omgFIREBALLS

Someone shared the tip you can power attack with a wand to make it briefly light things up, but yeah. For most part the game just decides to light up when I enter dark spaces. My headcanon is that I have bioluminescent growths on my face.

Eh, I think something in-game told me, but I can't find it. This article says 35% too.

I believe it's not considered bad, but you have to manually alternate between the weapons, and you can't block/parry. Haven't heard good things about them, I'm afraid. But also, it seems you can make every build work right now, so it's just a question of OP vs. more OP. You deal bonus damage to unaware enemies, and in fact if you try to melee them you will automatically use a special ability that does very high damage. But, once in combat enemies stay aware and there's no flanking debuff. It's possible to drop combat and try to land another Divine Thorn, but your companions (which you are forced to use) generally view your sneak attack as a go signal, so you'll have to wait for them to get knocked out before mobs will relax. I don't think Shadowing Beyond lets you use it in combat... I hear better things about guns, but I haven't tried playing an archer/gunner myself.

Common internet misconception: I will annoy people if I make a thread for my question, so instead I will derail an existing thread with it, because that is more subtle and appropriate. On topic, since this thread was bumped, I can say the answer to my question is no, misconceptions about Skyrim notwithstanding. You have to alternate your attacks for proper DW and you cannot block while dual wielding.

For a brief intro: Weapons and armor have quality tiers, going from Common +0 all the way to Legendary +3. Each tier improves the item's stats, and if the "tier difference" between you and your opponent is large enough (4), the one with the better equipment gets an additional 35% bonus. As in, my weapon is so much better than your armor that on top of the impressive damage my upgraded weapon is doing against your weak armor, I get an extra 35%. So, having upgraded gear makes the game a lot easier. And, to go between tiers, say from Fine +3 to Exceptional +0, you need Adra or its upgrades (Awakened Adra etc). This is a bottleneck. Update: Only applies to uniques. Since uniques are pretty much objectively better than plain equipment however, we still want to do this. On my first playthrough I tried to upgrade my starting gear... I spent all of Dawnshore struggling to reach Fine (while a lot of monsters have Fine equipment). Then I spent all of Emerald Stair struggling to reach Exceptional (which monsters tend to have there). Then I just started buying upgraded equipment as soon as I got into a new zone instead, and started preaching this method too. People discovered that uniques you loot will scale up to whatever you currently have equipped (or maybe in your possession). You have Exceptional armor; you loot Exceptional unique armor. Someone on Reddit galaxy brained how to best take advantage of this. Inspired by this post, I started a PotD run. I avoided all uniques until I was able to buy a Fine armor and weapon (Update: If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps, I've been informed it's cheaper to upgrade plain items to Fine, and that requires no Adra). Then I selected one weapon and one armor that would be my equipment for Dawnshore and broke down all other uniques. Since I looted them as Fine, breaking them down gave me Adra, which I turned into Awakened Adra, which eventually allowed me to (combined with buying Adra from merchants and looting it here and there) upgrade my weapon and armor to Exceptional before even leaving Dawnshore. Had I played normally, I would have had Common equipment when looting these uniques and not received any Adra for scrapping them. I also would have probably saved some of them because hey, maybe I'll want to use them, or I want to keep them for transmog. And this is where you say, hey that's what I'm doing and experiencing. I feel you. You're struggling to upgrade because you didn't metagame. Anyway, it gets a little worse. What I'd done in Dawnshore wasn't even fully optimal. Even better would be to pick one slot to focus on (I choose armor because I'm very passionate about not getting oneshot), looting my desired armor, then looting all the uniques for the other slot (weapon). Not until I had upgraded my armor to Exceptional would I loot all the other unique armor, which would then, you guess it, drop as Exceptional. What's it matter? Well, Exceptional armor breaks down into Awakened Adra directly - if I loot it as fine I only get 1/3 of that since it takes 3 Adra to make 1 Awakened Adra. That would make it a lot easier to upgrade my weapon and I'd finish the zone with more [Awakened] Adra. I'm even thinking about starting over and doing this. I will, either way, play Emerald Stair like that. I expect to finish Emerald Stair with Superb +1 or +2 equipment. I expect anyone who is playing Emerald Stair right now without research or metagaming is struggling to reach Exceptional (unless they bought it). Which I am about to waltz in there already sporting. The light at the end of the tunnel here is that playing like this doesn't actually get you something you cannot get with a sane playstyle, but you get there sooner and you have a more pleasant journey except for the starting ritual of avoiding uniques. "There" meaning Legendary +3 equipment. I'm not looking to start a riot here. I don't believe Obsidian are happy with this either. Let this post inform your decisions, and feel free to post ideas for how to solve this mess. I can think of an easy one - let transmogs just be a catalog of appearances you've looted rather than requiring you to keep the item around. I like how my armor looks right now, but I will be replacing it in Emerald Stair, and keeping the old one afterwards means I'm not getting Awakened Adra out of it. P.S. You want to get even more degenerate? Loot no uniques in Dawnshore at all, buy Exceptional equipment in Emerald Stair, then loot Dawnshore

Ah, excellent, didn't know it expresses itself like that. That makes it easier to incorporate the Godlike tree.

Using my abilities is fun. I found myself spending most of the early levels avoiding using them, because Essence. Essence does not naturally regenerate, and what items I've found to make it do that are too weak (not that I'd want to rely on them). Essence fragments are also too weak, and I'm not spending points on Harvest Essence unless I feel it would get me through a particularly difficult fight, rather than just reduce downtime. Potion chugging feels a little lame and is unsustainable either way. Since when adventuring outdoors you technically can teleport to a campsite, rest and teleport back where you were after every fight, you're not "really" limited by Essence if instead you are instead fine with being limited by the chore of teleporting back and forth with loading screens on top. I'm not. Now my next point would be that the radial menu sucks for selecting food so it's annoying to have to go into my inventory every time. But, there is this mechanic where "overeating" food just leaves the surplus regeneration waiting to be needed. This is good design, and I asked myself, is there a cap to it? There doesn't seem to be: So with this, if we suppose I eat a month's worth of food in one sitting, I can in fact go through a series of battles and regenerate at a pleasant pace between them, without going into my inventory all the time to select dishes. I can't say this is a tempting playstyle, meme fuel aside. I am right now playing the probably-already-infamous combo of Corrosive Siphon and Blood Magic, which means my abilities are pretty much only limited by their cooldowns. Fights are fun and action packed, but I find myself constantly running around with 0 Essence because why bother with it anymore, unless I run into a fight too tough for me to use my health as ability fuel. Poison immune enemies (which, by the way, seem disproportionately common) aside, where I have to go back to being limited by Essence, since I can't heal back up to fuel Blood Magic. I don't think I've yet felt that this game wouldn't be better with significant natural Essence regeneration.

This probably also means those uniques will sell for more money too. I went back to Dawnshore to grab a unique I'd missed and was surprised to see it drop at Exceptional quality (worth 2k), knowing I could have gotten it at like level 3 if I'd known where to look. So in other words, uniques you don't need immediately should be left behind until you do need them for cash/reagents, because they will magically evolve if left alone. And you have to keep a list of which ones you've yet to collect, across zones. Yeah, this is no good.

For translations, currently these are the strings I need localized. Translate only the "quoted" word/phrase. What's (within parentheses) is just there to give you context. The languages that need translation are those in the dropdown at the top of the calculator, currently minus English and German. It's the same languages as the game is localized in. "Stamina" (the resource in the game): "Requires" (this ability requires you to have this other ability): "Required level": "Available points": "Fighter points" (point spent in fighter skills): "Ranger points": "Wizard points": "Toggle descriptions" (show/hide descriptions): "Grimoire" (the spellbooks in the game): "Grimoires": "Export build": "Toggle spells" (show/hide spells in the grimoires): "Close" (close this window): "Reset current" (reset current skill tree): "Reset all" (reset all skill trees): You can also translate these spell names: Citzal's Spirit Lance Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon Caedebald's Blackbow Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar Minoletta's Missile Salvo Minoletta's Minor Missiles In-game, they don't have the archmage's name attached, but per Discord user Imshail's suggestion I added them for flavor.

Skill calculator here. What I particularly need to know is: Level cap (currently set to 30). Number of bonus skill points available (currently set to 0). This is best handled by posting where and how to get these bonus points, so we don't count anything twice or count two mutually exclusive sources. Grimoires with names and spell lists (I add them as I find them). If you want to help with translations that is also highly appreciated. Not every string can be pulled from the game. German is covered. I'd put this in a builds/theorycraft forum but there isn't one. If one is made, please move my thread there.

It's just a guess for now. We'll have a better one tomorrow.

There is a new URL for the calculator. Spread the word. I'm trying to make the old URL redirect to it, but it might not happen before EA hits. Anyway, this new calculator is... worse! JK, but strict mode is gone, as is some summary stuff. It's however way more maintainable and it will have internationalization. Currently you can change language, but there are barely any translations.

There are some previews in this thread. Early access is out Thursday and that should be when the review embargo is lifted too. At that point there will be plenty of footage.

So this is what it means to refrain from learning refrains.

But but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but that priest build from all those years ago said to get Unforgiven and I always thought it was because attack speed also granted action speed and now my whole life is a lie and what the postenago is this??? I've durganized that flail a dozen times. New special rule: Black market allows refunds.