DozingDragon

Well, if you are still generally fielding suggestions, then I would suggest considering building around Zandethus's Draconic Fury for a higher level Spellblade Aloth. Throw in Combusting Wounds and Flame Shield for good measure, and things work out pretty well. I recently did this, and I boosted Aloth's Fire keyword PL by equipping Magran's Favor and Sun and Moon to get more mileage out of Combusting Wounds and Flame Shield, and to also take advantage of the healing enchantments of those weapons.

You could go with your original idea, just use Whispers of the Endless Paths instead of Citzal's Spirit Lance. The base damage is lower, but it has some nice upgrades and you can always switch to a different weapon with higher base damage once the afflictions have landed.

Off the top of my head it only matters for the Devoted subclass, and the Fighter abilities Weapon Specialization and Weapon Mastery (additional damage when using proficient weapons). Additionally, the unique large shield from Beast of Winter, the Wintertide Bulwark, has an enchantment that modifies the large shield modal.

I am a big fan of the Essence Interrupter hunting bow, as many enemies have a low Shock AR. Add in the Soul Diplomacy upgrade and you will consistently bring more allies on the field that do not count against your summoning limit. The Sky Dragon Wurmling is a great pet for ranged characters generally, and the Ring of the Marksman can also be obtained pretty early. You can boost your Penetration with the PL 9 phrase and the PL 6 Invocation (Their Champion Braved the Horde Alone to get the Energized Inspiration for +2 Penetration). Add in the Hot Razor Skewers resting bonus, and your character should routinely Over Pen enemies, which means converting enemies into allied creatures even faster.

You can also use the less popular imp army strategy where you kill your summoned skeletons to create an allied grave imp.

How to get the Watcher back at level 1 for a sequel: At the start of PoE 3, the Watcher is captured and put on trial by the Steel Garrote for the murder of Thaos and for “aiding” Eothas. One of the gods or another force intervenes before the Watcher is executed by the Strangler, and instead, Woedica siphons the Watcher’s Essence into herself.

This might be worth posting in the technical support subforum. It might have to do with Essential Phantom and Substantial Phantom creating summons that are flagged as "Join Team" rather than "Join Party," but I don't know the exact parameters that are flagged for the Tactician subclass bonuses and penalties.

I think that Hylea’s Talons and Instruments of Pain could provide you with ranged melee attacks with a decent chance of causing enough self-damage to gain wounds while hiding behind summons. If you want to stick to melee, you can get some decent mileage by focusing interrupting enemies with Thick Grew Their Tongues and Efficient Anguish.

Empowering abilities should be tweaked, as I find that I either forget to use my empower points or I only use them during difficult battles to regain resources. I think granting each character fewer empower points and making empower points harder to regain (e.g., only certain types of food or resting bonuses replenish empower points) could offset an increase in the potency of empowered abilities. The naming convention for the Inspiration and Affliction system could use some clarity to better convey the stat each affliction or inspiration affects, and the relative magnitude of that effect. Right now, a new player has to learn the names of 36 different effects which are sometimes only vaguely indicative of their impact, such as Weakened which affects Constitution even though the word "Weakened" could reasonably be inferred to affect Might. As far as clarifying the magnitude of each effect, I think sacrificing a little bit of elegance in the naming scheme could go a long way in clearing things up. Which of these are clearer: Smart-Acute-Brilliant or Smart-Smarter-Smartest, and Strong-Tenacious-Energized or Strong-Stronger-Strongest. I know my examples sound a bit elementary, but they do clearly convey which of the three inspirations have the largest magnitude at a glance. Trinkets need to be reworked, although I believe they were implemented as generic per rest ability items in the DLC because per rest abilities were easier to balance given the limited amount of development time and scope for each DLC. Regardless, each class should have a specific type of trinket that directly impacts their class abilities in some way. Rangers could have collars that affect their animal companion's stats, priests could have holy symbols that could alter their Holy Radiance ability, etc. These effects could range from restoring abilities like Aggrandizing Radiance for PoE, quality of life enhancements for certain playstyles (a collar that miniaturizes your animal companion and places it in a quick slot in exchange for a flat bonus for players that do not want to manage an animal companion but for some reason dislike the Ghost Heart subclass, plus nostalgia and all that), to the bizarre (a Sutra for monks that make them literally "Blood Drunk," i.e., they become intoxicated from a random alcohol after receiving a certain number of wounds). As far as story beats, I really doubt much we say here will influence the specifics of the plot of a potential sequel. Instead, I think trying to make sure the "main quest" areas are a little more involved and built out than Hasongo, Ashen Maw, and Ukaizo would go a long way. Making those areas more like Beast of Winter or the Forgotten Sanctum would have made for a much more interesting main quest, or at least as close as possible given budgetary limitations.

There is at least one kraken eye added in the Forgotten Sanctum.

Llengrath also runs a cult in a bog that subjected a person to involuntary soul manipulation. So yeah, I would hesitate to rely on the trustworthiness of Llengrath or any of the archmages we have met so far.

Have you completed the main quest at Hasongo? Imported talents do not appear until after you complete that quest.

One other source of spell reflection I missed earlier: Konstanten’s Room at the Wild Mare (+30% Spell Reflection).

The only “hint” I see is that the Engwithan device cut off Ukaizo and Yezuha. Maybe there is another Engwithan device out near Yezuha that serves as the “retaining wall” for the dammed soul energy, where the machine at Ukaizo only regulated the flow of souls. A ton of soul energy held in one place might also explain why there seem to be mutants from Yezuha. Bonus points if the god of Yezuha is the third missing god body with another godseed gone awry.

It wasn't even an ability iirc, Lady Webb states that he reincarnated just as anyone would, but Woedica returned his memories when he reached adolescence each time. Here's what Lady Webb says, "What scraps of evidence exist suggest that he has died many times, only to be reborn each time, exactly the same man, Awakened during adolescence with all the knowledge and experience of all his lifetimes. The plots he orchestrates sometimes take hundreds of years to bear fruit." So it could be that Thaos's abilities are derived from Woedica, or it could be that Thaos, who was present during the Engwithan apotheosis (and survived), and who can also separate his soul from his body to possess constructs and kith, might have some special abilities associated with his soul as the result of Engwithan animancy. Either way, we have yet to see another individual who can do the same things that Thaos did.

And here I was really looking forward to the Free Temp Tooltip Text dlc.

That's fair, I thought the recommended level for starting the DLC was between 14 and 16. Maybe they tuned down the initial fight in the DLC in a patch?

Do you have upscaling on? If you have upscaling on then the suggested level in the quest log might be misleading, as the stuff in Beast of Winter all upscales pretty substantially.

No single companion or sidekick is essential to understanding the plot, or getting the most out of the game. Xoti chimes in during parts of quests, but so do your other companions (and sidekicks during the DLC sections of the game). The only unique thing Xoti can add that I can think of is that when you talk to her she will discuss her dreams, which seem to be prophetic, but those dreams are ambiguous enough to not tie down the writers for the sequel.

Isn’t that just assuming the writers won’t abandon any notion of verisimilitude, and just have Eder declare in PoE 3 that the Wheel is really just the friends we made along the way?

We do not know the extent of the gods’ knowledge. Even if they were ignorant tabula rasas following their creation, then I am sure the gods’ uncle Thaos could have filled them in on the mechanics of the Ukaizo machine during the post-apotheosis kindergarten class.

Why would the flow stop? Your anology isn't accounting for NEW souls. There had to have been a constant flow of new souls for the Engwithans to even exist, OR there already had to be reincarnation and they just moved it. Either way, the idea that the flow will stop doesn't make sense... Nor, to be honest, would it make sense with Eothas' whole 'I'm helping the Kith' thing, because at that point destroying the Wheel would leave Kith one lifetime to fix the Wheel before the world suffers permanent unfixable consequences. From the games, we know that souls sometimes fragment into new souls, and some decay and end up going in the White Void, which also appears to predate the creation of the gods. While we do not know everything about how new souls are made, Eothas and the other gods all seem to concur that destroying the machinery at Ukaizo will be completely obstruct the flow of souls that allows life on Eora to exist. Why second-guess that piece of the narrative? Regarding your second point, from Eothas's point of view, stopping the flow of souls to help the kith does make sense, because Eothas is by his very nature an optimist. He believes that the kith will solve the problem he has created, and that the new solution will be better than continuing the status quo. The high stakes of the problem are just a means to an end to ensure that the problem cannot be swept away by the Hand Occult, the Leaden Key, or other agents of the Engwithan pantheon.

In the river analogy, the Engwithans regulated the entire soul "flow" when they created their machine at Ukaizo, and that machine resulted in a retaining pool that would slowly release the slows back into the river's natural "flow." With the machine at Ukaizo destroyed, the flow of the souls will entirely stop, and all of the "flow" will gather in the retaining pool.

So far, Thaos's ability to reincarnate with his memories intact appears to be unique. Even if it was not completely unique, there is nothing to suggest that sort of ability would be nearly as common or as accessible as becoming a fampyr. So, becoming undead seems like it may have been the only option available to many Engwithans who desired immortality.

Using the right gear can make this battle much more doable, or at least it did for the relatively unoptimized party I used (single class wizard, swashbuckler Eder, priest Xoti, cipher Serafen, and herald Pallegina). Equip one character who is well suited to keep Dorudugan engaged. Either increase the character's defenses as much as possible, or boost their armor and damage reduction as much as possible (Cadhu Scalth upgraded with Luminous Harmony) works for this. I preferred increased armor and damage reduction, because I equipped the Jester's Hat (from the Deck of Many Things DLC) on the character I used to engage Dorudugan (Eder). The Jester's Hat is a guaranteed debuff of -10 to all defenses to Dorudugan (and anyone else in the aura, including the user of the item). I also equipped Eder with the Blackened Plate (-1 Armor aura to help reduce Dorudugan's armor across the board), Revku's Scorched Cloak (so Eder could also heal from all of Dorudugan's fire attacks), Finality's Claim (fully upgraded to automatically reduce Dorudugan's speed by 6%), and the Animancer's Saber (raw damage to ignore Dorudugan's armor, although I am sure I could have figured out something more optimal to use). Be sure to pack some Luminous Adra potions as well, as your front-line character will almost certainly get knocked out a few times. I had the other four characters hitting Dorudugan from range, while having Pallegina use summons (Animated Weapons) to support Eder up close. From there, it was just using whatever buffs or offensive abilities that worked while moving the ranged characters out of the path of Dorudugan's fire attacks. Equipping items that provide engagement immunity or pull immunity (Upright Captain's Boots) also help when Dorudugan eventually uses his pull ability, although having access to the Nimble inspiration also works.