Belfaldurnik

Stunned affliction interrupts your chanting, too, so for some encounters you need more than a brute-force Dragon Trashed Dragon Wailed chant.

You will need summons later for sure - it would be a serious mistake not to invoke the animated weapons.

Really don't worry about the fighting aspects of your base attributes, if you're planning to play on anything other than Path of the Damned mode. With anything from Easy to Hard difficulty (and for a long time PotD mode, too, if you know what you're doing), you can play without using food, potions, enchantments or resting bonuses. The requirements for PotD mode are somewhat different, especially if you want to slay dragons and similar boss enemies. If reducing attributes below 8 and playing PotD, it can get funny. A Fighter with CON 8, for example, doesn't have enough Endurance during the first levels to survive critical hits from some enemy casters and should take precautions. Careful playing that's not needed with the easier difficulty modes. Anyway, with that said, you're still on your search of the holy grail it seems. Without hands on experience, you will never decide on base attributes to begin with. I mean, you don't know yet whether high INT will be helpful at the beginning of the game, or whether you will benefit only from the values the attributes governs, such as Will defense or duration of effects. MIG 16 is plenty, potential to reduce it even. Else, it will be a long time before you will find +2 or +3 items to increase attributes, and you will need to apply level 5 crafting to items for +2 attribute bonuses. By the time you run into the first attribute checks during conversation, maybe you've decided on retraining your character already. Sure, you could reduce PER and still graze/hit well, but perhaps not do crits often, unless you receive support or drink potions. That doesn't mean you will be a bad fighter, but it may influence your choice of talents (to boost Accuracy). If you like fighting, it's so much nicer to hit/crit reliably, benefit from the full/increased duration of effects and damage instead of facing misses/grazes more often. Similarly, starting with increased DEX for increased action speed is more fun, especially if using two-handed weapons. And two-handed weapon fighters can be frontliners, too.

- The Savage Frontier series and Dragonlance series - Gothic 2 Gold Edition (and Gothic 1) - Pillars of Eternity - if it didn't exist, probably Baldur's Gate 1+2

Truth be told, there are no strict requirements for anything to finish the game. And still there are some options for PER 19 and even RES 20 in the game. Or a soulbound weapon you may only equip with MIG 28, which involves getting a variety of MIG bonuses, especially if you want to use that weapon not only temporarily. Just as there are traps/locks with difficulty 15, which require very high Mechanics. Again, you cannot create a character to cover all options in this game. But yes, if you work with attribute bonuses from equipment and resting, you don't need to give the character very high starting attributes. 12 isn't much, however, and requires plenty of bonuses to reach 18-20.

Well, you are still afraid of gaining personal hands on experience. There must be some reason that explains why. You refer to Aufra, an early side-quest, which means you know a tiny bit of the game, but it still looks like you're hoping for one specific "build" to finish the game with once and then be done with it. What a pity! You're also not sure yet which difficulty level to turn on, but the difficulty mode may influence your build/party requirements. About the idea from "Blades of Vanatar": There are tons of ways how to play the game and be successful and have fun, too. The bonus Hearth Orlans get converts some hits into crits, so you would benefit from using a weapon that adds something for crits. And if aiming at doing crits in general, you may want to run with high PER and use one single-handed weapon only for the +12 Accuracy bonus. Something I've pointed out in Steam's PoE forum often, Fighters are durable enough as to survive even with reduced CON/RES due to regeneration, very high base Deflection and various options to increase Deflection beyond the per level bonus. They don't even need high MIG, if you give them a Sabre (and other Ruffian weapons as fallbacks) or some two-hander. There are enough options to increase MIG via items. And high INT indeed can be really nice for duration of knock-down and several cross-class talents. Extra Knock-down and Charge are among my favorite Fighter talents. And one thing for sure, I favor quick warriors with high DEX.

Don't be so sure about that. I could have truncated the quote even further to "Dialogue should follow my morale" and reply to that. It doesn't make a difference. There are various dialogue options depending on class, race, cultural background, reputation, disposition rank, attributes, chosen god, paladin order, possibly not limited to those. There are only few class-specific dialogue options in the game. A very few for Fighters. A few more for Ciphers, because being a Cipher has implications. And there's nothing wrong with that, if these are options for you, the PLAYER. If you want to discuss what's bad about class-specific dialogue options, let's discuss specific examples. That's much too vague for me. I know that quest. I've done it dozens of times with various classes. What exactly is offered if you're a Paladin? And for which Paladin order is it? That dialogue gives you plenty of options, regardless of your class. There is no reason to be "angry", and "angry" is not one of the disposition ranks the game offers, but certainly there are the "Cruel/Aggressive" options during this side-quest, too. It's offered regardless of class. With RES 20 you can cover a lot, not limited to benevolent options and peaceful resolution of conflicts. It also covers some deceptive choices. High INT and high PER lead to some options, too. Fighters and Monks certainly can do it. Cannot say it often enough, trying to build an unhittable heavy armored meat-shield, will make that character more of a hindrance.

That's not true, and since you've not given a rationale I cannot agree with it at all. In the White March, for example, related to the Pargrunen Dwarves you get special talk options if you're a Mountain Dwarf. You may get the same or similar options only with sufficiently high Lore skill. In other cases, people may approach you in special ways, if you're a Death Godlike, and they would do so based on your appearance alone. During conversation, there may be a variety of stat checks, but the game cannot offer an infinite number of options. And it can happen, that different dialogue paths still lead to the same result. If an escaped Orlan slave, who's got problems with slave hunters, trusts you because you're an Orlan, too, it would be wrong to hope for the same reaction, if being a Death Godlike with bad reputation or Cruel 4 disposition rank. Similarly, if you've supported one of the opposing factions in the city of Defiance Bay, the other factions will no longer work with you, and while in the real world you may find ways to renegotiate that, the game only offers a finite number of role-playing paths. You seem to be in search of the holy grail of a single main character that won't miss anything at all. That won't work.

You should be able to find a hint in your quest journal. It's worth checking out new journal entries regularly. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Visions_and_Whispers

Uhm, what would you do, if you played a party of six Barbarians? In this game, a Paladin should follow the order's favored behavior, which is aggressive/cruel for the Bleak Walkers. Note that you don't lose side-quests or rewards if going that path. Quite the opposite. You gain various opportunities. It's good choice for other classes, too. Class-specific talents, base stats (Health, Endurance, Deflection, Accuracy) and skill bonuses.

PoE is superior to BG in various ways. The best RPG still is Gothic 2. Not true.

There is no "leader" position. Your main character will be the talker, regardless of the position within the party. Same for scripted interactions. In a few cases you can select companions in scripted interactions. The only other important thing with regard to party formation is that the game sometimes does forced encounters, turning off Stealth and moving all companions to a fixed place close to enemies. Making the tanks the left-most characters at the bottom of the HUD can be helpful then.

Since there hasn't been any reply to this yet, just this: You should have posted this in the Technical Support forum, a bit down in the list of forums. Giving a few details, such as the screen resolution you use, operating system and version, and uploading a savegame file to some public place, would be a great idea, too. With the savegame, a developer (or somebody else) could test whether the problem is reproducible. Also, can you confirm that the earlier areas, Cilant Lis and Valewood, are not affected?

Your scout can be anyone of the companions, even with low Stealth skill. Or let the entire party move forward with just one point in Stealth for everyone. Use a customized party formation, so the trap finder is near the front. Scout ahead, retreat if you spot enemies you don't want to fight. I've played with a warrior Priest of Berath hireling a dozen times and have given that priest maximum Mechanics skill, but no more than 1 Stealth. As good a warrior such a priest can get, I would let others be at the front at start of combat. Stealth becomes more interesting, if you want to sneak past enemies, instead of avoiding them, or sneaking past patrolling guards with someone - however, even when stealing a certain quest gem, Mechanics is more helpful and Stealth skill isn't strictly needed. Or if you want to have a Rogue join ongoing combat in Stealth mode to use the special backstab talent, which isn't worthwhile often. Some players also ignore the circumstance that you can remove and replace companions freely, and removed companions will be available at every inn and the stronghold, and meanwhile you can continue with a smaller or different party.

No build "works wonders" in this game. Jump into the fray, and you are killed in less than a few seconds. That's because you won't be unhittable, and due to the four different defenses and the Miss/Graze/Hit/Crit system, a single Graze can cause devastating afflictions that let enemies get rid of you at the blink of an eye. For the easier difficulty modes, no special builds are needed. One can play the game almost like an action rpg. Hack'n'slash with a group of tough warriors. Perhaps one Cipher and Chanter for unlimited per encounter spells. Overthink it, and your party may become weaker. And if you wanna play at the higher difficulty modes, what works wonders is hands on experience.

Pity, it would have been more logic that way... Not really. You do need the knowledge/education to recognize mechanical devices. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Perception I'm almost certain this is the case, since I have detected traps that I can't disarm. However I am not quite sure whether it's easier to spot traps whilst in stealth mode or not (I think it is but haven't done any tests). It is the case. I could have written "can be lower" instead of "may be lower" to be more clear. Uh, come on. The game will be less fun if you want to follow build guides. There are many ways to be successful in the game. Spend a little bit of time in the character creation screens and read all the details there. That's most important. Then decide what you like. In the game you can retrain your characters at any inn keeper's interface for a bit of gold. Not the race, the sex and the cultural background, but the attributes and talents.

Mechanics is the skill to spot traps and other hidden things, such as levers and loot areas. No, it's not Perception as some people still claim. Skill value needed to spot a trap may be lower than skill needed to disarm the trap.

You cannot do all of that. High Stealth for scouting ahead, high Mechanics for locating secrets and disarming traps, high Survival for resting bonus options. Not enough skill points for that. You need very high Mechanics to disarm some traps, and even if using items, rare scrolls and resting bonuses to boost Mechanics, it would be tedious at most and would require you to spend all skill points into Mechanics. Rogue only gets +1 to Stealth and suffers from low base Deflection, very low Endurance and low Health. It takes some effort to make them durable enough as frontliners. Talking to people is not about "getting most answers available", but about getting different options based on your disposition, reputation, attributes (such as high RES, high INT, high MIG), race, cultural background, Paladin Order, chosen god. You cannot cover all of that with a single character or a single playthrough. Say, with high RES you may be able to resolve conflicts peacefully more often than with high MIG and intimidation or with aggressive/cruel disposition and poor reputation. Chanter, Monk, Paladin or Fighter are versatile enough as frontline jack-of-all-trades, but better let one companion focus on Mechanics.

Maybe I will return to some more testing with two stacking Preservation items some time. Relying on them increases the risk too much in my opinion. Prone duration isn't long and afterwards you take quick hits again doing lots of damage. I've played a bit with Kaoto's monks in various ways and didn't notice any substantial safety from the +100 bonus to defenses, because most of the time you are not Prone.

Add me to those, who've done it with a Chanter. Previously, I've only had Frozen Crown Solo with a Bleak Walkers Paladin in version 3. Quite an obvious class choice to put it that way, but as I've not been much of a solo dragon slayer or kiting king, the Paladin run has been done without killing any dragon. Afterwards, I've returned to doing party based playthroughs for a long time, paying attention to items that could be helpful for a solo run and creating notes about traps, locks, required skill points and unexpectedly dangerous enemies - Adragans, for example - or encounters that don't stop before all enemies are slain. Eventually I decided to start another solo run with a Chanter. No idea how far I would come, but with the notes and the experience made with the Paladin, I had a good starting point. Still had to restart from the beginning once and early, because of running out of options at Caed Nua and couldn't afford retraining anymore either. Surprisingly, it has been almost a "no consumables" run up to level 16 - including all the bounties. Brute force slaughtering and even clearing of some areas, because oh-what-a-fun! I've also used only very few healing potions and enchantments up to that point, but then came the dragons, and of course, I had to evaluate all my options including drugs and item combinations I've never used before. Total damage done: 131665 Total damage taken: 112432 Total enemies defeated: 3161 Enemies defeated: 2247 Crits: 2733 Hits: 7299 Looks odd, eh? What surprised me the most is that I could survive each of the three big dragons without kiting, and I'm glad about that because I'm not good at kiting - which also means I haven't done it often before - but didn't see any other option at Mowrghek len. No Fast Runner, no Deep Pockets, no Bear's Fortitude.

An the answer to the question is: No. The game handles the Lafda bounty as optional, so it is not needed for unlocking The Ultimate achievement.

Spelled Little Savior and Ilfan Byrngar's Solace, btw, those shields. Have you made personal solo Chanter experience on PotD mode with those fights and relying on getting Proned? Or is it purely theoretical talk? I've found the monks at Crägholdt to be quick punchers that do heavy damage while your chant takes time to hurt them and fuel them with wounds to hit you even faster.

1) There aren't many Preservation items that stack. 2) Hoping for an early Force of Anguish attack implies high risk because you would take various other hits.

I disagree with "min DEX". Fast monks can be turned into highly dangerous interrupters. I also disagree with "max PER" being important. Monk's base Accuracy is "very high" already.

And still no Chanter build is "over-powered" as some people call it. With a single Chanter, it takes a lot of effort to eliminate the Drunken Orlan or a Mercenary Brawler, which are similar.