thelee

at the very least do you proc multiple inspirations from having multiple targets in the first blast for relentless? i could've sworn that was at least the case.

it's also a bit weird because you can actually get a bit of a lore dump from the guardian. i think there's also another way to avoid the guardian fight - i think if you just sacrifice your faction allies, the guardian never shows up (presumably busy with your allies). i know i've stumbled into ukaizo without a fight, and it struck me as a bit weird that it's that easy (and that easily for the player to overlook) to avoid what is supposed to be the last fight. (if you clear all the megabosses, it can even still be a bit of a rough fight due to all the scaling bonuses it gets as part of its "the last megaboss" buff.) at least in a game like F:NV you needed lots of skill checks and correct dialogue tree navigation regardless to do that.

well gee i never before tried binding the voulge to a fighter, but maybe now i will...

honestly that sounds like something glitched out in your favor. nothing in the spell list for gathering storm sounds like that, unless avenging storm glitched out and kept proccing

pallegina as a crusader makes a great tank. paladin hardiness and party support, and you can use a shield + hold the line for 2 engagement, or just do whatever and turn on defender stance for 3 engagement. only downside is that pallegina wastes her subclass and her first skill point on a lame upgrade to sworn enemy and getting flames of devotion, neither of which are great for a tank, but the strength of her ancestry helps ease the pain of manually picking up lay on hands.

sweet jeebus, that might explain why those druid sporelings carried me in that Sealed Fate ambush.

this is not true the "immunity to concentration" effect will immediately strip neriscyrlas of all layers of concentration, same with any other target with concentration. if it only prevented new concentration layers, it would be a *terrible* chant the only thing i can suggest is that it targets will, and you may not have been able to surmount ner's will defense.

i think one of the best part of ridable animal companions in WotR is that it interacts with things like sizes and stuff like in PnP, it's not just a cosmetic buff. So halfling, gnomes can start the game automatically being able to ride many kinds of animals, because they're small enough, whereas others will have to wait or are limited to a handful of bigger companions (e.g. horses) - which is a nice potential counterbalance to the fact that small characters move slower by default (e.g. my base 20-foot speed halfling is a 60-foot speed halfling+racing elk). At the same time, the spells that increase or decrease target sizes can help or harm one's ability to ride mounted. It can also lead to some interesting spell interactions - grease is already a pretty effective spell, but getting knocked down while mounted is doubly bad, because not only are you proned, but you're completely knocked off your mount and you could be either in a worse defensive position (if you were relying on your mount for AC) or risk an attack of opportunity to re-mount. Of course then there are other interactions like charging, barding, possibly getting 2x-ed by aoe spells, etc. I can easily see why even games based on rulesets that have ridable mounts might not implement them because of various headaches (not to mention UI issues that WotR doesn't quite solve), but kudos on WotR it adds a surprising amount of mechanical depth for having done so.

I've been taking a break from Deadfire (1700 hours, man) to give Wrath of the Righteous a shot, and here are some thoughts. I know some people here are genre RTwP fans, and options these days are pretty limited, so I thought I'd share some opinions because a desire for another RTwP is what really drove me to give WoTR a try. Background: I pretty much disliked Pathfinder: Kingmaker quite a bit. Terrible encounter design, I could not get over how terrible the writing was. It did get me into Pathfinder Second Edition though, so there's that. (Though learning up on the 2nd ed ruleset made me dislike Kingmaker's 1st ruleset even more. [WotR is still 1st ed pathfinder rules]) On the game itself: I actually enjoy WoTR, definitely much more than PK. Part of it is better story focus - the stakes are much clearer from the beginning. Encounter design is better; there are still those stupid "come back later" encounters, but it's not as bad as in PK, they're broadcast a bit more (less likely to just stumble into them without warning) and so far there's no loot behind it (so really they're just for the challenge); they really just seem like minor megabosses scattered throughout. Difficulty balancing is better - I play on "Core" which is comparable to somewhere between Veteran and PotD (generally acceptable difficulty and occasional hard fights), and it's better than P:K where Core was too damn easy but the next step up gave enemies so many bonuses (sometimes double-counted) that it basically eliminated most build viability and made many fights an all-or-nothing "everyone got initiative and sneak attacked the enemy" or "a wolf tripped your flat-footed tank and everything snow-balled out of control" binary. There's still those harder difficulties, but I feel like they got a better middle ground this time. YMMV on this one, obviously. Anyway, things that Deadfire/Obsidian did well and has aged well: art/area design. it's funny that we got a complaint about reused assets in another thread, because WotR is a whole heck of a lot of tile re-use. Areas look really same-y and it can be hard to geographically center yourself without constant reference to a map. the nuts and bolts of RTwP interfaces. Translucent spell effects when paused, constantly visible targeting circles and selection circles and health/engagement indicators, compacted combat log entries (where related entries or AoE spells get grouped into one expandable entry), adjustable speed, holy crap all amazing quality of life things that are missing form WotR which is several years newer. Even though I hate on the Deadfire combat tooltip becoming vertical walls in later fights, it's aces better than what WotR does (at least it's no longer hidden behind a Knowledge check like in P:K). AI scripting and smarter default AI behavior and scripts. WotR pretty much just only lets you automate one single ability at a time and your character will do it nonstop without pause. Pretty much only good for cantrips or other infinite-use abilities. Writing. I'm playing WoTR in german so it's a bit hard to assess (I'm at best B1-grade proficiency, plus it's a translation) but it feels a bit better than P:K but damn some of the character development is still just dumb and two-dimensional. having a fixed D&D-style alignment doesn't really help, but it's also not handled well where you get comically binary dialogue choices just so you can fulfill a "good" option or an "evil" option. better leveling/multiclassing system. i mean, 3/3.5e-style multiclassing is a travesty, so not going to spend much time here. rule clarity. yeah Deadfire is dense, but auto-generated tooltips and hover menus are plentiful and viability is still generally ubiquitous. Even with better tutorials of basic concepts in WotR, you're just tossed head first into the pathfinder system, which is full of jargon and build traps (e.g. heavy armor is not a good long-term strategy for defense). Plus, while there are hover menus, it's not expansive - I have to constantly reference other sites or the pathfinder rules to remember what particular afflictions do. the only saving grace is that there's a larger pathfinder community so there's tons of threads explaining rules or why certain builds are terrible ideas Things that Obsidian should learn from WotR in any future RTwP endeavour: Getting the story stakes right. I'm not one of the people who have complained a lot about Deadfire's story, but WotR really communicates the big stakes to you very clearly from the start and constantly updates you with it, and it does really draw you in much better than the kind of distant concerns over Eothas and the various Deadfire factions. It does this (at least so far) without even the heavy-handed timer countdowns of P:K! This is a vast improvement over P:K. I had a similar criticism of BG vs BG2; BG2 tossed you in the middle of a suspenseful dungeon break after being captured by a mysterious (and charismatically voice-acted) Irenicus, whereas BG you were wandering around some open meadows and just given slight suggestions of "hey maybe you should go south to Nashkel at some point." Turn-based really seems like table-stakes for a RTwP game now, and it shouldn't be a separate option you only have one chance to choose. You can swap in/out of turn-based mode with the press of a button in WotR. Especially since WotR implements 5-foot-steps in turn-based mode, and because of some of the sprawling fights, it's nice to have that option at hand, even if I generally don't use them. "Going first matters" - I get that turn-based in Deadfire was kind of added on, but Owlcat has done the "initiative" concept the best in any RTwP I've played; I'm glad they designed RTwP with this primarily-turn-based concept in mind, even ignoring how broken sneak attack can be in P:K (less so in WotR i think). Ridable animal companions!!!! Seriously, I never realized how much I needed this feature in a game until playing WotR. Great implementation of rest mechanics. WotR is a rest-based game (not encounter-based), but even ignoring that, resting is the downtime for your characters to craft scrolls/potions, cure ability damage (much more common vs P:K), but at the same time areas become gradually cursed the longer you rest in them from the demon invasion, which adds buffs to your enemies as you cross thresholds; a high religion ability from someone assigned this job at rest can slow the curse down, but not stop it from advancing. If Deadfire had things gentler than Wounds as well that don't require knock out (like ability damage or long-term diseases), there'd be more of an incentive to rest. At the same time, rest-spamming to refresh empower points or per-rest item abilities would be more constrained if the concern wasn't simply "you'll run out of shark fish soup." I'm actually one of those weirdos who enjoyed the optional constraint in PoE1 where you can only access your stash upon rest. Feeling "epic." Yeah, I tend be a very strong Balance Guy, and WotR is a little bit on the overkill side with the mythic paths, but it definitely helps with the story stakes and sense of progression. If the watcher abilities had been a lot more notable, that could really have helped. I'm not going to gloss over the fact that a lot of players liked BG2's Throne of Bhaal for similar reasons, even though I personally hated its mechanics. A better rest mechanic and resource constraints would make it easier to make e.g. more powerful/epic-feeling watcher abilities without messing up the balance. really sprawling battles. sometimes set-pieces, sometimes an encounter that merges with another, I just feel like these are set up better, whereas Deadfire everything tends to be isolated, and even the ship-to-ship fights happen within a small like 10m space. That being said, if anyone's itching for a newer experience, or just wants another angle to appreciate Deadfire by, I do recommend giving WotR a try. It's no Disco Elysium, but it ain't shabby.

i actually did not know this

i was under the impression that upscaling doesn't take effect in places that you've already loaded into - is that not true? either way, +6 acc/def can be a huge swing. It can make an (unlucky) run of events much more likely, which may be what happened. The monks in FS in particular also love to use skyward kick, which even works on a graze, which suuuuuucks, and will suck even more if they have +6 acc on that (i could easily see it turning into something you have virtually no chance of avoiding being chain-knocked-up) true, but maybe this is more like a bell curve where the scaling is effective at the beginning and effective at the (very) end, with a flattening out in the middle. at the SSS/FS level, the enemies already have powerful abilities and the power curve isn't nearly as much in your favor (e.g. if you come back 2 levels higher against a mid-game boar level encounter, you are just way more powerful than they can imagine with all your new stuff, whereas coming back 2 levels higher against FS vithrack, they could already use death of a 1000 cuts and minoletta's missile salvo, did you really gain that much of an advantage in those 2 levels?)

on top of what other people said: spread out you can see when the dragon is prepping a spell, and separate everyone you can. one siphon target is much easier to out-dmage versus an entire party's worth. part of also what might be contrbiuting to siphon messing you up is if you let llengrath's safeguard take place - which will massively boost Ner's defenses and make it hard to overpower a HoT. same strategies for interrupt. You can also use tranquilizing shot to cleanse it (best solution for most annoying boss tactics), or try your luck with club modal and arcane dampener.

this. i don't even use it to steal. leap is just such a good mobility effect to give to non-barbarian classes. has made me appreciate the barbarian ability more, too (but this way you don't have to spend ability points on it). use it to escape engagement, use it to debuff enemies (daze), use it to get into perfect positioning, just great. i had a recent run with mantle of the seven bolts, and uh i'm stupified i haven't used this earlier. it would be utterly broken with the mod that turns per rest items into per encounter. for most of the game, the bolt spell is a room-clearing effect, especially indoors where you can bounce it off walls. I also like charm of bones. +2 intellect is always nice, the vessel bonus is very relevant against some very tough enemies throughout the game (esp neriscyrlas and dorudugan), but the cherry on top are the summons you can get which are a) extremely freaking powerful [you can summon some high-level fampyrs or priest vessels with high level spells for example] and b) not limited per encounter. You are limited to ten total over its lifetime, but you can either make some early fights a lot easier, or save them up for some rough fights later (in my most recent one I used 8 charges just to drain megaboss Auranic out of all her spells). i don't see a lot of chatter for this item, but it really has lasting value and you can get it potentially really early.

i think this is mostly just dated wording, back when the constitution afflictions used to be: sickened -50% healing, weakened -100% healing, enfeebled -100% healing + duration malus as a possible alternate or additional balancing solution - what if concelhaut's corrosive skin was auto-hit ? i think the biggest problem is that for a tier 9 spell that targets only a single creature and a generally tough defense, the spell effect itself is not worth the risk or even worth the morningstar modal; i'd rather just cast missile barrage, meteor swarm, crushing doom, etc (the first two will end many trash fights on their own). if it was like a fire-and-forget, eventually fatal (to casters and weaker tanks) spell, or a guaranteed source of damage/debuff on tough bosses, that would be more on par for a top level transmutation spell.

does it stack at all? 2% sounds puny even if it lasts a while

it's worth highlighting that at some point in one of the patches, enemies got more easily pulled by noise. i think it came around with the arrival of the "berath's challenge" (combat doesn't end until all enemies in an encounter are dead). i don't know if it was an unintentional side effect or a deliberate choice to make it harder to pull enemies away from each other. so it is definitely easier to accidentally pull e.g. the deathguard than it was before. as for noise, i think noise is one of those things that are very subtle but can yield extremely emergent gameplay; i think it's like 95% of the way to being a really great game mechanic. this is me rehearsing a particularly hard stealth section in my ultimate run (because fighting the enemies would've wasted too much time and been very dangerous), using things that make noise in different ways to lure enemies around:

hot damn, i was always annoyed at hitting myself with crushing wave and it completely slipped my mind that i could combine this with aefyllath. when the keywords work/are properly set you can have some fun interactions

yeah i don't remember this old thread, but i think it's very party dependent. in some parties i can just brute force the oracle down real fast and take care of the adds later, but in other parties there's no way i can survive the onslaught of adds as they rush onward. that being said, just to add some clarification for posterity: the oracle and adds will actually want to attack polyps if left alone (discovered this in my ultimate run where i do a lot of hiding). leave polyps alone. they will add fluid to the chamber and make and more of it a slog zone, which is extremely annoying for your mobility (except for tekehu and any coral aumaua). the arcane whatevers will stun the oracle for a few seconds if destroyed. in some parties I have found it worthwhile to take them out one lantern at a time, because even for a few seconds it's nice to get a break from the oracle's perpetual beaming. also as some tech for future players - the more I use moonwell the more Hawt Tech it is. The fact that it protects you against a fire attack is aces. Stock up on scrolls (there's a decent number in FS alone) and use them a lot in the fight - they'll protect you from delayed fireballs, on top of giving you healing.

is the wiki wrong? lidless gaze is listed at 6s, which would put it at a lower duration than embrace, same with gaze of the adragan. even if you have tons of easy ways to nerf dorudugan's will and make it easy to roll a crit, a +25% multiplier would still yield a base duration that's less than embrace the earth talon (the bonus illusion PL might help bump it up). petrification has a substantial base duration (12s) which would make it easier to start off the fight at a level where you can start extending it with frostfall. the ugly math: dorudugan at 25 resolve is a -45% duration penalty, which turns into a -.8182 duration modifier (inversion math). if you have 25 intellect, say (18 base + inspiration + some items), you have a .75 duration modifier. you're left with a net -.0682, which translates into a -6.4% duration penalty. let's assume that it's easy to get +5 PL for petrification, and you can still cobble +11 PL for lidless gaze. petrification hit => 12 * .936 (net duration penalty) * 1.25 (PL) => 14.04s lidless hit => 6 * .936 (net duration penalty) * 1.55 (PL) => 8.7s lidless crit => 6 * .936 * 1.55 * 1.25 => 10.9s +20% off 10s seems pretty tight margin for error and attacks, but maybe it's doable with enough save scumming to make everything works out. (you'd have to save-scum any other approach with the frostfall angle as well anyway since you probably wouldn't be getting the full suite of your debuffs going) edit: in case anyone wanted a clear illustration of resolve's increasing returns and why arkemy'rs wondrous torment is so important: at 25 resolve, that -.8182 duration modifier can essentially be explained as saying "you need +81.82% in total buffs to duration just to get to your effect's normal base duration". Approximately doable, with reasonably high intellect. at 35 resolve, the -75% duration multiplier turns into a whopping -3.00 duration modifier. You need +300% in total buffs just to get back to your normal base duration! Even with completely maxed out intellect, you're still left with a substantial negative penalty, at which point all the multipliers from PL and crits are trying to boost an extremely small remaining duration and not getting you very far.

it might be very hard to get a net gain on the petrify, right? +20% on the debuff after accounting for attack speed, you'd need to make sure the petrify on dorudugan has ~10s left at minimum. but it seems doable, as an alternate strat. edit: if you have two wizards and are willing to save scum a bit, one does the arkemyr's wondrous torment, then the other follows up with an empowered petrification, if that lands with a hit you might have enough starting duration on that petrify to get a net gain of time with each death from frostfall (you'd still need a lot of accuracy to put yourself in any appreciable hit range against fortitude without doing the whole morningstar/whatever bit), so long as you are able to kill a skeleton with each attack. then you don't have to worry about refreshing anything else.

In case you wanted a minimally cheesy way to get rid of dorudugan (without the balance patch), I recommend chaining together a bunch of petrifies of sufficient level. I stumbled on this unintentionally with my disruptor theurge because it was the first time I was combining helm of the the white wind with a chanter and a druid, and I did it again without that specific build, though I definitely did the math beforehand to make sure it would work again. I still think the theurge is the most self-contained way to do it, but you can do this with a combination of: a wizard that can cast arkemyr's wondrous torment with high base intellect and weyc's wand a druid that can cast Embrace of the Earth Talon OR a wizard that can cast petrification, with high base intellect a priest that can cast Salvation of Time (* combined with the below, only main bit of cheese here) weyc's robe club modal morningstar modal a bunch of other accuracy bonuses for your petrifier (esp against vessels), or penalties to fortitude, some combination of your petrifier being the mainchar and becoming rymrgand's champion and destroying all the souls in SSS (up to +6) helm of the white wind (easy +10) multiclassing with a ranger for hunter's claw, marked prey, and stalker's link (ez, but pretty strict on what your character needs to be) multiclassing with a monk for dance with death, which gets you up to +15 necklace of the bones (+5) devotions for the faithful (+10, plus a -8 to enemy fort if you land the debuff) PL bonuses (e.g. prestige, potion of ascendance, lance of the midwood stag + woodskin/form of hte delemgan, weyc's wand) boras (+5 to spells) obsidian black wurm pet (+3 when flanked) remember that there's an optoinal berath's blessing that lets eder equip a pet for doubling up on both boras and the obsidian black wurm ngati's tusk (hunter of hunters can give you up to ~10 debuff against fortitude) gloves of accuracy edit: long nights chant can apply weakened (resisted down to sickened) for -10 debuff plus an additional -4 from the stat penalty edit: this isn’t a comprehensive list, just what comes to mind easily depending on what you have, your build can be more or less strict - on PotD dorudugan has 180 fortitude. you can pretty easily bring that down to 155 with just a morningstar modal and ngati's tusk (-35). a level 20 character with 10 perception will start off with 77 accuracy, so you need to find a way to close the gap of 103 accuracy, so you can have a net advantage against dorodugan's fortitude of +24, which means you'll never miss. Might sound like a tall order, but based on the list above there's quite a bit of flexibility to how to hit that goal (e.g. one successful casting of devotions will swing the accuracy-defense number by 18, (you get +10 acc, dorudugan gets -8 fort); the spell you use will itself have some innate accuracy bonus; etc). here's an example from my most recent attempt: (sorry it's in german) in this particular situation, i ended up with a net +31. I overshot the +24 requirement because I honestly kept making mistakes in this run (e.g. i forgot to become rymrgand's champion) so I ended up pulling together some extra bouses in case my math was wrong or made some other mistakes. translating into english and explaining the math, my accuracy buffs were: +24 from 34 perception (maxed orlan and white wends to start for 21, +1 from the alchemist's hut, +1 from a cloak, +1 from a ring, +2 from sleeping with aenalys, +3 from svef, +5 from intuitive from least unstable coil [important that it's from an item, so it stacks with svef]) +8 from embrace the earth talon's ability level (petrification would have +16 *) +11 from power levels (+5 from SC level 20 druid and prestige [petrification would only get +1 from prestige *], +2 from lance of the midwood stag, +2 from potion of ascendancy, +1 from spellshaping the spell smaller, +1 from weyc's robe brilliant [important from an item, so it stacks with potion of ascendancy]) +3 from gloves of accuracy +10 from helm of the white wind +5 from boras +3 from changeling's mantel armor random pet aura (this was actually pure luck and wasn't planned on, but you could theoretically save-scum this bonus if you're relying on it) +4 from sweet aroma aura from keeper of the flame +10 from devotions of the faithful +5 from necklace of bones dorudugan gets -25 from morningstar dorudugan gets -8.8 from ngati's tusk aura (i did this suboptimally, you should be able to get to 9 or 10) dorudugan gets -10 from ben fidel's neck invocation dorudugan also gets a "hidden" -8 because their might is reduced by 4 from devotions TL;DR game plan I mentioned this in another thread, but a wizard with wecy's wand, empowering arkemyr's wondrous torment is guaranteed to at least graze, which will tank dorudugan's resolve down to 25, at which point even a normal casting of arkemyr's wondrous torment will easily last for 30 seconds. combine with club modal, dorudugan's will defense is pretty much shot, which makes refreshing arkemyr's wondrous torment easy, as well as making it easy to add on other will-targeting debuffs if you need to. getting down to 25 resolve makes all the difference. it means your morningstar and club modals stop lasting for only a couple of seconds even on high intellect characters. it also means that embrace the earth talon and petrification, on a decently high intellect+power scaling character, will last 12+ seconds, which also means that even on a graze you'll still petrify dorudugan long enough to cast another after brilliant gives you another resource. with key players having brilliant from weyc's robe plus salvation of time, you can petrify-lock dorudugan all the way to his death and you can completely bypass all the annoying fireball/fire explosion dodging. just need to pay attention to refresh arkemyr's wondrous torment before it runs out (most important!) as well as any other debuffs you have going on. Why "Embrace the Earth Talon" or "Petrification?" Both have higher base durations than Gaze of the Adragan, which matters quite a bit for competing against Dorudugan's resolve, even when its hit with wondrous torment. You could probably cobble enough bonus PL with like an illusionist and some items, but then you start making it hard to cobble together the bonus accuracy you need to actually land it past dorudugan's fortitude defenses. I weakly prefer the druid for their embrace the earth talon here, because it actually does damage (helps speed things along) and more importantly you get two casts from the start which can help cushion the early rocky start as you get things going and your resource regen still needs to get everything back to 100%. plus, if you only have a single wizard who's responsible for wondrous torment AND petrification might easily be missing out on a cast of petrification because of resource regen being random. * petrification being at higher level also has an advantage in that it has a higher innate accuracy then a comparable embrace the earth talon. you get +2 acc per ability level, and only +1 per power level, so all things being equal you'd rather a level 20 wizard casting petrification than a level 20 druid casting embrace in terms of affecting the net accuracy balance. Why do this at all? There are plenty of other far easier, far cheesier ways to get dorudugan, but I like this because while it certainly is cheesy, it feels like you still have to work for it a bit (getting all the items and coordinating the chaining debuffs) and is satisfying as a result, versus just hammering Dorudugan down with axe modal and blade cascade, or attritioning it out with gouging strike's endless DoT. Plus, outside of dorudugan, you can do this against most bosses in the game (very few enemies in my memory are actually immune to dexterity afflictions, they tend to just be resistant) without needing as many accuracy bonuses, so it can serve as a decent strategy across your entire run if you feel like slightly cheesing out a harder boss encounter.

hard +upscaled might be more in line with poe1 potd. as others have said potd+upscaled in deadfire can be rather punishing, especially if you aren't familiar with the system. if you want to start off with that, be prepared to reload a lot and be willing to experiment/respec as you figure stuff out.

for the most part, the reactivity is on the minor side - e.g. companions might have slightly different starting gear. not necessarily worth it to optimize. you can always customize your poe1 history if you feel like, using the options in deadfire (through a bunch of Q&A). (more drastic reactivity is if you like murdered a companion in poe1. they obviously won't be around in deadfire.)

so to confirm some TB ideas i'd seen before, does it make sense to make sure your casters always go last, then? that way you don't have to worry about enemies running out of area of effects

double-check the description. it does "shock" damage, but that's it. it's a type of damage, it's not a debuff that would count as CC. CC are things like: an affliction knock down, knockup, interrupt (kinda, i don't always count these as CC) direct stat penalties (like miasma of dull-mindedness or nature's mark)