Shai Hulud

Sorry @Elric Galad, I guess I don't know as much about this game as I thought. I'd remove the bug report on nexus but don't think I can... I was certain something was wrong with the penetration though, I didn't remember HOW being THAT hard to damage punching him, so I loaded the fight in vanilla and penetration is 2 points higher, much higher if you crit. This is right after a crit with forbidden fist, same as previous post but in vanilla. Note I have haymaker on in both but it displays "tenacious" in vanilla and "haymaker" in BPM. Not an issue but I think it's why I thought there was one. Plus the penetration is also different...14.5 in BPM and 16.5 in vanilla vs. 21.8 / 24.8 on crit. This makes a big difference when trying to overpen with fists. In vanilla you can overpen on crits vs a lot of enemies (not quite vs HOW, but close, and one big difference is in vanilla you'd do the same damage without tenacious / haymaker as you would in BPM with). I know you changed unarmed attacks to address a bug but I think this difference in damage is unintentional based on this section of your notes

Okay you're a *little* older than me, but I figure if you were an adult when facebook became a thing you're too old to figure out twitter @Elric Galad I'm not sure your preferred method of reporting bugs. Please let me know if you don't want forum posts or if I should post in a different thread. Found a few bugs 1) I made a note on nexus mods (but can't provide screenshots) but the tenacious (presumably also energized) inspirations do not apply bonus penetration to monks' fists. Checked and it does apply to weapons. But Forbidden Fist and in general fist weapon attacks do not benefit. Which you can see here on this ravager berserker/forbidden fist. Blood Storm is up so tenacious is procced, but no bonus pen. (see screenshot) 2) Another issue but one I found harder to screenshot, the displayed beneficial / hostile effect durations are not affected by items such as ring of the solitary wanderer (even in combat), ooblit, strand of favor, etc. Also displayed hostile effect durations do not apply resolve. This guy has a displayed forbidden curse of 17.5 seconds, but it is actually 3.0 seconds after resolve and items. 3) Not sure if this is intentional but guessing no, Hardy does not stack with Iron Wheel bonus AR, you get whichever is higher.

Getting that crossbow is too out of the way for eothas challenge unfortunately. Also I think the trial of the changeling may be impossible without removing recovery time. It is very very hard to protect Vela. I'll try it later but I found it kind of hard even with a bunch of SOF procs (conduit, scordeo's, etc.) because the rogue and ranger prioritize her over the changeling. I could do it with SOF procs by starting invisible and in stealth and circling around to the rogue/ranger, killing them, then the others, but I had massive health regen and no recovery time so even without spells I was way stronger. So probably I would have to go seeker or survivor route. I'll try it though... Slicken could work. Lot of these things would probably work on like a hierophant where my accuracy is higher or I have more hit to crit conversion but reflex is their second highest save. But slicken is a hazard AOE so it might proc some. Definitely works on the little oozes. Maybe stack that and wall of many colors and cast CCDs on top... I don't think I can crit with accuracy vs anything but deflection unless I proc merciless gaze or uncanny luck, so that's 20%. If I use the pet milx it's 25%. If I did the forgotten sanctum first I could use the necklace The Third Eye which gives an extra +10% for 35%. Yeah I'm going to console that in and try that out. I usually do HOW before Forgotten Sanctum but I think probably that boss is harder for SC blood mage than anything in FS. Does potion of perfect aim stack with merciless gaze? If so that's another 25% but duration isn't real long. I can try extending that and ire of death's herald with wall of draining. It was nerfed but if you line up enough little oozes from symbiote may still get a significant boost. Even if they don't stack perfect aim would give me 45% which is pretty significant. Would be so sick on a blood mage / berserker though, could get 80% hit to crit while frenzied (blood storm), which with high intelligence you only need frenzy every 40 seconds and get back a point of rage from the potion of enlightenment every 30, thus can use stalwart defiance every now and then. Plus they have interrupting blows, one stands alone, savage hunter etc., so they get major damage boosts. Maybe I can script something to tell me when health reaches a certain point. Hmmm...another project. Takes a while to test anything out because it takes me like 45 minutes to get through HOW stage. If I console up my might and turn on god mode can probably cut that down a lot, but I have to use kind of passive strategies summoning phantoms so my armor doesn't break. Actually I can just turn off abydon challenge with console, then turn it back on when I get to gigantic ooze stage. Until I figure out the encounter at least. Sounds like stacking hit to crit and extending ire of death's herald would work. Then use slicken, chill fog, wall of flame etc. I don't intend to rest though (except I guess in SSS because the slayer's path is probably impossible) so am reluctant using one time abilities, but...probably don't need the interrupts as much for other bosses. I always end up saving things like that in games and then never using it. Even in my vanilla ultimate run I got mien of death's herald for intuitive (got energized from slayer's claw) and had planned to extend it with SOF but I never did it. Thanks for all the suggestions. One of these things will work.

Yeah has to be solo. I beat HOW with a party a while back but I don't really recall what I did. Probably focused on killing one and ignored the other. With five guys attacking a bloodied gigantic ooze they can probably kill it before the merge completes, I'd think. Or have several people devoted to CCing them, lots of choices when you don't have such restricted action economy. Do you mean the Scourge of Bezzelo? I haven't used crossbows much but there's only two uniques I think, that one says it shoots 3 projectiles. I noticed this with wall of many colors, which did paralyze them sometimes but rarely both at once because their defenses are so high and the duration is rather short. Their fortitude saves are quite high and SC blood mage accuracy isn't good enough to hit reliably so would require a lot of luck to hard CC both of them that way. So it doesn't work on HOW but it works on the gigantic oozes? Grazing at least one should almost always happen, and destroying one prevents the merge so maybe that is my best bet. Once one gets to near 50% I start spamming tornado (interrupts on graze), hopefully I get enough casts in to get one of them near death and then death ring. That could work, could also try guzzling potions of impediment and piercing strike then just attack one with a firebrand scroll or something, until near death, or if they're close enough together can use citzal's spirit lance. Does potion of impediment work on spells? If so could use scrolls of storm of holy fire or similar spells that throw lots of projectiles over a decent duration, there's so many projectiles that it should be interrupting a lot. I was looking into some blood mage / X builds and blood mage / berserker looked really interesting because berserker gets tenacious (and hardy) from frenzy, plus a 30% hit to crit conversion, plus the interrupting blows feat and other barbarian goodies. The confused affliction isn't really a downside, as it is easy enough to negate, and the raw damage to self while frenzied is manageable but not being able to see your health is unfortunately a dealbreaker. You'd need a perfect script for trials runs and since blood sacrifice gives off random(ish) amounts of damage it would be extremely hard to keep track of your health in real time. Very unfortunate because that subclass adds a lot of melee viability that blood mage is lacking. Could try with a hierophant again, think it would be pretty easy because of disintegration. I'm not married to SC blood mage that is just my jumping off point in trying to find a build that can possibly manage an ultimate style run in BPM. Which SC blood mage can do, for sure, if using major grimoire imprints, but I found the challenge level fell off pretty hard once I got that spell... I was using this spell a lot actually but it doesn't damage them quite fast enough. I drank a potion of enlightenment which restores one spell every 30 seconds, so my strategy around spell replenishment was using blood sacrifice to restore lower spells so I was only missing CCD, so that it would always be restored. That way I could cast it at least every 30 seconds (has a duration of around 20 seconds I think), usually faster unless unlucky with blood sacrifice (1/3 chance to restore L7+ in BPM from 1/2 chance at L7 in vanilla). I tried to keep it up as much as possible. It hits pretty reliably but the damage isn't great since they have AR 15 vs crushing unfortunately. Only weak to fire/frost/lightning with AR 9, and nearly all elemental spells target reflex which is pretty high. Can only reliably hit deflection and sorta reliably will. Edit: I think I know what I did wrong with CCD. I was focusing on one ooze trying to kill it. So CCD lasts about 20 seconds and I get one back every 30 seconds, need to cast it twice every 20 seconds basically to keep interrupting both so CCD => CCD => blood sacrifice => blood sacrifice => blood sacrifice => heal cycle takes about 30 seconds. But since blood sacrifice is random I sometimes get nothing from blood sacrifice and just get back 1 cast from the potion of enlightenment. Blood sacrifice really should work by first checking if you're missing a low, mid, or high level spell, then if missing only one of those it does the appropriate damage and gives you back the resource, but instead it just randomly selects a tier, damages you, and gives you back a resource at that tier or lower, even if those tiers were full. This strategy of alternating CCD would likely work eventually. I'll try it tomorrow. I need to find something that works reliably though if I have any chance of doing an iron run. Can you explain what you meant about the jester's cap interaction? I was wearing this incidentally for the deflection debuff so the phantom hit more, but I didn't try wall of draining since it was nerfed pretty hard. Would have to line up a bunch of small oozes from a symbiote attack and drain them. I think you'd need 4, but symbiote I think just drops 3. Maybe if you lined them up with HOW you could still get good benefit extension. I'm not very practiced using WOD without pause, but yeah maybe that would work. Mostly I've ignored the spell because there aren't that many effects worth extending anymore. Besides maybe temporal cocoon but that falls into "illegitimate"... @Waski What is this old school trick of CCD?

EDIT: Initial focus of this thread was HOW with blood mage, but I think this is pretty impossible so I've moved to trying a lot of different builds, succeeded with troubadour / psion and couple others, focusing on Dorudugan ATM. Troubadour / psion has trouble damaging him fast enough, as do most builds. Did kill him with a devoted / troubadour using Essence Interrupter with Energized up constantly but had to turn off Abydon's Challenge because the bow breaks very quickly. Checked after fight ended and I did over 25000 damage so he healed for about 18k over that period (like an hour?). Have tried some tanky builds that Doru can't kill like a barbarian / devoted just using unarmed attacks and no armor, but could only get him down to hurt even with energized + devoted pen buffs, his healing seems to pick up and his health stabilizes around there. One helfire barrage can heal him for like 700 health. IDK how to outdamage his healing. -------------- (original post below)------------- L20 blood mage, have all the trials on but wael and iron. I'm having a lot of trouble figuring this one out. The boss was easy enough when I had strand of favor extending energize and citzal's spirit lance interrupting AOE on crit. But I'm trying to defeat it "legitimately" and after nearly an hour of grinding down the mountain form (mostly using phantoms with animancer's energy blade and Finality's Claim to reflect damage) while managing to protect Vela and not break my equipment, then getting the gigantic oozes to about 1/3 health each, I saw that merge symbol and kinda panicked...don't think I had any AOE interrupts available and it's just me and an essential or substantial phantom who I can't tell to target just one of them. Tried thrust of tattered veils and interrupted one of them but apparently you have to interrupt both of them. The gigantic ooze form is theoretically vulnerable to might and con afflictions, but I don't have any spells that stun besides I think Dimensional Shift. If I could control the phantom it would be easy enough to set that up, but it still has to hit vs. fortitude (good luck). There's Cloak of Death...not sure if that can hit both of them. Scrolls of Tornado were suggested to me. Could work, but their fortitude is really high. I don't think increasing my arcana improves my accuracy, just the damage and penetration right? Minoletta's Concussive Missiles might work. Didn't have them in the grimoires I was using unfortunately. But interrupting is a temporary solution because they just keep trying to merge. Unless one of them is near death when that happens you probably can't stop it. Rolling Flame? Their reflex is pretty high. Not sure you can prone an ooze either. Call to Slumber, not sure if that works on these guys. Their will defense is also pretty high but I can debuff first with miasma of dull mindedness. Maybe that would work. Or...potions of impediment plus meteor storm? Might work if I'm lucky, but with the blood sacrifice nerf it takes a while to get back a L9 spell so I can't spam it. Death Ring *says* it can "potentially" destroy near death enemies whatever that means but I'm pretty sure doesn't work on HOW. My only other idea is to use up my Ire of Death's Herald for about 60 seconds of Energized, combine with Citzal's Spirit Lance and try to hit both of them at once. Watched most ultimate videos of the battle. Seems people mostly spam thrust of tattered veils with no recovery, using brilliant to spam high level super damaging spells with triple damage from conduit, monks with stunning surge and attacking way too fast, or have cipher with disintegration or soul annihilation (that last one would be me lol). Haven't seen anything that would really work with full recovery time. Yeah so...could use some advice here. This seems like the hardest megaboss for a solo character that can't disintegrate things. I tried it again, this time with scrolls of tornado and potions of impediment but by the time I'd drunk the potion of impediment and recovered they'd already merged. Guess I have to drink those before they hit bloodied and then on bloodied just start spamming tornado? ---- BTW SC blood mage sucks without cheese. At least compared to multiclassed blood mages. The L8 and L9 spells aren't that great compared to the ability to multiclass to e.g. cipher and gain +1 weapon pen and a ton of accuracy and defenses. I mean some of the L9 spells have penetration 11 or 12 *with* the spirit of X talents. Even if you eat crusted swordfish you're barely touching lot of bosses with AR 16+, unless you also have tenacious/energized (which you can't really get SC) and enough accuracy to crit (which you don't have as SC because your only accuracy buff is eldritch aim). My hierophant had functional accuracy about 30/40 points higher without cheese, plus way better defenses. The only REALLY good spell you can't get multiclassed is major grimoire imprint. Maybe it's just me but when I think L9 spells I think Time Stop, Wish, Chain Contingency releasing 3 Horrid Wiltings. Not Concelhaut's Itchy Skin

The blessing also gives you strength inspiration on being crit with fire, which could be useful... But I tried a bunch of variations of running through Ashen's Maw and I'm not getting this. The first group of Rathun in the Sentinel Wall I use diplomacy and they let me through to the bridge. If you kill the dragon first, you can get the "support" of the Bathor with diplomacy (not sure what you meant by that) but I'm still not getting anything. Tried instead going into the keep first but the Rathun Raider always attacks me without the torc. Tried not killing the dragon, then going into the keep. Doesn't make any difference. Even managed to convince the Bathor to leave, didn't make any difference. Finally I tried stealthing past the raider at the front to get to the bathor. And that managed to do it, one of them cast some spell on me and I checked and had the blessing. Stealthing past them required very high stealth and gear so I'm guessing you're not intended to get the blessing this way. So then I tried just fighting through the keep and slaughtering a dozen fire giants, and the Bathor kindly gave me his blessing. But he doesn't do it if you don't kill any rathun and deal with the dragon first. This game makes no sense.

Problem with scrolls for all-trials is mostly if you have Vela with you you need a lot of slots for withdraw scrolls. But that's a good idea in general since none of the ingredients for tornado are hard to get.

This build doesn't work with Abydon's challenge on unfortunately. I just tried it vs Huani O Whe and it appeared pretty invulnerable for a while, steadily chipping down the ooze's health (though with his 16 AR I had to turn on haymaker). My FF cycles were super low at like 2.2s, lower with Crucible of Agony. Tried maxing dex and dropping CON a bit, helped a bit but the problem is if you use shields it doesn't really matter if he underpens or grazes you, every hit is a damage tick and after I got HOW down to about 50% health my shield broke, then I started taking more damage and by this point my armor was damaged, my toon kept grinding it out for a few more minutes before her armor broke and then she was quickly slaughtered. Didn't even have vela with me... I guess with abydon's challenge on you just can't have these grindy kinds of fights unless your deflection is so high you're outright missed most of the time. Still messing around with builds for BPM with magran's fires challenges. No success except with imprinting blood mage, who can avoid these issues by being invisible... Could also just do damage so fast your armor can't break down but HOW has really high deflection and really really high AR except vs elemental attacks, so again kinda just leaves casters. A blood mage / cipher could probably do it, maybe even a plain cipher at least for this particular encounter, stacking accuracy and casting soul ignition over and over. Or you can stay off screen and let summons attack. Exploding phantoms could easily handle this if they had more penetration on explosion effects. Could maybe handle this encounter even with bad penetration since HOW is weak to fire and lightning. But then there's stopping the merges...hmm tricky tricky.

Theorycrafting some multiclass builds with similar stats. Was looking through your blessings and saw Magran's Blessing. How do you get this? I think the only way to get this is to console it in but I could be mistaken...

Ah. In that case I think the ghostheart subclass is probably fine. But...pets are very useful for positioning pre-combat, pulling enemies away while stealthed, etc., and you lose all that with ghost heart. I think I still prefer generic ranger / soul blade. The time and bond cost to summon the boar is probably not worth it IMO. The boar should not be dying that often if you keep up the buffs.

I love soul blade but I don't think it works very well in a ranged build since soul annihilation requires a melee weapon and you'd have to switch weapons to use it... probably not the worth the increased cost of the best spells. I've run a ranger / soul blade melee, and it works pretty well. Based on sarcasticsarcophage's ultimate seer run This is based on his build but that was an ultimate run so I tweaked it some. For instance I'd raise dex to the detriment of resolve and con unless you're using strand of favor shenanigans. This build is solo viable. You can do ghost heart / soul blade if you prefer, but the boar is tanky enough you shouldn't get bonded grief that often. Also..I'm not sure if the ghost heart boar being immune to engagement means enemies can't engage the boar or the boar can't engage enemies (or both). If it is the latter two it would interfere with the boar's ability to tank. Balanced Spread / Min-max spread (I prefer min-max since we have iron will and a pet deflection is not so important) MIG 16 / 16 CON 12 / 10 DEX 11 / 19 PER 20 / 20 INT 10 / 10 RES 9 / 3 wood elf, boar, white that wends, hunter. You want mostly stealth and diplomacy at first (with a little mechanics as needed), then later can take some athletics and survival, you want to hit around 15 with these skills to pass most checks. L1 Valorous Echoes (decent pet buff and the other l1 cipher spells are pretty meh) L2 Lingering Echoes (longer duration is welcome, this talent is even better if using Balance Polishing Mod) L3 Iron Will (compensates for low RES and stacks with bull's will which we take later) L4 Psychovampiric Shield / Resilient Companion (PVS amazing buff/debuff, RC to make boar tankier) L5 Draining Whip (+100% focus gain > +10% damage) L6 Recall Agony (great for bosses) L7 Hammering Thoughts / Evasive Roll (HT is amazing, Evasive Roll has execllent utility for moving around the battlefield plus quick, has no recovery) L8 Weapon and Shield or your preferred weapon talent (one-handed is good in BPM but the deflection helps if dumping RES) L9 Bear's Fortitude (our fort sucks) L10 Pain Block / Concussive Shot (PB for buffing pet or party members, CS mostly for the upgrade) L11 Bull's Will (more will is awesome) L12 Snake's Reflexes (not super necessary but not a lot of better picks) L13 Borrowed Instinct / Uncanny Luck (BI is ridiculously good buff/debuff, keep it up always, extra crit chance is welcome) L14 Echoing Shield (buff pet + break concentration of enemies) L15 Tough (more HP for our lowish con) L16 Improved Critical / Concussive Tranquilizer (we crit a lot so more damage is great, even better in BPM, CT amazing to remove enemy beneficial effects) L17 Rapid Casting (extra speed good) L18 The Empty Soul (+10 accuracy for the spells we care about) L19 Echoing Horror / Survival of the Fittest (passively frightening is great, even more accuracy vs hurt enemies) L20 Practiced Healer or Spell Resistance or another cipher spell (I like Phantom Foes and Secret Horros) Can change the order a bit as you like. You might want Heal Companion at lower levels, or sub it for something else like Snake's Reflexes (particularly if you have Weapon and Shield then your reflexes are already awesome). Gear you want Helm - Horns of the Bleak Mother / Cap of the Laughingstock Neck - Precognition or Claim/Refusal Armor - Devil of Caroc BP / Magnera's Chain or whatever you want, lot of decent choices Rings - Entonia Signet Ring / Rings of Minor Protection / Ring of Prosperity's Fortune once you have money Shoes - Boots of Stability / Boots of the Stone / Bounding Boots depending on situation Cloak - Cloak of Greater Protection early, then Cape of the Falling Star Hands - Killer's Gloves, Gauntlets of Ogre Might / Onepaha's Strength / Woedica's Stranging Grasp all good, gauntlets of greater deflection for some more defense Belt - Undying Burden / Upright Captain's Belt depending on situation Pet - Kaz when running around, Pes for combat Weapons - whatever you want, there aren't any special interactions with the class I'm aware of. Lot of good sabres, can use sun and moon if you want since it generates focus really fast but personally I prefer more damaging weapons Food and other per rest buffs - Hylea's Bounty and don't rest. Get +2 RES on Bleakrock Shrine (need 15 religion), +2 dex on random neketaka event, +2 everything from alchemic boons on outcast's respite, permanent +1 PER from cauldron, konstanten's boon, nature's resolve (+10 acc, +2 RES) on Tikawara is very important, dawnstar's blessing gives +50% healing (see my soul devourer thread for more on these)

I'm not familiar with either platform lol. I'm too old. Though how hard can twitter be... Thanks, the one I meant was more recent was sarcasticsarcophagae's, I assume it was verified since it is listed on the wiki...his run was about 6 months before mine. Relatively recent in the lifespan of the game anyway. Particularly since they said they'd give badges to the first 50. I'm guessing they thought a lot more people would try it... Guess I'll give tumblr and/or twitter a try.

I'm running a blood mage with maximum available cheese, have all trials on but wael / magran / iron, just got major grimoire imprint and the encounter with Beina presents a huge number of priest spells to steal. So many in fact I can't take them all. The abilities bar doesn't wrap around, it just extends until you can't click on the abilities any longer, so I figure you can take about 16 to 20 priest/druid spells depending how many other abilities you have in your bar from weapon modals and items and such. It takes a long time to steal spells with the blood sacrifice nerf and no strand of favor, but I made a script that goes pretty quickly on fast mode. I can console out spells if I decide they suck later so better to pick too many than too few probably. Might do an "ultimate" style BPM run eventually, although the challenge level has gone from high to low almost the second I hit L16 so IDK if I'll try with this build or figure out something else. Anyway. Beina has shining beacon, finishing blow, shadowing beyond, spiritual ally, divine terror. Plus the level 1 to 3 spells escape, spiritual weapon, repulsing seal, divine mark, barbs of condemnation, interdiction, pillar of faith, and maybe dire blessing. I'm L16 so she doesn't seem to have L7 spells being a multiclassed cipher / skaen. The goldpact priests are Berath and have three spells per level. Touch of Rot, Restore, Suppress Affliction, Holy Meditation, Withdraw, Iconic Projection, Spreading Plague, Watchful Presence, Consecrated Ground, Divine Terror, Circle of Protection, Triumph of the Crusaders, Rot Skulls, Barring Death's Door, Champion's Boon, Salvation of Time, Minor Intercession, Spiritual Ally, Rusted Armor, Cleansing Flame, Minor Avatar, and Shields for the Faithful. Between the two of them they have nearly every priest spell I'd want (besides Devotions and Woedica writs). Already have withdraw, escape, restore. Obviously I want finishing blow and shadowing beyond. Maybe shining beacon? From the berath priests, Barring Death's Door (even nerfed it is awesome), Salvation of Time (same). Probably Champion's Boon, Rot Skulls, Rusted Armor, Shields for the Faithful. Circle of Protection is nice but duration fixed 20 seconds. Minor Avatar probably. I don't really know what else. These slots also compete with druid spells I may want to steal, but probably just a few of those. Anyone know who has Devotions for the Faithful btw? Then again maybe most of these spells don't really matter because with shadowing beyond I am basically invincible, but there are a ton of good spells for buffing phantoms and such. I'd originally intended to be summoning and buffing phantoms from stealth and later invisibility. With the right equipment (cape of the falling star, one dozen stood, unstable coil etc) they can theoretically do a lot of damage on death, but the implementation is kinda buggy so I'm no longer sure this is the best tactic. Also been wondering if an ultimate style run is possible without stealing spells, because the challenge level at this point has gone down a lot...I think maybe I could do it with just withdraw. Possibly even without if I really avoided as much combat as possible and collected all possible withdraw scrolls. The main issue necessitating spell theft in my mind is Vela and BPM fights taking much longer than in vanilla since no strand of favor leads to you needing a ton of withdraw scrolls. Or...might be possible with a blood mage / skaen chugging potions of enlightenment, using the priest side of resource renewal to keep vela alive. You get one resource per 30 seconds from potions of enlightenment and withdraw lasts 30 seconds, so you could devote all resource renewal towards withdraw or most of it, with occasional priest spells supplemented with withdraw scrolls.

Huh. I just have the auto-reply on 12/29 (I know it is automated since it says so at the bottom). Sent it again yesterday, didn't get an auto-reply this time. The auto-reply is from support@obsidian.net and says "We’ve received your e-mail and someone from our team will get back to you as soon as possible. Please allow for additional response time as we are closed for the holidays starting December 21st - Jan 3rd. " Followed by various links. theultimate@obsidian.net right? I mean I assume this is at least a viable email because I did get the automated reply. Attached the gamecomplete.savegame file and a link to the playlist. Maybe they don't do it anymore? Though they verified yours, and at least one other run since then, and that wasn't too long ago. I want that nerd badge damn it lol

PSA on Akola's Apex Ward Even if you got the ship Servant of Rikuhu (captain Wheneena Eel's Kiss) to spawn, it will disappear later. It's either on a timer or linked to your Huana rep. I tanked my rep to -3 and checked that the ship spawned but decided to board it later because Level 17. I tested that the ship was still there when I bumped my rep up to -2 and like half a day later. After completing The Archmage's Vault (giving it to Netehe) and Trade Secrets my Huana rep was 2 and a couple in-game days had passed, and the ship is now gone. So...if you want this shield you better sink the ship right when it appears, and to make it appear you have to get your Huana rep to -3 (killing everyone in Takano's mansion was enough for this), I'd console it in but I don't think there's any way I can get this item in a trials / iron run so I guess I won't be using it. Boarding the ship at this level is suicide and fighting it is also suicide (particularly with Wael challenge) unless you get lucky and cripple the sails in 1 turn or something because it can move 105m per turn and your ship at this point can't even come close.

It's been about a month so maybe they're working on it but I didn't get an email saying anyone was validating it. Did you, or was it nothing until they finished and then you were told? My run was also pretty long, like 60 hours. Maybe I should resubmit it... Yeah I guess if Vela is tagged as ally it could possibly allow more spells to be cast on her. I didn't think about that. Though I don't understand the logic in allowing most priest healing spells but not Pain Block. I guess with Pain Block you could try using her as a tank in battle? But I don't think that would work very well since she won't be still and her stats are way worse than an animal companion (well, I guess you could cast Halt or binding web on her every now and then but still)....Ectopsychic echo would be interesting. You can actually do similar stuff to her with a wizard and hostile ray spells (probably antipathetic field also but I never tried it). Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring is an interesting case. Normally never use that spell, but can cast it on her followed by Withdraw and she still acts as an anchor, then you can zip across the battlefield with Leap or Escape or whatever.

@Elric Galad Animancy Cat is not applying either the might bonus or penetration bonus to essential phantom (probably other duplicates as well, but I've only tested essential phantom). Dunno if you were aware of this already. Can see the animancy cat on the left there. Has an aura of 42.6 according to my tooltip so he should be applying the summons buff but there is no damage bonus from might and no pen bonus. Doesn't seem to work in vanilla either.

Yeah I'm aware of that I've done the ultimate too. I watched a lot of your run, really cool build. Did you have your run verified by obsidian and if so how long did it take? I still haven't had a response aside from the initial auto-reply. But have to say I don't think much would be lost from the challenge if I could, say, script withdraw on ally vs pressing W every 30 seconds. Lose some tedium though. I like scripting as much behavior as possible. To me part of the challenge is creating a script that can handle all situations, but POE scripting is pretty limited. Still, I think I could do it if she were just tagged "ally".

Monastic unarmed isn't really for the duplicates it's mostly for doing decent damage at low levels when your equipment is garbage, but also in some builds not bad to replace weapons with fists entirely. Mostly an abydon's challenge thing because non-summoned weapons are unusable in a lot of fights because they break too quickly, and even if they don't repairing is very expensive, plus fists are actually pretty good most of the game since few enemies are immune to crushing. For a mage I can summon weapons, so not as big a deal as with other classes not to have the talent, but I never understood why say a cipher or priest can get take monastic unarmed but not a chanter or paladin. Another advantage of multiclass builds. Agree it makes no sense multiclass ciphers can stack more will than single class, though I took advantage of this with my hierophant build. I think the bull's will would be a good cipher addition, also fast runner for monk (or everyone). Personally I'd love to see a lot of the old utility talents that became class specific applied to all classes, like deep pockets (sorta applied in compromise extra pocket), but also monastic unarmed, fast runner and quick switch. I don't think any of these things would change class balance too much. That would be super, super awesome if you could fix the duplicates scaling on these passive abilities Random question, any idea why Vela is unscriptable? I don't mean scripting her behavior but I can't script my character to do simple things like heal her if damaged or cast withdraw on her. She doesn't seem to be tagged as an "ally".

Is it possible to add Monastic Unarmed Training talent to all classes, like Extra Pockets was? In POE1 there were a lot of cross-class talents like this including the unarmed fighting one, which I really liked. Shield-attacks and fists have pen 0 with no scaling on me and phantoms, at least with Tuotilo's. I have read the notes but my memory isn't perfect. I couldn't think of a good reason Tuotilo's Palm would have pen 0. Think it is supposed to be 7. Let me check Magran's Blessing...it has pen 6+2(exceptional), scaling is correct. I reread the section on item passive scaling, noticed you list One Dozen Stood, Cape of the Falling Star, Mantle of the Seven Bolts, and Least Unstable Coil as all affected by some glitch when you wear them simultaneously... I had a long thing written here asking about the scaling but I experimented with different orders of equipping the items and I get it now. Okay, so my question is this: these abilities should also scale with essential phantom, yes? But they do not. He doesn't display "volatile" "fiery descent" "echo of the godhammer" or "final storm" and just gets the base pen, also doesn't benefit from scion of flame or heart of the storm. Doesn't get the bonus damage or accuracy either. As a result the phantom does maybe 1/3 the damage I would on death. Is this intentional, or should duplicates get the passive ability scaling as well?

What is the trap strategy? I mostly know stuff I've discovered myself or been told in the last few months so I'm missing some likely commonish knowledge. Yes she is a priest of Berath. What I'm unsure of is whether all Priest of X have the same set of "extra" spells. They all have the auto-spells like Touch of Rot, Holy Power, Spreading Plague, and I'm pretty sure they share another spell per level. Most enemy casters have 2 spells per level but some have 3 or even weirder amounts like 10 from levels 1 to 3, so I don't know if like Yseyr and Meryel share these extra spells. I tried for a long time and I got every spell except Halt at least three or four times before I gave up. And she had 10 spells without Halt, which is the most I've seen a caster have from levels 1 to 3. Would be really weird if she has 11, but could be. Didn't know any of this. I mean I knew you could restealth without Berath and flee combat and pick off enemies one by one which is why assassins are so good right? Discovered the restealthing thing by accident really, was trying to murder the servants far away from the rest so I didn't aggro everyone and I restealthed and it aggroed everyone but they just ran into the room and back out. I probably won't be using this tactic much though. I actually turned off Magran's Challenge for the trial run so I can pause and look at the combat log when I need to figure something out. Trying not to use it much since it makes combat a lot easier. Have everything on but Magran, Wael, and Iron

Didn't know you could just sneak up to the fire. The wiki says doing that gives reputation loss. I managed to wipe out the Takano Estate at L10. Probably could have done it at 9 but was trying to steal spells from the druid and the wizard, which was a waste of time as none of them had anything good. Well, the druid did but his spells are easy to find. The wizard is called an "elementalist" so I thought he had the "elementalist grimoire" or possibly the "weathermage grimoire" but he has no grimoire at all, just a unique set of common and mostly meh spells: minoletta's minor missiles, jolting touch, curse of blackened sight, ray of fire, fireball, and crackling bolt. Was looking for combusting wounds, chill fog, and kalakoth's minor blights which are fairly hard to find. Interestingly even with Berath's Challenge you can apparently start combat by attacking and entering stealth, which queues up the battle music and prevents you from using offensive spells or leaving the area, but as long as you stay out of people's stealth detection you can send in summons and buff/heal them from off the screen. Phantom kept killing the druid though so I just took them on at once until druid and wizard remained, got the druid spells I wanted, killed the druid, then fought the mage for about an hour. Because of the changes to blood sacrifice it is very tedious stealing a specific spell (particularly if the mage doesn't have it lol), but basically I just repeat the cycle of eldritch aim => fetid caress (almost always hits this guy) => minor grimoire imprint x2 => blood sacrifice x 2 to 8 (or stop when near death) => fetid caress => restore x4. Need to find a way to script it so I can do it on fast mode but vela seems unscriptable for some reason so idk. Also you can't check wizard resources for some reason which would be needed to know when to blood sacrifice, though you can script around resources for a lot of other classes. If I knew how to mod I'd make a mod that gives vela the normal "ally" tags so those work on her in scripts and you can just auto-cast withdraw on ally if ally is not a summon, easy game. Anyway I wrecked my reputation with the Huana and was going to stop and do Archmage's Vault but found out just being nice to Netehe is enough to get you to -2, and the ship isn't there anymore. Your rep has to be -3 when you leave Neketaka. Luckily it doesn't have to *stay* at -3, the ship spawn appears persistent once it spawns, so I can board it later, but you do have to at least leave the city while your rep is -3. Oh I discovered another consequence of negative reputation. Didn't think there were any really, but if you go to the gullet with huana bad 2 or worse and talk to the overseer to go to the old city, he'll let you, but he leaves you there to die =/ Would be a nasty surprise in an iron run

Yes. Maybe I found another "bug" that will disappear after I restart the game, level up, quit, say a prayer, and reload. Hmm. No such luck. The BPM notes say they didn't do anything about the wizard spells because they were already implemented correctly I thought. The phantom's accuracy and deflection do scale with level but penetration does not, whether weapon or spell or exploding. Unfortunate because the explosions crit decently often but always no pen or worse. They'd do a lot of damage if there was penetration scaling. I checked Maura's Writhing Tentacles and they do scale but their base pentration is 5, so at level 20 it becomes 9 which is still pretty meh. --- Another thing, I noticed unarmed attacks and shield-weapons like Tuotilo's Palm have ZERO penetration, regardless of level. Hope that one isn't intentional because unarmed attacks are pretty useful when you want to avoid breaking weapons and don't have summoned ones available. Plus the shield-weapons are useless now. More than useless, they cost you attack/recovery time and always severely underpen.

Testing out AOE on unconscious gear on phantoms. This is at L20 with Mantle of the Seven Bolts Effort One Dozen Stood Least Unstable Coil Unfortunately Effort and Least Unstable Coil have 7 penetration regardless of level. Same with Cape of the Falling Star. Mantle of the Seven Bolts has 9 penetration which is still not great. One Dozen Stood has a decent 12 penetration. With Animancy Cat the exploding phantoms strat may be sort of usable. Shadowing Beyond => Pull of Eora => Essential Phantom. Stealing Champion's Boon would help the summons a lot. Even if the duration sucks because of negative power level you only really need the +2 pen when they explode. Pull of Eora doesn't pop you out of invisibility but Blood Sacrifice does, which is a bit strange since it isn't an attack. The phantom duration is a little over a minute. He is so tanky with One Dozen Stood that the Neketaka guards couldn't kill him though so I had to detonate him manually. But I'm sure actually tough enemies will detonate him. Potions of Enlightenment shouldn't break invisibilty so I think this will work, though the low penetration sucks. Least Unstable Coil does have a nice stun effect though. Could possibly even do this without stealing spells at all, using Arkemyr's Grimoire if it weren't for the ridiculous number of withdraw scrolls you'd need. Shadowing Beyond is better overall due to the lack of recovery, and stealing spells is fun. Blood Sacrifice breaking invisibility is also a problem, but length of Arkemyr's Wondrous Departure with decent INT is over 30 seconds so theoretically you could stay invisible without stealing spells or blood sacrifice BUT you also need to summon phantoms, and...can't regenerate resources fast enough for that without blood sacrifice or spell theft. How does potion of enlightenment work on multiclass characters? Do you get back 1 resource per class or is it random? Because with super high INT priest of skaen / wizard you could maybe do this with Spiritual Ally and Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure without stealing spells, if you got back 1 resource per class per 30 seconds from the potions. Or wizard / watershaper with watery double, except you can't be a watershaper sadly. You can steal the spell, though, but I'm not sure how bad it is with negative power level scaling. Or maybe a monk / wizard, not sure if the monk duplicate gets your gear though. Checked the description and it says "all class resources" so it SOUNDS like you'd get +1 per class per 30 seconds, so I think you could actually do all the magran's fires challenges in BPM without stealing spells, though withdraw duration was nerfed somewhat so I think you'd be just short of being able to stay invisible... Also makes these potions of enlightenment much better for multiclass, and they only cost 3000 gold or 1000 gold to craft

How do you get to L12 without raising your rep with the Huana? I'm avoiding certain quests for that reason, which puts me at 9. Maybe could do the encounter at 9, but it is dicey, so not ideal. I probably don't even need the shield but I've been wanting to try it because of the blood rage thing and huge deflection bonus for my 3 resolve char. Can also use The Wall with Escape (I think). Who needs to move when you can teleport? Guess I could do some of the Gullet quests, I think those just raise your rep with the Gullet and Dawnstars...except Trade Secrets. Can do Eulogy for the Dead. Archmage Vault and give it to RDC. Yeah could probably get to 12, though the pathing might be weird. Typically I go queen's berth => periki's overlook => serpent's crown => gullet (open undercroft shortcut) => queen's berth => gullet => serpent's crown => sacred stair => brass citdael => serpent's crown => periki => gullet => queen's berth => leave. I haven't found a faster way to do all the quests because you need Huana 2 to turn in Muhai without rep loss (though I guess who cares), and turning in Food For Thought is really circuitous with the best outcome, since you have to see Pitli then the Dawnstar Temple, then the Prince, then Enoi. Would be faster to get food from Mad Morena, but I don't do that because of the meaningless reputation gain in the gullet. Yeah I'm not doing that anymore. The only benefit to rep I've noticed is you can pass some checks that otherwise require diplomacy which I usually have anyway, and with Neketaka 2 you can get Emeini who is the best backup crew member IMO. And the cost of getting Dawnstar food is like half a day or more so not worth it. Ah crap, I already killed her. Oh well. I can steal it from Yseyr or Wheneena Eel's Kiss or probably a number of generic Huana ship priests...I think they're all Berath, was it Dgray who said that? Shows how hard it is to steal a specific spell though with bad luck. Even with minor grimoire imprint which only targets 3 levels vs major grimoire imprint's 7. I'm going to limit the number of major imprint thefts to things that I really need because it just takes ages to grind out a battle hoping for that 1/14 to 1/21 roll (assuming you always hit with the imprint, which you don't, so more like 1/20 to 1/30).