thelee

How would that help? The problem isn't the range, it's the wound generation rate. If you go look at a SC monk vs hauani video, once the ooze splits the wotw uptime is virtually 100% thanks to endurance dance and symbiote. Occasionally there's a mortification, but that has no recovery. In the video the wotw uptime was hugely important because it literally was needed to prevent oozes from merging (and in fact one merge successfully happened in the video I watched)

don't you have a lot of experience doing solo? you planning on getting your name on a plaque?

hasn't this always been the case? (knock up effects always break targeting while the enemy is int he air)

that doesn't sound like a gpu/graphics-related issue then

the big difference is that doing all the challenges now officially gives you a completed check mark plaque over the "ultimate" god slot. it's definitive proof that you enabled everything and killed everything. otherwise you could have done a bunch of separate runs to individually get check marks on all the other god portraits and it would look indistinguishable to a player who did one run with all of the challenges enabled.

you need to have a full video recording (they say youtube playlist or dropbox folder of videos), in addition to the save file. i haven't figured out a good recording software to use, but my AMD tuning software comes with some built-in recording software, so I'm going to give that a try and then upload to youtube later. Nvidia should have something similar.

lack of pause I don't think is a big deal if you're soloing and you only have a few buttons to mash, and not even that often. (blood mage probably much bigger problem). you can still slow down time. if you're extremely patient, you can do it on TB-mode, where all it does is limit you to ten seconds per turn, which is more than enough for solo, but I imagine megabosses would be an extreme pain to sit through. (it also makes it impossible to do running-out-of-range tricks with grog/nomad) i just looked up a video of monk soloing hauani o whe and i guess the secret sauce is the stalking cloak to basically perma-stun the smaller forms. edit - though it calls into question the forbidden fist approach because there's no way to get such high uptime on WotW unless you're getting wounds from symbiote or something on top of enduring dance.

i think as far as monk goes, boeroer may be right. SC monk can get both resonance (probably better anti-belranga/dorudugan/sigilmaster solution than gouging/brand unless you solve the Vela aggro problem) and wotw, and SC forbidden fist has the better answer w.r.t. to sustain. helwalker just gives you extra damage and for such a long iron man run you might want to err on inevitable survivability rather than a bit more damage here and there. (remember that one or two "random deaths" one might have had on solo and not thought much about is much much much more annoying when on trial of iron. it took me seven tries to do the ultimate in PoE1 and it made me extremely conservative about risk in the process) maybe, also saves a separate trip just to get nomad's, too. you could then maybe equip fleshmender for the health regen and extra item slot (for potions/withdrawal). I'm convinced now that SC forbidden fist could be a good approach, but I also think SC troubadour might be equally viable (trades off some offense and megaboss inevitability with more survivability). i'm a little bit of a skeptic on taking out hauani o whe solo without the aid of something like summons, but i'm happy to be argued wrong.

what about the sustain? that's a lot of damage you're taking, and you won't get healed to full after each fight, and resting will be extremely limited (basically inns, and even then it's basically a no-rest run due to eothas).

i don't know what the mechanics of hylea talons. how does this generate more wounds? i guess i'm not used to playing many monks, because i don't see how early game you aren't terribly squishy, especially as a helwalker.

nope, only charmed acts like this.

to anyone with solo experience - have you also done iron man solo? i'm wondering how defensive to be with gear, or how worried i should be about hard CC. my current brainstorming basically involves covering all my basis so that hard CC is impossible: feet that grant dex immunity, rekvu that grants interrupt immunity, ring of mule's wit for int*/res resist (though can still be charmed), and aumaua for might resist. (in an early draft i was also a part paladin for poison/disease immunity, though i don't know how good the paladin part is going to be in the ultimate). * normally int afflictions don't matter when soloing, but with vela around you will happily go up and whack her to death and she will be the only target around as well, so trying to avoid int afflictions might matter more on hylea + solo. edit - thinking about SC troubadour right now, with monastic unarmed training. in addition to infinite skellies and animated weapons, strong fists that you can conditionally quaff a potion of ascension plus prestige for fight-long legendary fists that never need repairing, you also have an instadeath invocation to use against bosses. you have anti-AR invocation, and animancy cat for bonus PEN on your animated weapons (who themselves scale up to legendary); the animated sword basically grants you infinite interrupts for tough single-target fights (or for keeping Hauani o Whe from merging). equip nomad's brigandine and bonus stride gear/passive so that you can face tank enemies away from vela by running in and out of scary attacks while your summons do the dirty work. you can even put on the int resist chant and due to how it works you'll grant yourself immunity to int afflictions because it'll tick every 3 seconds and keep downgrading the int affliction (AI doesn't seem to change your chant if you're dominated or charmed). still need lots and lots and lots of withdraw scrolls for vela though.

yeah, i know (mentioned in my post). I was more specifically asking how an SC monk (for resonance) could work, since several people suggested it.

I think (at least part) chanter is close to mandatory thanks to abydon and woedica. I don't have a lot of experience with soloing so maybe SC monk could work but how would you deal with the sustain when you aren't healing after each fight? Cipher and tactician have infinite resources but I don't know how a tactician could reliably trigger brilliant solo, and cipher doesn't solve the sustain or abydon problem nearly as well as a chanter. Part blood mage could work. It's not like you'll be refreshing your empowers very frequently any way. Also, unlike other classes, their sustain works outside of combat on woedica mode. edit - paladin and fighter also have replenishible resources, but only at medium-high levels, and very slowly. can corpse eater barbarian eat bodies out of combat?

some more thoughts on interactions: i don't think enough people are paying attention to ondra's factor here. ondra + wael is probably going to make most early ship combat more lethal - you'll literally have no idea how well your ship is doing (other than seeing a "repair hull" event icon appear at 50%), how well the other ship is doing, how far apart the two of you are, and you won't be able to outrun most ships even early on (on map or in combat). on ironman mode this basically removes an easy XP generator early game (until you buy a better ship) unless you're willing to roll the dice and start from scratch every time you die out of nowhere. (though eothas will prevent you from doing all the ship bounties in the first place). i think using a trap to get an injury and stocking up on rekvu gear is going to be required, mostly for the interrupt protection. With Galawain's on, all you need is a small pack of low level beasts with Bullish on them to interrupt lock you to death. the brand/gouging tactic may work less well because with vela around you have to find a way to de-aggro enemies completely, and the big problem I see is that you can't force Vela to run back after combat begins, and if you use a scroll of withdraw on her and then on yourself, she will come out of withdraw first and likely be close enough to re-aggro the enemies before you have a chance to come out of withdraw and protect her. maybe you can quaff a potion of refuge (with diff alchemy skill level it'll be shorter than the Vela withdraw), but it still doesn't solve the re-aggroing problem. arcana is the only skill that actually gates your ability to use scrolls. you can have alchemy of 0 and explosives of 0 and still use potions and bombs (if crappily). arcana you can't even use a scroll of fan of flames unless you have a point or two. so i think investing in arcana is the way to go.

Dang, there goes my idea. Plan on bringing/craftings lots of scrolls of withdraw then. Vela doesn't stand in one spot, she wanders periodically as if she's terrified. It's actually quite annoying, and would make kiting-based strategies extremely hard since once combat starts she's no longer "leashed" to staying near you (unlike a pet, who even in combat will stay nearby your PC). my eothas run was pretty lush, time-wise, after hasongo - you front load a lot of nekataka quests in act 2 and suddenly act 3 and 4 are pretty spacious. You still should not waste time searching burial sites or shipwrecks, and you should definitely not aimlessly wander around the map (or even try many ship bounties), but if you're basically doing a no-rest, any% run of the DLCs the timing shouldn't be awful. abydon challenge - i hadn't thought of that. my abydon run, by late game, even modest fights could see weapons and armor breaking down twice in one fight - it was so annoying i ended up blitzing through the crit path at around level 14 or so. Dorudugan, Belrange, and Sigilmaster you could get around it by gouging/branding them to death, but Hauani O Whe you probably need to bring in a lot of backup weapons or else you'll be left without anything. Wael would make this more annoying because you'd have no idea how much money you'd have to do repairs. however, if you're a chanter, you can just keep summoning allies, and they don't break down. in this respect, being part monk (or picking up monastic unarmed training) or part chanter is probably required or else you just won't be able to last long enough to do decent damage. yes. wael challenge is pretty thorough in what it hides.

woedica makes everything per rest, and you don't regen health normally. whatever people end up trying to do, i think some inclusion of chanter, paladin, or bloodmage is going to be required just for the health regen (coincidentally chanter and bloodmage can regen resources, paladin can do so slowly with virtuous triumph). chanter is probably the easiest because of their infinite summons. personally i think paladin or rogue are going to be needed for brand enemy or gouging strike (to make it as safe as possible to take out bosses). arcana probably a must because otherwise hylea's challenge is going to make traditional soloing strategies work less well because now you have to also keep Vela alive, and she's going to be nowhere near as tanky as e.g. a herald, and she's not going to be willing to follow you around if you're kiting enemies (instead you trying to kite enemies will make Vela more of a target). so lots of scrolls of withdrawal and high arcana makes them last a long time - if soloing is anything like in PoE1, fights can last a really long time. (plus if you withdraw vela and withdraw yourself, you can still de-aggro enemies to take advantage of brand enemy or gouging strike i think). for all of the above reasons herald may still be best choice. this is my opinion and i don't have a lot of experience solo-ing deadfire (yet, though that will probably change over the next few weeks).

as arkteryx suggests it's one of the Magran's Fire's challenges (and you need to do it as part of the Ultimate challenge): from https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/magrans-fires "Eothas: gives you a strict time limit to accomplish each part of the critical path (main quest). You only have 3 days, 26 hours to finish Port Maje. You have 25 days to complete Hasongo. You have 26 days to complete Ashen Maw, and a similar amount of time to get to Ukaizo. This essentially limits your ability to explore, and really discourages you from searching abandoned settlements or burial grounds out on the world map. The time constraint is tight for the first act, but a little looser for successive acts (though not loose enough to go off and do all the DLC, at least until the final act). You can save some time and level up a bit by frontloading all the Nekataka quests in Act II (before going to Hasongo) since it only costs you a couple hours to go from district to district (versus days to travel on the map). This challenge also has the effect of requiring you to be much more deliberate about resting."

i asked on twitter. basically if it looks like a boss, it has to be dead (no diplomacy/pacifism). according to devs, once you start the ultimate, you'll get a special quest that lists and tracks your progress in killing all the major enemies, so there should be no ambiguity once you start. edit - i think the hardest part will just be managing the eothas timeline. nothing about the challenge suggests that you get extra time in the DLCs, and wael prevents you from getting concrete knowledge of how much time you have left. i posted the amount of time you have per act elsewhere (it's also in my gamefaqs guide), so you probably have to count the days yourself. from past experience, act 1 is pretty tight, but if you can frontload all the nekataka quests in act 2 and are efficient with main path, you can buy yourself quite a bit of breathing room in act 3 and 4, so with what is basically a no-rest run (woedica plus rymrgand basically means you can't rest outside of an inn anyway) you can clear out DLC so long as you just do the main DLC paths (e.g. skip straight to the final dragon fight in BOW, even SSS is pretty fast if you don't try to do *all* the treasure-hunting and *all* the challenges). edit 2 - ondra also makes it harder to take advantage of ship bounties early on for leveling, even if eothas didn't already provide a huge time constraint on sailing around.

i'm getting old, how do I stream directly to youtube effectively, for archival/this purpose?

I'm hoping that because so much of the RTwP regressions were related to TB mode beta that fixes for TB mode fix the instability that plagued RTwP.

great changes, though i'm worried that the "item losing enchantment" bug is still in 5.0 (not mentioned in patch notes) and may be stuck with us forever...

holy FRICK, first twelve players get engraved onto a PLAQUE there goes my free time edit - time to bust out the herald again

aw shucks, yeah that's mine. i don't pretend to be 100% accurate or claim that it's 100% my work - I hope I credited everyone who helped contribute it to it (there's some more updateds pending phenomenum's contributions, but i'm waiting on 4.2). but if people get good mileage out of it, that's all I can hope for

note that a "fix" for this issue is to have the pet knocked out again and revived. then the bonded grief goes away (thankfully you dont' get multiple bonded grief effects)