Shai Hulud

That's really bizarre. I've used akola's apex shield a lot and never encountered anything like that. Are you using any mods?

Using slippers of the assassin and strand of favor can remove most of the tedium, as I'm sure you're aware. I don't really advocate strand of favor use in general but in places where it reduces tedium without affecting overall gameplay much I'm all for it. If you have Loaded Pockets on you can get especially good stuff from pickpocketing. The highest sleight of hand check I've seen is around 8, so you mostly need stealth (or the slippers). It makes no sense how items are marked with sleight of hand. Gems are usually easy to steal at least. I usually don't invest anything in sleight of hand. If you have hylea's bounty + luminous adra potion + carlo's training + rokowa's fingers that's 6. If you have a chanter/x cipher/x or rogue/x you get +1 (or +2) for 7 to 8. I might put ONE point in sleight of hand if I don't have any class bonus to get to 7, but the gems and money are always easy to steal. The hard stuff tends to be food and weapons but sometimes it's loaded pockets items. Very strange that unlike every other active skill you really don't benefit from maxing sleight of hand, except very rare interactive checks. I think the pickpocketing would have made more sense if you had to roll to steal, and your chances of success depend on item value and weight and your sleight of hand skill. I don't like games where if you fail a pickpocket everyone tries to murder you, though, so a better solution would be to just make it so you can only pickpocket a character once regardless of success. Money seems too easy to come by in Deadfire IMO. Also you sometimes find peasants carrying around emeralds and the like.

Assume you're talking about FF / SG. What weapons would you use here? I only used weapons for bonuses, like kapana taga, squid's grasp, or daggers with modal. Spamming forbidden fist seems a lot better than using weapons since you gain wounds and health, it enfeebles, and it does more damage than normal weapons given huge bonuses from transcendent suffering and forbidden curse. Or did you mean FF / assassin? And in that case how do you gain wounds with grave's calling + scordeo's edge?

Potions are part of the game, not even removed by ultimate challenge, why not use them? None of them are particularly broken besides potion of final stand. And there aren't that many difficult combats, I've never had trouble creating enough potions of ascension for them. Quill leaves are their most rare component but if you buy them when you come across them you can get 40+ per game even without wait-cycling vendor inventories. I guess you're one of those guys who hordes consumables in games where they're meant to be used? I used to horde consumables and ingredients but games are really better if you use them... The +1 power level from wellspring of life would be more impactful at lower levels where the +1 focus per second is more meaningful. From my testing at L20 it didn't make any difference at least with the items I was using, which had me at 7 focus per second with or without wellspring (I'm assuming you don't gain fractional focus for power levels in between). But with some combinations of items it could make a difference, I just don't think it's worth losing the versatility of a helmet. Even without the helmet some other racial bonuses are really good like fighting spirit and elemental endurance. But to each his own. Wall of Draining does not necessarily come that late. It is dependent on pathing and party size. I've played games where I have wall of draining before doing a single fight. Wand of the Weyc does come pretty late, admittedly, but the hardest fights are also very late. Besides wall of draining a priest can also extend as early as level 11, though by itself lord of the forest probably doesn't merit the cast, but it's an AOE so could be useful when multiple party members want things extended. With blood mages I usually blood sacrifice to half health anyway to trigger llengrath's safeguard and regain spell slots. One can easily heal with party spells, healing hands, or even the blood mage passive. I've found you can cast pull of eora and wall of draining while invisible so if you have arkemyr's brilliant departure it is very easy to extend effects rapidly, even from just one wall of draining. I really don't like godlikes but I'd rather use a death godlike than nature. Potion of Final Stand + WOD = invulnerability. And the potions can be scripted to be consumed at any health so it isn't actually that risky at that point. But yes would be very risky early. I can see how thematically that would be interesting I guess. I generally just recommend what I think is most effective. I acknowledge there are some benefits of nature godlikes here but helmets provide so much versatility that losing one is not worth the tradeoff IMO (and you also lose the other racial which can be very good like fighting spirit). None of the godlike abilities are strong enough to warrant the tradeoff barring some special builds with death godlikes, and I doubt I'm the only one who sees it this way since godlikes were, for example, buffed in elric's balance polishing mod.

Good point. Yeah I thought about mentioning WOTEP, it is pretty good pre-lance and can distribute soul annihilation with the cone. One thing to be aware of though, making the sword forces a rest for some reason, so you can't get it in no-rest runs (which I always advocate) without a no-forced-rests mod. I'd install the mod but an alternative solution would be to skip the per-game buffs like dawnstars until you get WOTEP, then rest with chosen food and swing back to port maje to pick up the blessing. Xoti has to be alive though or no blessing for you (found this out in a recent iron run with a fury, waenglith was pretty mad and cursed me). https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/354 If you don't care about stacking as many buffs as possible don't worry about it, just be aware it forces a rest with no bonuses.

I used a blood mage / soul blade for the ultimate and am a big advocate of the build. It is extremely strong with good defenses and super high DPS once you hit L13 and get citzal's spirit lance plus borrowed instinct. It does so much DPS because the lance both collects focus from multiple enemies and distributes soul annihilation to multiple enemies (I've hit as many as 10, but usually you hit about five). So once you have the lance you can typically refill your focus in one attack. Here is the build I used. Since it was an ultimate run I used cheese like strand of favor but it isn't necessary on normal runs and the build picks should still apply, though I'd recommend taking wall of draining at L19 and pull of eora at l10 or l11 in place of secrets of rime. I took secrets of rime mostly because I stole watershaper chill fog, but it isn't really needed. Also I'd take phantom foes and not heart of the storm. So the picks are the same except L11 - pull of eora, L12 - phantom foes, L19 - wall of draining and echoing horror. And I'd probably take whispers of treason at L1. In general you hit things with the lance to build focus rapidly, then use soul annihilation with the lance to do tons of damage, while using llengrath's martial mysteries wizard buffs and cipher buff / debuffs (mostly borrowed instinct, but also psychovampiric shield, phantom foes, and secret horrors) to greatly buff yourself and debuff enemies. Before you get the lance you can use the parasitic quarterstaff, or any weapon really, but you'll see a huge dps spike once you get the lance due to it hitting multiple enemies. I went coastal aumaua in this build for the might affliction resistance, but you could go anything but godlike. Could even go godlike if you don't mind losing the nifty hats. Probably nature godlike would be the best choice if you go that way. My top picks for race would probably be pale elf, human, wild orlan, coastal auamaua, wood elf, and mountain dwarf. Let me know if you have any questions And here is another thread discussing hierophants, mostly blood mage / ascendant but also blood mage / soul blade in my posts. And another thread talking about hierophants, with me rambling about blood mage / soul blade some more

FF/Soul blade is one of my favorite builds. Can solo the game without cheese. Would be able to do the ultimate challenge if FF worked correctly without community patch.

@Torm51 has good suggestions, but pathing and stealth can also be of great help to you. You don't need to fight the vithrack at all. If you do quarantined section first, you can stealth that and don't kill any normal librarians, you can avoid the first oracle fight, then sneak up to sissak's nest and hand him the warden contract. Most of the FS fights are so tough because the enemy parties are really well-balanced. Like they often have paladins or moon spiders doing massive amounts of healing to their strikers / wizards / ciphers. I've found killing the support characters first makes these fights a little easier. Soloing I've actually encountered some FS fights that appear unwinnable, at least with certain builds. Like had a super tanky arcane knight that simply could not kill certain groups though they couldn't kill me either. Sissak's Nest is good example, the moon spiders provide massive amounts of healing to the vithracks. It appears impossible solo unless you have abilities that can stop healing like forbidden fist.

Frightened Child is very difficult, I agree worse than oracle. I don't recall her exact abilities but she is a high level cipher who likes to spam death of 1000 cuts, and if you're hit by that plus hit by her minions they will mess you up pretty fast. She presumably has access to disintegration as well, which destroys. There are various other enemies that have high level cipher spells as well in FS. I didn't see llengrath's teachings listed in the abilities for the giant luminescent spore on the wiki, but that would definitely explain it. Something like spore cloud charmed your character and then that ability was used. With frightened chlid I like to run back where the librarians are and then throw down spells like great maelstrom, storm of holy fire, minoletta's missile salvo, etc. Can also use CC spells around the door to make a choke point, but it's usually enough to let them murder the librarians while I stand back and use farcasting AOE spells to take her out. Don't forget about scrolls, even if you don't have a druid you should have a character with high arcana to cast scrolls. For an ironman run you're probably better off skipping these fights. Giant luminescent spore doesn't give you anything for fighting it. For frightened child you get a neat crossbow, so could be worth it. Still, I usually kill frightened child even though I never use the crossbow, just because loot, even did so on an ultimate run.

Don't forget about scrolls. Great Maelstrom scrolls are pretty easy to make (1 palm slat + 1 primal wind + 1 primal water). There's also storm of holy fire and meteor shower scrolls though the range and AOE isn't as large so they aren't as good for these specific battles but still very useful. I'd recommend you always have one character with maxed arcana. I think fangs and fur fight must be artificially much more difficult with galawain's challenge so my impression of it is probably not accurate. With that challenge they all have ridiculous buffs that provide a range of nasty effects like a bunch of inspirations, immunity to interrupts, invisibility, super high armor, immunity to all afflictions, etc. Normally galawain's challenge doesn't seem like it makes the game that much harder but in fights where it is nothing but beasts it is definitely felt. If you include all the optional SSS fights where you chase down artifacts then SSS is probably the hardest. I usually skip those unless I'm looking for a specific item because it's too much "run and fetch this" nonsense. Installed a mod by @Noqn that lets you do these fights without completing the fetch quests, and I'd definitely recommend it. Some of the fights are pretty tough, though I can't recall which ones are slayer. You can do all of them if you got all three artifacts from the island. https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/631 Most of the hardest FS fights are optional. Well, really they're nearly all optional since you can stealth but I mean like Sissak fight can be incredibly hard but avoidable if you give him the warden contract. Frightened Child fight is super hard but totally avoidable. Giant luminescent sporeling fight is pretty tough but also avoidable, and you can also make any remaining spores and infested librarians friendly. A friendly solution also makes one of the upper bowels fights avoidable, while the other two can be stealthed past. Also first oracle fight is avoidable if you do the stacks first and don't kill any librarians IIRC. I think the only truly unavoidable fight is last oracle fight and fyonlecg. If you get reanimated maura you can have a peaceful solution, though I'd recommend killing her for her belt.

The best way to take out the totems is to use a huge AOE attack like great maelstrom. You can cast it before they start summoning anything, and It's large enough with high INT to destroy both totems and will usually mess up the snakes pretty bad as well. Sending one character to deal with them is dangerous unless they have movement abilities to get them out of there. I guess you're on slayer path? The Fangs and Fur one is IMO the hardest (changeling dance is hard solo but probably not with a party) but I always have galawain on so maybe without it isn't. Battles against the humans are pretty easy, and the end boss. I think the DLC difficulty goes BOW < SSS < FS, though SSS is arguably the hardest because you can stealth past a lot of the tough fights in FS while you can't do that in SSS. But if you choose to actually fight things, FS has some really hard encounters.

I've never had this happen and looked through the giant luminescent spores' abilities and don't see anything that would destroy a character. But his spore cloud can charm your allies, and he has a "storing magic" ability that causes him to do a variable amount of retaliation damage on being killed. I wonder if it's possible there's an interaction the storing magic attack on alliance-flipped characters that causes them to die rather than become unconscious? I'd have to see it happen and check the log to really be sure, but since I haven't seen it happen I can only speculate. Did you see anything in the log? It's pretty easy to avoid combat with him if you want.

Yes but not much. It's 1 power level (that wouldn't even always be up--easiest way would be keep up infuse or deleterious), not worth losing access to helmets, but you can build around it I guess. Should note if OP wanted to use vaporous grimoire it is a very bad idea to go godlike since you can't wear rekvu's fractured casque. Even if you don't use vaporous that helm is extremely useful in some battles. Even ignoring the casque I question whether one power level is worth losing 4 accuracy from acina's tricorn and other racial bonus, whether that's fighting spirit or elemental endurance or defiant resolve. Better ways to gain power levels: drink potion of ascension, switch to lance of the midwood stag when bloodied (then wall of draining / salvation of time), stone of power, wand of the weyc, etc.

Yep, should get 4 scales IIRC? 1 scale per upgrade so they help a lot. Also kraken's eyes can be used in this manner though it requires 2 eyes per upgrade. I usually don't find enough eyes to get more than one upgrade out of it but there should be four in the game. So 6 possible exceptional -> superb upgrades without money or gems. And for superb -> legendary there's the magma dragon gizzard stone, plus up to four (five?) culmination stones from SSS

Exactly what you want probably depends how you intend to use the character and on which party members you want to bring. A blood mage / psion works best as a ranged caster (as opposed to blood mage / soul blade which is a melee char) so I'll assume that's the intended role. pale elf, old vailia (can take any race but not a big fan of godlikes, I'd take an elf, human, wild orlan, or coastal auamau) MIG/CON/DEX/PER/INT/RES - 13/12/12/19/19/3 - doesn't need to be this exact, but generally this character does not need resolve, so you can dump it. You want max PER and INT so spells hit and last longer. And the rest you divide up among middling levels of MIG/CON/DEX. For most chars I'd lower CON some more but you want enough to be able to blood sacrifice. And normally I'd use higher DEX but since you build spells passively it is not as important to have high DEX to generate focus. For grimoires you could pick the grimoires with the best spells (ironclasped, ninagauth, jernaugh's, llengrath's, arkemyr) and memorize few spells or use the grimoire of vaporous wizardry which gives you one more cast per level but basically requires you to carry an injury and wear rekvu's fractured casque so you aren't interrupted when you take damage. If you go vaporous route you have to memorize more wizard spells as its spell selection isn't the best. For this build I'm going the route of using the grimoires with the best spells so I can pick more cipher abilities. 1 - whispers of treason, eldritch aim (or chill fog or slicken, though these are easy to find in grimoires) 2 - lingering echoes 3 - penetrating visions 4 - mental binding (!), weapon and shield style (or a wizard spell like chill fog, slicken, or combusting wounds) 5 - mind blades 6 - psychovampiric shield 7 - soul ignition (!), bear's fortitude 8 - secret horrors 9 - recall agony 10 - pain block, pull of eora (!) 11 - iron will 12 - phantom foes 13 - borrowed instinct (!), farcasting 14 - echoing shield 15 - tactical meld 16 - disintegration (!), tough 17 - the empty soul (!) 18 - rapid casting 19 - ancestor's memory (!), wall of draining (!) 20 - echoing horror You could take scion of flame, spirit of decay, etc. if you find you're using a particular element a lot, but the best offensive cipher spells do raw damage and I'd generally rather have more spells. You also don't have to take tough, rapid casting or farcasting but I find they help a lot. The best wizard spells you can just cast out of grimoires and switch to another during the recovery phase of a spell, so you don't really have to memorize ANY wizard spells, but I like to take pull of eora because it is good and not in any of the major grimoires, and wall of draining because it is really good and of the major grimoires only in vaporous and jernaugh. These are IMO the best non-unique wizard spells for a caster L1 - Chill Fog (!), Slicken (!), Eldritch Aim (when you need an accuracy boost) L2 - Miasma of Dull-Mindedness (!), Combusting Wounds (!), Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon (!), Arcane Veil, Infuse with Vital Essence L3 - Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Llengrath's Displaced Image, Arcane Dampener, Fireball L4 - Pull of Eora (!), Essential Phantom, Maura's Writhing Tentacles, Ironskin L5 - Ryngrim's Enervating Terror, Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring, Call to Slumber, Llengrath's Safeguard (!) L6 - Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst (!), Arcane Reflection, Gaze of the Adragan, Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar, Arkemyr's Capricious Hex L7 - Delayed Fireball, Wall of Draining (!) There are also several spells limited to certain grimoires, of which these are the best IMO L2 - Concelhaut's Draining Missiles (!) - Ironclasped L4 - Ninagauth's Shadowflame (!) - Ninagauth's Teachings L6 - Jernaugh's Equalizing Burst (!) - Jernaugh's Careful Calamities, Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure (!) - Arkemyr's Grimoire / Arkemyr's Illuminating Discoveries L7 - Concelhaut's Crushing Doom (!) - Ironclasped And this is probably the equipment I'd wear (going top down left column then right) Acina's Tricorn - gives +5 accuracy to most spells Charm of Bones - +2INT, +5accuracy vs vessels Fleshmender - for bonus quick slot mostly, so you can carry more grimoires and potions, also has good armor for leather Kuaru's Prize - +1 INT/PER, 5% spell damage Boots of the Stone - +1DEX/RES, resistance to might aff giftbearer's cloth - +fort/ref/will scaling with history (+17.5 here with 20 history), +1 weapon sets, +1 quick item slots grimoires - jernaughs, arkemyr's, ironclasped, ninagauth, llengrath (also have vaporous here, but you need to wear rekvu's casque if using that) gauntlets of accuracy - +3 accuracy (healing hands also nice) chameleon's ring - +1INT/PER, +1 arcana/insight upright captain's belt - +1 con, start with concentration, but mostly for its immunity to push/pull so you aren't affected by pull of eora and similar spells/abilities blinky - resistance to PER afflictions, +5 melee accuracy which also applies to most spells. It's a late game pet, earlier you can use harley or abraham weapons - you won't be using them, so they're mostly stat sticks or defensive shields slot 1 - griffin's blade with hound's courage, outworn buckler slot 2 - kapana taga (mostly for club modal will debuff), lethandria's devotion slot 3 - lance of the midwood stag - cast wall of draining after getting woodskin to maintain lord of the forest's +2 power levels slot 4 - griffin's blade with hound's courage + sun and moon

Konstanten's class choices being skald, skald/barbarian, and barbarian, means he was intended as a melee character, though his meh perception is not great for getting phrases back. You could definitely run him as a ranged howler. Won't be the best chanter since he can't get phrases back ranged but he isn't going to crit a ton anyway. Sure-handed ila + frenzy and he'll attack pretty fast. Barbaric Blow should apply ranged but there isn't as much benefit so I probably wouldn't take it. Give him a high dps bow and have him summon instruments of death now and then. Fassina works well as a pure wizard. Just cast caedabald's blackbow and essential phantom and she'll wreck things. Would probably be fine as a loremaster, but loremaster is redundant if you're taking konstanten as a howler. Also it doesn't pair that well with conjurer since she can only summon one thing at a time, meaning she can't use both wizard and chanter summons. Could do wizard summons and use chanter side for buffs and CC invocations, would probably work all right. Sorcerer does have some interesting synergy like combusting wounds + infestation of maggots... I think any of her class choices are fine, just depending what your party needs.

Which challenges? This is kind of my specialty actually. Be aware if you have on Abydon's Challenge you can't really use any weapons at all besides summoned weapons and fists, as they'll break (though I expect flames of devotion doesn't apply damage to weapons). Woedica + Eothas (or even just Woedica) makes using per-rest classes very difficult, unless they're used for solely some passive bonuses, or you proc mind over matter and extend it with strand of favor. You'll have to use strand of favor (if abydon is on anyway) because just waiting for things to proc it by hitting you they'll break your gear. Exceptions are classes with extension abilities like blood mage and priests, though it is still tedious to proc each fight. And Hylea I think can actually be done with just about any build but controlling Vela is very tedious. The other challenges don't change the run that much from a standard solo POTD upscaled except a general increase in difficulty. Also the builds I mentioned earlier won't do well solo potd upscaled. Not tanky enough. Votaries are a good choice, IF you proc brilliant and wear the right gear this could definitely work by spamming flames of devotion. I made a L20 test build KW/helwalker. With dawnstar's blessing and practiced healer plus helwalker bonus I was getting about 44 health per attack and healing the dichotomous souls as well. Still I got killed in "tactical ogres" fight in SSS. When I gave myself brilliant and extended it I was able to muddle through the fight, though keeping alive the duplicates is difficult. Animancer's Energy Blade doesn't seem necessary for this build though, except possibly in rare circumstances... crush damage is rarely resisted. Still your penetration isn't great (12 PEN at L20, can bump to 13 with potion of ascension and 15 with hot razor skewers). With the razor skewers and potion that is enough to penetrate nearly everything. And fists do more damage. Keeping the summons alive while you use long pain from behind them is difficult in some encounters. I expect it will work in many encounters, particularly if you give them +engagement gear, but sometimes enemies will break past anyway. The most effective votary I've played solo (or otherwise, really) is SG / FF, though you need the community patch for it to work right. Enfeebled triggers the SG 15% healing passive, and the FF attack heals you anyway when the curse runs out, so it is a brutally effective melee build. Doesn't even depend on armor, though it's probably easiest if you build it that way. Also FF attack has much better penetration than standard fists. It is high enough to penetrate everything that isn't outright crush immune. I don't mean to dissuade you though, I only tested this for like 30 minutes and I think there's promise, though I'd probably use fist + tuotilo's palm with instruments of pain rather than animancer's energy blade, unless crushing were resisted. Hmm yeah I tried the encounter again, this time with blackened plate helm for +engagement, and with fist + tuotilo's palm and I survived. I may mess around with this later, very cool build idea. I just quickly scraped something together, human with 15/3/9/18/13/19 stats. After buffs, items, and helwalker + iron wheel it's 32/24/21/24/20/31 Think in retrospect I might drop MIG a bit for more INT, but this works pretty well. Definitely want two weapons most of the time, since Flames of Devotion triggers twice per use for like +88 healing with two fists or fist + tuotilo's palm (with instruments of pain). I'm unsure if flames of devotion healing gets triggered on swift flurry or heartbeat drumming. I'm going to guess...no. I didn't notice it anyway. The more I test this build the more I like it. But if you're planning to proc brilliant every fight that will get tedious, I'd definitely extend it even though it's "cheesy".

Animancer's Energy Blade is top tier against certain enemies. Since it does raw it is never resisted by anyone nor is anyone immune. And versus enemies with very high pierce/slash resistance like say Dorudugan, or any of the dragons, a regular sabre user is going to struggle to do much damage unless they crit most hits (crit gives a +50% penenetration). Against regular enemies where you would penetrate most hits a regular sabre will do more damage, but the universality of animancer's energy blade is extremely useful. Same idea with Eccea's Arcane Blaster though I haven't used it as much. You can enchant both up to mythic. What changes is the weapons gain bonus damage and accuracy. With the blaster the imbued ammunition gains penetration since it does crush/corrode, and also you can add certain effects like interrupt/knockback chance and chance for bullets to split. They're both mid to late game items though so you might think about importing them from another run if you want to use them the whole game. Just put the weapons on a character and go to export tab on the character sheet, then export. Then in another run you can import the adventurer at an inn and take the weapons. It can be very expensive if you give him too many items so I'd just give him the energy blade and the blaster. Or if you don't mind disabling achievements you can just add the weapons via console. As Boeroer has indicated the builds that would benefit the most from these weapons specifically are ones with mediocre penetration and accuracy. When you do raw damage penetration is meaningless, and accuracy is not as important since crits don't affect penetration of raw damage. Classes with high penetration: devoted, berserker, cipher, monk (with fists anyway). Classes with high accuracy: rangers, ciphers, sometimes monks (if you can maintain enduring dance), and priests, fighters with conqueror stance and disciplined barrage. Also a spellcaster class probably wouldn't need the sabre since they have spells, unless you built the class to be a martial caster like a wizard, who has many defensive buffs. So...I'm thinking the classes that would benefit the most would be regular barbarians, rogues, paladins, monks, and maybe chanters and wizards. There are some interesting multiclass combinations there. A barbarian/rogue would be interesting thematically with the sabre if you take blood frenzy and blood storm, since you will do a lot of raw damage. Barbarian / streetfighter in particular would wreck things meleeing. If you want to use the blaster more then a SC paladin could be pretty strong in the right party, particularly a kind wayfarer since you can spam flames of devotion and heal allies with white flames, and at higher levels will gain back paladin resources whenever allies die (including summons from a chanter). Holy slayer (pal/rogue) is also interesting, particularly steel garrote, since it is easy for a melee character to trigger the healing passive. Bleak Walkers could work as well since persistent distraction + flames of devotion gives two afflictions and triggers deathblows. For rogue half if it's a melee character I'd be tempted to do streetfighter since it is easy to get flanked, but trickster has some nice defensive buffs. A blood mage / rogue using wizard side for defensive buffs and occasional debuffs to trigger deathblows could also be good. I must note it's kind of weird to think about building a character this way, since normally I try to maximize accuracy and penetration, but they are just not as relevant here. Accuracy is still good, just not as essential, but penetration does nothing. Still the only classes where high penetration comes with large tradeoffs are berserker and devoted, so really I think you'd be fine with anything else... I could give better feedback if you provided your other party members, what difficulty you're playing on, and the envisioned role for the character (DPS melee, ranged, melee/ranged hybrid, caster/melee hybrid, etc.?)

You can also start fights stealthed, or alternatively lure away a weak enemy, then use this time to cast combat-only buffs, before going in and killing everyone. Sounds like it may not be necessary in your party on that difficulty. For the megaboss fights you're probably going to run out of useful spells even on "regular", but I'm unsure. Dorudugan has like 16k health on POTD upscaled, Hauni O Whe can split and regrow indefinitely, etc.

Presumably these beasts don't have higher level abilities available unlike kith who are modeled after the same classes as players. With the skeletal sorcerers and such it does matter what level you meet them. I figure they don't have to be kith just set as one of the kith classes like skeletal sorcerers or risen mages are wizards so they eventually get high level spells even if they're meant to be like level 10. But I'm just guessing based on experiences running into them at higher levels. Haven't really tested spawning level-scaled characters, not actually sure how to spawn anything besides rotghasts...

Mods don't disable achievements. Also you can use lots of console commands just not the ones tagged as <cheat> Only thing I'm aware of that requires mods be turned off is the ultimate. And yes you can change mid-way. Just put the files in your override folder, check under options -> mods that it's enabled, and that's it. Most of the changes are minor and pretty transparent and you won't notice the difference unless looking for specific things.

I think casters scale up their spells. Like pretty sure I've run into risen priests that had minor avatar. And I know Katrenn has cast Concelhaut's Crushing Doom on me. She's meant to be level 12 so shouldn't have it. I was trying to steal spells from her and was annoyed she kept killing herself because the AI doesn't check if you have on arcane reflection before casting something like CCD, so eventually I just cloned my script and turned off Arcane Reflection when doing spell thefts. This was playing vanilla game. I've found it doesn't make a ton of difference what order I do things in besides DLC content. What matters is when the build comes together. Once you have your abilities and gear that make it work, as you say the enemy gaining a bit of stats doesn't affect you as much.

Should with instruments of pain, though eventually they'd be knocked out of reach

Force of Anguish / Efficient Anguish use just the primary attack, but are you saying if you get a double strike from efficient anguish it would then skip to the shield? And @Boeroer keeps up instruments of pain which gives +500% melee reach, so after hitting someone with efficient anguish you can do it again. Eventually they'll fall out of range but I'm not sure how long this takes. One-handing Stalker's Patience with a ranger I was getting lots of triple+ strikes so if it does skip to the shield bash that seems like a good reason not to use one, but I suspect if you manually time (or script to spam) efficient anguish as long as you have wounds it will keep doing the primary strike. Doesn't really seem like you need the shield at range but it does count as two-weapon so when you don't trigger mercy strike the recovery would be shorter. But you skip recovery about half the time if you always crit so if the +12 accuracy from one-handing is enough to get you from "usually crit" to "always crit" I would rather one-hand.

I've tried using instruments of pain from range but it is difficult to maintain enough wounds to keep up dichotomous souls plus instruments of pain (and sometimes other stuff like enlightened agony and thunderous blows). It can be done in some fights and is even necessary (like dorudugan) but with mobs it's mostly impossible. But not only that you're also maintaining enough wounds to spam efficient anguish? Or do you rely on other characters to keep back the tide and just maintain insruments of pain + efficient anguish I guess? Also in general I haven't been able to keep up enduring dance (solo) and have to reuse the ability which gets expensive. I wonder if a shattered pillar / ranger would be a viable option here (with community patch). I've never really been able to get it to work very well for wound generation but presumably you get wounds from every time mercy strike procs. I like nalpazcas in theory but the micro of finding enough svef is kind of annoying. Oh and I initially figured out stalker's patience was way better than it says using a ghost heart / barbarian with dumped RES and max CON. It isn't the king of proccing mercy strikes but every time it does proc you trigger carnage and damage from blood storm so it does just massive amounts of DPS. And if using BPM it is even better since every proc can interrupt groups. Ranger/monk is interesting though.