Gnomic

"Nobody expects the Magranish inquisition!" 3/10 missed opportunity.

The first batch of souls must have come from somewhere, so apparently souls can be created by some natural process or other. This is known to have happened in the time before the Gods, for reasons which are revealed by the plot.

Never used Twin Sting, now I wanna... According to a wiki, one of the Twin Sting unlocks involves killing 3 "gold nameplate" NPCs. Those are all peaceful backer NPCs, right? Won't I lose rep for picking a fight with one of them?

It's really too bad the 10% fire lash doesn't merge with a 25% fire lash for a total of 35%. Justice would still be bad unless its 10% lash were changed to one of the four lash-addable types.

My initial strategy with Druids was to back-line with GHS (after dropping some CC spells), and use Spiritshift if enemies go around my front-liners -- but then the "restoration" always triggers before I even Spirtshift once. What's the optimal way to use GHS on a Druid? Spiritshift almost immediately and then fall back, I guess? Or maybe Spiritshift and then cast while shifted? Is that useful at all?

Chanter is freaking awesome. What if you had TWO Chanters? Would it be better to have both of them singing Dragon Thrashed, or better to have one sing Dragon Thrashed while the other sang something else?

Girl Power Party: Watcher Pallegina Sagani Grieving Mother Maneha Devil of Caroc This all-girls group seems difficult. Not only are these all mid-to-late recruits, the team lacks "vancian" casters (unless you pick one type as the Watcher). How could this party work? Buy up 2-3 early NPCs right when you hit Gilded Vale, maybe, and then rush through Caed Nua to get access to Grieving Mother, Sagani, and Pallegina. What would be the best Watcher class for this party? Fire Priest, maybe? Sausage Party: Watcher Eder Aloth Durance Hiravias Kana? Zahua? The all-boys party looks a lot stronger, given that you can recruit one of each major "vancian" caster very quickly. The Watcher could be a Cipher to fill out the caster list, or ... anything, really. Which of the 6 male NPCs is it best to drop? What's the best Watcher class for the resulting party?

Ah, good call. That is an easy one to rest-scum. Thanks! That wiki is no longer accurate as to random loot, so I don't know if it's accurate in other respects regarding 3.06. Thanks for linking, but it's not really an answer.

If you turn off auto-leveling, you'll see that three Dyrwood NPCs start with one rank in Mechanics: - Aloth - Kana - Grieving Mother Any of those three are a fine choice for the party trapsmith. Usually I take Aloth, so usually it's him.

Are the Gloves of Manipulation still the only / best way to boost Mechanics? If so, where do I have to save-scum to find the things now?

When I tried blaming him anyway, they were pretty happy... "Best thing to happen all week." Bastards, yeah.

Same issue for me, and same setup: I spoke to Dunstan in the map room instead of by his forge.

Same issue here. Specifically, I gave the pieces to Dustan when he was in the Commander's map room (after completing the quest at Ansalom's Compass and while clearing up the Forge Knights).

I agree with basically every criticism of this quest. I didn't get that worked up about it, personally, but it did strike me as either a bug ("should be Minor Positive"), or as poor writing ("killing bandits is positive, killing bandits with minimal backstory is negative? why?").

There are a bunch of good choices. Look at your own play style -- how you use Aloth, or how much extra micro you want to do -- and pick a talent based on that. Penetrating Blast is a decent benefit for a low micro playstyle.

Edér seems to do pretty well with a two-hander like Tidefall. I tend to give him Defender + Hold the Line + Overbearing Guard so he's able to keep a lot of jerks busy, or at least tends to prevent them from approaching too quickly.

Someone had the suggestion of putting all the random loot items in a store somewhere. So, if you really wanted a specific item, you could just buy it. You'd still get random loot randomly, but the RNG wouldn't be the only source.

Maybe after clearing out the dwarves, the Eyeless were parked near the White Forge, so less travel time was necessary to come after $CHARNAME.

EDIT: derp, nevermind.

I'm doing a Cypher with Greater Focus now, and it's actually been very useful. Especially at low levels, it's great to have the option to open a fight with Paralyze (instead of always opening with Blind or Prone-Cone). If you Paralyze a jerk right in front of your dual-melee character, I bet you can get your Focus up very swiftly. Can't speak for the late-game, but I'd guess that Greater Focus is about as valuable as you can make your alpha-strike power(s). If your party has long, protracted fights, then Greater Focus loses value.

This thread makes me wish that we could program in our own character-specific AI scripts. That would be an interesting & educational challenge -- see who can write the best script(s) to take their character(s) through the game.

It's kind of hilarious to see an anti-choice opinion in a post titled "Lack of Choice". TBH, it's completely understandable for PoE to ignore some very modern and extremist "morality" grandstanding -- can you imagine the hypocrisy of a Watcher who wades through packs of Wicht abominations, trying to enforce the birth of more of the wretched things? What's the anti-choice battle cry in Dyrwood? "Carry them to term, for the sanctity of my XP farming!"

What's the best class for a dialog-centric array of stats focused on Perception, Intellect, and Resolve? Cipher and Druid look decent, and a tanky Paladin could work (maybe a Moon Godlike). What else would work well?

I love the idea of Dracozzi Paladini, but the actual dialog options labelled [PASSIONATE] seem pretty awful so far. [CLEVER] options are usually okay.

Well, it's called "Deadfire". Therefore it's obvious that in PoE2, you start play as a snuffed candle, and build your way up from there.