NobodyHere

Hahaha thanks guys. also damn spell checker, lol.

Greater focus was keeping me alive. I can see dropping it once I have 20 base focus though. It also helped generate focus (crit a lot on held target) . I’ll see into more con, that would help with the squishiness, thanks.

No, no weapon focus yet, just playing around with a 3 man lvl 3 party to compare how it handles vs a 2 man party on some tough- ish encounters for their level and party-size. (F.ex paladins with priest in Raedric’s hold, the 2 paladins with wizard scripted no-stealth engagement where you find Durante) I am following your staff advice weapons wise. Dual wielding seemed tempting until the hold breaks lol. I don’t foresee grabbing a weapon talent in the near future either. So far I have planned : - greater focus (I really like this so I got it at lvl 2) - dmg whip or whatever it’s called lvl 4 - weapon style feat (2H weapon, though sword and shield or DW were on the table too. But I liked your staff idea and the tidefall idea) lvl 6 - weapon focus tidefall. Lvl 8. Could easily be sneak attack instead since I have decent perception. Edit: Oops forgot veterans recovery at lvl 6 unless I get an early tidefall and it’s ‘enough’ to keep me alive. so bump style feat to 8 weapon focus to 10.

How do you run your tidefall cipher? Specially before tidefall. So far I’ve tried a coastal Aumaua with 18/8/10/16/16/10 and greater focus and light armour (padded) and he’s ..ok. The greater focus really helps so I can combo dazzling lights from Aloth with mental binding right of the bat. He’s squishy as hell and I need to remain stealth with him and aloth while Eder establishes aggro, but it seems to work. i can’t help wondering if I’m not doing this wrong anyway lol. So far cipher + Eder + Aloth is … slightly worse or same than my custom wizard (Hurtsack variant) + Eder. do you have a better stat spread? Maybe I should swap dex with might? 14 might and 8 res would be enough for a 16 dex.. or should I just bite the concentration bullet and go 3 res, 18 dex might 17? I’m also not sold on my race choice. I think Orlan’s bonus crit might have been better?

I tested wizard a bit. Serious nerf to durations (chill fog, aim, etc) , also Druid seemed to suffer from this (spirit shift reduced to two turns - 4 with 18 int). A max dps wizard still seems viable. Melee which heavily relied on one chill fog lasting most of the fight, not so much. I’ll try cipher, that sounded fun actually. No delay cipher might be very enjoyable. although antipathetic field at only 1 turn might no longer be anti, unless it pulses multiple times per turn (unlikely)

Ok! I’m willing to try again, so.. what do you guys recommend? melee polearm? Dual wield? Shield? Medium range guns? Crossbow? Bow? Medium armor? Heavy armor? Max dex perception and int? Race? (Doubt elf will work as well as usual even at range having to keep advancing to close to melee.. or even being at melee) I’d very much appreciate guidance for dummies so to speak “try to start fights with X” or “let fighter start fight then move in to charm, or grab power X to use once they clump on the fighter, don’t bother with blind if your wizard has it, unless you have a pali-buddy like boerer mentioned, etc etc. frankly in an ideal world there’d be a let’s play narrated with a small party highlighting a ciphers role but no such video exists that I’ve ever seen. I mean I don’t expect a cipher to ever outperform my wizard but I do need him to justify her existence which is likely 100% my lack of skill with the class and simply being too set in my wiz/druid/priest play mindset. The only other class I did poorly with, chanter, works just fine if you do poorly, just chant dragon thrash and summon and you have decent value

Ok! I decided to do a patch notes deep dive and…. It’s fixed! This can now expand your under 50% life a bit, I think.

Omg omg omg omg all hands on (steam)deck, this is the captain, ready large screen docking stations! This is not a drill!

Omg thank you! You summed up my main problem perfectly! The only way it justifies no longer doing damage with your weapon is if you can then do massive damage with a spell, which you can’t when the cipher takes a while to cast it (opportunity cost, not doing anything = 0 dps and also tanks burst damage, until he finally casts) , or doing amazing CC, which you need to do RIGHT NOW usually, not in 10 seconds when I gathered enough focus and finish smelling the roses for the spell to finally cast. passive retaliation focus would have solved this amazingly well. Pity. as always, thanks for the insight. Also, I guess no ciphers in my future lol, I’ll learn to live with my disappointment by having a Druid murder everything with storms

Ok, so… ciphers. I’ve never ever used one because I just couldn’t mesh with it. So I’m trying, as a main, to see if I can make them click for me. Figure once I ‘get it’ I’ll be able to use a cipher companion. My main issues: - spells like shock seem good, average casting time, etc. I tried putting an 18 dex just to see if that was my problem, but no. The spell casts quickly with 18 dex naked … and then nothing happens. Still nothing. Calista swings twice. Finally spell triggers and hits one wolf cause the other one is dead. I mean wtf is that 1-2 seconds after-cast delay before the spell hits? I mean it says ‘average casting time ‘ but compared to wizards spells, this seems ridiculously slow? Are all cipher spells like these? (Only tried a few lvl 1s) don’t you have serious interrupt issues when he decides to stare into the ether and ponder whether he should in fact cast the spell he already technically sort of cast? another example, I tried charm on the big bear, bear nearly murdered me because it took so long to decide to actually cast. (Then antipathic ray’s the cub and killed mama with the ray, that was kinda cool..) but .. that ray is a murder ray. I have never ever gotten a companion killed … until today. Calista rip, death by suicide AI into death ray. Not that she was touching it mind you. But being close was apparently enough. - it seems many spells are medium to short range (except murder ray, sigh…) so while ranged cipher sounded good (I was even thinking weapon switching to generate massive focus quickly) … is it as uncomfortable to play due to the short range spells as it seemed in my lvl 1 play? Or do I need to heavily invest in mobility? (Talent, boots etc) to keep moving back and forth. (I find when at short range melee are more tempted to abandon a tank for the squishy, and without distance (and with ridiculous casting times) I just don’t see myself surviving , specially when compared to a wizard (arcane veil and shield swap, blind, or prone or or or) is this about right? Or do we get actually fast casting ( ie without the delay of death) spells at higher levels that would work? - is there a list of which spells are openers/cast able before combat starts? Is that little confuse lvl 1 thing thing as useful as it seems just because it works as an opener even if the rest of it is subpar? Which are actually useful spells? So far my short list seems to be , - shock cause melees are usually swarmed, but casting time is an issue - charm, cause charming an enemy next to a caster is bound to ruin a casters day. range is (barely) ok. Higher level charm has a shorter range so that makes it less useful? - death ray, for when you want to suicide or I guess when you’re a front liner and target an archer. Pity it doesn’t work like ray of fire (pity ray of fire doesn’t have this things range though..) - tenuous grasp as an opener. Can’t help but think bear thing might have been safer if I started with this vs a cub, then charm bear, and then murder ray it. - is mind wave useful? I mean.. prone vs fortitude seems fine vs casters but often they’ll be out of range, and it seems horrible vs heavy melee types? Same reason I’m thinking eye strike isn’t as good as it first looks, might want to just pop a wizards blind..? I mean at least it’s 10m ..? any other insights specially from ppl who love this class are appreciated.

I’ll freely admit I was once upon a time traumatized by spirits (not soloing so my defences were .. what’s a defence? ) that’s why pale elf sounded cool (heh) Moon it is!

Again, thanks guys. I think I’m going to make the changes you guys outlined and see how this works . I’ll brb oh btw, pale elf is still a reasonable choice right? Or should I have gone Aumaua or boreal dwarf or moon godlike or something else? Since you’ve made solo runs I thought I might ask

Hi again anyone knows if this is still true? “We can't use Second Wind from Athletics because you will hit yourself with Battle-Forged's burn retaliation when using Second Wind (bug).” curios if the bug was ever fixed?

Wow thanks for all the info! Also, I blame my iPads spell check, Raedric gets corrected into that based on this feedback I now have.. and after a very unsuccessful cave fight at lvl 2 with like 4 con (hey I was curious! ) I went with : pale elf with mig 16 / con 10 / dex 10 / per 16 / int 18 / res 8 I did a quick bear cave test and it worked like a charm! Pre-cast chill fog just on the edge of bow range, so bear didn’t aggro when the cast broke stealth. Pre-cast veil1. Shot bow, instantly switched to hatchet and small shield (fun fact, the AI that supposedly doesn’t advance most certainly advanced when I switched to melee weapon.. so one panicky run back and disabled AI later..) cast wizards double. Barely made it before Bear and baby bear got into melee. Baby got blinded. Big bear grazed for 21 (ack) cast summon healing staff. Attack baby bear. Kill baby, get health back. Panicky veil2. (I don’t have spare spells for another wizards double!) hit with arcane blast which dazed big bear. Another healing hit. Big bear is dead. Wohooo! I was about to pop a healing potion, which I didn’t sell cause I thought I’d need it here. so it seems 10 is like the slowest possible dex value with breastplate. Anything slower and you’ll suffer too much. But I was happy with 8 res and the extra def from hatchet and small shield. I’ll probably walk around with +2 dex gloves until I get gloves of speed. (Sorry.. swift action ) my spells hit hard (yes I missed once but I also critted twice for 25ish on chill fog) I’ll try to keep records and maybe write about my success (or failure and need to respec lol) in any case, thanks again, you’re a star. ps: I reloaded a save just before resting so I could reach gilded vale on the right day to get my mantle of freeze (ZERO chance I’ll remember that name correctly) , fun fact, playing on a big screen tv on a lazy boy with the Xbox copy, the loot tables weren’t fubar’d

Hi everyone, After having a blast (heh, sorry..) with Boeroer’s Hurtsacker in a small party (Edér, Fire Priest, Hurt) I realized I wanted to push things solo. I don’t, necessarily, have to use melee weapons for damage, although the staff summon looks appealing, and I think there’s a nice high level lance too? Regardless, if I need to park myself behind a tower shield (or a small shield) that’s what I’ll do. Some considerations: I like min-maxing, functionality is most important. So my first instinct was tank dex, However after Hurt I don’t know if the much? slower spell casting won’t be a huge downside. I loved nuking the crap out of that witch in Roderick’s keep at lvl 3 with Hurt (chill fog opener, combusting wounds while Edér knocked her down, 2x arcane blast and 2 auto attacks killed the entire group on hard. I think priest cast accuracy prayer) I tried a much more conservative approach first by blocking the door and omg the wizard + witch murderized us with fireballs and lances and I don’t know wtf else. So I’m afraid a slow caster solo would have ..unfortunate results. I’m also seriously concerned about tanking res because of interrupts. I mean, if defence is high chances are it isn’t as big an issue .. until you get hit with an AoE or insect plague or something. I don’t know about race. I was thinking maybe moon godlike for the auxiliary healing, or Aumaua for the bonus vs prone and stun (might help vs spirits and dragons?) or pale elf (vs spirits cold dmg.. maybe with the mantle it’d be enough..) or maybe fire godlike, since I’m likely going to be getting grazed a lot, does retaliation add damage to such? Is it viable? lastly, I don’t like not fighting encounters. I don’t care if I have to rest after every fight, I do hate not fighting it. I’ll retreat if I 100% have to (not fighting Roderick at lvl 3 solo no matter what, but I will kill his keep at lvls 3-4 if I can do it. Bear has to die, lvl 3 the latest Please note I’m quite willing to learn in spite anything I’ve said so if I’m totally wrong, correct me! Also advise me on spells , skills, etc, so far, and 100% willing to change it I have: Mig 15, con 14, dex 10, per 19, int 18, res 3, moon dude, hatchet and small shield, chill fog, staff, w.double, aim, infuse vital essence, siphon, …and that’s as far as I got. Oh and arcane veil lol. I was thinking maybe a bit of stealth to try to sneak into better positions and ofc mechanics and lore (how much both?) any athletics or survival? Random thoughts: I think I need something to nuke casters with when I can’t close in. Would fire ray and missiles work? Or just try to land paralyze? But then how to kill them effectively even if paralyze works. Can you somehow run away and break engagement? So far I’ve only seen two enemies break off pursuit.. can you use figurines to escape? For that matter I think even at 6000 I should buy that initial figurine? Does shield penalty still affect spells? ok I’ll shut up now lol, thanks for any replies.