elohinen

Umm, I don't think so? To which event do you refer specifically?

At least on consoles, mortification of the soul ability is a free action in TB, meaning one can spam it as many times as one wants (or rather, has health) and I find keeping up enduring dance of death is quite easy too. Plus nalpasca get that passive wound regeration while high, but I guess you're looking to play different subclass (didn't read the whole thread, sorry).

I'll keep that in mind, but I'd rather avoid having another chanter besides Konstanten in the party. Then again, in my current playthrough I sometimes have three druids in the party hahah and if I go with blood mage this time around, then I'll have two wizards, sooooo never say never I guess. Ahh so the AK could be sturdy enough to be the tank even without a shield? Maxing resolve is a must? Gotta say, this is starting to seem like the way to go Also, can you tell me about the paladin's disposition system? SG disfavours benevolent/diplomatic actions (fun bunch, huh), but would it be ok to take say, aggressive or clever actions without penalties?

So, have people cooked up any interesting Steel Garrote builds since this thread was originally made? I'd really like to use cipher, but they're quite lackluster in turn-based mode. I guess Soul Blade could still work, but I don't wanna just spam one ability for dozens or hours. Also would like to avoid druids or monks this time around, since my current playthough has plenty of those. Reckon I'll go with blood mage, if nothing more interesting comes around. Rest of the main party will be: Aloth as SC wizard Maia as MC scout Xoti as SC priest Konstanten as... I'd really like make him SC skald, but my party is missing a tank, so I'll probably have to make him a howler and put him on the front line.

Any other tips or tricks to get this quest to trigger? Most of my active party is level 20 already and I only need to pick a faction for Ukaizo. Haven't done the vanilla quest on the Black Isles. I checked and I do have the quest on my first character, but for some reason I can't get in on my current playthrough and it's getting quite... annoying.

I've only just started a run of Deadfire on PotD in TB myself too, so I haven't got any tips or builds to offer (yet at least), but in the meantime you might find these interesting and/or helpful: https://fextralife.com/5-turn-based-builds-for-pillars-of-eternity-2-deadfire/ https://fextralife.com/5-more-turn-based-builds-for-pillars-of-eternity-2-deadfire/

Just a quick and final update: Made it off Port Maje last night - no wipes or even knockouts on PotD upscaled, so I think it went well. Charm/paralyze beast spells were certainly helpful. Mirror image feels a bit useless though, but all in all I think the adventures of Not-Loki will continue all the way to the end! Thanks again everyone for all the answers

Fine fine hahah, I'll stay away from Riposte in TB

Thanks for all the answers so far! It's starting look like a shifter/trickster is going to be taking on the Deadfire archipelago tomorrow! Now I just need to resist the urge to name him ****. Maybe something adjacent to him? Baldur? Sleipnir? Atreus? Ok, so a pretty even spread. How many active skills did you pick / are planning to take? I'm thinking crippling strike, escape and finishing blow. Probably gonna upgrade both striking abilities. Riposte any good on PotD? Also, are there any rogue/druid specific items in the game? I ran into some bracers for both fighter and monk that increased their resource pools and I know one can get DoC's breastplate, if she's ripped apart by the villagers in the first game. Is there anything else?

Heh, how did I forget about paladin completely?! Could be I ruled them out, because I'm already thinking about my (currently only hypothetical) third MC being an paladin/cipher multiclass, hahah. Hmm, that does sound quite powerful, at least on paper. So, eternal devotion + wildstrike burn + scion of flames? Would it work the same way as a monk with lightning strikes + wildstrike shock + heart of storms? That's a real shame about devoted... I was practically salivating thinking about casting a storm spell and then using Charge - would be good damage and so much cc - especially in turn-based mode. It would still be possible even with vanilla fighter, but too bad many of the passives won't help. Paladin would have access many of the same resistance passives as fighter though... Decision, decisions When 2/3 replies mention the same multiclass, it gets me intrigued! First off, stupid question: one can cast the bonus spells even when shifted? They're counted as rogue abilities with trickster, not spells? How was your stat spread? I reckon you didn't minimize resolve like usual? You can now forget the previous limitations - would like to hear about any (martial) class combos with shifter. Corpse eater + shifter tempts me from a rp perspective, but based on my previous multiclass barbarian, I kinda feel like barbarian would work best a single class build; doubly so for corpse eater, because of the increased rage cost to everything.. Ran into this kind of build: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1421041053 Any thoughts? If I'm not mistaken, it was made during launch of the game (when PotD was apparently much easier than in 5.0), but I would be playing it in a party, so it would maybe even out.. Pardon all these questions, but honestly a surprising amount of the fun from this game (for me) comes from just thinking about and discussing different builds

Argh, I just can't decide! Obviously I'm only thinking about martial classes in order to bolster the shifted forms.. Besides, the shifter's spell selection is quite solid too, so I probably won't be picking a lot extra spells. My first character was a berserker/monk and the party had two multiclassed rogues, so I'd like to avoid using those again... Played around with a stalker/shifter a bit, but it felt too passive for my tastes. That would only leave a fighter as a choice, but afaik it doesn't compliment shifter very well. Devoted's bonus doesn't apply to a shifter's claws, right? And I guess since a shifter isn't considered to be 'proficient' with their claws, then they won't benefit from passives like confident aim and the weapons mastery either? Unbroken and blackjacket don't really offer anything to shifter, so that would leave only vanilla fighter and I wouldn't mind that, but even with that, I wouldn't be able to take full advantage of the class. Again, if I'm understanding things correctly here.. Any thoughts and links to builds are very welcome indeed! this one seems pretty nice, but like I said, I just played a barbarian, so I'd like something else.. P.s. playing on console, so any shifter mods are a no-go.

Ok, good to know that about Serafen. It's much less severe than Wild Mage's random effects in BG series then. I replayed the BG series as a Wild Mage last summer and when I saw the desciption of Serafen's wild mind, I somehow equated it to WM's random effects, hahah. Towards the end it was beginning to feel more frustrating than fun and didn't want to go through that again. And yeah, fun or 'cool' characters are, in general, more appealing to me than absolutely gamefied powerhouses that rely on spamming one OP skill or item abilities. Of course it's best if a concept character can be both fun and effective, but still.

Huh, I'm really glad my initial impression of Hunter's Claw was way off then! I'm toying around with a shifter/stalker multiclass, but I was kinda bothered by the idea of only having one 'weapon' attack (wounding shot), but good to know HC won't be a waste of points. Thanks for such an in-depth answer!

Can anyone tell me if the ranger's lvl 8 passive ability Vengeful grief triggers off of the Stalker's separation anxiety? Cuz it gives bonded grief after all? Given how important armor rating seems to be this time around, is the bear companion the only real choice? Is Hunter's Claw as bad as it seems? Bond cost of 2 means one would need to spam it exclusively for a few encounters and have played the game previously to begin with (or be using a walkthrough at the very least, I suppose) in order to know what's coming next.. And the since the ability speaks of race, I guess one gets the bonus only against, well a single 'race', i.e. only dwarves? Not against all kith or against all wilder etc? How low can you keep perception on a ranger? Let's say, PoTD but with a party?

Hmmm, indeed, not really sure now how I read it like you only used 4 party members... I reckon I ought to stop posting after taking my sleeping pills, hahah. Anyhoo, you usually play with Eder and Xoti? Meaning you played with them more than once? Doesn't that get a little... boring? At least when you use them in the same class? Paladins were OP as **** in BG2, the Inquisitor subclass especially seemed almost custom made to the game (with the prevalence of powerful magic users and illusion magic in particular, I mean) and in general as a paladin one got all the benefits of the class without having to really struggle with choices. In PoE I didn't like their disposition system at first, but now I'm coming around to the idea being forced to play a certain way to get the most out of the class - If I ever get around to playing Deadfire a third time, I'll probably make the MC some sort of paladin, because then I won't really know where the conversations and decisions will go and it might make the game feel a bit more fresh. I agree on rangers in PoE though - one basically gets a permanent summon with the AC, but I feel I need to invest too many points into them to get them to a decent level of efficiency and even then, they remain too squishy for my tastes. With Maia, I only put one point into resilient companion and kept the bird out of combat pretty much throughout the game. That being said, I'm currently playing around with a beastmaster build (shifter/stalker) in turn-based mode, so far the bear has been pretty good. Feels like I'm starved for more ability points though. In general I only use story companions in party based games, but do try my very best to optimize them. Don't take this the wrong way, but I take it you didn't read through the whole topic? I mean, I've already played through the game and didn't have Aloth available in my save file.. But yeah, Maia with the Red Hand was absolutely devastating and Mirke as a shadowdancer was pretty fun too. Didn't really use Serafen, made him a witch and he felt very underwhelming in the early levels. Can he survive his self-nuke as a single class cipher? Hopefully at least when he is at full health.. I'm curious if you bench party members if they annoy you as an actual person or your MC? Or is it both?

Yeah, for instance my party would've benefitted immensely from having a priest in the party, but it was a roleplaying choice not having one. I can't imagine playing with only 4 members; I have choice paralysis with 5 members and struggled with 6 members in PoE1 hahah. Just of out of curiosity: what classes and roles does your 4-person party consist of? Do you min-max or use only written companions?

Oh yes please, do this!

Tekehu gets his party friendly version of the freezing pillar on the last power level, which means there's only 1 use per encounter and with me it was competing with the Great Maelstrom, which I found to be way more effective. Based on the wiki it's a PL 6 spell on a wizard, but I didn't have Aloth available on my save file and Fassina (conjurer sidekick) get's penalized for using the spell, so... maybe on my next run I'll give it another go. I can see tts hobbled effect being useful for cc if one could cast it on a chokepoint. Yeah, it's true what you said about boarding actions in particular, but my excuse for using the same team is two-fold: 1) I guess old habits sometimes do really die hard. This dates way back to me playing BG2 in my early teens and during that I found sticking to the same party to be most effective (not really true though, but still hahah). I've played this way through Kotors, Fallouts, IWDs, you name it. 2) I'm playing Deadfire on PS4 and currently switching party members is quite bugged: sometimes the party members I swapped will continue to appear on the edges of areas, although they're not in the party anymore. Sometimes party members refused to be dismissed and their character portrait would still remain and take up a slot, although they were gone physically and at one point dismissed party members didn't seem to get any xp, but yesterday evening I did manage to switch Serafen, Fassina and Ydvin on the team and raise them to lvl 17 no problem.. In short, I don't want to deal with the hassle and can only wait for VE to sort this mess out. And yeah, these issues have been made known to VE; now I play the waiting game, not Deadfire.

Hahah, that's an interesting site and exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you!! Case (thread) closed I guess too, heh.

Disclaimer: I searched for similar thread and kinda found one, but the last post on it was like 2 years ago, so I figured I'd start a new one instead of necro'ing that one. My first character in Deadfire was a fire godlike barbarian/monk slave from the Deadfire Archipelago and he only got reactions due to his godlike status and well, because, he returned home so to speak. I remember one offhand remark about being a barbarian and a slave, not a single line as a monk.. Didn't do any of the dlcs, mind you. So this got me thinking, if there are any veterans still around that care about this sort of thing, what classes and backgrounds seem to get the most recognition? My second character in PoE1 was a cipher and she got a decent amount of options in dialogue because of that - maybe it's the same here? Priests of all kind and certain paladins would get something at least, I wager.

Yeah, for instance Ocean's Burst does good damage, especially with spell shaping if the enemies are grouped tightly enough. And to be fair, Tekehu was doing double-duty as a healer and damage dealer, so of course he won't be as spectacular as the pure damagers in that regard. Frost (freezing wall? the PL8 spell anyhow) wall and ninagauth's freezing pillar were very underwhelming though.. I still like the character of Tekehu and his voice, so I'll probably multiclass him next time I bring him along. Should've also turned him into Svef addict or something hahah, to boost his accuracy and all in all this an non-issue; he did well enough, not just as great as the others.

Baldur's Gate 3 gameplay reveal coming up on Thursday next week!

So, finished my first playthrough last weekend; now some rambling thoughts about it for posterity! For science? Went with berserker/vanilla monk in the end MC. Worked rather well, but it got rather boring towards the end. I mean it was pretty hilarious seeing him critting for almost 300 damage total, but in the end it was just raging and then hitting. Started on normal, but dialed it up to veteran + upscaled around lvl 10. Didn't complete any of the dlcs (yet at least), because I couldn't enchant items (crashed the game 100 % of the times I tried it) and based on the few fights I did in SSS, I just needed more penetration on my weapons.. Rest of the party was: Eder as a dw-swashbuckler until switched him for shadowdancer Mirke around level 14. Maia Rua - scout Pallegina - herald. Didn't get knocked out even once in over 100 hours! Tekehu - SC druid. Maia was definitely the mvp, was neck-to-neck on damage and kills with my MC at the end of the game. Tekehu was kinda disappointing; single class casters don't seem to have a whole lot to do in the end due to limited spell selection that the new per encounter system steers the player towards. His party-friendly chill fog was very useful through the entire game though, but for instance the watery double just auto-attacked 98 % of the time I summoned it, although it's supposed to have spells too.

Yeah, for sure. Wouldn't go back myself in that situation either. Take some solace in the fact that this was just a 'task' type of quest and not a companion quest or one of the bigger faction quests.

Dunno really, I was able to complete the quest just fine by getting the quest from Tawenu then convincing Luca to nullify the contract via a few speech checks.. If you never talked to Luca about the contract and its details, it could be you broke quest by doing things out of expected order or something of the like. Do you have save slot before starting the quest? If you still do, then I'd just go back to that and go from there.