Jaheiras Witness

Jazz Wit, Solo Coastal Aumaua Chanter (Hard), Part 10 Progress update - lots of Defiance Bay quests and tasks completed and several more picked up. The completed list is: Rogue Knight, Built To Last, Far From Home, Supply & Demand, At All Costs, Clandestine Cargo, All Hands On Deck and Brave Derrin. Some highlights and screenshots are below. Fighting Penhelm in the Rogue Knight quest: The Dozens are playing with fire: A nice set of armour to replace the mail Jazz Wit has been wearing since Magran's Fork: Fighting the thugs harrassing the Salty Mast: And their ringleader, Aefre, another Dozens wastebasket: Completing this quest got me to level 6. I increased Mechanics to 7, took the 'At the Sound of his Voice' invocation (AoE paralyse) and the Superior Deflection talent (+5 DEF). I also went to Heritage Hill to camp at the entrance (to finally get rid of the Goldrot Chew hangover I have been carrying since Caed Nua). I chose to camp rather than stay at an inn since I already have an inn bonus that will last for another rest, and I can take the +20% healing bonus from Survival on top. Serel's boon: More thugs, these from the All Hands on Deck quest: I get to use Second Wind to heal for the first time (thanks to Serel): Animats and blights from the Clandestine Cargo quest: Using the 'At the Sound of his Voice' invocation for the first time: Bragan pays with his own life: Ready to enter the Catacombs to progress the main quest: Updated character record and inventory:

Jazz Wit, Solo Coastal Aumaua Chanter (Hard), Part 9 Explored Copperlane district, picking up a few quests and staying away from unnecessary risks . We found the wood beetle figurine before completing the Something Secret task (and without searching for it: Mechanics 6 must be plenty). The figurine was soon called into action in Purnisc's house: Jazz Wit buffed with Vital Essence and Wizard's Double in this fight (in the spirit of not taking chances): I summoned the phantom once the wood beetles had been slain (you can only have one summon per character; if I had summoned before the wood beetles were gone, they would have been instantly unsummoned): The upstairs battle is usually tougher. I tried Ironskin and Wizard's Double for maximum physical protection: Annoyingly, the Wizard's Double did not last long due to Zealous Focus graze to hit conversion: But the phantom and a couple more healing potions ensured there were not too many dramas. I am very short of healing now (1 x Infuse with Vital Essence left; no endurance potions) so will have to try to avoid combat for a bit until I have replenished supplies.

I don't know exactly what happened but your other characters behaved "correctly": knocked out characters should only revive when the combat is truly finished (i.e. opponents are dead). Sometimes if you are running around/kiting, enemies stop chasing you and start walking back to their base location and the combat ends. And then because they see you again, combat restarts after a very short pause. Something like that may have happened, triggering Eder to wake up, but the combat restarted before the others woke up. I don't know, I am speculating, hard to know without seeing it. With regards to solo: I am fully expecting you to be in the midst of this action after a few party playthroughs! You are one of the experts in BG solo and it's only a matter of time and experience before you are doing it in PoE too, I'm sure. There are plenty of people who probably cannot believe BG can be done solo without dying. A Chanter really is an excellent class; even Kana if used properly, the stats don't matter all that much. For the phantom, yes you are using it incorrectly: the phantom is the hammer, not the anvil. If you look at my screenshots you will see that I have the opponents attacking my PC (the anvil, focused on defence) while I summon the phantom behind them. The phantom promptly flanks the opponent, triggering sneak attacks. With nobody attacking it, it can wreak havoc while my PC rides out the enemy attacks. 95% of the time my phantom disappears because the duration expires or combat ends, not because it is killed. Stealth is one of those skills you want to get around the 3-5 mark early in the game (for a solo character at least) so you can sneak past early opponents you don't need to fight. This is the phase of the game where it most benefits you to avoid combat. Later on you will be able to defeat enemies easily enough not to need stealth. It is not a skill to invest a lot of points in, even very high stealth scores don't enable you to get right behind opponents without being spotted and it is not really used for backstab or anything like that. If you don't invest in stealth early (say before level 6) then you don't need to invest in it at all - if you have got to level 7 and beyond, you are not going to need it.

Thanks! And yes, it's a nasty battle; good job I was on Hard and not PotD, I would definitely have lost if that same encounter in the same situation was on PotD. The silly thing is I now remember I died to that very same encounter in a playthrough quite some time ago and told myself then that it was not worth it; I think it's part of the reason why I have decided on Whispers of Yenwood as main weapon rather than Heath Harvest. So I would have been really annoyed with myself if I'd ended this run right there, but thankfully got through by the skin of my teeth. No more silly risks. It's a timely reminder.

Jazz Wit, Solo Coastal Aumaua Chanter (Hard), Part 8 Well I just did something monumentally stupid, breaking all the rules around unnecessary risks in no-reload. I decide to head to Defiance Bay. I do want to do Raedric's Hold at some point, if for no other reason than to set up the Act 3 retribution. It's very easy for a Chanter, epecially the sneaky route, but we'll let it wait since it is hardly a priority for Jazz Wit. So we go south to Woodend Plains. Start off absolutely fine: stealth the entire map, avoiding all enemies and just collecting the free herbs and loot. I almost run into a wandering lion: I may need to defeat him to go up the path; but I am currently hungover from Goldrot Chew withdrawal. In England we call this 'Hair of the Dog': I manage to sneak past the wandering lion and come across the pack. It's a pride of lions. Led by an Elder Lion. The loot from the body behind them is the Heath Harvest, which is an excellent weapon except that I have already decided to stick with Whispers of Yenwood. So I don't need it. I don't need to go near this encounter. Literally no reason to do it. I drink Spirit Shield to help with concentration and then unleash my new Watcher ability to frighten the pride (which reduces their accuracy). I have a decent spot to fight. 3 of the lions can engage me but that is better than all 5. The Elder Lion is also frightened for 15 seconds, so his accuracy will not be so great. A hit for 32 damage. His accuracy is better than my DEF (which is reduced by flanking) even when frightened. I have officially stepped right in it. I am now sinking potions as fast as I can. All those screenshots are taken just after I drunk the potions (which are healing 87 points each). So I was around the 30-40 endurance mark just before I managed to swig, which is 1 hit territory. I have also used everything else I have at my disposal: the second casting of Speaker to the Dead, the 3 Fan of Flames scrolls in my quick slots, and summoning Phantoms whenever I can. I got away with it. But that's how close it was. What on earth was I doing? Jazz Wit makes it to Defiance Bay, which is the second major milestone I look for in a solo Chanter. But Jaheiras Witness the player is off to have a stern word with himself.

So I loaded up my save from the start of the session and recruited Kana, who has a Stealth score of 0: Kana enters in stealth - nothing here: Still nothing: Here (near the chapel) we spot two shadows: But they are avoided without the yellow bar even starting to fill up: Until you get to the Will-o-Wisp, which cannot be avoided: So yes, it is fool proof even with 0 stealth as long as you don't try to march the entire party in formation.

I see. So that's not an invariably safe approach. For solo character with decent Stealth yes. But I don't think one would build the whole party around Stealth. There are other useful skills out there to develop and even high ranks in Stealth don't allow you to get an enemy close enough for surprise attack (i.e. backstab). This all is just a fair warning for those, who might think ''Oh, I could sneak around south wall right into the a main hall'' and then suddenly get in troubles unprepared. As long as you send one character at a time (and not try to move the whole party), even a stealth score of 0 might be enough, since you don't even spot any enemies if you hug the bottom wall (or if you do they are at the edge of vision). It's the northern path where you cannot avoid the spirits. I'll see if I've got a save to demonstrate with screenshots.

Jazz Wit, Solo Coastal Aumaua Chanter (Hard), Part 7 Dungeons and spiders. I'm quite low on health but I have a specific reason to press on without resting. Here is the reason: I won't be needing to rest very much from now on (other than for reasons of fatigue, recharging per rest items, getting a different rest bonus, or if I run short of these potions). Here's an example. Drink: And when the combat ends: I don't know specifically what it is about the mechanics of Vital Essence that does this, whether it's a bug or intended behaviour; but when combat ends, you can find yourself with more health than when the combat started. Luckily the effect within combat works correctly (it restores the right amount of health and endurance, which is 50 modified by MIG + other healing modifiers) or else it would be really broken. As it stands, it's a really convenient way of restoring health without resting. Positioning gone wrong again, this is not the spot I wanted to fight these beetles... But sink a potion just in time to avoid a very embarrassing way to die. I use my White Worms invocation for the first time (works great at chokepoints where bodies are piled up): I generally avoid disengaging, especially when being attacked by multiple opponents, but sometimes you just have to run: Much better spot: That gets me to level 5 \o/ I increase Mechanics to 6, Survival to 2, and take the 'One Dozen Stood' chant (provides a bonus against fear, will hardly ever use it but there isn't a single phrase at level 2 that does me any good at all). This is just too tempting not to do it: They are fighting amongst themselves :D More Fan of Flames fun: And so Maerwald. I have seen many people talk about this battle and how difficult/dangerous it is. I don't know why but I have never had any trouble with this fight, even on PotD. I take an obvious precaution in retreating to the door and drinking a Bulkwark against the Elements potion. Casting Chill Fog was as annoying as Maerwald got: Phantom kills him in perfect time, just as it is unsummoned: The new lord of Caed Nua, trying to decide where to go next: Raedric's Hold is an option and trivially easy, though I don't know if character-wise Jazz Wit has enough dislike of Raedric even to bother. Defiance Bay is more interesting and makes more sense RP-wise. Will have to think about it.

I was in stealth mode, I saw plenty of phantoms and shadows but backed away. If you stay hugging the south wall you never pass close to any spirits, I don't think you need much of a stealth score either (mine is 4).

Jazz Wit, Solo Coastal Aumaua Chanter (Hard), Part 6 Caed Nua...and since Jazz Wit just fought a very topical battle against phantoms which turned out to be an edge of seat experience, I'll go into a lot of detail for this one battle. With Kana's warning of dangerous spirits ringing in our ears, we use stealth to scout a safe route to the doors of Caed Nua, fighting only this one Will-o-the-Wisp: You can see from the map below that the safest way in is to skirt the southern wall as far east as possible. The Whispers of Yenwood, to which I add the Fine and Burning Lash enchantments: This is going to be my main weapon for the majority of the game (until Drawn in Spring probably). The main reason is the +2CON bonus, which gives me even more health and endurance as well as +4 to my FOR defence. All the other bonuses are incidental but nice. Having spotted shadows and phantoms from stealth, it is time to prepare for the main battle (in some people's opinion this is the toughest battle in the game when going for a solo no-reload attempt): +3 MIG and +2 CON give me an additional +10 FOR, as well as boosts for health, endurance and DEX. I have also prepared a custom chant of 'At the Sight of their Comrades' mixed with 'Soft Winds'. This will give me an additional +10 FOR on top of everything else, and you can see there is only a tiny gap where I will not be covered by it when I alternate to Soft Winds. Time to initiate battle: As the first phrase of the chant kicks in, let's have a look at my FOR defence (which is what the phantom stun attack will target): My FOR score is now 96...and as a coastal aumaua, I get an additional +20 to resist prone and stun. So my effective FOR is actually 116. Not bad for level 4. We are not done buffing yet: next we add Potion of Minor Recovery (which will reduce the duration of any afflictions we get by 20% for the next 30 secs) and Spirit Shield (+3 DR and +30 Concentration). I also notice there are actually 4 phantoms in this battle (I thought it would be 3) Jazz Wit retreats into a defensive corner to avoid being swarmed, allowing only 2 opponents to attack him simultaneously. There is a lot going on in this screenshot: Note that we have already built up 2 phrases in our chant by the time engagement starts, I only need 1 more to summon my own phantom to redress the odds. But I have been a little unlucky with the first phantom stun attack faced: the phantom's accuracy is 50 vs my FOR of 116, which applies a -66 penalty to the phantom's d100 roll; but it rolls a 96, which is a net 30 after the modifier, enough for a graze (graze is the best the phantom can do, even a roll of 100 would only be 34 after modifiers, it needs 50 for a hit; moreover there is an 80% chance it will miss, since it needs to roll at least 81 for a net score of 15, the minimum for a graze). The stun graze duration is only 1.8 secs (thanks also to the Potion of Minor Recovery). But being stunned for any duration stops my chant... I throw out a Fan of Flames: phantoms do not have that much endurance, so they can be killed quickly if you have the damage potential. I injure a couple of them and kill one of the shadows. My chant counter is still at 2, I am not avoiding the stuns for long enough to get the 3rd phrase completed. So I try Crucible of the Soul for more AoE damage: And then another Fan of Flames (still stuck at 2 phrases!): I am down to just 2 phantoms remaining, one of which is badly injured, but now they can both engage me and things start to go south. This is the point at which I finally reached the 3rd phrase. Look at the combat log from when I last cast Fan of Flames: I got hit by 4 sneak attacks, including a crit for 28 damage: I had to drink a healing potion to recover (circled in red). It has taken 6 consecutive misses from the phantoms attacks (circled in yellow, either missing the original attack vs DEF or the stun attack vs FOR) to get the last phrase out. That was uncomfortable. Summon phantom = win fight

@semiticgod: regarding Eder and his death, when he revived wth 1 health and endurance, he was really dead: the only reason he woke up is because you have maim before death selected (so the game maimed him rather than kill him). This is the free second life you are giving your characters by having that option selected. But next time they die, it counts and that is what happened with the skirmisher.

I think you will change your mind on INT with more experience, it is AoE as well as duration. However, as it happens, the Rogue is the class best suited to dumping INT to a minimum, but for a reason you may not have considered. I will put it in spoiler in case you want to figure for yourself. For a Cipher I would never dump INT. You have so many offensive and defensive abilities with a duration: why would you not want Whisper of Treason to last longer? Psychovampiric Shield? Borrowed Instinct? Time Parasite? Even damage abilities with a duration effect, such as Silent Scream and Disintegrate (+ the bigger of AoE of Silent Scream). I can’t think of many classes that would benefit more from INT.

Base RES 10 Chapel rest: +3 Dragon meat dish: +3 Any equipment bonus, e.g. armour +2 or more Salty Mast boon: +1 or +2 So getting +10 to RES 20 is doable . But I take your point and you are not going to know to have these buffs running all the time to pass RES checks. But then again passing RES checks in dialogue isn’t even important, other than perhaps the one to avoid nasty fight in WM1.

I think even conversation stat checks use modified stats, not base stats. I know in past playthroughs I have managed to go the peaceful route in banshee quest by raising PER from 10 to 13 with Blacsonn drink.

@Alesia Great post. That corner in Caed Nua is the exact spot I park my character. If you get it perfectly right, you can be engaged by 1 shadow only (and for heaven’s sake don’t attack it, it shields you from the phantoms). Even if you don’t get it perfect, only 1 shadow and 1 phantom can attack you. That’s a lot better than 3 phantoms + 4 shadows surrounding you. What is slightly ironic is that I often switch off Soft Winds for that fight in favour of At the Sight of their Comrades (extra FOR buff!). Another thing I am seeing on some of the character builds is high RES. Now I understand some people are roleplaying and some are not min-maxing and that influences stat choices. I personally do not like dumping RES (which many people would advocate) because of Concentration; but there is a difference between not dumping and having a high score like 15 or 19. RES is one of the weakest stats. People can argue all day about what is needed for certain roles, but RES is one of those that is widely detracted. There is even a priest spell that gives your entire party +25 RES (that’s PLUS 25, not 25 fixed). If a spell did that for any other stat it would be the most broken thing ever. I am guessing people are choosing this either for increased deflection or because the character creation screen tells them it is an important stat. We’ll avoid comment on the latter but for the former, my view is that while DEF is important, increasing DEF through RES is not the best option. It’s a 1:1 ratio between RES and DEF which is not great, considering how much you can increase DEF through abilities, talents and spells. Stat points are precious and throwing them at RES is a bad deal if it means you could have had more MIG or PER or INT.

I don’t like to generalise and I know every rule can be broken, but here’s one anyway: from the moment you reach Gilded Vale (which is with 99% of the game remaining) there is no excuse not to be running food and booze buffs in every single fight. The cost is so cheap, the duration is so long, and it is the only form of prebuffing you can do in PoE. If you want to face tough challenges such as PotD or solo, you have to do whatever you can to rebalance the odds. Food/booze/drugs are one of the few things you can use which your opponents do not. Btw for story companions you cannot change their stats even through retraining, only abilities and talents. Only your PC and custom NPCs can change their stats through retraining.

@semiticgod: bad luck with your PotD attempts, but I guess you’ve partially answered your question of whether moon godlike paladins are overpowered In terms of your reasons for failure, I think a large part was due to inexperience, and personally I would suggest at least 1 or 2 attempts on Hard before PotD. You just cannot dive into a fight with Phantoms and hope that a bit of extra healing will get you through. I don’t know whether you’ve been following my run but it’s only a minor exaggeration to summarise my combat as “summoned Phantom: won fight”. Phantoms deal a lot of cold damage, they can stun on every attack, and they deal sneak attack damage if you are afflicted (and you most definitely are when stunned). Stun-lock is a high possibility when facing them unless you take proper precautions. So you have to treat them with the utmost respect: think of them as SCS mages. If you look at your combat log you should be able to see the Phantom’s accuracy. On PotD I would not be surprised if their Accuracy was higher than your paladins’ FOR defence. Bearing in mind the miss/graze/hit/crit system, that would mean >85% chance that every strike would stun you, and that is from a single Phantom. A hit or crit would also mean a long stun duration. That’s not swimming upstream, that’s trying to swim up a waterfall. If I look at your screenshots, I cannot see any food buffs, let alone scrolls or potions. You have to be looking both to maximise DEF and FOR, and take pre-emptive recovery action (e.g. Scroll of Protection) to stand a chance. I would expect to see Goldrot Chew/Pearlwood Chicken/Meatloaf/Rauatai Cookies/Wizard’s Double potions/Scroll of Defence/Scroll of Protection etc etc for those fights. You might also consider Coastal Aumaua as a race for your main frontline . Maybe Moon Godlike is not actually the god race

Moon godlike are one of the best races and in a custom party no reason why you would not have at least a couple. Flip side is that healing endurance is quite easy (lots of abilities, spells, talents and items), you don’t necessarily want to be triggering the 50% and 25% waves (you would want to avoid having characters slip into this danger zone), and you cannot wear helms, which is significant bearing in mind the stat/skill/other bonuses magical helms often have.

Well done semiticgod on your first completed run! Regarding firearms, the Quick Switch and Gunner talents help. If you want to go all-in, you could go island aumaua and take the Arms Bearer talent to have 4 loaded guns at the start of combat. It’s specialised but effective, a Cipher would generate huge focus from that for instance and could spend the rest of combat casting spells. Or if you could accompany with an AoE effect, a rogue could do devastating sneak attack damage. Btw when you are up against very high DR enemies, in future you could try raw damage (e.g. Silent Scream) which ignores DR, or damage over time weapons/effects (e.g. Persistence) to which only a fraction of DR applies (25% I think, or something like that). And if you presage with Combusting Wounds, even better .

Haha yeah! It’s a tough fight but doable with Wizard’s Double potions. Just an unnecessary risk though for no-reload so just decided to skip it.

Jazz Wit, Solo Coastal Aumaua Chanter (Hard), Part 5 Short and quick update today. Jazz Wit cleared the Temple of Eothas. We did some fighting against spiders, skuldr, shadows, shades, oozes and even a phantom, but we avoided siderooms we didn't need to clear to get to the end. A few highlights and screenshots. Firstly, when positioning goes wrong: My aim here was to get back to the archway but I got stuck by spider webs. If I broke off now I would suffer at least 3 disengagement attacks. The only consolation was that I was surrounded by spiderlings rather than the adult spiders. So I fought where I stood but lost a lot more health than I should have done if I had got the positioning right. I have lost count of how many phantoms I have summoned. Now I have to fight one But I back off enough that I can summon my own just before it gets its hands on me... Don't think I'll be going this way: We complete the quest by letting Wirtan go and rest up at the Black Hound. Next stop is Caed Nua. Here is the character record: Couple of things I have highlighted: 1) We have defeated 130 enemies but Jazz Wit is responsible for only 28 kills :D. The phantoms are carrying the day. 2) We have done 2,698 damage but taken 1,493 damage. That's more than 50%! Shows how attritional this style is and the dependency on healing. In solo no-reloads in BG2 for instance, you would likely expect to be doing between 10:1 and 100:1 damage, not 2:1.

It’s the barbarian’s carnage ability, which applies to every strike. Every strike hits other opponents in the area of effect also. The higher your INT, the bigger the radius and therefore more opponents get struck. So literally every single attack of the barbarian’s benefits from INT

Long regen, long buffs, and to maximise time and/or AoE for their disables. A barbarian (believe it or not) is the class that possibly benefits most from INT :D

You know it’s an odd game when fighters and rogues are the best scroll users, your tanks want high INT and your mages high MIG.

Nice insight, it is all relative. People have soloed the game with Rogue so it’s not like it’s a hopeless class. It is just very limited, specialising in single target damage, and defences are quite bad. My first few attempts at PoE were with Rogue (usually my favourite class), but the lack of sustainability on front line really bothered me, so I was soon exploring other classes. I think your point about playing a rogue but not like any rogue you have ever known is spot on!