt to balance game play by introducing power sources for everyone, and having them restored between battles, and reduce the power of individual spells: In PoE, casters could make there special, high-power spells that were intended to be per-rest into per-encounter spells by just resting between each and every encounter. That made them outshine any melee-based character in my opinion, and it creates an insurmountable balancing challenge. (Whether balance is indeed a challenge to be taken on in single player computer games is another matter.) So the move to per-encounter actually levels the field for everyone, and from a balance perspective, that's a good thing, I guess. I just noticed two negative side effects: I didn't have to rest once during the first 10+ hours of gameplay on the highest difficulty setting (PotD, ToI, Expert mode (which doesn't work BTW), Level Scale All (Scale Up Only)). While the hack-and-rest fests of PoE 1 were not too entertaining to be honest, this feels a little too easy. I'm sure PotD is going to be harder to beat after they fix it, but per-encounter spells take most of the blame in my opinion. The way grimoires work - it's clearly a compromisem, and I don't have a better solution to propose. They wanted to give wizards some of their former flexibility back, but editing grimoires (I didn't miss anything, did I?) or learning spells from a grimoire were non-options for obvious reasons. But this makes some of my ability/spell choices obsolete: You find a grimoire that does what you want, and boom, three of your five spell are no longer relevant, so you feel like you created a failed character in a sense. Yes, that's only a problem if you object to respecing (like I do, but that's another discussion), or on your first blind playthrough (that's when it matters most, at least for me).

I might add that this is, how to put this, very disruptive if you're used to playing on expert mode. Good thing it's not "Auto-Level Companions", though

This still happens, also with Prone, Unconscious, Petrified. I think it happens if there is Status Effect suppression is involved.

The xp gap becomes less and less of a level as you level up. It is a disadvantage, of course, but at level 16 it's gone. And with a full party it's not that much an issue.

Everything, including lock picks, ingredients, wolf hides. Even the beer is worth 2 or 3 coppers; everywhere else, it's 0cp.

Not if you start out selling _everything_ you have (except 1 weapon each) to Heodan, which leaves you with ~3000cp when you leave Cilant Lis. Yes, that includes Gaun's Pledge, but as Heodan pays 4-5 times the regular price it's well worth it. In solo playthroughs, you can afford to get the Adra Animat early on, which is a game changer if you don't have any summons already. In a party run, you can afford 5 NPC companions lvl 2 easily.

I can only give you my personal experience on this, I don't have all the numbers or know all the possible builds. When I started playing PoE, I considered Rogue to be an essential part of the party. I stuck with this concept until quite recently, tried to tweak in play a slate of different character concepts over time. I arrived at two conclusions: Dual Wielding is best for a Melee Rogue and Rogues are not essential to a party. That being said, I'd say there are a couple of other classes with talents suited for dual wielding (and that also fit the pirate theme to some extent, if you pick the right background and culture): Barbarian, Chanter (if you think Pirate, that's maybe the most natural pick besides Rogue), Cipher (if you want to go melee, you'd want to gain focus as quickly as possible), and Monk (outfitting them pirate style works perfectly fine). I have no experience with dual wielding fighters - they always end up as board and stick guys. The same for my paladins, I just hesitate to give up their strong defense/support capabilities and go dual wield (come to think of it, I wouldn't have to give up much except for the shield, but I also have trouble seeing them in the classical pirate role - although in PoE, I found even the most unusual character concepts work out pretty well).

For me, on the "Solo Ultimate Wizard" run, it was definitely Concelhaut. I just didn't have the hammer back then, so by comparison, Brynlod, Llengrath, Alpine Dragon, and Adra Dragon were all easy. (Phantoms in Cead Nua hall were also easy once I got the Adra Animat: Just pull them, run to the souteastern corner of the map, spawn the animat and kill them with whatever - they will stun lock the Animat instead of you if you position it correctly. (That trick requires you to sell Gaun's Pledge - among other things, including your starting armor - to Heodan, as he pays 5 times normal prices.) On my Frozen Crown Playthrough, the hardest fight was actually Thaos himself - having aced everything else, I went into that fight without too much preparation and thought, completely underestimating it. Aloth got killed, which makes for a fine story twist. On my Ultimate playthrough, though, I totally overcompensated, Thaos and one of the Statues were toast after less than 10 seconds.

I agree. Generally, stats distribution is overrated in Pillars of Eternity. Other factors like synergies from party composition, talents, equipment, etc. are way more important. That's also true for PotD, and to some extent even for solo PotD. Haven't tried that in a level-scaled run yet, but I'm pretty sure that's the one time when it _does_ matter.

Thanks for the reply!I agree that there might be builds where this is different (e.g. I don't know enough about Barbarians to judge, but sounds like it's definitely worth looking into), and some heavier weapons e.g. apply status effects that are desirable. But I don't get the Rogue / Full Attack part. While it's true that the additional damage on one attack will help the heavier weapons to make up some of the difference for a given time frame, there are a couple of issues that diminish and ultimately revert that effect: * Any kind of DR will increase the relative gain with smaller weapons. * These Full Attacks do 25% or 50% more base weapon damage, but also apply a status effect that allows for sneak attacks or death blows. While it's true that it might not always trigger, or might not always be relevant (as the target might already be prone, flanked, blinded, etc.), it will trigger often enough to turn enough of the follow up auto-attacks into Sneak Attacks (for all rogues) or Death Blows (for those who took it). Again it's more beneficial to strike more often then to hit harder (less then one attack for the duration of the effect is more than enough to offset the 25% or 50% full attack damage). * On a related note, the more frequent attacks also make it more likely for Finishing Blow to make sense, or for its passive cousins Bloody Slaughter or Death's Usher to trigger. Given, that's usually overkill and depends on your build, but it's a nice side effect of striking and hitting more often.

Could you elaborate? Full attacks don't change the math speed-wise, and scale base weapon damage (i.e. effects are not multiplicative), so that should be even more reason to dual wield, because DR is even less of an issue. The same logic applies to conversion; it just scales damage on a graze or hit, so you have to graze or hit as often as possible. Single-handed accuracy only matters if you wouldn't hit at all otherwise; in all other scenarios if looked at, accuracy pales in comparison to speed. It's almost twice as good as the single handed accuracy bonus when accuracy equlas defense, and it keeps getting better.

Well, I played a CON 8 wizard as Moon Godlike (MIG 10), with food etc. Endurance was 340 at Level 16. Each time Silver Tide procs, it cured more then 60 hp, so you can think of it as ~200 extra endurance at level 16. It does this passively, which is great both on solo and with a party, and it does so in a huge circle (base radius 20 iirc) which is usually going to hit everyone in your party. The only time you which you hadn't picked this is when you're charmed or dominated and it procs...

Three Wise Men (i.e., Wizards). One is enough to wipe everything in this game, but THREE?! Other than that, add a Priest and/or Chanter to the Mix, or replace one of the Wizards with a Druid.

Zoso der Goldene, the Wizard I earned The Ultimate with. As he was a Tiefling in his former life, he should have been a Death Godlike, but I had to compromise in order to get the Achievement, so he ended up as a Moon Godlike. Stats MIG 10 / CON 8 / DEX 19 / PER 19 / INT 19 / RES 3. What h*ll of a ride that was! Most intense combat imaginable - no full party playthrough even gets close to that, and playing with a full party now somehow feels hollow. One thing that really annoyed me, though, which I didn't realize while playing with a full party, was the "move/attack/cast while incapacitated (unconcious/prone/paralyzed/petrified)" bug. It happened ~50% of the time, but never to my character. If I had to guess, I'd say it almost always happened when one of the status effect on the target was suppressed because of another, more powerful one. THAT makes your life really tough on solo POTD, as if it wasn't tough enough already.

If you do the math for raw DPS output (not counting Damage Reduction), nothing beats dual-wielding two light weapons. The effect becomes stronger the heavier your armor is. If you rely on hitting at all, you're better of dual-wielding light weapons, unless your accuracy is ~80 lower than the target's deflection. If you factor in DR, the break-even is somewhere north of 30 depending on the exact context (e.g. stiletto? dagger?). So if you don't focus on interrupt or status effects only found on heavier weapons and don't need the extra protection from a shield, chances are you should be dual wielding light weapons.

"All art is quite useless". So it comes as no surprise that the better it looks, the more useless it is. (There is a sweet spot between 25% and maybe 40%, where it looks worse, i.e. does less damage, but for bosses like dragons, it makes getting through count.)

Nicely done! Just two things: Death's Usher requires a Death Godlike, so the might bonus drops to 82% from 84% (which it would be for a human). The 20% is well worth that, though. Killer's Work would be better than Rabbit Fur Gloves, as it gives 10% on the Finishing Blow Damage, so 25% overall, as opposed to the Rabbit Fur Gloves' 10%. I totally agree!