Jojobobo

I'm curious, bigwillystyle, what exact strat are you using for the Abbey? (We can PM this if you like?) I'd first, based on the numbers I've given, target people with the least Deflection (if you target the tanks, you hit them less often and get less Carnage) - from what I've experienced the tanks at the Abbey aren't high damage anyway, so if you take out the weedier mob members first you should fare better. If you kill them first, you can tank some misses against the sturdier members. With a highly mobile Barbarian (and with Blunting Belt - which I'd recommend on and off the entire game - some decent plate and Second Skin), and the standard Dragon Leap and HoF combo, I'm at a little of a loss to see what the difficulties are - especially if you are doing party play? I've amassed 19 Scrolls of Valor very early already (Kurnd sells Ta Ondra Tara, various people sell small number of Stalgaer Teeth and Dyrcap is available from herb sellers everywhere) - I expect when I get to the Abbey I'll have a meaty supply, and to be honest I think what I described above was overkill in terms of adding acc, the scrolls should be enough. Some misses are to be expected if you're not looking for crits, 1-15 is the range for miss and that is accuracy = defence and you will be lower than that, but you should also have around two attacks per second from what I've found - and even for some late game enemies the 90 accuracy I described is higher than their Deflection. All this is to say, I'm intrigued as to bigwillystyle's.. erm.. style? The Abbey does, as I've said, require strategical ideas that are simply not required in early game. I will be testing the build in the late game when I get there regardless. For a needless update, I'm currently level 10 (I've yet to try my new earned Vuln Attack, I've decided to dump Barb Blow to 12 or 14). I want to get HoF before Stalwart, but I may also over level to get Dragon Leap before I start.

Also, are you open to doing hotfixes? Not a full patch obviously, but if anyone notices anything extremely weird it would be good to get it resolved. This might be a good candidate for such a fix.

Maybe the game reverts to an easier difficulty when you load the autosave. I think I have seen this before (pre-3.03 even), which is why I'm wary about my Stalwart initial saves - I usually start the area afresh if I fail from a save outside of Stalwart. Not sure if the difficult drop applies jsut to Stalwart or the subsequent maps.

Was there some bug with Bash and Carnage I wasn't aware of, or does this mean Bash doesnt trigger carnage attacks now like when they changed retaliate to not trigger carnage? I found the bug, reasonably routinely Bash would proc more than once with Carnage (you'd get two bash attacks from one swing of your shield) - it may be related to the original Retaliate bug as you say. It was why I wasn't keen on developing my shield Barb idea, on the flip side Boeroer who did work up the idea said he rarely if ever encountered the bug. Still, I guess if the devs found something to patch there was something in the code which was making it act weird, even if the bug was sporadic. I thought it was something that should be addressed with Dragon's Maw being a signature soulbound item for the Barbarian. Great work on the patch guys, looks like almost everything worthwhile is fixed. I'll look forward to getting it on GoG when they get their installer out.

I think in terms of skills, a little more detail would be good. Just things like you get 6 points per each level after the first, for 66 total without the expansions at level 12, 78 at level 14 with only the with the White March part I installed and 90 at level 16 with both expansions installed. With a base of zero in a skill the first level costs one point, the second two, etc. Class and background bonuses give you a base level in a skill, so a Colonist Barbarian would have a base 3 in Survival (+2 for Colonist, +1 for Barbarian) and now the fourth skill level can be bought for one point, the fifth for two, etc. Any unspent skill points roll over to the next level up, so in this way you can buy the seventh level and higher in a skill. Something like that

I find you have to be pre-prepared for pretty much every encounter at the Abbey anyway. I'd maybe change it up and go with Gauntlets of Accuracy, Tower resting bonus, Aldwyn's Boon and a +1 food item, Mantle of the Excavator and I'd also use Scrolls of Valour for +30 accuracy - this gives you 120 total (use a Figurine distraction while you set the scroll). Having a peak at their Deflection, Sworn Swords have 116, Cresentwards 133 (unless they had Crowns of the Faithful active or something), Tidalfists 97 and Faithbinders 81 - I didn't check the Wizard or Chanter losers because I think there's would presumably be lower. The Abbey PotD upscaled, let's face it, is always a massive pain in the arse - especially solo. I think some pre-buffing to get through it is standard, but with patience it should be do-able, especially if you throw in a few Scrolls of Confusion here or there - if you buff the accuracy like that I think they would work with the Int given even just on grazes or hits (I think scrolls benefit from the level bonus like all spells, but I'd have to double check, in which case you're using 110 accuracy which I think as it targets Will is also fine). For me, it's above and beyond the toughest and most tedious part of the game (let's have almost 20 encounters of the same thing, over and over again). EDIT: Or alternately use a Superb Kith-Slaying Vile Loner's Lance one-handed. Superb Kith-Slaying and Accurate give +22 acc, one-handed gives +12, Disorientating means -5 Defences (for an effective +5 acc again) - given that fists are +20 this has 19 accuracy more. Or maybe go Vile Loner's Lance and fist, it's hard to say without testing myself.

It's a little handy, but I don't really see the need. Barbs have good endurance and endurance heals to make up for damage from disengagement, and when I get Dragon Leap and HoF most people will die anyway (you can easily hit level 16 before Act II and in WM pt I), plus I'll take Wild Running too to ease disengagement. All in all, I'd say it's definitely not worth the ability, though the abilities in this build are hardly a hot contest so most could be switched out. EDIT: I thought more about this ability, and while it is very good I don't think it's as worthy as One Stands Alone - at least for solo play. For solo play you level much faster, so getting access to Dragon Leap does defeat the point if Wild Sprint to a good extent, and I would say especially Eye of the Storm. But in party play where the levelling up comes much slower it definitely has it's advantages - I think my initial thoughts about it player it down too much and likely it's a stronger option than One Stands Alone in party play as other party members lessen the impact of Flanked on your Barb. As I mentioned, this build is loosey-goosey for abilities, so it is extremely easy to chop and change. I will definitely do that (very easy to buff to that level from 10), remarkable that you can do that with one of the worst bosses in the game and yet one of Serel's options requires Resolve 18 (at least, I think). A very sensical choice by the devs, for sure.

I guess just don't wear one? It does depend on an extreme level of self control, so I can see why people would struggle with it.

No one sent you the memo?

I think the thing is with Ryona's Vambraces is that I likely won't have them most of the game as the Alpine Dragon is crush immune. I guess I'll see how early I can take him on, but with this character he's probably one of the bosses I'll most struggle with. If I do leave it until end game, Gauntlets of Swift Action will more than make up for it in the mean time (with a side of Siegebreaker Gauntlets if enemies are interrupting the crap out of me). In terms of abilities, I think Wild Sprint is much better now than Thick Skinned (which has, and always will be, kind of lame). Getting into the tower at Heritage Hill, it's very obvious that mages are a big problem due to the build's low Relfex and Deflection (Deflection wards against the likes of Necrotic Lance and Cleansing Flame), and while I did realised this which is why I stuck Snake's Reflexes on the build, handling it earlier is definitely a benefit. While Dragon Leap will help when you get it, Wild Sprint is much more useful earlier and also later in situations where casters are fanned out as you can only Dragon Leap plus HoF on one of them when the surrounding melee guys dog pile in - meaning you'd take a lot of spell hits otherwise to get to any additional casters. Further, I normally use Survival bonuses for speed, but here they'd be better spent on accuracy for the boss monsters - and as I really don't want to use Boots of Speed end game Wild Sprint remains a premier option to get decent positioning (Llengrath, Magran's Faithful, and the like). So yeah, Wild Sprint can move into the 9 slot and One Stands Alone into the 15 - Flanked immunity (more or less) is still extremely useful in my opinion. This is build development in action, I'm sure you're all extremely thrilled (don't worry, it's wry humour, not genuine megalomania - or at least I think it is).

I didn't even notice, I'll give myself a pat on the back. To be honest I posted a lot around here when the game was in development, so I accumulated many posts in that pointless period where everyone was rampantly speculating about every exact detail of Pillars - when I think really the devs knew what they wanted to do anyway. Just tested Wilder Hunter - no dice. I set Might to 100 (with 500 Per to ensure a crit) and went and gave the Cliant Lis Xaurip a spanking, I actually rolled for less damage with the talent on a crit than when I didn't have it (both within the listed damage range for the character too, again indicating that graze/hit/crit makes no difference). I'll try with the Bartender's Ring, but I'm 99% sure there's no difference. PS The best way to clear the opening encampment is to pick a Barbarian, set Int to 10000, Might to 500 and Per to 500 - one hit clears the entire map. It's quite fun if you want to get into or slightly past Cliant Lis to test, warping to different locations is such a pain. EDIT: No luck with the Bartender's Ring either. In a hit on my current character I did 23 damage against a Gul, with my damage range being 20-25 (how's that for consistency?). However, seeing as the Bartender's Ring adds 20%, if the damage range was working normally the minimum I would do on a hit as far as I can tell is 24 (20 at a low RNG roll plus 20% of 20). I did also notice a Carnage graze did 19 damage, again underscoring how sweet this set up is. Really this build is great for easy character design, as all you really have to care about is Might - unless you play with low Int nothing else really has a great deal of effect (you can even offset low Dex with ease with all the Barb speed bonuses). In this way you can make it as close to a pure DPS focussed build as is more or less possible, made all the better because whole groups suffer equally. I know my build isn'y zero recovery, but having a huge chunk of DR with minimal recovery is more than worth it to me - but by all means a zero recovery variant I think would be easily doable.

For macs GoG make you download the full installers everytime (rarely doing the 3.03->3.04 updates). Looks like several hours of downloads for me again

No, no Sandals of the Forgotten Friar yet - I usually do a lot of Act II before starting the White March Pt I, that Stalwart fight is tough solo. Concerning recovery, I think it's fairly negligible, even with Vulnerable Attack. Let's see: Recovery for two weapon style is 0.5 as a base. Durganizing your armor gives Sanguine Plate +0.35 recovery, and Vulnerable Attack adds a further +0.2. That's 1.05 to overcome. Using Ryona's Vambraces there's: 1.33 (Frenzy) x 1.2 (Bloodlust) + 0.2 (Two Weapon Style) - 1 = 1.80 with rounding. But, you can just turn off Vulnerable Attack when you need to, and then you're looking at 0.05 recovery next to nothing. With Gauntlets of Speed you're at 1.04 reduction (again, with rounding) - leaving you with 0.01 recovery, practically zero. Then bear in mind these are further lowered by Dex, as is your general attack speed (a x1.3 reduction at Dex 20), and you're looking at even less of a nothing. In all likelihood, it's probably best to judge against enemy DR whether you'll need Vulnerable Attack active or not. With Barb Retal, regular Retal and Glittering Gauntlets - they all roll your terrible accuracy so I don't think it's worth it. Barb Retal could easily replace Thick Skinned on this build, but I think the damage still isn't that worthwhile given that it's not going to hit most of the time and it's a bit of a drop in the ocean compared to what you're doing with your fists. I guess I'll give it a bit of a test when I get to level 16 and see how it plays out. I think as pedroelm says, pretty much nothing but Might effects the damage - which is another reason not to go for Garodh's Chorus Retal as the Maegfolc Skull gives one higher. As I said, I'm currently clearing Heritage Hill and I have the Bartender's Ring - so I'll watch out for differences closely, but I've not noticed anything large. I'll also at some point check out some hater talents, but there's not a great deal of room for a lot of talents tbh - so even if they did scale it's unlikely I'd take them. Sounds really cool, I look forward to seeing it fully developed - and if you need specific advice I guess here is now the place, though I'm sure you know this game better than any of us. You have 90 accuracy end game, and seeing as you only need to graze (and you hit at an alarmingly fast rate, making up for a few misses) I think it'll be fine. I would never, ever normally advocate dumping Per, but here it should work. I'm a touch concerned about the 80 accuracy Carnage not hitting enough - but as the only thing I'd really be willing to change on the build is Snake's Reflexes for Galant's Focus (better than Accurate Carnage as it's +4 acc to your main target too), with Reflex being pretty mediocre I'd rather not. What you have reminded me to do is make sure to get my Lore up to 8 so I can take Scrolls of Valour (I could just take Lore 6 and use the resting bonus, but then I compromise on juicy Might). Unlike shoddy potions of Eldritch Aim that last for next to no time, with Scrolls of Valour and my Int they'll over 20 seconds offering +15 accuracy - a stack of 5 of them should be more than enough, and honestly the 105 accuracy they'll hit is fairly decent for solo. Anyway... I'll get back to it. It's great the build has so much interest, I guess people like the idea of playing a face-beating badass! I'll report anything else interesting, but I think mostly now it'll be the long grind get through most of my current playthrough.

For an update on the Barbarian build, so far through testing it's really really good. I'm going through Heritage Hill at level 8 right now and this thing just shreds Darguls - though Heritage Hill isn't terribly tricky Darguls usually do take some time to kill due to their large HP, but not with this build I think the build also has very nice progression, given the way Novice's Suffering levels up. It's very gratifying when you hit another break mark, my fists are now more accurate than fine other weapons in the Peasant group from the level 7 improvement, with a much higher minimum damage so they're much more consistent. In act I, though the fists are a little underpowered then, I still used them primarily as they do a lot of damage on graze. I swapped to a spear when it was really needed and used it one handed - against things like Trolls or Sporelings that have high crush DR, or against very high Deflection enemies like Shades and Phantoms. In terms of whether Frenzy and Bloodlust and Blood Thirst all together is overkill, personally I think they seem to work extremely well. While on most dual-wielding Barb builds you're probably going to achieve zero recovery due to Durganizing your weapons and so Blood Thirst isn't needed - here you can't so any extra recovery waiver is nice. It also allows you to pull off a very cool manoeuvre, where you kill two enemies in a mob to activate Bloodlust, and then at the same time you use your zero recovery from Blood Thirst to activate Frenzy. This allows for a maximum overlap of the two effects, and turns you into an insane DPS powerhouse for a reasonable duration (particularly when you're still getting recovery waivers, in addition to your already minimal recovery). It's very nice. I thought people might be interested to hear how it was shaping up, so there you go. Suffice to say, this will definitely be a class build in the nearish future. As I keep mentioning, if anyone has any other builds that are fleshed out - post them up. It is good to sometimes discuss builds as you're building them.

I'm the same way, but as the game allows for respec-ing at inns then if something isn't working as intended you can just change it later. Money in game is ridiculously easy to come by, so it's easy enough to perfect your build in game even when you do have a detailed plan going into it.

No it's 3/11. It makes sense because you're going day/month/year in order of increasing units of time - rather than month/day/year, which I can't see why anyone would do under any circumstance other than the desire to upset people wanting to do something in a logical way.

No I have bad restarteritis myself, I like to get a good grasp of mechanics early and then restart. With Pillars, this was unfortunately exacerbated by how buggy it was on release - giving me additional restarts on top of my regular lot (particularly with the bug that made your defences stack when you saved in an area, or on my subsequent playthrough where I played a Fire Godlike only to find the DR stacked and was permanent on Battle Forged) that made me burnt out faster than normal. I feel like RPGs, or at least RPG players, have different stages: (1) Restarteritis - where you restart loads, then the game feels unrewarding, and it becomes hard to push through. (2) That middle phase - where you do push through, but maybe you do that once too often, so you get restarteritis even on the middle stages. (3) The zen mode, where you finally push through and complete the game - and develop a real appreciation for it. You now know the game and want to play it through again, so you're much more likely to stick at it, and also your restarteritis comes in handy - because you're now so familiar with the early game stages that you can get them done extremely efficiently (for example, I completed 13 Defiance Bay quests/tasks in under a couple of hours the other night, due to my gross familiarity with the early stages of the game and how to optimise quest completion to save time and avoid load screens). I was a bit of a noob at the start, I had all sorts of badgering mechanical questions and thought to activate cheats you needed to type the "iroll20s" thing in blind - and not into the text bar (like an old school console cheat code... I know, I was such a noob). I guess only one build I've written all by myself and two builds where I had only a slight input and really Boeroer put in loads of work really refining, developing and making them truly good still doesn't make me much of a master! But I guess that's a little of the point, I was just asking mechanical questions - to an extent people in Slacker's situation need to try and make a character their own, even if they are imperfect, and then persevere.

I think you essentially just have restarteritis, and you do need to stick with the game to fully enjoy it. If you play through the game and get later on into it, you will appreciate it more - and you will eventually feel more powerful and your character will have grown a personality. Stick with any one concept past sections that you haven't reached before and I guarantee you that'll it be more fun. I will say I think part of that process is posting on forums less about that initial experience you're trying to achieve, the game is fundamentally about roleplaying and it's a single player experience - in a way you're just supposed to go with it and do what you think is right. It's like in real life if you had to role play a scary clown, either for LARPing or sexually (if you're into that kind of thing), you wouldn't then go around everyone you know and ask, "Guys, how do I role play a scary clown?" You just do what your idea of a scary clown is, and enjoy the resulting experience (I wasn't commenting on the waning scary clown social media phase, I just really couldn't think of anything else suitably weird when I mentioned it). Stick with the game, ask about mechanics (even then, they are easy enough to test yourself through the console), but I wouldn't ever encourage asking how to play to a certain character archetype - it entirely defeats the purpose of an RPG game. Nearly all the equipment and abilities/talents are covered on GameBanshee or the wiki to an extent, so look at that, decide what you think is cool and thematic and then play it. It's literally what I do all the time, rather than first asking people to think about those questions for me. Once you've completed the game, or got very far into it and lost interest, then is a good time to discuss thoughts about it. If you are going to regret not having played it, then stick with it - that's ultimately what it comes down to. For my Gunslinger build, if I'd actually bothered to really get a ton of advice beforehand I wouldn't have ever of played it ("guns suck, noob!" or "your defences are crap, no way you're doing this solo," or whatever) because it was a different kind of build that doesn't sound necessarily like it works on paper and because it's not the kind of thing people had tried before. The fun was trying that, and discovering what worked myself - without external input.

Seemed to be mainly about Fallout if you ask me. I'm inclined to agree with ZenshinX that if Obsidian did have that mindset they don't currently, if they did sell the company hopefully it'd be to someone who would appreciate the legacy of reinvigorating the isometric RPG genre.

The Blade of the Endless Paths is easily better, with it being Durganizable (very nice with the innate speed bonus) and enchantable as you say, however I'd say the Grey Sleeper is more fun. The Grey Sleeper has lots of weird effects that fire off at random, and Slow Spirits is also a reasonable AoE debuff (-60% attack speed), so if you're looking for that zany appeal it's a more fitting weapon - particularly with a Barbarian so you get a load of procs. I've always personally wanted to make some sort of Master of Death build, likely a Death Godlike Chanter because of their innate abilities to summon the dead and because they have Soft Winds of Death and White Worms Writhed in the Bellies of the Dead, and then give them Grey Sleeper for the extra summoning (though I do have a suspicion that you wouldn't be allowed the Grey Sleeper summons and the Invocation summons at the same time, just as you can't have Invocation summons with Figurine summons).

I think if you're playing the game until you are level 9 though, and you're still finding your character weak, something must be wrong with your expectations of the game. I always notice a significant jump in power when I get to that kind of level, and I'd wager to say with a party it's even worse. It seems like Slack83er wants to feel strong and badass from the start, which seems strange as the entire point of combat and levelling in RPGs is a slow build up to power. Besides, running around curb-stomping every enemy in the game would be even more boring - this is a long game, so pancaking every enemy wouldn't give any sense of accomplishment after a point. I do agree some things early game do seem like a mistake on the devs part however. Those Caed Nua Phantoms are ridiculous - even with playing with a fortitude save of around 90 (factoring in Towering Physique and food/drug buffs) if you're fighting two of those guys at once on solo you will usually die. Their Stun effect is made all the worse by the fact Obsidian gave them Sneak Attack (!) too. Really they should have provided early game a +10 resist against Stun item, or dropped the accuracy of their Stun effect by 20 points. There's other cheap things early game, but the Phantoms are by far the worse and are in no way enjoyable - and encourage the worse kind of cheese tactics.

You know you can just leave the difficult encounters until later (you are talking about the bears encounter right, it's hard to keep track)? I take on whatever tricky encounters I can Act I and leave those I can't until a later point, as I play solo my mileage varies a lot early game in terms of what I can and can't do as the different classes. This latest build I cleared out all of Caed Nua (even the library) before taking on Maerwald, but for some builds that will be extremely difficult so I just skip it - there's more than enough experience to go around in this game by the end. Once you're in Act II, there's a lot you can do with minimal combat to gain experience - and with a party I imagine it's all the easier. You don't even have to start Act II when you've finished Caed Nua, you can recruit Sagani and then head towards Dyrford Village for Hiravias and Grieving Mother. Then, you can do all the Act I stuff you missed out on with a decent party. A lot of people say, "Oh I like to take on every encounter precisely when I get to it, otherwise it's weaksauce," but with the addition of the expansions I'd say this game has become increasingly non-linear in terms of how to tackle it and so you should just try it in whatever way you find enjoyable. What I will say is, you post an awful lot in this thread, and whenever you're posting means you're likely not playing the game (unless you're accessing the forums with a phone or tablet at the same time) - so I'd stick at the game for longer and still post, it can be difficult to progress otherwise. I'm not trying to discourage you currently, but I think it might be limiting your progress. In the end, you do need to try things - there's only so much knowledge people can share.

There's a "RemoveTalent" cheat (see the wiki for more details), that should work - though I've never had cause to use it so I never tried it myself. I don't see as if any of these cheats would break the game, they don't as far as my somewhat limited testing goes. Remember to look in the assetbundles/prefabs/objectbundles in your game's folder for all the specific ability or talent code names (e.g. Silver Tide becomes "silvertide", but silver_tide is quite a common format for talent and ability names too). You can also find all the weapon and armor names in here, in case you get bored and want to do some testing with any of them. Have fun.

I think you can just remove abilities by console, in that case pick a different race, remove their racial - add Silver Tide and you're done. Set your attributes to what you need for the race too I guess.

Guess I just figured it was on rest as I was travelling from the White March to get these ingredients - in any case it's very regular so you don't need to be too worried about using supplies up (by the Abbey of the Fallen Moon I think I had 300k gold, more to limitlessly buy whatever I wanted for the end game).