Yougottawanna

Speaking only for myself, I put 500+ hours into the Baldur's Gate series and loved it.... but have put 1200+ hours into the PoE series, 850 or so in Deadfire, I think it's my most played non-MMO game ever. I actually do think PoE is the better series, partly just because it was released later with better engine tech etc...

I wonder if they'll release updated sales figures now, all this time later... I would hope that the overall quality of the game (IMO) would lead to a healthy "tail". Also Microsoft bought them and it appears that "Avowed" (FPRPG set in Eora) is still being made, so maybe they see potential in the setting - I certainly do...

I personally find Maia to be pretty dark...

I'm curious to see the stat spreads people are using for their attempts, can anyone share?

So from what I've seen, the initial challenge is getting past the Maje stealth sections at level 3/4 or less on any multiclass combo. (doable with good micro/pumping stealth early) The second is getting to level 13+ ASAP from non-combat quests. (doable with the right quest order and avoiding ship battles) The third is making a broken build at 13+ that has high defenses and can handle long fights (so, tactician/skaen, chanter/something, or SC monk, or something I haven't thought of yet) The fourth is getting past the sticky parts (FS/BW with minimal rests, megabosses) Following this, I've personally made it to midgame, but I've always ended up making some dumb mistake.

I'm still unable to test things, so I can't test this myself, but: Rakhan field boots can be used on yourself, out of combat, and are per-encounter, meaning they recharge after a second. I don't believe Woedica's challenge should change that, because it only applies to the character abilities as far as I know and not abilities from equipment. So Rakhan field boots + shroud of the phantasm + salvation of time could be a way to get long brilliant without either using tactician or wall of draining. Apologies if someone already brought this up, I skimmed the thread and didn't see it.

For Scordeo's Edge synergies, I'm like 90% sure that the ooblit pet affects the duration of the no-recovery buff. It also affects blade turning, and at least one SC monk strat uses blade turning vs. huani. (Unfortunately, the 3 sec bonus doesn't scale with INT, it's just a flat bonus) For Vela I wonder if you could hide her behind a chokepoint or something. Aggro on a bridge or next to a door or something, cast a figurine or something to block her, then pull the enemies somewhere else. Let her just wander around on the other side of the screen. If you're limited in the number of withdrawal scrolls you have, it could be a workaround.

Can't believe I forgot about that... Does anyone know what a good trap is? You'd want an injury that doesn't hurt too much, and I know there are a lot of traps in Oathbinder's Sanctum, though there might be ones that are easier to get to early.

Tactician with rechargable discipline will get very powerful once you have unbending. I think you can fully heal any damage taken at around 14-15 INT, so between +INT and +beneficial effect duration items/foods (which I believe also effect unbroken) you could have a ton of time to build up chants/summons. I'm curious to see how it works because I suspected unbending might be one way to beat this thing. However, on a multiclass you won't get the upgrade which gives you concentration, so you may need to find a workaround for enemies with lots of interrupts.

By putting all skill points into stealth (you can still respec in the Ultimate, I believe, right?) and using the +stealth pet that is a backer bonus or something (it's the black wyrm. I'm not sure why I have it) I've been able to stealth past everything on the first island. However I haven't done it with Vela and I don't know how much harder that is. (I won't be able to play the game again until monday) And I bet you can do it without the backer bonus pet, but I haven't tried that either.

To me the spirit of the challenge is (or should be) that you can use cheese but not glitches. For example, doing the trick that lets you stack food bonuses I would say is a glitch. Using shadowing beyond to trigger brilliant is cheese. BDD/SoT shenanigans are cheese. If a form of cheese if found that trivializes the challenge (that's a big if, lots of things sound unbeatable during theorycraft but run into unexpected problems in practice), then I think the best way to handle it is to allow that one playthrough that uses that form of cheese, but only the one. Otherwise everyone else will just copy the strategy of the first. Unrelated question: I'm not on a computer that has the game on it at the moment. Will Vela invalidate the Ring of the Solitary Wanderer bonus?

My initial thoughts on how to do this are: Single-class Monk (I'm not sure about subclass/no class. If Nalpazca still gets the debuff on Arcane Dampener/Cleanse then that's out. Helwalker's main advantage is speed in individual fights, so I don't think that's optimal. No sublass Monk may be the best) High will defense (meaning high INT and at least moderately high RES, you can stack will super high and make yourself unhittable to many of the game's most dangerous threats) Use monk cheese (meaning Whispers of the Wind/Resonating Touch/dual blunderbuss/avenging storm scrolls/items or some combination of the above) Arcana is probably the best skill to either level up or respec into (it just gives you so many options, even though the "_____ storm" group of spells may have been nerfed) Stealth through the first island, then blitz the non-combat quests up to at least level 12, if not more (I haven't looked into the timeline restraints in that much detail, but I think Eothas' challenge can be managed) Problems with this plan: The SSS fights that puts you into a construct and takes away your usual abilities (this problem will have to be solved with consumables somehow I expect) Keeping Vela alive (I haven't even tried that challenge so I don't know what the hard things about it are) Ondra's challenge (don't want to lose to some random crookspur slaver 20 hours in, this is probably manageable but I don't personally have experience with it, especially now that the ship-to-ship combat mechanics have changed)

Kind of late to the thread, but I agree with most of what's been said here. As for 'tick' vs. 'hard turns', I don't prefer either one on general principle but I think 'tick' is more appropriate for adapting RTWP to turn-based. More of the existing game balance is preserved, which is good as the existing balance is the one that's been refined and iterated upon.

I didn't see this mentioned, but maybe I missed it, it's a UI thing: sometimes when your list of buffs/debuffs (that you get by mousing over the character portrait) gets so long that it won't all fit on the screen. You have to open the character screen to the what effects you have and the duration. King of irritating... is there a way to save space on that mouseover popup? Make each entry smaller somehow, so they can all fit.

I agree with the idea that traps should be better. They DO reward scouting and planning. But the only thing I ever use them for is cheesy split pulls. I don't get why they're so weak.