Scrapulous

Just a note about Frostseeker. Late-game rangers can do really amazing amounts of damage with it. Frostseeker gives a cold damage AOE on crit and shoots three projectiles per shot. With the Driving Flight passive and two enemies and decent player targeting, you're getting six projectiles per autoattack, with six chances to crit. The more your accuracy goes up, the more crits you're doing. My late game Frostseeker ranger was routinely getting six crits per autoattack, which meant six cold AoEs on top of the (small) damage from the six projectiles. Once you get Twinned Shot, it's 12 projectiles per attack. When firing into tightly-packed groups of enemies with high accuracy, the damage is breathtaking. It's not as powerful out of the box as hand mortars can be, but it's very strong.

I guess if I were to try to meet all these, I'd give each character one potion slot by default (how realistic is it to drink anything in a battle, much less four things? also gives the opportunity for gear or abilities to increase the base. Also tightens the tactical choice about which potion to use.). Potions would be 1/encounter. Finding more means more of your characters can use that potion type in a given fight. Probably the same deal with scrolls. Deadfire already has all of these elements, just not assembled into a coherent system (or rather, assembled into separate coherent systems). My problem with all of these (except Tarn's Respite) is how late in the game they all seem to come. I don't enjoy building around things like Scordeo's Edge, Engoliero do Espirs, or Voidwheel because so much of the game is behind me by the time I get them. Should I just get comfortable with rushing certain content and ... heh, maybe using a lot of consumables to get it done earlier than I might otherwise be able to?

But but but I might need them later! It's a reasonable player instinct, though. Is the game harder early, or late? You can't know. Will this potion turn out to be the magic bullet in a specific fight? You won't be sure until you've played the game through a couple of times. The Adra Ban discussion highlights a great example. What's the actual precious material? Surely it can't be this one that's used to upgrade my weapons to middle-tier.

Yeah, it's a very good spell. It's a Priest buff/debuff that lives outside the affliction/inspiration system, and it hits the two stats that essentially everybody wants. It's great. My typical Priest buff cycle for offense on PotD difficulty goes: Dire Blessing, Devotions for the Faithful, and Shining Beacon, another AL4 spell that does amazing work. It attacks will, is foe-only, has a meaty base AoE, and it drops 10 from all defenses and applies a burn DoT. The DoT is just a nice bonus. But between Devotions and Shining Beacon, nobody in the party has trouble connecting with their abilities. If there are high-will enemies in the room I'll have a wizard self-buff accuracy and then drop a Miasma of Dull-Mindedness to drop their mental stats by 10 before the Beacon. Also, I thought you could buy Adra Ban? Stores refresh over time, but I don't know for sure if Adra Ban is something that refreshes. I admit to being a little lazy about upgrading my gear, so I'm not very qualified to answer your third question, sorry. Thanks for sharing your play experiences, it's fun to see how people play with the feedback they get here.

This answers a follow-up question I had. Because your use case "cast all the buffs" and thelee's "cast the best possible spell at any moment" are mutually exclusive in RTwP mode.... or at least they require a lot of action and recovery time spent blood sacrificing to get the buff casts back. Blood Sacrifice as a free action sounds really powerful. I wonder if Turn Based is the ideal mode for Blood Mages.

Ha ha, ok. I see where we differ. I really enjoy the resource management side of a wizard. The things you two mention as problems the Bloodmage solves (having to decide whether to use the Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry + Rekvu's Casque, having to move to less optimal spell levels, juggling grimoires) are part of what I enjoy about playing wizards. Every fight starts to look real similar to me if you solve those problems too early in the game, so I like having to work on the puzzle of "given the enemies I am facing (kith are always the worst here), how do I manage the spells I have available at the levels that aren't depleted to hurt them the most?" That's where I'm happy, and part of why I mostly do not enjoy the specialist subclasses, because they narrow the range of available spells more than I enjoy when I'm still in the resource management part of the game. I should also mention that I play with the Balance Polishing Mod, which eliminates some of the cheese available to Blood Mages (perpetual Barring Death's Door). Thanks for explaining, you two. Also, yes, the PL boost of Blood Sacrifice is nothing to sneeze at, either. It's mitigated somewhat by the opportunity cost of using Blood Sacrifice, but I definitely felt like one gains more than one loses from the bargain.

Bloodmage is unquestionably powerful, but I also think it's overkill in a way. For most fights you have enough spells. Where I think Bloodmages excel is against megabosses: long, drawn-out fights with a lot of choreography and special needs. Bloodmage has the entire suite of wizard spells available to answer every need and the ability to renew those spells if they're depleted. That's a big deal to be sure. But in trash fights I never needed to renew spells, and even against most bosses there's plenty of power available even if you deplete your favorite spell level. One caveat is that I haven't yet played a blood mage on PotD, but I'm approaching the megaboss stage with an Evoker/Magranite, so I have the sense that I know how non-Bloodmage wizards play. Haplok, do you disagree? I think it may well be that I'm missing an important factor.

Great! And if you still have questions, please do ask. The big Deadfire Brains around here are knowledgeable and helpful.

A thread developed from an OP with a very similar request to yours just this morning. Have you read it? There's some good information in there. If you haven't read it, I recommend it. If you have, do you have any reactions to the recommendations there?

In that case I think you probably won't go wrong with Boeroer's build or with the fighter/wizard approach. Neither build will wait until the end of the game to get good. Both will start competitive and will get strong relatively early, and will keep getting better from there. Paladin in my experience has both an early peak and a late peak, but wizard has a smooth upward curve.

Very tanky. A paladin is tough on its own. Adding all those wizard defensive buffs on top takes that paladin to another level. I suspect the Blood Mage / Steel Garotte build you mentioned in that Boeroer post is based on the idea that the Blood Mage can have unlimited spells at the cost of health. The Steel Garotte paladin vampires health from doing melee damage. If you add them together, you have potentially unlimited spells. But that's not enough synergy for a Boeroer build, so I am guessing that he also recommends something like that Whispers of the Endless Path approach (to passively do aoe melee damage for huge Steel Garotte health leeching to pay for lots of blood magic) or some other third dimension of synergy, maybe with the Garotte ability strangling and paralyzing a megaboss while Combusting Wounds builds up big stacks of damage or something. Maybe both. He's sneaky that way. As far as your question about the merits of single class vs. multiclass... I'd say the balance is pretty good in this game. There's I think some edge for multiclasses that goes up the more savvy you get with the various ability interactions that are possible in the game. But you don't need those things. A lot of the fun of that is basically being able to punk even PotD trash fights and bosses because of your build/research skills. It's not needed. I was able to win and have fun and feel powerful without doing those things. I think you should play what sounds fun or thematic or canonical for your character, depending on your motivations, especially for your first time through Deadfire. Then start experimenting with combos and nutty things. Example: I made an Illusionist / Trickster character because there is some gear in the game that I normally rarely use that makes illusion spells more powerful. Is it a kick ass build? No, it's kind of clunky so far. Would I have enjoyed it on my first playthrough? No, I would have felt frustrated. But I'm really loving it now, just because it's weird and thematic and I enjoy seeing what's possible in the game. Yeah

Yeah, if you want to tank with your main character, I'd say multiclassing a wizard with a paladin or a fighter would be extremely tough. @Boeroer writes about going martial/caster using the Whispers of the Endless Path greatsword to do passive AoE riposte damage while you're casting if you want the multiclass and do melee damage while you cast. You could very easily tank with this character (wizard's defensive buffs more than make up for no shield). @thelee, thanks! I completely overlooked Spirit Shield (AL1, Enchanting, +3 AR and Concentration), which is embarrassing because I use it as my primary source of supplementary Concentration. oops! I left Llengrath's Safeguard out of the list deliberately because it has a base 3.0 second cast time (but still 0.0 recovery), which I find inconsistent and irritating.

A single class wizard is very survivable in Deadfire, even on PotD difficulty. The protective Enchantment spells that @thelee mentioned are very good. There are also some Illusion spells I like. Here they are all together. Ability Level 1: Wizard's Double (Illusions): +40 (!!) Deflection until hit Fleet Feet (Enchanting): +5 Dex, +100% movement speed, +20 Defense when Disengaging AL 2: Arcane Veil (Conjuration): +50 Deflection against non-Veil Piercing attacks (most things besides firearms and a handful of spells), Concentration Bulwark Against the Elements (Enchanting): +5 Armor Rating against Burn, Freeze, Shock, Corrode Mirrored Image (Illusions): +30 Deflection AL 3: Deleterious Alacrity of Motion (Enchanting): +5 Dex, +100% movement speed, Immunity to Engagement, +15% action speed, -3 Health per 3 seconds Llengrath's Displaced Image (Illusions): +10 Deflection, +20 Reflex, 30% of incoming hits targeting Deflection or Reflex converted to grazes AL 4: Ironskin (Enchanting): +5 Armor Rating Minor Arcane Reflection (Enchanting): 100% chance to reflect spells for a total of 15 spell levels Flame Shield (Evocation): +10 Freeze Armor Rating, attackers take burn damage when they hit you in melee AL 6: Arcane Reflection (Enchanting): 100% chance to reflect spells for a total of 30 spell levels The things all of these spells have in common are that they have a base cast time of .4 seconds and a recovery time of 0. With strong caster stats, you can get the cast times down to .3 or .2 seconds. At .3 you can have all of the non-redundant spells in that list active by the time enemy archers are preparing their second volley. By way of example, in a lategame save, my Aloth, who is a single class wizard, has after buffing himself: Deflection 144, Fortitude 124, Reflex 171, Will 149. He completed his buffs before a single attack was made in the combat (it was a ship boarding battle). Compared to my tank Eder, who has Def 147, Fort 132, Ref 140, Wil 119. Now, Aloth's defenses can get torn down by a dedicated mob or the right enemy spells while Eder's are durable. That's why Eder is my tank. But that situation almost never happens because I don't put Aloth at the front of the party formation and Eder is built to make enemies pay for trying to get to my back line. All of this to say: a single class wizard can be very durable on its own as long as you don't choose a specialization that cuts out Enchanting or Illusions and you are consistent with your buffing or you script your AI to handle it for you. I'd also say that an Evoker is powerful but probably overkill for difficulties outside of PotD. I would just go with a vanilla wizard if you're playing on Normal or Veteran, because the flexibility loss for specializing is rather steep in my opinion. But if you want big booms and don't care about flexibility, Evoker is good fun.

Yes. The ` key (same key as ~ on my keyboard) opens the console. Type iRoll20s (or just iro and hit tab). This enables cheats and disables achievements. Then type, if I'm remembering correctly, addexperiencetolevel 20 . If that command doesn't work, just type addexp and hit tab to cycle through the autocomplete options. The right command will appear.

Hmm, for some reason I thought the accuracy bonus per level had a class modifier, but you're right, it doesn't. Flames of Devotion is definitely great for an Arcane Archer, but my experience with it on Maje Isle was that Zeal ran out well before the big fights ended, so I was thinking that a bonus to acc that you have throughout the fight would be better. But you're right, there isn't a bonus. The only difference in acc is getting Marksman earlier as a single class AA than the Shepherd would get Zealous Focus. I haven't played the tutorial through starting at level 1 in a long time, so it depends a bit on where the levelup break points are, but I think I'm convinced that multiclass would be the better approach.

I might even go with a single class arcane archer so you get more base accuracy and can pick up the Marksman passive early for another 5% acc.. Arcane Archer/Bleak walker gives you the benefit of nearly twice as many special ability activations. But the advantage of Essence Interrupter on an AA is that your autoattacks hit often (+10% acc from arcane archer passive) and hard (elec damage), so I think you might not miss the additional ability activations. But I'm a big arcane archer fan, so take this with a grain of salt. I wouldn't be able to leave the character on Maje Isle

That's how I script my wizards. You can't test for most of the wizard self buffs, so I just give each one its own rule, make it "always cast," and set the timer to double the default duration, which is a very rough equivalent to "recast this if the battle somehow lasts long enough that it would have expired naturally." It's not ideal and doesn't encompass things like buffs being shortened, but that's okay. In fights that last longer than that I switch to manual control once the self-buff cycle is complete. I find that "good enough" is mostly indistinguishable from "perfect" when it comes to scripting in this game.

Uh, wow. Not quite the same, but something very like this just happened to me while trying to take Auranic. Really good guess. None of the obelisks were up; I took them all out before I focused on her. She was at near death, activated Last Trick, then cast Paralyze on Eder. It missed him, but grazed her, I presume as a result of the spell reflection from Konstanten's room. She petrified herself and I can't kill her. I don't know why she won't die, really, as I understand the mechanics, her death shield should be complete.

I took Grave Calling for a stroll against Dorudugan, and encountered something weird. I was able to Paralyze Dorudugan using the sabre despite its body resistance and despite what the combat log says happened. Huh? Eccea's Arcane Blaster was able to paralyze it, too, but I can see an explanation for that, since it Petrifies, which I understand to be a logical tier 4 affliction which I suppose could be knocked down to Paralyzed by resistance. Am I missing something, or should paralyzing using Grave Calling be impossible? Scrap

yeah i always found fireball kind of an underwhelming spell, but it's popular. Nuking against high hp enemies is hard, and really forces a nuker to explore the available spells. Grimoires make this... not easy, but doable at least. Quicksave a game before a tough fight and play through the fight a couple of times with different grimoires to test different spells and how they work for you. Getting to know the wizard spell catalog takes time, but it's rewarding. I agree with @thelee's spell recommendations for nuking, and I would add something: the anchored ray family of spells are real powerhouses. They seemed feeble to me at first, but they're amazing. They are: AL2: Ray of Fire AL3: Ninagauth's Death Ray (only from grimoire) AL5: Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring They anchor on the target and do periodic damage to anybody between you. Special note: the Death Ray is foe-only, so you won't hurt your allies with it. These spells tick damage rapidly and will quickly grind down even tough foes, especially if you get all three of them going at once. In my experience they do much, much more damage per cast than spells like fireball, and they keep ticking while you do other things. If you have Deleterious Alacrity of Motion on, you'll be able to reposition efficiently for maximum damage. It's a lot of micromanaging, but it's well worth it in my experience.

This looks like a fun build, and it's relevant to my interests. I'm tooling around with an evoker/priest of magran right now, trying to manage as a baby nuker on PotD. I have a question: in a couple of places your OP mentions "Magran's Core." Is that meant to be Magran's Favor, the axe with +2 fire PL? If not, I've been missing out on something (this is not entirely unusual).

Deadfire also made it clear that, when the Engwithans decided to retcon the universe, they incorporated existing divine legends into the gods they manifested, or that the new gods absorbed or claimed existing legends as their own. It's a pretty neat fantasy explanation for syncretism, which was a common real-world phenomenon.

Yes, welcome ("one of us! one of us!"). Indecision is the early stage of PoE love, in my experience. I rerolled in both games a LOT before I stuck with something, and even now that I've done different playthroughs, I don't play a single character straight through, I swap between ongoing playthroughs. The game mechanics are constantly presenting interesting new problems and tricks to explore and sometimes my mind gets its teeth into something and won't let go until the bite is complete. Single class Monk is really powerful. I won't say "you can't go wrong," because it's possible, but monk has a lot of ways to go right. Given that respecs are easy and cheap, there's no such thing as a permanently broken build. Take this advice with a grain of salt, but what helped me settle down on a primary character in both PoE1 and PoE2 was deciding to commit to a class that wasn't especially new to me: wizard. I think Priest or Druid would have worked just as well. They're pretty standard caster classes and won't provide too much rocky ground, imo. But I also love wizards in most games, so it felt like "home base" and a good place to start learning a new system. It sounds like Monk might be that for you, although I do think PoE monks, and especially Deadfire monks, are somewhat different than I expected based on my normal thoughts about what a fantasy monk is. But I think picking something you like conceptually and seeing if you like it mechanically is potentially a good way to make a first character "stick." I'm not especially qualified to give stat advice - sometimes I feel like I made the wrong stat choices and just roll with them anyway. I also am not a fan of dumping stats, and this game actively tries to discourage it, so I hesitate to comment when people ask about dumping. Welcome and enjoy! And if you do a bunch of rerolls before you find something you love, I certainly won't judge Scrap

Oh, sorry for my miscommunication. I was providing unnecessary detail. I moved my party into the fog cloud so that it would draw the rest of the enemies into the cloud as well, because the contstruct started the fight a little far from the rest of its friends. The Chill Fog is foe-only. I needed the ticks on the other enemies to increment the count of lash buffs.

Yeah, so the Chill Fog ticks are weapon hits, they're just not melee weapon hits. So they won't trigger passives that require melee weapon hits (or crits), like Enervating Blows. But they do trigger Stunning Shots. This jives with @Haplok's comment about building focus. They also appear to build Resonance stacks for Resonant Touch. I'm playing around with it in the SSS gul and skeleton trials, where waves of enemies appear. The first wave delivers a chill fog or two. The second produces several more. By the time the third wave arrives, the enemies arrive and are instantly paralyzed and very quickly ground into icy dust by the stacks of chill fog. It is definitely murder on the GPU, though This feels pretty broken . Notice the Chill Fog in the log triggering interrupts from Stunning Shots. It's mostly irrelevant because they're getting paralyzed at the same time, but other "on weapon hit" passives might be more impactful.