wildeyn00700

Not sure what you mean? You mean that Belranga is close to Nemnok anyway? Yeah, then I have to sail to Belranga, but still I don't remember her being as far as Nemnok. Even if it doesn't save much sailing time, the xp is probably worth just doing it that way. I don't remember very well the exact location of Belranga - I've only been to her island once.

https://vimeo.com/user44259461/review/347983037/1d348e341c Ok, wow. So, I'm testing my ranger/chanter to see a leveling path. All challenges on except expert and Wael and TOI. I have 52 days left (27 until Maw), I'm in Nekataka, and the huge thing is that Nemnok is dead, which gave me a ton of xp, gold, and, importantly, I don't have to sail back out there later. And I'm lvl 19 (which is critical for my char, as you then get ancient weapons and can do the Maw). My only deaths have been in testing some new things, but I have no deaths from difficult situations that I can't avoid (such as a hard stealth or dangerous combat). There will be some relatively difficult combats later. This means that I should be able to easily do the Eothas challenge, with a lot of room to spare. Also, I have a zillion withdraw scrolls, and all my bond points. I'll just have to win fights that I've already won in testing (although Galawain's can always throw in some surprises). I'm not actually doing Ultimate in this run. This is a mirror. But that turned out far better than I expected, xp-wise. Being able to do Nemnok at lvl 16 after visiting that middle-north Huana island for the Crookspur slave master is huge in terms of travel time and xp and all that. The key to Nemnok is to use Wurms and stay pretty far away, so you don't trigger him teleporting, and very rarely trigger his Siphon. Then, it is just a matter of time (took me about 2 hrs in real life of doing about 20 hps a turn, as he has 15 fire armor and a zillion hps; it feels like he has more hps than Dorudugan or something, although that probably isn't true). In the video, I scroll through my saves to show my general path, but it should be noted that I tried going to Tikawara but reloaded and did not actually go there yet in this run. I'll go there at some point, probably next, and then I'll probably do the mega-bosses.

Vampiric on the wrong beast can be a major problem, and as far as I know, you can't find out until the fight has already started, which of course on Ultimate means you can't get out of it and change strategy. One plan I have if Belranga is vampiric, and I'm not totally sure it will work, and it will take awhile, has to be in turn-based mode. You summon a ranged summon outside of Belranga's vision once the spider lairs are gone, and wait until they are on their last turn, then move them in range of Belranga and attack, after which they disappear instantly as their time runs out. I also thought of that for the Cavern Crawler if necessary. I ran into that on my first test run for Ultimate (without Trial of Iron and w/o some of the other God challenges) when I thought I could do the Maw at lvl 16. I could have... but the dragon was vampiric and there was no way. His meteor shower, among other things, heals him for a huge amount. I came back at lvl 20 and actually won easily by using a crossbow with the interrupt modal, along with the summoned polearm knock down interrupt, and that worked great. Most of his abilities take him awhile to finish casting, and he doesn't have much concentration, and his life is small enough that you should be able to win pretty easily before your crossbow breaks. The other buff that worries me is bullish on those spiders in SSS. Vampiric on the Beast of Winter may not be a problem for your build, but it might be pretty inconvenient for me. You never know when he might try to bull rush Vela in that fight. He usually doesn't, but if it does on too long, not sure. Meteor shower scrolls may help a bit to reduce the time it takes, not sure.

Holy crap, I'm jealous, lol. That went about 1000X faster than my fights go. One thing that Pillars 2 has, is a lot of depth in terms of strategies available.

ah. It will be interesting to see how my exp run goes. I'm mapping out my exp path for the first time. Lvl 19 is big for my char to reach to be able to do the serious fights. Flaune I did at lvl 11. Just did the Cavern Crawler at lvl 12. Skipped the Sandswept ruins, so I'll see if that can be skipped or if I'll end up needing it. I killed the adra ooze and such. Random fact about killing the panthers in the dig site, which I did. I got several fangs, which are used for withdraw scrolls. I believe that you do get a bunch of fangs later, but I can't remember where. I haven't seen them for sale this game in Periki's. Regarding Meryel, I assume that the reason to kill her is to unlock the next bounties from that bounty-person, in addition to the 1000 exp.

So, you spell up with it on a summon, and then head into combat dwielding? Then try to convert hits to crits. The main question would probably be whether it makes a real difference in any specific fight you have in mind. Cool potential idea, though.

1st flaune quest? what is that?

A couple of questions: When you say "19 days until Ashen Maw," you mean that you've played for 5, plus 25, then 6 days, or something like that, and have to complete Ashen Maw within 19 days, right? In other words, 19 + 25 total days left? (meaning that you've used about 36 days?) When I first read this, I thought you were saying that you had done all of this and reached lvl 17 in 19 days, but now I can see I pretty obviously misread it. Is there anything hidden to know about in Sandswept to get all 4800 exp, or is is just a matter of disarming the traps until the end of that long stretch (skipping the hard no-exp ones)? I really like that post of yours; it helps give me a reference point plus some good potential ideas of where to go, or what to try to improve on. Also, lol, after reading this post I started watching Stranger Things for the first time and I like it a lot. Finished the 1st season The kids in it were born approx the same year that I was, and also gamers. Very cool. I wish I had a group like that growing up.

Thanks. And, yeah, the as Waski said, you can start the FS quest by just going there, unless you know of an advantage to having Llengrath come and do that scripted event on the dragon. Ok, I'll do Principi and see how that goes. By the way, not that it matters, but I have to assume you can get Scordeo's edge without using Principi for the final Ukaizo quest, although I don't know that for certain.

Guys, does anybody have any insight or advice on completing the game after you'd done the Maw (and after cleaning up the DLCs and mega-bosses). I've only done that once or twice, and over a year ago, and only with the Principi. I'm thinking of just making sure I can make the diplomacy check with the undead ship (in the past I just did the fight but it would kill Vela with my build, for sure, in Ultimate), and using that to go to Ukaizo. Can the sidequests be skipped, like the ones for the Vailians and Ruatains (the ones with that corrupted forest witch and the other one with the desert big ironclad guy)? Is there an endgame path that is known to be preferred and/or simple and safest for Ultimate? Or is there anything in particular I should know or look out for? Is some other faction better to do?

Welcome, Nail. and Grats on doing Ultimate in Pillars 1. Regarding what you said about the Eothas challenge: I'd say that Hylea's challenge (Vela) is the most defining challenge, and probably most would agree with me on that. Also, Abydon's (weapons and armor breaking FAST, literally disappearing or becoming fully useless WITHIN a fight, rendering weapons and armor almost completely useless*, along with any builds that rely on them). And then the challenge that turns per-encounter resources into per-rest (especially combined with Eothas). Together, those 3 challenges are what eliminate nearly all class combos from being useful. The other challenges, unless I am forgetting one, are mostly unimportant, at least as far as whether a build can work. The Wael challenge is a big deal in a different way, but that one is about player knowledge rather than about what build you use. *Weapons with abilities that are used for the ability, like Scordeos, Essence Interrupter, Effigy's Husk, or any Crossbow used to interrupt a key enemy abilities, are not useless. Or armor to protect you a little bit from a few hits in a combat isn't useless. You just can't rely on weapons to do damage, or shields and armor to let you tank a long fight. You need summoned priest weapons, unarmed strikes, spells, or summoned creatures to do damage, as far as I am aware. Victor's (Raven Darkholme here) videos on his Twitch and Youtube have been a sort of rallying point for most of us here, as far as I can tell. He's done some great testing and theorycrafting, including discussion with several others on this thread in his streaming chat, starting about 2 months ago. Recently, he's been finding new and creative ways to die unnecessarily, because he just loves re-doing Port Maje and Neketaka... (j/k Victor - you've been great and much appreciated)

Oddly simple. The idea is that most fights are auto-win from the start, combined with Vela staying still in turn-based combat. Plus, she stays in stealth as well, if you are in stealth and if the enemies aren't close. Even without stealth, of course if she is very far away, she is generally safe anyway. That narrows the game down to figuring out which fights are more difficult, and doing a combination of finding the right approach and apportioning resources (mostly withdraw scrolls). For example, the two most extreme fights are probably Beast of Winter and the Water Dragon. For the Beast, you need to withdraw Vela each time he gets a new 1/4 down in health, as the Souls spawn right near her (and she is fixed in one place because the fight is conversation-teleported-and-forced). The Water Dragon can 1-shot her with Tidal Wave, so you need to withdraw her and/or interrupt him (so better if he isn't Galaway-challenge Unstoppable). Also, sometimes if a boss is Vampiric, it can change things because your damage is somewhat limited by summons plus perhaps what you can do with your weapon or scrolls. For Dorudugan and the Ooze, you have to get a bit more creative. For them, Vela isn't really the problem; their healing is. So, stats can be pretty much anything as long as you have high perception and int. I'd probably keep the other stats around 10. Dex may matter for a few fights where you want intiative, such as in SSS on the little pedestal against the Dragonslayers. I don't have that figured out exactly. I won that fight the first time with maybe 12 dex or so, not sure if a lower dex might have been an issue or if a higher dex would have helped (14 dex also helps at the bridge in SSS). Regarding might, con, and resolve, resolve is probably least important. Con would just be for fights like spiders (SSS) or the risen dragon, where you will draw some fire. Might may help heal Vela a bit more with Ancient Memory sometimes, so I wouldn't ditch either one. Race is weirdly unimportant also. You have those dex-infliction-immune slippers from the Deck of Many things merchant for a couple of later fights (Beast and SSS spiders), and the hard fights don't typically involve issues with afflictions. I went pale elf, but I rarely used their armor ability either. In theory, you could be a human and take advantage of the no-regen aspect of the God challenges and stay halfway dead (or halfway alive if you are an optimist...) and use that for certain times when you want to jump into a fight but aren't going to be in much danger. I picked stalker archetype for ranger for my test run, but I will do a vanilla ranger instead. Use a boar for its regen, which is really cool to counteract the God challenge (Magran's maybe?). And of course Troubador for faster re-summoning. Getting to 20 int is critical; 25 is the next cutoff for another round for your summons, but that doesn't matter much. Next I'll be plotting a good route through the game and having a re-test of a run-through with everything but Wael on.

A further update: this is very real now. I figured out the last real issue, which was how to beat Dorudugan with my ranger/chanter. Previously I beat him, but probably would have broken my weapons from the Abydon challenge (which I have turned off in this test game, but Dorudugan is the only time throughout the game it would have mattered). Ultimately, the secret to ultimate is to find the right cheese for each moment. lol. Fight cheese (the difficulty and design-laziness of Ultimate) with cheese! I say to Josh Sawyer, "My cheese is greater than your cheese!" Just some cleanup testing is left, but that was likely the only real challenge left to figure out, and it was a big one. However, I can definitely win that fight now, in Ultimate. Until tonight, I was still somewhat skeptical of my build, but now I am very confident. There may be about 4 fights that are not quite 100% assured (but each of those fights I won the first time I tried them after I figured them out), and the rest of the game should be close enough to 100%. Of course, anything can go wrong in Trial of Iron. I can say with a lot of certainty that it is possible to do Ultimate with this build, possibly after a few (or maybe several) tries. Possibly a particularly bad Galawain buff might cause a problem somewhere, like maybe on the Water Dragon. However, with enough mirror-practice, I think that it is realistic to succeed the first time (assuming practicing hard situations in a mirror right before doing it for real). The 4-ish hard fights can probably get to about a 90% probability of success or so, maybe higher. On the other hand, with the help of a friend, I realized that the upgraded armor breaking (-2 AR) invocation is really good when appropriate. It stays on an enemy for the entire fight after just 1 cast, if you have summons hitting. Very good for dragon fights and for killing various bosses, and even some non-bosses that are slow to kill, like fire nagas. I didn't realize that on my first playthrough, and it should make the next playthrough easier and faster. One man's cheese is another man's strategy!

I just had a thought, while watching Victor's 2 month old theorycrafting/testing vids for Ultimate. In case anybody forgot or forgets sometimes, if you do manage to initiate a combat while still in stealth, such as via traps as Watcha was talking about, then your recovery time while you maintain stealth gets a huge bonus (-85% I believe), which may help cut down on buffing time and stacking Salvation of Time and things like that. You can't attack with Scordeo's and keep stealth, but if you were doing non-attack buffing, it may save time in some cases.

You mean out of combat, from salvation of time stacking from a previous combat, and then you are walking around out of combat and you can invis past other enemies and not worry that Vela will interfere with doing that? Good to know.

Edit: I re-read blade cascade and now I get it. the 5% chance happens, has a duration, and during that time, which is extended, you have instant recovery on all attacks.

Hey - you won. It was amazing to watch. I spent something like 2 hours on that fight before realizing that Wurms (chanter) crush the Dire Weavers because they are immune to their powerful web and also they don't trigger tunneling. I was scared to try summoning Wurms earlier in the fight because Vela becomes visible (not enough room to get her far enough away for her to stay in stealth) and I didn't want to be left with dead summons before I could make new ones, and Wurms are pretty squishy. Is storm of holy fire the main way you kill monsters once you are high level, after you buff up and protect yourself?

Hey, I was just watching this video (the one your post on page 18 of this thread) to learn how you do fights, and I noticed something else I have a question about. The spiderlings were "exalted" by Galawain's challenge. Is there info somewhere about what the various Galawain buffs do? I've encountered them all at this point, and many can be figured out by observation (like bullish, prowling, vampiric, and some others), but I am wondering if there is any place that they are explained. The spiderlings were apparently "energized" which interrupts on crits, which was a big problem for you in that fight, it seemed (amazing you won while getting interrupted that much, actually). Are they getting that from the exalted Galawain buff? I don't recall their base stats including being energized, but maybe they have some other ability which does that for them. When you refer to getting lucky in that fight, do you mean by Brilliant proc'ing off the cloak? Exalted seems to give alternating buffs to the spiderlings, sometimes robust, sometimes brilliant, so probably sometimes energized as well. Maybe it alternates between all 6 of the highest level stat buffs.

Thanks, didn't realize that and may have screwed up a game for not knowing.

you think it was the lack of pause? I interpret it as Decadency clicked on dialogue option 3. I'm checking to make sure I don't run into an issue. By the way, thanks for your videos; they have been helpful for figuring out some things for my Ultimate testing (even though your videos aren't for Ultimate, they still contain lots of great info and demonstration).

(Not really the right post to quote, but...) Can you confirm the exact number of days of the Eothas challenge? 80? is the wiki correct on this? /Magran's_Fires#Eothas.27_challenge_dates

Which Ashen Maw fights? Wasn't it you who made the video showing how to stealth past the bridge? If not, a person showed how to do it. The other fights other than the beginning of the dragon cave, and the dragon itself, are all avoidable, as far as I saw. Are you running into some other fight that you aren't seeing how to avoid, or did I misunderstand your post?

Holy Crap!!!! I've got the power! Porokoa doesn't force you into combat after all! Game over! I haven't even fought him yet but it is surely over! I believe I've proven the concept, erm maybe with an exception of Dorudugan, who I beat but have to see if I can do it with Abydon's challenge on. All other fights can be done for sure. Also, I'm almost certain it can be done in time, because turn-based combat takes very little Eothas (in game) time to complete. For example, I beat all of those Nagas in SSS which takes forever but in-game it was just 1 hr. Update: Yep, killed him, first try, no issues. He made me nervous for a few minutes with his ancient bellows that gives him huge armor and 70 regen for 5 rounds, which he did twice, but then he stopped doing it. So, it basically buys him 10 rounds when you are solo, but then life moves on. My poor Animated Bow kept breaking its elbows, knees, hands, and ribs, however. heh. You know what will most likely kill me in Trial of Iron? Forgetting to re-program-in chants after I respec, as they get all wiped away. If I get into a fight that way, it is auto-death, as I can't do any invocations then. I've done that several times in my test game and had to reload. One thing that Obsidian really screwed up, when you hotkey your Animated Weapon abilities (like wounding shot, flames of devotion, and knock down), the hotkeys get wiped away every time that particular group of summons goes away. Absurd. If any crazy people want to try my build, and if you have questions about any fights, ask and I'll describe how I did or bypassed it. Haven't done Drowned Barrows or Ukaizo yet, but I've seen them before and I doubt very much that they will be a problem (famous last words - heh). One thing I can't remember, which would be a very very sad way to die, is if the final fight after the Guardian, is an ambush. That could be a problem, possibly. We'll see. Does anybody know about that, and does anybody know which faction is wisest to pick? Is there a faction that lets you not get attacked after you [almost] finish the game? The one time I've done it that I can remember, I sided with the Pirates and got attacked by the Huana Queen, if I am remembering right. Here's what I think: if a priest real-time build can do the Eothas challenge, then it is likely better, because it seems that you can get fights down to a science with the right priest/x build (from what I hear from you guys - I haven't played one). If Eothas remains an issue, my build may be the way to go. With my build, you can pick up so much exp at each level, and at each location you are naturally at, by winning fights, and you can win most fights at most levels (within reason) so you can probably do a more direct route through the game (I don't have that planned out and optimized yet, however). You can also probably get more gold faster, as well, in case that matters for a better ship. On the other hand, Waski's post about getting to level 17 with a bm/priest is amazing, and far better than what I could do at this point with a real-time build. I don't have the knowledge or experience to duplicate what he did from what he wrote, currently. I don't know how to beat that, but my build may have the potential to, logically speaking, if somebody knows the game well enough.

If you set a trap, enemies walk up to it but don't trigger it, right? Do you set a trap along where they patrol and then wait until they trip it? Or do you do something like combining a trap and then a sparkcracker or spell?

I agree. Losing the rest bonuses did force me to discover something (which many may already know). If you use a food that increases your power level (I just used the lesser baby back ribs b/c they were right there for sale in SSS), then a chanter starts with 7 chants, which is enough for a Troub to summon ancient weapons right away. I haven't ever seen the Porokoa fight except in a couple of videos by others, but I think I am nearly there. I got to champion of arena with my ranger/chanter, although that fight on the little pedastal sucks for me, as I couldn't use my ideal strategy. Managed to beat the dragonslayers first try, using 2-3 withdraw scrolls (cant remember which). The bear party can't be beaten with my character on Ultimate if you fight them on the pedastal, but then when you fight them in the water, you have plenty of room for Vela and can start in stealth, so you can use my strategy (i.e. cheese) on them. So, it comes down to whether I can beat Porokoa. If I can, then I believe that I've tested and won all fights that need to be done to finish Ultimate. I'd need to re-test Dorudugan with Abydon's challenge, probably, to make sure I can do him with 3 weapons, or else rack my brain for another strategy to beat him, if possible.