thundercleese

The wording is "Action Speed", which to my understanding applies to attack speed, recovery and reload speed.

Pretty sure Devil of Caroc is only attacks from stealth (this may have been changed at some point idk). Also Sagani is against targets > 4m away, not same target as ally.

I chose Frostseeker for the AoE. See the screenshot below of my opening shot into a pack of undead. That's 328 damage visible in the log, so total would probably be somewhere between 350-375. Granted you're not always going to get them grouped as good as that, but the point still stands. St. Omaku could be good to have to swap for single target and Veil-Touched enemies though, will test it out.

Ah I see, thanks for the clarification. I will edit that out of the post

Class: Hunter (Sharpshooter/Devoted) Difficulty: PotD (turned on upscaling after getting Frostseeker) Version: 1.2 Race: Hearth Orlan Background: Deadfire or The White that Wends Attributes: Max Per and Dex My distribution (after Berath’s blessing and culture): MIG: 15 (17) CON: 8 (10) DEX: 18 (21) PER: 20 (22) INT: 8 (10) RES: 8 (10) Main thing here is starting with as high DEX and PER as you can. MIG is your next priority, though I dislike having any of my starting stats below 10 which is why I didn’t max it. CON or RES would be my dump stats of choice if I were to though. Without blessings I would probably go 10/10/18/19/10/10. Skills: Whatever you feel like really. I generally like all my characters to have at least a point or 2 in athletics for an emergency heal. Otherwise stealth is quite handy to have. Or alchemy if you like to use consumables. For passives you can max survival or history for the cloaks that scale off those, but again it’s up to personal preference. Abilities: I will list the important abilities for each PL, the rest are to preference. Generally, you want as many passives/buffs as possible, as the bulk of your damage comes from the frost explosion proc. PL1: Disciplined Barrage (!) Marked Prey (!) Resilient Companion ® PL2: Fighter Stances (!) Protective Companion (!) (though this can be put off as we only take it for Stalker’s Link at PL4) Confident Aim ® Marksman ® Two-Handed Style ® PL3: Disciplined Strikes (!) Marked for the Hunt (!) (I recommend getting Protective Companion here, at level 9.) PL4: Stalker’s Link (!) Weapon Specialization ® PL5: Driving Flight (!!!) Armored Grace (!) (only if you plan to use DoC BP) Conqueror Stance (!) Uncanny Luck ® (not great, but then we have so many free choices you may as well take it if/when you have nothing better to choose) PL6: Improved Critical ® Survival of the Fittest ® PL7: Weapon Mastery ® Superior Camouflage ® So, as you can see, the build is pretty much complete at level 14 (second PL5 choice). There are also many level ups where we don’t have anything important to take. Therefore, just take whatever you like using. The pet heal/revive talents would seem like good choices, however the range on both is abysmal and therefore I can’t really recommend them. Takedown and Master’s Call are decent options for when enemies break through to your back line, otherwise just take defensive passives/skills, increase your stride, or buff your pet. Important Gear: Weapon: Frostseeker Armour: Miscreant’s Leathers/Devil of Caroc Breastplate (DoC BP)/Any robe Ring: Ring of the Marksman Pet: Cutthroat Cosmo/Abraham (any other pet you like if wearing robes) The rest of the gear isn’t that important, mainly just go for things that increase MIG/PER/DEX or defenses. I also quite like having high stride for easier repositioning/escaping when mobs break out of melee. I’ll list some good choices below. Ring: Chameleon’s Touch Boots: Boots of the Stone/Boots of Speed Amulet: Strand of Favor (though honestly probably better on another character) Helm: Blackblade’s Hood/Acina’s Tricorn (only if you don’t also have a gun user in party) Gloves: Gauntlets of Ogre’s Might/Bracers of Accuracy. Firethrower if you don’t have a wizard who wants them. Burglar’s gloves if your mechanics bot doesn’t need them. Belt: Whatever. Currently using Huana Charm Belt for the stride bonus. Cloak: Again, doesn’t really matter. Currently using Cloak of Greater Protection. I suppose Magnificent Escape would be good for the disengagement bonus and near death Escape use. Or Ruata’s Walking Cloak for the stride. Pros and Cons: Pros: Very high accuracy; you will almost never miss after leaving Port Maje 65% graze to hit conversion – for the odd time you get an unlucky hit roll ~42% hit to crit conversion at level 7, can go up to ~48% if you take Uncanny Luck and get Blackblade’s Hood Animal companion can act as additional meat shield, help if you get closed in on in melee Strong, consistent sustained AoE damage, while still doing respectable single target damage Cons: Sharpshooter penalty is kinda rough, especially in the early game Animal companion can be hard to keep alive at times, and penalty when it dies is quite severe Pretty much just an auto attack build, so you may find it boring Feels bad if/when you get consecutive non-crits (more of an early game problem) Your “highest single target damage” stat will likely remain some random crit you got on Port Maje with a regular/fine war bow for the entire game "Veil-Touched", an ability that all the undead spirits possess, appears to grant a 100% crit to hit conversion. This means you will want to go cry in a corner any time you fight them So the premise of the build is really simple: maximum possible crits to trigger frost explosions for very nice sustained DPS. We do this by taking ranger for all the accuracy boosts and driving flight, and fighter for disciplined strikes (25% hit to crit conversion, +5 per). Subclasses we take sharpshooter and devoted. Sharpshooter because we want to crit as much as possible, and while the 10% action speed penalty is harsh, a crit can triple our single target damage, not to mention what it does to well grouped packs. Devoted because neither of the other fighter subclasses offer anything to the build, we are a crit build so bonus crit damage is always nice, but most importantly for the +2 pen. Bows are dual damage so you won’t need to worry about weapon switching for immunities. Even against things that are immune to pierce and slash (sigils in undercity are only ones that come to mind) if you crit, you still trigger the frozen explosion which is where most of your damage comes from anyway. On that note, the proc benefits from all passive modifiers to your weapon, as shown in screenshot. Explosions triggered by the “bounce” from driving flight don’t suffer the -50% malus, which is nice. Now for how to play the build, it’s really quite simple. Send your tank in to pick up the initial agro and get as many mobs grouped up as possible. Then mouse over the more central ones and find the one with the highest hit chance. Apply marked for the hunt, activate disciplined strikes, then auto attack and enjoy the carnage! I also recommend setting up a simple AI script to auto renew disciplined strikes when it falls off. Something else you can do is set a condition to attack an enemy that is being threatened (for minor threat) or affected by marked for the hunt (or even target of animal companion). For gearing, I highly recommend going to Fort Deadlight as soon as you leave Port Maje to get the Miscreant’s Leathers from Brutal Ben. You can pick off a random low level Principi ship on your way to allow you to enter the front gates. Whole quest can be completed without a fight (other than taking out a ship for its flag), and the armour is really strong for us. Then go to Neketaka and if you’re confident you can go straight for the bow (forest to the south west of Neketaka's island), otherwise do some of the errand running quests for an easy level or two before getting it. I had no problem getting it at level 7-8. For the marksmans ring, you will need to start the feuding families quest, then speak to the Valera guy and get the quest to clear out the RDC sailors. You can either kill them and loot the ring off the leader, or if you don’t want to take the RDC rep hit you can pickpocket it from him. I was able to do so with Serafen with 5 in each of sleight of hand and stealth. Otherwise the rest of your gear isn’t terribly impactful, so no need to rush anything else. The Blessing of Berath merchant in Port Maje has some great items if you have him. DoC BP can be stolen from the middle chest in the vendors shop, providing you have the mechanics for it (save yourself ~30k copper). Other things I would recommend are bringing a chanter along for Sure Handed Ila. A save where you sacrificed Sagani in PoE1 is nice but by no means essential. DoC would be my second choice. I don’t have a priest in my run but their buffs would certainly be nice (devotions especially). This build could also be done with Wizard (probably stick with no subclass) instead of Devoted. You would have faster action speed (DAoM) but less hit to crit. You would also not want to use DoC BP as you need armored grace AND Cosmo/Abraham to counter the recovery penalty. So I think that's everything. Build has been breezing through the game so far, my total number of crits is rapidly closing in on number of hits, which I expect to surpass by the end of the game. Edit: Added "Veil-Touched" to the cons list. Edit 2: Amended the hit conversion values stated as I had misunderstood how they stack.

Just got one adra ban from the sand blight fight at the eastern exit to poko kohara ruins, pretty sure it was the greater blight that dropped it. Edit: Just got another adra ban from the sand blights on the western side of the map (in the slog zone). Again, fairly certain it was from the greater blight. Could be safe to say its a guaranteed drop from them? Edit 2: Two from the engwithan colossus.

Hi jlee, Thanks, I'll upload two saves. I don't have a save from the time the above screenshot was taken, as I mainly use quicksaves, but I'll upload the most recent save from that playthrough. I have since upgraded it to superb and when I tried to reproduce the double stacking attacking guards in Tikawara it didn't work. I only have 4 stacks currently though so I'll go kill some more things and try again. Second save is from another playthrough when I decided to test some things for this playthrough. You will need to purchase the Twin Slugs enchant, for which I have the materials. I was testing on the pack of Xauripts to the west of Neketaka; first shot would knock it out of range, I would run forward to take second shot and it would knock it back again. Regarding the vessel destruction; I believe it is working as intended, just that the term "lower level" may be a bit misleading. File is too large for me to upload normally, so here's an external link for it http://www.mediafire.com/file/2lh5w53q82g0x4h/The_Red_Hand.zip/file Edit: Forgot to mention; Tigger is the save with the Double Tap enchant, and it's being used my Maia. Ellesime is the save where I was testing it on a Hired Adventurer and took the Twin Slugs enchant. This one is extremely easy to reproduce. It was also knocking back two Xauripts with every shot. Probably because I have driving flight, so probably working as intended. Will update once/if I manage to reproduce the multiple stacking.

Yeah - that's all I found so far as well. I think that's all there is tbh. There is one that's "guilt free", then you can either defy a god or rob a nice old innkeeper who is summarily devastated by the theft; which ever rests easiest on your conscience. Or do both and keep one as a trophy. Two handed weapons probably just take all recipe prices and double them, leading to an impossible upgrade option being displayed in this case.

The one on Wael's island, the one from the actual Kraken and the one from the inn. Well, that is I'll only steal the one from the inn if there is a fourth

Anyone know if it's possible to get a fourth Kraken Eye? Because the fact that 2handed weapons show it for a superb upgrade kinda implies there is one but I can't find any evidence to suggest there actually is.

Sorry, just remembered one final bug from a previous test I did. The Twin Slugs enchant seems to always knock back regardless of distance.

So just a quick update. I swapped to melee weapon during a battle, then when I swapped back a third stack began accumulating on the next kill. So looks like my last sentence above is irrelevant. Also would be good to have a bit more clarity on what constitutes a "lower level Vessel". From my run through the Undercity (level 9 party, PotD upscaled) it would appear there is a list of Vessels it works against, and those it doesn't. At first I thought it was based on the base level compared to yours (as the wording suggests), as it was working against skeleton warriors/sorcerers/etc. (base level 5), and rotghasts and pestilent rotghasts (base level 4), but not against the risen skeletons nor rotghast ravagers/slingers (all base level 10). But then it also seemed to not work on darguls (base level 7), which leads me to believe that level actually has nothing to do with it. If this is the case, I would suggest the wording be changed to something like "destroys lesser Vessels on second consecutive hit". Edit: So just cleared the Island to the east of Neketaka, and was destroying not only the Darguls there, but also the Fampyrs and Ogre Revenants. Maybe I just wasn't getting consecutive shots to land in the Undercity. Or maybe it doesn't consider a crit as a hit? Either way this enchant is really strong, trivialises undead encounters. Even works on constructs as they are considered Vessels.

Just noticed a couple things with The Red Hand on my current playthrough. The Double Tap upgrade works on skeletons, despite them being immune to pierce. Think this may be intended as the description doesn't specify damage needs to be dealt, just two consecutive hits. Secondly, the No Rest for the Wicked (and presumably its upgrades) will not only remain active after a weapon switch (probably intended), but will then start a fresh stack after switching back, without removing the initial stack, as shown in the attached. This could lead to some ludicrous damage buffs, and also to your character being 1 shot, depending on which upgrade you choose. Worth noting that I actually removed the weapon to my inventory, then reequipped it rather than a standard weapon swap.

Thanks for the reply Andrea. I have no qualms changing to DW, however not being able to respec my starting proficiency means I'm stuck with fists as my weapon unless/until a mod is made. Not that that's necessarily bad, as monk fists hit as fast as daggers and as hand as sabres, with a better damage type than either. You just miss out on the cool enchanted effects. I can understand where they're coming from with the nerfs, as having every build reaching zero recovery seemed a bit silly to me in the first game. Basically if you could reach zero recovery and your build would benefit from having zero recovery, then you were pigeonholed into gear/talent/ability choices, as zero recovery was the biggest DPS boost for most builds. The thing is in Deadfire while they are trying to alleviate this by making permanent zero recovery impossible to achieve, they haven't addressed the issue that hitting faster is almost always better than hitting harder, so you are still pigeonholed into stacking speed buffs. Slow attacks just feel worse too. One idea I've had to narrow the gap between DW and 2hand (+1 pen is a good start but still not enough imo) without gimping one hand/S&S is to impose some kind of penalty to DW. So if you have two weapons equipped you have -1 pen or -10% damage or -5 accuracy, something like that. A similar system was employed in DA:O which I thought worked quite well, though they had passive talents to then remove the penalties.

Thanks, didn't realise the base hit got nerfed too. Ah well fists it is then

Hi there. Just wondering why this build has been tagged as deprecated since 1.1 release, as while the patch contained a lot of nerfs to a lot of things, none of them stood out that would ruin/break the build. Is it just that DW is generally better? If so, does the extra PEN from 1.2 change anything? Also wondering which of the mutually exclusive enchants you went for on Whispers. Most people online seem to really love the reposte, however I wonder how often it'll proc on a character that doesn't stack tons of deflection (especially on PotD), whereas the stacking recovery buff seems to fit the build theme. Or do you only need a it to proc a couple of times to get the value from it? Also we want to be hit to gain wounds, so... Also wondering if Run-Through also procs the cone, if not then Spinning Assault seems by far the better choice. Been playing it on PotD in 1.1 and everything has been smooth so far. Went with a Wild Orlan, since with the Blessing of Berath only 17 MIG is needed on creation - more PER and affliction resistance is always nice. Barely used the sword as I can't afford superb (that 30k went on the DoC BP), and fists feel better atm. Still very early in the game though!