guildwriter

I'd respec to test that for sure. Assassin/Skaen really needs all the AoE it can get. Though with the bloated health bars that I'm seeing in late game PotD upscaled (DLC esp) I don't know how much good it will do.

I don't think all those are different, I think rather that "invisibility" and "stealth" are different things, and there are different rules governing invisibility and governing stealth. From my experience, any action breaks invisibility, whereas only actively hostile ones break stealth. (I was really bummed out when the act of applying a poison on my weapon would break invisibility). There might be something weird going on with drinking potions of invisibility (I've literally never used one), but everything else (Smoke Veil + Shadowing Beyond + Shadow Step + Slippers vs Stealth) seems consistent with the above. Are you really saying Shadowing Beyond twice in a row will result in one of them being a no-op that just dispels invisibility? So ordinarily I would just interpret your example as "smoke veil grants invisibility -> act of drinking potion breaks invisibility and makes you visible to everyone, alerting them -> potion makes you invisible" but I'll admit I haven't used the invisibility abilities enough to really thoroughly have a detailed knowledge of their mechanics. Agreed. I completely underestimated how important the 0 recovery on Shadowing Beyond was compared to Smoke Veil (on top of the extra duration). With my first attempt at an assassin, Smoke Veil turned out to be a real bummer because my recovery and intellect were bad enough that I couldn't do another action before Smoke Veil's invisibility wore off. Nope they are different. Here are some examples: The most egregious example is Arkymyr's Dazzing Escape. While under the effects of the spell you can drop as many non damaging debuff spells or buffing spells as you like and you will not drop combat. This means Confusion, Arkymyr's Wonderous Torment, Displaced Image, etc. All of those spells if they land on a target while under the effects of Dazzling Escape will not break the effects of Escape concealing you. What will break the effect is any application of damage including any DoTs that are currently active. This runs counter to a common rule to stealth and invisibility that "hit" applications like a "hit" of Pull of Eora or Chill Fog that you cast on a hostile target will cause the invisibility/stealth to break but active DoTs will not break invisibility or anything like it. I just tested having Aloth cast spells while in combat and in stealth. Mirrored Image did not break stealth but Confusion did. Shadow Form does not break stealth on casting of buffs or even when you one shot a target. I've even timed it so that a hit will occur just after Shadow Form procs and the stealth effect does not break. Also there's a fun bug where if you kill more than one target at the same time, Shadow Form activates and then just goes away. My Assassin/Evoker is a little salty about that one. Casting Shadowing Beyond while it is already active does not break Shadowing Beyond. Casting Smoke Veil while it is already active not only breaks Smoke Veil, it breaks Shadowing Beyond or other effects. I don't think it's intended to work this way as when I reported it as a bug, they seemed to treat it as one. Using Smoke Veil and then using Potion of Invisibility clears Smoke Veil and replaces it with Potion of Invisibility. I've seen Shadow Form and Shadowing Beyond active at the same time. Using Smoke Veil and then Shadowing Beyond causes them to stack. See the notes on the weirdness of Shadowing Beyond. I've never seen the AI do that for either Potion of Invisibility or Smoke Veil. I'm sure the logical thing is that these are all either Stealth or Invisibility but I've found time and time again there are weird corner cases for each ability. Either this is classic Obsidian or intended or some weird mix of both. An Int of around 20 or so makes Smoke Veil around 10 seconds. Combined with a reload time of about 6 or lower on Dragon's means you can Smoke Veil, reload, and shoot all in one go. Really helps open up possibilities. I consider maxed Int and maxed Dex to be mandatory to make Assassin builds work properly.

I tried the weapon swapping for a time, but ultimately stuck to the following three sets: Chronoprismatic Quaterstaff (backstab and auto) Fire in the Hole/Kitchen Stove (aoe affliction and Thunderous Report from stealth) Dragon's Dowry (ranged stealth and kiting) The reasoning being that I didn't feel that a dual wielding set gave any upgraded utility over any of the three that I currently had. You get some really hilarious crits if you supercharge with Deltros and Thunderous report from stealth. Everything just evaporates into a bloody red mist. It's not a playstyle for everyone. I've reloaded some fights 5+ times because I got caught off guard by something I didn't expect. The build is extremely prone to failure and you have to work 3 times harder sometimes to get a similar result from another build. I just really like how every fight feels different not only depending on the enemy composition, but at each stage of the fight. Fights where you can't drop combat are especially challenging and force you to get creative with your approach (Pirate ships esp the vengeance ship fights are all sorts of fun). Boss fights are pretty boring though as there's not much room to play as they're mostly just endurance fights. So these are the steps regarding my Shadowing Beyond usage: Drop out of stealth with full attack opener (usually Toxic or Gouging) Shadowing Beyond next to following target as soon as the previous attack lands Enemy NPCs freak out and start doing their "run to damaged target and then run back routine" Pop out of stealth next to different target and drop another Toxic Strike on target ASAP Casually walk away like nothing happened in plain sight as NPCs continue to mill around Walk away well out of sight (NPCs still aren't following) By this time either two squishy targets are dead or are wasting cast cycles on targets that have reduced healing and are going to die to a DoT that ratchets up to 40+ damage a tick (Fun fact: Toxic striking the same target adds to the current duration). Buff up, summon, etc. This usually causes the NPCs to path to me. Re-engage. Found this out in BoW and just about every group I ran into that I tried this on displayed this behavior. I don't know the exact limitations of it yet and would have to do some pretty indepth testing to find the limits. I also have no idea if this behavior is even intended. I'm pretty sure some of the things I've found out about hugging corners causing melee NPCs to become magically blind are NOT intended though. Fun fact, did you know that a potion of invisibility can double as a sparkcracker? If you manage to stay in combat and have the NPCs enter "passive" mode, popping a potion of invisibility in the middle of them while under the effect of something like Smoke Veil will cause the NPCs to enter "investigate" mode and then path to where you are standing. Nice way to setup a massive AoE hit especially in pirate fights. Don't ask me how many reloads it took to figure THAT out. [it's important to remember that invisibility, stealth, smoke veil, shadow form, and shadowing beyond are different effects. Do not try to extend the duration by recasting a similar effect (ie: potion of invisibility twice) as it will simply cancel out and dump you in the middle of some very angry people] Unfortunately not. I wish there was as this build is as gear hungry as it is resource hungry. There are a lot of fun equipment setups and consumables that really enhance the experience. I'm working on a guide but I expect it to take awhile as I'm trying to be thorough and also balancing a Helwalker/Trickster playthrough as well. I suspect a post about all the nuances of a stealth focused game (both relying on it for offense and defense) might be more illuminating to people though.

For me the fun of Assassin/Skaen comes from the playstyle, not the OPness of the build. I enjoy the challenge of making something that is less powerful like this work without resorting to scrolls and the like except when there is no other option to do so. It's a build that lives or dies by the choices you make and has a lot less to do with the initial build so much as how you choose to approach the game. It's not about backstabbing over and over. If I wanted that I'd get a different build. The axe is a good example. I did play with dot stacking with Magran's Favor and did find it to be strong. The issue is how full attacks behave out of stealth when you dual wield versus when you use a single weapon (2h or 1h). The recovery bonus of stealth gets consumed by the offhand swing of the initial full attack out of stealth. This means when the full attack completes, you eat the full recovery penalty of the offhand swing which in some fights is long enough for you to die. Instead a 2h or a firearm can perform the full attack and gain the recovery bonus or have no recovery at all, allowing you to almost instantly perform a second action (which also has interesting implications to how the AI starts reacting). Furthermore when you have to fight outside of stealth (and you will have to fight outside of stealth), the damage you get from the dot is often not enough to compensate for the reactivity you lose as a result of the malus. Being off by a half second can get you killed. Plus this build doesn't have to be about backstabbing only. You have BDD and Salvation of Time meaning you can Deltro + Maestorm and wipe people out. You can mass spread arterial strike and toxic strike and get the AI to run around non stop and kill itself using mortars. You have strong self buffs and a summon to tank as you need to. Yes there are classes that are specifically tuned for these things that do them more efficiently. I also find those classes are one note and can't do much else besides the one thing they're good at. There are a lot of diverse ways to play the build. Another fun thing to note: Assassin's Slippers gives Shadow Form which is neither Stealth or Invisibility. What I mean by that is you can cast buffs and other specific spells while in Shadow Form and NOT lose the buff. This means your decision tree can change depending on when you time the kill to happen on your approach. It also seems to not break if you one shot your target in question. Using Shadowing Beyond immediately after an initial strike causes the AI to wonk out and behave like the player isn't there even if you are out of stealth and are even in combat. It's not a durable loss of "awareness", but it can be useful to buy time to perform other actions or setup in a different position. There are more little weird corners in the AI behavior that can be exploited to give the game more texture and expand your options.

Mindstalker paired with Trickster will be decently tanky thanks to Mirrored Image + Body Attunement. Definitely won't have to skulk around the battlefield at all with that. Can pair with something like Soulblade and have something that can stand on the front without too much babysitting. Solid combo. Inquisitor is a great combo and definitely can excel. My first playthrough was using this build and I can say that it was excellent at everything you mentioned. Great AoE, easy to build up focus for soul annihilation or Ringleader or w/e. Stood on the front lines without much worry and was the star performer from start to finish. One thing I've heard about Arcane Knight is that the damage isn't as good as other tanky builds as your damage spells are often competing for casts with your defensive spells. Good example would be Combusting Wounds and Mirrored Image being in the same spell level. One benefit I will say for this class though is that Wizard is really flexible and that versatility is really handy. Spellblade is a great choice as well. Either Trickster for more defense/cc or Streetfighter for more offense. Assassin is more of a niche pick but giving spells the Assassinate bonus can be it's own source of fun (esp when you empower the spells).

Figured out what the issue is. The last soul fragment only spawns if you lower the water in the area where it is using the conch that is used by the spirits in the scripted sequence. There is another conch that can lower the same pool of water where the spirit is that is accessed by a doorway near the pool of memories. The issue is that conch does NOT reveal the spirit in question. So if you don't think to go and hit the first conch that can be hit at the start, then you're SOL and it looks impossible to complete.

Can confirm I had the same thing happen, don't have Rekke in my party or have even found him yet, but the text triggers anyways.

Happened to me as well. Fourth soul at the pool near the entrance is not there and the quest can't advance. Emailing save file.

One of the few builds I know of that can solo the slime megaboss is a Darcozzi/Chanter.

Soulbound items can be upgraded to Mythic. Backstab scales with PL.

Can use Amra early as a stopgap before you get Oathbreaker as both are battle axes. Just need a Strength Inspiration and you're good to go with the carnage.

Sounds about right. Don't think I ever tried buffing from stealth while in combat during my group run so that's probably correct.

So I did more testing and it turns out that poisons do take from global accuracy bonuses (or at least assassinate). Currently I suspect that devotions of the faithful style accuracy bonuses (which are confirmed to work with scrolls) do benefit the poison to hit chance. Ranger could work as well. So with a morningstar hit (+25) + assassinate (+25) + devotions (+10) you're looking at a +60 accuracy bonus. If you really want to get funky, stack a might and cons affliction on top of that. At that point you could probably poison most anything that isn't immune. But yeah, that's pretty high maintenance.

I could be wrong about the casting from stealth but I'm pretty sure I'm not. I can run some tests to confirm later. There are certain spells like Delayed Blast Fireball which don't break stealth when they are "cast" (when the fireball projectile emerges), but do break stealth when they explode. So there may be buff spells which operate in a similar matter. What I will say is that there are forms of "stealth" that do allow you to cast. Whether or not that's actually intended I can't say. Still testing them to try to figure out what is going on.

They only apply on the first hit calculated. After the first roll check (irregardless of whether or not the hit lands), the poison on the weapon is gone and you have to reapply it. If you could mass apply poison I think it'd be broken. Stone Joint does something like 250 Raw damage along with -35% Action Speed and Stride on a normal hit at Alchemy 20. If you could apply that to a group using a hand mortar or WotEP that would be insane value.

I'd say 3/5 of the characters I've mentioned are solo PotD upscaled viable. Healing support isn't necessary to make such a party work. It's mostly control at that point. Don't think I've seen a dungeon or setup where I couldn't backpedal into another area where you can bring all five melee to bear. If this were BG I would agree, but Deadfire area design is pretty open.

I'm currently piloting an Assassin/Priest of Skaen in PotD solo upscaled. Have cleared Nemnok/Kraken/Pirate Ships (early and endgame) so far and playing BoW for a break from normal content. Here are some thoughts. If you want big damage numbers, go bleak walker. With the upgraded FoD lash, you can delete people effectively when all of your damage buffs line up. Less options but more friendly to micro when you have a full party to deal with (less to think about). I tried and rejected Assassin/Soulblade as if your character opens up from stealth outside of combat, you will not get credited cipher resources for that first hit. This I found enraging, but I like solo so this is especially bad. This can be a really rewarding route to go down as charm is OP. Damage in general is likely to be higher. Another option is playing Assassin/Wizard and using one of the Arkymyr tomes for his escape spell. It's quite potent but super finicky. Dots DO break its invisibility, BUT you can cast certain kinds of spells at will and not have it break the invis. In the end I chose Skaen as it effectively gives you 12 guile and frees you from having to make those skill picks. I like playing around stealth and this setup gave the most opportunity for that. You cannot buff in stealth. Spiritual Weapon is okay but honestly better served by using real weapons. Also getting full Sneaky and Cruel reps is actually difficult and there are "benevolent" reputation trap choices that the game doesn't tell you about until AFTER you've selected the dialogue option. So Skaen RP can be a pain. Not that priest rep does all that much to begin with: holy radiance and spiritual weapon lash. Wael is a safer choice if you want him to solo take on the backline as the defensive options through deflection stacking are much more potent. This is more of a playstyle thing. Re-stealthing can be a potent way to avoid damage as well, but it requires a lot of micro. Backstab does not proc AoE IIRC, just the first target. Dragon's Dowry is probably the best 2H choice before you can get Chronoprismatic Staff. Can get within 2m to backstab. Downsides are unfit for melee debuff and can't engage using ranged weapons. Other noteworthy early pickups are Amra and Eager Blade. WotEP is good for applying rogue abilities in AoE format. Mass arterial/gouging/toxic is enormous value. Can upgrade to have the ability Run Through which does extreme damage 1/encounter when combined with Assassinate and Backstab. Will just about one shot most things that are even level and higher. If the damage from the attack doesn't kill them, the dot likely will. If you want a alternative Dual Wield option: Stalker's Patience and Rust's Poignard. Get the Mask of Grotto's Deep and Hylea's Gauntlets and just stack raw damage on people. Also gives an additional stealth if you want it through Rust's. If you want to ensure penetration, get a sabre instead of Stalker's. Tarn's or Grave Calling work well. Make sure you get the modals. You want to penetrate. Another 2H worth considering is Willbreaker as the morningstar modal debuffs fort which is a common check for many spells and abilities. Many mobs, especially high level ones have massive fortitude so it helps people a lot to reduce it through something like morningstar hit + Toxic strike. Can also look to AoE blunderbusses to spread afflictions from range if that sounds like fun. Triumph of the Crusaders is the only heal you need if you play right in mob scenarios. As far as viability is concerned: Assassin/Priest of Skaen requires a lot of micro every fight. This can get tiresome for people. Personally I like microing a single character a lot, so it works for me. A lot of what I do on PotD is abusing the enemy AI. One shotting mobs without a strong multiplicative lash is pretty hard. Against durable targets like enemy fighters or paladins that are even level, expect to require multiple backstabs to drop them. This is especially true in harder content. One playstyle I like once you get Toxic Strike is loading a target with dots with one full strike and then leaving them to die. This character is nothing to write home about outside of stealth attacks, but BDD does open some fun cheese options using Deltro's and scrolls. Overall I'd say it's not the strongest power gaming pick. It is viable at all points in the game however and a lot of fun to pilot (though it does take a bit to get rolling), especially if you just enjoy stealth characters like I do.

If you succeed at the perception check on ****erel Forest (forest on island of Crookspur) and choose to double back, the dialogue scene exits and you're back on the world map. Except the forest is now gone.

Resolve is much less critical now for dialogue options compared to PoE1 though I wouldn't say it's useless. It's just more spread out. Skills, stats, even abilities can be used now to resolve situations. There are certain skills which open more options than others. Diplomacy, Intimidate, or Bluff are the most useful conversation skills. For me Athletics is one of the ones that stand out as you tend to get wounds or even die for failing some checks. Use this site to see the distribution of skill checks and how high or low they go. It's down right now but looking at the github I think the author made a change that broke something.

How did you get past Fyrgist without fighting him? IIRC he more or less camps the dock point. Also doesn't the door back close forcing you to hit that switch which spawns everything? Solo Wizard no subclass is probably viable. CW + Flame Wall is straight busted and Phantoms are strong summons. Worth considering a blunderbuss and a shield to proc additional hits. In general I'd advocate for no subclass on Wizard as my general feeling is that the +PL is not enough to compensate for the lack of flexibility. Wizard/Ranger is underrated. The accuracy bonuses on Rangers are 20+ and that helps a lot with landing spells. It's not uncommon to see enemies on PotD upscaled to make their saves without a large accuracy bonus. Pet also helps with grouping mobs which makes landing AoEs without your face more tenable. Or just go ghost heart and not have to worry about bonded grief. Wizard/Any Rogue is solid. Assassin stealth bonus applies to spells which really helps not only land massive AoEs, but also with spells like Enervating Terror in making their will checks. Streetfighter works really well here as Wizard's deflection and armor boosters help stay in the blooded pocket. High martial offensive capability of Streetfighter works here to provide a non stop damage engine which overcomes the primary weakness of casters: limited resources. Trickster allows you to avoid spending resources on defense spells and allows your wizard to spend their spells on damage. No real benefit to picking normal Rogue, just take a subclass. Wizard/Paladin is broken. Make a Wizard/Goldpact and deflection stack and have a build that is mathematically impossible to hit. Those are the ones that stand out. Personally I wouldn't overly focus on wands and scepters as that heavily constrains your options and leaves a lot of much better tools on the table. Early game especially can be a bit rough without a large shield. Unless you're doing it for flavor and then in which case knock yourself out.

I'd preface everything here by saying read this guide. Has a lot of good info all in one place, specifically talking about how some abilities function in detail. Helps avoid surprises. I would also say that NOT multiclassing with a pure melee team is asking for a lot of frustration. My recommendation is to build a generalist team and go from there. Or just mess around on Veteran with a popular build from the forums and companions and just see what you like. It helps to know what kind of difficulty you're looking to play on. There's a lot of things that work in lowers that I would never recommend for PoTD upscaled. Also your tolerance for micro helps narrow things down. Some people just don't enjoy constantly readjusting things and want fights to play themselves for them. Nothing wrong with that, but it is good to know as it again narrows things down. A pure melee team without any caster support can get itself into a lot of trouble easily so I would recommend building survivability into characters so they don't get picked off one by one. Especially important for endurance fights. You're also going to need substantial melee AoE to help deal with large packs. The thinking for this squad would be to use one to two characters as "anchors" in the fight. In other words, use engagement to force the AI to stay near them so you can mass them up for aoe strikes. This won't work for bosses though unfortunately as they seem to prioritize people outputting the most damage. Again, without a healer or buffer this means your strikers are going to catch a lot of heat. Fighter - Unbroken (Tank) - Use something like Bronlar's or Claduh Scalith for a shield. Akola's is probably BiS Plate for high armor to not get overpenned. Platinated or Blackened. You could go something like Reckless or Nomads Brigandine but watch the pierce hole. Any one hander works here. Barbarian - Berseker (Melee AoE striker) - Get Modwyr and upgrade to prevent Carnage splashes on your team and dual wield with something like Grave Calling. Amra is a good AoE two hand that can be bought early if you can position them right during the frenzy. Oathbreaker's from BoW is especially nice. This guy is going to take a lot of punishment so be warned. Probably will need a lot of babysitting. Paladin - Goldpact (AoE striker/offtank/healer stopgap) - Get whispers of the endless paths to use the aoe cone to apply the FoD hit to multiple enemies. High int increases the cone size and Lay on Hands time which will be used as a stopgap heal for people who go low. Lots of armor through gilded emnity. Plate, or DoC Breastplate for extra zeal is ideal. If you don't like cone positioning, just get him a solid two hander like eager blade which can be bought early and penetrate. Monk - Nalzpaca (Survivable DPS) - Do lots of drugs. High level single class Monk is broken. Can get away with just using your fists as monastic unarmed training scales with PL. Watch out for cleanses and kill enemy mages fast. Rogue - Trickster (Survivable DPS and Debuffer) - Free illusion spells each PL that cost 1-2 guile each means that this guy can survive, dps, and debuff all in one nice package. -10% sneak damage is a small price. Can be highly mobile and zip around and take out priority targets. High int combos well with a DoT based approach, so stalkers and rust's poignard can work really well. Toxic strike scales really well with int as well. Something low recovery rate like Miscreants is nice or Garari's Cuirass if you want extra survival. DoC Breastplate as well. This team will require a lot of positioning. Especially to avoid damage from large wind up attacks that you will not be able to heal through. Keep at least one ranged weapon to deal with sigils as there won't be enough wardstones for everyone. The curses stack and can result in massive penalties that swing fights. Make sure to keep at least one weapon of a different damage type on everyone. Some enemies are pierce immune, some are slash immune, etc. Veil touched foes will be irritating. Hot razor skewers for food will be a good general buff as it will give might, PL, and +2 peneration.

This is way too open of a question. Way too many possible permutations of setups. Get more specific about what you are looking for.

As far as PoTD upscaled is concerned, I think the armor bonus outweighs the extra health and regen significantly. Enemies have significant penetration bonuses and anyone without enough armor will get over penned with each hit. The difference between a overpen, normal hit, and a hit that under penetrates is massive. This is one of the reasons why Goldpact Knights are favored so much in solo builds as Gilded Eminity and Stoic Steel stack. Though this also depends on how much armor the pets have and how much of an increase they will get overall. Lack of engagement also makes it a bit moot.

Wizard for high dps having an evoker.. basically i'm not quite impressed. the damage don't quite make it for me. I've played a lot of Assassin/Evoker solo and the damage is enough to carry entire fights including pirate ships. If you sequence your spells and empowers correctly, you can destroy entire fights without a single enemy attack being thrown at you. This is harder to pull off as scaling increases though. Make sure you have all the +PL gear you can get your hands on as well as any penetration boosting perks/boosts you need.

As I understand this, each source of conversion is processed one-by-one. It checks one, if converted, you're done, and if not, it checks the next. So, if you have 3 sources of h2c, at 25%, 15%, and 10% (I'm inventing numbers to illustrate because I don't remember precisely what chance the abilities you mention give you), the chance of a non-conversion is .75 * .85 * .9 = .574. Subtract that from 1 and convert to a percentage to get your total h2c chance: 42.6% Yeah this is correct. I remembered wrong.