thelee

wow, good job on the solo! quick note: afaict from my attempts, it only uses it a few times early on... i think it must be triggered by specific (high) health thresholds, because in my several attempts it had the same usage pattern each time, and after the few early uses I never saw it use it again later into the fight (even as i dropped it into bloodied/near death territory).

Priest stasis (withdrawal) is a defensive healing spell. Cipher's is a flexible target-anyone ability, no? That flexibility comes at a price. Can use it on defense (without healing), but also to sequester an annoying enemy away (or multiple enemies) until you've gotten rid of their friends. (After having done SSS would've been handy for my underoptimized party to have had a cipher to Stasis away some of the monsters on the Survival track challenges). Also, I forget--is this the one that lets dots continue unabated? If so, that adds to its power level. PL7 also contains Ancestor's Memory, which is amazing.

For anyone who cares, I updated this to be more relevant in 3.0 (and also because I plan on referring to it for another character build/mechanics write up, so it seemed prudent for this to be up-to-date).

Ciphers are extremely good at crowd control though. When the PoTD re-balancing first happened and I was still adjusting to the new curve (especially early on) I was pretty much carried by charm/dominate effects that the cipher can basically do at will. On another note, grazes are much more punishing to ciphers than they were in PoE1, so perception or perception inspirations are more important for a cipher. (In PoE1 grazes were an additive -50% modifier which you could easily trivialize with bonuses. In PoE2 grazes are very close a x.5 multiplier [slightly more complicated than that, but just to illustrate how much stronger it is], so it's much harder to trivialize/dwarf with bonuses, and therefore grazes are much costlier for focus generation than before. I think the math works out that might or dex is still better for net focus generation (i did the math for an ascendant at one point), but on PotD early game especially perception is more important than it was in PoE1. If you're planning on picking up CC spells then obviously perception becomes more important than might/dex because it improves your focus generation and also helps your CC in ways neither might or dex can.

dayumn i love these ideas

i haven't tried this challenge yet, but i think those potions or spells that reduce the duration of active negative effects will be effective. (potion of major recovery is -10 seconds, litany is -5 and eothas is -10, which may do way more effective healing than many potions of miraculous healing, not to mention suppress affliction or liberating exhortation; i've used them before against other dots)

I'll be honest and say that I don't completely agree with this "bug." I think it's a completely reasonable thing to design an ability and decide "...nah, this shouldn't benefit from Spirit of Decay" even though it does corrode damage. Coming from the world of IWD, IWD2, or PoE1 where these talents boosted a specific damage type universally, it is certainly unintuitive by comparison, but in terms of general systems design I don't think it's unreasonable.

See screenshot: Dropbox link to save game and output log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/oi47plnvqeizw1s/AAAsI6xThZtIEK8MXpbV3bkEa?dl=0

The whole coping strategy for Abydon's is to have lots of disposable weapons to use on trash fights. On solo it might be rougher because fights last so much longer, but for a 5-person party I have lots of spare equipment (sometimes just waiting in a spare weapon slot) and save my uniques for when I really want to bust them out. It helps that it appears that damaged equipment sells for the same as undamaged, so instead of repairing the common trash I just sell it. But yes, you have to be really deliberate because otherwise you are just constantly losing money as the game goes on due to costs > most rewards (other than bounties). And it also means relying on all the disposal magical trash weapons means your power level is going to be lagging behind a non-Abydon challenge. I think it makes for an interesting challenge, but now that SSS is out with lots of bullet sponges I'm a little less keen on Abydon's challenge because it would suck to be fighting a multi-thousand-HP monster and damage all your best equipment to shreds over the course of a single fight. (Also when you start getting exceptional or superb scaling on your summoned weapons, they are huge money savers.) get a torch or use the starting saber torch and keep it on a melee character, try fighting only during daytime, or use a stealthy scouting party member. Doesn't solve the "problem", when trying to do a ranged solo play. You can't hold a torch (or light source) and use most ranged weapons. (pistols excluded) What I need is a mod with a bow / crossbow / arbalest with a light source attached. LOL +100 upvotes for some sort of tactical flashlight enchant on an arbalest or crossbow

it's effectively a new skill at the new power level. So it won't show up in PL1, it'll show up in PL3.

This may be intended behavior, but upon killing Kuaro, I got a Matakau as part of the loot. Thing is, Matakau is also something I start with as a pre-purchase bonus. Now, this may be intentional, because I either sold my Matakau or it may be on a character not in my party, so maybe this is an intended optional drop if you don't actively already have Matakau in your inventory so that people who didn't pre-purchase the game can still have access to Matakau. But reporting just in case. Attached screenshot of Matakau reward: Dropbox link to output_log and save before and after fight: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zt34zg4sgr1330c/AACbp2kT2nvTnfZ0rtwt9kIza?dl=0

Ongoing issue with various encounters that I've been reporting where at the start of a ship-to-ship encounter (after you close to board) the opening bark made by the enemy captain is wrongly attributed to your mainchar. Screenshot proof of Kuaro's opening bark instead being attributed to my mainchar (Topher): Dropbox link to output log and save: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8mf6m6lcjv55rfl/AABplsR_dfp_LYztoQRDrxbna?dl=0

Just to confirm I got this from completing Pallegina's quest in 3.0.1 and it's bugged like this.

Equipped on my nature godlike mainchar, which means I either get Nimbus of Death (death godlike or watcher) or Nature's Shelter (nature godlike), depending on which has higher "priority." Instead I get Lunar Heart (+1 PL), which is intended for moon godlikes. Screenshot proof: Googling around it looks like this has been reported before, so I'm reporting it again as a reminder that it's still broken.

get a torch or use the starting saber torch and keep it on a melee character, try fighting only during daytime, or use a stealthy scouting party. How many meters do you gain with the torch? Is it the same with Xoti's lantern and the sabre? yep. And lighting effects don't stack. If one is already using the lantern or has the sabre torch, adding the other or additional torches won't help. Torches also count as clubs for weapon proficiency purposes, which is a fun thing that I never before needed to know pre-skaen's challenge. I actually kind wish now we had magical non-sabre torches.

get a torch or use the starting saber torch and keep it on a melee character, try fighting only during daytime, or use a stealthy scouting party member.

Actually the one real difference between those failures and the most recent, successful attempt is that for some reason my gaming PC wasn't updating and was still on 3.0.0.26. The laptop I tried it on this morning (that succeeded) was at 3.0.1. maybe there was a ninja fix in the patch?

TBF carnage in poe1 could quickly become very abusable, especially since the way the damage penalty was implemented you could trivialize with other sources of bonus damage, or use the monk pseudo-talent to get fists which are basically immune to damage penalties.

Here's the screenshot proof of everyone out of combat after this encounter: I appreciate you trying to help me figure this out as legitimate behavior, but this was definitely a bugged encounter.

Nope: those rotghasts spawn as part of another fight further north if a wraith abducts you (or you can manually trigger them). And further nope, this is definitely a bug: I tried this encounter again for the umpteenth time (though on a different computer this time) and killed the exact same enemies and the battle immediately ended.

For extra context: I have no berath's blessing enabled, and I have the following magran's fires: - eothas - berath - galawain

Please watch the video. I killed those enemies (I'm assuming you're talking about the skellies that appear out of the tombs and then another couple of enemies just north of a couple traps of that room that can join in, an area I run through on the way north to disarm a trap). I am wandering around quite a bit (and even trying to disarm a random trap) and still stuck in combat, with no apparent enemies in sight. (I actually did more wandering than is recorded in the video, which is why I start quite a ways before the actual encounter, and why part of the map is already explored when I head north to disarm the trap.)

I've noticed that there are two other threads like this here. Oy

OK, this isn't just unintuitive, this is plain buggy, and was extremely frustrating. See this youtube video I uploaded. I killed all enemies in sight in this encounter in the Hanging Sepulchers, but remained stuck in combat (my characters are still taking damage because a couple of them got hit with gouging strike). I wandered around aimlessly for a while before heading north, and after the video ends I ended up encountering a completely unrelated group of enemies. I got so frustrated with this (I was already mostly out of per-encounter abilities so this would've been a wipe) that I instead just quit to the desktop. I hope Obsidian developers internalize the fact that when bugs make it out to production it can cause events like tonight where I basically had an entire play session squandered because of repeatedly dealing with this bug and being unable to complete an already annoying encounter. I still remember when doing The Ultimate achievement back in PoE1 I had to "cheat" by keeping back up saves because I had lost several attempts solely because of random bugs. Dropbox link to output log and quick save: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7wm7qhw5gd88ewe/AAB97iSfAXi5-1W-2GKe3YPLa?dl=0

IIRC, this amulet is supposed to give me a whiteleaf effect upon waking up. But I just killed Lady Epero and she drops a Soul Void that does... nothing. I equipped it on one of my characters just to double-check, and sure enough there's no passive effect enabled on them. Here's a dropbox link to output_log and save:https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c67acea9wjgscqu/AAByhpHRG5F1YLxD3-Bjje2ca?dl=0