Wotcha

The one weakness of Beguiler from a focus-through-casting perspective is that they are dependent on multiple enemies to rapidly generate focus. They can fill up super-fast while the board is full, but against big solo or small groups, they have to earn their focus the hard way. Additionally, when doing that they have a lower focus multiplier than other ciphers. They only get a base 25% focus gen from attacks. If the target is afflicted, it goes up another 25% (to bring it back to par with base cipher's 50%). But Draining Whip only doubles the BASE focus gen, giving them a total focus generation of only 50%/75%-with-affliction, compared to 100% for a normal cipher, or 150% for an Ascendant, both of whom additionally don't need to worry about getting an affliction on before attacking.. Oh, and other ciphers can fill up extra-fast against multiple enemies as long as they're clustered, via rods or mortars. Not that Beguilers can't do that too, mind you, but a Beguiler is probably just going to spam Deception spells in that case. Also, if your point is to synergize Helwalker, the big multi-target Deception attacks that are so sweet for focus generation with Beguilers do NO DAMAGE, so the might bonus is wasted on those. For a build like this, Ascendant has more to offer. Incidentally, people often mis-play Ascendants feeling like they have to wait till they Ascend to start casting spells. But in many cases you're better off thinking of it as a trade for faster focus generation against very slightly nerfed (-1 PL) spell effectiveness. For big long fights against few enemies (the bane of Beguilers), you additionally have the prospect of ascending to drop a few big spells, but don't feel like you have to. Sometimes ascending even feels like a mistake, because it means that (unless you're cheesing SoT/Brilliant) you will eventually DE-ascend, and that means at least one turn of weapon attacking even if you want to cast a spell just then. Additionally keep in mind that unlike normal ciphers, you still get Soul Whip damage bonus when full of focus as an Ascendant, and additionally your damage bonus goes from 10% to 30% while ascended. You're probably still better off casting spells, but attacking shouldn't feel like a complete waste.

I seem to recall that you're even good with 8m weapons if you're very careful about where you stand. Might want to test that first. It's got a ton of AR, but I think it's weaker against slash, so choose your weapons accordingly if you're worrying about weapon degradation due to Abydon (war bow would probably be best choice if it's slash you need to beat, and you'd want to have bow proficiency or another source for +2 pen). I'm speaking from a position of ignorance regarding the God Challenges, because I've never had the patience to deal with them. I don't know how fast the degradation happens, and whether it would be a material concern for a fight of this length. There are two or three regular grubs which aggro in the fight, which can be pulled out of the room and killed safely. I think you might also wind up with a small number of grublings spawning from the grub nests too, but I think that the grub nests only spawn grubs if you get closer to them, so if you properly hang back at the entrance you never have to deal with them (or perhaps just one or two from the initial start of the fight). Worst case, it might be worth testing to see if you can stand somewhere safe in the room and kill the grub nests from range.

Furthermore, the giant grub fight is pretty cheeseable. If you can survive clearing out the little grub adds, you can whittle the big grub down in perfect safety by sitting out of its range and plinking away with an arquebus or whatever. Don't know if that's common knowledge on the forum.

Also, if you're already burning time sailing around for explore xp, it might be worth investigating how many Sanza quests you can rack up without (or with minimal) fighting. You don't ever need to actually complete the dungeons to get island naming credit, you can just hop in and out, name the island, and then make it back to Sanza to get XP and payment. Might have other location fights/skill-checks that you need to pass to GET to the dungeon.

Stupid question, but are you considering the exploration XP for sailing around the map? You can get a pretty solid whack of XP particularly in the endgame stuff on the north end, without fighting anybody. It does cost sailing time though, and I don't know how hazardous it is to do with Ondra challenge. But particularly if that time is otherwise going to waste if your worry about act timer clipping is valid, you might be losing the time no matter what you do, might as well burn it to get some no-combat XP. My game exploration lately hasn't been for The Ultimate (I have only so much free time!), but I was able to pretty easily get to 16 solo, via steath and exploration xp. Although that includes Ashen Maw, which I did NOT fight the dragon in, because I'm not on an Ultimate run and don't have to.

I wish I'd paid attention to exactly what I'd done, but following the "passionate and clever" options, and also choosing wisecracking options not otherwise attached to reputations (if those make any difference, who knows?), but I did indeed obtain Acute after the second, and Brilliant after the third god conversation in my current playthrough. I quick-tested my choices after the fact by casting the ability on a crew member after each god convo to verify that the inspiration upgraded. So it's possible, and next time I'll be sure to write down the full series of conversation choices.

In fights against Yseyr or other Death Guards with their Shroud of Darkness aura (applies Blinded and Shaken while in melee range), when a character with both Perception Resistance AND Resolve Resistance comes into melee in TB mode, the combat log gets constantly spammed with messages noting that the Blinded portion of the aura was resisted due to Clear Head (or whatever is granting Perception Resistance). Also the floater text spams the strikethrough text of Blinded and Shaken constantly. The resistance abilities are functional, in that the paladin is unaffected by the Shaken as it is completely resisted, and affected only by the Disoriented effect which was successfully resisted down from Blinded. So it's functional, but super annoying to deal with. A more annoying secondary effect of this bug, is that even after leaving melee range of the Death Guard, and even after the combat is over, the paladin remains debuffed with Shroud of Darkness (at the resisted Disoriented level and no Shaken due to full Resolve resistance) indefinitely with no duration. This aura does clear on resting, so you can work around it unless you're limited on your rests due to challenges or whatever. I suspect this is an unintended side effect of aura effects refreshing in real time, as noted in the 5.0 patch notes. This does not happen if the character has only Resolve Resistance or Perception Resistance. In those cases, all the game interactions appear to operate normally. The nature of the bug seems to be handling combinations of multiple resistances, where one is fully resisted and the other is only partially resisted. I can see how this could get missed in testing. Out of thoroughness, I also tested Perception Immunity along with Resolve Resistance, via a character with Effigy's Husk and the Perception Immunity enchant, along with Horns of the Bleak Mother for resolve resistance. That resulted in constant floating text spam of strikethrough Shaken, but nothing in the combat log, and after the combat there was no lingering aura. Also applying full Resolve Resistance through Rejoice, My Comrades, Two Fingers of Daylight stopped the floating text spam in that case. Super easy to reproduce: 1) in TB mode, build paladin with Clear Head (for perception resistance), and equip with Horns of the Bleak Mother for resolve resistance. 2) spawn a Death Guard (CRE_deathguard) with the console. 3) initiate combat, and move the paladin into melee range. 4) behold the spam. 5) Kill the deathguard, either normally or with the console, while the paladin is still in melee and affected by the aura. 6) check the paladin's status and see the lingering Shroud of Darkness debuff with no duration.