Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

Would anyone with the capability mind putting together mods to give Aloth the "blood mage" subclass on his Mage half, and/or Eder the Trickster subclass on his rogue half? I'd like to try a run with same and after an abortive attempt at it myself I've realized that a programming background consisting of LOGO and Commodore Basic is woefully insufficient for the task at hand. Thanks!

I'd love one for the blunderbuss modal too. I reported that in beta

Come to think of it, an Unbroken / Trickster build for Eder could be really great. Stack Cadhu Scalth, Mirror Image, Llengrath's, and the Fighter deflection bonuses. . . EDIT: bleh, I can get it working with the standard console but not with the unity console. Oh well . It is a dandy build -- you can get up to around 180 Deflection!

Yeah, what I'm hearing is "someone needs to write an Aloth Blood Mage mod." Not it! (I don't know how anyway!) There's basically one poor dude who's written almost all the alternate-class mods on the Nexus/workshop and I think he's overwhelmed since the patch.

I will have to give the priest mod a go with Xoti - that sounds like a ton of fun. And I've never played with Rekke, Konstanten or Ydwin, do they have good banter in the party and hold their own in a fight? Ydwin and Konstanten have special banter in two of the DLC's I think.

If you get the Unity console you can just change Aloths classes to Steel Garrote Paladin and add a subclass to his existing Wizard class. It's a respec and then you start adding abilities through the normal level up process. The core paladin abilities and blood mage abilities get added, and you won't have to remove any previous class abilities unless he was a multi-class fighter. Yeah, I just don't like using the Unity console any more than I have to, partly because it's not been updated in a long time and I worry about bugging out the run, partly because I always worry I haven't fully set things "correctly" if I'm doing it all by hand.

I've used mods people have written to change the companion's starting builds. Next time through I'm probably going to go street fighter Eder (I tried Unbroken but it's a bit limiting because I felt obligated to use a shield), troubadour pallegina, and if someone will write a mod for it for me, Steel Garotte Paladin / Blood Mage Aloth. Ydwin really should have been a beguiler from the start.

I'll repeat what I posted on SA in response to this discussion: AR vs. DR I can swing either way, but I miss some je ne sais quoi about the original's character builder that seems somehow absent in the sequel. Also, JS's response to another poster:

Perhaps it's a clavichord! Or even a rare, early pianoforte, looted by Benweth from the ship of a Vailian inventor. . . . https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cris/hd_cris.htm

Sure, but Benweth is an idiotic pirate who probably looted that harpischord. It's a miracle the thing is even in tune. It doesn't actually say that hitting the keys harder makes the volume increase, just that when the background noise is louder, Benweth abuses the instrument. If anything, Mirke is mocking Benweth's incompetent, brutish, ignorant playing. EDIT: This also justifies his murder. You're not just doing it for the armor. You have to save the harpsichord.

I think I'm gonna build Eder this way on my next run with him. I don't like playing without a morningstar modal in the party, and the dual-wield swashbuckler build always ends up using the Reckless Brigandine which is just so ass-ugly Hrm, this still work or not given the maybe-bug ? I've always gone swashbuckler Eder, weird to go pure fighter with him.

Should be relatively straightforward to fix with a mod.

Yeah. Just as one example, you can do things like script Mind Blades to only fire at targets on whom Combusting Wounds is active and who don't have Arcane Reflection up, etc. A few other examples: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/954102730671907636/22E1691CC6307400560305CE060D01850394A037/ (making sure you always have your buffs up) https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/954102730671907310/93E2F7470D62F9627D2FBB4A76885F5ED0F01566/ (making sure allies are buffed appropriately when needed; "target is race: kith" is necessary to prevent uselessly buffing summons) https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/954102730671907811/979F980472B6E59BE372277C50D43510ABE0610E/ (making sure that your scripted buffs don't run into stacking issues) Once you really get it going you mostly just have to worry about positioning. It's a brilliant mod that dramatically cuts down on how much clicking you have to do and makes the overall game play a LOT faster and more conveniently.

I find the AI Conditionals mod a must-have for scripting, really -- I'm not sure I'd still be playing this game without it. I like to set Second Wind to trigger at 25% health, Refreshing and Vigorous defense to health below 50%, Unbending below 75% health Into the Fray works well with "engaging or engaged by self: not" and "engaging anyone" to scoop up all random enemies who aren't on the tank

Dude, script that ****! I use it all the time. Literally, because I have an AI script to make sure. There is a reason the AI always drops it, it is extremely potent.

Main thing is make sure you have someone who can use mace, club, flail, Morningstar, and Pike modals. Past that it's flexible. I'd suggest no more than one glass cannon character. On potd you probably want at least one chanter and at least one cipher for long fights. at least one dedicated healer but it helps to have a paladin and or chanter with backup resurrection. Multiclass your physical damage classes but a single class caster or two can be very useful for earlier access to higher level spells.

Hrm, it doesn't seem to actually -- restoring a level 4 slot with blood price cost 40 health even with Cadhu equipped. Bug Report time. What about the voidward ring? That work? edit: hrm, further testing, not conclusive either way

Hrm. I've been theorycrafting a Steel Garotte Paladin / Blood Mage and I've run into a crux I'd appreciate some help thinking through. On paper at least, the Cadhu Scalth upgrade "luminous harmony" (reducing damage from all sources, scales with metaphysics) should reduce the blood mage damage, while also having great synergy with stacking deflection very high as an Arcane Knight. Problem: the Steel Garotte bonus healing only works on *weapon* damage. Are there any summonable wizard weapons that are one-handed, other than kalakoths' minor blights? If only Citzal's were one-handed . . .

How well does Steel Garotte / Blood Mage work?

Yeah, please don't think I'm saying Tactician is bad. It's a good class. It's just finicky in a way I wasn't expecting to find as annoying as I did. I kept feeling that I was out of "optimal" positioning and would get annoyed at myself.

* the reason why blood mage and tactician are so specially good is because resource regeneration is extremely powerful, and they can do it well with only a small amount of metagaming on classes that weren't designed to have consistent resource regeneration (unlike monk wounds, cipher focus, or chanter phrases). After playing for a while with a modded Aloth Tactician, I'm not nearly as much of a fan of Tactician as I thought I would be. Reason being, 1) to make Tactician really work well, you need a cipher in the group, or at least it really helps 2) once you have a cipher in the group, Ancient Memories is a much less finicky source of Brilliant that requires much less micromanagement 3) Doesn't interact well with Streetfighter Tactician is still probably a fun class and doing a Tactician run could be a neat challenge -- probably great in turn based mode -- but in rtwp it's super finicky and requires more micro than it's worth (imho). My next run I'd like to try a steel garrotte / wizard Aloth build but I gotta wait for someone to write that mod

There was a hilarious berserker/chanter summon build around the grave calling blade and chanter skeleton summons.

Any word on the "boarding combats not dropping unique loot" and/or the "boarding combats opening with five seconds of combat before you can control your party" bugs?

It doesn't seems that easy to sink ship for me. What's the strategy with the sloop? max range with max range cannons. If you mess up and die, reload.

Hey, another Aloth request if you have time and don't mind -- Instead of Fighter/Wizard Aloth, how about Paladin (Steel Garotte) / Wizard Aloth? edit: if you get a chance, a Blood Mage Aloth option would be great too! further edit: as would a "Trickster" option for Eder (would like to try him as unbroken/trickster). Sorry for throwing so many requests at you!