Shai Hulud

Some monks can kill him with just melee damage (definitely pure FF due to more accuracy), though it is a long grind because of the bugged healing...my method with the transcendent is using dichotomous souls, instruments of pain, and soul annihilation, which fulfills a similar burst damage role to Resonances. I keep forgetting he'll reach L33. Yes, in that case, it is probably doable with any multiclass monk once he gets resonance touch, just takes tens of thousands more damage to kill Dorudugan than it should. The health bug is indeed present in the vanilla game. Sadly. Dorudugan heals for nearly 200 every time he goes from weakened to not weakened, so the less you can sustain weakened over multiple attacks the faster he heals. So there's three ways around that with FF monks, attack with things besides your FF attack (like bows you mentioned), be able to maintain weakened longer so he heals less, or otherwise out-DPS his healing somehow. Other classes can chip away at his health and it may take a while but it goes steadily down, he only heals from the helfire barrages and helstorms. And the helfire barrages can be completely avoided with some practice, though Helstorms cannot. I even tried that fight staying bloodied with Effigy's Husk because I thought he had some kind of passive healing going on, and Effigy's Husk does greatly reduce healing from helfire barrage and helstorms but it doesn't do anything about the healing he gets from going weakened to unweakened. Because technically that isn't healing, it's probably some kind of rounding error compounded by his giant health pool. Good old cheese. Hmm why is that? Chant "many lives pass by" while pelting him with shock arrows and detonating resonances? Dunno where the FF part comes in. This also works with troubadour / anything really. I made a simple script to send out instruments of pain and just fast mode afk killed him with essence interrupter with hunting bow modal. Completely ignored the helfire (was wearing rekvu's scorched cloak though so I wouldn't die). I've made lots of builds that can kill him fairly easily (and legitimately). The ones that can't tend to have very bad healing / bad defenses and limited / no summons. I generally find Hauani O Whe more problematic but Dorudugan is a close second. Though not being able to figure Doru fight out with the troubadour/psion bugs me. It's mostly because the way I built the character it was a glass cannon, and the summons have a hard time redirecting the helfire barrages so Doru heals too fast to keep up with the pain link damage (which is also bugged). It's probably possible if I switched the stats up and just gave him essence interrupter... I really like soul blades too but the votary is pretty damn good. I tested it in Port Maje and with the right gear (like amulet of greater health, hylea's bounty, girdle of mortal protection) the 3 CON is manageable, though at this point you don't have enough armor for brigandine to be worth it, the tougher enemies like the skeletons at the digsite will always penetrate, so I had more success wearing robes and attacking fast. Lay on Hands is very helpful. Still had to do a little kiting to separate the largest groups. Could take on about 3 skeleton fighter / archer / sorcerers at once without dying. With transcendent at L6 it's probably 2 to 3 also, have much less healing but can treason things and paralyze/immobilize. You can reach L10 by the end of deadlight or maybe early neketaka and monk builds get quite a bit tankier at that point so Maje is one of the more difficult parts if you want to kill everything. Even L7 helps a lot with transcendent, since you can dominate things and attack them without them turning on you...

Huh... you know I'd never actually tried melee + ranged, but I had assumed you would fire the pistol, close the distance, then attack with the sabre while reloading. You get the action speed bonus from two weapons but just use the melee one. Seems you have to move away to reload the pistol. Sigh...that's just bad AI. I'm generally pretty disappointed in what you can do with the AI in this game. I don't like to micromanage, but the ability to automate things is pretty limited. The interface is okay, but there just aren't that many conditionals and key actions are missing. Baldur's Gate came out over 20 years ago and had vastly, infinitely better scripting capabilities. I've seen (and made) scripts that were capable of doing the whole game, some thousands of lines long. Really simple stuff, like checking whether you have a specific spell and if not then blood sacrifice, or checking if focus is maxed for soul annihilation, or "run away for X seconds", or any scriptability whatsoever to control animal companions and summons, just a lot of stuff lacking. Wish I knew more about programming / modding, so I could mod the AI. Well I guess your options then are Xefa's Empirical Explication (open choke) + Hand Mortar, bounding boots, leap, and micromanaging position. Xefa's blunderbuss is pretty good actually, but you don't get it until mid game, same with second pair of bounding boots, and leap is a fairly late ability.

Yes I thought of that also, it's unfortunate all classes can't take quick switch like in POE1... Have you tried dual wielding a melee weapon plus hand mortar, or xefa' empirical explication with open choke + hand mortar? I think in either case the AI will close the distance. I don't think you could use shout like that (maybe if you target the farthest enemy?) since it is ranged, but if you have any melee range talents that might work, however you'd need a melee weapon. I think you either have to dual wield as mentioned above or use the bounding boots which would give you two movements per combat (once you have two pairs anyway, before that they're per rest). The first pair is in Deadlight (Aeldys' room), the second you normally get quite a bit later in Ori O Koiki. It is also possible to "cancel" leap from bounding boots but it is micro-intensive, you have to click somewhere else or press the cancel key when serafen is between the highest point in the air and hasn't landed yet. The only classes I can really script to move correctly are rogues and blood mages (single and MC) where I imprint Escape and use it as a movement ability to close distances. I think in this case if you don't want to dual wield, then thelee is probably right and your best bet at least until you get two bounding boots or leap is just to move him manually.

Yes I know thanks Were talking about a herald taking Vela.

Because this is a thread specifically about soloing BPM vs vanilla? Possibly I assumed he was using BPM (or at least planning to) based on context, possibly incorrectly. But I don't think it's odd to be talking about BPM changes given the thread title (also I missed in your first post where you said those builds weren't for BPM, sorry). As for Magran's Fires, admittedly a tangent, I was just giving some perspective why my builds have tended to use different stat distributions and why I haven't played others as much. For what it's worth this transcendent build is exactly the same in BPM or vanilla, minus dichotomous souls costing slightly more, which I mentioned. The votary *should* work with the right equipment changes and minor re-spec (effigy's husk robes, rekvu's fractured casque, gauntlets of accuracy, blinky pet, charm of bones, tuotilo's palm, exalted focus, two weapon style), but I've discovered Dorudugan fight is bugged, probably because the way health is restored when clearing a constitution affliction is bugged. Something was bothering me about how with FF monks only super-high DPS builds had any chance of defeating him after I checked my brute build which easily chipped away his health, so I used ToggleCharacterStatsDebug to see what was going on. In these screenshots this is a before and after of Dorudugan weakened and then recovering. His health goes from 13266.83/16365.65 weakened, to 15429.9/18659.9 unweakened, to 13497.31/16365.65 when weakened again. I grazed for 35.5 damage so his health should be 13231.33. Basically he is healing himself by varying percentage of health (at this stage, 265.98 health) every time he goes from weakened to not weakened. So with FF monks, the only way I can out DPS him seems to be to have high accuracy high DPS builds with decent INT and fast attacks who can keep him weakened enough that this healing effect doesn't proc very often. @Elric Galad Do you know anything about this? I suspect it is a general problem with changes to constitution status, which is at its most extreme with Dorudugan because he has so much health so small percentage rounding errors are compounded into meaningful healing. Also his resolve is crazy high so he is only weakened for at most about 5s. I think as you grind down Dorudugan's health the absolute value of health restored becomes smaller, because my experience is if you can get him to 3/4 health you can probably get him to 1/2, and if you can get him to 1/2 you can kill him. The longest stage is always getting him to 3/4. This test in screenshots is using BPM, but I reloaded the fight in vanilla and the exact same thing happens. Main difference is he starts with slightly less health, 16824.5, but he is still being healed. Went from 13034.53/14912.63 weakened to 14912.63/16824.5 unweakened, back to 13172.01/14912.63 weakened, after a graze for 46 damage, so he healed 183.48, slightly less than in BPM (probably because lower health pool) but still problematic. ------------------------ Basically @Lovecraft1986 you are going to have an extremely hard time killing Dorudugan with FF builds, even if you can avoid the helfire barrages healing him. It is a grind even with pure FF or a transcendent, and takes over an hour. This votary I think can still *barely* do it with the changes mentioned, but it took me well over an hour to get him to roughly 3/4 health. And that's avoiding all his helfire barrages from healing him. So...given this fight is bugged for FFs, just stab him from stealth with Lover's Embrace, drink a potion of invisibility, and run away. It's cheesy, but the legitimate method doesn't really work in this case. You can also start the fight with a stealth stab from Lover's Embrace, which adds enough DOT that "three hour fight" might go down to "one hour fight" if you take him on directly. I actually like the SG / FF votary build a lot. I haven't tested it in Maje but I think it will work as well as anything for you. Transcendent can clear the game but it is a more complicated build and requires a bit more scripting or else lot of micromanagement. Also it's a little weak before L13 when you get borrowed instinct. If you like casting you could try the transcendent, early game is tough but doable, but I think a votary will be easier for most of the game. Late game a transcendent would be especially interesting IMO once you get shared nightmare (plus time parasite is one of the best buff/debuff in the game), but paladins do get sacred sacrifice for a circle of massive burn damage around you as you kill things, which would be pretty cool. It also injures you but I think you have plenty of healing. Also Divine Retribution is reworked in BPM so you get some zeal back based on how much health you've lost, so you could probably burn sacred sacrifice constantly. Might even have enough zeal regen to use inspired beacon semi-regularly, which gives a big damage boost and blinds people around you. I think a FF / unbroken brawler would have the same problems with Dorudugan, but it might "come online" a bit earlier. Stats are similar with either build, I went 18/3/8/18/10/21. And not that I doubt Kaylon (the early fights could be doable with 3 CON, IDK for sure), but the extra might doesn't make that big a difference in damage or healing compared to like 13/8/8/18/10/21, which could make fights a little easier before Level 10. High level fighters get some okay abilities but the big draw is toughened fury which gives back discipline as damaged and would allow you to keep up your buffs in longer fights, or use abilities like mule kick / clear out.

I've been working on builds that can face tank without armor because I've been playing various magran's fires things and armor breaks. Plus you attack faster without it. Some FF builds can do it by attacking very fast, e.g. steel garrote / FF is one, others stack healing sources like ravager stalwart defiance + ff or brute with stalwart defiance + rapid recovery + unbending. Brute can facetank pretty much anything naked and with **** deflection. I do think your build steel garrote / FF build is very good. Don't think it can beat Dorudugan without gear change. He has to have passive health regen that doesn't show...Might be as simple as putting on effigy's husk, that should nearly double damage output and reduce dorudugan's healing if you script to stay bloodied. WOTW costs nine wounds in BPM and you don't start with that many, so I guess you have to use enduring dance, wait, use WOTW, shadowing beyond, wait, repeat? I've played a ton of builds but have mostly stayed away from rogues and druids. Know the rest reasonably well. Ha Mohora Tanga is asking for trouble. My PC cost 10k and it still sometimes crashes the game from proccing a hundred plus times. Even when it doesn't the frame rate stutters badly. I didn't think about grave calling freezing enemies vs paralyzing. So if they're resistant it is downgraded to paralyzed... the description says it paralyzes but I do recall using the sabre and it actually freezing them when I used strand of favor to stack freezes, but I thought it was just a visual distinction at the time. Sounds like an interesting build.

Why FF / assassin? I've barely played assassins, but my understanding is you mostly just spam invisibility for assassinate passive then alpha strike? But that doesn't really go with your weapon choice so I'm missing something. Does Grave Bound still proc using FF attacks? Or are you just totally counting on swift flurry and heartbeat drumming with gambit? Also I don't think that build makes it out of Port Maje without stealthing. Which is fine, though he wanted something that can combat everything as he goes. FF / steel garrote is a great build, I've tested it a fair amount at L20 though haven't played through. BM / troubadour is also interesting, though I kind of hate blood mages in BPM. Grimoire imprinting is extra hard since blood sacrifice is only 50/50 to restore minor grimoire imprint and it kills your heals for 6s. And has a recovery. Also a cool thing about troubadours in BPM is empowers are better and have lasting effects through the rest of combat, but blood mage can't empower, so I kind of prefer wizard / troubadour in BPM, though imprinting is super hard without blood sacrifice. There's potions of enlightenment but you need a lot if you hunt down all the best spells. Hmm. You must be talking about pure FF build or martials that don't do anything but spam FF with this stat spread? Min CON makes the game pretty difficult until you hit L10. 3 CON is like 224 HP even with Hylea at L20. If you have all the boons and belt of eoten CON it is 443, which is fine, especially if you have lots of wounds. But I like to use dichotomous souls and instruments of pain. That costs 10 wounds in BPM. Max MIG is nice because you heal more but dawnstar's blessing (and practiced healer when available) makes up for this quite a lot. I guess if you just spam FF and always have 5+ wounds then this spread is good post level 10. Assuming nothing can kill you faster than FF heals you... Definitely prefer squid's grasp or kapana taga for weapon. Not being flanked is basically +10 all defenses and +1 armor comparitively. There are many combinations of stats, armor, modals, items, etc. that work. I suspect this spread will have pretty low attack speed but more important recovery time will be horrible if you try to cast anything like enlightened agony, dichotomous souls, etc. I mean not dual-wielding is +45%, block modal is +25%, brigandine is +55%. I'm guessing this guy attacks like once per 4.5s? Maybe 4s with swift flurry? I don't think a transcendent would do well with so much recovery given you want to cast borrowed instinct and psychovampiric shield with some regularity. For a pure FF or martial combination like brawler where you just spam FF I'm sure this is good. I just don't want to confuse @Lovecraft1986 ------ Tried this on a SG / FF votary. Attacks 4.2s with all dex boons and swift flurry active. The curse only lasts 1.9s. You really don't need this much resolve if wearing such heavy armor. I'd be tempted to put some more points into CON for early game survivability and drop resolve 5 or 6 points. Our will defense will still be pretty good. I like Lethandria's Devotion here with Sheltering Light. I made a script that just casts swift flurry, thunderous blows and spams FF. Between Giftwrapper, Sheltering Light, FF, Elemental Endurance, and SG passive I heal like 2 + 2 + 39 + 8 + 11ish = 62 per round. Pretty nice. Also I can see the appeal of pale elves. Battle takes a long time though, and I ran out of swift flurry pretty fast in the fights I tested, leaving me attacking once per 5.2s. And my other votary can attack over twice as fast, heals significantly more even with less MIG. Also casts Enduring Beacon in some fights for even more damage. Doesn't have the armor, but it seems to be able to handle everything. I do like your suggestions for pure martial FFs. But it won't work for a transcendent, recovery time is far too much to keep up buffs and debuffs. Still this may be an easier build to use, assuming it can handle the megabosses and whatnot, but personally I wouldn't drop CON below 8 if I'm planning to fight things before L10. ----- (EDIT)--- Dorudugan I think may be impossible with this votary build. I tried for about an hour and couldn't get his health below 3/4. It's strange, Dorudugan's health bar gets to 7/8 pretty quickly but then it just sticks near there if you don't damage him fast enough. You'd think the damage would add up and he'd eventually get to Hurt, so long as you lead him away from the Helfire Barrages so he doesn't heal. Yeah what the hell, I gave up eventually and checked the before/after damage dealt and I did OVER 20,000 DAMAGE! And he was hit by like 1% of the helfire fireballs. I wasn't doing any burn damage, was doing 400 to 600 damage per fireball cycle, and no way he healed for even 10% of that on average. I've gotten good at directing the fireballs away from him so he doesn't get healed that way. But still I couldn't touch him. Helfire Iron must provide some passive regeneration that isn't shown in the logs... that's the only explanation.

Yeah I'm often frustrated with the scripting in this game, unfortunately there isn't an action called "move to melee range" or something so movement is difficult to control. The easiest way to control it is with some movement ability like a rogue's escape (which if you're a blood mage you can steal as a movement ability with grimoire imprints, which I did extensively to script movement in my ultimate run), then a simplified movement block would be conditional : target in melee range (not) -> escape target nearest enemy Since serafen is a barbarian you could use leap like this. Screenshot below, you'd run out of rage eventually but you could use it like every 20s or something, could also give him bounding boots and script that. If you have two pairs you can cycle them out of the stash to refresh the per rest limitation. What have you tried so far? It might give me some idea. I also tried Conditonal: Self - only ranged weapon equipped and Target in melee range -> action: attack nearest enemy If you uncheck the auto attack, this ensures you would only attack enemies in "melee range", but then serafen would just stand there when he's out of range of everything (may not be a big problem since enemies tend to approach, or you can move him manually when the script doesn't, though this isn't a great solution). Can't figure out how to script movement beyond just getting within attacking range. To that end you could just give him xefa's empirical explication with open choke and have him dual wield, that reduces the range of that gun to 3m which I think point blank is rounded up towards. Or you could give him a melee weapon in main hand and hand mortar in the other, then auto-attack should close the distance.

I've been meaning to test this build more at lower levels anyway. Trying Port Maje with fighting everything hostile. If you start with 20 resolve and 13 int, forbidden fist curse lasts 4.4 seconds, which is too long even with dex 3 and brigandine, which makes fighting more annoying as you'd have to alter normal attacks with FF. I guess you could use the small shield modal or haymaker. You could also dump intelligence but once you get clarity of agony and ring of the solitary wanderer, 13 is perfect, so I'm starting at level 4. You said you were okay with Berath's Blessings. l1 - swift strikes, tenuous grasp, weapons club + small shield l2 - whispers of treason l3 - lingering echoes l4 - clarity of agony, psychovampiric shield, weapon dagger With clarity of agony and psychovampiric shield, the curse lasts 2.2 seconds. In a robe you attack with swift strikes can attack every 2.3s, so robes are perfect for fast attacks. Once you get dawnstar's blessing the healing you get per attack is pretty good and generally favorable to wearing heavy armors. Small shield modal is useful if you need to increase recovery time. Club modal is useful for enemies with higher will early on, so you will land psychovampiric shield or whispers of treason or tenuous grasp. Dagger modal gives +10 melee deflection, better than early shields. Easily cleared the boat. Saved crate. Immediately rested with Hylea's Bounty. Found dagger on beach. Weapon set 1 is club + dagger, weapon set 2 is dagger + small shield Easily cleared beach Cleared sea cave I wouldn't say easily, but was able to do in one try. Sea bats were a little tricky without kiting them, but keep one charmed and try to use it to flank others. Rusted Copper Construct and Revenants seem hard but pull skeletons away, kill them before revenants and construct arrive, keep construct charmed while killing revenants, then kill construct. Rotghast and revenants also not trivial but doable. Rotghast will is super low so hit him with tenuous grasp then WOT and you always hit/crit, keep him charmed, similar to construct fight. Once 1v1, he hits like a truck and has high armor but you can keep him interrupted with FF and finish with soul annihilation. Port Maje - quested around, got dawnstar's blessing. This +50% healing (and other boons to a lesser extent) is so good that you want to plan your run around not resting. This is easy with the no forced rests mod. Without, a bit trickier but still doable. If you want a different food than hylea's bounty, better to head straight to neketaka, buy the hot razor skewers or whatever and come back later for the blessing. I like hylea's bounty, and FF attack usually has good enough penetration. Also if you're very lucky you may find some reagent in Rinco's house. Other times the container has solution or rune powder or gunpowder. With the reagent you can craft luminous adra potion before leaving port maje. But it's only there like 1 time in 5 or something like that, just makes some early skill checks easier. I found gunpowder. Anyway, stuff I bought from unique item vendor and others: death's maw, boots of the stone, girdle of mortal protection, stinky pete, amulet of greater health, and ring of minor deflection (you don't have to buy all this, but I'd at least buy the boots of the stone and probably death's maw). Gorecci Street: After Satehuzi Harbor I am L5, I chose Draining Whip (mental binding also good, probably grab at L6). If you started at L1 you'd probably be L4 here. Not a ton of difference. But this fight is extremely difficult at L5, it is a well balanced group with high defenses and good penetration. You can choose to path straight to Engwithan Waystation and stop by Gorecci on the way back at L6/L7 which I'd recommend. I wouldn't advise just rushing in and fighting everyone at L5. But I tried anyway. Pick up the necklace and head south, you can kite these three looters away from the other group even without traps, though it is slightly tedious. The main looter has very high will so I hit him with a club, then tenuous grasp, psychovampiric to get his deflection down, then proceeded as usual. Every time you land enfeebled you double the duration of his debuffs. The fighter has "determination" which gives him 91 deflection vs FF. Have to 1v1 him, and it's still hard. Would highly recommend doing this at L6/7 when you have mental binding. Oh and I hope you aren't planning to attack Ilari, that would be borderline impossible, probably even at L7. Upaho Waro Woods: Don't attack the nice old man. But if you do, this encounter is actually pretty easy, just use tenuous grasp on the boar, treason the boar, then tenuous grasp on the old man so his spells hit friend/foe. Xaurips: I've never actually tried to kill the xaurips, usually just scatter them. It is pretty easy. If you enfeeble someone THEN charm them the duration is much longer, so sneak attack stone-tooth then TG then treason, pick off the little ones etc. using enfeeble + treason as needed. Not much point though, you don't get much loot from this. Engwithan Digsite: Killed everything with a lot of patience and several reloads. You need to do some kiting unless you want to reload constantly. You simply don't have the capacity at this point to face 7 attackers at once. You can take 3 or 4. Traps are the easiest way to kite, but you can do it without consumables, though I don't get the limitation. I came just shy of level 7 before having to kill the monsters unfortunately, that level would have helped a lot because hammering thoughts (several enemies here have 10 AR vs crush and we have 9.3 pen) and swift flurry. Now about 7.5 after leaving the island. ---- And to answer your last questions, no I don't think troubadour / blood mage can do all the content. I mean you can with vanilla + CP, but only if you're using the wall of draining deification process and/or Strand of Favor, which I'm pretty sure falls under both cheese and consumables. Troubadour/psion is a really good build, though I am 99% positive at the very least Dorudugan is impossible without using SOF (or stabbing him with lover's embrace and drinking a potion of invisibility, very cheesy), as well as some other encounters one might skip. Troubadour/FF is going to have not great accuracy, and may not have enough DPS to kill Dorudugan. Hauni O Whe is pretty difficult and technical but possible if you know exactly what to do. Basically I'm not confident any of these builds can do a completionist playthrough. Maybe they can, with someone more skilled than I am, or if you're willing to reload endlessly etc. And like I've said with troubadour / FF it really doesn't come online until L19 with instruments of pain, and by that point (L20 anyway) you'll also have access to dichotomous souls summons which are some of the best summons in the game (behind maybe instruments of death), so I don't think there's much synergy there, you're basically using summons at lower levels and then at higher levels punching things, which I guess you can do just fine with a level cap of 33. But cipher's shared nightmare is so much better than anything high level chanters get. Why do you have all these constraints like no consumables? You're making an already difficult game much harder and no offense whatsoever but if this is your first solo POTD upscaled run I don't think you're going to have the game knowledge necessary to do this even with builds capable of doing it. -------- (edit)------- It sounds like you're looking for an invulnerable build that can just run into a room and kill everybody at every step in the game. Transcendent is not that. I'm not sure that build exists honestly. The early game is hard because you don't have the equipment and abilities needed for your build. For summoning builds and guys that just punch things the distinction is not as large as with other classes. There are some tankier builds that will have a slightly easier time early in the game than transcendent, and Godlikes (particularly fire) can make things easier. But even the super tanky builds like votaries, brawlers, sages, and ravagers (also arcane knights) get most of their super tank abilities at tier 5+ That's when fighters get unbending, barbarians savage defiance, mages llengrath's safeguard. Paladins don't get their super tank ability stoic steel until tier 9, though you could use sworn rival from level 1 for +4 armor with goldpact knights, though it breaks after a few hits. Also they get deep faith early. Godlikes have an advantage early because they come with unique bonuses, like fire godlikes have +2 armor when bloodied and their ashen skin ability is like a permanent fire shield, and the tradeoff (no helmet) is no tradeoff early given there's only one decent helmet even on Port Maje, but mid to late game you may be wanting more accuracy or the ability to prevent interrupts and being able to switch helmets is usually better than godlike bonuses. Particularly when fighting dorudugan, he will constantly interrupt you if you aren't wearing rekvu's fractured casque. Brawlers do come online relatively early, since you get disciplined barrage immediately, plus constant recovery, plus forbidden fist. A fire godlike unbroken / FF would be pretty tanky. I think you'd have problems with Dorudugan but if you don't mind stabbing him with lover's embrace, drinking a potion of invisibility, and coming back a couple hours later, then that could work for you. Same with psion / troubadour though that is a more interesting build IMO, and one I outline here. I don't think you'll be able to beat Dorudugan, not at L20, but if you fight him at L33 it is likely possible. You'd have to do more than just summon things though, like summon things and shoot him constantly with Essence Interrupter might work. Or take monastic unarmed training, your accuracy/damage/pen scale with power level so by L33 it could be doing pretty good damage. I think the summons scale indefinitely also, so they might start doing better damage. But I assume Dorudugan will also scale with you? So you may get like 18 penetration but maybe his armor is 24 at that point, who knows...

I'm assuming since you posted in this thread you are planning to play with BPM. If you plan to play vanilla, yes that changes things. There are a number of nerfs and buffs in BPM that overall remove most of the more broken combinations and end up favoring tanky builds that can also do damage like FFs. There are many many changes which you can see here https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/438 The most relevant ones coming from vanilla are probably these The "brilliant" effect is weakened - for caster classes it doesn't restore a spell of any tier but gives a cycle of a spell in tiers 1 to 3, then tiers 4 to 6, then tiers 7 to 9, so it is no longer possible to cast your high level spells, let brilliant restore them, cast again, etc. For non-casters it is basically the same, though there is a 3 second delay for all classes before you get resources out of combat effect extension is removed - strand of favor, cabalist's gambeson, and ooblit cannot extend effects out of combat. priests are significantly weakened - barring death's door no longer prevents death but provides a damage shield. Salvation of Time cannot indefinitely extend effects tacticians are weakened - tactical dilemma now requires flanked OR bloodied (not AND), and gives a harsher penalty. Brilliant tactician requires you be hurt or better and not flanked. Unbending is also weakened, as in vanilla it stacked indefinitely. It is still useful, and constant and rapid recovery last indefinitely so fighters overall are still quite good. blood mages are weakened - blood sacrifice has a recovery and prevents ALL healing for 6 seconds after use, making it much harder to use. In addition, spell restoration is split at tier 4 and tier 7, not tier 3 and tier 6 as in vanilla. This means level 7 spells restore with probability 1/3 not 1/2, and level 4 spells probability 1/2 not 1. In addition, wall of draining is half as strong as in vanilla, so you need roughly twice as many enemies to drain for it to be useful (generally 4+). Potions of Final Stand also have a fixed duration. Basically, blood mages are much harder to play in BPM and the kinds of builds where they are still good tend to be tanky and favor restoring tier 1 to 3 spells, since these are the only ones you will always get back. troubadour is slightly weakened - brisk recitation reduces phrases to 4s from 3s, but the class is still quite good and often the best pick for a chanter monks are slightly weakened - whispers on the wind costs 9 wounds making it hard to spam. Dichotomous souls costs 6 wounds instead of 4. Multiclass monks are only affected by dichotomous souls, which is still very usable at 6 wounds. assassins are stronger than before, given cheaper resources, and an assassin could do the whole game, I didn't mention it because the playstyle is IMO simplistic and cheesy: attack things with assassinate buff, go invisible, flee combat, regain assassinate buff, attack things, repeat. Many other changes, like various buffs to barbarians, rangers, paladins, rogues, fighters, and summons which indirectly buff summoner classes See the change list in the link for a full description, but most changes not mentioned are minor and improve the game in various ways Forbidden Fist attack builds more focus than I think any other attack. You can often get like 90 focus in one attack. Ciphers add a ton of versatility but the most important thing for POTD upscaled is your accuracy and defenses are improved. The cipher spell borrowed instinct gives +20 accuracy and +20 all defenses. It is easy to land against most enemies given ciphers can debuff will in various ways and the empty soul gives +10 accuracy to attacks targeting will. Psychovampiric shield also debuffs enemy resolve by 10 (meaning -20 will, and -10 deflection) effectively giving you +10 accuracy against that enemy's deflection. Phantom Foes has a huge AOE and flanks anyone in it, giving you effectively +1 penetration and +10 accuracy. These all stack, so you can gain +40 accuracy against deflection from ciphers. There's also many useful CC spells like Mental Binding (paralysis), Secret Horrors (mass debuff), Whispers of Treason / Puppet Master / Ringleader (charm/dominate/dominate+charm). And enfeebled from forbidden fist gives +50% hostile effect duration, so everything you punch that doesn't have a constitution resistance gets +50% duration on all these cipher spells. And bosses tend to be immune or resistant to a lot of things, but often they have no resistance to constitution afflictions, and in the worst case are generally just resistant (like dorudugan). Outright immunity to constitution afflictions is so rare I can't even think of anything that has it, though there's probably something. And soul annihilation is really really good. With a FF / soul blade you gain focus fast enough, even with casting the previous mentioned spells you can use soul annihilation every 15 to 20 seconds at max focus. The raw damage indeed helps against megabosses (everything really). So three stats are at play in determining the appropriate duration of forbidden curse from the forbidden fist attack intelligence - unfortunately intelligence boosts the duration, though you can still max intelligence if you want to wear the tankiest armors resolve - the higher your resolve, the more the duration is reduced. It won't be displayed correctly in the window though so getting it right takes some trial / error or previous experience. Generally you want resolve as high as you can get it dexterity - you want to attack with forbidden fist no faster than the actual duration of forbidden curse. To find the actual duration of forbidden curse, just check the character sheet immediately after using it on something. If it it say 2s, then you don't want to attack every 1.9s or the curse will build up. Ideally, you want to attack every 2s, but higher is fine, just not lower. In effect you can use dex as a dump stat. Wearing robes or devil of caroc breastplate (or lighter armor) you can still attack every 2s to 2.2s, even with dex 3, partially because of monk's swift flurry action speed buff Also you want items that reduce hostile effect duration, and abilities that reduce it. For a FF / soul blade this means you want up clarity of agony / enlightened agony when you get it, and you want the ring of the solitary wanderer when you get it. Until then, you may have to wear heavier armors to slow your attack slightly, or use small shield modal, or even the haymaker modal which add recovery time. It sounds complicated but you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly I expect. You just don't want the curse building up, because it causes a lot of raw damage. I've been meaning to post a thread with this class build, I may do it later, but I'll go over the main points here. These are my ideal stats for wearing robes. These are modified stats, with berath champion stats and various boons. 17/25/10/26/18/30 - starting stats 12/14/3/21/13/15 You don't have to max resolve because psychovampiric shield will get you to 35, but you may want to max it anyway, in which case I'd start with 9/13/3/20/13/20 or something like that Wild Orlan is the best race for this build IMO because perception and resolve are both useful and we don't care about maxing might. The other races are fine though, besides godlikes. Forgoing helmets can be really bad in certain fights and cap of the laughingstock basically gives you +10 accuracy. Fire godlikes are cool because of the armor but you don't really need tons of armor because FF heals you (though you can go that route). Tuotilo's shield is usually best, FF has its own attack so the weapon you use only matters with respect to its passives. I.e., holding a dagger with dagger modal gives you +10 melee deflection, so daggers are good early game. Once you get to Dunnage, buy Squid's Grasp. The immunity to flanking and attempted parley are very useful. The club Kapana Taga is a decent alternative (get that from the ship that patrols Forgotten Realms). I'll post a screenshot of example high level equipment. Hmmm honestly unsure, may give it a run through later. I usually stealth Maje island. But if a FF build can't do it there probably isn't much that can. If you start at level 4 with berath's blessings that would help more than you'd think, since you'd be able to pick up psychovampiric shield and clarity of agony (or weapon and shield style might be a better pick at that point, I'll have to test it). I don't generally build characters based on how they'd do on maje island which is why I'm uncertain... If you're willing to go just a little out of your way and circle back, you can easily reach level 4 if you skip the cave and do the quests in maje without fighting. Then once at L4 I think you could circle back and clear the cave and gorecci street. FF is strong enough I wouldn't call it "mandatory" to pick soul blade, but ascendant is not at all synergistic. This is a build about stacking accuracy and punching things. You don't need to cast disintegrate except in rare cases. The only megaboss where soul annihilation makes a huge difference is Dorudugan, but overall it increases your damage output quite a bit. You may have trouble damaging Dorudugan fast enough without it. And disintegration is cool but you won't be able to land it reliably on megabosses. Maybe... I have tested cantors some, but not nearly to the extent of transcendents. It's a different kind of build, you wouldn't be able to face tank things as much, you'd be eventually relying on instruments of pain, which you'd use to cast forbidden fist from a distance behind your summons (note you can do this anyway eventually with dichotomous souls), and enduring dance can give you +12 accuracy, though you'd fall way short of what a transcendent can get. But this build is really dependent on instruments of pain, which you don't get until level 19. So it would play very different before that, I expect you'd have to do a lot of casting summons from stealth and letting them fight which may violate your conditions. Bless the maker and his water. May his passage cleanse the world. ------- gear from top left counterclockwise cap of the laughingstock strand of favor devil of caroc BP ring of the solitary wanderer boots of the stone grog girdle of mortal protection ring of greater regeneration bracers of greater deflection giftbearer's cloth weapons: squid's grasp + tuotilo's palm (accuracy enchant, inward spikes). I do have seeker's fang in one of the slots but don't usually use it. The raw damage only procs with heartbeat drumming and swift flurry (though this happens pretty often), so in situations where you don't get flanked it is a pretty good rapier.

Why not just go blood mage / soul blade? Can get all these spells and then some. Llengrath's Safeguard alone is a strong argument for choosing blood mage. Plus Arcane Veil, Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Arcane Reflection, Wall of Draining... And Citzal's Spirit Lance both collects focus from everyone it hits and distributes soul annihilation to everyone it hits, equally. And you get some passive healing. Less damage on paper from no deathblows / sneak attack but the lance and soul annihilation more than make up for it. And that's before you even get into all the crazy stuff one can do with wall of draining (or SOF) like extending conduit, blade cascade, adaptive, opening barrage, etc. I'm kind of partial to this build but still. I wrote the guide with cheese but I wouldn't change much without besides probably a different necklace (charm of bones) and maybe entonia signet ring and ring of solitary wanderer if I'm solo, maybe different boots and pet depending on situation. Maybe greater deflection gloves in some situations, but this equipment is fine.

I have played most build combinations in BPM. With a level cap of 33 I think many can eventually do what you're talking about. The hard part is "take on any encounter at any point" as many builds come online late. I've been playing a lot of builds in ultimate-like conditions, some with deadly deadfire on, level cap 20, testing against megabosses, DLC content and such. These builds I am confident can solo everything without cheese FF / soul blade SC FF Barbarian / Devoted or Barbarian / Black Jacket Barbarian / Ghost Heart The last two I've only tested high level content and some of their survival abilities come on late, particularly with the savage being dependent on savage defiance for healing, so I'd run some kind of a forbidden fist or the brute. FF / soul blade will be stupidly strong by level 33 since you'll get the high level FF abilities plus cipher's shared nightmare. SC FF already has enough penetration at L20 to beat everything, if you kept leveling it you'd just benefit from more accuracy and damage from transcendent suffering power level mainly, but that also levels with multiclass. There are a lot of builds that can do like 90% of the content or even 99%, but many have trouble early on or can't beat specific megabosses without cheese or at least consumables. Hauani O Whe is probably impossible without a cipher or some kind of summons (without consumables, or going way out of your way to get Mechanical Marvel). Dorudugan is impossible for some tanky builds that don't do damage fast enough. I think troubadour / psion can do nearly everything by late game, I don't know about on the way, but I'm pretty sure you won't be able to beat Dorudugan. I would advise against blood mage. It was nerfed pretty hard. Wall of Draining is much weaker and blood sacrifice prevents healing. There may still be some blood mage / X builds that can solo everything, particularly by level 33, but not as you encounter things. The strongest blood mage / X builds in BPM are mostly melee builds IMO. Troubadour / blood mage is interesting and has a lot of late-game versatility, but without consumables your healing is going to be extremely limited early on. Even once you get ancient memory plus blood mage passive you will heal something like what a fighter would get from constant recovery alone. I think this build will not be able to beat Dorudugan at L20, and HOW would be extremely difficult. But at L33, I have no idea, with the power level boosts to healing maybe it makes a big difference. Forbidden fist builds are going to be your best bet by far IMO. In addition to the two I listed, ravagers, cantors, votaries, brawlers, wanderers, and sages (melee focused) are all quite strong, though I haven't tested them as much, and HOW while possible with dichotomous souls can be rather difficult. With FF you get your strongest attack at Level 1, and as long as you balance INT/RES/DEX correctly and choose items that reduce hostile effect duration, you can spam that attack, which had tremendous penetration, good accuracy and damage, enfeebles enemies, heals you, and produces wounds. Pure FF fighter builds are not that interesting to me since you mostly just spam FF, part of why I like the transcendent more. ------ I should also note when you reach Tier 9 in multiclass builds due to the Level 33 mod, many multiclass builds become absurdly strong. Many classes have Tier 8 and 9 abilities that provide resource regeneration, which is reasonably balanced with a level 20 cap that limits in most cases said resource regeneration to single classes. Fighters, paladins, monks, rangers, rogues, and barbarians all gain varying amounts of resource regeneration, and certain combinations will become quite broken. Also, I'm unsure if shared nightmare works on other classes spells. If it does, then cipher/casters could become extremely overpowered when their spells cover the entire screen (e.g., a hierophant could possibly use citzal's spirit lance to hit everyone on the screen and use soul annihilation on all of them). In other cases, like paladin / troubadour, you can easily regain paladin resources from chanting many lives pass by, and fighter / x martials as well as ranger / x martials become much stronger for their resource regeneration. Until that point you would be reliant on potions of enlightenment in long battles with most classes, but you don't want to use consumables, so... this basically just leaves combinations with renewable resources, i.e., monks, chanters, ciphers, blood mages, paladins, and their various combinations. Again, FF / soul blade ticks all the boxes...

Haha I agree, the weapon is fine as is even if description is off. It is extremely good in some cases but not broken or anything This makes perfect sense, what I was counting before was actually the SUM of double strikes, triple strikes, quadruple strikes, etc. Can see below that if a double strike happens with probability .33, a triple is .109, a quadruple is .0359, etc., and I've never seen more than 8 hits in a row so I did a sum from 1 to 8 to get .492 So effectively the probability of getting *at least* a double strike is roughly 50%, which lines up close enough with my testing.

FF prolonging DOTs has got me wondering how that works. Like I assume Mortal Wounds adds X amount of damage that ticks off over Y seconds, so if that duration is doubled to 2Y does it do 2X damage or is it X damage over Y/2 duration? I'm guessing the former... Ghost Heart works well with the weapon, I have scripted my toon to summon the animal on enemies and when you do this it tends to summon the animal on the other side of the enemy, or very close, and ghost heart summons have no engagement so it is very easy to reposition for flanking if necessary. I also scripted my character to attack whatever the animal companion is attacking, so I'm getting flank bonuses like 90% of the time. With FFs the main attack is so good I tend to use nothing else (besides for the passive bonuses, like Squid's Grasp). Hmm yeah I don't know, but I've used Xoti's Lantern probably more than any other shield because of how useful it is with Skaen challenge, but it is a really good shield for monks also, at least if you're expending resources a lot. Particularly mortification, since there's no other way to get that back. I was thinking there was probably some background thing where it was rolling multiple times because of carnage maybe, I need to try it on a straight ranger and see if it's still way north of 20%. I also tried dual-wielding it offhand with Mahora Tanga but I couldn't trigger the Red Flag Flying craziness. Didn't pick it, but yeah. So it's supposed to say AplyStatusEffectOnEventWithChance? But 100%? That can't be right, because I crit every single hit in this fight, besides the ones that got knocked down by dragon scales. The recovery is canceled a lot, but not every time. It does seem to cancel more on subsequent hits than the first one though, which is weird. I get way more triple+ strikes than I should, whereas double strikes seem lower. Need to test it in a more controlled scenario

Description says Mercy Strike: 20% chance to recovery immediately on crit. My experience is it procs much more than this. I have had many many opponents I proc 5+ times. Does anyone know what the actual rate is? It's hard to tell because it's sort of random but after playing a Savage quite a bit using this spear most of the time, I'd guess it procs on the initial hit something like 20%, but repeated proc probablity seems higher. I recorded a fight vs The Messenger to test this. Picked this fight as it is decent enough length to get an okay sample, everything is a vessel, and I'll crit 100% except vs The Messenger (dragon scales). Anyway, after looking through the video I have 91 crits, of which 41 procced Mercy Strike. I'm probably off on the count by 2 or 3 in either direction, but that's roughly 45% proc rate. And this fight seemed very typical for my experience, so I'm guessing that is at least close to the true proc rate, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were as high as 50%. In this fight I had at least four quadruple+ procs. That is just incredibly unlikely if it's really 1 in 5. Quadruple procs would be rather rare (1 in 625). There could be some interaction with carnage as it seems to proc more when facing groups than individuals but I'm unsure. I do know one thing, this weapon is stupid good. On top of its innate +5 accuracy, Mercy Strike proccing more than it should, Ambushing adds like 24% damage to flanked targets with max stealth, and Mortal Wounds causes A LOT of raw DOT (it stacks, and the DOT gives +50% damage to animal companion with predator's sense). Definitely a top tier weapon for crit builds IMO, particularly for melee rangers.

You could solve the Cotta encounter peacefully. You get roughly the same awards if you just take his deal and convince the shipwright with diplomacy. Using console you just type "iroll20s" to activate cheat mode, then "god" for invincibility, type "god" again to turn it off. "toggleresourcelimit" is also useful, gives you infinite resources.

Yeah it was here, talking about changing LOPZ to fire/shock but you did seem to change your mind a few posts later. I must have hallucinated the bit about sacred immolation lol...so do you like sacred immolation as is? Could make it fire/frost or fire/shock, it's "holy fire" so doesn't have to be literal fire. This build just gets kind of stuck vs fire immune things and there's a lot. I mean fire/freeze on LOPZ seems fine but it isn't keyworded that way, it is keyworded frost, electricity (and description says "tremendous amount of shock and freeze damage") so it doesn't benefit from scion of flame for penetration nor ring of focused flame for accuracy. Also seems to default to fire...like vs dorudugan it uses fire which of course just heals him. I haven't seen an enemy yet where it uses freeze, though I haven't tested it except in some tougher fights.

Was playing a pure paladin, noticed ring of focused flame doesn't apply to light of pure zeal which does fire / frost. Keywords say "Frost, electricity". IIRC you had discussed previously changing maybe sacred immolation to fire/shock also? But it always does fire. Not sure if you changed your mind on implementation or it isn't working properly? Or possibly I'm misremembering. I like the changes to Divine Retribution. Makes resource regeneration more reliable and less goofily based on sacrificing summons. Works pretty well on solo characters. This build would actually be pretty effective if sacred immolation and upgrades did fire/shock, but it's centered entirely on high immolation damage (using inspired beacon to increase damage and lay on hands to not die) so it just won't work on fire immune things. ------ Also you have done a lot of great stuff with barbarians, but I feel their resource regeneration is lacking, since they only gain resource from "Blood Surge" which has just 33% +1 rage on kill. Compare to paladins whose "Virtuous Triumph" grants them 50% +1 zeal on kill at tier 7, plus Divine Retribution which is effectively 1 zeal per 12s + 0-2 zeal per 30s, for roughly 2 to 4 zeal per 30s depending on party composition. Granted it is harder for paladins to kill things, but having multiple sources of regeneration including passive regeneration, paladins gain a lot more resources. Comparitively Blood Surge is rather weak in its resource gain. Would propose increasing to at least 66% on kill, possibly even 100%...I think 100% would probably be fine since the high damage abilities like heart of fury cost 3 rage, but it may need some testing to get the right number. And I guess casters don't have any resource regen because they have a larger number of spells compared to non-caster abilities? ---- Bonded Fury doesn't seem to work on ghost hearts, I guess because the statuses have to be reapplied every summon. Probably no way to fix this?

Turn-based would take even longer from stealth, though with some builds combat is indeed very easy, given you can do infinite free actions, including a lot of potions, many wizard spells, etc. Like tactician / skaen and tactician / blood mage are both super easy. The enemies also don't move as much, so possibly they wouldn't find you in stealth. Still, I'd like to see this guy beat Dorudugan from stealth...but yeah, possibly since you can see which attacks he is going to use you could position the summons so helfire barrage always misses, or maybe just break the AI in some way so he just stands there. Turn-based mode seems more of an afterthought, not very fleshed out compared to games built for it, and unbelievably slow. The one turn-based ultimate submission didn't do Dorudugan in turn-based because it apparently takes ages, though I watched some of the other vids and it looked very easy. EDIT: Tried Dorudugan turn based with spiritualist. His stealth detection radius is smaller in turn based so you can stand quite close, and you have longer to reach if you're starting to be detected, and he doesn't really chase you. So...seems much easier to stay in stealth. But he still does his helfire barrage and I couldn't get him to direct it at anything in particular, he just fires the fireballs in all directions around himself which does maximum healing damage. Seems even harder than RTWP for this one because I can't figure out how to avoid his healing, but I can believe the other megabosses might be doable given the difference in how enemies seem to react to you being in stealth... Mmm....Belranga is the easiest megaboss to kill with a troubadour IMO. That one you can just stay stealthed and send in summons and the spiders will eventually kill her (can do same with monk with enduring dance and dichotomous souls), but yeah Dorudugan is probably next easiest, assuming Abydon is off. Hunting bow modal and essence interrupter indeed shreds him. I did kill Dorudugan with all the challenges on using a devoted / troubadour with legendary war bow as my weapon and hot razor skewers plus energized which got me to 18 pen. For some reason the non-unique weapons don't degrade. ---- I tried the missile gloves to proc Sea Stories from Whale of a Wand. Doesn't work unfortunatley. I cast it 60 times, and it procs 6 per hit, so the probability of none of those 360 hits proccing sea stories is .95^360 = 9.56 x 10^(-9), so...yeah. Doesn't work sadly. Also does a lot of damage, I did 140ish a couple times with just 16 might, and she has 163 health at L20, so could possibly kill her. Ray of Fire scrolls work well and are relatively plentiful at least. But I wouldn't cast them with max arcana, I tried it and she died lol. With < 10 arcana should be fine, I never got her more than bloodied with 7. Can carry healing scrolls just in case.

Sure. I posted this build in another thread but will update it based on more experience with it 14/9/12/19/19/3 mig/con/dex/per/int/res, race probably go wood elf or wild orlan but not that important (just don't go godlike), old vailia artist Char creation: The Thunder rolled like waves on black seas, Soul Shock, come soft winds of death 2 Iron Will 3 Lingering Echoes or whisper of treason 4 Gernisc Slew the Beast / Psychovampiric Shield 5 At the sound of His Voice the killers froze stiff 6 Mental Binding 7 Ancient Memory / Pain Link 8 My Son Do You See... 9 Hammering Thoughts 10 Oh But Knock Not.. / Pain Block 11 ...and their screams reached the heavens 12 Its crash could not be denied 13 The Lights Danced Across the Moors / Borrowed Instinct 14 Echoing Shield 15 Farcasting 16 Eld Nary / Disintegration or Tactical Meld 17 The Empty Soul 18 Quick Summoning 19 Called to His Bidding... / Rapid Casting 20 Many Lives Pass By.. This isn't exact as you get better summons on leveling up so you won't generally need all these summons at higher levels, and at low levels you might want the "thrice was she wronged" invocation. Like you can drop the ogres and wisps once you get instruments of death, except for fights against things with very high pierce / slash resistance. Ogres do physical damage but not as well as the instruments of death. The wyrms do ranged fire damage which remains useful for enemies with a lot of physical resistance. The wisps do ranged electrical damage. So if you drop a summon replace with weapon and shield style, secret horrors, bears fortitude, puppet master or whatever else you want Generally you want brisk recitation ON so you can cast more invocations. At low levels before you get echoing shield "thick grew their tongues" chant is good for breaking concentration. Before ancient memory "come soft winds of death" is fine. Once I get ancient memory and higher my chants look like A: Ancient Memory B: Many Lives Pass By C Many Lives Pass By, Ancient Memory Use B most of the time, before you get that you'd use A, or if you need healing, can use C if you want a mix of healing and summons Equipment: Head: Horns of the Bleak Mother (helm of white void later, rekvus fractured casque sometimes), buy horns from merchant in queens berth Neck: Charm of Bones (buy from orlan in brass citadel) Chest: Miscreant's Leather (Magnera's Chain if you expect to get hit), get miscreant leather in deadlight Rings: Ring of minor protection + kuarus ring or chameleon ring Feet: Bounding Boots, or boots of the stone Back: Cape of the Falling Star or Gift bearer cloth Hands: Gauntlets of Accuracy (can get in engwithan waystation) Waist: Upright Captain's Belt (before this girdle of mortal protection) Pet: Animancy Cat (buy from animancer guy in sacred stair) Weapons: Don't much matter besides probably want Sasha's Singing Scimitar for refreshing finale, and a shield. Probably want a pistol in other hand or a bow, but usually you don't directly attack things, you cast summons, buff them, sometimes cast cipher CC, cast psychovampiric shield on enemies or your own summons, cast borrowed instinct to boost accuracy and defenses when you need to land something like CC or Disintegration, can also debuff with secret horrors and psychovampiric Summons first few levels are weak, you can take the skeletons and cast soul shock on them but it is easy to wait for better summons, the wyrms at l4 are decent and especially their upgrade, once you get ogres at l10 you'll have an easier time

Thats a good idea, also fireball necklace, but if its like the "spell" binding web from spider silk robes it may not be treated as an actual spell. I'll check it later though. Yeah I couldn't proc sea stories with any invocations or paladin abilities... I wouldn't call it easy...and some enemies will chase you down even stealthed. They also will encroach on the summons until in some cases you're out of room and get unstealthed. Using fire blight or whale of a wand is the safest way if you don't have a class with infinite withdraw casts like tactician / skaen, or temporal cocoon. You could do a lot of content from stealth but psion / troubadour is much better suited as you can cast pain link on the summons and actually damage high AR enemies this way. Still there are fights you can't do like this. Some of the SSS content. Hauani O Whe probably. Not sure how you'd prevent merges with only the summons. I mean I know you can split them but sending them from a safe position takes a while, and rate of damage is pretty low even with the wyrms... Also that encounter (and others) you can get hit with attacks that target your summons, the summons movement can create symbiotes etc. This has happened to me quite a few times where I get unstealthed from attacks bouncing off summons though I can't recall which fights. Sigilmaster Auranic fight the obelisks will target you even stealthed. Possibly you can kill them anyway like this if you're far enough back in the cave *and* the humans stay where they are. Yeah maybe actually, this one might be doable. Sigils are immune to pierce/slash so the instruments of death are no good, but probably some combination of summons could do it, assuming their summon duration isn't removed from the obelisk of cleansing (like the corrosive splash from HOW can run out summons time). But maybe, I'll say...possible. But dorudugan cannot be defeated with summons alone. Nor the encounter in Sissak's Lair (that one you can't even start stealthed). Summons can't sufficiently damage Dorudugan without pain link to outpace his healing. He heals himself with helfire barrage and helfire. One charged helfire barrage can heal him like 800 health. If you micromanage the summons you could possibly have them run away and then back so his targeting misses himself. But you can't avoid the helfire that covers nearly the entire map. That will always heal him. I can't even do it with a psion / troubadour using pain link. Takes about an hour to get him hurt and he stabilizes there without direct attacks. Even with direct attacks I can't do it without conduit and/or blade cascade. Unless there is some way to trick his AI into not using helfire and helfire barrage I dont think it is possible from stealth with vela using summons... You could complete the game like this, but definitely not all the content. Not Dorudugan, probably not HOW. Probably not Neriscyrlas due to oblivion's call healing her. Definitely not the changeling's dance and subsequent slayer path content. Not a lot of optional content like Sissak's Lair fight, certain fights in the enclosures where paladins spam light of pure zeal, etc. Also it would take absolutely ages, which is why I'm pretty sure no one has actually done it. Watch pale shelters ultimate run. It is super long even though he fights directly in most fights and procs conduit blade cascade etc. And he had pain link...for a class that doesn't, like herald, summons fighting megabosses (besides belranga) would take many hours. And if an enemy heals itself you are just screwed.

She's the most anarchic choice and wants to keep the pirates pirates, is afraid anyone getting to Ukaizo will end the power struggle that allows the pirates to prey on everyone without much opposition Yeah the "independent" route doesn't make a lot of sense, for one the pirates or RDC or whomever still come fight you like you betrayed them, I kind of think the independent route was implemented almost as an afterthought...though it is said factions keep fighting for Ukaizo so I guess the storms aren't reactiviated? Arguably Eothas, but probably Hylea. Right Wael can fight him if you do the Forgotten Sanctum but he doesn't really change anything. You can convince Eothas to do a number of things, not really sure which ones Berath would support, but some endings seem more favorable to the gods like "the gods let kith solve the crisis" vs "convince eothas to destroy the world" Laziness? Possibly this could be explored in "Avowed" if that game ever actually comes out, though the reveal trailer "reveals" basically nothing about its plot besides that it is set in Eora, and I can't find much else information about it, other than it looks Skyrim-esque. It might be a prequel and not a sequel actually, there are hints it has something to do with Woedica, possibly the time when she was cast down. Can find more about the various ending slides here https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Pillars_of_Eternity_II:_Deadfire_endings?so=search#Eothas

So spirit frenzy is bugged...didn't know that. I play mostly with BPM on now and pretty sure it doesn't work like that I still like blood frenzy though, does very large amounts of damage

Babysite vela with a herald? That is going to be very difficult, but you do have a few options, but none of the best ones are available early. In general you want Vela to get paralyzed with fear far away from any enemies (or at most one easily killed enemy), and either start combat right then or have her stay there. These are the ways I know to do that (abot aka pale shelter taught me most of these) 1) Traps - You can use traps to kite a single enemy towards Vela, kill said enemy, and run off towards the fight before battle ends. This is a little risky because the single enemy can focus on Vela, so have withdraw scrolls as backup. A better method is to use one trap to pull an enemy, then throw sparkcrackers so the enemy steps on the trap, starting combat far away from Vela. But Vela will also run towards the sparkcrackers if she isn't completely behind you so it requires good timing. You can also place a second trap within the detection circle of the first trap, getting the enemy to step on the trap, but this can be difficult on some enemies. 2) Starting combat stealthed - Press alt twice rapidly within the detection radius of an enemy (doesn't work on all enemies, like nagas and some beasts will chase you). This starts combat stealthed but Vela will still be unscared. Use a scroll of binding web to freeze Vela for about 20s. This should only be used in simple fights since it won't actually scare her, and once the immobilization is over she will come looking for you, but it does buy you time if you have no better method, and you can try to keep the fight away from vela but she'll inevitably run towards you. You may have time to kite the enemies away from her. Probably by that point she finds you you'll have had about 30s and can use a withdraw scroll on her if needed to finish the fight. Also as a troubadour you have the option of simply sending in summons from stealth. Vela will stay near you and her stealth is bad so you have to stay pretty far back from the fight. This method is cheesy and may take a long time because most summons are bad at combat, but some are surprisingly good, like the wyrms do a lot of fire damage, and the animated weapons are good vs anything that doesn't have insane damage resistance. As soon as you do something aggressive you'll get unstealthed, so you can't brand enemy for example. 3) Reverse pickpocketing bombs - This only works on kith enemies who start out with white circles like Concelhaut's group, you can sneak up to one with high enough stealth and decent sleight of hand, shift-click the enemy, place a bomb, and sneak away before it goes off. This is useful when it works but it won't work in a majority of situations since you can't reverse pickpocket most enemies. 4) Belt of Magran's Ire - Shoot Vela with a blunderbuss (procs 4 times per shot) until the fire blight spawns, then she'll get paralyzed and combat won't end unless you kill the blight. Don't kill the blight, it will follow you, just lead it away towards the fight (hopefully going around the bad guys and pulling them in opposite direction). This works in nearly all cases but requires a deck of many things item. Also can be annoying to proc this, and if you have on abydon you'll have to repair the blunderbuss a lot, so don't sell any blunderbusses you acquire, the generic ones are perfectly fine for shooting vela. This is IMO the second safest method. 5) A Whale of a Wand - this is the best item on maps where Vela starts far from enemies. While holding a whale of a wand, you can cast spells on her repeatedly with a 5% proc chance that she is "charmed" which starts the combat music, and she will go looking for enemies if there are any nearby, but when the music ends she will become scared and stay in that spot permanently (until changing maps or reloading anyway). This is at Bekarna's Orrery. Not sure a herald can cast anything on her though. Maybe flames of devotion counts. Can also use scrolls like pull of eora or ray of fire which are nice because they proc a lot, especially pull of eora as it does no damage. Also I suspect as a chanter if you start a fight stealthed (use method 1 to 3), the combat music triggers and now you can cast your chanter spells. Lead Vela to a map corner, and *now* you can cast chanter spells on her to proc sea stories. EDIT: Tested this, doesn't work since the spells are all foe AOE only, not even the "rejoice my comrades" spell works. Also tried lay on hands and flames of devotion, lay on hands definitely doesn't work, flames of devotion I did manage to turn her into a pig, but that's probably a sign it won't work, the ability is treated as a weapon attack and not a "spell" so I think your only option with this method and 6 is to use scrolls. 6) A whale of a Wand + Spider Silk Robe - this is the single best combination and works for pretty much every fight. Enchant the spider silk robe to cast binding web, it is per encounter and resets every round even if you have woedica challenge on. So you cast the web on Vela, then attack her with spells while carrying a whale of a wand, recasting binding web when it disappears, eventually you'll proc "Sea Stories" and charm Vela. Then cast another binding web on her, the charm should run out before the immobilization, and she will stay there until you change maps or reload. 7) Scrolls of withdraw - Always carry at least one stack as backup, but in most fights you shouldn't rely on these as primary strategy especially as a herald since you will need many casts to get through long fights, possibly more casts than you can carry. Methods 4 5 and 6 are the most reliable, good luck ---- Edit: Have to use scrolls as far as I can tell to proc sea stories since the chanter spells are foe only and the paladin ones aren't actually "spells". I tested minoletta's concussive missiles, which works but only hits a few times so not ideal. Pull of Eora is okay as it does 5 hits and doesn't damage her. Your best bet is ray of fire scrolls, they hit 11 times and won't kill her with 6 arcana (got her to bloodied from unharmed in my testing), so on average you'd only need 2 scrolls to proc sea stories, though carry more as it could take five or so if unlucky. Also binding web scrolls DO proc sea stories so they are a great option as well, particularly since they'll hold her in place also. You get 6 hits per scroll so on average need 3ish (unfortunately binding web from spider silk robe doesn't proc sea stories, but is useful to get her to be still). Though ray of fire seems to have similar effect in ending charmed once she's hit by the next tick of the ray. Just buy ray of fire, binding web, and pull of eora when you see them and also buy their ingredients. I think you'll have enough scrolls to freeze her on the bigger maps, and can just use the fire blight on smaller maps like megabosses and SSS fights. It's a shame the binding web ability on Spider Silk Robe doesn't do it, because you can cast that all day.

If it isn't so great why did you nerf duration? IMO there are a number of examples where lower level summons are better than higher level. Like essential phantom > substantial phantom, instruments of death are best chanter summon etc.. And IMO spiritual ally is one such example, able to compete with level 9 spells at level 6. It is super useful when soloing not just for healing but also for priest multiclasses to proc certain effects. Like the tactician / skaen deification process pretty much requires the ally to proc the nice things like blade cascade in safety. Also shadowing beyond -> one cast of spiritual ally can heal you continuously, get rid of tactician accuracy and pen debuffs. In a party one ally could heal everyone. Also I think spiritual ally lasts longer accounting for power level...and not gimping yourself 5 power levels for a summon is kind of nice. His infinite heals which are better than priest heals also mean the priest doesn't really need to take healing spells. I haven't messed with pure priests much (mostly because the high level spells are very meh) but I think the incarnates would be fine if you removed the power level gimping entirely vs reducing it to -3 in bpm. They're level 9 spells after all. Rymrygand summon is better but you can't make a priest of rymrygand so seems fine if it is relatively OP.