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I didn't notice this thread when it was first posted, but I just started playing a build like this a couple days ago (Devoted/Ghost Heart). Mostly because with my last character, I had given Frostseeker to Ydwin (as a single-class Rogue, AI-controlled, not even bothering with a custom AI script, just the default aggressive rogue script), and she was slowly catching up with my Watcher in terms of total damage done. That's never happened before, and it was a pretty solid Watcher build too. Rogue might be a better choice, but since I had just played Ydwin as a Rogue with the bow, I went Devoted/Ranger instead, to maximize crit chance and penetration. The only major difference is that I pumped up INT to increase Frostseeker's AoE radius, but does anyone know if there's a way to see how big the AoE is? I can't tell if the extra INT is actually doing much. Since it's not the initial attack, it doesn't show the normal targeting circle.

Arcane Knight is very viable, and a very nice class combination. The thread you linked to is referring to solo-ing the game on Path of the Damned difficulty, which was much easier to do in 1.0 with many different builds (PotD was too easy when the game was released, so they've made it harder and also nerfed some overpowered abilities). The game is not built around soloing, it's built around having a party of five, and since you said you are new to the game, I really wouldn't recommend trying to solo. I've never bothered trying to solo, so I don't know which builds still work or how much cheesing is required, but Arcane Knight works great under regular game conditions, including PotD difficulty. I imagine any of the Arcane Knight builds listed on the build list would still work in general, though a few details may have changed between then and now. If you are dual-wielding, you can ignore the weapon summoning spells, which means you can take Evoker as a sub-class, which gives you +2 PL on evocation spells (the basic type of direct damage spells). There are also gloves that give you +1 PL on evocation spells. You will still have access to the very fast-casting combat buff spells that improve your fighting abilities, such as: Infuse With Vital Essence (cast this first to increase your INT, so that your other buffs last longer; plus if you are a Nature Godlike, it'll give you another +1 PL) Spirit Shield and/or Ironskin Deleterious Alacrity of Motion There are also some illusion spells that help with your defenses, but I usually keep those spell slots free so that I can do a second cast of the spells listed above for fights that last longer. And there are some other fast-casting buffs such as spells that block you from being hit by enemy spells. You can set up an AI script that handles the buffing for you at the beginning of the fight, so you don't have to manage it manually (set it to cast an inspiration if you don't already have that inspiration, and for buffs that don't give you an inspiration, set a timer on them). Between the buffs, the dual-wielding, and your Paladin abilities (particularly Flames of Devotion), you'll have a strong front-liner who can take damage and dish it out. After that, you can fill in your other spell slots with Evocation spells for direct damage. If you decide to go with summoned weapons instead, then you'll want to take a generalist wizard rather than a specialist, and be sure to take both the ability that improves spell-casting speed and the one that increases casting speed when summoning weapons, since those spells are slower than your buffs. The generalist wizard gives you access to a wider range of spell types rather than focusing on direct damage, but your PL will be lower. For this type of character, stick with either generalist or evoker, don't try any of the other wizard sub-classes. For a wizard, most summoned weapons are two-handed weapons, so you wouldn't be dual-wielding if you go this route. Any of the Paladin subclasses will work except for Shieldbearer. Personally, I like Kind Wayfarer for dual-wielding, because FoD gives you a built-in AoE heal (on both hits) so you can just spam that rather than wasting resources on Lay on Hands.

Early on with the starter ship and the four iron thunderers you can get cheap from doing the shipwright's quest in Neketaka, I've found that to be startlingly effective -- way more effective than the wyrmtongues I used through most of my playthroughs, and cheaper too. I would still switch to double bronzers after upgrading to a junk, due to the slow jibe speed, but with the starter ship and the iron thunderers, I was able to easily take down fully armed galleons with captains of a higher level than me. Also, you can hit the space bar to continue when there are no options to select (it's safe, because when there are options to select, space bar won't do anything), and that can really increase ship combat speed. Basically space space space jibe space space space hold position space space space fire, repeat. If you manage to injure an opponent or cause a negative status on the first volley, you might set up a repeating pattern where the enemy never even fires.

I think major nerfs to full attacks (such as eliminating them) or dual-wielding at this point in the game's life would make a lot of people angry. Far angrier than regular nerfs. The time for that kind of change would really be in the initial game design, or at the latest, before the game is released publicly. I think the solutions presented to improve how two-hand and single-weapon styles work with full attacks would be much more reasonable, and some of them don't sound overly difficult to implement. That said, I think there is a fundamental design issue with full attacks and dual-wielding that should be addressed during the design phase if there is another sequel. Perhaps only making full attacks available to certain specialized dual-wielding sub-classes and placing limits on weapon size for dual-wielding, and for everyone else, improving the primary attacks or lowering their cost. But I don't think that sort of change would be appropriate for a game that's already released.

I almost always take a sword & shield Herald, if not Pallegina then a hireling. With Ancient Memory, Exalted Endurance, and Lethandria's Devotion (sometimes assigned to my other tank rather than the Herald), that gives three sources of passive regeneration. I don't like to depend on Lay on Hands for healing though, since the Herald is usually slow and surrounded by enemies, so I like to have a Priest for when someone gets too low to wait for the passive regen. I like Xoti just fine, but I'm getting kind of tired of having the same conversations over and over again, so I've tried out some hirelings. The Priest class is kind of underwhelming (particularly because I tend to play only the first half of the game before getting bored and switching characters). I tried Priest/Druid (Lifegiver) a few times, and it's fine as a healer, but it never really clicked for me. So most recently, I tried Rogue (Trickster)/Priest (Magran), with dual pistols/scepters, and that actually works pretty well as a support character, with rogue skills and priest spells and ranged full attacks, freeing up one slot for something else. Thinking about trying it as a main character, but priest combat buffs are so slow compared to wizard combat buffs, I'll probably end up with a rogue/wiz instead.

I understood the pun!

In addition to Ironclad Constructs and Xaurip Champions, I've now run into this on Fampyrs as well (on the unexplored island west of Tikawara). Though for Fampyrs, it wasn't permanent -- they got stuck on trying to use Crippling Strikes, but after a minute or so, they got unstuck (maybe I interrupted them and they moved on to other attacks?).

Thanks. Knowing it's intentional and not a bug is helpful.

I don't know if this is a bug or if this is some sort of deliberate special attack, but when fighting wraiths in the undercity (old city?) areas, a wraith will often disappear from the fight and go a significant distance away, and Pallegina will often accompany them. This has happened at least once every time I've completed those areas. It's always Pallegina that teleports, but that could just be because she's often at the front of my party. This has happened over multiple versions of the game, including 1.1, 1.2, and 2.0beta. Posting it here because it wasn't a new issue introduced by the beta. It has only ever happened when in those areas below the city, and not when fighting wraiths elsewhere. If this is a special ability that the wraiths are supposed to have, feel free to close this thread.

Does it have “enough” accuracy? 100% crit rate seems quite unattainable, and since the overall speed increase from dual wielding with full attack is far, far higher than the accuracy boost from single weapon style, there’s only a certain band within which single weapon is better. In most cases where you want to be accurate for reasons other than just dealing damage, dual wield will still be more effective because of full attacks. And how much +crit damage would you have to give it? It would have to be a lot. +25% crit damage would still only be a moderate damage increase, even if you crit 100% of the time assuming some bonus from might, a legendary weapon, class damage bonuses, etc. And one specific goal Josh Sawyer has repeatedly mentioned is his desire to avoid reliable, extreme damage spikes, since that would encourage scumming the opening of a fight until you roll a powerful crit and one shot an enemy. That’s the reason guns have -% crit damage. So an extremely high bonus seems problematic as well. If people don’t like the idea of accuracy, maybe instant recovery on melee crit, or something more exotic, like 50% chance to retaliate against melee attacks on crit for 2 seconds, would be better. Sure, I'm open to whatever makes sense. I don't know the math well enough to judge what's best, but there are a lot of potential options mentioned in this thread. If the devs are actually looking into it, maybe they've come up with some we haven't thought of yet...

A lot of good possibilities here that could be tried, to see what's best. I wish we knew whether Obsidian was looking into this. Some sort of damage bonus for full attacks seems almost necessary (for two-hand or single-weapon style). A small accuracy bonus would be nice for two-hand style on full attacks to help land afflictions. Single-weapon already has pretty good accuracy, but maybe a bonus to crit damage as suggested above. These extra bonuses might change the math for how much the damage bonus should be, but I don't think it would change it by that much, and it would enhance the flavor of the different styles.

I suspect a solution like that would have worked better before the game was released. At this point in the life cycle, I imagine it would generate some ill will. I'd lean toward something that targeted full attacks only, since those appear to be the main cause of the issue. Something that makes them more competitive for the other weapon styles, so that players view it as a win for those styles rather than a loss for dual-wielding. Maybe damage plus a small accuracy bonus for two-hand, and hit-to-crit plus PEN bonus for single-weapon?

Thanks for looking it over, everyone. Do we think Obsidian is aware of the full extent of the discrepancy? Every weapon style is supposed to have one bonus over the others, but martial classes having six extra bonuses for a particular weapon style has got to be unintentional, right? If they read these boards thoroughly, or play the game a lot, they've got to know.... but if they base balancing decisions only on telemetry, I wonder if that's really sufficient to discover the extent of the problem. I mean, I play different weapon styles just for variety, when I get tired of dual-wielding (but am generally disappointed in the results). And the abilities involved are spread across a bunch of different classes, so it might be harder to see patterns in the telemetry. I was really hoping they'd do something for the 2.0 patch, but the 2.0 beta, at least, didn't really do anything in this area.

Was it the 1.1 or 1.2 nerfs? Fighter's Charge lost the aoe full attack, Stance lost lost the infinite full attack, Unbending was halved, Monk's lash was halved, some other minor nerfs. Back then, it was Charge city and everything just melted right off the bat, encounters were over before my non-mobility melee characters had the time to run up to the closest enemy character. Both; I didn't try a monk till after 1.2. That sounds very... different.

I was wondering if someone with more knowledge about the game internals could chime in. It seems like everyone is in agreement that dual-wielding is significantly more powerful than the other weapon styles due to full attacks. I think someone did a comparison showing that auto-attacks were pretty comparable across dual-wielding and two-hand (and maybe single-weapon?), so the problem comes down to every martial class having access to low-cost full attacks. Has anyone worked out exactly what that means? I feel like I've noticed six different benefits that dual-wielders get: 1. They get to attack twice using the stats of the full attack ability (this one is obvious). 2. If the attack applies an affliction or something similar, they have two chances to apply the affliction. (Afflictions don't stack, so while the damage calculations of missing vs. hitting are obvious, two chances to apply an affliction is a major benefit that's somewhat less obvious.) 3. Similar to afflictions, if the attack has a chance to return resources or do something else on crit, dual-wielding gives two chances to do so. Even if that thing can only happen once, having two chances to trigger it is still a major benefit. 4. Dual-wielding means faster recovery, which means they can take other actions such as casting spells or making another full attack more quickly. So not only do they get major benefits from full attacks, but they can also make those attacks more quickly. Obsidian appears to have balanced dual-wield recovery time based on auto-attacks, but that doesn't take other types of actions into account. 5. When making a full attack while dual-wielding, it waits for the recovery from the previous action, but does not wait for recovery between the first and second hit from the full attack. It feels like there's less than a second in between the two halves of a full attack. And after the full attack, before moving on to your next action, it feels like it only does a single weapon's worth of recovery. This is a very significant speed increase above and beyond what they already get for dual-wielding. 6. They get bonuses from two different weapons. In theory, this should be solved by two-handed weapons having better benefits, but in practice, I haven't really noticed that. (Sword & Shield gets this benefit as well, but Sword & Shield is kind of its own thing, and isn't as much of a concern for this conversation.) Do these sound accurate, and are there any other benefits to dual-wielding that I missed? #1 alone would provide an advantage to dual-wielding over other weapon styles, but if you add together #1 through #6, things are very lopsided. I don't really think they should change dual-wielding or full attacks much at this stage of the game, but I think there needs to be a serious re-think of how the other weapon styles handle full attacks, to make them at least somewhat competitive. There have been a number of threads discussing the issue, but I wasn't sure if anyone had made a post listing out all the bonuses to dual-wielding in one spot.

Yes, I did a Firebrand Devoted/Druid after Boeroer's post about it, and the weapon was nice, but other than the weapon and Scion of Flame, the druid side doesn't really contribute much to the combo. Consoling in a Firebrand and giving it to a different class combo would probably be more effective.

Every enemy that I want to use Disintegration on ends up having really high Fortitude defense. It's annoying to miss so often. That said, my single-class Ascendant playthrough has been far out-damaging my Fighter/Soulblade playthrough, more due to Amplified Wave and Mind Blades than from Disintegration (if I had gone dual-wield for the Soulblade, it might be a different story, though, due to faster focus build-up).

I'm not sure what the nerfs are for Monk/Devoted that are referred to above, because I've only played one recently, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit so far. With the high enemy armor on PotD, I like having Devoted's bonus PEN on two different damage types (saber/fist) since Devoted otherwise gets penalized when switching weapon types. Between the fighter and monk ability trees, I think you can instantly self-buff four different inspirations, and you can set up a custom AI to do the buffing for you any time one runs out. Set Tactical Barrage first on the priority list to increase the duration of the others (it also gives you +1 Power Level) I briefly tried Helwalker, but decided against it, since my goal with this character was to always have resources to spend (three different resource pools), while with Helwalker, you have to make the choice between spending wounds or saving them. You may want to bump INT up a bit to make the inspirations last longer. Each of the three resource pools has attack abilities, so with Devil of Caroc armor, I think I've always had attack options available, even while burning resources on self-buffs. Grayrest's ideas sound really fun too.

I've encountered this with Ironclad Constructs as well. Probably the same problem that I ran into with Xaurip Champions and reported in a separate thread.

Where would I find that file?

Two more 2.0 beta bugs: 1. I've run into at least three Xaurip Champions who freeze during a fight and don't do anything. Two in the Lord Admiral Imp fight, and one on the unexplored island north of Port Maje. But I killed them, so I don't think a save file will be helpful. UPDATE: Happens in Purakau fight as well. The Xaurip Champion ran toward my party, but once it tried to use an ability (the icon looked like some type of exhortation), it froze up and remained that way for the rest of the fight. 2. Sometimes at the end of a fight, one of the floating green/red numbers that indicates damage or healing gets stuck on the screen (I think it's probably the last number that got displayed for that fight). So far, it's always been small numbers, like from regeneration or DoT, rather than a main attack. The number doesn't exactly follow your party around, but it stays on the screen at the same position relative to the game window as where it started. Quitting and reloading the game removes it. Transitioning areas does not.

For me, opening inventory is about the same as before, but clicking on an item in inventory to select it is now much slower. The game as a whole feels slower in multiple ways.

I can confirm that when stealing from most merchant containers, I can't 'Take All' or drag an item, but clicking on an item works.

This has happened four times in just a few hours of gameplay on the 2.0 beta patch. Going into the Options menu and selecting Save Game brings up the list of save files as normal. However, if you click 'Save' on an existing file, it brings up the normal dialogue box for "Overwrite save file for..." but when you select "Accept", nothing happens. The dialogue box closes, but your save file doesn't get updated and the Save Game window doesn't close. Once this happens, saving a new file also doesn't work (clicking "Save" for a new file doesn't do anything at all). Auto-saves still work (at least so far), but in order to save normally, you have to quit the game and reload. I'm on a Mac, in case this issue is platform-specific. EDIT: The problem above has only happened on the 2.0 beta patch, but I've had another save issue ever since the game was first released -- every once in a while, when going into the Options menu, the Save Game button is actually grayed out and can't be clicked. There's no reason for that to be the case, no fight going on or anything, it just gets stuck. Usually this issue goes away after transitioning areas. EDIT2: Not sure it's worth a separate post, but I just had an issue on 2.0 where after fighting the Spindle Man's group, three of my companions started hovering rather than walking. Strangely, it was my three shield users (Pallegina, Eder, Xoti), but that may have been a coincidence. Problem disappeared after reloading.

If it scales by the wielder's level rather than the summoner's, can you load summoned items through the console, and if so, do they have a duration that way (if you don't have a wizard or for after the bug is fixed)? Is there a guide somewhere with console commands and item codes? Would this set-up use the two-weapon ability, two-handed ability, or both? (maybe two-weapon ability isn't needed if the armor has 0 recovery?) It might be kinda fun for an unofficial playthrough with a one- or two-person party where you need more damage output.