NotDumbEnough

Nah it's Grieving Mother. If you bring Ydwin, she'll also comment that she's heard of powerful ciphers having such abilities.

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.