Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

As a practical example, in the DLC there are many fights that consist of a small number (2-4) of very high health enemies who are also weak to fire damage. If you can land CW on them, and then a few casts of a bouncing attack like Mind Blades or Bounding Missiles, it's not hard to quickly rack up 20+ stacks of CW within a few seconds. Nothing survives that. Even very high AR enemies die rapidly anyway because resistance doesn't matter if you're being hit for 1,000 damage anyway,.

Body Blows as a modal lowers fort by 25 no matter which weapon ability you use with the morning star. If the enemies' fortitude is already not more than 10 points higher than deflection you can also start with Mule Kick (which targets Fortitude) right away. The 10 points because Mule Kick has +10 ACC. If the fortitude is higher than that I would start with a weapon attack that targets deflection. After that usually fortitude is lower than deflection. There are some enemies that have such high discrepancy between deflection and fortitude that this doesn't work out though and it's better to stick to attacks that target deflection - and to turn off Body Blows. Interesting, I thought it would only apply the modal to the "primary" target with things like Clear Out. Definitely something I'll try out when I do my next Battlemage Aloth run. As to Maia, yeah, she just adds a lot of versatility to the party. I build her with almost all her actual skill choices in Ranger, especially the accuracy bonuses, then swap out grimoires as necessary -- being able to pop in an Arcane Dampener or Expose Vulnerabilities on a difficult target is just too useful to pass up. I usually prefer Aloth as my caster anyway, but sometimes I want to swap in Maia for particular quests, so when she's along anyway she might as well be useful. Also helps to have her well-built so she's effective in ship boarding fights.

I think it's too easy to enchant weapons and that. Why does our character know how to do it instantly and can do it anywhere? You should have to go out and find a scroll, maybe there's some buried treasure which has the recipe for it. Then you have to take it to some enchanter or have an arcana skill of x to do it. OH WELL it isn't like that so who cares. I assume that it's because you're a watcher, so you can manipulate soul essence. [

Oh, the lack of stacking was clearly a bug they didn't bother to fix because it was too good.

I only want OG sanguine plate with the cool retaliate effect

The pike modal is great but the unique pikes are crap and/ or hard to obtain so the only one worth using is Citzal's Spirit Lance. I'd say pikes, wands, and battle axes are probably the big holes in terms of available useable uniques. Some more poleaxes would be good also; one does AOE friendly fire damage and the other is locked to three classes only.

I wonder if you could use Defensive Mindweb to overwrite the fool's cap penalty and make it functionally foe-only. It probably wouldn't work in practice because 10' is fairly far in game terms and you'd have to keep your deflection-stick character out of the range.

Hah, that sounds like something for the bug forum.

It's not really a "mod" as such but if it's possible to look through the game files and figure out where the Bracers of Greater Deflection are supposed to spawn, that information would be greatly appreciated!

Theoretically at least there's a maximum cap on defensive bonus utility -- if you're just always being missed anyway, additional points of defense don't add much.

I generally go Eder swashbuckler / pallegina herald / xoti priest / aloth on my runs, but aloth's role changes a bit depending. He can be extremely strong as a battlemage or spellblade.

It's genuinely annoying me that I don't know where the wahaki tua and bracers of greater deflection drop. The Pathfinder boots drop location I forget but it's been posted on this forum and should be findable in a search. The Ring of Focused Flame is also great for fire-nuke-build priests. You can also get a free Physicker's Belt from the derelict ship south of Tikawara.

One question I had actually was whether or not you could get higher defensive values with a Battlemage Aloth than with a Spellblade Aloth. It seems like you *should* be able to but a lot of the fighter active abilities -- vigorous defense, conqueror stance, etc. -- may not stack with Mirror Images, Llengrath's Displaced Image, etc.

SCepter usually works fine.

I've been having a lot of fun with Spellblade Aloth. All you need is mirror images and he can be a very effective deflection tank with just the martial masteries grimoire equipped. Then switch out a Disruption grimoire and he's a perfectly effective caster counter, too. You don't really need the top-end Wizard powers; they;re nice but also a bit gratuitous.

There's also the issue that in Eora, there's clear, proven knowledge that souls aren't gendered and "you" can be female in one life and male in the next etc. Gender as a whole is just a more fluid concept in this setting.

I'm also running into this problem --- have gotten up to level 15 on this run with no random encounters in Neketaka at all. Current patch 2.(whatever we're on as of today) save file here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=11Jkpf6ks-x4pcZnL1n4Q5KY-xt82powq I suspect it's because I picked up the Cornett of Waves before getting the quest to do so but could be wrong.

Depends what you mean by "viable." You can beat the game with any cipher I expect, even on PotD.

Only a few and most of them aren't that useful or can also be obtained from fixed locations -- all from the random map treasure pinatas, the burial mounds and towers etc. Thing is I've routinely reloaded those pinatas to find various specific things (spyglass, drake pendant, etc.) and have never found this item, and I want it for an Aloth spellblade build I'm putting together. Some unique items like "Kapana Taga" or "Reckless Brigandine" are also not guaranteed drops. So don't plan with them for a build on Trial of Iron playthroughs I think that's a bug as of the latest patch. Otherwise encounter loot is very standardized. You do get less loot if you sink ships via the minigame instead of boarding, but named loot is supposed to still drop.

Is it possible to check the game files to figure out where they *should* drop? I feel like I remember someone talking about doing that with the Red Hand to confirm that it wasn't dropping anywhere.

Only a few and most of them aren't that useful or can also be obtained from fixed locations -- all from the random map treasure pinatas, the burial mounds and towers etc. Thing is I've routinely reloaded those pinatas to find various specific things (spyglass, drake pendant, etc.) and have never found this item, and I want it for an Aloth spellblade build I'm putting together.

Has anyone found a location for these? They seem red-hand-esque.

Mine look pretty much exactly like that and my first thought was "awesome, that's *waaaaay* better than I would have been able to pain them myself." I like painted minis but I lack the hand/eye coordination to paint them. The only downside was that Eder's sword was kinda bent weird and I had to straighten it with my finger but that's also normal for figs.

Oh, fixes to the ship combat system: Presuming that they keep the same basic system -- I'd really like to see a tacking mechanic added. Angled turning and sailing (i.e., on a slow ship, you turn 45 degrees in a round instead of 90, etc.) ; approaching at an angle lets you move toward them at half speed and fire at half accuracy; a wind direction mechanic where you can't sail *into* the wind but have to tack if the enemy is directly upwind; etc. I realize I'm probably the only person who wants this but there's a real potential for a fun ship minigame there, it's just that the current incarnation is too simplified for the people who want cool naval combat and too complex for the people who don't.

My current install speed where I live is incredibly inconsistent. My download speed currently is 28kb/s (Yes that's kilobytes!) and has been for about two days. No joke. I absolutely understand the frustration. I do not live in a place with good internet and when it does work it's also very poor. It sucks. Ok, fair point. Still . . .how do you patch?