NotDumbEnough

Does the damage keep escalating upwards? Or does it start from base value again? I'm wondering whether it's worth taking Toxic Strike just for bosses if I kill my enemies fast enough without the use of damage over time.

You can still exploit this by kicking everyone out of your party before turning in quests. A related XP exploit is to never level up your companions and bring them with you to turn in quests at level 1 for a massive XP multiplier until you are ready to use them. Always nice to have an Eder that's 3 levels higher than you.

If you go to Ashen Maw first there is some unique dialogue from your companions (because they did not see the footprints on Hasongo, this is their first time seeing the size of the colossus). If you go back to Hasongo at this point, you restore the adra but there is no conversation with Eothas. I didn't play much further on that playthrough, and didn't finish Ashen Maw. Notably, you don't get Gift from the Machine and Effigy's Resentment back because there is no Eothas to talk to at Hasongo, if ever.

If you just want to beat the game, I think the easiest way would be some form of Rogue or Rogue multiclass. Since you're solo there are lots of quests where you can just disengage and run towards the objective in stealth/invisibility. I'm not sure whether you can sneak past the Guardian of Ukaizo, but you can definitely talk your way through Ashen Maw. Hasongo can be skipped, and the game even acknowledges that you skipped it (to a certain extent).

You can actually summon the ship and take it for yourself. You actually have to report back to Furrante or Aeldys for the other factions to excommunicate you. Pallegina will also leave if you do so.

On certain glass cannon builds BDD with 1 or 2 casts of SoT should be enough time to effectively end the fight (if not, follow up with Withdraw). I also had a Streetfighter/Forbidden Fist Death Godlike playthrough where my MC could take advantage of being near death and punch everything to death within the span of ~20 seconds, though I guess that's specific to the race and class.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I've seen a fair number of AI enemies just happily attacking a character with BDD on them, i.e. they're too dumb to switch targets. So not only does BDD function as protection, it's also pseudo crowd control, since quite a few enemies like to prioritize near death targets.

Personally, I think Skald is 90% about the cheaper offensive invocations and only 10% about the melee crits for phrases. I wouldn't avoid Skald, if, say, I only wanted to use ranged weapons, or my attack speed or accuracy was not oriented towards producing lots of crits. That said, perhaps Skalds are better as multiclass chanters. They do get penalties for summoning invocations, which is the primary way Chanters contribute to boss fights at higher levels (Her Tears Fell Like Rain and Eld Nary are not particularly useful against single targets, though they do have a useful reflex-targeting finisher invocation).

Does Durance have a false eye? The portrait very strongly suggests it but it is never acknowledged anywhere in-game, I think.

That's a tier 2 spell cast you're expending though, and illusionists really want to use them on Miasma of Dull Mindedness

I personally think the current iteration is better; illusionists shouldn't be getting hit that often for a 10% chance to be useful, and in fact may be dead before it even procs. I think the problem with illusionists is that they lack non-Evocation damage spells, and the lack of T9 illusion spells, not their passive ability.

I personally did prefer the Endless Paths to the overworld exploration in Deadfire. Having to back out into the world map, watch the ship move from point A to point B, and then walk into another cave really breaks the flow of the game for me. Also there's really very little exposition on most of the islands you explore compared to the player piecing together just who the Master Below is.

Are you sure Unbending benefits from healing modifiers? I checked for it before, but at least the character sheet does not acknowledge it. I think only its duration can scale.

I am against using Vithrack Brains for the potion. Unless you enjoy spamming the wait button at the herb shop/Dark Cupboard, it doesn't contribute much to the game. I guess it makes the potion less spammable if you're doing Eothas's Challenge but that's just too annoying for most normal people.

I'd rather have a consumable (with a lengthy use/recovery time) that is too costly to use in every single fight, but slowly regenerates resources during combat. Not useful due to taking too long and being cost-prohibitive in small combats, but addresses the dozen or so super long fights where running out of resources can happen.

Fixed in latest version of community patch

You could feasibly equip Reckless Brigandine or One Dozen Stood for engagement slots. Chanters can sing Silver Knights' Shields. Later on you have Maura's belt as well from FS. Throw in a Whitewitch Mask and you can do something similar to Trickster disengagement attack cheese from the terrify effect.

You are mistaken. There's a legacy choice as to whether you infiltrated them or killed them all. If you infiltrated them, Aloth will say "If only we could find another hapless initiate who lost his hood". Otherwise, he comments on the bloodshed.

You still get a damage bonus of +50%, but no higher. Of course, it's an AL0 ability so you also get lots of power level bonuses out of it. If you don't have the community patch it also has higher pen than normal fist attacks but doesn't benefit from sneak attack, focus gain, etc.

You can have some fun with a Priest/Paladin in your party. If your debuffs are suppressed, you accrue more stacks of the FF curse but the cost of using FF doesn't go up until your debuffs come back. You can run around punching people with FF for 0 cost, and when the suppression effect wears off you can immediately have BDD used on yourself.

The spirits' attributes are independent from your own. See: Also while you don't have access to them for most of the game Helwalker+Devoted is powerful enough that you can just punch your way through most fights. I would also use Helwalker over Nalpazca as you already have functionally infinite wounds by having allies nuke you or enemies attacking you. Nalpazca is a lot more useful when your build doesn't have infinite healing from Unbending. If you multiclass with a caster you can't just stand there and let enemies have at you in the same way as a fighter. Your fists will also be much weaker early on.

There are two things that work in favor of casting Great Maelstrom naturally: 1. It's main strength is more in dealing with trash fights. You cast Great Maelstrom, fight ends instantly. I wouldn't actually use it in boss fights where Touch of Death might be more powerful. Of course this isn't mutually exclusive with carrying scrolls. Scrolls, on the other hand, are a bit too expensive to spam every fight. 2. A good bit of the damage comes with high intellect leading to longer AOE duration (more damage ticks). Scrolls don't take into account any of your attributes aside from dexterity. That makes them useful on low might/perception/intellect characters, but compared to a high intellect character it is noticeably weaker.

Damage over time does not work. Shining Beacon, Cleansing Flame, Holy Radiance vs vessels etc. all do not work. Try Divine Mark or Pillar of Holy Fire.

His mod removed Lasting Empower because of its bugginess and replaced it with a passive that removes recovery from empowered attacks. Unfortunately every single proc of empowered Avenging Storm seems to be considered as empowered so you just attack with no recovery. Especially obvious on Tekehu since he gets it automatically as a Stormspeaker and you can empower something every fight with Sasha's Singing Scimitar.

Something I realized while messing around with my Brawler is that the Dichotomous Spirits you summon actually inherit all your gear except your weapons along with all the properties they have. They can't use active abilities attached to them, but all the passive abilities seem to be fair game. I'm wondering whether it would be possible to make a goofy build where you deliberately hit your own monk and his summons with friendly fire. The other upside to Dichotomous Soul is that it only costs wounds which you have an infinite source of, and unlike Chanter phrases accumulate quite quickly. My initial guess at making this work would be to pick a non-godlike race. Some of the helmets are fairly strong and I think they work on the spirits too. Unfortunately that means you can't be a nature godlike so you're missing that +1 PL for your fists. My second impression is that you should probably multiclass with a Fighter. Several reasons: 1. Since you're going to use your summon a lot, not having WotW and Resonant Touch doesn't particularly matter that much (I also despise playing as single class monks due to how boring and broken these skills are). You'll be spending your wounds on mostly just Dichotomous Soul and Thunderous Blows, and otherwise hold them for Turning Wheel. 2. Devoted get a cool +2 pen to their fists. Helps make up for your weaker fists compared to single class monks. Intuitive is also fairly powerful with Swift Flurry and Stunning Surge since you'll still be punching enemies for most of the game. 3. Turning Wheel+Unbending makes even a brawler with dumped RES nearly immortal due to your super high intellect. In my current brawler playthrough I often solo the easier fights with my Helwalker/Devoted if I'm feeling lazy due to how insane Unbending is. 4. Mob Stance and Refreshing Defense is also fairly nice. In short, a Helwalker/Devoted would probably suit my purpose best. Unbending effectively nullifies all the extra damage you take as a Helwalker and the extra starting wound/+might is nice too. Of course choice in gear is also extremely critical. I think there are two ways to go about this: 1. Straight up suicide build, where you want the summons to die asap and trigger on knockout effects. This means Effigy's Husk/One Dozen Stood as your armor, Mantle of the Seven Bolts/Cape of the Falling Star as your cape, and the Whitewitch Visage you buy from the Spindle Man to trigger at least one tick of Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage whenever your clones reach low HP. The idea is to have your wizards and druids hit your Brawler and his summons with all the friendly fire they've got. Since Unbending is OP your Brawler will be fine and will comfortably have infinite wounds from all the damage. Hopefully your summons will die about as fast you can summon them. 2. A Deltro's Cage Helm build where you don't want the clones to die super fast. Deltro's Cage Helm, Nemnok's Cloak for Barring Death's Door, maybe Effigy's Husk for armor or High Harbinger's Robes for the attack speed. Unfortunately there's not a whole lot of friendly fire shock damage in the game, and the best source of it only turns up very late in the form of Great Maelstrom (remember to maintain high burn AR so you get hit by shock damage instead). Hopefully both you and your clones get a very large lash from Deltro's Cage Helm from incoming shock damage, and the clones will survive a decent amount of time thanks to Nemnok's Cloak.