Helz

Nice looking system! If your old PC had a spinning hard drive, the loading times will be much faster with either SSD (not to mention your new processor and memory). The loading times will be a little faster with the NVMe drive. If its a decent model, I'd pick the SATA drive for double the capacity.

Really, the problem with the world today is everyone acts too polite? What a joke.

This was my MC for my first playthrough. I played on Veteran Upscaled with a party. I completed every quest that could be done honorably including all DLCs. I didn't side with any faction and I skipped the megabosses. The rest of the party: Caltris: A custom Illusionist/Rogue. Xoti: SC Priest of Gaun Eder: SC Warrior Aloth: SC Wizard Prelude: Before Fhorn, there was Will – an estoc-wielding warrior of great resolve. Will's godlike nature made him bear down in times of danger. Will was rocksteady and people all over the Dyrwood grew to rely on him. As a lord, he was just, honorable, and honest. Will's soul was ripped from his body by Eothas and he was resurrected as Fhorn. Bio: Fhorn is a nature godlike barbarian-berserker fighter. He is primarily a damage dealer but also off-tanks. Remnants of Will remain, but as Eder puts it, "Fhorn's got more bark." Others find Fhorn's constant motion distracting. He struggles to contain the energy boiling within him. His treatment by the gods has pushed him to the knife-edge of reason and his rages terrify everyone. As he descends into a battle frenzy, Fhorn chants a litany of Awareness to ward off confusion and madness. His friends breathe a sigh of relief. =================================== Like a Truck, Berserker! =================================== Difficulty: Veteran Upscaled with a Party -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Brute (Berserker + Fighter) -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Nature Godlike -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Deadfire Archipelago – Explorer -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats (No Berath's Blessings): MIG: 15 CON: 12 DEX: 15 PER: 12 INT: 12 RES: 12 -------------------------------------------------------------- Important Skills: Athletics -------------------------------------------------------------- Abilities (a=auto, ®=recommended, !=important) PL1 Barbarian Carnage (a) Berserker (a) Frenzy (!) Blooded ® Arms Bearer ® Fighter Constant Recovery (a) Disciplined Barrage (!) PL2 Barbarian Barbaric Blow (!) Thick Skinned ® Fighter Fighter Stances (!) Two Handed Style (!) Determination ® Confident Aim ® PL3 Barbarian Wild Sprint (!) One Stands Alone ® Bloody Slaughter ® Fighter Tactical Barrage (!) Penetrating Strike (!) PL4 Barbarian Spirit Frenzy (!) Fighter Weapon Specialization ® PL5 Barbarian Barbaric Smash (!) Tough ® Interrupting Blows ® Fighter Mob Stance (!) Armored Grace (!) Unbending ® PL6 Barbarian Lion's Sprint ® Brute Force ® Fighter Clear Out (!) PL7 Barbarian Spirit Tornado (!) --------------------------------------------------------------- Weapon 1: Lord Darryn's Voulge - This weapon is a blast. Not amazing for single target but great for groups. Equip Boltcatchers and apply Storm Toxin for maximum shock value. Weapon 2: The Willbreaker (Make them Flinch, Unavoidable Demise) - A devastating weapon with nasty afflictions and upgrades to ensure they land. Weapon 3: Mechanical Marvel - Fhorn doesn’t do ranged much, but when he does, he prefers an Arbalest with a knockdown. Chest: Patinated Plate (Constant Rebound, Burnished Joints) Helmet: None Amulet: Strand of Favor - For the 10%. Trinket: I rest sparingly, so trinkets get switched out frequently. Cloak: Champion's Cape Gloves: Gatecrashers Ring: Etonia Signet Ring Ring: Ring of the Solitary Wanderer Belt: Ngati's Girdle Boots: Boots of Stone Pet: Epsilon – Less recovery time due to armor for Fhorn, increased stride for party ----------------------------------------------------------------- Offense: Fhorn opens with Tactical Barrage, Lion's Sprint, and Spirit Tornado (Disciplined Barrage, Wild Sprint, and Frenzy at low levels). Barrage cancels out Frenzy's confusion making Fhorn's friends happy. Fhorn is a melee off-tank who wades into the thickest part of the battle, placing as many enemies as possible in range of his carnage AoE and debuffs. With sprint, he's lightning quick, and can land a devastating attack anywhere on the battlefield. An ideal position is on a blob of enemies locked down by Eder. He makes a great hammer to Eder's anvil. He's not worried about stealing aggro, the more enemies focused on him, the faster he gets. Fhorn is most efficient when 3+ enemies are in front of him, but his mobility and interrupting attacks make him a deadly mage hunter too. Fhorn is mundane without an inspiration buff, but any of them will trigger his +1 power-level bonus. Barrage, Frenzy, and Sprint are all cheap inspirations, but Sprint's short duration makes it situational. In many fights, Fhorn can have three active inspirations and rotate between Penetrating Strikes and Barbaric Smashes. Clear Out is an expensive Full Attack knockback on everyone in range, which can be devastating and is also great for repositioning. For long fights, Fhorn conserves most of his resources for inspirations. Defense: Fhorn's best defense is a good offense, but Spirit Tornado terrifies surrounding enemies and Patinated Plate gives a 30% chance to stun attackers when they hit. In a crowd, there's usually a 1 or 2 unable to attack. Fhorn started out in light and medium armor, but it wasn’t enough. So he donned heavy armor and took armored grace. For half the game, he wore Reckless Brigandine. Eventually, he settled on Patinated Plate and was happy ever after. Unbending prolongs the inevitable, but its Xoti that keeps him running. Fhorn takes lots of damage and he's incentivized to make more enemies attack him. In a ~90-hour playthrough with permanent companions, he leads in total damage done (37%), damage taken (48%), and times knocked out (49). Afflictions: Spirit Frenzy staggers on attack (-5 Might, no engagement for 10s). The Morningstar proficiency subtracts -25 Fortitude on hit (Brute Force allows Fhorn’s attacks to target Fortitude or Deflection). Affinity for Being Surrounded: With Mob Stance, Fhorn gets -5% Recovery per threatened target and a killing blow triggers a free Full Attack on one enemy within range. One Stands Alone grants +20% melee damage when near two or more enemies. Ring of the Solitary Wanderer give -35% hostile effect duration when no allies are nearby. Hit and Crit: Lion’s Sprint add +15 Accuracy to the next attack. Will Breaker converts 25% of Misses to Grazes. Confident Aim converts 30% of Grazes to Hits. Willbreaker converts 10% of Hits to Crits. Frenzy converts 30% of Hits to Crits. Bloody Slaughter converts 20% of Hits to Crits on targets <= 25% health and adds +50% crit damage. Disclaimers: I respec'd Fhorn once around level 12, changing him from a dual-wielder to a 2-hand user. I also switched him from the Blood Frenzy track to Spirit Frenzy. He was too fragile at that point in the game, and I thought that Spirit frenzy would give him better survivability and team synergy. Making enemies cower and staggering loads of them is great for survival. Still, I won't deny that I missed melting foes with Blood Frenzy. The reason for the switch to 2-handers was two-fold. First, due to some poor luck or itemization, I hadn't found any axes or flails worth a damn at the time. The second reason was Modwyr. Major spoiler below if you don't already know about Modwyr. Also, the extra penetration from 2-handers and the morningstar's Fortitude debuff.

I started a new playthrough as a dwarf and this made me smile.

Clear Out is so nice for crowd control. I was using it here to push everyone back after Eder got picked up, but it pretty much obliterated everyone instead.

I disagree. Maybe he thinks he's being silly but what he's parroting is that old people are worth less. Okay. PoE 1 and 2 were crowd-funded and never would have existed without all the people who missed old-school RTwP RPGs. Y'know those games made by "boomers" for "boomers". Also, your mistake is reading RPG Codex.

Nothing like hating on huge numbers of people for things they have no control over, like when they were born... Not only that, you are hating on your own parents/grandparents/great grandparents/future self at the same time. Maybe your family are a bunch of morons (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree), but mine aren't.

It would be boring if there was a perfect answer. CON is the stat I try to get "just good enough". I favor RES because of the reduced duration on negative effects. How often do I find myself barely outlasting some nasty ailment that completely disables the character? Frequently. I don't know how duration is handled in TB mode though.

Oh dude, that's like a real life Gouging Strike... Sorry. Edit: We're not doctors. He's been through it a few times. Edit: Trying not to spoil the mood. Edit: Spoiler tags are hard.

You help keep these boards alive, entertaining, and interesting. More than that, you're not an ass. Thank you!

I'm a simple man, so I like to drop a Pull of Eora on the back row of the enemy, then use Clear Out to knock the front row into it. Then the berserker spams Barbaric Blow on the blob while my two wizards and the priest nuke them and the fighter chucks grenades.

Wizards are versatile. Self-buffing into a melee monster is an option, but I rarely use because I've got a melee heavy team already. They've got interrupts, damage and afflictions for single target or aoe, summons, battlefield control... They can pretty much do it all and you can tailor their abilities to any particular fight, its just a matter of picking the right grimoire for the situation.

Yes, I'd limit each character to ~2 roles. It's a party-based game, so you'll still get to play every role. For example, my party is Berserker/Fighter (DPS, offtank), SC Fighter (Tank), Illusionist/Rogue (DPS, afflictions), SC Wizard (DPS, crowd control), SC Priest (buffs, heals, fire).

What's that? An argument about semantics? Yeah, I can't resist The word had that meaning long before SF2. "Cheesy: Meaning 'cheap, inferior' is attested from 1896, in U.S. student slang (https://www.etymonline.com/word/cheesy)". I guarantee it was used a lot for games in the 80s. Exploit is easy, the definition is in the name. Some exploits require extra skill to pull off while others require zero skill whatsoever. That's the line between a fair exploit and a bad one to me. Some good exploits that come to mind: The hunter behavior for wall climbing and wall bouncing in Left4Dead required an insane amount of skill and I really doubt that it was intended by the developers, but it lead to some amazing gameplay. Faxmonkey's "Stupid Mage Tricks" videos for early World of Warcraft were inspiring, full of Line of Sight and pathfinding exploits and mad skills. I think most of the popular PoE2 exploits are the other kind. It took mastery to discover them, but then new players think that's how to play, start the game on PoTD, and do the same move over and over until they're bored to death. edit: removed some acronyms

Stop overthinking it. Whatever you pick, it probably won't be all that interesting until you've leveled up a bit. So don't expect your characters to be awesome right out of the gate. Rather than deciding on everything before the game has even begun, I think its more satisfying to let characters progress naturally. First, through roleplaying, "What makes sense for this character?" Asking this will make your characters feel real after a while. And also tactics, "We're really struggling against these enemies/types of attacks, what will help the whole party be stronger?" You can discover a lot this way. Maybe you'll have more fun if you take that approach?

I don't have a druid, ranger, paladin, cipher, monk, or chanter. I assume druid or paladin are probably useful against poison. Off the top of my head, the amphibian people use poison. Various rogues and archers. There is a spore attack that eventually dominates anyone infected that the antidote cures. Lots of fortitude ailments, including sickened. Your party will call out when they've been poisoned, which is nice. The antidote suppresses all negative effects for a long time compared to most consumables.

Yeah, I use a lot of antidotes too. I bet it has to do with party composition or spells available. At some point I realized that poisons kept wrecking my team so everyone has a stack of antidotes in their quickslots. They come in handy from time to time.

I had the same thought after a few hours of playing my first time. I wasn't quite happy with my first character's build so I decided to go back and change a few things and try turn-based. The intro-fight on the ship convinced me there was no way I was going to play like that. It was going to take an hour for a fight that only lasts about 10 minutes in RTwP. Later fights do go on for at least an hour in RTwP so I can only guess they last all day in turn-based mode. As far as it being too chaotic, I recommend adjusting the auto-pause settings. Too many auto-pauses are annoying, but there are a lot of options to make it feel good. I like to micromanage, so I turned off most of the auto-pauses, except for when a party member finishes an ability, that works great for me.

I felt similar to you about all of the complicated PoE lore. I wasn't all that interested in learning yet another universe's history and theology. I played all the way through, skimming over the more esoteric stuff. I found that PoE2, while still heavy on the gods, is much easier to follow. It turns out that I learned a lot of the lore from the first game in spite of myself. You seem to remember it pretty well, so I think you might enjoy PoE2 more too.

I really dig this spell. It goes so well with the Gaun lore. I get a kick out of harvesting the souls of people who've tried to cheat death. Xoti has finished off death knights, a vampire lord, an undead dragon, the Beast of Winter, Concelhaut, the list goes on... I imagine they all got sucked into her lamp.

I don't know the odds, but Wormtongue cannons do start fires. To test, I equipped 1 side of my ship with 4 wormtongues and 1 hullbreaker. In one fight, the first volley caused "loose cargo", the second started a deck fire AND a sail fire, the third caused flooding, and the last two did regular damage. All specials were caused by wormtongue cannons. I use hullbreakers because they do twice as much damage and reload faster. The specials are effective because all crew comes topside to make repairs, exposing them to grape shot, but they complete the repairs before the wormtongues are ready to fire again. On a smaller ship, jibing and firing from the other side would work, but fewer cannons means its less likely RNG will work in your favor.

I try to control the field. I'm playing with a tank (shield) and off-tank (no shield). They grab 2 or 3 each. I've got a little spellblade in the back who seems like a soft target for backstabbers, until they miss and she blinds them. If there are a lot more running free, Aloth or Xoti can summon something. Eder is SC Fighter, Xoti is SC Priest, and Aloth is SC Wizard. Eder is so tanky it's almost overkill (underkill?) but it's nice not having to worry about someone.

It dawned on me last night that turning level scaling up helped smooth out PoE2's difficulty curve. It was challenging the entire time because I rarely out-leveled anything and was often under-leveled. I experienced that spike in PoE so I understand how its frustrating. There is harder content in PoE2 outside the main quest though, and I think it's fair to make you play it. You have to 'gear up' for the DLCs. Now if you do all that and still have no chance it might be unfair. That's true. It's really easy to die in Gorecci Street so if someone is playing on Ironman I can see why it's "the hardest". But its hard like the beginning of Baldur's Gate is hard. I wiped on it so I went and hired a companion.

This describes me pretty well. I've found Veteran mode with full scaling (upwards only) to be a difficult, but doable challenge on my first playthrough. I have lots of experience with these types of games though. I've finished the Beast of Winter, I've almost finished FS, and I'm about a quarter done with the SSS. They are hard, but honestly I thought the game was tough all the way through. That's why I laughed at the thread about Gorecci Street being the hardest fight in the game. It might be the first hard fight, but there are a lot more to come.

You can buy all the ship upgrades from the "resupply" option on the town map. This works for every town.