Shai Hulud

Lot of builds can get by with zero defenses. Some because they don't need to expose themselves, others because they can deify themselves (e.g. priests), others because they have massive healing (e.g. brutes), etc. Low deflection is less of a problem in dumping RES than the hostile effect duration IMO, though priests have tools for that too with Suppress Affliction and Minor Intercession, especially with two priests if one gets stunned or something the other can save him. Also chanters are great from stealth IMO. Particularly troubadours with brisk recitation. They can send in summons including skeletons from many lives pass by, as well as casting buffs. Troubadour/psion is particularly great from stealth, as you can cast pain link on your summons and damage things that way in addition to the summons attacks and various cipher buffs. Can do most of the game this way actually, only major fight I can't do from stealth with this one is Dorudugan. I've even done fights with monks from stealth, just cast enduring dance and then dichotomous souls over and over. But yeah most builds are not ideal from stealth, with priests focused on buffing as long as they have farcasting they can probably stay stealthed whole battles, though I think OP wants this priest to be casting frost spells.

Yeah I got what looks like an automated response from the first email, from support@obsidian.net, and the email looked like a standard auto support ticket request and gave me a number (66195). Past submissions from like just a year ago generally got some kind of acknowledgement email that someone was looking at it within a month or two... My subsequent emails didn't get a response, automated or not. May watch some of your run later, here's mine if interested (blood mage / soul blade), it is also a cheesefest, didn't use potions of final stand or wall of draining but I did lot of grimoire imprints and used strand of favor heavily so I could build tens of thousands of focus and mass zerg enemies with citzal's spirit lance + soul annihilation. My run is pretty long (mostly due to imprints and lot of unnecessary combats to build focus obscenely high) which could explain the delay, though you'd think they'd at least say "hey someone is reviewing this and will be back to you in six months (or whatever)". I've been thinking about doing a "legitimate" ultimate run since this one I was still figuring lots of things out and used just about every exploit I could think of. I am pretty sure I can do it without any cheese with at least one or two builds, though it will be very tedious controlling vela without withdraw or cocoons I don't start fighting anything serious until video 23 I think, and the harder stuff is 28 and on. Just emailed theultimate@obsidian.net (where I submitted it as per instructions) and also support@obsidian.net just to ask if they were still sending badges, would be a little surprised if I get a reply but here's hoping. Let me know if you get an actual response from obsidian EDIT: Watched a little bit, lol you actually stole salvation of time and bdd that is awesome. I've done this before but the game became too easy at that point and I abandoned the run, if I'd done a pure blood mage in the ultimate run I definitely would have tried for that though, it's way easier than temporal cocooning vela and trying to proc brilliant EDIT 2: Regarding spell theft I definitely would have stolen escape and shadowing beyond from a skaenite like beina. Escape is super useful as a movement ability and can be scripted even. I scripted most of my run so in combat most of the time I didn't do much besides press W to cast withdraw on vela who isn't scriptable. I'm thinking about it though and with salvation of time being an AOE that hits friendlies (unlike Wall of draining) you could cast BDD on vela manually and script absolutely everything else, the main thing being if you cast SOT on yourself while standing sort of close to vela she will also benefit, so you'd just have to script self casting SOT every 10s or whatever. Throw in minolettas missile salvos and whatever else spells you want to cast, with frequent blood sacrifice if not brilliant, and I think you'd auto wreck everything. I kind of want to try this now. Or something sort of similar like a priest / chanter who can cast spells in between SOT, maybe a priest / cipher. Really I think any priest class can do the ultimate, you just have to proc brilliant and be immune to int afflictions. Probably any blood mage / x but it is quite a lot harder to deal with vela, also walls of draining can be hard to place with wael (most annoying challenge btw)

What do you mean by top "hidden" ships? Do you mean the vengeance ships, or I think each faction has one labeled ship sailing around that isn't a bounty, though I can't recall their names nor do I think they were particularly high level. I boarded a RDC master ship and they just had exceptional and superb gear. Also killed everyone on the deck of many things. On top it's all exceptional gear, on bottom it is a mix of superb and exceptional. Didn't find any legendary. I was L20 but hadn't been to ashen maw, so...possibly their gear scales with how far you are in the story and not level? Or they don't have any legendary gear. I'm kind of thinking there might just be a couple (maybe even one) generic legendary pieces, which would explain why the gear isn't coded correctly with regards to abydon.

I've discovered generic legendary gear doesn't break down under abydon's challenge. I've tested a number of weapons, shields, and armor via console, and the generic legendary items do not degrade at all. Everything else does. But I only know of one piece existing in the game, the legendary plate armor rewarded from contest of the slayer in SSS. Has anyone encountered other generic legendary gear? It could open up more builds for ultimate runs. Like with the plate I am pretty sure some paladins can do it, definitely paladin / FF, possibly others.

Theoretically yes, they committed to patches for first 50 and there have been like 15, so they should be giving out patches but I haven't received so much as an emailed acknowledgement of receipt of my submission from december, so... ? Also congrats, figuring out the ultimate is pretty tough

That's a good point, though I normally just cast infuse + arcane veil then extend things, but if you have limited casts it may not be worth taking strikes. I really wish this game had metamagic so I could move some spells up to level 4... extended arcane veil anyone? Quickened draining missiles?

Normally low deflection is not a problem if you position your characters appropriately. Give your MC farcasting and most enemies won't be able to reach him without moving so they'll target someone else. It's especially not a problem since you have barring death's door. Ship combat and ambushes are kind of the exception because you can't position your party how you want, and are stuck with however it loads. Really ship combat is not well-designed...the "hard" encounters are just ten guys with arquebus firing at you from the other ship. You can skip it entirely and not really miss anything besides possibly the club kapana taga might require boarding (or it might not, sinking the ship sometimes gives the loot). But yeah in ship combat you could just go into turtle mode with bronlar's phalanx or some other large shield with huge deflection bonuses, can even use the wall modal which massively reduces ranged damage. You won't be able to move, but if you have farcasting it is probably fine, possibly even if you don't. If you need to move just toggle it off/on. Normally I'd use a movement ability like escape but priest of rymrgand doesn't have one. But you don't have to dual wield the advantages are not that large compared to sword and shield, and there are plenty of good shields. Another possibility is do sword and shield with akola's apex ward large shield, which gives +10 accuracy when below 50% health, offsetting the accuracy penalty by +2. You'd want more CON so you can fight at lower health (or have barring death's door + salvation of time), but it works pretty well with blood mages, not as sure with priests, may be harder to stay bloodied. I think this situation calls for...blade cascade (from scordeo's edge)! It's kind of annoying to proc but if you do, one salvation of time and you can cast like a maniac. Pretty late game item though. Double priest is fine, particularly if one is more focused on damage and the other buffs I guess, though personally I rarely do Xoti as pure priest because monks are so good and contemplatives are best of both worlds.

I also loved Durance. He was a lot more believable to me as a character than xoti, and his conversations were more fleshed out than any other character in the series by like a mile. He was kind of a gloomy jerk (most of the time, sometimes funny), but he was a priest of magran who helped kill a god, what do people expect? He was also extremely perceptive, IIRC he is the only one who really gets what's going on if someone dies at the blood pool in Dyrwood Ruins. Also with the right actions you can convince him Magran was complicit with woedica which just breaks him. It's one of the most memorable moments of the series for me, seeing how everyone reacts to the revelation but mostly Durance. Deadfire characters in general are not nearly as good as Durance (or Eder/Aloth, maybe even Sagani). Their conversation trees are basically just their personal quests, they don't seem to have a lot to say about the main quest. Also I don't understand why some of them happen to be in the Deadfire (like Aloth) except that that's where you are, besides Serafen and Tekehu their presence seems rather circumstantial. Xoti just seems kind of daft, and I don't think her quest makes a lot of sense except for the dark version where she is collecting the souls basically because she wants to, because she's compelled to. I think Gaun is just an excuse at that point. All this is why in POE1 I prefer playing with a party, whereas in Deadfire I don't really care after the first couple times.

Yeah you're only actually "stuck" on a difficulty if you're doing magran's fires or other challenges like trial of iron, though even with these you can change difficulty by console, however it is considered a cheat and requires iroll20s to change difficulty in this setting setgodchallenge enabled abydon 0 for instance turns off abydon challenge, challengemode expert turns on/off expert mode, and the difficulty is just e.g. difficulty easy

Thelee is on point as usual. If you're mostly casting use griffins blade + sun and moon or griffins blade + magrans favor axe, or my favorite combo, griffins blade + squids grasp, though to really get the benefit of squid you need to be in the thick of things to proc attempted parley. Effigys husk is amazing, though as priest of rymrygand I think you're honor bound to kill vatnir for being a phony and wear his high harbinger robes Which incidentally are the best robes for damage + action speed. You can get them mid game as soon as you can take on the messenger. I usually sail by to grab them around l14. Shouldn't be too hard with two priests given all that fire damage. Speaking of i'd consider running xoti as a monk or at least transcendent, also pallegina as herald is probably better suited but you can finish the game with any party so its a matter of preference mostly. You don't need con or resolve unless in the thick of things. Maybe like 8 CON max. 3 RES. Int -> per -> mig > dex > con -> res Max int/per, high might, over 10 dex, under 10 con, dump res Other nice gear, acina's tricorn acc buff applies to spells for some reason so it is a great hat for casters. Sky dragon wurm for pet imo. Charm of bones or strand of favor for neck. Gauntlets of accuracy. Sandals of ahu taka. Kuarus ring. Gift bearer cloth. Late game you might want least unstable coil and weyc gear, at least if you aren't doing a no rest run. Even in a no rest run id want it for megaboss fights. Can get Brilliant on yourself from storm of holy fire + coil, then salvation of time now and then and you've infinite spells. A cipher would also be a fantastic add to the party for ancestor's memory (among other things) which you can extend with SOT. Ydwin as pure cipher instead of xoti or Maia would work, she can do a lot of similar things priests can and some that priest cannot.

Also means you can stack might/con/res inspirations with each kill fed his fury, which can lead to some stupid high stats on chanter / x builds. Was playing a chanter / wizard in vanilla with least unstable coil and most of my stats were 30+ which was fun. Think I preferred the untyped stat bonuses personally.

Cool builds, and I like weyc gear for same reason particularly the wand, obviously lots of synergy with least unstable coil etc. on regular wizards, though this is gear players typically don't get until 90%+ finished with the game and DLC content. I mean at the point you have this stuff all that remains is megabosses and endgame. Also like the fighter/monk, I've made similar builds geared around max procs of interrupts with slayer's claw, though again, super late game (though not as much as the aloth build). Might be a wee bit too advanced there.

Basically you just cast defensive spells like the ones in llengrath's martial mysteries, summon weapons, and use fighter stances and abilities to tank and/or murder things. I'll elaborate All three stances are useful in different situations. Mob stance as the name suggests is best for killing mobs, it procs an auto-attack every time you kill an enemy, and it decreases recovery time. Guardian stance gives +3 engagement and some damage reduction based on number of targets, also prones enemies who disengage, so if aloth is your sole tank that would be very useful. If his role is more an offtank, then I'd normally use conqueror stance for its accuracy and deflection bonuses, and mob stance situationally (combined with citzal's spirit lance you can do a ton of damage with mob stance). If you have room I'd probably memorize two of them, definitely conqueror, and the other one depending whether you have another tank or not. Can probably take all three if you memorize very few spells. With battlemages I generally try to memorize as little as possible because everything you need is in llengrath's martial mysteries (except arcane veil or mirrored images), and this allows you to take all the useful fighter actives and passives. But even if you memorize just one you can use still use the others' basic forms like guardian stance's basic forms called "defender stance" which is same as guardian stance except it doesn't prone enemies. You can give aloth +engagement items if your other tank isn't engaging well enough (or you don't have a second tank). Blackened plate helm, blackened plate, reckless brigandine (can get this earlier than blackened plate), kapana taga club, any shield, maura's belt. And take hold the line. I would definitely use the lance when you get it. You'll have enough deflection and armor from llengrath's safeguard and other spells like llengrath's displaced image and arcane veil that he doesn't usually need a shield, especially since by that point you'll have access to unbending which can provide huge amounts of healing. When you get the bracers of greater deflection you can give them to aloth, could also give him a cape of greater deflection if you think he needs it, but this comes at detriment of fort/reflex/will compared to a cape of greater protection or giftbearer's cloth. At lower levels use mirror images or arcane veil (the images last much longer but go away when hit) to boost deflection. I'd give aloth a shield like lethandria's devotion to help while casting initial spells before you summon a weapon (goes away when summoned). Concelhaut's parasitic quarterstaff is rather good too, particularly for a level 1 spell. It will scale up as you level and remains useful against pierce-resistant enemies and has a 20% health drain. Use vigorous defense and refreshing defense when you get them, but once you get llengrath's safeguard they are no longer necessary because the safeguard includes +20 all defenses (as well as +5 armor) and they don't stack. It's good to have as a backup if you run out of level 5 spells though. I would default to llengrath's martial mysteries since it has most of the spells you need, but it does limit you to two casts per level compared to grimoire of vaporous wizardy, so if you're finding you run out of spells too fast you can try using this instead, or just respec for it in longer fights. The grimoire of vaporous wizardry has a couple caveats a) this spellbook is not oriented towards melee casting so you'll have to memorize more stuff than if using llengrath's martial mysteries (or katrenn's grimoire), which you might want to do anyway if planning on using other grimoires much. You may not have room for all the defensive spells from llengrath's martial mysteries, so priory-wise, it's llengrath's safeguard -> citzal's spirit lance -> infuse with vital essence -> llengrath's displaced image -> mirrored images or arcane veil (they don't stack) -> arcane reflection -> deleterious alacrity of motion b) the description is kind of vague but you are interrupted every time you're hit, which can be bad if you don't keep your deflection sky high. The easiest way to not be interrupted is give aloth rekvu's fractured casque which makes him immune to interrupts, *provided* he is injured. Some injuries are really bad but others very minor. The most minor is probably wrenched knee (-25% stride), which you get from running over caltrops traps, which are all over the place in poko kahara dungeon. If you need an injury for a specific fight and that one went away from a rest, the easiest minor injury to get is probably acute rash, aloth can cast necrotic lance on himself until he dies. The effects are pretty minor, -5 fortitude and -3 armor vs corrode, definitely worth it for the immunity to interrupts if using the vaporous wizardry grimoire. Also you want to take knock down and mule kick, as mule kick is ridiculously good when combined with citzal's spirit lance. The kick is distributed through the weapon and hits everyone in the circle, and it interrupts (knocks up) on GRAZE so at 1 discipline it is a very cheap way to CC mobs. And take disciplined strikes, not tactical barrage. Infuse with vital essence spell gives long-lasting smart (not as good as acute, but intuitive + smart > aware + acute IMO). The weapon you give him doesn't matter that much since you'll usually have summoned weapons, just give him something with good passives like kapana taga club, squid's grasp rapier, or if these are taken or you don't have access to them yet a simple dagger with dagger modal on giges +10 deflection against melee enemies, while a spear can give +1 engagement with its modal. Not a complete build guide, but hope this helps, let me know if you have more questions

I guess the most lucrative option would be to take the initially peaceful route of agreeing to convince Zamar to sell to the principi, take the advance payment, inform Zamar, buy iron thunderers if desired, return to Cotta for the 500, then kill the group anyway. You get a reputation gain with the principi, 700 gold, and can still buy the iron thunderers and kill Cotta for his gear. Though sometimes I too just take the advance payment before the double-cross, because Zamar seems so angry and disappointed at having to deal with the principi (which oddly stays in effect even if you kill his contact after). Should note, however, that when you're first coming off the Defiant in Neketaka, low level and with crap gear, his well-rounded party is a pretty rough encounter. Even detonating the barrels, typically Cotta, his wolf, and the priest in the back survive, often one or more others. I've found throwing sparkcrackers first then detonating the barrels helps. While rarely killing the group outright, this at least draws some of the ones in the back like the priest into the explosion radius. The priest is important to deal with here because he has the annoying habit of casting withdraw on his near-death allies (and on himself). I think Cotta has a ring of minor protection but don't think anything else drops of interest. Though I guess during the stage of the game people typically fight him, money is still scarce so even 500 dollars of loot is maybe worth the fight. And rings of minor protection are pretty good, yeah.

As @NotDumbEnough indicated the PL bonus from a bellower will not help summons (besides duration). In BPM they do eventually get legendary gear, so the Instruments of Death for example are quite powerful, and they're tanky enough that increased duration can help them stay alive longer. However if you max INT which I'd recommend you're already looking at duration of like 60s. A troubadour can build up phrases faster and resummon things, so it's a bit more responsive if things happen to die. The power level boost from bellowers most benefits spells, like So Sings Thy Biting Winds O Eld Nary (and upgrade Eld Nary's Curse) and Her Tears Fell Like Rain gain significant bonus damage and penetration. The bonus penetration can be really important especially on higher difficulties. These two spells will destroy things that aren't immune to frost. There are also some very good multiclass bellower builds, like priest / bellower, though it is not as OP in BPM due to salvation of time nerf.

For spellblade aloth just give him llengrath's martial mysteries and cast buffs from that. Also give him healing hands gloves and cast that (or have a party member cast lay on hands or pain block). When they're all up (or the longer cast ones anyway) cast wall of draining + escape (plus other fast but short buffs like arcane veil) and he's pretty invulnerable for a while, if you hit enough enemies with the wall you probably bought 60+ seconds extension on the buffs including the crazy healing from lesser lay on hands. Would definitely use him as a striker / disruptor as spellblade. I guess with Escape plus arcane veil he has super high deflection and will riposte a lot (pretty sure they stack, but it's been a while could be mistaken), though active attacks are the focus. Ripostes while wielding citzal's spirit lance can be pretty devestating though. He has enough deflection from wizard/rogue buffs he doesn't really need a shield to proc it. Citzal's lance will also distribute active abilities like fighter's mule kick or rogue's arterial strike, sap, devestating blows etc. Sap + Devestating Blow triggers deathblows on the whole group that got hit from the first one and does crazy damage. Escape can be used to go behind enemy lines and zerg high priority targets. Pull of Eora is very useful to pull enemies together so your lance hits more of them (it also pseudo-interrupts them when they get pulled), just make sure not to cast it near your fiendlies who aren't immune to push/pull or don't have very high fortitude. There's a couple item sources like horns of the aurochs and upright captains belt, just put these on your frontline chars and the backline ones should be far enough they won't get sucked in. If you have some source of brilliant, easiest being a cipher with ancestor's memory, he can keep the buffs up longer. But Llengrath's Safeguard has really good duration anyway (like two minutes), so does infuse with vital essence, deleterious alacrity of motion, arcane reflection. Arcane veil isn't in that grimoire and has shorter duration but you may want to memorize it or just grimoire switch. Llengrath's Displaced Image does stack with the veil, has very long duration, and gives a huge boost to reflex which helps if you aren't using a shield. Deletrious Alacrity of Motion also has long duration. Even lowly spells like mirror image (also not in llengrath) are pretty good since it has long duration and the mirrors only disappear when he gets hit and he won't get hit that much. They don't go away on grazes I don't think. So stuff to memorize: eldritch aim, mirrored image, arcane veil, pull of eora, wall of draining, this is really all you need that isn't in llengrath. Normally I'd carry Arkemyr's Grimoire for Arkemy's Brilliant Departure but as a spellblade he doesn't really need it, still if he is the only wizard you might give it to him. If you want to go nuke mode give him ninagauth, but spellblade aloth is best used stabbing things with the lance. Since you don't take a ton of spells you can take most of the rogue passives and abilities. Alternatively...if you want more casts you could give him grimoire of vaporous wizardry, but he'd want to wear the rekvu's fractured casque (best injury is wrenched knee, which you can get walking over caltrops traps like the ones in poko kahara ruins, but he can also just kill himself with necrotic lance for acute rash). Also only relevant spell in that grimoire is wall of draining, so you'd have to memorize about five more spells compared to carrying llengrath, but it could be worth it late game. IIRC the way the deflection stacking works is you get one active ability that appears when you mouse over deflection (like escape will replace mirror image while both active since 50 > 30), plus arcane veil. So while you have veil and some other deflection boost you can get it to +80 to +100 range. Arcane veil doesn't show up under deflection boost since it isn't universal, it's just against "non veil piercing" attacks which is generally everything but guns, and this is why it can stack with the universal deflection boosters. His grimoire has minor grimoire imprint, you can just permasteal escape if you want to spam it a lot btw. Beina has it as well as various skaenite priests. Items you give him aren't hugely important, I guess he should start casting with a shield (lethandria's devotion is good) before you summon the lance. Squid's grasp is good so he isn't flanked in the meantime. His default armor is fine and the +AOE works with the lance. Can give him devil of caroc bp if you want him tankier. He shouldn't be getting hit too much though and has healing from the gloves so he is fine in robes, high harbinger robes are nice for the damage and attack speed boost, spider silk for the immunities. Other items are hard to say exactly what you should give him because other party members may need particular items more, but just give him +INT stuff mostly then +PER, ring of prosperity's fortune goes well on spellblade aloth, footprints of ahu taka will enhance attack speed and healing from the gloves but boots of the stone are also fine (there's up to 3 pairs of these boots, eamund the fox has one, you can buy one at RDC HQ, and you can buy one from port maje unique items vendor). Helm of the white void helps him land rogue abilities, if solo i'd use cap of the laughingstock but you probably don't want to debuff friendlies' deflection. Thaos' headdress is actually pretty good and keeps in character, assuming he starts with this. I like upright captain's belt so he can use pull of eora without getting sucked in. EDIT - I checked and escape does not stack with arcane veil. Escape, llengrath's displaced image, mirrored image etc. are all "active abilities" so only the largest deflection modifier applies. However, llengrath's safeguard once triggered gives +20 all defenses and +5 armor, and the +20 all defenses is considered "passive" for some reason and does stack with these other abilities, hence arcane veil / escape + llengrath's safeguard = + 70 deflection, +50 fort/reflex/will, +5 armor, and the 30% deflection/reflex hit to graze conversion and +20 reflex from llengrath's displaced image still apply (so actually +70 deflection +50 fort/will +70 reflex and 30% hit to graze deflection/reflex). I also tested how much escape I could get out of one wall of draining, and hitting four enemies I got about +90s, so you should be able to keep up escape or arcane veil + llengrath's safeguard + llengrath's displaced image for a decently long time, making aloth pretty dang hard to hit. ----- @Dalinoth since Boeroer answered the first part rather well, I'll just address the second Since your MC is ranged I'd want 2, perhaps 3 tanks - Eder for first, Aloth can be the second as a battlemage, or you could hunt down Rekke and use him as brute, Pallegina can also fulfill this role You want some kind of healer/support char, possibly two. Pick among Tekehu, Pallegina, Xoti, and Ydwin. You also want a caster. Pick among Aloth, Tekehu, Ydwin, Xoti One character can wear multiple hats (Aloth, Tekehu, Ydwin, Pallegina) so in your case I'd take this party Eder as fighter/rogue as a decent tank and does good damage Aloth as wizard/fighter is an excellent tank and can cast offensive spells when needed Tekehu as stormspeaker/watershaper can cast druid support spells like nature's balm, moonwell, etc., cast offensive spells like returning storm, and provide constant healing with ancient memory (particularly if also chanting Mercy and Kindness which gives +50% healing), can buff your party with each kill fed his fury and set to their purpose, and finally he has some crazy powerful offensive invocations Ydwin as pure cipher - give her a high DPS bow like Essence Interrupter / Frostseeker, and/or The Red Hand, she builds focus fast and provides a lot of support, can heal with pain block, enhance your tanks' engagement by +3 with tactical meld, debuff enemies with psychovampiric shield, secret horrors, phantom foes, can break concentration and give your party resolute with echoing shield, can CC with mental binding and charm/dominate spells, and finally can hand out brilliant with ancestor's memory. Can also do huge single target damage with recall agony, disintegration and death of 1000 cuts. We go pure cipher to get these spells faster but also because as single class she gets some great tier 8/9 spells like time parasite, reaping knives, and probably the best is defensive mindweb, which finds the highest defense in each role (deflection/fort/reflex/will) and gives it to your entire party, it is insanely good. AND she gets shared nightmare as pure cipher, which will make the AOEs on her spells cover most of the screen, so e.g. she can immobilize everyone with mental binding, can easily mindweb your whole party, can give the whole party resolute, interrupt whole screen with silent scream, etc. You could sub Pallegina as herald for Tekehu if you wanted, though with Ydwin's tactical meld and defensive mindweb, two tanks is quite sufficient. Main benefit of Pallegina is she can summon things, also can hand out exhortations, and as paladin is pretty tanky herself, but I prefer Tekehu because there are some really good druid support spells, plus I just like him better, and if you subbed pallegina you wouldn't have as much spellcasting available. Could also sub Pallegina for Aloth as a more straightforward tank and take two chanters, but Aloth does significantly more damage with citzal's spirit lance compared to pallegina I like Xoti but she is hard to fit here because you really want two tanks, you really want a chanter, and that just leaves Ydwin and I'd rather have a cipher than a priest but if you wanted to not use sidekicks you could take Xoti instead of Ydwin, and I'd run her as pure priest or transcendent There are actually a lot of valid party compositions, the important thing is you have sufficient support for various roles (damage, healing, support, tanking), so there's no "best" party but I like the one I outlined and also these alternatives So TLDR - Eder/Aloth/Tekehu/Ydwin (my first choice), or Eder/Aloth/Pallegina/Ydwin (second choice), or Eder/Aloth/Tekehu/Xoti (no sidekicks choice)

I take Eder mostly because a) I like him b) he can equip a second pet with "can i pet him anyway?" berath blessing If I have the blessing off I'd be tempted to go without him because as kaylon says he is not the best tank, but you can give him stuff with +engagement like kapana taga club, blackened armor set (or reckless brigandine) if you need him in that role, I like most of the items kaylon suggested for eder. Also if you're playing vanilla game riposte ability is kind of weak, procs only on being missed completely, which most things that will seriously threaten your group won't do very often, with community patch riposte builds are more viable since it is 25% proc on miss/graze

Pretty much, she will be "good enough" almost regardless what you pick, but with right picks she can reload faster, has +40ish accuracy from marked + flanked + stalkers link + marksman + survival of the fittest, and +85ish % damage from sneak attack + deathblows (+65 more from crits + overpen). When I built her like this in the past she did more damage than the rest of my party. Just script her to target whatever Ishiza is attacking (and maybe marked prey on > 90% health once per 30s or whatever) since you can't script ishiza. Then you position ishiza to create flanks and maia auto targets these enemies. Geomancers are cool, though if you have aloth in the party it's kind of wizard heavy

Ranger Side: Marked Prey, Marked for the Hunt, Marksman, Gunner, Protective Companion, Stalker's Link, Driving Flight, Survival of the Fittest, Superior Camouflage Rogue Side: Dirty Fighting, Blinding Strike, Confounding Blind, Debilitating Strike, Deep Wounds, Devastating Blow, Deathblows Common: Uncanny Luck, Improved Critical, Two-Handed Style, Deep Pockets if you use lots of items I also like Evasive Roll but in a party it probably isn't critical. Accurate Wounding Shot is pretty good, especially if you take Predator's Sense. Can take other pet talents if you have room, Vicious and Resilient are most useful. Then general stuff like Tough, Bull's Will, Bear's Fortitude. Basically you just want her to have sky high accuracy and crit a lot, preferably on targets that will trigger sneak attack (ishiza is immune to engagement and can easily flank) and preferably deathblows, main reason to have a couple rogue actives. Does tremendous damage with devestating blow, and confounding blind is good for priority targets. Give her ring of the marksman and gauntlets of accuracy, her default armor is good. Sky dragon wyrm or Retina are best pets for her, but will depend on rest of party obviously, sky dragon wyrm is pretty good overall though. -------- Or did you mean what talents for other companions are good for Maia? Sure-Handed Ila chant mostly. Ciphers can give her tactical meld, ancestor's memory. That's about it that comes to mind anyway, but in general things that provide afflictions are good so you don't have to use her rogue abilities as much. Ciphers and chanters are both useful there.

FF / goldpact knight can cast sworn enemy for +4 armor (lasts four or five hits, and you're hard to hit so it's decent), since multiclassed paladins can't regain zeal until getting virtuous triumph at L16, you would only use this with sworn rival so you get the point back. Take Exalted Endurance. Wear heavy armor. It will break, at least until you find generic legendary plate armor which doesn't for some reason. FF / SG would be better because when you hit things with afflictions you get back health, but this doesn't work for FF attack without community patch, so goldpact knight. You don't need post-encounter health regen, just drink health potions at low levels (or even better, sneak past fights), once you have exalted endurance that can heal you, don't recall if it works out of combat, if not start combat stealthed and wait, or just use ring of greater regeneration or trollhide belt between combats. But really it isn't hard to avoid combat until L13, and I've avoided until L16. Probably possible L19 but would require weird pathing. This build is tanky enough to do combat lower, it's just your armor will break and you probably won't have the items you need to control vela yet. At level 19 you take stoic steel for +3 armor. Assuming you can get the club kapana taga that's another +1 armor, not sure how hard this encounter would be with paladin / FF, might have to be delayed until you have the legendary plate, particularly since with ship battles protecting vela can be near impossible. Might take 20+ withdraw scrolls. Go pale elf for burn/freeze armor or wild orlan for stats, stats something like 18 / 3 / 9 / 18 / 10 / 19, take iron wheel, with the legendary plate and iron wheel and kapana taga and stoic steel you eventually have armor in 21+ range which is enough most things will underpen. These kinds of builds don't really work in general for ultimate because your armor breaks in megaboss fights, but I found a piece that doesn't, the legendary plate you get in SSS contest of the slayer. This means you have to do the changeling's dance with vela, which is extremely technical though with practice I was able to do it close to 100%. That's basically it, you spam FF while wearing tons of armor and stacking paladin defenses so you're missed and grazed and underpenned a lot. Soul mirror kills ranged things. The Wall large shield modal can protect you even more, also block modal with medium shields is good but slows your attacks even more. Can keep up Thunderous Blows but in general not using other abilites because we want the bonus armor from iron wheel. If you could find generic legendary shields they wouldnt break, but I haven't been able to find any, so possibly they don't exist. Shields don't break as fast as weapons or armor if you have 3+ slots and different shields in each one, also not as catastrophic if they break compared to armor. Lots of generic superb shields, could use these and switch to the next slot when they break. Or use the unique shields, but they could break. I've tried some of the late game battles with this build and it works. For most you just spam FF in fast mode. Hauani O Whe and Dorudugan require different tactics. HOW you need dichotomous souls to separate the gigantic oozes, which is tedious but doable, might have to take turning wheel and +INT gear so their duration is longer (or increase INT at cost of dex in character creation). Dorudugan should be straightforward but isn't because he actually heals when going from weakened to unweakened. I think everything does, but usually the effect is not that measureable except in his case because his health pool is so huge. Probably exalted endurance provides enough healing, can drink some potions if necessary and use the rekvu's scorched cloak to run into fireballs, he should eventually go down just punching him as long as you are careful dorudugan doesn't get by his own helfire barrages. I'm guessing it takes over an hour though, perhaps two. Hardest part with this build is protecting Vela. You don't have enough withdraw scrolls given how slow this build is so you have to use different methods. There's the belt of magran's ire, you basically just shoot vela with a blunderbuss until the fire blight procs, then the blight follows you into battle. Works okay, very tedious, can accidentally kill vela or run out of blunderbusses / money to repair them. Other method is you cast a spell on vela while holding a whale of a wand, which has a 5% chance per spell proc to charm her. You usually have to web her once she gets charmed or she may run off and get herself killed, but basically when she is charmed in this way she won't move from that spot on the map once the charm duration ends. So this is ideal for bigger maps with multiple fights, also procs faster than the fire blight and you don't have to wear that belt. But paladin/FF has no spells they can cast on vela, therefore you have to use scrolls. Some scrolls like ray of fire proc I think 9 times per cast so you have pretty good odds to proc the charm effect, though ray of fire is slightly dangerous as if your arcana is too high you can kill her, but if kept under 7 or so and she always starts unharmed it won't kill her. Safer route is use binding web scrolls, though this only procs 6 or 7 times. Anyway, I think you can find/craft enough scrolls to use the wand to control vela, and when you can't you use the fire blight.

No he always offers the discount. Only difference is he doesn't give you the iron thunderers for 1000, *unless* you tell him Radora was robbed BEFORE making the deal. You also get +700 gold for the peaceful route, this is definitely the easiest and most lucrative route.

Oh yeah, I do recall in POE1 calculating attack speed being more complicated. And it was possible with the durgan's steel to attack really, really fast. And many spells like deleterious, time parasite etc. have been heavily nerfed for Deadfire. I suspect some people carried over the terminology of dex being multiplicative into Deadfire, or else I just imagined it Now I want to do another ultimate run in POE1. Have done just barbarian so far. Could do paladin but boring.

Exactly this, even without threshing aura I use her shield a lot because of the lantern glow and for monks soulkeeper gives + 1 mortification and +1 wounds per kill, AND it procs on killing friendly summons, so in longer battles you can refresh your mortification by killing some chanter skeletons. Tuotilo's Palm is nice but the shield base damage sucks and dual-wielding doesn't do double damage so you only do slightly more damage with it. Fighting with Xoti's Lantern and fist at 15 dex she attacks once per 3s and does something like 14 to 20 base damage (it varies with transcendent suffering but this is base I think), for average of 5.66 DPS With 15 dex tuotilo's palm assuming you have two-weapon style she attacks twice per 4.3s (4.7s without) and does 14 to 20 with fist and 10 to 14 with shield for average damage per attack of 14.5 and for 6.59 DPS, which is slightly better, but the shield also has bad penetration, plus it costs you an extra feat or else you're doing just 6.3 DPS, so I think unless you're a forbidden fist tuotilo's palm is not as mandatory. Two fists will do the best damage, there you get 7.39 DPS, but she will be more fragile I often fight with fist + tuotilo's palm in slot 1, fist + xoti's lantern in slot 2, start combat with slot 1, when your resources are low switch to slot 2. When you get threshing aura that also helps with your party's DPS enough that tuotilo's palm may no longer be worth it. Her shield is especially good for celebrants since it also has +2 all restoration/inspiration power levels, but as pure monk you can give her healing scrolls to cast and they will benefit from the buff Also DPS doesn't tell the whole story especially with Soulkeeper because gaining mortification and wounds means she can keep up swift flurry and thunderous blows and spam powerful monk attacks like efficient anguish or raised torment more often (eventually WOTW, which her shield is perfect for since killing things gives more wounds).

They originally were going to veryify the first 50 iirc, and I'm like number 15 (maybe lower if there's people not listed on wiki) or so. What is there to verify by even watching them? Can't the game files tell if you used the console or whatever? But yeah my run was pretty long, I'm slow at doing the quests and super careful when stealthing around things. Also quite a few mundane fights where I'm just trying to steal spells with minor grimoire imprint. Overall 70ish hours long, but there have been much longer submissions.

Cool, definitely a POE veteran here but I haven't played it in so long I've forgotten too much to give useful feedback. Think I'll play it again soon so I can contribute (and because it's awesome).