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This build was created for a collaboration with @Aestus who runs the Youtube channel Aestus_RPG. This is build 2 of 3 from that collaboration. You can find a link to that video down below. ----------------------------------------- This build is mainly meant for inspiration. You don't need to follow it in detail to have fun. If you understand the key features - the basic idea what makes this build special - you can usually deviate from non-core attribute-, skill-, gear- and ability selection and form the build to your own likings and ideas. ----------------------------------------- n the Living Lands, there exists a Druid named Rhuar - a rugged, rather ugly man with a deep connection to the natural world. Born in a small, secluded village on the fringes of a vast forest, Rhuar spent his youth learning the ways of both nature and martial combat. His affinity for the land and its tasty bugs was nurtured by the village's ancient traditions, passed down through generations of Druids. Rhuar discovered his spiritshift ability early on - able to transform into a wild boar, a creature of strength and resilience, embodying the untamed power of the wilderness - aaand able to sniff all the tasty bugs! This transformation not only granted him unparalleled endurance and a welcome snack every now and then, but also the remarkable ability to regenerate, healing wounds with every blow he takes. As a boar, Rhuar is a force of (dirty) nature, charging through enemies with ferocity and amouthful of chitin. But even when not in his animal form, Rhuar remains a formidable fighter. His years of training in hand-to-hand combat have turned him into a skilled pugilist. With fists like iron, he strikes with precision, using his human form to deliver punishing blows that complement his druidic powers. Though Rhuar’s life is simple, it is not without turmoil: driven by an unyielding sense of duty to protect the natural world from encroaching dangers and the wish to dig up some squishy worms from time to time, he roams the land, seeking balance between the feral instincts of his wild boar form and the wisdom of his human heart. Whether in battle or in peace, Rhuar is a guardian of nature a warrior with the soul of a beast and a tummy full of tasty bugs. =================================== The Vigorous Warthog =================================== Difficulty: PotD -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Druid -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Human (or Aumaua, Dwarf, Nature Godlike) -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: The Living Lands - Colonist -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats: MIG: 20 (+1 Living Lands) CON: 14 DEX: 12 PER: 12 INT: 16 RES: 04 -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Survival 12, Athletics 9 -------------------------------------------------------------- Talents (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) 2: Wildstrike Shock (!)(or whatever element you like) 4: Novice's Suffering(!) 6: Veteran's Recovery(!) 8: Weapon Focus Peasant(r) 10: Greater Wildstrike Shock(r) 12: Two-Weapon-Style(r) 14: Outlander's Frenzy 16: Heart of the Storm Abilities 9: Spell Mastery: Nature's Vigor 11: Spell Mastery: Taste of the Hunt 13: Spell Mastery: Nature's Balm 15: Spell Mastery: Form of the Delemgan Story Talents: - Second Skin - Dungeon Delver - Song of the Heavens - Galawain's Boon (+1 MIG) - Gift from the Machine (+1 MIG) - Effigy's Resentment: Maneha (+1 MIG) --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (!=important, r=recommended): Weapon Set 1: fists (!)(Novice's Suffering) Weapon Set 2: two hatchets (r) Boots: Sandals of the Forgotten Friar (r) Head: Hermit's Hat Armor: Wayfarer's Hide/Sanguine Plate Neck: Mantle of the Dying Boar (obviously )/Fulvano's Amulet Belt: Wildstrike Belt® Rings: Pensiavi mes Rèi, Ring of Thorns Hands: Mourning Gloves/Gauntlets of Swift Action --------------------------------------------------------------- Hi again! Another late build for PoE - I was invited for a second interview by @Aestus again, this time for PoE: And since I talked about some PoE build ideas in the forum but never posted them, we thought this was a good opportunity to do so. The Vigorous Warthog is a Boar Druid - obviously. The Boar form grants two very good abilities while shifted: a wounding lash on your tusk weapons and also a constant regeneration effect similar to a Fighter's Constant Recovery. Speaking of Constant Recovery: the cross-class talent "Veteran's Recovery" does stack with the boar regeneration so we'll take it, too. We can build around those things and create a Druid who is surprisingly sturdy and at the same time does great melee damage while shifted, especially against enemies with thick armor. Wounding - as you might already know - scales with Might, and the healing you do does as well - so we have a double motivation to raise our Might high. This also helps all our spells that deal damage and heal us and others. We want to deal the majority of our melee damage when shifted - but Spiritshift is not endless and often enough we will shift back before the fight is over. For that we might need some fitting backup weapons. Best to use some who don't need a lot of mony and resources to be good, they are for backup only after all. Soulbound weapons come to mind or even a summoned weapon such as Firebrand: they scale without resources. Or - just hear me out - we use our fists. Novice's Suffering works in a weird way: it leaves your fists' base damage untouched but instead adds a rahter big flat damage bonus to them. Since most damage bonuses use the weapons' base damage as... well... base, adding damage bonuses to fists doesn't do much. But on the flipside damage maluses like grazes also don't influence the damage output much. The flat bonus however doesn't get influenced by anything - except Might! Yes, again Might - another reason to pump it. This leads to a set of backup weapons that does increbibly consistent damage, even if the wearer hasn't that much accuracy (like a Druid for example). And except the talent point they cost nothing. Later we add the Sandals of the Forgotten Friar. They add a second (small) flat dmg bonus to unarmed attacks and is also influenced by Might. Now we maxize it during character creation (Dwarf, Aumaua or Human for bonus Might - or even Nature Godlike for the chance to get stackable +3 MIG when under 50% endurance) and use a nice +MIG item (I chose a ring but it doesn't really matter). Outlander's Frenzy can give us another +3 MIG. But we can also use the Sanguine Plate for that: wait until you were hit by a crit and Frenzy procs, then spiritshift: the Frenzy will stay with you - and you spared a talent point. I picked the Wayfarer's Hide however - mostly because of the looks. Use the Blighthollow Resting in Caed Nua for +3 extra Might, it lasts for 3 rests in the wilderness. Make sure to pick up the Wildstrike Belt. What it does it pretty amazing (and obscured by its vague description): it will ad 10% to your Wildstrike damage it says. But what it really does: It adds +10% to your Wildstrike lash, raising it from 30% to 40%. But it also adds 10% to your Greater Wildstrike lash! Those two are separate lashes - and the latter one is only 15% which has to overcome enemies DR/4, too. Low lashes often get eaten up by enemies DR, so raiing this 15% lash to a 25% lash is great. Now your Wildstrike does +40% elemental lash damage and +25% elemental lash damage. No it's totally worth it to pick up one of the elemental damage talents like Heart of the Storm. It will raise both lashes, too: from 40% to 48% and from 25% to 30%. Now you do almost as much lash damage as physical tusk damage. And remember: wounding, buffed up by lots of MIG, comes on top! All Rogues who witness this go home crying and decide to attend Druid Evening School... Your Boar + Veteran's Regeneration is very good, too, allowing you to hang out at the front line after some levels. And you can always increase it with a powerful healing spell of course. The best apporach is to first cast some useful spells (Avenging Storm, Form of the Delemgan, Nature's Balm etc.) and only then rush into battle, swinging tusks left and right. And should Spieitshift end before the fight ends you can punch around with your meaty fists - or cast spells of course. Against crush-immune foes you can use a set of solid hatchets: they grant some deflection and deal slash damage - and they share the same weapon focus as fists. 99% of times you won't need them though. Since Novice's Suffering fists don't profit much from damage bonuses I skipped Savage Attack, Appr. Sneak Attack etc. and instead focused on Might, speed and lash improvement. Cheers and have fun!

(Updated 24-Feb-2020) Have been looking at the characters.gamedatabundle and discovered that it is possible to make spiritshift essentially unlimited, and also to make it useable outside of combat. It’s possible many of you know this already? 1. Open characters.gamedatabundle in PillarsOfEternityII_Data\exported\design\gamedata 2. Ctrl-F find DebugName":"Spiritshift_Bear","ID":"0db41697-d8b9-49fa-b31e-67eb9c3a9693 3. There is a line of code, "IsCombatOnly":"true” Change this to "IsCombatOnly":"false" 4. This makes spiritshift available outside of combat. 5. Then there is a line of code just after this "DurationOverride" make this "DurationOverride":9999999 6. This makes the duration of the spiritshift essentially unlimited. You could input any number you wish. It also works for turn-based mode. If you remain in your spiritshifted form then when you enter a new area, you can walk around as a werewolf or werestag etc. but not in combat pose, rather just in normal pose, which is cool. There is something awesome about walking around town as a giant were-stag... like a Watcher Baphomet... or a big bad wolf... I'll try to get this presentable as a mod. This would be ideal for multiclass druid-monk or caster class, as you can cast spells whilst spiritshifted.

The Thundercat - or 'crit me maybe on more time!' --------------------------------------------- Difficulty: PotD; Game version 3.02 --------------------------------------------- "The Thundercat is on the move, The Thundercat is loose, Feel the magic, hear its roar, The Thundercat is loose. Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercat! Thunder, thunder, thunder, THUNDERCAT!" Intro Pictures Race, Heritage and Background Attribute Scores Talents & Abilities Spell Mastery Skills Equipment Buffs & Party Composition Spell Guide

Just purchased the game on Nintendo Switch. Main character is Druid with Stag Spiritshift. The Spiritshift ability was working fine for several hours, but now isn't working under any condition. I can't select it manually in the radial menu - the option is there but it simply won't activate. Also, with Spiritshift AI enabled, the character still won't switch when engaged. This is happening through many encounters, different save files, multiple locations. Is anyone else experiencing this? Any suggestions on how to fix it?

So I'm considering a Pathfinder: Rogue(Trickster or nothing) + Druid(shifter) as my watcher and main tank The plan is to abuse the hell out of the free heals from shifting forms to just face tank all the damage while using rogue abilities to setup sneak attacks on target. Did a quick test and trickster's illusion "spells" are treated as abilities for the purpose of shifter's penalty, hurrah for 10 free instant heals and mirror image+riposte Looks decent on paper, but the paper leaves out some information I'm hoping to get from people around here First and most important, Does the heal from form shifting scale, and if so from what? I assume might since might scales all the other healing, but is there anything else, Character level(ideal but not expected) Power level(expected) or Max HP(Could be fun). This is more or less the crux of the build and I'd hate to be level 14 and find out my main trick is no longer keeping up. Second, do passives that don't specifically mention shifted forms effect shifted forms? the big ones here being riposte, dirty fighting and two-weapon style(every form available to shifter dual-wields) Lastly, any suggestions on druidic spells? Stat spread is going to be very INT heavy for shift duration, and very perception heavy for landing afflictions and its relying on a lot of passives and rogue tools, in the build I kinda spec'd out there's only room for ~7 druid spells beyond what's auto-granted so gotta be very judicious on which ones i pick. side note: which wildstrike element holds up best throughout the game?

Looking over the wiki, and theorycrafting a shifter druid (as I have a mac and can't play at the moment) and I noticed that all of the animal spirit shifts have an armor calculation of (8+ Power Level +1 every 5th Level), with the exception of bears which have (8 +2 +1 every 5th Level). It looks like bears are supposed to be a tank form. Does this mean that they are strong at 1st level, but falls behind all the other forms shortly after? Or is it supposed to be {8+(2 x power level)+1 every fifth level}? Can someone with access to the game check this please? because as it stands it looks like the elk and boar forms seem to be stronger tanking options.

Had a few questions about spiritshift in Deadfire, but couldn't find the answers. So made a few tests myself and here is the aggregated info (for beta3): (note: all screenshots are made at lvl 1 and 10 str/int/res) Spiritshift Bear (Shifter): - ability/armor/claws: - active ability: Terrifying Roar: Spiritshift Boar (Shifter): - ability/armor/claws: - note: although it shows 0 raw damage every 3s, it actually damages for [4 + 10% per power level] per tick; (e.g. each tick deals 4 dmg at power level 1; 6 dmg at power level 5) - note: this raw dot does not stack with itself - note: boar regeneration equals [4 + 10% per power level]. I.e. it heals for 4.4 / 40 = 11% of max hp at ch.lvl 1 / power.lvl 1. And 7.6 / 230 = 3.3% of max hp at ch.lvl 20 / power.lvl 9. (* these values are for 10 mig/res) Spiritshift Cat (Shifter): - ability/armor/claws: - active ability: Cat Flurry Attack: - note: cancelling or changing form does not clear Flurry Attack buff. Spiritshift Stag (Shifter): - ability/armor/claws: - active ability: Druid Stag Carnage (yes for some reason it is an active, not passive atm): - note: druid does not have passive carnage. He can make only 1 such attack and it deals really low damage at the moment. Spiritshift Wolf (Shifter): - ability/armor/claws: - active ability: Knock Down: Spiritshift Storm Blight (Fury): - ability/armor/claws: - active abilities: Shifting Storm (Teleport) and Storm's Rage (single target dmg+stun): Spiritshift duration: - base duration is 15s. It gets a bonus +5% per power level; and this bonus stacks multiplicatively with INT. - shifter has a longer base spiritshift duration. It is equal to 22s. - fury gets it's spiritshift duration increased by 4s when dealing a killing blow. While shifted you do not benefit of your items (they are unequipped). But you can still benefit from your racials. Shifter gets healed for 20 + 5 per power level health at the spiritshift end. He can end his form prematurely. Or switch to another one. While shifted, shifter cannot cast druid/priest/wizard spells, use powers or invocations. But he can use active martial abilities and scrolls. Lifegiver gets: +2 power level with rejuvenation spells +5 power level while spiritshifted (so the bonus is +7) -5 power level after spiritshift has ended (so the malus is -3) What's possibly wrong with spiritshift: - At the moment, Spiritshift Hide get's +1 AR bonus on character level 5 and 9. Personally I would expect it to be on the same level when you can enchant your armor by 1 tier up, i.e: 4,8,12,16 - Elemental Corpus doesn't get such an AR bonus, i.e. it doesn't scale at all. - Elemental Claws are currently marked as two-handed. Maybe that's an oversight? As the plural form and the model itself point for dual-wielding. - Claws' damage does not scale. Or at least it's not displayed in their tooltips. - Boar regeneration and shifter healing (on spiritshift end) scale a bit poorly. And will be of x3-x4 less usefulness for a druid at max level (unless there are some really strong +healing modifiers in the game). - If a druid while spiritshifted tries to cast Scroll of Kalakoth's Minor Blights he usually gets stuck with the cast animation, and the scroll casting never finishes. But in rare cases when he succeeds (example) he can't auto-attack at all. - Animalistic spiritshift forms are still to large in inventory screen - Storm Blight form could use a female model for female characters - Spiritshift Stag form can deal only 1 carnage attack, during which main target takes normal damage, while adjacent ones just 1-5 slash dmg. - Spiritshift Cat form description mentions: "the cat spiritshift has a naturally fast attack and can burst into even faster attacks". This was correct for beta1, but is not longer true in beta3, because cat claws are now as slow as others.

Hey so am planning on playing a Druid as my main char Anyway was wondering whats the best spiritshift to choose I found this site which lists all the Spiritshifts There is: Bear - has a frighten effect Boar - Stamina regen Cat - fast attacks Stag - Defense Wolf - knockdown which form do you think is the most powerful?

I got this game right after it came out. Despite being the two classes I was looking forward to most, the ranger and druid classes were a huge let-down. Ranger: Despite being marketed as one of the main damaging classes, the ranger's DPS was nothing to write home about. Neither was the animal companion. (But I kept playing anyway, because I love animals.) The Druid was an even bigger let-down. Despite all the pre-release updates gushing about the spiritshifting abilities, it turned out to be very weak. It was only mildly effective during the first few levels of the game, but then it failed to scale up with the character. That, combined with the complete lack of special abilities to boost it the way you got tons of abilities to boost your spellcasting, meant you quickly had to abandon it and stick to spellcasting exclusively. (I know I sound greedy and ungrateful since the druid was one of the best spellcasters at the time, but it was the spiritshifting ability I really wanted. I would have gladly taken the option to focus on spiritshifting over spellcrafting, and sacrificed being able to become a first-rate spellcaster to become a second-rate warrior if only it meant spiritshifting didn't get me killed every battle.) There was some talk about the devs eventually balancing them better, but I quickly finished my first playthrough then moved onto other games and projects while I waited. Now I'm back, and I'd like to know if anything has changed since I've been away? Or should I aim to finish my cipher or chanter instead?

So, I would like to change my Druid's spiritshift without restarting the game for the 10th time (I haven't made it past Black Meadows/Angslog Compass because I found a mistake in my character choices--and every time, I restart). I'm hoping to avoid another restart, as I've just finished the Temple of Eothas for the first time, and was hoping to continue on with the main quests. Console commands/tools welcome--thanks!

Straightforward question--in Hard/PoTD, which Spiritshift provides more early-game survibability (I know they're no good mid-late game)?

Hello, Actually knockdown for druid wolf is recharged per rest. Is it supposed to be like this? Just wondering because of other spiritshifts. Per encounter would be better in my opinion, and would make the wolf spiritshift less useless.

I am somewhat unclear as to whether or not this should be happening... After maintaining spiritshift form for somewhere between the 5-10 seconds, the effect just ends. The combat logs show that the ability was deactivated as well. None of the tooltips display a duration to the shift effect, which implies it lasts until the end of combat. Is this supposed to be happening?

This isnt a mechanic thing, but a lore/customization thing. Because this is gonna be subject to opinions Id like to hear yours on this. Observe the map: That’s a lot of water. Ocean, rivers and lakes. We can see that coastal settlements are very common. Observe the Aumaua. An entire player race defined by their affinity with water. The dwarfs and elves who share many arctic regions. Then you have the Moon Godlikes. Observe the location origins available. The gulf nation of Rauatai, the Deadfire Archipielago, The Living Lands (which are in a large island), the cracked arctic The White that Wends...that’s 4 out of 7 origins and the Aedyr Empire is centered on a tropical equator. These are mostly locations one would assume to have many fauna that had an affinity for water; fish, amphibian, mammal and reptile alike. Then theres the whole Moon mythos and the Tides. The point is: Many of the cultures are located in places near oceans and large bodies of water. Druids and Rangers are the classes that deal more with the natural fauna of the world and which have a more tangible representation of this fauna for the player to interact with. Currently it is entirely comprised of forest and plain-based fauna. For the Druid´s Spiritshift they has these options: Bear. Boar. Lion. Stag. Wolf. For the Ranger´s animal companions these are the options: Antelope. Bear. Boar. Lion. Stag. Wolf. What I’m saying here is that for a world so filled with water fauna there isnt options that reflect that affinity. An Island Aumaua Druid from the Archipielago Spiritshifting into a huge Aligatorman or Walrusman feels better than the same fishface Druid becoming a Lionman. The Boreal Dwarf Ranger having a Polar Bear or a Moose as a companion would make more sense than him having a Boar or normal Bear (though that’s far more reasonable than the islander having a stag of course). So, I think it would be pretty neat to have more Animal Companion and Druid Spiritshift options to reflect the world better. These do not need to have new mechanics (though they could), they can simply have the same as the current options only with a visually different portrayal. An Aligator/Crocodile can have the Bear´s Damage Threshold or the Lion´s Roar. A Giant Gecko could have the Wolf´s movement speed. An Iguana could have the Boar´s Might. You could even have Giant Platypuses. You get the idea I think. And yeah this may be a low priority thing almost equivalent to "add more portraits", or something for an expansion but Id like to muse about it now and bounce ideas around. So, what do you guys think? TL;DR: World has loads of water-based fauna, races and cultures. Would like to see more of it represented/acknowledged in Animal Companion and Druid Spiritshift options since they are more fauna-based.