brasilgringo

I agree with this. I use F11 to test different areas. Actually the Sea-Lashed Crypt entrance where there are "docks" and a ton of Fampyrs and related mobs rushing you is a great test. As is Sissak's Nest (also accessible via F11). You can test the Wael beholder areas as well, and Frightened Child area and related (the flesh constructs ouside that area will pummel you with chain Stagger if you're not resistant to Might afflictions). Also testing on the Fire Dragon boss in Ashen Maw is helpful, as are the Nagas at Kophoa Fang (or whatever it's called), as is SSS arena. Finally the Flooded Cave (F11) is particularly hard as the teleport command drops you right in the middle of the mobs.

Nuking a bunch of Console-spawned tightly clustered rotgasts from stealth may look cool but it is not how the game plays. Go record POTD solo on splintered reef or flooded cave or fampyr cave or Sissak's nest... Those are better representations of what you will be up against. Not to diss what you did, it's just not a good representation of the real potd experience.

Don't forget Potion Of Ascension!

How do you delay your action until later in the round? I can only see End Turn as a button. From my experiences so far, turn-based makes everything so slow I am literally falling asleep in battles.

Blood Sacrifice works best for me on an extended BDD build, where you can't kill yourself with it even if you spam it (which one does) -- like a Woedica/Bloodmage. The Tactician/Bloodmage can generally get back spells via Brilliant (Chillfog) and doesn't need to spam Blood Sacrifice except on flank-immune enemies. I've killed myself enough times trying to get into Potion of Final Stand territory with Blood Sacrifice that it's embarrasing.

All is working for me with Woedica. For Woedica, the original spell line-up shows when you click on the Priest Subclass at char creation, but if you click thru to see the skill tree, you see the adjusted spells. As expected Storm of Holy Fire and Pillar of Holy Fire hit like trucks with the +PL from Woedica and +5PL you can stack for fire. The resolve penalty seems a fair trade. I did not get to use Puppet Master or Ringleader much, and Hammer is cool but very situation vs just "kill it with raining down fire" -- good for interrupts without having to swtich to concelhaut grimoire. Meaning to try out Rymrgand/Tactician...

<<(queue up successive uses with shift key) >> How does queuing work? I've never been able to get it to work. Help! (Also I can't figure out how to hotkey stuff or to remove hotkeys from stuff I somehow hotkeyed by accident).

Arkemyr's Grimoire has his escape-type spell which is invis + teleport + confuse: arkemyr's brilliant departure. https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Arkemyr%27s_Grimoire I also think it's in another Grimoire or two (Celestial Grimoire?)

The new version is making available all the updated Priest subclass/powers except for Woedica, which remains unchanged from the vanilla (unmodded) game. Any idea what could be causing this? All the other subclasses reflect the mod's tweaks/changes.

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/107909-deathless-thaumaturge-build-solo-potd/

If he's like me, I still don't understand how ship battles work -- I've always boarded, and I'd have to stop and learn how they work with cannons ...

Was thinking about Arcane Knight after i finish game with Battlemage. Will test this, Slayer's Claw (On scoring kill: Suspend hostile effects for 8.0 sec) teamed with Sacred Immolation and Virtuous Triumph Worth testing, though if your goal is to have a melee-based wizard Tactician/BloodMage may still be better due to ease of getting brilliant, and then just use Potion of Final Stand for those moments when you need to approach a cannot-die situation. Not sure pally offers enough other tools to make a melee build worthwhile. Or even a spellcasting build. Curious what you come up with. EDIT: in-game tooltip for me says only prevents death when used on allies. Anyone test?

Combusting Wounds plus AOE triggers for it (Chill Fog, Wall of Fire) plus beam spell(s) on the key target of it. Face melting. I killed most bosses in the game with some combo of this.

I would respectively disagree about the Hammer. The idea behind it is judgement but yeah it could go either way. Assuming I get around to making a Priest of Abydon we will see. I'm not complaining, I think it's a great spell and I get the hammer = gavel = judge symbolism. One things I've been thinking about - and really this is powergaming talking -- is that Rymrgand priest is kind of getting the short end of the stick in a Tactician build or Thaumaturge build, because you're locked into Frost spells and acid/decay spells, most of which (if not all) are also available to Wiz ...and yet Wiz gets greater variety. And at the same time, Rymrgand priest is locked out of some of the things that make Priest most fun, like the 2 higher level nukes (Pillar of Holy Fire and Storm of HF). Basically I'm better off making a Woedica/BloodMage which gets all the good priest spells (plus nice PL bonus) and can supplement the frost and decay suff from the Wiz side as needed (Ninagauth's Teachings + some other grimoires). With this in mind, maybe rethink the penalities for Rymrgrand (e.g., don't lock out the Punishment/Fire spells) or give some other bonuses that counter giving up the flexibility on spells. For example, some class bonus like the Death Godlike "Pallid Fate" (+3PL when near death) and/or the Human "Fighting Spirit" (+15% damage, +7% accuracy when Blooded or worse) - which thematically would fit with "being closer to the White Void" when dying. Or move up some of the higher-level Rymrgand spells by 1 level so you can at least access the cool stuff (symbols etc.) sooner, which also makes sense. Just something to think about. The way it stands, I'll probably do Woedica/Bloodmage for my next playthru-testing.

If it works on self, you'd want to pair it with a class that can extend its effect - which presumably is either preist (thru Savlation of Time) or Wizzy (thru Wall of Draining). Worth testing if you have time. Does Paladin come with enough other goodies that it is worth taking over priest to get a BDD effect?

It's fixed on Beta and from my testing, Clear Out with WotEP doesn't do much at all anymore when I tested it on some Rathun at ashen maw. However Clean Sweep with WotEP still seems to be doing multiple damage in aoe, at least before it kb's the mobs. In trying Clean Sweep vs. 1 mob using WotEP, it seems to hit three times but only 2 of those are damage rolls. It may seem like more among many mobs due to mob stance and other powers like swift flurry. Maybe you can check on your end if you opt into public beta.

So the Rymrgand mod makes an interesting option for Rymrgand/Tactician that can get Brilliant via Chill Fog and still have decent healing (if it's needed via Fighter's unbending and constant recovery, not to mention scrolls/potions - though one is inclined to run a BDD build extending it thru Salvation of Time and Brilliant (repeting Salvations, which also affect other buffs). You can do some power level shenanigans too with Tactical Barrage and (if you use the other mod) Crowns of the Faithful or Litany of Spirit, on top of the PL from the Rymrgand special. The AOE priest ability Winter's End is likely OP, to be fair. For Woedica, the passive is going to make Storm of Holy Fire and Pillar of Holy Fire hit like a truck I assume, if you are also stacking +5 fire PL on top of the +2 Punishment PL, and maybe +1 or +2 PL from Crowns/Litany and Potion of Ascention. I'd like to test it out. The charm spells (Puppet Master and Ringleader) add some flavor to what in vanilla are lame spells at those levels, though I suppose potentially OP. And Concelhaut's Crushing Doom is a nice addition for flavor, tho thematically it probably fits better with Abydon. If you run a BDD Thaumaturge build (like my Deathless Thaumaturge), you'll probably have some tasty nukeage that you can drop on yourself. Honestly a Woedica/Bloodmage is likely more powerful than the Rymrgand/Tactician, even though you'll have to rely on Shroud of the Phantasm for Brilliant and otherwise use BDD + Blood Sacrifice to return spells.

I have a solution to this. I keep a lvl 10-ish save in Tikawara that has a good amount of coin. Anytime I want to try out new characters I add them to that save, and run them through the surrounding battles and Lagufeth Broodmother, and if I need longer testing I’ll run them through Poko Kahara Btw, for those of you who were beta testers like me, it’s a wonderful bit of a nostalgia playing through those experiences again. Dead fires beta was one of my favorite gaming experiences ever. Not sure how many hundreds of hours I put into it. I've been doing this to, but I've noticed that the OpenCharacterCreation command tends to make you lose some buffs like Gift of the Machine or Effigy, and maybe dings you on Berath Blessing augements to your skills. You can console around this. Plus I would point out that even if you do nothing else, using the F11 command to get around (once you've enabled cheats, which I presume you've done to use OpenCharacterCreation command) is pretty awesome.

On a related topic, does this mean +3 PL from Death Godlike when near death going to be better than the Human racial bonuses (+7% acc / +15% dmg, if I'm not mistaken) for a BDD-based build? Given you can't use a helmet (I've been using +5% accuracy helmets, or Revku's prior to not needing it). Can't recall if Death Godlike also get an accuracy buff when *they* are near death.

I tested out (started to, anyway) a Priest of Rymrgand / Hellwalker last night - not taking much from Monk tree, just some self-buffs for speed (Swift Flurry), the thing that gives Tenacious (so I can skip Champion's Boon) and Turning-Wheel stuff and Rooting Pain, Clarity of Agony etc. (which sadly you can't click once you've been paralyzed or turned into a pig). Brilliant is not triggering a lot. I'm finding I have to watch for Arcane Damper casts and either withdraw or heal thru them (athletics, priest restore, priest regen symbol). Lack of Slicken definitely makes it harder. Having to BDD and salvation and then basically dump all my nukes. Having the Dicotomous Twins helps a little as it takes some enemy pressure off. I tried using Stunning Surge with dual aoe blunderbuss, for CC, but it doesn't seem to do much, and it friendly fires the twins - it also seems to leave me open to taking a lot more damage than when I'm holding a sheild. Shrug. Will keep experimenting. I wonder if there's anything more interesting than Tactician to pair with Bloodmage. Perma-Brilliant is hard to beat. I saw one of the modded Rymrgand sets has Chillfog as its first level cast. So I suppose there's a modded Rymrgand/Tactician build to think about. Still would miss speed buffs tho. Maybe potions. Come to think of it, isn't there a subclass modded to be useable from Tekhu that has Chillfog as well? Maybe there's a druid/tactician build, again just have to deal with speed boosts and the bigger issue being no power to extend buffs (no Wall of Draining or Salvation of Time). Open to suggestions.

It's a tough call. What is it, 10% effect duration? 15%? So something like 1.5-2 seconds extra on a BDD cast vs. using a different neck like FS's Third Eye (10% spell crit chance) ... not sure what is better, really. It's like the toss up between using +PL items for Fire or Acid damage vs. 10% damage for spells from Griffins Blade -- Blade does slightly higher damage (1-2pts) while PL gives extra duration and pen. Shrug. Grog not smurt enuf to decide.

I already basically have all the achievements i need, so rushing from boat landing to digsite to clario/PortMaje via F11 teleport makes my quality of life better. It also makes it beter for visiting other challenging areas of the game. The key is just leaving Port Maje on the boat the right way so you have your boat (otherwise the game gets a little wonky). But after that, F11 lets you teleport to Wild Mare, Tikarawa, Sakyua, etc. and key locations like Fampyr Cave, Splintered Reef, shops etc. If you're not worried about immersion/RP and you've visited all these places before, it's a lifesaver.

If you enable cheats you can use F11 to teleport to Nekataka, but your boat isn't crewed properly. Best bet is to rush the digsite quest and turn it in so you get credit properly

So I did some more testing on the Bloodmage/Barbarian, and liberal use of Slicken plus the Barbarian shout that prones/interrupts carried him through Fampyr Cave / Splintered Reef / Flooded Cave ... with some uses of Potion of Final Stand, which still can be extended reasonably well with Wall of Draining even post nerf, as long as you can hit the wall targets (see Raven's suggestion to use essence interrupter bow to generate low-will mobs, or the magran belt to generate fire blight). To tell you the truth, Tactician/Bloodmage feels stronger to me because you get more tools than Barb (which is largely action speed / recovery, as far as I can tell, with some damage buffs). Tactician/Bloodmage lets you get Brilliant a lot faster in 95%+ of the game, without having to rely on Shroud of Phantasm cloak (which seems to be proccing less for me on the beta patch, but could be observer error). Otherwise I'm stuck spamming Blood Sacrifice for spell recovery, which carries its own risks. Thaumaturge means you have to rely on Shroud for Brilliant, yes. But you do get more offensive spells - just having Pillar of Holy Fire and Storm of Holy Fire in your aresenal means you get a couple more shots on goal without having Brilliant. And once you get Brilliant, you can extend it quicker/longer using Salvation of Time on top of Wall. You also get easier access to BDD and buffs, though you can't extend Unbending like a tactician/bloodmage (but you don't really have to in 95% of the game, because you have BDD). I guess the nod goes to Tactician/Bloodmage because you can always get a BDD equivalent thru Potion of Final Stand (which aren't that hard to craft, too). But that said, nuking feels more fun with Thaumaturge because you get Storm of Holy Fire and Pillar, which do crazy maxed fire damage - and you can nuke right on yourself. I'm wondering what if anything to mix Bloodmage with going forward that could have any better synergy that Tactcian or Thaumaturge. The challenge I have mixing Priest with something else is the 2 nuking priest classes (Magran, Rymrgand) have nukes in spell slots that compete with Priest buffs. I love druid but the slow spell casts and mix of too many damage types (beast, plant, decay, fire, ice, etc.) makes it seem harder to want to include. But I can't say I'm excited to do without Wall of Draining in even its nerfed state. Open to suggestions, the more OP the better [sometimes i just want to dial back the game to non-POTD and laugh at mobs lol]

Fun fact - if Slicken really does interrupt merging on the Oozes, it cements its place as potentially most useful level 1 wiz spell (if not level 1 spell in general). I used to give this nod to Chill Fog, but I've recently seen how Slicken can basically win the Concelhaut and Fampyr Cave fights for you ... going to try it out at Splintered Reef and also Flooded Cave now (edit: pretty good in flooded cave but need to strip concentration from Lich with Damper or stacking Slickens, hard fight to win on Bloodmage/Barb w/o Potion of Final Stand / Edit2: yeah, it makes a huge difference in Splintered Reef).