JerekKruger

Whilst definitely good, I'd say your first stop with a high level Cipher should be Defensive Mindweb. If you can find a good way of building the focus required to cast it super quickly at the start of a fight (I think Raven Darkholme settled on Twin Sting for this purpose) then you'll usually find the rest of the fighter pretty easy. Admittedly this works best when your main character is a Paladin with good Faith and Conviction scores, but it'll generally work well for any party. After casting Mindweb though, Reaping Blades on a Monk is of course an excellent choice. I assume however that the Monk loses his Transcendent Suffering bonuses whilst using Reaping Blades?

Yeah, that claim is just bizarre. It suggests he's either being dishonest, or his only experiences of Diablo games are screenshots. Other than both being isometric games with fantasy settings the two games share almost nothing.

No, I also think the game is too easy and am not opposed to nerfs in general. I think the sabre nerf was a good change for example. It's badly thought out nerfs that I'm against, and this is a prime example of such. I don't think anyone is going to find Pillars significantly more difficult as a result of this nerf, but I do think the Unlabored Blade will be used much less.

I've just remembered another wish: 24 hour days, or at least an even number of hours in a day. Yes, it will involve a retcon, I don't care, 27 hours is a stupid number to divide up a day into and no intelligent species ever would. And yes, this is somewhat tongue in cheek, but this does annoy me far more than it should.

Good idea, get a handle on what spells you like the most then pick the talents that benefit them. Yeah, I just thought I should mention it in case you didn't realise. I totally agree that it's still a good choice. Make sure you remember to switch to it after combat. Interrupting Blows is one of those talents I've never really used. I know interrupt builds can be made to work, but I think they usually require a lot of stacking interruption. I'm not sure how much benefit you'll get from it with this build. As prototype00 says, Wizard's Double, Displaced Image and Mirrored Image are all good. Don't be put off by the "until hit or critically hit" parts of them, they give enough Deflection to make this take a long time (usually). Safeguard is good but high level, don't discount the humble Wizard's Double in shorter fights (+10 DR is irrelevant if you don't actually get hit). You should also be using buffs from other classes for hard fights. Other than that, you get a lot of defence from crowd control. Having an enemy stunned, knocked down or blinded from one of your spells will reduce incoming damage substantially. Another thing to consider: once you get Deleterious Alacrity of Motion (this should absolutely be your level 3 per encounter choice) you can afford to wear pretty heavy armour without much of a speed penalty. That's another source of protection. Also yes, as far as I am aware it works with Citzal's Spirit Lance.

Good point. I really ought to learn more about Eastern religious beliefs. I once had a fascinating conversation with an Indian friend about Hinduism wherein he explained that in some sense, everything is one thing (Brahma?) which has been fractured into many different things (by Shiva? Who is also Brahma?) but is slowly going towards reunification, after which it will shatter again in a cycle. I am probably horribly butchering this, but I remember thinking it was far more interesting than Christian cosmologies (though this might simply be its foreignness).

Almost certainly yes, since it took Livegood118 very little time to reverse the change using the UABE and I imagine Obsidian programmers have better tools and are more familiar with the code. I still think it would have been a better patch with just one change though.

Are only a small minority of players here, complaining about this nerf? Of course. Only a tiny minority of people who own Pillars are even active on these forums. Most people who have played Pillars have probably never fully unlocked the Unlabored Blade, many have probably never even picked it up. None of this makes the nerf a good idea or a good use of Obsidian's time*. Yes, the Unlabored Blade was very powerful when used by a Barbarian. What I don't understand is why, in a noncompetitive single player game this matters. If people want to play an overpowered build then so what? Why did Obsidian feel the need to step in a stop someone having fun in their particular way, on their own, in their own time? Moreover why did they feel the need to do so in a way that made the Unlabored Blade underpowered for every other class. "Sorry dagger wielding Rogue, because someone somewhere is making the game too easy using the Unlabored Blade with a Barbarian we are making this otherwise cool item less good than a boringly named dagger available at the end of Act I with some enchantments." Now I've found a way to revert the UB to its original form, so it's not a big deal for me gameplay wise (and I am not going to use it on a Barbarian anyway since I think Barbarians look silly wielding daggers), but it's the attitude of Obsidian that bothers me. This sort of behaviour is what I'd expect in a MOBA, where balance is important, but it's precisely to get away from this sort of thing that I come to single player games. Baldur's Gate 2 was objectively terribly balanced and yet somehow it managed to be fun. In fact a lot of the fun for many players was because of this, both in learning the system so well as to be able to build ridiculously powerful characters, and challenging themselves trying to beat it with bad ones. It's a shame to see BG2's spiritual successor move away from that. *I realise it probably took about five minutes to do. I think those five minutes would have been better spent letting the programmer who did it go home earlier it's such a pointless change.

What sort of crazy fool wants to hit things with the in game equivalent of Thor's Hammer? EDIT: just in case it's not clear, I was joking. Actually I've been thinking of making my own "redone Soulbound Weapons" mini mod for exactly this reason.

To be fair, it is worth using at the moment, just primarily for casters, and primarily for the +4 Might.

I'd love to see a modding community spring up, but I doubt I'll have time to do more than fairly basic tweaks for my own use (like the above).

I'm not really sure why the fact the base game doesn't contain the Unlabored Blade is relevant. Anyway, it was a good weapon, but not overpowered (or if it was, there were a lot of even more overpowered weapons). The main thing is that it was one of a very small group of Soulbound weapons that wasn't rubbish. Most Soulbound weapons are outperformed by their regular brethren, which is a huge shame given the effort put into their lore and the taken to unlock them. With this nerf, that group is one smaller, as the Unlabored Blade is now outperformed (for non-Barbarians) by a White March Dagger with the Legendary Enchant and a Flaming Lash. Meanwhile, there are plenty of actual bugs left in the game that Obsidian could have been fixing, but they chose to take the time to nerf this weapon, making the game a little less fun. It's not a major issue, but hopefully you can see why it's annoying. Yeah, load times are pretty awful. I think I read somewhere that this is related to the way the Unity engine does things, so hopefully the newer version of Unity will improve matters for PoE2.

Looks decent. One point though, I don't think you'll get the +3 Resolve from Gyrd Haewanes Stenes when wielding any other weapon (this includes summoned weapons). This is a minor detail, but I thought it worth mentioning. Whilst you might not want to Tank, if you're going in melee you will want to invest some points into defensive spells otherwise the AI will target you and you will go down quickly. Luckily, Wizards have a brilliant suite of self buffing defensive spells to choose from so you should be fine. At lower levels you might need to hang back and use a wand or other ranged weapon, but as time goes by you should find it easier and easier to be in melee. One of the good things about a melee Wizard is that it's fairly easy for you to switch to a ranged combatant when there is limited room for melee: simply have a second grimoire filled a more ranged suite of spells for such situations. Blast and Penetrating Blast are good, but probably only if you plan on using Implements (Wands, Rods and Sceptres) a fair amount. I can understand how you feel about Arcane and Hardened Veil: I hate per rest as I always keep them for a more important situation and/or forget I even have them. That said, in the early game (when you are most fragile) they are a great panic button so you could take them then, and retrain out of them later. Personally I wouldn't take more than two elemental talents (and usually just one). For the Wizard, Secrets of Rime is my favourite choice, since they have an absolutely great selection of frost spells. Taking all four seems overkill, and the +5 DR is not enough when it actually matters, and not needed when it's enough. If you plan to do any damage with a melee weapon (and with Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff and, later, Citzal's Spirit Lance you'll definitely want to) then you should definitely take a Weapon Focus Talent. It actually doesn't matter that much which one, since both the Parasitc Staff and the Spirit Lance are part of the "Universal Weapon Pool" which means they benefit from all Weapon Focus Talents (only once, you can't get +12 Accuracy by taking two). The same is true of Soulbound items by the way, so Gyrd Haewanes Stenes will get +6 Accuracy regardless, therefore you'll probably want to choose the talent based on whatever other weapon you're holding. As well as Weapon Focus, you'll probably want to take Two-Handed Style for the +20% damage with summoned weapons. This is particularly great with Spirit Lance given the AoE component and high base damage. Apart from that, Superior Deflection and Bear's(?) Fortitude can't hurt. Perhaps Talents which improve melee damage too?

I'm not convinced myself. The journey spirits from death to reincarnation is fairly common within various belief systems around the world, most obviously Buddhism, and The Leaden Key are basically your quintessential mystery cult (as is, to some extent* the Church of Scientology). This is probably why they are reminiscent of TRES: Foucault's Pendulum was a deliberate parody of this sort of thing. Now Scientology could be an inspiration, but I suspect it's more likely that many of the things that inspired L. Ron also inspired Obsidian. *I say "to some extent" because in our modern world, it's hard to keep the mysteries of a mystery cult truly mysterious.

Oh I totally agree, ultimate death could be a merciful option here. It's partly a question of whether his soul is prone to becoming awakened. If it can go on an have a normal life that's fine, but if he's likely to remember his past again then ultimate death is probably preferable.

Aren't most locked dialogue options simply flavour text? I can think of a few situations where you can save money, but nothing particularly significant.

You don't raise your attributes through levelling up in PoE. The only way to raise your attributes (permanently) is through gear and a few quests. You can also raise your stats temporarily with resting bonuses from inns and an ability your main character learns later in the game (also from buffs in combat, but most of them can't be cast outside of combat). Generally speaking, there are relatively few dialogue options that require more than 16 in any attributes to choose, and perhaps only one or two for each stat requiring more than 18.

No, it's purely based on how many of a given creature you've killed. That's a pretty good idea though, perhaps something to be implemented in the sequel in Obsidian are reading this.

Interesting. I will admit that, since I have fairly fast internet and no download limits, I don't really mind how big the patch is, but I can understand how annoying it must be for those without one of those two things.

Rogue is perhaps the least Might dependent damage dealer. This is because the % damage increase from Might is additive with other % damage increases (which the Rogue gets lots of), not multiplicative. For example, suppose your Rogue has Might 15 (+15% damage) and is sneak attacking (+50% damage), and let's suppose he hits for a base damage of 10, then he will actually do 16.5 (10*(1+0.15+0.15)) damage before DR reduction is applied, and not 17.25 (10*1.15*1.5). As such the bonus damage from Might will quickly get dwarfed by other damage bonuses, and it might be better to keep Might at around 10 and raise other stats instead. The counterpoint to this is Fortitude is probably the most important defence, so if you have average Might and low Constitution you're going to have terrible Fortitude. If you're planning to use a ranged weapon then this is less of a problem, but if you're planning on a melee Rogue then I'd suggest at least keeping Constitution at 8 (preferably 10) and perhaps not lowering Might to 10. Rogue's are also not particularly Intellect dependent. Yes, they have some attacks that cause afflictions which will last longer with higher Intellect, but they have no AoE abilities and there are other classes better suited to debuffing. I'd tend to focus more on increasing your crit chance (high Perception and, I think, some Rogue abilities do this) since if you crit, as well as doing an extra 50% damage (additive again) any affliction you cause lasts 1.5 times as long. I'd probably go with Intellect of 8, but I don't like dumping stats all the way, you could probably go all the way down if you don't mind doing so. If you're planning on fighting in melee then having a few points of Resolve can help make you a less appealing target for the AI's target selection algorithm, so I would say 14 is a nice sweet spot. If you're planning on going ranged then you're right that Resolve is much less important. Here's what I might go with: Melee Rogue Mig 10 Con 10 Dex 18 Per 16 Int 8 Res 14 Ranged Rogue Mig 14 Con 8 Dex 18 Per 18 Int 8 Res 10 Now, I realise this doesn't tick all the dialogue attributes boxes so you might want to tweak things. I'd suggest that it's better to pick one of two dialogue attributes to focus on and not to worry about the others. In general the special dialogue options unlocked by attributes won't give you anything more than different responses: don't expect super powerful item rewards gated behind them. You might sometimes be able to save some money, but honestly money is a non-issue by the mid game. If, however, you are set on keeping more dialogue attributes high then you certainly can. If you're planning on playing with a party then, on hard, the game is fairly forgiving and you definitely don't need to min-max at all. Honestly the only place where min-maxing is (arguably) mandatory is solo PotD. If I were modifying your attribute spread I'd probably go with Mig 10 Con 8 Dex 16 Per 16 Int 14 Res 14 Especially since you've said you don't plan on using Might dialogue options very often. This will work fine for both ranged and melee.

Huh, you know I've never really thought about it that carefully. I had heard mixed things when I first played about whether the secret was available without siphoning his knowledge, and given how minor the bonuses to prestige and security were in the long run I always went with that. Now I know that it is available regardless I really ought to choose a more in character reason. In fact the main reason I hadn't before is because of the ambiguity about what was the kindest option for him. Maerwald's spirit had done some pretty nasty things in the past, but it's clear that Maerwald himself regrets them and I don't see any reason to punish him.

Min Int on a Barbarian? That's a strange choice. Any particular reason you are going for a mono-class party?

Whilst I'm still a bit confused and annoyed about the UB nerf, I've learnt how to change it back manually and, at the same time, learnt the very basics of modding PoE, so it's not all bad.

Excellent! It sounds like it shouldn't be too hard to modify Unlabored Blade in the same way. I'll leave my far too detailed explanation of what I did up for anyone else who might want to know how to do this. EDIT: also thanks for mentioning this in the other thread. I've enjoyed playing with the UABE and I suspect I'll do so a lot more.

Here is what I did step-by-step, just in case there's some minor difference that explains why it worked for me: Open UABE. Select File then Open Navigate to "\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles\prefabs\objectbundle" and double clicked px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d. Select File then Save, and save the file as "Export.assets" (I did this in a different folder to the PoE one). Select File then Open and open Export.assets. Click the Info button. Scroll down to MonoBehaviour ID 209 and click the "Export Dump" button, and save it as Dump.txt. Open Dump.txt, scroll to the bottom of the file and change "AbilityTriggerChance = 0.100000" to "AbilityTriggerChance = 1.000000" (or whatever other value you want). Save and close it. Go back to the "Info" window for Export.assets and make sure MonoBehaviour ID 209 is still selected. Click the "Import Dump" button and double click Dump.txt. Select File and Save. Close the Info window Select File and Save in the main UABE window and save the file as "Import.assets". Select File and Open and once again navigate to "\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles\prefabs\objectbundle" and double clicked px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d. Click the Import button and double click your Import.assets files. Select File and Save and save the file as px1_battle_axe_wodewys2.unity3d Backup the original px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d file somewhere safe, then rename "px1_battle_axe_wodewys2.unity3d" to "px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d" and move it to the "\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles\prefabs\objectbundle" folder. That's all. Hopefully if it works the same as it did for me then the change should be in game.