Jojobobo

Sounds cool - I've not got round to thoroughly testing the build myself yet! In group play, it definitely won't need quite the same defensive boosts and Vet's Recovery is probably overkill (usually at the end of the game playing solo Vet's Recovery isn't that vital, it's just so damn useful early-mid game). What talents/abilities/attribute spread have you gone for? I'm always interested in the specifics on any sort of build variation.

MaxQuest did an extremely helpful guide on attack speed, see here. Essentially for a two-hander with Deleterious Alacrity of Motion potions (DAoM), Gauntlets of Swift Action (GoSA) and Durganization you get: [1.5 (DAoM) x 1.15 (GoSA) x 1.15 (Durganized)] -1 = 0.984 less recovery. Recovery in clothing starts at 1, so you're looking at a recovery period of 1.6% without armor. The recovery increases additively by whatever your armor penalty is. With a speed enchantment on your weapon (e.g. Blade of the Endless Paths), you get... [1.5 x 1.15 x 1.15 x 1.20 (weapon speed)] -1 = 1.38 less recovery. You can now attack without recovery in Plate Mail so long as it's also Durganised to reduce the recovery penalty (normally a 50% recovery penalty, durganisation reduces it by 15% so, 100% + 35% - 138% = no recovery). Essentially, you can make your recovery pretty minimal with a two-hander lacking a speed enchantment with potions so long as your armor is light and durganised, or if you have a speed enchanted two hander you can run around in plate without recovery so long as you're popping potions all the while. Things like Cautious Attack add to recovery.

If anyone was interested, you don't need any mechanics at all really to find Gwyn's Band of Union (I tested with 4 Mechanics on an old save and still spotted it). However the door to get to it is 11 difficulty, so you need a mechanics of at least 9 to get access to it.

Yeah level 4 isn't really a good metric for any build - you have so few talents and abilities at that stage that it's practically meaningless. Chanters also always start off strong with their ability to summon minions, their healing and their damaging chants/invocations. Give it a fair few more levels (9 or 10 is usually when I get a good sense of how something is shaping out) and then see how you feel - you've not really got any way into the meat of what the build is about.

The loot lists in this thread (the v3.01 ones) still apply for me. I was wrong about the Endless Paths it seems, but you should be able to get a Ring of Seering Flames at the Temple of Woedica day 9 in the hidden room away from the initial entrance.

Yeah but whole point is i need to go straight there from Gilded Vale to be able to get the ring of combusting wounds and minor gloves of accuracy + gloves of mechanics Edit: Wich makes it impossible to enchant. I did however take the time to go to Magrans Fork to loot the body at the Adra stones, it gave me a Fine Polaxe, but it was'nt enough to take down the guard, my barbarian is super slow and the guard crits me for 25+ dmg basically every hit. I could get a total of 14 DR before fighting him (rest bonus + beer + potion + mail armour) but it didnt seem to do **** about his massive dmg lol and i thought 14 DR vs one low lvl dude would be overkill. Oh how wrong i was... I normally head to Raedric's Keep Day 4 of a month. You get Gloves of Manipulation, Belt of Bountiful Healing, and Boots of Stealth (less stealth needed for the Caed Nua Throne Room). Ring of Combusting Wounds can be got from several places (you can get it level 1 of the Endless Paths where Maerwald is for starters, in the fairly easy SW spider room), and Gloves of Minor Accuracy aren't going to make a world of difference. By waiting until Day 4, you can also hit level 3 quite comfortably (you can do the Blacksmith's quest without fighting anyone, sneaking to the cargo crate even without stealth skill, you'll have time to rest after Gilded Veil so that the Watcher bit at the tree triggers, and you can do Against the Grain too, leave the bear until later) and then the guard isn't so insanely difficult. Plus you should be able to rack up just about enough to afford the Bronze horn. What I normally do on solo: (1) Kill Aloth and Eder for their items (do this a little later if not tough enough, or just kill Aloth), do Against the Grain, get Rymyrgand's Mantle from upstairs room in the Black Hound Inn, which should be there unless you were ages in Valewood. (2) Travel to Magran's Fork, and get the fine weapon on the dead guy by the Adra Pillars (you can get there without fighting), get the location for Anslog's Compass but don't travel there. (3) Travel to the Black Meadow, sneak to the south, there's a fine weapon on the dead guy near the tents, and get the location for Madhmr Bridge but don't travel there. Get the Blacksmith's Shipment. (4) Travel to Anslog's Compass you can get Fulvano's fine crossbow. (5) Travel to Madhmr Bridge from Anslog's Compass - bypassing the Xaurip Skirmisher you meet if you travel from Black Meadow - to get a fine hatchet near tents to the west (sneak there) plus you can kill the fire godlike for a pistol. (6) Go back to the Gilded Vale, finish the Blacksmith's Quest (making the Bronze Horn figurine cheaper). You can try clearing out the west spider room in the Temple of Eothas which provides a shortcut to the bells, there's a locked chest near them and another magical item in said chest. Resting at some point as mentioned let's you do the Watcher bit by the tree. All this takes you to about day 2 of the month, travelling to Raedric's Keep is either late hours day two (in which case maybe travel to and from Esternwood again) or early hours day 3. You'll need to likely rest after scaling the keep wall, and then there's more rest supplies in the dungeon, giving you plenty to hit the day 4 mark. But you have to go into the cellar anyway for the 2 random loot stacks and freeing Giacco is super easy, if you sneak around back where the ladder and slimes are, open the south door and splitpull the skellies one by one. Killing Nedmar neither saves you time nor makes it reloading less likely unless you plan to go for the basement items super late, but then again there is a couple of traps in the basement, too for nice and easy xp. True, but Dorftek's concern was having low mechanics. You can get to Nedmar with lower mechanics (using the hidden switch found in the skull) than you need to rescue Giacco iirc.

You can kill the guard fairly easily if you use a mace one handed (enchant it to accurate) and give him a beat down. If you've been able to purchase the Bronze Horn figurine that helps too. With a Barb, Savage Defiance is your friend and gives you massive heals at level 3 to help you out in a lot of the encounters, it shouldn't make the guard too tricky. Also, no need to free Giacco, you can just kill Nedmar for his key - no one cares. You don't even have to get the objective from whatever the animancer is called to do this, and he's an easy fight.

Not to be a knob or anything, but I don't think threads where the last post was from over two years ago really need to be posted in. The simple fact is most people who originally posted won't be around anymore, and beyond that two years ago Pillars was quite radically different to what it's like today (there was no White March, the classes went through several iterations of changes, etc.), so you're not going to get the discussion you're looking for. It's better if you have something to talk about to make a new thread about it so we can have a discussion about it, rather than post in a thread that has become largely irrelevant due to time. I'm not trying to mini-mod here or anything like that, just pointing out that you're going to have to be lucky to get discussion in threads from when the game was released, so it would be more worth your time to make a new topic.

For solo I'd recommend one of either: -Defensive Barbarian, with a Bash shield and healing, something like the Golden Dragon build. -A high dam/high DPS Barb. You can do this two handed as Raven Darkholme suggested (with Firebrand being very good currently), or go for two weapons. I'm not sure what weapons are best for a two weapon build - Barbs don't have the best accuracy so I'm not too sure how well Prone/Stun on crit works these days. Going Unarmed works pretty well as the damage is consistent (it's largely unaffected by graze/crit/carnage - with them all doing damage around that of a hit) so I'd say that's definitely viable. Essentially here you're using high damage rather than tankiness to try and dispatch foes as quickly as possible.

What I was trying to say is that speed if of course beneficial, but it's good to use other sources of speed (abilities, spells, etc.) so you can use better footware and better survival resting bonuses (i.e. not the speed resting bonus, accuracy/healing). I guess I didn't word it well enough.

That makes the weapon only really usable by a Ranger though, which shouldn't be the case. I'm all for the idea of "it's so powerful that it can Stun and Prone people, therefore it takes a long time to reload", but if the devs were really trying to play that angle the decreased reload speed should have coincided with the Stun and Prone chance. In this way the level 3 weapon unlock is actually better than the level 5, which is fundamentally counterintuitive, and therefore likely an oversight (extremely weird seeing as the got the +50% attack speed working just fine, you'd think they wouldn't make the mistake to throw in a minus in front of the reload speed).

There seems to be several bugs that appear to be problematic in the new patch, the foremost being some items that have a per hit chance are targeting a player's own party. This is most noticeable with the new Company Captain's Cap (which with the confuse chance is borderline unusable in party play) but there's also reports of it happening with Elryn's Jacket with Eyestrike. Additionally, the appearance of a lot of the new pirate uniforms appears bugged (they aren't appropriately colored on male characters, and don't go transparent when behind/underneath objects), plus the new Soulbound Arbalest gets increased rather than decreased reload speed as you level it up. I thought I'd mention them here so they have more prominence. While the aesthetic bugs aren't too bad, the proc against your own party bug would be best fixed as it prevents use of the hat outside of solo play (ironically, as you're not much of a captain without a crew) and it also appears to be an existing bug in the game for other items which predates the current patch. I realise your time is diverted on other projects, so I'm not sure if you'd want to take the time for one last bugfix, however just thought I'd spread the word.

You can get to Twins Elms without taking any of the Elmshore mobs, so you can always do that, quest, and then come back stronger - it's what I did but then again I was playing solo. For Adragans, Prayer Against Imprisonment makes you immune to Petrification, so slap that on whoever you have with high Dex, high Int and low armor (plus the necessary Lore) and that makes things a lot easier. Either that or strongly buff Fort on your tanks to try and save against it (you can get Looped Rope that increases your defence against it in WM Pt II). Adragans are also pretty frail, so if you can Dominate/Charm them quickly their own group usually takes them out (using Ring of Changing Heart, Munacra Arret or the Spirit Spiral to get some charges) - again slap them on a high Int high Dex guy to fire it off as soon as possible. For Druids, I think I usually focused on charming them too TBH.

Thanks for giving the breakdown, I presume none of the upgrades are class-specific (different for a different class, or requiring different criteria)? I haven't seen any evidence that they were in my own testing, but that wasn't very rigorous. I love the idea of running around drinking milk to unlock the Company Captain's Cap.

Remember that you can also use one of the higher level masteries for a lower level spell (just select a lower set rather than keeping it on the high set). So you can master one level 1, one level 2, and two level 3s (both Llengrath's and Deleterious Alacrity). Llengrath's Displaced Image and Deleterious Alacrity can easily compete with what's available at level 4, it really depends on the build you have in mind. If you're going solo, either Fleet Feet or Deleterious Alacrity always allow you to get great positioning every encounter, so I'd strongly recommend one of the two of those as they completely negate the need for any other speed item (no one really wants to use Boots of Speed unless you have to solo, and Viettro's Formal Footware - even if you're not interesting in Dexterity - effectively give you +8 Reflex, or you could go for Shod-in-Faith for some healing).

There's lots of CC that drops accuracy (Blinded, Dazed, Frightened), that'll shift their accuracy vs. your defence rolls. That can certainly help not having a shield.

All I know is they need to come up with better names than "???". I mean who would buy a game called "???" - no-one, that's who!

Also on mac, with 3.07.

Sounds like a man with good priorities to me!

I managed to figure out a work around for hitting 200 Will against fear after all, without dropping any of the original Talents suggested (just making sure to take Bull's Will as the final talent that was free). If you rest in the Noble's Stay Room at the Brackenbury Inn this gives +2 Int and, more importantly, +10 Will. It also lasts for two rests, which is very useful at you can pair it with a +20 Accuracy against Beast Survival resting bonus (take the Colonist background, and then with a +2 temp equipment bonus you can boost this up 16 so long as you invest up to level 12. Then you can add three to Mechanics, and three to Stealth for the Caed Nua Throne room boosted to 5 with Boots of Stealth from Raedric's Keep - Lore is taken care of with Viettro's Formal Footware and the Wizard's innate bonus for the purposes of Scrolls of Defense). With Bull's Will (+10), Looped Rope (+20 Against Fear) and Defiant Resolve (+10), you can now get back to 200 against fear with the standard Defence Scroll/Dragon Meat/Mind Grub-Whiteleaf buff. If you enchant Drawn-in-Spring against Beast, and use Little Saviour over Old Gerun's Wall, then each of Def/Ref/Fort will still be 200+ with Defiant Resolve going via this route, and your accuracy with the Survival Bonus (and without the Old Gerun's Wall accuracy drop) would be 152 against Beast under Citzal's Martial Power. Definitely sounds like the way to go for the Llengrath fight at least.

I just checked if other Soulbound weapons are effected by unrelated Weapon Focuses, and they still are. Wasn't sure if this was a stealth fix on all Soulbound weapons to make them only now work with the correct Weapon Focus.

Yeah the armor is pretty crazy, quite possibly if they do another patch (which they probably should do, given there's several little bugs with the new content) they'll give it a nerf, but hopefully not. I'm not too sure of the point of a nerf anyway, while +20 Deflection and +20 another defence certainly is high I guess the trade off it the DR on the armor is low (though I guess as mentioned if you are using it to pimp Wizard's Double and Ironskin potions, that won't concern most characters). Going the potions route on a different class would definitely top out at higher defences, I guess I'm always more of a fan of abilities being more or less innate for to the largest possible extent. I'd certainly be interested in hearing what the best spell-free (as in, only relying on a Wizard's Double potion and food/resting buffs/prostitute buffs) would be. It'd definitely be cool if someone could have defences approaching the 200 mark and not really have to cast to get there.

As mentioned though, if you take Bull's Will and Mental Fortress, and use Looped Rope, and have Defiant Resolve active (which happens on every pulse of the Fear Aura) then you have 200 Will against fear effects too. I'll make an edit to the OP and suggest dropping WF Noble for Mental Fortress, and taking Bull's Will in the spare slot. From what I saw on my PotD Upscaled save, the accuracy of one of Llengrath's Dragons for the effect is 150. 150 accuracy vs. 200 save moves it into the 1-65 = miss, 66-100 = graze category - ensuring no hits possible. From what I remember, there aren't any other attacks that target Will from the dragons (I didn't see any in a brief test)? And even if Llengrath has a few Will targeting spells she won't be firing them off consistently (and if one of them hits you, you still have four more Wizard's Doubles you can cast...). Given that you'll have 212/210/210 Deflection/Reflex/Fort for the Llengrath fight (with Defiant Resolve) and 200 Will defence specifically against fear I think the dragons will only be capable of grazing you, and even then they're going to be over 50% likely to miss. This is also remembering that you should be attacking fast (the new pirates' uniforms have zero recovery penalty when Durganized, so even with Cautious Attack you won't feel much of a pinch). Besides, even if it does fail, your buffed Superb Old Gerun's Wall Deflection with Llengrath's Displaced Image and Defiant Resolve is still 197 - which suits me fine. When you get the Bog Dragon scales, Legendary will make this 200 for fighting Thaos and his Cleansing Flames, if not 215 if you keep Wizard's Double intact.

I posted this up somewhere before, not as a class build but it is fully fleshed out. It is also super fragile being maximised entirely for damage, so you could probably balance it out a bit. One things for certain though - it should hit like a truck! Details below...

Could go for a Sharpshooter Rogue, Island Aumaua with the extra weapon talent, then either Quick Switch or the belt that reduces switching time (the wiki has just stopped working temporarily so sorry for the vagueness) and four arquebuses. Then Deathblows, a couple of Strikes, Shadowing Beyond and Backstab and use them to pick off the heavy hitters in a mob. A little high maintenance but it's always nice to see big juicy crits.