Scrapulous

Oops, thanks for the correction! I did my Priest of Berath playthrough before I installed your mod, so I didn't pay as much attention to the changes for the priest spells that you made. I should have looked it up before writing this reply

So: I hadn't considered the synergy between Weakened and the fortitude targeting of a lot of the spells. Great point. There's some internal harmony in the free spell set for sure. Something else I have never once ever considered: empowering a Symbol. I don't know why. I suddenly feel like I've been missing out.

Interesting question! I didn't know, so I asked Furrante what he thought. He said that each ray gets its own hit on a target regardless of whether any of the others hit that target: But there's more weirdness now. The only reason I know that I would have interrupted Furrante was if those hits had been crits (Stunning Shots). But they appear in the log as hits. When I mouse over them to see the roll, no hit roll appears: It's true of Heart Seeker even on single-projectile weapons, too: it appears to be auto-hit. Or at least it shows no to-hit roll and always appears as "Hits" in the combat log. I didn't know that could happen.

I think single class priests of Berath are fairly balanced casters. The Berathian spells give you some offense that priests don't usually have. They tend to deal in corrode damage, which I think is a strong type. Some of the spell descriptions are very lacking, though. PL 1: Touch of Rot (druid spell): the description makes it sound like Chill Fog, which creates a hazard zone that will hurt your team. It's not like that. It's more like fireball: the area of effect is a circle, the base radius of which will hurt your allies if they're in it when the spell fires. Any AoE size buffs (usually from high Intelligence) you have will create an ally-friendly extension to the radius of the base circle. Anybody hit by the spell when it goes off will also get a strong and long-lasting corrode damage over time effect. This is an unusually good level 1 spell in my opinion, and a rare damage powerhouse for a priest, with a targeting utility that I associate with non-priest casters. AL 2: Holy Meditation: this is a pretty good buff in the early game, before your team has their concentration abilities in place, but I found less use for it later on. AL 2: Spiritual Weapon (Berath): It's a greatsword with a corrode lash. This is a strong weapon all game long and makes a great fallback if you need to change damage types and didn't plan ahead. If you want to multiclass with something martial that likes two handed weapons, you could make this your primary weapon, but I think weapons you find later, like Marux Amanth, might make you reconsider that plan. PL 3: Spreading Plague (druid spell): gives the level 1 Dex affliction, Hobbled, and the level 2 Con affliction, Weakened to the target. After that, at regular intervals, the target will emit "jumps," basically recasts of the spell. The jumps seem to happen whether the target is alive or dead. It defaults to 5 jumps; my endgame Priest of Berath has 11. I'd say this spell is good for the beginning of a tough fight with several enemies, but the later you cast it, the less impact it will have. If you have different results, I'd be interested in your take. This does give you a fortitude-targeting ability in PL 3, which priests besides Xoti otherwise don't have. PL 4: Divine Terror: drops the tier 2 Resolve affliction, Frightened for a base of 30 seconds. 30 seconds is a long time, and the fact that this debuffs resolve means in practice it's longer than other 30s spells would last - and will make anything else you do to affected enemies last longer, too. Frightened is a great affliction imo: it drops enemy power levels by 3 and makes them unable to use abilities that target your party. I'd say this is a strong free spell, despite the fact that it's something any priest can get. PL 5: Rot Skulls (druid): there was a period where this spell was seriously broken in PoE 1, and it's hard for this non-broken version to live up to the impression formed during that time. But it's good. The description fails to make clear that the aoe corrode damage of the skulls is foe-only. This is similar to Kalakoth's Minor Blights without the advantage of exotic damage types. The projectiles do crush damage to the target and the aoe effect gives a corrode DoT to enemies in the area of effect. Having a summonable ranged weapon alongside a summonable melee weapon can add flexibility if you think of them as additional weapon slots. Not a bad bit of tactical flexibility. PL 6: Salvation of Time: this is a spell that people use in combination with other abilities to break the game, so getting it for free is a pretty good deal. None of the four spells in this level are bad, though. PL 7: Rusted Armor (druid): reduce one target's armor rating by 4. That's good for boss fights or certain constructs. Unique among your PL7 options in that it targets Fortitude. PL 8: Symbol of Berath: each symbol puts a mark on the ground that pulses damage and an affliction to enemies in the area. Berath has a strong damage type, corrode, and an okay affliction, Weakened (-5 con, -50% healing received). Weakened can be great when healing is part of the enemy's kit, but some of the other symbols appear more useful to me (Magran and Eothas). PL 9: Hand of Berath: this gives a single target -10 to all power levels for a base of 30 seconds. That's no joke, but it's not as broadly useful as the Skaen, Eothas, or Magran PL 9 spells. PL 9: Incarnate (Berath): I really like Berath's Incarnate. You lose 1 PL for 120 seconds, which is not nothing. But in exchange you get a giant bruiser, the Pallid Knight, and a giant caster, the Usher. Right after this spell might be a good time to drop your free AL 2 spell, Holy Meditation, to reduce the time you lose a PL. I haven't done much multiclassing with priests, so I'll leave that commentary to wiser posters.

Do the Chill Fog damage ticks build the Frosted Edge stacking +2% freeze lash? If so, there's no downside to, for example, killing a weak skeleton with your first hit, because the Chill Fog will quickly buff itself up. Unless the Chill Fog instance snapshots the weapon buffs at the time it's created. Hmm. Also, are the Chill Fog ticks weapon attacks? I can't imagine they are, but the fact that they get the weapon's buffs makes me wonder. Some class abilities modify or interact with weapon attacks, so if they count as weapon attacks there might be some fun interactions in there. I'll play around and see what I can find. Edit: Okay, so I did some testing. Grave Calling's Chill Fog does indeed increment the stacking lash per Chill Fog tick. The Chill Fog is also not a snapshot of the weapon buff state at the time the Chill Fog is cast: it can build itself up to 10 stacks of Frosted Edge and then start triggering the Grave Bound Paralysis on a crit. But, the Chill Fog ticks did not apply the Monk's passive Enervating Blows, which require "Melee weapon Crits." How I tested: I went to fight Ikorno, who has one Ironclad Construct with him. I killed the construct with Grave Calling, let the Chill Fog drop, then maneuvered my party into it and watched the stacks build to 10 and then paralyze Ikorno: Edit #2: Holy crap, this weapon is insane if you have it on a high-damage character and you're going through a dungeon filled with vessels (I'm testing it in the necropolis under Neketaka's Temple of Berath). The lash stacks last 60 seconds by default, and the duration is subject to passive Int buffs, so it's very easy to get 10 stacks in your first fight and then keep them until the next fight... all the way through the dungeon. Fights get a lot easier when you open by paralyzing the first thing you hit. I'm rebuilding Pallegina to supply me with cheap, weak skeletons

Holy crap! That's stupidly good. I suppose that's why the duration is so short. Thanks for letting me know. Update: I started playing around with the Ravager with other gear setups. It's limited by what I have on hand, of course. I wound up using the Fair Favor hat for 10% hit to crit and +10% crit damage, Necklace of the Harvest Moon for a small recovery speed buff on crit, Devil of Caroc Breastplate, Hylea's Talons, Voidward ring, and Belt of Magran's Chosen. For weapons, I don't have any of the stronger sabres yet, so I took the unlocked Modwyr and the Squid's Grasp rapier. It was a huge change in the character. Much, much more damage coming out. @Haplok was right about the value of a fast offhand triggering slow mainhand crits with Swift Flurry, and the occasional situation where Swift Flurry triggers itself multiple times is fun. I did get myself knocked out during Frenzy once by the looters in Hasongo, who were all upscaled to one skull mobs, but the upscaled naga, even the big pack guarding the aboveground passage from east Hasongo to west Hasongo was not a problem. I'm going to rebuild Eder back into a tank and commit to this high-offense approach for the Ravager. Thanks to all of you for the suggestions. This is much more fun to play.

@Elric Galad: Yes, my pistol ranger uses whirling strikes with Lover's Embrace and Scordeo's Trophy as a fight opener to get big DoTs on everybody in the range of the power (which is longer than the range of the dagger), and then get speed buffs from everybody in pistol range. It's a nice way to start the fight killing or nearly killing some people outright and hurting a few others and with -20% or -25% recovery time. It's a strong power with a lot of weird, hidden facets. @thelee: Oh, good catch. Here's Scourge of Bezzello: A much tighter spread than Frostseeker! Here's Frostseeker in the same situation: So I'm guessing that what determines the angle of the rays is just the animation. Frostseeker shows the three arrows emerging from from the bow on autoattacks at about that wide angle before they turn and converge on the target. It seems weird that something so relatively important would be left to something as unbound by balance concerns as animations, but there it is.

I have not historically been a fan of the Ranger AL9 power Heart Seeker. It doesn't benefit from Driving Flight, it's not foe-only, which makes the line projecting straight out from the user problematic for a ranged character, and it's reall y expensive in terms of Bond. I found it hard to justify using it over other Ranger powers. But I installed Elric Galad's Balance Polishing Mod and complained about even his version of the power. He pointed out that the Enfeebled affliction from the power has no duration, meaning it won't end naturally. That convinced me to give it another try. So I have been playing around with it. Then I tried it while using Frostseeker: Each projectile gets its own, miniature Heart Seeker (usually the aoe line is thicker). The spread is tighter with Xefa's Empirical Explication, but it's overall wider after a few feet than the default ability: Unfortunately the ability is still limited by Xefa's range, so my character in the situation above would run toward that marauder and spoil the effect of the spread. So doing this with a blunderbuss is less useful than with Frostseeker. Are there other multi-projectile weapons I should try this with?

Thanks for the replies, everybody. @dgray62, that's a good idea, probably a much better approach to the "winter set" idea than mine. I would instead go blunderbuss/winter shield. You don't need an empty hand for the Forbidden Fist power, so that part of your approach would be unaffected. The gear itself provides quite a decent amount of tankiness, and you could even get some ripostes on ranged attacks with the blunderbuss. It would mean giving up the winter mace, but it's not a great item anyway. I think I'll have to add your idea to my list of character concepts to play. Thanks! @Haplok, I've seen Swift Flurry cascades before, they're really devastating. I didn't know that offhand hits trigger mainhand Swift Flurries, though; I can see how Scordeo's Edge is very nice in that situation. I hadn't considered dual wielding as a way to maximize weapon-based accuracy buffs, but it makes sense if I'm looking for crits. I think this character has already reconciled the Valeras and the Bardattos, so getting into the Valera vault for Rannig's Wrath might be impossible by now (I think you need the Bardatto vault crackers to get in, right?). I might have to find something else for the offhand. @Boeroer, I tried self-afflicting with the Cow Hoof Boots, and had two problems. First was that the confusion duration on Frenzy wasn't very long (it diminishes with Resolve, I think, and was much shorter than my frenzy duration), so the window for self-affliction was fairly narrow; I was reluctant to reactivate Frenzy so soon after the last activation because sometimes the only thing that prevents me from picking up an injury is that Frenzy has expired. I may have gone too heavy on Res and Mig (Edit: this felt mechanically wrong to me, so I tested. I was wrong. See note below) The second problem was that moving all the time in combat earned me disengagement attacks. Am I not using enough finesse? Maybe there are small steps I can take that won't cause disengagement but will be big enough to self-afflict with the Hoof Heels? Edit: Ok, so why was I seeing confuse drop before Frenzy? It turns out Xoti was dropping Suppress Affliction on me, which is obviously a pretty big problem for this build. I loaded up and was sitting in Furrante's lair in Dunnage, so I attacked the pirates. They quickly dropped my team, and I hit Frenzy and watched. I wasn't dying, so I started fighting back. There are a lot of priests in there, so the fight wasn't going anywhere until they ran out of spells, by which time my Rage had long been depleted. I still wasn't doing enough damage to overcome whatever renewable sources of healing they had until I started abusing Blade Turning, which is a great skill if you have a high deflection and are surrounded by enemies. Furrante absolutely housed himself with a couple of crits, which I thought was funny. Anyway, I think my problem with confuse duration has been cleared up; I just need to reprogram Xoti.

Sounds like I was working too hard at the idea of a "set" of gear I'll try fists. I usually go with weapons because they can come with sexy lashes or on-crit effects or whatever, but I suppose when it comes to delivering a lot of crits in a short period of time, fists will probably be a strong approach due to their frequency and relatively high accuracy.

You should probably assume that any build that doesn't specifically mention turn-based is a RTWP build. Another approach is to compare the date of the build post with the date of the patch that introduced Turn Based combat. But hard core build brains I know of around here are mostly RTWP folks. You do sometimes see other people asking this question and some breakdown of the differences - like action speed buffs become worthless in a TB world, for instance (or so I have read - I have never played TB).

Yeah, I think it's conceptually interesting but functionally a mess. I'm not sure the winter gear is really salvageable in terms of being an "I'm always afflicted" set unless you just have your casters keep including you in their debuff aoes. It sounds like you think the way to maximize the set is to play a fighter, who in my experience doesn't need what the winter gear brings to the table in order to be a tank. It may just be a vanity project where you like the look and so make a Rymrgand fighter. Bummer. Do you have thoughts about where to take the Ravager gear-wise instead? I really like the class combination when I let go of this concept, but I'm not very savvy with non-weapon choices for barbarians. It seems like barbarians mostly want to increase crit chance (at least based on seeing what their tasty passive powers can do), especially since the balance tweaking mod enabled carnage crits. I'll scan some barb threads for ideas, too.

So I did a weird thing and I'm not loving it and I'm looking for suggestions on a different direction for the character, which has a lot of promise. The weird thing: I wanted to make the winter set items (helm, armor, shield, mace, cloak, boots) into an effective equipment set. They mostly reward having afflictions and spreading them to enemies. I decided to make a character build around that idea and then use console commands to give that character the items from the beginning of the game. The character I chose was a Berserker Barbarian / Forbidden Fist Monk Ravager. My thinking was that the passives on both classes would work well with being afflicted: Berserkers confuse themselves, and Forbidden Fists gain wounds and health from hostile effects expiring. The armor gives +5 to all defenses while afflicted, and a weak heal over time and +2 to mig, dex, and con while afflicted. It also has a 1/rest ability that inflicts weakened on the user in exchange for +20% action speed. The cloak gives +5 to all defenses while afflicted. The shield gives 20% graze to miss while afflicted. The mace has a 25% chance to spread a random T1 affliction to a random enemy when the wielder is hit by an affliction and increases affliction duration on nearby enemies by 20% when the user scores a kill. It was really rough going at first. Now I have left Neketaka for the first time and the build is actually very hardy, in part because I have the Barbarian skill Savage Defiance, which gives the t3 con inspiration, which comes with a good heal over time. And barbarians are good at spreading afflictions around. But it feels like I'm using a ferrari to haul ore. The winter gear has some offensive elements, but is mostly oriented toward defense. That helps make this character a fine main tank for my party on PotD, but his damage is pretty bad, and this is with @Elric Galad's fine balance tweaks improving the barbarian kit. He attacks slowly, the mace doesn't hit especially hard, and as I collect weapons like Wahai Poraga, Amra, and Modwyr, I start thinking wistfully about what the character could do offensively if I left the winter set behind. Sometimes I switch over to Amra and have fun using Frenzy without confusion and dropping big hits on enemies, and I think about all the great two handers out there. So I'm interested in suggestions for other approaches. This is my only frontline character, so wahai poraga looks like a fun option. One thing I have thought about is trying to use the Forbidden Fist class punch as my offense; I shied away from that early on because incurring more self damage while frenzying was a quick recipe for a dirt nap in the early levels, but it might be more sustainable. And maybe as I get into the higher ability levels (I'm at 4 now), this winter set approach will fill out. But maybe this was just a dumb idea, the winter set isn't especially fun, and I should just shed all the ice and embrace this character's inner savage with a switch to one of the sexier two handers and some more fun armor options (devil of caroc breastplate is always so tempting on a dual-martial multiclass). Thoughts? What gear does your ravager like? Are there particularly good options I'm missing with my janky winter set approach? Thanks for reading, Scrap

Arcane Assault is a foe-only source of aoe Daze, but you can't choose it on level-up and the only grimoire that has it is the main character's starting grimoire, which I think is probably nobody's favorite pick. I doubt @thelee's "Three Spell Aloth" wastes a quickslot on the default grimoire for very long after Port Maje, for instance

I think you just crossed the threshold with this post. I think it's at 5 posts. Hopefully you get replies from a better player than me. I love playing wizards, but am not great at it. Here are my thoughts about Aloth and wizards generally. On normal difficulty using them as nukers is very viable. On PotD the enemies have much more health, there are more enemies, and they have better defenses, while you don't do any more damage than you did on normal. Using wizards as nukers in this context is tough until you have a deep array of spell levels to draw from, and even then it's usually not the most effective thing. What you want is to debuff enemies or create situations that multiply the damage your team is doing. If those spells also do damage, even better. A wizard's first priority is to protect herself. Wizards can actually become quite tanky with the right self-buffs, and with good stats the cast time on those can drop to .3 seconds, meaning you can get all your meaningful buffs off in less time than it casts to get a single nuke done. You also want, imo, to get Deleterious Alacrity of Motion in as an early cast; spellcasting velocity matters, and a wizard typically has a lot of spells that she wants completed all at once in any given situation. The faster that happens, the sooner the fight swings decisively in your favor. The next priority is to apply the nastiest debuffs you can to your enemies. This is hard on PotD (enemies with high defenses) and really rewards being aware of the different defense types and which spells target which defense. Mouse over each enemy to see where the weakest common defense stat is, then choose your aoe spell that hits that defense and drop it. Afflictions are mostly pretty damaging, especially level 2 and higher afflictions, so you ideally have an arsenal of different aoe spells that apply meaningful afflictions and target different defense types. I'd call that any wizard's #1 priority on PotD. Again, doing damage is a bonus. Combusting Wounds is great because it's a damage multiplier. It doesn't do damage directly. It puts an effect on each target it hits that gives them a stacking damage over time effect each time they take damage from any other source, including whatever damage spells you cast and whatever your teammates do. My only gripe with it is that it's hard to see the damage it does. Chill Fog is an aoe spell that drops a patch that pulses a damage + blind affliction at regular intervals. You can see how this goes well with Combusting Wounds, because each Chill Fog pulse adds another fire DoT to anybody affected by both spells. It's an early powerhouse combo and never really becomes obsolete, just less obviously the best thing to do as you get more options. Another thing to pay attention to is whether spells are Foe-only or not. Some spells can be finicky to target - non-foe-only cones, for instance, can be tough to maximize the value with in close quarters since you often have to run to the ideal spot for best coverage. Also, once you have debuffed enemies, their defenses will have dropped and your spells that target that defense will become more damaging on average (because your hit numbers will rise correspondingly, resulting in more hits and crits). So pay attention to which damage spells target which defense so you can optimize your post-debuff damage contribution. Once the enemies are thoroughly debuffed and their game has been completely ruined, then go ahead and start dumping pure damage spells; whichever you have remaining. Your job is basically done and you are essentially helping your team with the clean up. At early levels you can run out of spells and fall back on dumping autoattacks on enemies or using scrolls that don't seem like they'll be critical later (low level damage-only spells, mostly). You can also use the renewing necklace of fireballs trick (putting a nearly depleted necklace in your stash with a full necklace makes them both full) once you have two of them to dump fireballs on people if that doesn't feel exploity to you. At least, this is how wizards have worked for me on PotD. On Normal (and in the original PotD, honestly) they were basically gods dispensing various forms of punishment or death at will, but on the current game they need to focus on turning the enemy's offense into pudding. Unfortunately, choosing the optimal spells on levelup really requires a bit of metagame knowledge about which grimoires are out there, containing which spells. With that kind of foreknowledge, you can get the optimal grimoire as soon as possible, and you can focus your spell picks on spells you always want in every fight and leave the situational spells (damaging spells that target specific defenses) to the right grimoire that you then ideally swap out for the correct fight. It's not breathtakingly suboptimal to play without this, but if you're like me you get to a point where you want every spell level to have one aoe debuff, one buff, and one useful damage spell, so if you whiff with a vital spell and have to deplete that level with a second cast of it, you're not completely without backup options from other spell levels. Not necessary for your first playthrough, though.

I can't comment on your main character concerns - I haven't played Ciphers in Deadfire yet. I can say that a Berserker can be really dangerous to itself if you have high might. But well scripted companions will heal them and you eventually get a sense after many fights of when to pop the athletics heal or drink a potion. Eventually Berserker gets at ability level 4 an ability called Savage Defiance, which grants the Robust inspiration for a base 25 seconds. That inspiration makes you heal over time while it lasts, and the power of the heal is affected by your strength. It's a good offset to frenzy self damage; I usually activate it right before I activate Frenzy. I have also experimented with using the Amra axe, which can grant the default Frenzy power (not the Berserker self-damage version) on a crit or on receiving damage, as a way of having my cake and eating it, too - I can Berserk when I want to, or, for fights that don't need it, I can just let the axe Frenzy me. It's not the most satisfying thing, but it's an option in a build I made for myself that isn't working out the way I had hoped Gorecci Street: I always do this last. I take Eder and Xoti straight to the Engwithan Ruins, pick up Aloth, finish the Ruins, then clean up the island - explore all the little areas, go to Vilario's Rest with Xoti and let her clean up the spirits who for some reason didn't follow the Watcher, and then head to Port Maje and walk to Gorecci Street. That does two things. First, it means I am approaching the fight from the south end of the map, which is huge. You can engage and fight the southern group of looters while the two non-ranged people from the northern group slowly slog their way into melee range. It does mean the spellcaster and an archer start far away, but you could even stealth a melee MC up toward them before the fight starts and engage them in melee if you wanted. I don't usually. Second, it means you have a fourth party member and a spellcaster of your own. Aloth is a dps boost to your party and will help. He usually attracts aggro and gets KO'd after doing some big damage, but that's ok for me in that fight. I should mention that I don't micromanage my companions, I let them roll with their scripts. If you micro them, the fight should go better. I do have a lot of experience with companions. Here are my thoughts: Eder: I always go with a Swashbuckler build. Early on with PotD, he can be knocked out, but you can make him tougher. The most obvious things you seem not to be doing are: 1) sword and board. This is a big boost in survivability. 2) Having the board be a Medium Shield and activating the modal. Another big boost in survivability. 3) Defensive stance. Your third big boost in survivability. Doing all three of these make Eder rather tough, even for difficult fights like Gorecci Street. That's not to say he won't be knocked out - Port Maje Isle is rough times on PotD. Taudis' post in this thread is good advice for building Eder as a tank: Pallegina: I always use her as a paladin/chanter with a two hander as a utility player: she does damage from behind the tank and has the frankly amazing Paladin suite of heals, buffs, and utility powers to deploy when things get rough and selected Paladin Chanter chants to keep the party going with passive healing, which I have found makes a big difference in PotD. This build wants to be micromanaged but I have found it works well with even default AI scripting: Aloth: I take him as a SC wizard, because every party I build, even ones with an MC wizard, appreciates another wizard. I choose spells for him that are party friendly, because the AI targeting is not always forgiving. I also customize the AI - the default wizard AI is pretty weak. If the only thing you do is add a set of instructions to get the .4s casting time / 0s recovery time wizard buffs cast at the beginning of the fight, Aloth survives many, many more battles. Or just micromanage him yourself. There's a build for Aloth here that is very focused on the lategame, but enables some pretty decisive actions against megabosses on PotD: Xoti: Ascaloth's Valkyrie of Gaun build is strong and uses some synergies from Xoti's custom subclasses to do things that a main character Contemplative could not do. It starts out fine and gets very good with the right gear. It even comes with a provided AI script, although I wouldn't use the script until you have the two handed sword and bow, because it focuses very much on Xoti's "offense is also defense" abilities that require those weapons to shine.

Aha! I failed to notice that the Enfeebled affliction from Heart Seeker is permanent. That definitely changes my opinion of it; I see the utility for boss fights. Thanks for explaining!

Hi. I'm a little late to the party. I installed the patch for an arcane archer playthrough, and I am very much enjoying it. I am using Ranger powers that I would never use before, like Deadly Surprise and Bonded Fury (I love that this is more like other self-buffs now with no recovery), and in general this feels like a very good set of buffs for Rangers. Power choice is much less obvious now. I will say that I still find Heart Seeker to be a weak power - it's rare to get enemies lined up without allies in the area of effect, and hits don't trigger Driving Flight, while Twinned Shots does. It's hard to imagine a situation where Heart Seeker is better than Twinned Shots in terms of damage, so it becomes a debuff power. By this level, an Arcane Archer with Frostseeker is dealing so much damage that the debuff here seems like a big waste of Bond. I'm not sure how to fix it, but maybe making it Foe-only would help? Scrap

The gloves are Rokowa's Fingers. You can buy them at the Dark Cupboard after completing Fassina's quest.

There are three ways to get around that map: 1: doors; 2: sunbeam time travel; 3: the one weird portal that @thelee mentioned. And yeah, what's walkable and what isn't is not always visually clear. I did this quest for the second time yesterday, and despite knowing that the portal existed, I still did a fair amount of backtracking and flailing around. The quest was less annoying than the first time, but it was still somewhat irritating. And the second time around it didn't have the cool factor of the subject and exposing the event that led to Eora's entry into the Atomic Age (or equivalent) to relieve some of the irritation. It's also not intuitively obvious, but: if you loot a particular stash in the morning, it's still un-looted in the afternoon and at dusk. Loot everywhere in every time. Edit: oh, and you can easily miss on a really good armor by assuming that one of the bodies being rocketed off the bridge and hanging in space a good 11 feet away from the nearest solid surface is not lootable just because it's beyond the reach of human arms. You can reach it.

For pistols, I can recommend both SC Ranger and SC Monk. I have also played MC Ranger/Monk, but pistols really want the PL 8 and 9 monk and ranger abilities. Between the three options, I find Monk to have the highest performance. Here are the abilities I think are important for a pistolero: SC Monk: Lightning Strikes upgrade to Swift Strikes: usually Swift Flurry is the pick, but it only works with melee weapons. A 15% lightning lash is very nice to have instead. Instant activation and no cooldown. Enduring Dance upgrade to Dance of Death: good pistols tend to have on-crit effects, so you want to build accuracy where you can. Instant activation and no cooldown. Stunning Surge upgrade to Stunning Blow: again, you want to be critting, so you might as well get your mortification back when you do. You will be doing a lot of stunning as a SC pistol monk, not just with this ability. Duality of Mortal Presence just because +10 Int is too good to pass up. PL8: Resonant Touch - not a great power until you get to PL9... PL9: Whispers of the Wind: this blows the doors off most of the Ranger kit, unfortunately, because getting 5 full attacks in the span of a couple of seconds is just too good. WotW is also cheeseable on its own, like by adding Ajamuut's Stalking Cloak for free stuns on every target. I typically open with Scordeo's Trophy equipped; if opening from stealth, using Stunning Surge. If the battle starts unstealthed, then you'll immediately buff and launch Whispers of the Wind, which will give you ~5 hits from Scordeo's Trophy, which gives you a nice -25% Recovery Time buff from the Opening Barrage enhancement. If you have 5 wounds when your first WotW is done (sometimes yes, sometimes no), then you switch to Thundercrack Pistol (if you want CC) or Eccea's Arcane Blaster (if you just want to do damage) for the next WotW. Thundercrack Paralyzes its target for 2s on a crit, so depending on your accuracy you may be locking down a lot of the fight right there. 2s doesn't sound like much, but it's quite effective in shifting the momemntum of a team fight. Eccea's does raw damage with a powerful "imbued ammunition" second hit, and a chance to fire multiple times with the Fractured Bullet enchantment, so it does a lot of damage and shines once Scordeo's Trophy has stacked its recovery time buff. While you wait for wounds to build between WotW activations, I usually toss Stunning Surge around with Eccea's, but it depends on the need of the fight. Edit: I forgot to mention Resonant Touch. WotW will spread resonant touches all around. When you feel that enemies have enough (they can each have more than 10 stacks, but 10 is the maximum that will take effect, so I tend to use it once I see 10 stacks), you can activate the power and dump a lot of raw damage all at once on every enemy with stacks. After a couple of WotW activations, it can be a great clean up power. SC Ranger: Standard Ranger accuracy-increasing powers like Marked Prey and such are great PL5: Driving Flight is a superstar. Getting a free second hit on another enemy who is within a ~150 degree arc (I think? Maybe 180, but sometimes I'm sure somebody will get hit and they don't, so... ) behind the first target is amazing value for a single power pick. Weapon abilities activate on the second hit, so everything your pistols can do to the primary target can be done to the secondary target. This also works for abilities like Hobbling Shot. I get Driving Flight as soon as it becomes available. Thorny Roots: fast-casting, foe-only AoE immobilize and pierce/slash damage. The only thing keeping this from being as good as many wizard spells is the small radius. But: foe-only. It's good. PL8: Twinned Shots. This is fantastic. For 2 bond you attack your target twice. Each attack is subject to driving flight. You can open a fight with Scordeo's Trophy and have four stacks of the buff before the enemies have acted. Or with Thundercrack Pistol you get two chances to paralyze two targets. Or with Eccea's two chances for split shots, which is very fun when it happens. PL8: Whirling Strikes. This is another very good power, but counterintuitive for a pistolero. It requires a melee weapon, but uses a full attack and will fully use an offhand ranged weapon. One great way to use this is to open from stealth with the Lover's Embrace dagger and Scordeo's Trophy: everybody in range of the power (which is considerably further than melee range, FYI) will be hit with the massive raw damage DoT from Whirling Strikes. Everybody within range of the power will also be hit with the never-ending raw damage DoT from Lover's Embrace. And everybody in pistol range (much further than the power's range) will be shot with Scordeo's Trophy. I really wish it could be paired with a rogue for backstab damage, but Mick Jagger tells me that I can't always get what I want. In practice I'm usually able to get five stacks or so from Scordeo's Trophy and destroy or nearly destroy three enemies who were in melee range - and they won't live long with those DoTs. I heavily invested in stealth on this character to be able to do this. PL9: Stunning Shots: this is amazing. Don't let "shots" mislead you: every weapon crit you do, melee or ranged, interrupts its target. This is enormous. With Driving Flight, you are typically interrupting two enemies on auto attacks. That is huge passive CC, and makes it easier to swap away from Thundercrack Pistol on difficult fights. I was not able to find much use for the other Ranger PL9 powers. Again, I open with Scordeo's Trophy to build stacks of the speed buff from the pistol - one or two Twinned Shots for -20% or -40% Recovery Time, then switch to Thundercrack to disrupt/paralyze casters and Eccea's to finish things off. Ranger/Monk: The abilities are mostly the same here. There is a pleasing economy of power picks because so many monk powers (and a few Ranger powers) are useless to a pistolero, but it really hurts to lose out at the top end of the power curve on both classes. If you have to go this way, I'd recommend modding to raise the level cap or give access to PL8 or PL8 and PL9 abilities to multiclass characters by level 20. The best part about a pistolero is that you get three unique pistols that each serves a different purpose, and switching between them is very useful. I take Arms Bearer for this reason. Scordeo's does damaging crits and buffs your recovery time, Thundercrack has a nice lightning lash and paralyzes on crits, and Eccea's does raw + corrode damage for those enemies that are immune to pierce. I recommend getting each of them as soon as possible. I think there are other classes and multiclasses that could work well, but these are the ones I have tried and can speak about with knowledge. The Ranger, Monk, and Ranger/Monk also do well with blunderbusses (SC monk especially - WotW with two blunderbusses and the aoe modal and bounces.... it's over the top), but if you just search for "boeroer blunderbuss" on this site you'll find much more information than I can provide on that subject

Would the trinket from the Beast of Winter's Engwithan dream-realm that gives you a 1/rest AoE enemy charm work? It might be a way to get lots of hits per fight/rest. Edit: the name is Betrayal, looks like the hilt half of a broken dagger. https://pillarsofeternity2.wiki.fextralife.com/Betrayal

Why do you think monk is all about auto attacks? Monks have plenty of activated abilities and more access to them than most martial classes do because they have two resources: mortification, which is non-renewable, and wounds, which is renewable. SC monk's best power, Whispers of the Wind, is fueled by wounds, making it not just stupidly OP, but also usable long after you have run out of mortification. Monks have everything - self-buffs, strong passives, interrupts, a stun which can refund its cost on a crit, and plenty of active attacks to choose from. Not all of their powers are winners, but their winners win hard. I'd rather take a SC Monk into any megaboss fight than any other SC martial class.

It's funny to me because this bit Owlcat in the behind when the game came out. Their difficulty settings did not map faithfully to pnp - their encounters were considerably more difficult than the pnp versions, and they liberally gave "artificial" stat boosts to even very minor enemies. The Pathfinder hardcore was outraged - not because it was too difficult, but because it was inaccurate. Mods that reversed those stat boosts were some of the first that came out, if I remember correctly. I think uuuhhii and Madscientist are making the same point - that Pathfinder is full of trap choices and that there are build optimizations that are obvious to people who know the system well but that are not intuitive or even visible to people who don't - uuuhhii's example that one level of Monk or Paladin are the optimal amounts when multiclassing is a very good one. I think this really illustrates the difference between a good system and a familiar system, especially when it comes to video games. It's easier to commit to playing a flawed system when you know you'll be done with the flaws after 80 hours of gameplay. But if I think I'm going to have to spend five or ten hours learning a system before I can start my 80 hours of gameplay, I might be more inclined to choose the system I'm familiar with, along with its flaws, in order to get into the gameplay I want sooner.

I loved that game and played it through many times. I bought Human Revolution and couldn't get into it. I didn't play past the second "level." Maybe we have identified a theme, and the disease is inside of me? I made it about halfway through a SC wizard PotD playthrough and quit because my wizard was able to solve every fight on his own and I was bored. I read on the boards that tuning was coming and decided to wait for some DLCs to arrive before returning. It's a much more playable experience and I appreciate Obsidian's continued support of the game. I'm playing it a lot right now. Interesting, I think of the videogame-D&D fanbase to be composed of different groups. One is the group of tabletop D&D players who also play video games and are like you describe: people who appreciate the complexity of the system, who have mastered it in its most complex form, and who want video games reflecting the things they like about the pen and paper version. But I suspect there are very many more who have never played tabletop D&D, or who have only played it a small amount, and who are simply are familiar with D&D through the very long history of D&D video games. Many of them probably don't care about how good or balanced or scalable a game system is. They just want to rescue some princes and fight dragons and find cool magic items, and they're perfectly willing to spend 5 minutes reading on reddit which classes to avoid and which are OP, and then dive into a familiar system. These are the people I imagine bouncing off of PoE. "Okay, let's see... might? I guess that's strength. Perception? Wow, I'm not sure which stat I need. Maybe I'll make a fighter and make her strong and tough. Wait, where is my armor class?? What the hell is reflex? Help!" Maybe plenty of them just wing it, then try to save Aloth from some angry farmers and get crushed, and then walk away forever. Or they wait for a good online guide to how to build characters. But I will say that I think there is a hidden downside to creating a system where there are not obvious dump stats: people like having quick mental shortcuts or "hacks." D&D games have a lot of these. It's usually safe to dump charisma, for example, and most D&D games do a good job of telling you what stats you should not dump once you have selected a class. If you have played one D&D video game, you are probably pretty well situated to pick up most any other pretty quickly. Madscientist, you mentioned above that Kingmaker sold better than Deadfire. Is that known to a certainty? Or could it be that Kingmaker sold better relative to expectations than Deadfire? I think Owlcat had a considerably smaller budget for Kingmaker than Deadfire did, which is why I ask.