Not So Clever Hound

Thanks so much @Elric Galad! It works wonders. I just nearly killed my entire team with 25 procs of Screaming Souls in one cast . If anyone else wants to use it, here is the file you can directly place in your override folder, with description and everything. Screaming Souls Fix Mod.zip

There is a lot of effervescence these days around finding new stuff in the Deadfire! As forum contributors investigate ideas, we are eager to report nice synergies/combos that we didn't know of, or things that aren't working as they should. But we're less keen on reporting on basic failures, i.e. experiments that just didn't work out either way. I thought maybe it would be nice to know of those experiments that didn't yield any meaningful results, if only to spare the trouble for others . So here's my trial at this. Those probably aren't 'new news' to many, but I'll report on 2 recent experiments that just didn't work out. I'll try to add to this thread as I (don't) discover stuff . Don't hesitate if you'd like to post on your own "meh, scrap that" experiments. -I tried if Rot Skulls' potential would benefit from Arcane Archer bonus elemental accuracy: doesn't work. -I tried if Shadow Step's Paralyze effect would spread to multiple targets with an AoE weapon like WotEP: doesn't work.

You know, one thing I've been thinking about regarding Combusting Wounds and Infestation of Maggots is that in real life, putting maggots on a bad wound (to eat away the necrosis) or cauterizing it are old-school ways to prevent the worst infections. So a Sorcerer is actually nice to the enemy: if they can walk from the avalanche of pulsing, ticking, DoT, burst AoE spells that a Sorcerer can unleash upon them - then at least they've got very clean wounds. You're welcome.

That's the spirit! Never, ever underestimate the potential of critters and bad weather. Even if you get some Grazes and Underpenetration sometimes, it hardly matters when there are dozens of ticks that are damaging and stunning and hobbling and weakening and frightening and blinding and....

Yes provided you can go somewhere safe to deaggro or stay invisible for a bit, those things will enable Brilliant. DoTs - particularly Gouging Strike - will keep the encounter active as long as the DoT is active and they won't prevent Brilliant. It takes a bit of practice but you'll see what I mean when you play. I had noticed also the point about Deep Wounds/DoTs in the thread. Don't worry about it. I'm not sure what is meant here, probably just a typo. I had followed this guide very successfully which inspired me to go with the Mindstalker build I mentioned earlier. You can safely go with Kaylon's Glimmer Man.

I think the games applies standard rounding for the purpose of displaying numbers in-game (without decimal points) but does its actual calcuations/effects with a decimal point. Net to your core question, if you're a primary tank / secondary healer you probably don't need to invest in MIG and you can focus on other stats: keep in mind that to increase healing effectiveness, as a Herald you can pick Mercy & Kindness (+50% Healing done - party wide aura!), Practiced Healer (+15% Healing done) maybe even wear the Footprints of Ahu Taka (+10% Healing Done). And that's already a lot more impact on your healing that your MIG score can ever affect. Oh and if we're talking about your MC, if you are playing no-rest, get Dawnstar's Blessing from Waenglith: another +50% Healing done for the Watcher!

Of course anyway I think the smaller Foe-only AoE is also a good idea. Setting Screaming Souls to Silent Scream dmg is also an alternative but I think the foe only AoE is more fun. Yes sorry that's me again talking before I've put enough coffee in me. If you're looking for self-inflicted distractions for the Streetfighter, maybe we can register the streetfighter on the Obsidian Forum Community and turn his notification on. He will be distracted from work forever .

For Screaming Souls - personally I like the idea of first making it work exactly as described/intended, and then see if it should have any other tweaks. I like that if it works as intended it is high risk/high reward and somewhat unique (because it actually is). For Streetfighter, great idea! Makes a lot of sense and could create an incentive for more explosives usage on such build I guess. I never, ever use explosives. Not sure if it will be enough to give serious competition to Powder Burns though, which is easier and 100% guaranteed to work..?

I just tried to rename the file and the issue persisted - Screaming Souls still working vanilla/unmodded. Would you mind possibly sharing a .zip to see if it works?

Yes indeed. It's correctly loaded in the mod loadout menu too. I'll do more testing when I can tomorrow.

Well it's in my loadout and it's here to stay. Because you know, why not.

I think I know what you are referring to: @Boeroer made some visual aids and then @thelee used them in his guide here at the bottom of the page... and the exact same info is also somewhere on this forum and I also can't find this entry for the life of me . And no, it doesn't apply to Mule Kick. Only Clear Out and its upgrades.

Thanks a lot @Elric Galad! It's very possible that I'm doing something wrong, but I've loaded the mod and tried in several different ways and it doesn't seem to fix the issue from my testing . I get the usual Screaming Souls effect. Maybe someone else has more luck? Tried on a bunch of spirits and vessels. I only run the Community Patch, the No Forced Rest Mod by @Noqn and this mod. Oh and of course the Fixed Wahai Poraga Pollaxe Mod by @Boeroer.

You will tend to find more +INT items (helmet, amulet, rings, also potentially cape...). +MIG items are a bit more limited outside of Gloves, Belt, potentially Ring depending on your class. Honestly, don't sweat too much on your stat spread... unless you go with very extreme values it won't have that much positive or negative impact. I personally find that MIG tends to be a worthy investment if you have passive regen (so it helps DMG, Regen and FORT saves - nice). Otherwise usually you get more mileage out of INT since it influences AoE and Duration that not only increase your net total DMG but also your buffs, afflictions etc.

As @dgray62 mentioned, its DoT is based on movement, but you can create some devastating combos with Arterial Strike, for example with Pull of Eora. It's also the ultimate hit n' run tool.

Exactly and I think that’s what @Kaylon meant there is no roll and it is not considered as an attack/negative effect so it doesn’t interact with Hostile effect reduction % from RES. But it is still getting bonus from high INT of caster, even if lowered by Confused.

That's a nice one, thanks for sharing @dgray62! You must get ridiculously high damage numbers. Sounds like a similar issue to when MuT/Transcendant Suffering used to stack with Priest of Woedica's Spiritual Weapon fists and create an absolute puncher of destruction. I should try this mod at some point, sounds really fun and well built (besides this exploit). It also reminds me of great mods on BG2 that vastly improved the Shifter, sometimes to the point of absolute cheesy OPness when it unexpectedly interacted/stacked with other things. (e.g. natural haste + boots of speed so you could permanently move at Haste x2 speed). This new installment in the Werewolf & Cheese series was brought to you by:

@Kaylon BTW did you see the thread below about using Withdraw while Confused to temporarily remove one Gigantic Ooze from the 2nd phase of the HoW encounter, while you safely work on the other Ooze? I thought you'd like it .

This is great. Thanks @Elric Galad. Would be indeed awesome if split in 2 files as I'd personally like to see what happens with the ability if it works fully as intended, then potentially also include the reduced secondary AoE which is probably indeed more balanced/controllable.

Please also note that, as @thelee noted in his guide, those additional Skeletons that join your team (not your party) are interesting because they are not really summons as much as they are true copy of the enemy. So they benefit from Difficulty-based scaling for PEN and AR and they don't get the Beckoner penalty to health. In other words, you can't control them but they have better stats than the summons they replaced. The same is true for the enraged Drake that you get with "Yet its mate was more feared".

I just did some testing: Spiders continue to spawn when she is withdrawn. The stacks of Wrath of the Empress also happen while she is withdrawn (so she is increasingly pissed-off, she loses defenses and gain ACC for each spiderling killed also when she is withdrawn). That can open up some possibilities, but I don't think it can make Belranga fundamentally easier for builds that cannot already own her without Withdraw. (I realize that my sentence isn't clear....). So: any Rogue, Blood Mage, Paladin or a Brilliant Priest can completely own Belranga, with or without Withdraw it won't change much. Other classes that already struggle, will also struggle with it. And of course still anyone can do it with a couple reloads and True Lover's Kiss + Leaping Boots or Rakhan Field Boots. EDIT: however, I think this Withdraw trick can be marginally more useful in the Auranic fight, if you want to take a more frontal approach. Auranic and her Sigils should be withdrawable too! EDIT2: I love those little discoveries so Auranic can be withdrawn which is quite nice, but of course the Obelisks reflect direct-targeting spells so you end up withdrawing yourself if you use Withdraw on an active Obelisk.

There are quite a few high AR mobs besides Ironclad and Steelclad, and you will also meet more of these constructs outside of Arkemyr's mansion. Some enemies also have straight-up immunities to certain damage types (e.g. Ironclads and Steelclads are immune to fire, certain undeads are immune to Pierce). It also depends on the difficulty you play at. Upscaled adds substantial AR scaling to all enemies which makes PEN such a pain. For a first playthrough, maybe expert mode is a bit harsh .

You can diminish the gap between PEN and AR with other tools and classes than Berserker, which IMO is not super useful if you're doing a ranged weapon char (it's still great for e.g. Bloodmage/Berserker). Devoted/Cipher for example can enjoy +3 PEN with a chosen weapon, then you have the Sharpshooter ring for +1 PEN... the Assassin conditional bonus is of course amazing too. You also have potions, spells/invocations... The Iron and Steelclad constructs in particular are weak to Shock damage, so you can use Essence Interrupter, Lord Darryn and of course spells like Chain Lightning, invocations like Her Revenge... to your advantage.

This Mindstalker was my easiest overall megaboss run. Mostly because it makes Hauani a cakewalk. Also there is this SC Assassin one if you're interested, but it's in its own category With our latest discoveries, I would also say Berserker/Bloodmage or Tactician/Bloodmage because now we know the potential uses of Withdraw used offensively by a Confused character. Then, people have also soloed all Megabosses with for example a Herald, but I don't even want to imagine the tedium of Hauani o Whe.

Indeed, IMO. But I'm not yet playing the game with your mod so maybe my opinion is irrelevant. Anyway, I think it's a trick that doesn't totally break the game, that you can only abuse with a lot of prep/focus on it, and which most significant advantage is to help give alternative solutions against HoW (which is fair... come one this merging blob routine is in my nightmares now ). And it has the drawbacks you listed. Its imbalance is balanced I think . I have no idea what you're talking about. With SoF, my little Shadow Camembert Assassin only got to 110,000% Deltro Lash and 100,000,000,000s durations of Vanishing Strike. It still felt a bit unsafe. I feel like you're trying to make me feel unsafe. I feel triggered.