JerekKruger

Last question before I start my character: powers, what's good? In particular what's good early game and is Antipathetic Field worth taking for a melee Cipher? For level one and two, the only powers I absolutely know I'll take are Whisper of Treason and Mental Binding.

Yeah, I realised afterwards that "interesting" could be interpreted as "I am not convinced", which wasn't the intended meaning. At this point I must admit I am probably settled on Bittercut + shield (in my defence, I have literally never used Bittercut before*), which is part of the reason I want to), although I will probably mess around with a few other options to see how they play for me. I will say that I won't be benefiting from Silver Tide. I rarely take Godlikes these days, but even when I do I never take Moon ones. This is mainly because I don't like the way they look, but partly a carryover from the early days of PoE where the solution to anything difficult seemed to be "use a Moon Godlike and it becomes easy". I am sure balance has been improved since then, but there's always a voice in the back of my head telling me taking a Moon Godlike is taking the easy path (silly, I know). *It was fairly recently that I understood exactly why it's such a good weapon - and to be fair, the reasons aren't all obvious - and before that I always avoided it, rather sillily, because of the penalty to Poison Defence.

Frenzy comes with a buff to Might and Constitution I guess (and perhaps importantly as a result, a pretty hefty buff to Fortitude), but otherwise it does seem rather redundant.

Thanks for the clarification Max. I always knew Lashes were good, partly because everyone always said they were good, but the fact they are multiplicative really explains why they are so good. I need to be less stingy with my hordes of enchanting materials in my next game. Don't worry about that, I've had this thread open whilst scribbling on a (physical*) notepad to decide on this build so I'm not missing the earlier advice. In fact I'm particularly interested in Braven's suggestion of self targetting with Psychovampiric Shield before combat. With Shod-in-Faith I'm tempted to put them on another, higher Might melee character (perhaps Zahua) and rely on the AoE overlapping my Cipher. That might be a little riskier though, since if my Cipher gets critted whilst Zahua doesn't then there's no proc happening. Part of me is now tempted to also run a Berathian priest at the same time as my Cipher, but if I do it'll really have to be the main character, and at that point it'll be hard to tell if the Cipher's really viable or is just being carried by the overpoweredness of a Priest who isn't Durance. I think I will stick with just one player made character. *I'm an old man. If this were the world of Logan's Run** I'd be dead. **Book or Movie!

Yeah, I suspect we'll either not get multiclassing, or we'll get multiclassing but all existing classes will be significantly rebalanced in the sequel. I can't see any way that simply adding multiclassing to the current system won't end up with horrendously overpowered builds. I'm not talking Kensai/Mage levels of overpowered, I am talking builds which make the Kensai/Mage seem weak.

How do Might and Lashes fit into the damage calculation? I want to calculate how much damage Bittercut will do on a Cipher with Biting Whip, Spirit of Decay, Savage Attacks and a Corrosive Lash. At the moment I have: (11-16)*(1 + 0.2 + 0.2 + 0.4 + 0.2) = 22 - 32 For everything other than the Lash and any Might contribution. What I don't know is whether Lashes and Might and additive like everything else, or are mulitplicative (I vaguely remember seeing someone refer to Lashes as multiplicative, and since Dexterity works differently to +Attack Speed I thought Might might also work different to other +Damage sources). EDIT: based on this thread it seems that Lashes are multiplicative whilst Might is additive, so the correct calculation would be: (11-16)*(1 + 0.2 + 0.2 + 0.4 + 0.2 + x)*1.3 ≥ 28.6 - 41.6, where x is the Might modifier (1.3 for the Lash because Spirit of Decay applies to it). Throwing on a quality enchant will push this even higher obviously. That seems like pretty good damage to be doing with a single one handed weapon.

I wasn't sceptical mosspit, just surprised (and interested).

Of Berath? I was playing around with the idea of Berathian Priest using Tidefall and focused on being a Vessel killer. Holy Radiance can do some pretty high damage when maxed out but I wasn't sure if it would benefit from the vessel killer talent (Sanctifier?). Also I noticed that Eyeless Ones are immune to fire which, perhaps wrongly, put me off. Interesting. Drake's Bell (Boeroer got an item name wrong ) is one of those weapons I never end up using, but that additional DR reduction is pretty useful, and Beast Slayer is not bad either. I am, however, somewhat paranoid about single damage type weapons. Are there many enemies of significance that are immune to pierce, or that have significantly higher pierce DR than others (by significantly I guess I mean more than 5 for BotEP and... loads?... for Drake's Bell). I always forget that Tidefall has Draining. In my head it's "Tidefall, is Superb, has Wounding" and I stop there since even if that was all it had, that would be amazing. Interesting that you were able to remain in melee with most of the tougher fights in the game.

It's certainly a weapon I'm fond of so I'll give it a try. It's not like there's a rush to decide on a weapon.

I'd agree with one caveat: give us more just-swords. In PoE there are several really good Greatswords, a couple of really good Estocs, three or four really good Sabres and very few good just-swords. Actually there are a couple of pretty good just-swords, but they are available so late in the game that it's basically over and you hardly get to use them. I'd love to see a "spell schools" system added along with specializations.

Yeah, when you learn what exactly his staff is, and how it's linked to him, it really makes a lot of sense for it to be Soulbound, and it would get around the fact that the Magran specific talent is for Swords and Arquebuses rather than Staves. I am, however, fairly certain it's never going to be patched in now sadly.

I'm not yet set on sabre, but it is hard to resist the temptation of Bittercut and if I go weapon and shield I'll want my weapon to do decent damage. I considered the Novice's Suffering route, but the fist damage there just didn't seem that good, and whilst staves are perfectly good weapons none of the staves in the game is "exciting" if you understand what I mean.

I thought that might be the case. Good to know. I might use Durance's Staff in the early game. After all, I probably won't take a Weapon Focus till after at least the two Whip upgrade talents, and it might be helpful in the early game to poke at people from behind Edér et al.

I've just carefully reread all the replies in the thread and now know for certain that either dual wielding, a two-hander, a reach weapon, or a shield is best. Damn it people, why can't you all agree At the moment I am tending towards using a weapon and (small) shield. Precisely which weapon will probably depend on aesthetics and thematic considerations, plus of course effectiveness. @Eric Galad: Tall Grass is a great weapon, but it occurs to me that a Cipher can cause Prone easily already with Mind Wave (admittedly the targeting is a little tricky), or indeed Paralyse via Mental Binding. Hence I think I'd prefer a weapon that has some bonus to damage done, like Annihilation, to speed up focus generation, and rely on my powers for crowd control. Meanwhile a Barbarian could be using Tall Grass and knocking multiple enemies prone with each hit. EDIT: a couple of questions on weapons: I notice that Max recommended Purgatory rather than Bittercut. Roughly how do these two stack up against each other? As I understand it, Spirit of Decay adds 20% damage to all attacks made with Bittercut, regardless of which damage type it uses, so we're comparing +20% all the time against +50% on crits. Also Bittercut does two damage types, so is less likely to be completely resisted and more likely to be facing a lower DR than Purgatory. Thoughts? Does the Wounding Enchantment build Focus? Related to this, does Wounding stack with itself and am I right in thinking Wounding is actually best with lower Intellect characters (due to the damage being concentrated into a shorter duration DoT)? The second question obviously relates to the excellent Drawn in Spring dagger, which it occurs to me would probably be good both with a Shield or dual wielded with itself using the Helwax Mold. I have to say, if I were to use DiS with a shield I think I would have to play with an Orlan or a Dwarf, since I feel it looks weird on larger characters.

Just a quick post to say thanks for all the replies. At some point today I'll sit down and read them carefully and have a go at coming up with something. Then, if you guys want to you can tell me where it can be improved.

The first character I played through (most*) of the game with was a melee Cipher, and it has been a class build that I have returned to time and again since then. However when I build my Cipher in this way he inevitably spends a significant portion of his combat time taking a nap, and ever since respeccing was added to the game I've usually respecced him to a ranged Cipher at some point out of frustration. Despite this, I still want to complete the game with a melee Cipher and, more importantly, have fun doing so, so I thought I'd turn to the good people of the "Pillars of Eternity: Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning)" forum for advice. I also noticed that of the three Cipher builds in the build list, two are ranged and the sole melee one is an outdated (though still effective) retaliation build of Boeroer's. A secondary objective of this thread would be to end up with a new melee Cipher build to add to the list so that other players who are, like me, struggling to make this class build work will have a solid example of it easily available. Ideally this would include some interesting item synergies (if there are any) that are not immediately obvious to less experienced players Since ranged Ciphers are relatively easy to build and tend to be very effective, perhaps the place to start is with the two major differences between them and melee Ciphers (that I can see), and how to accommodate them. So, here goes: Ranged Cipher's can, generally speaking, afford to have low Resolve and wear light (or even no) armour since they shouldn't be getting hit much. A melee Cipher doesn't necessarily have that luxury. How much additional protection would you give a melee Cipher? (What Resolve, what armour, would you give them a shield and, if so, which type etc.) Because of their positioning in Combat some powers seem less effective for melee Cipher's than for ranged Cipher's. In particular Antipathetic Field, which comes highly recommended in many Cipher guides seems much less effective for a melee Cipher since they can less easily manoeuvre themselves into a position to use it effectively and their targets will generally speaking be less far away, leading to a shorter beam. Are there any powers that you would not take on a melee Cipher that you would on a ranged one, and vice versa? If so, why No doubt there are other differences, so feel free to outline them and explain how you would modify a build for them. Beyond that we can get onto specifics. What sort of Attribute spread would people recommend? What gear should a melee Cipher use? What Powers and Talents should they take? The list goes on... *I have a terrible habit of abandoning playthroughs part way through Act III.

Ah my mistake, I saw the word durable and assumed you were building a shield user. I'd still be cautious of your low Fortitude and would personally drop your Perception (perhaps to 15) a few points to raise Constitution and/or Might, and I'd definitely take Bear's Fortitude at some point.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I actually don't think the above is all that durable. Sure, you've given yourself +6 deflection but that only brings you 21, lower than Fighters, Chanters, Monks and Paladins (due to Faith and Conviction) and if you take Reckless Assault you're back down to 13, lower than everyone apart from a Wizard (and the Wizard will have a bunch of spells to temporarily buff their Deflection when needed). Meanwhile, your Fortitude defence (the most important defence, particularly for a melee class) is at -2. That just seems to be asking for trouble (note that mosspit's build has +5 Fortitude from Attributes and +10 from Bear's Fortitude). Also, if you use a shield and take Weapon and Shield style your Reflex defence is going to be high already, so you really don't need the +16 from having both Dexterity and Perception at 18. If anything, I'd favour dropping Perception down (you're already the class that has the highest innate Accuracy potential) and raising your Might and/or Constitution to bring your Fortitude defence back up (as well as the other benefits from those Attributes being higher). Of course, someone might tell me I'm completely wrong. I am nowhere near as knowledgeable as others on this subforum.

If you fight Raedric with a full group, after doing all the quests in Act I, you can absolutely beat him without abusing doors, even on PotD. I know this because I too hate abusing doors. I would recommend not immediately attacking him though, instead agreeing to help him to that you can rearrange your party, then talking to him again and attacking.

I dunno. When you first meet Zahua, he asks you if you're real and your options are "Yes", "No", "Yes", "No" and a few others. Not lying in this case is somewhat tricky, at least if you want to answer "No" (I think the first yes is not a lie). EDIT: I think I am wrong actually. I believe [Lie] and [Deceptive] are two tags, and that [Lie] should remain even with disposition tags turned off. I might be wrong though.

If you pause your way through the first minute or so of his Thaos fight you can work most of it out. A few specific items might not be obvious but you can probably work them out from the start of the Llengrath fight.

The ingredients for lower tier enchantments are plentiful and, I believe, semi-renewable via the stronghold, so throwing those enchantments on gear you will eventually replace is no bad thing. Obviously with any of the super rare enchanting materials you'll want to be careful on what you use them on. Also for a few builds (like quick switching gun builds) it makes a lot of sense to enchant mundane items since there simply aren't enough unique ones of the appropriate type in the game.

Jnpc? But yeah, once you realise just how powerful Wrath of the Five Suns is, it does make other Paladins feel a bit weak. Later into the game its power wanes a little (enemies tend to have higher DR and iirc each ball has to overcome DR so it's affected disproportionately by DR0, and the joy that is Sacred Immolation appears, bringing other Paladins back up to parity (yes Pallegina has it too, but her lower Might and Intellect mean that she won't be quite as good with it as most player build Paladins). That said, I quite like Pallegina. Her character is woefully underdeveloped in the game, but the little that does appear makes me hope we'll see her return in PoE2 if, for no other reason, to give her a proper chance to be developed.

You're welcome, glad it was useful. My actually work is somewhat related to cryptography actually, but in this case I simply went to "\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles" (where exactly Pillars of Eternity is installed will vary depending on whether you use Steam or GOG or other services, and I guess this will be different in Linux) then searched various key words from the items you asked about, specifically "Blighted", "Iverra", "Amaia" and "grammon" (nautilus didn't work due to the typo). Usually only one file will appear, but occasionally several will and you'll have to take an educated guess as to which one is the item (or try them all in game to find out). Pillars is a game that rewards experience I think. My first ever play through was on normal, and it was also probably my toughest. I then ran a few on hard and found that since I had learnt the sorts of things various enemies were weak against they were a lot easier (also hard isn't all that much of a step up from normal). Finally I started playing on PotD and, whilst the early game is definitely tougher, the knowledge you gain from having played on easier difficulties serves you well in dealing with the higher difficulty. As for NPC control, that definitely is something that is trickier in "real time with pause" than turn based. I solve it by going a little bonkers with the pause button but I know a lot of people don't have my patience for that sort of micro. I think that's fairly normal. It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that, unlike in Baldur's Gate, a Fighter could run with a Might of 16 and not be crippled compared to one with a Might of 18. Once I realised this though it made me very happy, as I've always hated builds with dumped stats (e.g. a Rogue with Intellect 3 say) so knowing that I wasn't crippling my builds by being less extreme was nice. As a general rule of thumb, all bonuses from increasing Attributes scale linearly. For example, each point of Might above 10 increases your damage caused by 3% and gives you +1 to your Fortitude Defence. I am fairly certain that, if you open up your character sheet it will tell you exactly what bonuses each Attribute gives your characters, and a bit of simple division will allow you to work out what each point above 10 gives. As a general rule of thumb, the first enchantments you should get for a weapon are the "quality" ones (fine, exceptional, superb etc.). Then, if your weapon still has sufficient enchantment slots free (most will) get an elemental lash (which element is up: my advice would be to either go Corrode or, if your character has one of the elemental damage talents like "Secrets of Rime" then go with the same element as that). After that, go with whatever you want that will fit. I wouldn't worry about not being able to finish the game. The difficulty curve of PoE is such that the hardest part is the early game, and it gets easier as you go. On Normal, any full party should be able to defeat the final boss. It might take a few attempts but it certainly shouldn't be impossible. Yeah, in my second play through I decided not to sell anything until I got maximum reputation with Gilded Vale with the hope of getting the best prices possible. Turns out it was a waste of time. The only way to lower shop prices are the quests like you mention. That said, by the mid to late game you'll likely be swimming in cash if, like me, you're a compulsive looter. By the end of some of my play throughs the innkeeper in Gilded Vale has hundreds of Xaurip Spears That might be the case actually yeah. I always pick a junk shop to sell all my junk to (usually the Gilded Vale innkeeper) to reduce clutter in shops I actually care about. Actually, in PoE2 I'd prefer it if normal quality gear was not dropped by enemies since, after the very early game, it just serves as inventory clutter. I never issue more than one command per character at a time. Combat starts and I issue initial commands. After a second or two I'll pause to override some of those commands if they're no longer appropriate. I then pause combat periodically to issue new commands when necessary. Do you mean "before that battle starts"? If I understand correctly, Obsidian wanted to avoid the somewhat ridiculous prebuffing that occurred in Infinity Engine games, where you'd spend upwards of a minute before important fights casting a whole range of buffs in a precise order to ensure maximum duration for them all. Whilst perhaps more realistic, it was incredibly tedious.

Not as far as Achievements are concerned, which is the nearest we get to an official ruling on what is, and isn't cheating. Whether you personally view it as cheating is, I guess, down to you. I usually avoid it, but more because it's tedious and breaks my immersion than that it's cheating. Based on the game files I'd guess: figurine_blighted_coals, helm_iverras_diving_bell, pet_amaias_codex (or possibly item_pet_amaias_codex) and figurine_the_nautlius_of_or-grammon I believe reputation is almost exclusively used for gating certain conversations. There may also be one or two quests that are unlocked through reputation (the only one I can think of just like that is the Kolsc will approach you in Gilded Vale to ask you to kill Raedric if your reputation is high enough, otherwise you need to travel towards Raedric's Hold and meet him on the way there). It doesn't seem to have any affect on shop prices though. Arguably this is not a bad thing. On lower difficulties the differences are fairly minor (unless you come across an enemy who's immune to piercing say) and Paths of the Damned is primarily targeted at those players who enjoy immersing themselves in the mechanics and will pay attention to the specific damage reductions of an enemy and adjust their weapon based on them. I'd say the most natural role for the Paladin is as a tank/support hybrid: their job is to take hits for the party whilst also providing various buffs at the same time. One thing that takes some getting used to in PoE (compared to, say, Baldur's Gate) is that attributes are really not that important. They all scale linearly so a few points here and there really don't matter. In particularly, none of the NPC companions are crippled by their attributes.