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Since Hiravias's personal quest is about him questioning his spiritshift form and struggling for answers, this build is about ignoring spiritshift until the end of his personal quest. Afterwards you can respec to the classic Druid build with Wildstrikes. Little bit of RP never killed anybody and the Firebrand build is still viable. Difficulty: PotD -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Druid -------------------------------------------------------------- Game Version: 3.0+ -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Hearth Orlan -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Eir Glanfath - Drifter -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Survival 7 (base 5, +2 Druid), Lore 10 (base 9, +1 Druid), Athletics the rest --- Hiravias is eating a deer at Stormwall Gorge. Druids gain new spells every odd level. You don't have to select which spells to learn. You learn automatically all the available spells at the appropriate level. Level 1: Druid Spells Level 2: Weapon Focus Peasant Level 3: Druid Spells Level 4: Two-Handed Style Level 5: Druid Spells Level 6: Scion of Flame Level 7: Druid Spells Level 8: Heart of the Storm Level 9: Druid Spells, Mastery - Sunbeam Level 10: Apprentice Sneak Attack or Outlander's Frenzy Level 11: Druid Spells, Mastery - Firebrand Level 12: Outlander's Frenzy or Apprentice Sneak Attack Level 13: Druid Spells, Mastery - Returning Storm or Infestation of Maggots or Nature's Balm Level 14: Bear's Fortitude Level 15: Druid Spells, Mastery - Moonwell or Form of the Delemgan Level 16: Superior Deflection --- Sunbeam has a nice Blinding effect but it isn't Foe only. Charm Beast is funny to cast on Alpine Dragon. Returning Storm and Relentless Storms are OP. Moonwell is great AoE heal and buff. Plague of Insects has incredible range and radius, and is Foe only. Also good at helping you interrupt spell casters. Sunlance is sometimes good, if I don't forget it exists. Infestation of Maggots + Insect Swarm + Plague of Insects + Venomblood = DOTs Spell Mastery - Sunbeam, Firebrand, Returning Storm or Infestation of Maggots or Nature's Balm, Moonwell or Form of the Delemgan --- Weapon Set 1: Durance's Staff, Llawran's Stick, Taluntain's Staff, Greenstone staff Weapon Set 2: Hunting Bow Head: Stag Helm Armor: Pike's Pride or Hirbel's Protective Skin, enchant +2 Int Neck: +Per Hands: Forgemaster's Gloves Boots: Boots of Stability or something Belt: Girdle of the Driving Wave Rings: Snerf's Folly, Ring of Protection, Ring of Deflection Look for Intellect, Constitution, Perception and some Dexterity. --- Cast Returning Storm or Relentless Storm, pop Firebrand and Outlander's Frenzy. Hiravias is not tanky and he will have his health concieled because of Outlander's Frenzy. So give him some support, attack targets stunned by storms, equip Stag Helm to not get stuck (or Cast Form of the Delemgan), use Knock Down from Girdle of the Driving Wave. If the heat is too much, then stay back and cast druid spells. --- If you want to respec to Spirithsift Druid: Level 1: Druid Spells Level 2: Weapon Focus Peasant Level 3: Druid Spells Level 4: Two Weapon Style Level 5: Druid Spells Level 6: Wildstrike Shock Level 7: Druid Spells Level 8: Heart of the Storm Level 9: Druid Spells, Mastery - Dancing Bolts or Nature's Mark Level 10: Greater Wildstrike Shock Level 11: Druid Spells, Mastery - Woodskin or Insect Swarm Level 12: Apprentice Sneak Attack Level 13: Druid Spells, Mastery - Returning Storm or Infestation of Maggots or Nature's Balm Level 14: Bear's Fortitude Level 15: Druid Spells, Mastery - Moonwell or Form of the Delemgan Level 16: Superior Deflection Weapon Set 1: Hatchets or Spear and Shield Weapon Set 2: Hunting Bow

Several years ago I wanted to play a melee Cipher. I looked around the threads here to see if there were any suggestions for melee Cipher weapons. The winner for me was the combination of Sword of Daenysis and March Steel Dagger. Eventually I tried to give the same weapon combo to Devil of Caroc. I think Sword of Daenysis and March Steel Dagger work just fine for a Rogue. There is something very satisfying about being super fast with your attacks. Difficulty: PotD -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Rogue -------------------------------------------------------------- Game Version: 3.0+ -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Advanced Construct -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: The Dyrwood - Trapper -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Survival 12, Athletics the rest --- Devil of Caroc can join your party after you complete the Recluse of the White March quest. The Devil chooses Blinding Strike at level 1, you can't change that. Your choices start from level 2. Level 1: Blinding Strike Level 2: Two Weapon Style Level 3: Escape Level 4: Weapon Focus: Noble Level 5: Dirty Fighting Level 6: Vulnerable Attack Level 7: Deep Wounds Level 8: Vicious Fighting Level 9: Adept Evasion Level 10: Snake's Reflexes Level 11: Deathblows Level 12: Savage Attack Level 13: Sap OR Crippling Strike Level 14: Bear's Fortitude Level 15: Persistent Distraction Level 16: Superior Deflection --- Escape to reach squishy targets or to flee to safety. Vulnerable Attack to help with Damage Reduction. Have both Vulnerable Attack and Savage Attack always on. Sap is not a Full Attack ability but I value the Stun. I like the combination of Adept Evasion and Snake's Reflexes. If you find it unnecessary pick something else. --- Weapon Set 1: Sword of Daenysis and March Steel Dagger Weapon Set 2: Either ranged weapon from Weapon Focus: Noble or a melee weapons with Crushing damage type. Sword of Daenysis is sold in Club of Refined and Prestigious Gentlemen, 2nd floor of The Salty Mast. March Steel Dagger can be obtained after you finish Something Secret quest. You need to choose specific dialogue options with Gordy. If you are not certain how to proceed, save before you interact with Gordy. This weapon combination will make you quite fast and accurate. Head: Executioner's Hood Armor: Devil of Caroc's Body, enchanted +2 Dex or +2 Per Neck: Cape of the Master Mystic Hands: Gauntlets of Ogre Might Boots: Echoing Misery Belt: Binding Rope Rings: Orlan's Bramble Ring, Serel's Ring, Ring of Protection --- Devil of Caroc, thanks to the Advanced Construct race, is immune to Poison and Disease effects, Sickened, Confused, Charmed, Dominated and Call to Slumber spell. She also can't use Food, Drinks and Drugs. She can be left behind and survive in Cayron's Scar ending scripted interaction. Even though you will be mostly auto-attacking with Devil of Caroc, you have to pay attention who to attack, when to use Sap and when to retreat if necessary. Don't charge in mindlessly.

Aloth is the first companion you can recruit in the game. Well, Aloth can actually be considered as two companions. Iselmyr counts too. Difficulty: PotD -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Wizard -------------------------------------------------------------- Game Version: 3.0+ -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Wood Elf -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Aedyr - Gentry -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Lore 12 (Base 8, +2 Wizard, +2 Gentry), Survival 6 or 12, Athletics the rest --- Aloth can be found in Gilded Vale near Black Hound Inn. You start leveling Aloth from level 2 onwards. Every wizard gets Arcane Assault at level 1. Level 1: Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights, Fan of Flames, Minoletta's Minor Missiles, Wizard's Double Level 2: Chill Fog, Blast Level 3: Combusting Wounds, Curse of Blackened Sight Level 4: Merciless Gaze, Penetrating Blast Level 5: Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Minoletta's Bounding Missiles Level 6: Expose Vulnerabilities, Weapon Focus: Noble Level 7: Minoletta's Concussive Missiles, Confusion Level 8: Dimensional Shift, Marksman Level 9: Malignant Cloud, Llengrath's Safeguard, Mastery - Eldritch Aim Level 10: Blast of Frost, Penetrating Shot Level 11: Gaze of the Adragan, Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar, Mastery - Curse of Blackened Sight OR Combusting Wounds Level 12: Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst, Secrets of Rime Level 13: Tayn's Chaotic Orb, Delayed Fireball, Mastery - Deleterious Alacrity of Motion Level 14: Ninagauth's Killing Bolt, Interrupting Blows OR Apprentice's Sneak Attack Level 15: Kalakoth's Freezing Rake, Wilting Wind, Mastery - Ninagauth's Shadowflame Level 16: Caedebald's Blackbow, Interrupting Blows OR Apprentice's Sneak Attack --- I use Aloth's grimoire the whole game and eventually learn all the spells I want from other grimoires. My spell selection for Aloth is: 1st level spells - Eldritch Aim, Chill Fog, Spirit Shield, Minoletta's Minor Missiles or Slicken 2nd level spells - Combusting Wounds, Curse of Blackened Sight, Merciless Gaze, Infuse With Vital Essence 3rd level spells - Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Minoletta's Bounding Missiles, Expose Vulnerabilities, Arcane Dampener or Arduous Delay of Motion 4th level spells - Minoletta's Concussive Missiles, Ninagauth's Shadowflame, Confusion, Dimensional Shift 5th level spells - Blast of Frost, Malignant Cloud, Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring, Llengrath's Safeguard 6th level spells - Gaze of the Adragan, Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar, Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst, Arcane Reflection 7th level spells - Tayn's Chaotic Orb, Delayed Fireball, Ninagauth's Killing Bolt, Concelhaut's Crushing Doom 8th level spells - Kalakoth's Freezing Rake, Wilting Wind, Caedebald's Blackbow, Wall of Many Colors or Minoletta's Piercing Sigil Mastery - Eldritch Aim, Curse of Blackened Sight OR Combusting Wounds, Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Ninagauth's Shadowflame My last playthrough I chose Secrets of Rime talent. My spell selection reflects that. You can choose very differently, both talents and spells, and still have a lot of fun. Wizards are very powerful and versatile. You will need Ninagauth's Black Pages grimoire and The Ironclasped grimoire for some of the unique spells in my selection. --- Weapon Set 1: Engwithan Scepter, later Gyrd Háewanes Sténes or Puitènte med Príncipi Weapon Set 2: Melee weapon from Weapon Focus: Noble I like how Scepters look, so I use Scepters. But Wands and Rods are perfectly viable. Gyrd Háewanes Sténes has a chance to Dominate your target on Hits or Crits. It annoys me to no end. I use Engwithan Scepter and wait all the way for Puitènte med Príncipi. Head: +Int or +Per Armor: Aloth's Leather Armor Neck: +Int or +Per Hands: Gauntlets of Accuracy Boots: Glanfathan Stalking Boots Belt: +Dex or +Mig Rings: Ring of Protection, Ring of the Selonan None of these items are essential. You are looking for Intellect, Perception. Some Might and Dexterity, if you have items to spare. --- Arcan Assault is a pretty good per encounter ability in the early and mid game. Lore 12 gives Aloth the opportunity to cast all the scrolls in Eora. For Aloth I usually choose from these: scroll of Revival, scroll of Confusion, scroll of Defense, scroll of Protection, scroll of Valor, scroll of Paralysis, scroll of Moonwell. With masteries, starting from level 9, Aloth should cast Deleterious Alacrity of Motion and Eldritch Aim at the start of every fight. Confusion, Gaze of the Adragan and Ninagauth's Shadowflame are very strong spells. If things get out of hand, these spells can save you. I think Dimensional Shift is underrated.

Edér likes animals and charging to the frontlines. Difficulty: PotD -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Fighter -------------------------------------------------------------- Game Version: 3.0+ -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Meadow Folk -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: The Dyrwood - Farmer -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Athletics 9 (base 7, +1 Fighter, +1 Farmer) , Survival 12 (base 10, +1 Fighter, +1 Farmer), some Lore if you want --- Edér is smoking his pipe next to the the gallows tree in Gilded Vale. You need to do Visions and Whispers quest before you can recruit him. Level 1: Knock Down Level 2: Two Weapon Style Level 3: Confident Aim Level 4: Weapon Focus Soldier Level 5: Weapon Specialization Soldier Level 6: Bear's Fortitude Level 7: Armored Grace Level 8: Weapon Mastery Level 9: Disciplined Barrage Level 10: Apprentice's Sneak Attack Level 11: Critical Defense OR Vigorous Defense Level 12: Superior Deflection Level 13: Charge Level 14: Savage Attack Level 15: Triggered Immunity Level 16: Rapid Recovery --- I don't think Edér needs Sword and Shield to be your main tank. Even on PotD. Abilities like Disciplined Barrage and Vigorous Defense are great but they don't last very long because of Edér's Intellect. I tend to choose Criticial Defense over Vigorous Defense because of that. I still pick Disciplined Barrage though. Don't always mindlessly spam Knock Down and try to interrupt enemies with it instead. --- Weapon Set 1: Shatterstar + Godansthunyr or Strike Hard Weapon Set 2: Any ranged weapon from your Weapon Focus I hate how Godansthunyr looks. So I often pick Strike Hard instead but Godansthunyr is the better weapon. Another option is to go Weapon Focus: Knight. There is plenty of good Swords and Battle Axes. Head: Garodh's Chorus Armor: Plate Armor, He Carries Many Scars Neck: Shroud of Mourning Hands: Pilferer's Grip Boots: Boots of Stability Belt: Girdle of Eoten Constitution Rings: Ring of Protection, Ring of Deflection You are looking for Resolve, Constitution, Might. Enchant your armor with Perception. --- It's crucial, especially in the early game, to know how to use chokepoints in the area you are in. Well placed Edér is going to block a whole group of enemies even on PotD. Look for doors, narrow corridors, ... If you feel like you need Edér to tank with a shield, then pick Weapon and Shield Style instead of Two Weapon style and respec later when you are more comfortable without a shield. Later in the game, most of the time, you can just send Edér forward to tank and deal damage. With Charge Edér becomes a lot more fun to play but that is all the way at level 13. Have Potions of Llengrath's Displaced Image ready in your quick slots for more difficult fights. If you want Edér to tank dragons, give him Ilfan Byrngar's Solace. The shield has Preservation: +50 Defenses while Stunned; +50 Defenses while Prone. That's great against dragons. Alternatively you can choose any other piece of gear with the same enchantment. But Ilfan Byrngar's Solace can be obtained more easily and relatively early in the game. Other options are Ring of Thorns, Malina's Boots, Garodh's Chorus, ...

Another companion build. This one is super fun. Heavily inspired by Boeroer suggestions and also by The Fire General build by ottffsse. Difficulty: PotD -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Paladin -------------------------------------------------------------- Game Version: 3.0+ -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Avian godlike -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Vailian Republics - Soldier -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Lore 10 (base 8, +1 Paladin, +1 Soldier), Athletics 9 (base 6, +2 Paladin, +1 Soldier) , Survival 7 --- Pallegina can be found in Ondra's Gift. You need to do At All Costs quest before you can recruit her. Level 1: Flames of Devotion Level 2: Intense Flames Level 3: Zealous Focus Level 4: Weapon and Shield Style Level 5: Sworn Enemy Level 6: Wrath of the Five Suns Level 7: Liberating Exhortation Level 8: Penetrating Shot Level 9: Coordinated Attacks Level 10: Scion of Flame Level 11: Righteous Soul OR Aegis of Loyalty Level 12: Aspirant's Mark Level 13: Sacred Immolation Level 14: Veteran's Recovery OR Prestidigitator's Missiles Level 15: Abjuration OR Lay on Hands Level 16: Veteran's Recovery OR Prestidigitator's Missiles --- Penetrating Shot works together with Wrath of the Five Suns, Prestidigitator's Missiles, Scroll of Missile Barrage and Blunderbuss. Sworn Enemy/Wrath of the Five Suns works together with Scroll of Paralysis. Very good when fighting dragons to boost your much needed accuracy. Liberating Exhortation can save you in many fights. Especially when somebody crucial from your party gets Dominated, I'm looking at you Adragans, or you need to get rid of DOTs, like in Ogre Druid fights. Righteous Soul might not make Pallegina immune to Charmed, Dominated, Frightened, Terrified, Poison or Disease but it will reduce the duration by 5 seconds. I think that is significant. Especially when it comes to Charmed and Dominated. --- Weapon Set 1: The Flames of Fair Rhîan and Outworn Buckler Weapon Set 2: Lead Spitter Before you get The Flames of Fair Rhîan, use any weapon that you like. Head: ... Armor: Plate Armor, she looks great in Angwes Adra Neck: Amulet of Summer Solstice or Ruphec's Watchful Cloack MKII Hands: Ryona's Vambraces Boots: Boots of Stability Belt: Coil of Resourcefulness Rings: Ring of Protection, Ring of Deflection, Ring of Searing Flames, Ring of Thorns --- Have Scroll of Paralysis, Scroll of Missile Barrage and Scroll of Revival prepared in your quick slots. To continue with the theme you can also prepare Potion of Flame Shield and Scroll of Burst of Summer Flame. To get The Flames of Fair Rhîan you need to consume Maerwald's soul. To get the Amulet of Summer Solstice you need to kill Lord Harond in Dyrford. Ring of Searing Flames + Sacred Immolation = fun. Have Penetrating Shot ALWAYS on. Start the fight with Pallegina casting Wrath of the Five Suns, fire a shot from Lead Spitter using Flames of Devotion. Aim for enemy Wizards, Priests and Ciphers. They should get melted. Switch to Sword and Shield and go tank. Pop Sacred Immolation and help yourself with Aspirant's Mark, boost your damage with Ring of Searing Flames. Scroll of Missile Barrage and Prestidigitator's Missiles are cherries on top.

Continuing the companion builds. This time Durance. Difficulty: PotD -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Priest -------------------------------------------------------------- Game Version: 3.0+ -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Meadow folk -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Dyrwood - Clergyman -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Mechanics 12, Lore 6 (base 2, +2 Priest, + 2 Clergyman), Athletics 2 (base 1, +1 Priest) , Survival 1 --- Durance can be found in Magran's Fork standing near a statue of Magran. You start leveling Durance from level 2 onwards. Priests gain new spells every odd level. You don't have to select which spells to learn. You learn automatically all the available spells at the appropriate level. Level 1: Priest Spells Level 2: Interdiction Level 3: Priest Spells Level 4: Inspired Flame Level 5: Priest Spells Level 6: Gunner Level 7: Priest Spells Level 8: Insipring Radiance OR Painful Interdiction Level 9: Priest Spells and Mastery - Blessing OR Armor of Faith Level 10: Weapon Focus: Soldier OR Scion oF Flame Level 11: Priest Spells and Mastery - Iconinc Projection OR Holy Power OR Divine Mark OR Consecrated Ground Level 12: Scion oF Flame OR Weapon Focus: Soldier Level 13: Priest Spells and Mastery - Dire Blessing Level 14: Heart of the Storm Level 15: Priest Spells and Mastery - Devotions for the Faithful Level 16: Apprentice's Sneak Attack OR Bear's Fortitude --- Inspired Flame gives Durance +10 Accuracy with Arquebus and Sword. Withdraw can be used to save your party members or to block a chockepoint. Watch out for dots, they don't get removed by Withdraw and continue to deal damage. Priests can simplify many dangerous or annoying encounters thanks to Prayers and Litanies. Prayer Against Fear, Prayer Against Bewilderment, Prayer Against Imprisonment, Prayer Against Treachery. Priests have important buffs to Accuracy and damage output. Blessing, Dire Blessing, Devotions for the Faithful. Don't forget that Minor Intercession lowers the duration of active hostile effects by 5 sec. Spark the Souls of the Righteous is so good that I think Heart of the Storm is worth it. If you get surrounded by enemies, later in the game, Spark the Souls of the Righteous can be very helpful. --- Weapon Set 1: Use the best Arquebus you can find, later Pliambo per Casitàs Weapon Set 2: Durance's Staff or Weapon and Shield In the early game take Kana's Arquebus. Head: Hermit's Head Armor: Durance' Robe, later Raiment of Wael's Eyes Neck: Cloack of Protection Hands: Fulvano's Gloves Boots: whatever you like Belt: Girdle of Maegfolc Might Rings: Ring of Overseeing, ... You are mostly looking for Intellect, Dexterity and Might. --- Durance should hangout in the back of your party, fling spells and shoot his arquebus. If you want to buy an Exceptional Arquebus, you can go to Bricanta Doemenel. She is in the Doemenel Manor on the second floor. It's not cheap though. Durance's personal quest is very long, several acts long, and you have to rest with Durance in the party multiple times.

Hi everyone. After several years I returned to Pillars of Eternity and noticed that this forum is missing a little bit more detailed companion builds. So I thought I would try to change that. I also think that maybe because of Avowed there will be more people going back to Pillars of Eternity. I hope that I am not blind and that other people have not already posted the same companion builds. I will start with Kana. --- Difficulty: PotD -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Chanter -------------------------------------------------------------- Game Version: 3.0+ -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Island Aumaua -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Rauatai - Scholar -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Lore 12 (base 8, +2 Chanter, + 2 Scholar), Survival 6, Athletics the rest --- Kana can be found standing outside of Caed Nua. At character creation, Chanters select two Phrases and one Invocation. Kana at level 1 automatically chooses (you can't change that): phrases - Blessed Was Wengridh, Quickest of His Tribe and At the Sight of their Comrades, their Hearts Grew Bold invocation - If their Bones Still Slept Under that Hill, None Can Say So you start leveling Kana from level 2 onwards. Phrases at lvl 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15. Invocations and Talents at lvl 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16. Level 1: Automatic Level 2: The Thunder Rolled Like Waves on Black Seas, Ancient Memory Level 3: Dull the Edge Level 4: White Worms, Weapon Focus Soldier Level 5: Sure-Handed Ila Level 6: At the Sound of His Voice, Gunner Level 7: One Dozen Stood Level 8: The Lover Cried out to the Beloved, Runner's Wounding Shot Level 9: Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr Level 10: The Bride Caught their Ruse, Marksman Level 11: Rime and Frost Followed Level 12: Oh But Knock Not, Envenomed Strike Level 13: They Shielded Their Eyes Level 14: So Singt thy Biting Winds, Apprentice's Sneak Attack Level 15: With All Your Strength Level 16: Called to His Bidding, Beast Slayer OR Secrets of Rime --- White Worms Writhed in the Bellies of the Dead is an AMAZING early game Invocation. It's basically corpse explosion Just take advatage of chokepoints with your tank and as bodies pile up you can cast White Worms and deal a lot of damage. You can even lure enemies to places where you already have some bodies prepared. Just be aware that if you reload, bodies will dissapear. You can even deal nicely with the Raedric fight thanks to White Worms Writhed in the Bellies of the Dead. Before you start the fight with Raedric, pull the group of enemeis behind the door to the left of the throne room and lure them to the bedroom door on the right. Chanter can turn on Blessed Was Wengridh for Move Speed. Watch out for the Web spell. Priest at level 5 has Prayer Against Restraint or send someone who can be knocked out for the duration of the fight. Afterwards pull Raedric to the same spot and spam White Worms. I picked Sure-Handed Ila Nocked Her Arrows with Speed because my main character was ranged Cipher. Feel free to pick whatever you want instead or keep it. At the Sound of His Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff paralyzes in AoE and foes only. You will use it majority of the game. One Dozen Stood Against the Power of the Saint is pretty good against Dragons, Lions or anyone with Frightened/Terrified attacks. Rime and Frost Followed is for the burning house interaction in Stalwart and Cayron's Scar ending interaction They Shielded Their Eyes 'Gainst the Fampyr's Gaze is "surprisingly" good against Fampyrs or anyone who is trying to Confuse, Charm, Dominate your party. With All Your Strength Slay the Beast for Dragons mostly. --- Prepare these Chants: Chant 1 - Sure-Handed Ila + Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr. I have this on most of the time. Chant 2 - One dozen Stood + Sure Handed Ila. Chant 3 - They Shielded Their Eyes + Sure Handed Ila. Chant 4 - With All Your Strength + Sure Handed Ila. Before you get Sure-Handed Ila + Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr use Dull the Edge + At the Sight. --- Weapon Set 1: Hold-Wall, later switch to Aedrin's Wrecker Weapon Set 2: Great Sword or Pike or War Hammer and Shield You can buy Hold-Wall in Black Hammer Smithy in Gilded Vale. Aedrin's Wrecker can be found on Level 10 of the Endless Paths of Od Nua. Head: Anything with Intellect Armor: Angio's Gambeson or any light armor Neck: Finreah's Grace Hands: Spiderfingers Boots: Glanfathan Stalking Boots Belt: whatever you want Rings: Ring of Protection, Ring of Overseeing, Ring of Searing Flames or whatever you want None of these equipment choices are set in stone to be honest. You just want nice Dexterity and Intellect boost and some Perception. --- I find Kana to be quite good from start to finish. With arbalest he will knock down enemies, buff and protect your party with chants, CC your enemies and summon help. You should also give him enough Lore skill so Kana can use some handy scrolls. I like scroll of Valor, scroll of Defense, scroll of Protection (amazing against Ogre Druids, Delemgan, Pŵgra, Adragan, Mênpŵgra), scroll of Revival, scroll of Prayer against Imprisonment, scroll of Prayer against Treachery.

My 1st Envoy: I played on Hard. He's built around melee combat and speed. All skill points are in Fighter and Ranger. Starting Attributes: Strength: 2 Constitution: 2 Dexterity: 3 Perception: 1 Intelligence: 0 Resolve: 2 Ending Attributes (with gear bonuses): Strength: 7 (Base 5, +2 Kai's training) Constitution: 3 Dexterity: 13 (Base 9, +2 Delver's Caution, +2 Wolf gloves) Perception: 8 (Base 3, +2 Ranga's Clarity, +3 Tranton Family Talisman) Intelligence: 6 (Base 0, +2 Yatzli's training, +2 Ranga's Clarity, +2 The Queen's Burden) Resolve: 10 (Base 8, +2 Giatta's training, +2 The Queen's Burden) Ending gear: Armor: Vailian Breastplate (+20% movement speed) Weapon: Giant's Slumber (Titan's Bane and Vessel Slaying) Shield: Wind and Wave (+10% movement speed) Gloves: Wolf Gloves (+2 Dexterity) Boots: Tranton Family Greaves (+10% movement speed, +20% dodge distance) Amulet: Tranton Family Talisman (+3 Perception) Ring: Delver's Caution (+2 Dexterity, +15% parkour speed) Ring: Ranga's Clarity (+2 Perception, +2 Intellect) Background: War hero Skills: I prioritized damage, stamina, and just enough survivability. Ranger's Scavenger is important for upgrading, and I'd take that as early as possible for any build. The Charge skill was crucial and always on cooldown, but I left it at level 1 because I didn't want the increased range. I used it up close and when I missed it already took me way off course. Fun fact, it's possible to charge off the middle of a bridge into a river of lava and survive if you swim fast enough. Fighter: Level 1: Charge: Rank 1 Armored Grace: Rank 2 Constant Recover: Rank 1 Toughness: Rank 1 Level 5: Devastating Criticals: Rank 3 Level 10: Unbreakable: Level 3 Level 15: Reflect Retribution: Rank 2 Level 20: Inspiring Triumph: Rank 2 Ranger: Level 1: Survivalist: Rank 3 Parry: Rank 2 Evasive: Rank 1 Level 5: Piercing Thrusts: Rank 2 Finesse: Rank 3 Scavenger: Rank 2 Level 15: Critical Strike: Level 1 Level 20: Flurry of Blows: Rank 3 This build is pretty twitchy. He sprints into combat, weaves around enemies, and skewers the squishy ones before they know what hit them. He's constantly dodging and blocking when he's not attacking. Things can get downright dizzying when he has a bunch of food buffs active. Outside of combat, all that speed is great for exploration and parkour, too. His history as a veteran of the Tall Grass worked out great and I stuck with the spear. It's quick, has long reach, and the power attack is a thrust that drives you forward. He's always moving, even in the middle of an attack. I upgraded the plain spear to superb before I found Giant's Slumber. This was the perfect weapon for the rest of the game because it adds high stun to power attacks and low stun is the main drawback of spears. He seemed like a scout, so he wore light armor until he found the Vailian Breastplate (medium). This was fun and effective from the beginning. By midgame it was overwhelming. Early on, there isn't much room for error because he's got a small health pool and light armor. I quickly learned that running out of stamina was deadly, so Resolve became the #2 attribute. That worked out for roleplaying too, because he's not the brightest knife in the library. Yatzli rolls her eyes a lot when he's speaking. I gave him the +Intelligence gear so he could sort of grasp what the hell was happening, but for his decisions, he relied on faith.

Alternative title: Should it be done? Long time lurker first time poster who usually plays PotD etc. I'm still working my way through Deadfire after enjoying Pillars of Eternity. I find myself drawn into the myriad of options that Deadfire presents. I also really like priest/cleric characters in general and the idea of slamming a critical Pillar of Holy Fire on a group of charmed enemies. I wanted to get the communities read on this build concept. Right now, I’m trying to build a character (most likely a priest of Wael) with some preacher/cult leader-ish vibes and I think debonaire provides an interesting twist on the usual rogue with Charming Smile and 100% hit to crit on charmed foes. This would definitely not be solo, and the character would likely travel with a Witch Serafen and a SC Cipher Ydwin to take better advantage of the Hit to Crit. The idea would be to charm and then hit hard with some powerful spells (PoHF, Divine Mark, etc.) In theory it sounds like an interesting build but I’m seeing some issues with implementation. 1) Zealots are not the most synergistic of class multiclass combos. Although, as thelee demonstrated with his Umezawa build, the combo can work wonders a zealot is not as intuitively synergistic as say a contemplative or a cleric. 2) Aside from Pillar of Holy Fire and Storm of Holy fire the priest is lacking in friendly fire AoE spells. This can be helped somewhat by scrolls but still presents an issue. I still think this build could work and I like the flavor, but I’d like to workshop it a little before I commit to the bit.

Hi guys, I'm in between a couple of multiclass options for my upcoming run of Deadfire where I plan to play an off-tank paladin who can still put out some decent damage on the front line. I would really like to make use of WoTEP and its offensive parry ability, and I know both of these multiclass options have the ability to do so, but I'm just not sure which would end up performing better long term. I'd love to hear what your guys' experience with these multiclass options has been, and if anyone has suggestions for a decent Paladin subclass for either of these builds, that would be appreciated too!

This is a variant of the Darcozzi Forward Observer: it makes use of the paladin's unique ability to stack Accuracy on allies in the same way. However, it plays very differently as it is an aggressive ranged striker rather than a relatively passive leads-from-the-front tank. It's built around another Marking weapon, namely the St. Garam's Spark pistol. It's a much more active build as it has relatively high DEX. Stats: MIG 16 CON 6 DEX 15 PER 16 INT 18 RES 6 Talents: Flames of Devotion! Intense Flames! Zealous Focus! Liberating Exhortation! Inspiring Liberation! Scion of Flame WF: Ruffian! Gunner Coordinated Attacks! Sworn Enemy Gear: St. Garam's Spark with Burning Lash. Stack Int any way you can, it's crucial. PER and MIG come next. Light armour. Strategy: Have as much of the party as possible target the same enemy (everyone gets +10 ACC from St Garam's Spark and +10 ACC from Coordinated Attacks on top of the +6 from Zealous Focus). Use the Liberating Exhortations at suitable moments for another +10 for selected characters for a pretty extended duration. When a suitable moment presents itself, hit with Flames of Devotion (haven't tallied up the full bonus from Intense Flames and Scion of Flame but it's pretty significant). If necessary, prepare with Sworn Enemy. For extra lulz give one of the frontliners a Marking weapon as well (primary or secondary) so the Commendatore gets a +10 bonus on those Flames of Devotion too. Should mesh well with a chanter (Sure-Handed Ila), and benefits from two or three hard-hitting front-liners. Might be interesting to try a party with Kana and Sagani, with Sagani supplying the extra front-liner and serious damage potential of her own. Pros: Active character -- high Dex, light armour. Significant damage potential when it counts. Ranged character, which leaves room in the front line for another hard hitter. You can round off the paladin abilities with either offensive or defensive ones as you like. St. Garam's Spark is way easier to acquire than any of the other Marking weapons, so you can get rolling with it sooner. Cons: Somewhat fragile. Misses out on Outworn Buckler. Not as good alpha-striker potential as a ranged paladin built around a heavier ranged weapon. I just briefly tried this build and it seems to work, but haven't played extensively with it.

I tried out a paladin build but got very bored and had to restart. Does any one know what stats I should put use and subclass? I would prefer to be melee.

Looking for advice on a Paladin build as my main character. I want something that deals a good deal of damage and is semi tank if not tanky. I don't mind multi classing. Ideally something that can help me beat the mega bosses. Thank you for the help.

[This post has been edited do to accidentally posting before it was completed] Most of the time when I play an Rpg I just try to get a balance of Attack and Defense. This normally means I play as rogues, barbarians, fighters, and any other close range fighter. As of late though I’ve felt yearning to do something different, so I’m going to do a ranged build. Ranger, of course, is my first choice. And I would like to multiclass. But if there is any other ideas I want to hear them.

WHAT THIS IS Trying to do something different here. I'm going to discuss a character build that I had a lot of fun putting together and playing on 1.1 PotD (probably the most fun I've had in Deadfire so far), but I'm going to use it as an entrypoint to teach-by-doing various game mechanics and how to think about them and use them for your own builds. People already comfortable with min-maxing their way through Deadfire might not get much out of this, but hopefully for everyone else there's something useful here, because there's a lot of information scattered through this forum, reddit, and the in-game cyclopedia and I hope to consolidate some of it here and put them to actual use. In fact, I would say something like 90% of this is just going to be talking about game mechanics, because understanding the game mechanics thoroughly is key to understanding this character build. I hope you find this useful! Oct 2018 - Updated stats, items, build for 3.0+, added alternatives, and god challenges notes July 4 2017 - Updated stats for patch 1.2. July 3 2017 - Partially updated for patch 1.2. TABLE OF CONTENTS - Introduction - What does this build do - The build itself - TL;DR playstyle - Detailed playstyle - Details - Armor - Details - Weapons - Details - Surviving - Details - Consumables - Details - Miscellaneous spells and abilities - Details - Stats - Conclusion/Putting it all together - Alternatives - Rejected approaches - Notes for Magran's Fires - Appendix: Linear returns INTRODUCTION "What the hell is an 'Umezawa?'" Well, while I don't play it anymore, I still follow and am a big fan of Magic: The Gathering. And with one of the more recent sets out (Dominaria), I got to thinking about a couple of cards that struck me as particularly flavorful: The latter card is actually from a set more than a decade old and is/was so stupidly powerful that it's banned in one of the super-powered tournament formats (banned in Modern). The former card is just a nostalgic callback to the latter that was in Dominaria (which itself was a set all about nostalgic callbacks). It's not particularly tournament-worthy.(*) (*) If you're a M:TG lore purist out there, yes yes I know that the Umezawa on the left is not the Umezawa that the Jitte on the right is named for. Even if you don't play Magic: The Gathering, the takeaway here is a fragile, weak, but elusive hero, and a stupidly powerful tool-kit of a weapon that the hero is lorewise linked to. I liked the idea of taking a very blue (crafty, subtle, evasive) approach to stupid levels of power, and decided to personify it in Deadfire as a Streetfighter/Wael multiclass that I'll just brand here as an Umezawa build. WHAT DOES THIS BUILD DO This character is very versatile and mobile, tanking on huge packs of enemies or jumping around behind enemy lines to assassinate troublesome foes. This character is not going to be great at doing burst or area of effect damage (at least until you have a steady supply of explosives), but it will do frankly a stupid amount of sustained damage, maximizing uptime for the Streetfighter's special (at least without resorting to just being a ranged blunderbuss dummy). While this is probably not the most powerful Streetfighter build you can make (a Streetfighter/Monk is probably better for pure damage) and is fairly micromanagement-intensive, it can nonetheless be a very fun and engaging way to play. THE BUILD ITSELF Before diving into the mechanics of it all, let's just lay out the build order. UMEZAWA CLASS: zealot - streetfighter + priest of wael RACE: wood elf BACKGROUND: living lands + scientist STATS: 10 (9+1 living lands) might, 10 constitution, 17 dexterity, 16 perception, 18 intellect, 7 resolve SKILLS: roughly 2:1 ratio between Explosives to Alchemy. For your secondary skill, shove as much as you can into Religion, though you can respec out of this after a certain point. Be sure to pay 3000g each to train both Explosives and Alchemy. STORY ABILITIES: be clever at the first summons to the gods so you get Wit of Death's Herald ABILITIES: (active priest abilities with arabic numerals, active rogue abilities marked with roman numerals for their power levels, automatic priest spells in angle brackets, weapon choices in italics) Updated for 3.0: some skills reordered, dropped Searing Seal for Champion's Boon, weapon proficiency recs changed 1. Restore (1), Escape (I) <Arcane Veil (1)>; hatchet, blunderbuss 2. Fast Runner 3. Arms Bearer 4. Holy Meditation (2), Smoke Veil (II) <Iconic Projection (2)>; large shield 5. Weapon and Shield Style 6. Two Weapon Style 7. Despondent Blows (3), Riposte <Mirrored Image (3)> 8. Deep Pockets; mace, sabre, or stiletto 9. Prayer for the Spirit (3) 10. Devotions for the Faithful (4), Dirty Fighting <Llengrath's Displaced Image (4)> 11. Persistent Distraction 12. Pillar of Faith (2); mace, sabre, or stiletto 13. Barring Death's Door (5), Tough <Confusion (5)> 14. Champion's Boon (5) 15. Uncanny Luck 16. Salvation of Time (6), Smoke Cloud (V) <Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment (6)>; dagger 17. Rapid Casting 18. Pillar of Holy Fire (6) 19. Cleansing Flame (7), Deathblows <Gaze of the Adragan (7)> 20. Smoke Grenade (VII); remainder of mace, sabre, or stilleto or your favorite end-game weapon here IMPORTANT ITEMS: Sparkcrackers and Cinder Bombs as explosives. Deadeye, Potion of Ascension, Potion of the Last Stand, Potion of Deftness, Potion of Impediment, and Potion of Piercing Strikes for alchemical goods. Mix in other stuff as desired. IMPORTANT FOOD/DRINK: Meppu, Roe, Forgotten Night IMPORTANT GEAR: Miscreant's Leather, Cutthroat Cosmo (the special pig pet), Xoti's Sickle (early on), Marux Amanth (soulbound to priest), Fair Favor, Nemnok's Cloak, Entonia Signet Ring, Shorewalker Sandals RECOMMENDED GEAR: Pukestabber, Frostfall Mace, Rust's Poignard, Animancer's Energy Blade, Bronlar's Phalanx, Wintertide Bulwark, etc or whatever else floats your boat. TL;DR PLAYSTYLE Early on (when your health is super low, like levels 1-4) you are going to dual-wield a hatchet and a blunderbuss with Powder Burns enabled. You'll attack at range with a blunderbuss to trigger the Streetfighter's Heating Up bonus, then run in for melee. When the Powder Burns self-debuff has ~3.5 seconds left (first reload) or ~1-2 seconds left (subsequent reloads), you'll shoot at an enemy or ally 3-5m away and refresh the Powder Burns debuff. (Early on you may just run out of range manually and shoot your current target.) Once you have a bit more health and a bit more abilities under your belt, the playstyle is very aggressive. Instead of relying on Powder Burns, you'll rely on one of: blindly charging in and getting flanked; blindly charging in and getting your health pummeled really fast; or manually triggering your Streetfighter special by hitting yourself with Sparkcrackers or, in a pinch, Cinder Bombs. So depending on the situation, you might be tanking for your entire party, or you may be dodging back behind enemy lines to take out important casters. For boss fights, you'll drink a Potion of Impediment and try to pin the enemy down with repeated interrupts. DETAILED PLAYSTYLE This character is a "build-around" on the Streetfighter's special. To reiterate here, when you are flanked or bloodied, you get a special buff (Heating Up) which gives you a whopping -50% recovery time, along with a +50% damage bonus against sneak attack-enabled targets (effectively it is a souped up sneak attack damage bonus). If you are both flanked and bloodied, you get a special buff (On the Edge) which not only grants you the same bonuses as Heating Up but gives you a further +100% crit damage bonus. Both the damage bonuses are additive with other damage bonuses, so while they are certainly very good, it's not insane. The real star here is the -50% recovery time. -50% recovery time is equivalent to a whopping +100% action speed for your recovery, or the equivalent of getting +33 dexterity during your recovery. Furthermore, contrary to what you might think or read elsewhere, speed bonuses offer linear returns(*), so you can add on a bunch more recovery time reductions or action speed boosts and get to really fast levels (translating to high damage output). This is especially important for maximizing Potion of Impediment, which can really shine with a "Heating Up" Streetfighter's very fast attack speed. (*) Linear returns may end up being one of the most controversial things I'll say mechanically in this entire post, but is mathematically true and I will fight anyone who says otherwise . There'll be an appendix at the end that will go through the ugly math and details of it. Notably, unlike Pillars of Eternity 1, Deadfire distinguishes between action speed adjustments and recovery time adjustments and they are very different and expressed in different ways, and is responsible for a lot of confusion about how action/recovery works. The Streetfighter's bonus only applies to your recovery, leaving the attack part untouched. This means this bonus heavily favors weapon attacks, potions, and throwing bombs, because weapon attacks, potions, and bombs have very short attack times and the bulk of the time spent using them is just recovery. By contrast, spell casting has significant attack ("cast') times that will be left untouched by the Streetfighter's special. (Scrolls sit in between, having slower attack times than other consumables, but faster recovery than spells.) But the way cast times work in Deadfire is that they generally follow a pattern where spells with faster cast times have longer recovery, and slower cast times have shorter recovery; this means that, ironically, a very slow spell cast (6s) will have a much shorter recovery time (typically 2s) than even a very fast cast spell (0.5s cast, up to 4.5s recovery). (The standard progression for spell timing is 3s cast/4.5s recovery, 4.5s cast/3s recovery, 6s cast/2s recovery so the total action time spent doing a spell cast monotonically increases with slower spells, even if the recovery is less.) This means that we can still get some benefit out of the Streetfighter's special if we focus on casting fast (3s) and some average (4.5s) spells, because shaving off 2.25s or 1.5s off your recovery is still incredible (shaving 2.25s off a fast spell cast is roughly equivalent to a +42% action speed or almost like taking three stacking copies of the Rapid Casting passive talent, even though it's all weighted towards the recovery phase instead of the cast phase). The major downsides to the Streetfighter are twofold, one explicit and one implicit. The explicit downside is that while you are neither flanked nor bloodied, you get a +20% recovery time penalty. The implicit downside is that to maximize the Streetfighter, you have to be at least flanked or bloodied which is generally a very dangerous situation to be in. This character focuses on letting you survive in those situations while trying to not take away from the Streetfighter's strengths. DETAILS - ARMOR A really important piece of gear is actually your pet. The cosmo pirate pet (unlocked by doing the deadfire scavenger hunt or special non-achievement-disabling console commands) gives your main character a reduction in their armor penalty. The effect varies on armor, but this variance is because of the weird way it's implemented (which is identical to how a Fighter's Armored Grace is implemented). Internally, the game stores armor recovery penalties of +20%, +35%, and +55% roughly as coefficients of .83, .74, and .65. (What these numbers mean is not important right now.) Instead of applying a consistent effect on the listed recovery penalty, the cosmo pirate pet adds a flat .1 to these internal coefficients, which means these coefficients become .93, .84, and .75, which means the armor recovery penalty becomes +7%, +19%, and +34%. This means that the armor recovery penalty reduction is actually strongest for heavy armor, but that's not the important point here. The important part is the interaction with Miscreant's Leather (a light armor you can get for doing the first Principi quest by killing Benweth). Miscreant's Leather comes with a special enchantment that reduces recovery time by -10%. Theoretically, this was supposed to have the net effect of mitigating a majority(*) of the of the +20% light armor recovery time. However, with the cosmo pirate pig, your base armor recovery time penalty is +7%, which means the -10% recovery time enchantment makes wearing Miscreant's Leather actually faster than wearing any +0% recovery time clothing. (*) one of the ongoing confusions that one might have about recovery time is that you can't just add up your various recovery time adjustments and expect to get a sane answer. In fact, the best way to think about adjustments to your action time is that there is a different "native unit of measurement" depending on whether it's a bonus (either a +X% action speed or -Y% recovery time) or a penalty (either a -X% action speed or a +Y% recovery time). For bonuses, the native unit is "action speed," whereas for penalties the native unit is "action time." This is a weird distinction but is important for understanding how modifiers are combined. You can read the Appendix for further discussion. Anyway, for our purposes here what you need to know is that the -10% recovery time bonus needs to first be translated into its native unit as an action speed adjustment, or +11% action speed. The +20% light armor recovery time is in its correct native unit so we don't need to change it. Now (and for you people who took science classes in high school and pay attention to your bases/units this might hurt your head but is how Deadfire does it), you subtract the recovery time from the action speed and get a unitless -9%; because it's negative the effect is considered a recovery time penalty, and so the net effect of the -10% recovery time adjustment is that the armor effectively has a +9% recovery time penalty instead of a +20% recovery time penalty. TL;DR: a +20% recovery penalty combined with a -10% recovery time bonus does not equal a net +10% recovery penalty. In fact, the -10% recovery time bonus is actually more powerful than an equivalent recovery time penalty. This will come up again later, and I will go into further detail about the math then. So, as one of the few mandated pieces of gear, you should really have a cosmo pirate pig pet, and you should prioritize getting Miscreant's Leather. It will give you extra protection than cloth and be faster than cloth. Plus, it has a really useful enchantment for this build (Kidney Guard, which reduces received flanked damage by -10%). For the early part of the game before you get the leather, you should otherwise be in +0% recovery time clothing. If you're struggling a bit too much in early game, you can equip other light armor and the cosmo pirate pet. 3.0+ Update We now also have Epsilon as a good pet choice (available in Dunnage). In addition to reduced armory recovery time, its party-wide bonus is extra stride speed, which can be a much more useful bonus than Cosmo's firearms damage obnus. DETAILS - WEAPONS A hatchet and a blunderbuss (along with their proficiencies) are your absolute #1 priorities early on, followed up by a large shield. A hatchet is important because it provides a stacking +3 deflection against melee and its weapon modal applies a -10 accuracy (regardless of attack type) to the enemy, both of which you'll soon see is very important for this build. The blunderbuss is important because Powder Burns applies the Distracted affliction on you every time you attack, and conveniently for the Streetfighter, all Perception afflictions also apply Flanked which will trigger the Streetfighter special. (In fact, I'm sure many people have discovered you can create a stupidly good ranged attacker by just making a Streetfighter equip at least a blunderbuss.) Early on, using a blunderbuss at the start of the fight is a good, safe way to trigger the special, and the powder burns aoe damage is generally so low that it's ok to occasionally hit armored allies with it. Later on, Powder Burns is still a useful way to trigger your special in small fights or when you're isolated by yourself against important targets away from everyone else. An important pickle with gun reloads is that any adjustments to their reload speed is delayed by one reload. This means that after you fire your Powder Burns blunderbuss, the immediate next reload will not benefit from the -50% recovery time bonus. However, subsequent reloads will. I believe this also works in reverse. If you start reloading your blunderbuss while benefiting from the -50% recovery time bonus and Powder Burns wears off, you still benefit from the faster reload until the next time you need to reload (though by then you will already have refreshed it). For this character, you will want to dual-wield your blunderbuss with a melee weapon (early on, a hatchet). Because of game mechanics (even if it doesn't make logical sense), dual-wielding a melee weapon with a ranged weapon means that outside of melee range you only use your ranged weapon, and in melee range you only use your melee weapon, but you do both as if you were dual-wielding, so you get the -30% recovery time bonus from dual-wielding (plus an additional -15% recovery time bonus from two weapon style), even though you're just repeatedly attacking with the same weapon. In fact, in some parts of the game, you may have a melee weapon that is so good that you don't want to switch off with a weaker second melee weapon, which makes it a perfect candidate for pairing with a blunderbuss. In practice, it also means you can blunderbuss, melee, and then re-blunderbuss a ranged target (to re-trigger Powder Burns) without having to switch between weapon slots, which incurs a costly 2s recovery each time. This is a relatively painless (if micromanagement intensive) way to get 100% uptime with your Streetfighter special. Note that blunderbusses have a low range (4-5m, depending) so when you are in this melee/blunderbuss mode you should be cognizant of viable blunderbluss targets, particularly since for a good amount of that range your character will want to melee or take a step in order to melee. It is actually worth shooting your own allies (and positioning them close to do so) because for armored tanky allies they will take negligible damage that is well worth the continued uptime of Heating Up. In the worst case (if you're not engaged by your target), you can just step away from your target and fire at range. This downtime of running back and forth will still be outweighed by the significant damage boost you get from having constant uptime on your Heating Up effect. Do remember that for your first reload you need to give yourself 3-4s of time (depending on stats and gear) though subsequent reloads will only need a little more than a second. At level 4 you pick up large shield proficiency because this build has two very large weaknesses. I'll go into the second one later, but the first and most common weakness is enemy gunfire. See, this build leans on Arcane Veil heavily for protection, and Arcane Veil unfortunately offers no protection against "veil-piercing" attacks, of which enemy gunfire is the most common type. In such a situation, the large shield modal gives you an astounding defense against ranged attacks, -50% to ranged damage, on top of the natively large deflection bonus (coupled with Weapon and Shield Style) that will work against gunfire. It's such an extreme survivability difference that in any fight involving guns (at least early to mid game), you should switch to using a large shield and prioritize taking out the gunners. The downside to the large shield modal is that you are immobile, but fortunately we pick up Escape at level 1, which will let us hop around the map without having to toggle the large shield modal on and off (in addition to providing a nice, gun-effective deflection bonus for a short time). Note that even outside of gunners, many ranged attackers in Deadfire have stupidly high accuracy bonuses for their attacks that it may still be worth switching to large shield in ranged-heavy fights in early-to-mid game, both for the extra deflection, and for the significant damage mitigation. As you go up levels, you'll need to pick up some blunt weapon proficiency for damage diversity. I prefer flails and clubs for two reasons: they are fast (3s base recovery) and their weapon modals let you reduce enemy reflex or will by -25, which is huge. Clubs in particular are good because two of your most important spells (Despondent Blows and Devotions for the Faithful) target will. If you don't want your weapons lots to be oversubscribed, you can give a party member a club to do the debuffing for you. 3.0+ update With some of the rebalancing that has occured since this guide was first written (especially PotD enemy scaling) a weakness that glass cannon builds like this have is penetration. On PotD enemies can sometimes have substantial armor, and if you can't penetrate their armor, a glass cannon can't do the high damage output needed to balance out its relative fragility, which means you're just a fragile character with little upside. As a result, I no longer recommend fast blunt weapons, which lack penetration weapon modals. Instead I recommend diving into maces (which have high inherent penetration and whose weapon modal debuffs armor for everyone in the party), sabres (for access to Animancer's Energy Blade, which does raw damage; you don't technically need the weapon proficiency to take advantage of this, but sabres are just a good class of weapon to have proficiency with early on), and/or stilettos (high inherent penetration, access to Rust's Poignard). Both stilettos and sabres benefit from the Fair Favor hat, which this build already uses. In addition, as I'll mention later, I recommend picking up Champion's Boon instead of Searing Seal for the extra penetration from the Tenacious inspiration. This character will also pick up dagger proficiency. For reasons that I'll elaborate on in a moment, the weapon modal isn't too important, but what is valuable is getting the Fair Favor hat and getting a Marux Amanth soulbound to your priest class. Fair Favor gives you hit-to-crit and bonus crit damage with daggers (among other weapons). Marux Amanth has very useful abilities for this character when fully unlocked: Worthy Sacrifice (which is an instakill against Near Death targets if you hit them), Corona of the Soul (10% chance for a decent burn aoe effect), and Echoes of Faith (10% chance to re-cast any priest spell a half second after the initial cast). Echoes of Faith is a particularly good ability; 10% isn't very common, but when it does happen can be a tide-changingly good effect. We actually pick up certain spells basically because they would be really good to have duplicated (Pillar of Faith, Pillar of Holy Fire, Cleansing Flame). Still others get good benefit (Salvation of Time), and at the very least you get double chances to afflict enemies with Despondent Blows or Devotions for the Faithful. Corona of the Soul is also a decent ability and works well with this character because we will be attacking so fast that we'll be close to maximizing the number of times we can proc the burn aoe (which does ~10-20 in about ~1.5m) in any given amount of time(*). As an extra plus, imagine that the Marux Amanth is the Deadfire equivalent of Umezawa's Jitte from above . (*) Funnily enough, while trying to test some Deathblows-related issues, I discovered that Corona of the Soul has its damage boosted by damage modifiers that affect any weapon, including Deathblows itself (and any lash effect). This appears to apply to any weapon-based proc. (See below screenshots--click to enlarge--the left is a Corona of the Soul proc in the combat log and the right is a Sungrazer proc in the combat log, though unlike Corona of the Soul it doesn't have a special name in the combat log. I also tested some other procs and verified those get boosted, too.) This is both a general thing to keep in mind for your own builds, especially rogues who can sneak attack and Deathblows, but is especially good for a Streetfighter who can easily get an additional +50% from Heating Up and a further +100% from critting while On The Edge. As far as other unique weapons go, steal Xoti's Sickle as soon as you can, you'll be able to put better use to it. Not only does it have the benefit of having two damage types unlike other hatchets (giving you much-needed damage diversity), but its power-up effect (additive +5% plus .5% per religion skill to sickle damage until end of fight, up to 4 stacks) is very good and likely to trigger since this character will be doing a lot of finishing blows. I highly recommend you enchant it to have Urgent Harvest, which gives you 15% plus .5% per religion skill action speed bonus to Xoti's Sickle the moment any enemy dies anywhere, regardless of whether or not you did the killing blow. Importantly, due to stacking rules (which I'll go into further later), this combines with the Streetfighter special, with Potions of Deftness, etc so you can get stupidly fast attack speeds with the sickle. Mid-to-late game better hatchet options will open up. Acolyte's can be straight up better than a Xoti's Sickle because its Freezing Lash is always active (whereas Xoti's Sickle needs to power up upon kills) and is a multiplicative bonus with the total damage you did, which means a +15% freeze damage lash is worth much more than a +15% xoti's sickle damage. The combination of sneak attack damage (up to +60% additive) and Streetfighter special (another +50% additive) and possibly the Streetfighter On the Edge bonus (another +100% additive from crits) can make that lash worth more than a fully-powered up xoti's sickle. Later on when you have more survivability tools at your disposal and the +3 deflection bonus from a hatchet (or +6 from two hatchets) is less important and the -10 accuracy weapon modal more redundant, you can start ignoring hatchets all together. I like pairing Marux Amanth and Pukestabber together; when Pukestabber is enchanted with Mad Drunk, while under the effects of alcohol, both daggers will have +20% additive damage and +20% action speed; plus, both of them will benefit from the Fair Favor hat. Regardless of what weapons you choose, you'll have three weapon slots each with an important role: one that has a blunderbuss/melee pair, one for dual-wielding, and one for a large shield. Your dual-wielding one will be your main slot past the early game, but you'll need to be ready to switch to one of the other slots as the situation demands. And be sure to have damage type diversity, because this character will lose a lot of steam if you're stuck in a 25% No Pen situation against most of the foes in an encounter. In fact, I recommend keeping your high penetration backup weapon as your blunderbuss/melee pair - this is essentially your "boss mode" set up where you can both do high penetration and trigger self-flank at will throughout a long fight without having to repeatedly weapon switch. 3.0+ update There have been some random changes to how dual-wielding a ranged weapon and a melee weapon work. First, you can no longer attack destructibles at range if you are main-handing a melee weapon; your ranged weapon must be in your main hand. Second and more relevantly for this build, you cannot actually engage enemies unless you are main-handing a melee weapon. This is important because a good crutch for this build was to main-hand the blunderbuss, so that the range indicator properly indicates the range of the firearm so you know how far away to go before it's too far when trying to trigger Powder Burns. You can still do that, but you can no longer engage foes if you do this. Since engagement can be pretty important, if you don't need the visual aid of the blunderbuss range indicator, you should main-hand a melee weapon and keep the blunderbuss in your off-hand. DETAILS - SURVIVING The basic point of this character is getting into dangerous situations to trigger the Streetfighter special and then surviving, which is a harder task when playing on Veteran or Path of the Damned. Before we dive into the many tools that we'll lean on, we need to talk about how effect stacking works in Deadfire. On the face of it, the rule is pretty simple, paraphrasing the in-game cyclopedia: all passive effects stack, but the highest active effect suppresses all other active effects. While the rule is simple, the devil is in the details and thinking through the implications of this is important for your own gameplay. A "passive effect" can be thought of as constant item effects (like a Ring of Minor Deflection), innately triggered item effects (like Xoti's Sickle's Urgent Harvest or its damage boost or Entonia Signet Ring's defense bonuses), and passive class abilities (anything in the passive column and always-on innate effects like the Helwalker's might bonus from wounds). Everything else is an active effect, including weapon modals, paladin auras, and stances. This is relevant because one of the ways that we'll lean on surviving in dangerous situations is by having a high deflection. Veteran min-maxers will know the finer points of getting your deflection to sky-high levels, but the important detail for us is that when it comes to defensive abilities we actually have a lot of redundancy, and surviving will involve avoiding that redundancy. Look at the following table for ways that we will make it harder and easier for enemies to hit us, and what active effects fall into each stacking category (this is not a comprehensive effect of all things in the game, just common ones relevant to this character): +Deflection | +Deflection from Resolve Arcane Veil (+50 vs non-guns)| Any resolve inspiration (+5) Escape (+50) | Ripple Sponge (+2) Mirror Image (+30) | Llengrath's... (+10) | dagger modal (+10) | Coral Snuff (+5) | ------------------------------------------------------------- -Enemy accuracy | -Enemy accuracy from Perception Despondent Blows (-15 melee) | Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment (-10, jumps to -5) hatchet modal (-10) | Any perception affliction (-5) Devotions for... (-10) | Blinded affliction (-10) | ------------------------------------------------------------- -Deflection | -Deflection from Resolve Flanked (-10) | Any resolve affliction (-5) This means that any given time, you can have around a 85-point net swing in your relative deflection to the enemy's accuracy. This is by combining Arcane Veil, a resolve inspiration, a Despondent Blows debuff on the enemy, and a perception affliction on the enemy, though you will likely also have a constant -10 from being flanked. Still a 75-point net swing after being flanked is still pretty huge and this is still ignoring stackable passive effects like the hatchet innate weapon bonus (+3 deflection against melee), Entonia Signet Ring (+2 all defenses per enemy engaging you [which is different from enemies that you engage]), a large shield with weapon and shield style (+12, +6, plus an additional +2 per large shield enchantment level), Cloak of Deflection (+7), Minor Ring of Deflection (+2), Shorewalker Sandals (+1 resolve), etc. However, this also means that if you have Mirror Image active, there is no reason to have your dagger modal active. If you've hit all the enemies nearby with a blinded affliction, there is literally no reason to have your hatchet modal active and casting Devotions for the Faithful could potentially just be a waste of time. Juggling all these various stacking effects will constitute a good chunk of the micromanagement of this character. You certainly could just leave your dagger or hatchet modal on all the time, but you'd be giving up a significant chunk of damage unnecessarily. Now, a big question is, say all enemies nearby are hit with Devotions for the Faithful (-10 accuracy); is it worth the opportunity cost(*) of casting Despondent Blows on top of that (it would be a net change of an additional -5 accuracy)? Similarly, if you are already protected by Arcane Veil, is it worth the time to get a resolve inspiration? The answer, my friend is that defenses offer increasing returns(**). Basically, look at the combat log. If the enemies don't have too much of a negative penalty to their attack roll, then it's probably not worth it. If they have a pretty huge negative penalty (but less than -75), then yes it's probably worth it. Even then, this guideline isn't perfect because if you're trying to get hit to get low enough health to trigger On the Edge or a perma-Heating Up (common later on in the game), then you may never find it worth it to cast even the hard-hitting stuff to begin with. (*) "Opportunity cost" is a crucial concept for this character, and an important concept for any other character. There's an idea that there's an "action economy" in games like Deadfire, that is, you only have enough time to do so many things before combat ends, one way or the other. You certainly could cast every single buff or debuff in your arsenal willy-nilly, but then you'll spend actually very little doing anything of import. When you eventually are able to attack about once/second for a significant amount of damage (40-50 a pop, with potential Corona of the Soul triggers), you'll have to judge very carefully whether it's worth instead spending 3-6 seconds (i.e. giving up 150-300 damage) by casting a spell or using an ability. (**) Defenses offer increasing returns because of the way attack rolls work in Pillars/Deadfire. The higher the relative defenses to an attacker, the more significant each additional point of defense becomes. A pair of examples illustrating this: let's say you have 0 defense against an attacker with 25 accuracy. What would the impact of 5 additional defense be? Well, with Deadfire's rolls, you'll go from being graze/hit/crit by the attacker 100% of the time to 95% of the time. Not much of a change in your total survivability. Now, let's say that you have 95 defense against that same attacker. What would the impact of 5 additional defense be? You'll go from being grazed 5% of the time to never being touched ever again. You will have gone from having finite--if huge--survivability to literally infinite survivability: that enemy could attack you until the heat death of the universe and they will never so much as reduce your health by 1 point, where with a 5% chance to graze they could probably kill you within an hour if you do nothing but stand there. This might sound like an absurd example, but for many types of "The Ultimate" runs for Pillars of Eternity 1 (beat the entire game solo on the hardest difficulty in iron man mode) some fights could literally last for more than an hour and the difference between being grazed 5% of the time and never being touched could be the difference between a successful run and one that fails after many hours of playing. Plus, when you are surrounded by enemies in melee and targeted by enemies at range, even a 5% chance to be grazed can be significant; when there are ten enemies on the battlefield one will be expected to graze you every other attack, which will quickly add up to something fatal if you aren't killing things quickly). You'll note that I list Escape as a source of deflection. And while it lasts an extremely short time (3s), with decent intellect and stuff like Meppu/Roe it can last almost 5s. Early on it can be a way to get some extra emergency protection without burning an Arcane Veil (especially since you don't have many other non-situational Guile-spenders you can potentially just chain together a bunch of Escapes to your current location since it has only a .5s base action time and no recovery), and at all points in the game can be used so that you can jump straight behind enemy lines and have a few seconds of unconditional +50 deflection protection to buff yourself or do something else. (If you want to be tricky, you can use Salvation of Time to extend the unconditional +50 defense of Escape by 20 seconds.) Now, it's important to highlight that this character is not intended to be an immortal riposte build. We could just leave a large shield equipped and stack on all sorts of bonuses to be untouchable, but frankly I find that playstyle boring (I did that for my own The Ultimate achievement run and while it was certainly impregnable it was also tedious). What we really just shoot for is enough defenses and debuffs to not be squished into oblivion within a few seconds of being flanked, so that we can go on a killing rampage. This character picks up riposte not because we are going to rely on it for as a centerpiece for our damage, but as an accent of some additional damage in certain situations (which we maximize by dual-wielding since riposte does a full attack). In fact, in the late game, we may just want to deliberately get to near death ourselves and not worry so much about defenses, which leads me to another aspect of the survivability equation: CAN NOT DIE EFFECTS If you played Pillars of Eternity 1 with a priest, you'll be forgiven for ignoring Barring Death's Door and similar effects in Deadfire, since the effect in Pillars 1 was pretty lame. All they did was prevent you from dying, and dying in Pillars of Eternity 1 meant getting knocked down to 0 health (as opposed to 0 endurance), which would have been a permadeath instead of just a knockout. What Barring Death's Door and similar effects do in Deadfire is prevent anything from reducing your health below 1 (even instant kill effects from something like Death Ring). Fortunately for the Streetfighter, one way to trigger Heating Up is to get Bloodied or lower, and the only way to get On The Edge is a combination of being Bloodied or lower and being flanked. Both Barring Death's Door and Potion of the Final Stand give us a nearly foolproof way to trigger Heating Up and sustain On The Edge. But both Potion of the Final Stand and Barring Death's Door have low base duration. It's for this reason why we pick up something like Prayer for the Spirit (+5 intellect means an extra +25% of base duration for Barring Death's Door), invest in Alchemy (+5% duration per point in Alchemy to Potion of the Final Stand), and love food/drink like Meppu/Roe (+15% beneficial effect duration, additively stacks with intellect and power level scaling) and importantly why one of our most important late-game spells is Salvation of Time (+10 seconds to beneficial effects but as of 1.2 actually grants +20 seconds at least the first time you cast it per encounter). This stuff also helps Arcane Veil--which has a fairly short duration as well--but is more critical for these "can not die" effects because the moment they wear off with you at 1 health, you are probably going to be knocked out. This leads to the second of this character's weaknesses, and it is Arcane Dampener. It's not too common for much of the game, but during the Paradise of the Mind quest and Nemnok the Devourer quest, literally every enemy wizard will try to hit you (and especially this character) with Arcane Dampener at least once; will Arcane Dampener temporarily suspend any current protections for a long time. You can try to hope that your will defense--which will be sizable thanks to a high intellect (buffed further by Prayer for the Spirit)--protects you, but this hope is dangerous because even a graze will dispel all your protections for a few seconds, which is more than enough time for you to be interrupt-locked to your death. You have two main approaches. First, you can try to use Smoke Veil to go invisible the moment you see the Arcane Dampener icon appear above wizards' heads (they tend to all cast it at the start of the fight, so if you see one you will probably see a lot) and let the enemy wizards re-target it to another member of your party who is less reliant on spell protection for survival. Second, you can try to use Smoke Grenade/Smoke Cloud or something like Grenades or Concussion Bombs to interrupt them while they are trying to cast it. This is very risky because if you miss you don't get another chance to interrupt them, so generally prefer the first approach. Either way, you should then eliminate the enemy wizards with extreme prejudice, because some of them will hang on to their third level spell cast to try again later. DETAILS - CONSUMABLES In addition to blunderbussing with Powder Burns or charging in to get flanked/brought to Bloodied quickly, an additional way you are going to get uptime with Heating Up and On The Edge is with explosives. Sparkcrackers is the way to do it for much of the game, since it will afflict you with Distraction and with a high explosives skill can last ~30s on a hit. The catch is that it needs to hit deflection first, so it will not work very well if you have already buffed your deflection or are in the middle of an Escape. A smaller catch is that your Intellect and possibly your Resolve are high, so your will defense will be high, making it hard for Sparkcrackers to hit, so only do this if you're desperate for a buff or are under the effects of Deadeye, Potion of Deftness, or something like Potion of Perfect Aim (all of which will give you a modest boost to accuracy). Do note that with a modest intellect, Sparkcrackers will attempt to hit you twice: one upon contact and once again a second later; its distraction effect triggers every second and Sparkcrackers actually has a base aoe duration of 1s.(*) (*) Note that patch 1.2 significantly weakened the effects of Deadeye and Potion of Deftness (no additional accuracy from alchemy) and somewhat weakened Sparkcrackers (no extra duration scaling from intellect). If all else fails, you can use Cinder Bombs (or rely on a friendly wizard to cast something like Chill Fog). Unlike Sparkcrackers, Cinder Bombs don't need to hit deflection first and instead of targeting will targets reflex which may not be as high if you have a perception affliction. Note that the blinded affliction is much worse for you than being distracted, because in addition to being flanked and losing 5 perception, you will also have an additional -10 accuracy penalty and a severe +50% recovery time penalty. However, even though the +50% recovery time penalty has the same magnitude as Heating Up's -50% recovery time bonus, the recovery time bonus is much more powerful than an equivalent magnitude penalty, and so you will still gain a significant speed up from being blinded(*). Cinder Bombs can also be used suicidally in a pinch if you want to lose some health to either trigger On The Edge or get into Heating Up in the first place, but do pay attention to that ongoing damage because it would be stupid if you ended up actually killing yourself. In higher-level fights, Cinder Bombs can also be a useful protection since if you're blinded you cannot be hit by Fampyr's Dominating or Charm Gaze. (Theoretically, blinding enemies also blocks them from using gaze attacks, but as of 1.1.1 this is bugged and doesn't work.) (*) This point comes up again and seems confusing, and is a minor disagreement I have with MaxQuest's otherwise excellent work on action speed; in the pinned post he asserts that all maluses (through something he calls "double-inversion") are stronger than their equivalent magnitude bonuses. This may be true for damage, but is not quite the right way to think about this in terms of action/recovery because action/recovery has different "native units" depending on whether it's a bonus or a penalty. The true complexity is left for the appendix, but for here it serves us just to remind you that because of the different "native units" a -50% recovery time bonus is not countered by a +50% recovery time penalty. Instead, if you are at all familiar with investing or finance, it's related to why if your investment loses 10% of its value one year, you actually need more than a 10% gain the following year to make up for it, because you're starting from a smaller base. In fact, let's stick with this investment analogy and swap in numbers from Deadfire here: imagine you had $1000 worth of stocks that lost 50% of its value one year. What return would you need the next year to make it back? If you lost 50% of your $1000, you are down to $500. So you would actually need a 100% return (doubling your money) the next year to get your money back. And in fact, this holds true for the blinded/Heating Up interaction. For the blinded affliction to cancel out the -50% Streetfighter recovery time bonus, it would need to be a +100% recovery time penalty. Sure enough, you can verify this in-game by looking at your weapon recovery time and then blinding yourself. Even though you have a +50% time penalty from being blinded your recovery time will go significantly down. To get the magnitude of the specific effect, we have to convert to our native units; -50% recovery time bonus is natively a +100% action speed during your recovery; a +50% recovery time penalty is already in its correct native unit; we take the +100% and subtract the +50% recovery time penalty; the answer is positive, so we treat it as an action speed adjustment of +50%, or a net recovery time bonus of -33% which is still significant. Yes, this math is weird. Other than those explosives, you should load up on whatever else floats your boat. Remember that, like weapons, explosives have a short action time and a longer recovery, so the Streetfighter with their special will be able to spam explosives like nobody's business. because of this Grenade and Concussion Bombs are a little less useful than others because spamming bombs is a little harder to do when Grenade and Concussion bombs are knocking everyone around. For alchemical uses, Deadeye and Potions of Deftness are mostly there as accuracy bonuses (though the action speed bonus from the potions of deftness is a nice plus), not just for landing Sparkcrackers but also because even with 17 perception there's a high likelihood that you have a perception affliction, so you are going to find that sometimes you need the accuracy help. Note that once you get Devotions for the Faithful, you can just use that for a powerful if slower accuracy boost (though it may be too slow for just trying to trigger Sparkcrackers early on since you'll have to go through at least one slow spell recovery from Devotions before attempting a Sparkcrackers).(*) (*) As of patch 1.2, Devotions for the Faithful's +10 accuracy bonus is the best active common accuracy bonus that I can immediately think of. This is because patch 1.2 significantly nerfed all consumables but in particular Deadeye and Potion of Deftness by no longer letting their accuracy bonuses scale upwards with your alchemy skill, so Devotions's +10 bonus got significantly better as a result. In addition, Devotions is special because most other accuracy bonuses come from being perception inspirations (like Fighter's Disciplined Barrage), so the +10 accuracy will stack freely with other perception inspirations and importantly for this build won't counter perception afflictions. Potions for the Final Stand are a good, if uncommon, supplement to Barring Death's Door (and your main option--aside from a friendly Shieldbearer Paladin--before you get Barring Death's Door). Potion of Impediment meshes extremely well with the Streetfighter's ultra-low-recovery rate for weapon attacks; as of 1.2 you no longer get effect scaling with alchemy but with a 30% interrupt chance and a fast attack rate you can still prevent a dangerous enemy from getting much done (interrupts, in addition to countering any active ability adds a little extra time to their current recovery). And lastly, a major weakness is that the Streetfighter/Wael lacks a lot of good ways to penetrate enemy armor (you won't be picking up any weapon modals that give you bonus penetration, and there are no armor penetration skills), so when you can, keep a Potion of Piercing Strikes ready to give you bonus penetration for big, hard fights.(*) For much of the game, you'll also want Potions of Minor Healing (nothing stronger) just to help you when your health gets too low. (*) Due to the fact that damage maluses are significantly stronger than damage bonuses due to double-inversion, under-penetration can lead to severe loss of damage. 25% underpenetration cancels out upwards of +300% worth of damage bonuses (it's a similar situation to a -75% recovery time bonus requiring an equivalent +300% recovery time penalty to cancel out), which is well more than what even a Streetfighter that is On the Edge and critically sneak attacking can put out. Even just going up to a 50% underpenetration (which only cancels out +100% worth of damage bonuses) can actually more than double your damage output. E.G. a neutral might, level 20 streetfighter/wael on the edge, sneak attacking, critically hitting, at 25% underpenetration would have a net damage adjustment of almost -40% (-3 + .6 + .5 + 1 + .25 = -.65 => 1/1.65 = .61 => -39%) whereas just managing to go up to even 50% underpenetration would have a net damage adjustment of +35% (-1 + .6 + .5 + 1 + .25 = 1.35 => +35%) which is a 2.25x increase in damage. Shows you how important penetration can be. DETAILS - MISCELLANEOUS SPELLS AND ABILITIES As mentioned before, we pick up Pillar of Faith, Pillar of Holy Fire, and Cleansing Flame just to do some extra damage and cause some interrupts (for Pillar of Faith), and hopefully trigger a Marux Amanth double-cast. Remember that opportunity cost is very important; make sure with all of these that you are doing something that, on its own, is worth giving up the melee damage you are foregoing by not auto-attacking instead. For Pillar of Faith, that means trying to interrupt several enemies in one go (remember that the prone itself targets Fortitude whereas the damage targets Reflex). Pillar of Holy Fire against groups of enemies (and potentially yourself if you're trying to trigger Bloodied). Cleansing Flame to eliminate enemy buffs and when it looks likely you'll get some good jumps off of it. Holy Meditation is just for some early resolve inspiration if needed, and later on as a way to cancel out a growing number of ways that enemies can Terrify your party. This character doesn't have many offensive abilities, so Frightened is not actually that big a deal, though the resolve hit can be a liability. Searing Seal is there as an additional source of blind and a way to lure enemies and blind them for free. That's because if you cast a spell outside of combat and you stay out of combat for a few seconds, you get that spent resource back. For many abilities this is not too useful. Seals, however, have a long duration. So you can cast it, wait for your resource to come back, and either lure enemies into it or wait for them to walk over and be hit by it. In fact, so long as you cast it a decent distance from enemies away, but still close enough to alert them by its noise, they will walk over the seal and be affected just after you get your 5th level spell cast restored. Because your 5th power level of spells is going to be oversubscribed (Barring Death's Door is just so good in this build), an opportunity for a free blind is too good to ignore. 3.0+ update I no longer recommend Searing Seal and instead recommend Champion's Boon. Champion's Boon solves several problems for us. First, it gives us +2 penetration from its Tenacious inspiration; this won't stack with a sabre or stiletto weapon modal, but will stack with the mace effect (because the mace gets extra penetration by implementing it as a debuff on the enemy, not as a buff on yourself) and importantly is the only consistent way we have to boost the penetration of daggers. In fact, for daggers this is better than a weapon modal because most other bonus penetration weapon modals give you a significant recovery penalty, whereas Tenacious gives us the +2 penetration without any drawback. The second and smaller perk is that Champion's Boon gives us +3 engagement. Combined with Persistent Distraction, this means up to four nearby enemies will be Distracted. Combined with the inherent Resolute inspiration Champion's Boon gives you, this is a net 10-point hit chance swing in your favor, in a way that stacks with accuracy penalties from Despondent Blows or Devotions of the Faithful or the hatchet weapon modal. It also means your Riposte attacks have an easier chance to hit on virtually anyone attacking you. The downside to this choice is that we no longer have a "free" spell like we did with Searing Seal. Because Barring Death's Door is so important for survival, you really should evaluate your combat situation carefully and weigh whether or not you are going to need the bonus penetration or you're going to need to prevent death/trigger On The Edge. We pick up Smoke Cloud solely as a prerequisite for Smoke Grenade. And we pick up Smoke Grenade for two reasons: as an additional fast interrupt, and as a way to help enable Deathblows. Persistent Distraction will take care of Deathblows for you automatically (the free flanked that perception afflictions bestow counts as a second affliction), but Smoke Grenade will be useful for triggering Deathblows on enemies you are not able to engage and for situations where the enemy is resistant to perception afflictions (you get the weakened effect from Smoke Grenade, and then rely on either manual flanking or some other explosive or party member to apply another affliction). If you have no problem with keeping near 100% Deathblows up-time without Smoke Grenade's help and don't mind the friendly fire, you can pick up Pernicious Cloud instead for the extra damage. 3.0+ update I added a story choice to the build--to be snarky at the gods when they first summon you after leaving Port Maje. This is because this unlocks the Wit of Death's Herald upgrade to your Death's Herald watcher ability (it also fits in with Wael's preferred disposition of being clever, coincidentally). Wit of Death's Herald adds on an intellect inspiration to the base effect, so is a "free" way to cast Prayer for the Spirit once/rest without using up a PL3 slot. DETAILS - STATS The last part of this is just the easiest: why are stats the way they are? Intellect is the only mandatory max-out, because you want to squeeze as much duration and area of effect out of everything you have. Resolve/deflection is an important stat, but after the consumable nerfs of patch 1.2, this build really needs the accuracy help due to perpetually being hit with a perception affliction (and no longer able to rely on Deadeye or Potions of Deftness with a high alchemy), so we actually skip resolve and invest in perception instead. We'll eventually get Shorewalker Sandals for its +1 Resolve to get up to 10, but we don't actually want more than that, because patch 1.2 also weakened Sparkcrackers' duration, so having too high of a resolve will negate many Explosives skill points. Basically we'll rely on deflection-boosting buffs, enemy-accuracy-penalizing debuffs, and Holy Meditation for our survivability instead of requiring a high inherent resolve. If things are too rough for you early game, you can put on a Cloak of +7 Deflection or some resolve boosting gear or some such, but as you get more tools you will generally want to dump some of that stuff just so that it can be easier to self-Sparkcrackers when you need to. (By contrast, we like Entonia Signet Ring because its defense bonus only occurs while you are actively engaged by enemies and you frequently are going to be doing Sparkcrackers while you aren't actively being engaged yet. Perfect for this build.) A lower resolve means we're going to get hit more regardless of what we do, so we don't dump constitution anymore. We don't have the spare points to invest in it, but we also don't want to make ourselves squisher than we need to be. In fact we pick up Tough later on for extra buffer room against high-impact enemy spells/abilities, but it's really a double-edged sword. More health means you can stay at Bloodied or below for longer, and there's more room for mistakes (like not paying attention to the fact that your Arcane Veil just ran out or that your Arcane Veil isn't doing anything because the enemy is using guns even while you melee them), but it also means it takes a lot longer to get to Bloodied. Whatever might adjustments you make here will be generally dwarfed by the huge amount of damage bonuses you'll get from a Streetfighter sneak attack (the base +30% plus power level scaling, plus the +50% from the Heating Up special). We opt for a neutral score to put the points elsewhere (and we want to avoid a penalty because damage penalties are stronger than bonuses). We put points into dexterity because action speed stuff has linear returns (see appendix) so we'll be able to be even faster, and importantly our spell cast times aren't affected by the Streetfighter special (just their recovery), so dexterity is the main way we'll make our spell casts a little more nimbler. (Picking up Rapid Casting later on will help, too.) Wood elf background is pretty important for its Dexterity affliction resistance. This character really wants mobility, and being able to shrug off hobbling, and convert a near-lethal Paralyze into a not-bad-at-all Immobilize is pretty valuable. You can find gear that provides Dexterity resistance, but this way you can reserve those inventory slots for more interesting stuff. CONCLUSION/PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Whew! That was a lot of text to read. If you made it this far, congratulations! And I hope you learned a thing or two. If this build still sounds really abstract to you, here are a couple typical examples of mid-to-high level encounters and how an Umezawa would handle it. SCENARIO: mixed group of melee 0. already affected by deadeye. 1. main tank charges in, unstealthed, while Umezawa is still stealthed. Targets self with a Sparkcrackers with ~70% accuracy (which is almost a guarantee to graze/hit, and the will effect will be likely to at least graze), if the main tank pulled right maybe an enemy gets affected too. 2. Escape towards the bulk of the enemies. While you still have the +50 Escape bonus active, make sure hatchet modal is enabled (in case Riposte procs you can debuff enemy accuracy), and then self-buff with Prayer for the Spirit and then cast Despondent Blows before disabling your hatchet modal and then casting Arcane Veil. 3. DPS everything down. Throw some bombs if you feel like it. Re-cast Arcane Veil if necessary. If fight is still going on and you're out of Arcane Veil, self-empower, chain Escapes together, use Mirror Image, etc. SCENARIO: high-level mixed group of melee and casters 1. Charge in. Notice that casters start casting Arcane Dampener. 2. Use Smoke Veil to go invisible. Continue to run Umezawa towards the back while the Arcane Dampener gets retargeted to your other party members. 3. Unstealth by throwing Sparkcrackers at point-blank range with one of the back casters, hopefully affecting yourself with Distraction. Cast Prayer For the Spirit, then Barring Death's Door as enemies reconverge on you. 4. Let them bring you down to 1 health and flank you while you DPS the caster down (you can also self-target with Pillar of Holy Fire to help bring your health down), and Escape to target the next caster. If you see another Arcane Dampener start getting fired, use Smoke Veil or Smoke Grenade. 5. When all the casters are gone, DPS everything else down. Use Salvation of Time for extra Barring Death's Door time. If you're in a situation where Riposte could be relevant and you're already at 1 health, go ahead and use Arcane Veil just for the added damage from your counterattacks. If you run out of Salvations of Time and Barring Death's Door, self-empower for another round of both. SCENARIO: "deal with it" nemnok fight. 1. Let main tank unstealth and trigger everything. 2. While stealthed, Umezawa either Powder Burns or self-Sparkcrackers. 3. Carpet bomb the area with Lightning Bombs and whatever else you got (Immolator, Frost Bombs, Blister Bomb) and mix in a couple of Smoke Grenades to lower enemy fort/reflex and reduce their ability to heal back from this hellscape you're creating. 4. Watch the entire enemy fight disappear under a hail of bombs exploding every other second. SCENARIO: single-enemy tough fight 0. Start off with deadeye already enabled. 1. Start off with your melee/blunderbuss weapon slot, the melee weapon being a fast (base 3s recovery) weapon. If you are able to land a non-graze self-sparkcrackers, switch to your dual-wield. Otherwise stay with this weapon slot and just find ways to keep Powder Burns uptime for the rest of this scenario. 2. Drink Potion of Impediment. (The interrupt chance from this and Deadeye are multiplicative with each other, so you'll have a net 40% [1 - .7 * .85] chance of interrupting with any given attack.) 3. Attack the enemy with a fast weapon. While as of 1.2 you won't completely interrupt-lock the enemy, attacking almost every second with a 40% chance to interrupt will turn down the danger level of any given tough enemy a lot. 4. Use Salvation of Time if necessary. Use Cinder Bomb, Pillar of Holy Fire, or other explosive to get your health down if you also want to be On The Edge while doing this. ALTERNATIVES After having dug up how monastic unarmed training works, I suggest two alternatives that rely on picking up Monastic Unarmed Training instead of Fast Runner. (You can pick up Fast Runner later in lieu of e.g. Holy Meditation or Pillar of Faith). TL;DR: Monastic Unarmed Training gives you potentially extremely fast, high-penetration weapons, but you need to find bonus sources of PL to really get mileage out of it (ideally at least +3, hopefully even +6). Option 1: Nature Godlike Until you pick up Champion's Boon you are going to a friendly party member who can buff you with a body inspiration, but you get +1 PL, and then you can get up to another +2 PL from either food (+1 PL) or a Potion of Ascension (+2 PL). +2 PL is enough to get you better-than-superb fists pretty early on, though not quite enough to get better-than-legendary, so you'd need to start crafting/buying Potions of Ascension on a regular basis to get to better-than-legendary scaling (at level 19). This is the "consistent" option, but is dependent on party composition. Option 2: Death Godlike For much of the game you won't get much bonus PL, but once you unlock Barring Death's Door, you can hover around Near Death for +3 PL, with the possibility of another +2 PL form either food (+1 PL) or a Potion of Ascension (+2 PL). +3 PL is enough to get you better-than-legendary fists by the end of the game (level 19), and conditionally +5 PL will get that for you by level 13. Unfortunately I don't think there exists another way to stack on another +1 PL to get better-than-mythic fists by the end of the game, at least without exploiting a bug(*). If there does exist another source, do let me know (it would have to be a non-class/keyword-specific PL bonus that comes from an item). This is the "spikey" option, but doesn't require you to have a body-inspiration-buffing-capable party member. (*) The Heart-Chime Amulet (reward for Pallegina's quest) is supposed to give you a variable bonus as a godlike or watcher, but is currently bugged to always give you the bonus that a Moon Godlike should get, which is a +1 PL stackable bonus. You can use it here to get +6 PL, but be warned that Obsidian will fix this bug and it's only a matter of time before this loophole goes away. In either option your main dual-wielding set of weapons will be your fists, which you can treat as fast blunt weapons with bonus inherent accuracy, damage, and penetration and a +30% damage lash. The weapon modal proficiency for fists is an additional +2 penetration, so you could theoretically re-drop Champion's Boon and bring back Searing Seal. You'll have a strong early game due to how the monastic unarmed training talent works, and the bonus PL will help ensure that you continue to scale at a reasonable pace. Though you need to be a Death Godlike comfortable with dancing with Barring Death's Door to really take advantage of it; fortunately for this build lots of good things happen at near death, so you'd be really leaning into that "glass cannon" philosophy. You're giving up a head slot, but this build was mostly using it for Fair Favor, which you don't need if you're busy punching everything in the face. REJECTED APPROACHES One immediate alternative approach to an Umezawa build you might think of is to pair a Streetfighter with an Illusionist, or at least a Wizard. You get a lot more opportunity-cost-worth-it damage spells and ways to afflict enemies. You also get Infuse With Vital Essence with is like a super-charged version of Prayer for the Spirit (since you are mostly using it as a self-buff in this build anyway). Plus, the Wizard has access to Wizard's Double, which, with a sufficiently high deflection, its duration-less unconditional +40 deflection is the best defensive spell you can use. The problem is that the Wizard actually has its defensive spells inefficiently distributed for our purposes. Both Arcane Veil and Mirror Image are at PL2, which means a Priest of Wael actually effectively gets twice as many casts as the wizard, since for the priest Arcane Veil is at PL1 and Mirror Image is at PL3. The fact that Arcane Veil is a PL1 is also a bigger deal than you may think. For one, early-game (Port Maje) 1.1 Path of the Damned is a fair challenge, and a wizard multiclass won't get two casts of PL2 spells until level 7, which is after when you probably most desperately need it. In addition, there are several resting effects in the game that give you a bonus +1 level spell cast (The Wild Mare and the Luminous Adra Bathhouse immediately come to mind). This is great for a Priest of Wael because it potentially means 3 casts of Arcane Veil, plus an additional 2 upon a self-empower. There's basically no equivalent for a wizard. And while Wizard's Double is good, it won't be that good for much of the early game because your deflection just won't be high enough to really milk it for what it's worth, and by the time you can take advantage of it, the Wael version will be picking up new tricks. Speaking of which, wizards lack the following spells that really help tie the Umezawa together: Despondent Blows, Devotions for the Faithful, Barring Death's Door, and Salvation of Time. It makes for some great general party utility and combat versatility. While I'm sure there is a great Streetfighter/Wizard build out there, I am fairly confident that for this specific playstyle (as opposed to an immortal high-deflection riposte build, which a wizard could do better) Streetfighter/Wael is the way to go. The Umezawa build as of now is also not a solo PotD build. A soloable version of Umezawa would be closer to an immortal, high-deflection riposte build, because the way this build is now the Umezawa is a team player. Frankly, without a lot of delicate pulling of enemies or just constantly equipping a large shield, there's just no way that the Umezawa can sustain all the enemy hate in the world because while your deflection is high to mitigate a significant portion of damage, it's not going to be high enough. Even with access to Barring Death's Door, encounters would probably just take too long and you'll be left out of steam with enemies still standing. Umezawa can work great in smaller-than-5 parties, but a completely soloable build would likely be unrecognizable to the one being presented here today. NOTES FOR MAGRAN'S FIRES Abydon: not recommended. This build leans hard on certain unique weapons and armor and you can really run up an expensive repair bill versus other characters that can use generics instead. Berath: nothing relevant to worry about. Eothas: nothing relevant to worry about. Galawain: be on the look out for Unstoppable and Bullish enemies. Unstoppable can't be afflicted, but they can be flanked; important to keep in mind for keeping your DPS up. Bullish enemies interrupt and knock back at will, so make sure you don't drop your best deflection bonuses (Arcane Veil or Escape) before trying to cast something at point-blank range. Magran: if you can pull off this build along with a party on this challenge you should probably quit your job and become a professional DOTA or Starcraft 2 player. Skaen: if you want to use this character to help illuminate things, the sabre proficiency is more important early on, and then you can use the sabre-torch. If you don't have access to the sabre-torch, well... *shrug*. Normal torches are still usable but represent a huge DPS loss. APPENDIX: LINEAR RETURNS I made the assertion earlier that speed adjustments offers linear returns. I've fought similar debates re: World of Warcraft and Diablo 3, and I'll fight it again now. But before we go onto my analysis and conclusion, we need to be clear what we mean by "linear returns." If you've taken calculus, then the easiest way to express what "linear returns" means is that for a given differentiable function f where f'' is the second-derivative and f consumes a stat x to yield a metric y, then if f(x) = y, ∃x₀: ∀x > x₀ f''(x) = 0. Putting it into words, we mean that after a certain point for x the second-derivative of f(x) is 0. Analogously, "increasing returns" is when f''(x) > 0, and "diminishing returns" is when f''(x) < 0. Put in less math-y speak, a stat has "linear returns" when for a given absolute change in that stat, the resultant metric always yields the same absolute change as well, regardless of what our starting point was. By contrast a stat has "increasing returns" when for a given absolute change in the stat, the resultant metric yields continually larger absolute changes the higher our initial stat was. Similarly a stat has "diminishing returns" when for a given absolute change in the state, the resultant metric yields continually smaller absolute changes the higher our initial stat was. A key point to this is properly identifying what the "metric" is. The poster child for this is resolve(deflection) and perception(accuracy). I've talked to and read posts by people who assume that because +1 deflection gives the enemy a -1 penalty on the attack roll and a +1 accuracy gives you a +1 on the attack roll that deflection and accuracy have linear returns. Nothing could be further from the truth. Because the actual metric is "effective health." That is, how much effective health do you have? And as this is the true metric it becomes very clear that deflection/resolve has increasing returns, because at very low deflection another point hardly matters, but at the top-end each point of deflection is so important that eventually it gives you infinite survivability. Accuracy, by contrast, has diminishing returns, because it's the flip side to that deflection equation. When you go from missing all the time to grazing some of the time, you just got an infinite increase in your damage potential (which was previously zero). However, when you already have accuracy so high that you are critting all the time, another point of accuracy will do literally nothing. With regards to action speed and recovery times, a lot of people get hung up on the fact that when it comes to speed adjustments, the more bonuses you have the smaller your reduction in your action time and recovery time, and they therefore conclude that therefore the returns are diminishing. This is wrong for two interrelated reasons. One, the action time/recovery time is not actually the metric. It is in fact just a mere component of our true metric, and is in fact the denominator. Two, because it is the denominator for our true metric, the smaller our starting value, the smaller the change needs to be to accomplish the same net effect. For example, reducing your recovery time by .1s when you're starting at 1.5s is way better than reducing your recovery time by .1s when you're starting at 5s. So just the mere fact that you get less recovery time reduction the more action speed you already have does not, by itself, mean you have diminishing returns. Instead, you have to look at the true metric. So what is the true metric? Basically, damage per second, or damage over time. More generally, it is "how many things can we accomplish in a given amount of time?" Now, does this metric get linear returns from speed bonuses? Or is it diminishing? Or is it increasing? Let's imagine a hypothetical scenario where you attack and on average do 15 damage to the target, and you do so every 5 seconds. Using the action speed equation, we can draw a graph of how much damage you are capable of doing for different levels of +action speed. See that smooth diagonal line going up(*) in the graph below (click to enlargen)? That's literally the definition of linear returns. (*) Note that for a game like Diablo 2 or Diablo 3, it's not quite this simple. At a certain point, because attack animations are connected to whole numbers of frames (frames as in "frames per second"; whole numbers as in no fractional frames) you start running into a "breakpoints" where you actually get 0 returns for a while until you get enough accumulated attack speed improvements to "round" down to the next lower number of frames per attack. So at a certain point it stops being a smooth diagonal line and starts becoming a steadily embiggening staircase. It averages out to be linear returns, but in truth it no longer really is any sort of well-defined returns because the function is no longer differentiable at that point, which was an important part of defining any kind of returns above. It is possible that at the extreme, Deadfire hits similar issues, but in truth it is clear that Deadfire retains recovery time to two decimal places (even if it rounds to one-decimal place in tooltips), and it is likely that it is impossible to accumulate so much action speed so as to hit "breakpoint" issues. Plus, if Deadfire allows for fractional attack frames, then breakpoints are a non-issue altogether. Now one hiccup here is the fact that the way Deadfire treats adjustments to your action time and recovery time is that it has different native units of measurement depending on whether it's a bonus or a penalty (malus). In effect, the native stat for bonuses is action speed. The native stat for maluses is action time. So when you have a -50% recovery time bonus, it is actually truly a +100% action speed adjustment. However, if you have a -20% action speed penalty, it is actually truly a +25% action time adjustment. Why is this relevant? Because it affects how Deadfire combines the numbers behind the scenes. When you're combining bonuses, you translate anything that's not an action speed into an action speed adjustment and then just add them up; you then optionally reconvert it into whatever unit (recovery time adjustment or action speed adjustment) the tool-tip requires; e.g. a -50% recovery time penalty and a +15% action speed bonus becomes a +100% action speed adjustment and a +15% action speed adjustment which becomes a +115% action speed adjustment for the recovery, which turns into a -53.5% recovery time bonus (and just a -13% action time bonus). When you're combining maluses, you translate anything that's not a recovery time penalty into a recovery time adjustment and then just add them up e.g. two -20% action speed adjustments become two +25% recovery time penalties that add to become a +50% recovery time penalty, which you can then reconvert back for display purposes into a -33% action speed adjustment if needed. When you're combining bonuses and maluses, you convert all bonuses into positive action speed adjustments and sum them, and then convert all maluses into negative recovery time adjustments and sum them, and then you subtract the latter from the former even though they are two completely different units of measure; so a -50% recovery time bonus and a -20% action speed adjustment becomes a +100% action speed adjustment minus a +25% recovery time penalty. The resulting number's unit depends on its sign. If it's positive, the resulting answer is determined to be an action speed adjustment. If it's negative, the resulting answer is determined to be a sign-flipped recovery time penalty. This is needless to say weird. Anyway, this is to say that yes, penalties can drag your numbers down because a -20% action speed is actually much more powerful than a +20% action speed. But unlike what MaxQuest says in his otherwise really useful action speed post, it's not just maluses that do this because of double-inversion (unlike damage penalties). For similar reasons, a -50% recovery time bonus is much more powerful than a +50% recovery time penalty. It's because you have to first convert to the "native units" at which point you see that a -20% action speed is actually a +25% recovery time penalty, which is more powerful than the +20% action speed; and the -50% recovery time bonus is actually a +100% action speed bonus which has a larger magnitude than the +50% recovery time penalty. Yes, again, this is weird and confusing. This odd use of native units of measurement also has an effect on the full understanding of our linear returns. When all you have are action speed bonuses, the linear returns are easy to see as a diagonal graph going up and to the right. When all you have are recovery time penalties, it is trivial to see that e.g. each +10% recovery penalty you add to your 5s recovery is a flat .5 second, which is also linear. But when you are combining bonuses and penalties, things get a little harder to compute and things don't add up as trivially. But if you remember about "native units" then it looks a little less weird that a -75% recovery time bonus can cancel out as much as a +300% recovery time penalty (which can make it intuitively feel like there's increasing returns to time/speed modifiers) or that a -20% action speed penalty outweighs a +20% action speed bonus (which can make it intuitively feel like there's diminishing returns to time/speed modifiers). And this is why it's so important that you get x and y right when analyzing whether for an f(x) = y, that f''(x) = 0 . Now, astute observers will note that with linear returns, the more you have of something, the less any further gain is worth relative to what you already have. MaxQuest has called this "intrinsic diminishing returns" for lack of a better term. I don't quite like the terminology because "diminishing returns" has a specific meaning, but I also don't have a better suggestion. Anyway, it is certainly true that if you have +500% action speed, another net +25% action speed is going to be a relatively less impact than when you had +0% action speed. This point is relevant if you're trying to decide between investing in damage or investing in speed, because to maximize total damage over time you want to balance out your bonuses as much as possible (for the same reason that given a rectangle with sides a and b with a fixed combined length of a + b = c, to maximize the area, a = b. In other words you get more area from being a square than from being an extremely skinny rectangle). But if you're not actively concerned about a tradeoff between damage or speed (such as when choosing how to allocate points between might or dexterity) the fact that the relative gain is less and less is completely irrelevant to whether or not you get linear returns, and sort of an orthogonal point altogether. Why? In general, a good way to think about increasing, linear, and diminishing returns is this: if something has increasing returns you generally want to invest a lot in it; if something has diminishing returns a little bit of investment might be worth it but it's definitely not worth it after a certain point(*); if something has linear returns, you're always going to get value out of it. If instead of this being Deadfire and us talking about speed bonuses, we were instead talking about Baldur's Gate and equipment that gives you bonus damage to weapons (like a pair of gloves that might give you +1 to weapon damage rolls), literally no one would be saying "oh I guess you have +5 total damage bonus now. Not worth getting more" unless it was some sort of tradeoff between equipment that gave you +1 damage or one that gave you +1 extra attack. In fact, everyone would probably be trying to stack on as much weapon damage bonus as possible after maximizing their attacks per round. It's the same thing here. When you're not trading off for damage, there's basically no reason to not get more speed if you can. (*) This is very simplified and glosses over a lot of nuance. Something can have such extremely slow increasing returns that it may never be worth investing in, and something can have such extremely slow diminishing returns that over a reasonable range of stats it may never not be worth investing in. Similarly, if every action speed and recovery time adjustment in Deadfire were suddenly decimated to literally one tenth of their current value, even though speed adjustment would still be linear returns, the gains would be so small that even though they would still be linear returns, you would be getting linear crap returns. The linear returns for investment in speed works out for us players in Deadfire because in large part Obsidian purposefully balanced speed with damage (see the Might/Dexterity correspondence). So that's it. What are you still doing here? Show's over! Hope you found this useful, entertaining, or at least educational!

Hi everyone! I'm quite a latecomer to Deadfire, I just started, finished my first run to Ukaizo this month, after reading lots of build ideas from here, so I felt indebted to post mine. My first message on this forum. It was a fun to seek the most synergies to survive the PoTD mobs solo that fast, I think I find the most synergies for a melee-crit DPS build in there, after some of my test builds, then let's get on with it. At first, Berath's Blessings highly favorable for this build, especially the starting money,Mythical adra Stone and +2 attributes, I played this way. Race: Human (Synergies):1- Bloodied bonus easier to reach with Hellwalker, favorable for melee, +Might and Resolve is welcome as well Deadfire Archipelago: I wanted to max the Dexterity- Woedican Background: For power levels Mercenary- For athletics (the only skill we need except skillchecks) Weapons: Amra with Mythical Adra Stone- Wanton Gore/ Tempered Fury, Unarmed/ Tuotilo's Palm (Synergies):1- It's problematic to go Single type Slash damage with devoted since you can encounter immune enemies, but Monk class saves the day with literally zero investment. You can do unarmed crush damage to Slash immune enemies without devoted malus instead with devoted bonuses. 2-You can go with Magran's Favor time to time since playing single type weapon when devoted can be boring, enjoy one handed gameplay against lower tier enemies with Magran's Favor, not great synergy but it Magran's Favor comes legendary quality, requires minimal investment after acquiring. Battleaxes are only weapon type I know supports two different styles(one-handed/two handed) 3- %20 Crit Damage Battleaxe weapon modal comes handy with Fighter's Intuitive Bonus (%25 Hit to Crit Ratio) comes with Disciplined Strikes and other Hit to Crit bonuses I invested on. 4- Tempered Fury eliminates Frenzy Deflection Penalty useful in solo, %33 AOE useful against mobs as well. Headgear: Helm of The Falcon early game/ Champion's Helm late game optional. Synergies: 1: Helm of the Falcon easy to acquire if u have the money. Undebatable Best fit for 2 handed gameplays. 2-Champion's Helm brings extra flavor with riposte like ability,and increased attack speed agianst crowded mobs if u like. Armor= Reckless Brigandine / Blackened Plate Armor (Optional) Synergies: 1-Fighters already start with better engagement numbers, Hellwalker tends to lose health then it triggers extra armor+and damage makes you more staunch&faster at Bloodied state, where you exactly want to be. 2- Blackened Plate for artistic reasons and a lot of different bonuses (-Armor aura for more damage, Poison resistance, more Regeneration when life is low, random Inspirations when bloodied are all useful) Boots: Boots of the Stone Synergies : 1- +Dexterity +Resolve and Resistance to Might Afflictions comes extra handy while its Critical to maintain 25 might to fully benefit Amra. Belt: The Undying Burden Synergies : +2 Constitution while we need it as a Hellwalker, extra Second wind ( Athletics is a skill already to be invested to past skill checks) Damage Reduction increases with life lost makes you stauncher at bloodied state Rings: Entonia's Signet Ring- (Synergies): Stacking defenses trigger easily whilst solo 5x2= +10 total Ring of Solitary Wanderer- (Synergies): Meant for solo gameplay even by name Saves you from afflictions with +resolve and extra -%35 duration Cape: Cape of the Falling Star Synergies: All defenses including Deflection (better than either Protection-Deflection Capes) + Aoe damage when unconscious ( works with Fighter's Unbreakable Passive) Neck: Cog of Cohh (More Damage+ Aware Inspiration gives +5 Perception) Hands: Gatecrashers (Synergies): +1 Might useful to Reach Amra's 25 Might Threshold, Crit- Knockdown useful synergy for crowd management against multiple enemies Pet : Pes- +%10 Melee Damage %5 Hit to Crit Ratio Rest-Boon Officer's Stay : +2 Might+ Concentration - Rabyuna's Boon +1 Might +2 Resolve Attributes: Might: 11 Base +1 Human +2 Berath's Blessing :14 Total ( It's risky to go for more since wounds+ strong inspiration of frenzy brings +15, and handgear brings +1, Rest and Boons +3, is quite enough for good enough damage without risk reaching 35 hardcap especially if u save scam for alchemic cave+ get gift from machine) Constitution: 8 Base+ 2 Berath Blessing +2 Undying Burden 12 Total - (Limits you at the beginning but gets much better With Iron Wheel + Fit Inspirstion from Frenzy) Dexterity: 18 Base +2 Berath's +1 Deadfire Archipelago +1 Boots of the Stone (You'll hit crazy fast even with heavy armor) Perception: 12 Base + 2 Berath's + 1 Galawain's Reward ( 15 total is fair enough for accuracy, +5 from Cog of Cohh Aware Inspiraton) Intellect: 16 Base + Berath's ( longer Inspirations and Frenzy makes you finish the fight without needing time-resources for renewing them) Resolve:10 Base+ 2 Berath's +1 Human +1 Ring of Solitary wanderer + 1 Boots of Stone +2 Rabyuna's Boon ( 17 total is good enough to get rid of afflictons faster rate) Start Abilites :Constant Recovery+Devoted ( Endurance + Increased pen and Crit Damage From the start) Transcendent Suffering and Helscar (no need for ditching means of gaining wounds) Tier 1- Disciplined Barrage-Fast Runner-Swift Strikes-Force of Anguish( Force of Anguish is preferable to Knock Down since Discipline more needed than wounds for inspirations + your only skill uses wound powerpool) Tier 2- Fighter Stances- Two Handed Style (For Amra) - Determination- Confident Aim Tier 3- Swift Flurry(Crit-Speed Synergy is great) -Soul Mirror-Bull's Will-Disciplined Strikes (For Intuative) Tier4- Duality of Mortal Presence-Body Control (Another Resistance to keep your Might High) - Weapon Specialization-Vigorous Defense Tier 5-Mob Stance (More AOE+Speed vs Crowds) -Uncanny Luck (More on Crit) -Armored Grace (Synergy with Heavy Armor)- Enervating Blows (Synergy with Crit)- Unbending ( to further benefit from Hellwalker dmg malus) Tier 6- Refreshing Defense (Works great in solo since you're the only target) -Improved Critical (Needless to Say) -Iron Wheel (Endurance you needed to Negate the Hellwalker Malus) -Flagellant's Path (Move effectively Around Battlefield, the active you'll use the most) Tier 7- Unbreakable (More endurance on the battlefield) - Heartbeat Drumming ( Another great Synergy With Crit) You can optionally use Clear Out From Tier6 instead of Unbending Tier5 ( I actually go that way myself) to use remaining discipline for crowd control, instead of more endurance. And that's it, You'll have great Hit to Crit ratio, your Crits will do good damage,cause afflictions (Enervating Blows) do aoe dmg and trigger other attacks, you'll be heavily armored and still very fast (Bloodied+Frenzy+Full Dexterity+Mob Stance+Reckless Brigandine,Armored Grace,Swift Flurry and Headgear Bonus to attack speed) , 3 different powerpools to use while your might is crazy high without even much investing on it. Your inspirations will be very long, 2 second winds and one resurrection, more armor as you lose health(Reckless Brigandine) as you gain wounds (Iron Wheel) have constant life recovery, good defense (Refreshing Defense- Frenzy without Deflection Penalty (Amra-Tempered Fury) less time with Afflictions (Ring of Solitary Wanderer), Extra penetration and damage from Devoted. Quite hard to keep alive at start, but if u manage to gain level on trivial quest (not hard at solo) this build just becomes unstoppable. I guess its much more than one can wish from a Deadfire melee build I always welcome to hear your suggestions and corrections, thank you for your time if u read it all

Hi everyone, I know many threads already exits about soulblade but i wanted to know your opinions about berserk/SB vs ShatteredPillar/SB (melee obviously), i love both and i wonder which is the strongest between the two and what your prefered. I precise that i talk striclty about those subclass (not ascendant or whatever "better options") and have a weakness for woetp XD. Thank you *sorry for my english

Hi everyone! I'm finally starting my first playthrough of POE II (with full party, planning to go with Veteran mode) and thinking about creating a CC-focused caster (with some nuking sprinkled in). Will be playing turn-based. After looking through multiple forum posts here I'm leaning towards trying out a blood mage/priest and even found this amazing FAQ with a Wael Thaumaturge build, written by @thelee as far as I understand: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/case-study-2-deadfire-lich I also sort of like the idea of cipher/rogue. I have some unresolved questions after my search, however: 1) Is the Priest class in the gameFAQs build worth it for extra healing or the blood mage would be better off with e.g. multiclassing it with paladin? Would the build still function well in the turn-based setting? 2) Stats for thaumaturge (and for blood mage in general) are a bit confusing to me. Some recommend to dump CON, others suggest a fair bit of CON investment. What would ideal stats look like for this build? 3) Would a cipher (beguiler..?) or a cipher/rogue be a more robust choice for a cc-focused build? Is it possible to make a good gunner-cipher who is also effective as a caster? What would be approximately good stats for this build? Sorry for the messy questions - it just seems like there is quite a lot of information on the builds but none of it is recent and in games like this I try to make a build that feels right from the start, otherwise I end up forever restarting... Any input on the topic is highly appreciated! Thank you!

I'm planning my next run on PotD Upscaled and I'd love to play a ranged guy who dual wields scepters. As it was already pointed out, scepters have one of the best modal in game: + 2 PEN and + 20% Damage with no substantial drawbacks. But... how would you build a ranged character who dual wields scepters to maximize his DPS output? Has anyone tried such a character? I've seen the "Eccentric Scepter-trick Shadowdancer" build by Silvaren, but I'm not convinced about going Helwalker/Assassin (I've just played an Assassin and the assassinate bonus doesn't apply to the attack made with the off-hand weapon, so the ability seems kind of wasted). How about a Devoted/Helwalker? Would it be better to go Devoted/Ranger instead? Could a wizard+something multiclass build work with dual scepters? Any kind of advice would be greatly appreciated.

Decided to try a dual wield cipher, thought multiclassing it with a rouge and creating a begulier/assasin or begulier/vanilla rouge. They obviously have great synergy, begulier and rouge but with assasin? I cannot decide, mainly because I don't believe having an increased stealth attack won't help me much since imstead entering into stealth and repositioning my character then doing a an enhanced attack, I can use all that time attacking and using my spells. Which is arguably a better way to deal damage to the enemy party. Also taking %15 more damage is a big deal but nearly everyone were saying otherwise in the other threads I read, so I am a bit confused.

I am relatively confident in Pallegina's build, and there are many guides as to which spells are good for priest/wizard/druid/chanter/cipher. But Edér... man, I have no idea how to set him up effectively (without either changing his class or his stats). I originally thought just to copy one of the Lady of Pain builds, but they don't seem to work that well for some reason. I would think that a build around Defender would work well with a not-so-tanky party. Taking Defender, Rapid Recovery, Confident Aim, and... that is where I stop having any ideas... Currently, I switch around his weapon setup like they are socks. twohanded, dualwield, SnS-style. The latter seems a bit obsolete, as I already have both Kana and Pallegina with SnS, and of course my whole backline as a backup weapon set. Also for disengagement attacks, I think 2handed stuff would work best?

[CLASS BUILD] The Man of Mistery – SC Trickster Solo Upscaled PotD Class: Trickster Concept: Fun and Versatile Rogue that mixes spellcasting, ranged and melee attacks to adapt to each situation and tricks his enemies into certain death. Optimized for a No-Rest run. Game Version: RTwP. Works with latest updates and DLCs as of v5.0.00040. I recommend the Full Community Patch and the No Forced Rests mod (otherwise just metagame around them, it’s fully viable but just a bit annoying). PotD Solo Viable: Yes. Of note, I think this is a Solo build that is particularly well compatible with party play because he can do so many things that will benefit others. Companion: Nope. -----WHAT IS INTERESTING ABOUT THIS BUILD?------ Why go with an SC Trickster? As an SC Rogue, it’s probably not the strongest Solo option (arguably it is Assassin). As a Trickster, multiclassing is usually the way to go as it pairs so well with other classes, in particular martial ones. I wanted to try out this build nevertheless to see how much mileage I could get out of its unique access to high-level Illusion spells, notably by stacking as much Illusion Power Levels as I could while achieving a really cool, nightmarish style (see this thread) fitting well the fluff of an Arcane Rogue who vanquishes his enemies with scary illusions and deadly, freezing tricks. I was especially curious about using Kalakoth’s Freezing Rake and Wall of Many Colors as a Rogue. These are spells that I’ve loved since PoE1, particularly for their utility against certain Adra/Alpine large beasts, but in Deadfire I haven’t used them so much as a SC Wizard because 1) there is usually another certain Wall spell that I want to keep up and 2) there is a lot of competition on PL8 spells and offensive spells in general. All in all, I’ve found this SC Trickster quite surprisingly powerful and very fun to play Solo, mostly for its versatility and because it’s a Rogue archetype that doesn’t play exactly like a typical Deadfire Solo Rogue. Here are some key highlights: We reach PL14 on Illusion spells (we can even reach PL16 on Freezing Rake wielding Sun & Moon at night). That is a lot of PL, which combined with high No-Rest stats make all Illusion DMG and CC attacks hit like trucks. Huge AoE, nice ACC, long duration, large damage… We can then supplement that with powerful ranged and melee offense depending on the situation. I would usually always start with Dazzling Lights to lure/group enemies but then every combat sequence can be totally different depending on the enemies and layout. I’ll detail key abilities and strategies below. Because it has so many options, this build is the opposite of a one-trick pony and can actually stay in most fights for some time before resetting the encounter or abusing Gouging Strike, if at all. Even if in many situations on Upscaled PotD you still have to go invisible/resest before the end of the fight, I have found that you might reset less often than Assassin for instance, and can take down a lot more enemies than you thought in one go (ah, the random power of Fyonlecg's Wall of Many Colors…). Of course, it should be also be said that as a SC Rogue with non-renewable resources, completing the harder DLC fights (non-resettable, small battlefield, lots of enemies with lots of health) without cheese requires Arcana. But that’s also true for an Assassin. Or you know... abuse Strand of Favor and remove all challenge (that is not what this build/post is about, but it is a possibility). -----SPECS------ Race: I went with Pale Elf for style and +PER Background: The White that Wends – Hunter FINAL STATS WITH ALL PERMABUFFS AND NO-REST BUFFS AS OF 5.0 (without combat buffs): MIG 22 (15 Base +2 Berath +1 Gift from Machine +2 Alchemic Brawn +2 Hot Razor Skewers) CON 12 (3 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Brawn +2 Konstanten Boon +3 Girdle of Eoten CON) DEX 27 (18 Base +1 Elf +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Guile +2 Amira’s Blessing +2 Footprints Ahu Taka) PER 30 (18 Base +1 Elf +1 White that Wends +2 Berath +1 Konstanten Boon +1 Effigy: Sagani +2 Alchemic Guile +1 Savage Cunning +1 Cauldron Brew +1 Ajamuut’s Cloak +1 Kuaru’s Prize) INT 26 (18 Base +2 Berath +1 Konstanten Boon +2 Alchemic Wits +2 Charm of Bones +1 Kuaru’s Prize) RES 11 (3 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Wits +2 Nature’s Resolve +2 Rikuhu’s Blessing) ADDITIONAL PERMABUFFS: Food: Hot Razor Skewers Adratic Glow All Trainings Dawnstar Blessing Luminous Adra Potion Nature’s Resolve (Accuracy) Savage Cunning (Survival) Galawain’s Gift Magran’s Blessing Infamous Captain, Bonus Skills, Champion Stats, Port Maje vendor, Fully discovered Map, Bonus Money… invested all 105 Berath’s Blessing Points SKILLS I just spent between Mechanics, Athletics, Stealth and Survival, Diplomacy. Max Arcana temporarily for certain end-game situations. ----- ABILITIES ------ ACTIVE Crippling/Arterial Strike, Blinding/Gouging Strike, Smoke Veil/Smoke Cloud/Pernicious Cloud, Withering/Toxic Strike, Gambit, Vanishing Strike. PASSIVES Key: Backstab, Fast Runner, Monastic Unarmed Training, Arms Bearer, Two Weapon Style, Dirty Fighting, Persistent Distraction, Tough, Uncanny Luck, Deep Wounds, Improved Critical, Deathblows, Prestige. Optional: Snake Reflex, Combat Focus, Adept Evasion, Wall of Flashing Steel. -----GEAR------ Weapon Set 1: Hand Mortar (Blinding Smoke), The Eye of Wael (The Hundred Visions, Shrouded Strike). Weapon Set 2: Kitchen Stove (Thunderous Report, Everything and Anything) single wielded. Weapon Set 3: Monastic trained Fists. Head: Whitewitch Mask. Neck: Charm of Bones. Chest: Pale Hide (Ghost in White, Dread Howl). Cape: Ajamuut’s Stalking Cloak. Gloves: Gauntlets of Accuracy. Rings: Kuaru’s Prize, Ring of the Marksman. Boots: Footprints of Ahu Taka. Belt: Girdle of Eoten Constitution. Pet: Harley. -----STRATEGIES------ I’ll just outline a few simple example situations but there are so many fun combos to create and you can mix depending on the situation and the resources you have left (I always start with Weapon Set 1): Melee Style: Lure with Dazzling Lights, get close in stealth, combat starts, cast Repulsive Visage to Terrify everyone, Switch to Fists, Use Gambit as much as you want (you have 11 Guile ), reapply Repulsive Visage, Gambit ad nauseam and other Rogue attacks or autoattacks. Can also use Dread Howl. Works surprisingly well! Mage Style: Lure with Dazzling Lights, Gaze of the Adragan, 2 or 3 Freezing Rakes, mix and match with Wall of Many Colors and Thunderous Report for fun. Dread Howl can help if survivors get aggressive. (EDIT: one Freezing Rake can do about 300 DMG per target on a Crit, on average definitely in the 200s). Rogue Style: Lure with Dazzling Lights, Fire AoE with Vanishing Strike from stealth > combat starts, all enemies are stunned and you’re invisible. Follow up with AoE Gouging Strike (you have reloaded instantly the shot from stealth), Pernicious Cloud, Smoke Veil. From there, you can try to add an Arterial Strike + Smoke Veil or simply just retreat to a safe location and wait it out. Won't be long . Weird/Wael Style: Lure with Dazzling Lights, Gaze of the Adragan, Wall of Many Colors to hit all enemies, see what happens then and what is best to apply next. -----THE END------ That’s it. Not the strongest Solo build but really fun to play, especially if the unique features of the Trickster subclass have triggered your curiosity. I also think it would be an absolute monster in a party. Let me know if you have any comment or question!

=================================== The Hound of Yezuha, Ultimate Edition =================================== Difficulty: PotD v5.0.0.0040 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Brawler (Fighter + Monk) -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Storm Human -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Yezuha (Missionary) -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats (char creation, no Berath's Blessings): MIG: 11 CON: 10 DEX: 15 PER: 14 INT: 14 RES: 11 -------------------------------------------------------------- Active Skill: Athletics ® Passive Skill: Any -------------------------------------------------------------- Weapon Proficiencies: Sword (a) Greatsword (a) Small Shield ® Sabre (!) Battle Axe (!) Flail Hatchet -------------------------------------------------------------- Abilities (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) PL1 Fighter Knock Down (a) Disciplined Barrage (!) Monk Swift Strikes (a) Force of Anguish PL2 Fighter Fighter Stances Confident Aim Monk Clarity of Agony Common Two Weapon Style (!) PL3 Fighter Disciplined Strike (!) Mule Kick ® Monk Swift Flurry (!) Efficient Anguish ® PL4 Fighter Charge ® Weapon Specialization ® Monk Thunderous Blows (!) Duality of Mortal Presence ® PL5 Fighter Armored Grace (!) Conqueror Stance Monk Enervating Blows ® Common Uncanny Luck ® PL6 Fighter Clear Out Monk Turning Wheel ® Flagellant’s Path ® Common Improved Critical ® PL7 Fighter Unbreakable Weapon Mastery ® Monk Heartbeat Drumming (!) --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (*=additional enchantments; !=important, r=recommended): Weapon set 1: Scordeo’s Edge (Blade Cascade*!, Adaptive*!) (!), Slayer’s Claw (!) Weapon set 2: Unarmed, Tuotilo’s Palm (Balanced Shield*, Pugilist*) ® Chest: Contender’s Armor (Heavy Mobility*) ® Helmet: Fair Favor (!) Amulet: Cauldron Shard (!) Cloak: Cape of the Falling Star Gloves: Burglar’s Gloves ® Ring: Finality’s Claim (!) Ring: Ring of Prosperity’s Fortune ® Belt: Ngati’s Girdle ® Boots: Rakhan Field Boots (!) ----------------------------------------------------------------- As Companions and Sidekicks go, Rekke is one of the most vanilla as they come. Which is not a bad thing in itself; his stats lends itself to a DPS build, and his vanilla class choices make him very adaptable, which is more than can be said for several of his peers (looking at you, Fassina). Since pretty much any DPS build would be viable for Rekke, I decided instead to design a build that won’t be realized until near the end-game, but sets him up to take on one of the Megabosses in particular. Using some fairly simple interactions between his class abilities and specific weapon enchantments, this build makes Rekke an interrupt-lock machine that can, with the proper support, take on his intended target mano-a-mano. Thus the name of his build, the Hound of Yezuha; it is not only a testament of Rekke’s ferocity in battle, but it’s also a tribute to the man who killed the Mountain. (Note on “Ultimate Edition” builds: With the release of the Ultimate Edition on PS4 and XBox, there will be many first-time players of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire who will be searching for builds online, only to find that most available builds were created for earlier versions of the game. While many of those are still viable even in the final version of Deadfire, this would not be apparent to new players; thus, builds such as this will be tagged as “Ultimate Edition” to indicate that they’ve been tested for version 5.0.0 of Deadfire, including all DLCs.) Cutting the Voracious Mountain Down to Size Apart from its own set of nasty tricks, Hauani o Whe also hits like a mack truck. However, it has the lowest Deflection of the four Megabosses, and is also vulnerable to interrupts. Therefore, the trick to defeating the Voracious Mountain is to exploit these two weak points mercilessly. And the Hound of Yezuha can achieve this through a couple of fairly simple interactions. Firstly, the Slayer’s Claw increases any Might Inspirations applied to its wield by one tier. In the hands of a Monk, that means Thunderous Blows doesn’t give Tenacious, but Energized instead; that’s why I made Rekke a Fighter/Monk, and it guarantees that he’ll interrupt with every crit. Pair that with Scordeo’s Edge with the Adaptive enchantment, and Rekke will work his way up to +20 Accuracy with both weapons in time. Add the hit-to-crit bonuses from Disciplined Strikes (Intuitive) and Fair Favor (which applies to Scordeo’s Edge), and you get a Rekke who can crit and interrupt the giant ooze with practically every other strike. (This also makes Rekke ideal as a mage-hunter, which is why I gave him both Charge and Flagellant's Path; so he can dive into the backline and immediately start dismantling enemy spellcasters.) Double down on that with the Blade Cascade enchantment, and now whenever it activates, Rekke can ignore Recovery and interrupt-lock Hauani for around 5-6 seconds each time. Pretty sweet, isn’t it? Now imagine what happens when Rekke has a Priest and Cipher to provide the Ancestor’s Memory-Salvation of Time combo. That’s right; Rekke can now wail away at the giant ooze throughtout the whole fight, keeping it pancaked and unable to do much of anything whatsoever, all the way until it ****ing dies. (On a side note, Valkyrie Xoti is ideal as the Priest for the Hauani o Whe fight, because she singlehandedly turns the Symbiote debuff from an annoyance into an asset for your party. The little oozes are OHKs with The Twin Eels, and each one heals the whole party every time.) Sure, you’d still have to watch out and make sure that the smaller oozes don’t merge back into the big one. But properly supported, the Hound of Yezuha is all the DPS you’re going to need for this Megaboss fight, including the clean-up after the hard part. Enduring the Crushing Weight But to get the Blade Cascade started in the first place, Rekke has to begin the encounter with attacks on Hauani o Whe at normal recovery. Therefore he’s still going to take some hits in the first few seconds, and needs sufficient protection to help him survive for at least that long. The one thing to keep in mind about Hauani’s attacks is that it does Crush/Corrode damage. This means that the most useful type of armor against the giant ooze are Breastplates, since it is the armor type with the highest AR that doesn’t have a penalty against either Crush or Corrode. And when you think about Breastplates, the obvious choice is the Devil of Caroc Breastplate, which remains one of if not the best Unique Armor in Deadfire even in the Ultimate Edition. And while you can certainly give it to Rekke, I would actually not recommend it… precisely because it’s so good, I’m assuming it’s likely going to someone who needs it more (like your Watcher) and therefore not available for Rekke. With that context in mind, I’ll suggest the next best thing instead. And in Rekke’s case, that’s the Contender’s Armor from the SSS DLC, with the Heavy Mobility enchantment. With high Athletics and Armored Grace, it’s one of only 3 armors in the entire game that can potentially let the wearer attack even faster than if wearing no armor at all (the others being DoC Breastplate and Miscreant’s Leather); so even without Blade Cascade, Rekke can still attack at a brisk pace with this setup. To further boost Rekke’s AR against Hauani’s attacks, I also gave him the Cauldron Shard amulet and Rakhan Field Boots for additional Corrode AR, as well as Ngati’s Girdle for more Crush AR. Cauldron Shard also comes with a 20% chance to turn Hauani’s Corrode attacks into healing for Rekke instead, helping his survivability against the ooze that much further. On top of that, Rekke gets the Finality’s Claim Ring, which gives him a 25% chance to ignore its attacks altogether (it actually reflects the attack back to Hauani, but the giant ooze doesn’t take any damage from its own reflected attacks, so). Final Thoughts Pros: - Is set up to be your MVP during the Hauani o Whe Megaboss fight. - Also makes him useful as a mage-hunter, so you can use him in that capacity in normal fights. - Is perfectly viable even with a vanilla Brawler like Rekke. Cons: - Can only be fully realized as a build near endgame, because Scordeo's Edge is key to this build. - Going for this build locks you into the Slayer path in the SSS DLC, as Slayer's Claw is key to this build. - Foregoes all defensive abilities available to Fighters/Monks in favour of more DPS, so Rekke will need party support to survive in more difficult encounters. - Requires Priest and Cipher support to reach it's full potential, which can limit your choices of party composition. Last but not least, see the attached file for the AI script I created for Rekke as the Hound of Yezuha Rekke Custom (Brawler) (Fighter Monk) (08e33d71-36e8-46eb-9c8d-b3af9b6cdbac).customai

Welcome to the new and updated list of current builds from these boards. The actual list is down below (scroll down a bit). Each of the several classes and multiclasses in the game are listed below in alphabetical order (single classes first, then multiclasses), with each build listed alphabetically underneath. If there's no build yet for a class/multiclass then you won't find the class name/section. I will add those once class builds come flying in. I don't order by subclasses. If you think I should and can tell my why I will consider it. For each build you'll find a short descriptor, an indication of the game version it was built for and/or it uses gear and abilities from, and whether it has been meant or tested for solo play. --- DISCLAIMER: SOLO PLAY I assume solo play to be untested for all builds that do not explicitly mention solo play in the OP. If anyone tested any of these builds for solo play and would like their experience to be reflected in this thread, please PM me specifying the build you used, the difficulty you tried, and whether you could beat the game. Similarly, if you want your build's descriptor updated, contact us with the updated descriptor. DISCLAIMER II: THREAD NAMING/TAGGING Included in this list are only builds that got send via PM or posted with the "class build" or "build" tag or with [CLASS BUILD] in the title. Since there is so much info posted atm I can't search the forums for every untagged build/build idea that is floating around. If your build is missing, please PM me with the relevant information (link, descriptor, game version, solo play) and I will add it. DISCLAIMER III: LABELS Builds can get tagged with different labels. At the moment there are three: |HOT| marks builds that got a substantical amount of feedback from the community (in form of responses, currently 20+), |POPULAR| will be put on builds that have surpassed a certain number of likes (currently 10+). Unmaintained builds or builds that won't work anymore because of patches will get tagged with |DEPRECATED| until they get updated. If they don't get updated they might get removed eventually after some time. Builds that need a mod (for example to unlock certain subclasses that are otherwise only usable by NPCs or companions) to work will be labeled with |MOD| . --- FORMAT: Build Name [links to the build's thread] Subclass(es) Short descriptor of what the build does or specializes in. Author: The user who made the build. Game version: What game version the build was created for, and/or uses equipment and abilities from. Difficulty: On which difficulty level this build was played Solo: Whether the build is suitable or intended for solo play:"Yes [Difficulty]" - The build was either created or tested for solo play on the specified difficulty level. "No [Difficulty]" - The build was tested for solo play on the specified difficulty level and the game could not be beaten. "Untested" - The build wasn't born with solo play in mind, but for all we know it might as well work—except nobody's tried yet. Companion: Does this build fit any of the official companions or sidekicks? If "yes", just add the name of the companion/sidekick here​. Usually it's only one name I guess. If you are searching for a companion-build you can simply use the search funktion of your browser (ctrl+f) to search for a companion name. --- SINGLE CLASSES (bold=there's a build): Barbarian, Chanter, Cipher, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Priest, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard MULTICLASSES (bold=there's a build): Arcane Knight, Ascetic, Battlemage, Beastmaster, Brawler, Brute, Cantor, Celebrant, Cleric, Contemplative, Crusader, Fanatic, Geomancer, Harbinger, Herald, Hierophant, Holy Slayer, Howler, Hunter, Inquisitor, Itinerant, Liberator, Loremaster, Marauder, Mindstalker, Mystic, Oracle, Pathfinder, Psyblade, Ravager, Sage, Savage, Scout, Seer, Shadowdancer, Shaman, Shepherd, Sorcerer, Spellblade, Spiritualist, Swashbuckler, Tempest, Templar, Thaumaturge, Theurge, Transcendent, Universalist, Votary, Wanderer, War Caller, Warden, Warlock, Wildrhymer, Witch, Zealot COMPANION & SIDEKICK BUILDS (bold=there's a build): Aloth, Edér, Fassina, Konstanten, Maia Rua, Mirke, Pallegina, Rekke, Serafen, Tekehu, Vatnir, Xoti, Ydwin Ok, fire away! ------------------------------ ----------BUILD LIST---------- ------------------------------ ---------SINGLE CLASS--------- Barbarian The Ultimate Suicide Bomb |HOT| |DEPRECATED| an offense heavy build that discards any defense to max AoE (shock) damage output Subclass: Berserker Author: dunehunter Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Cipher Dat Arsehole Ascendant A pure dps cipher build Subclass: Ascendant Author: 1TTFFSSE Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - ------------------------------ Fighter The Intelligent Captain a smart tactician and leader that has a lot of options and uses underrated abilities with great efficiency Subclass: - Author: Myrtillo Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - The Undying Titan Maximizing the effect of Unbending Subclass: Unbroken (any other works as well) Author: Esajin Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: Edér, Rekke ------------------------------ Monk The Flagellant A ranged dps monk who generates wounds through controlled self damage Subclass: Helwalker Author: ntavanga Game Version: 1.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Priest The End Bringer A powerful offensive Priest of Rymrgand, unlockable through a mod or playable with Vatnir Subclass: Priest of Rymrgand Author: Stardusk78 Game Version: 2.0 (+mod) Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: Vatnir ------------------------------ Ranger The Arcana Archer An archer who combines certain scrolls with Frostseeker in a very effective way, dealing massive AoE damage Subclass: Ghost Heart Author: Dorftek Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: Maia Rua ------------------------------ Rogue The Duelling Corsair A veritable fencer without the need for stealthy tactics Subclass: Streetfighter Author: Myrtillo Game Version: 1.0 Difficulty: Veteran Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Wizard The Combusting Wizard Very high dps Wizard with lots of versatility for group or solo runs Subclass: - Author: eschu101 Game Version: 2.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: Aloth The Master of Missiles <no description provided> Subclass: Evoker Author: knownastherat Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - Tormentor of Mind and Body excellent crowd controller and debuffer Subclass: Illusionist Author: Silvaren Game Version: 4.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ----------MULTICLASS---------- Arcane Knight (Paladin/Wizard) The Angel of Death A dual wielding, self buffing tank with great AoE dmg Subclasses: Bleak Walker/Evoker Author: Sarnael Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Archknight Goldmagi Dual-wielding, self buffing killing machine with tanking capacity and endless zeal resource Subclasses:Goldpact Knight/Evoker Author: Enurale Game Version: 4.1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - The Solo Arcane Knight |HOT| What happens when you have 210+ deflection? Subclasses: Goldpact Knight/- Author: Sfzrx Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Ascetic (Druid/Monk) The Fate Testarossa |HOT| |POPULAR| or: how to accidentally make your Watcher more anime than Ydwin Subclasses: Fury/Helwalker Author: Ascaloth Game version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Battlemage (Fighter/Wizard) Cuchulain Battlemage who focuses on Citzal's Spirit Lance Subclasses: Devoted/- Author: Cyrus Blackfeather Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - The Lightning Rod |HOT| Battlemage caster able to unleash calamitous amounts of lightning damage on self and foes Subclasses: -/Evoker (optional) Author: Elebhral Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Brawler (Fighter/Monk) Gypsy Thunder |HOT| a harbinger of storm, mowing enemies with her lightning machinegun Subclasses: Devoted/Nalpazca Author: Giftmefood Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Lady of Pain |HOT| |POPULAR| DEPRECATED due to patch 1.1 High-speed, medium-armored dps great sword user Subclasses: Devoted/Helwalker Author: AndreaColombo Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - The Tornado |HOT| A brawler who's standing in a pack of enemies and spinning like crazy in order to cause as much damage as possible Subclasses: Devoted/- (vanilla or any subclass) Author: BalkothTheFeared Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - ------------------------------ Brute Guts - Frenzied Berserker |HOT| Build with great tanking possibilities, good self healing, good damage against solo targets and devastating power against crowds Subclass: Berserk/Devoted Author: seed_ls Game Version: 1.0-1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Lady of Endless Whispers A relentless and tempered brute, good damage and area of effect Subclass: -/Devoted Author: Kenneth77 Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - Wiliiam "Will" Breaker A howling immortal one man army that smashes everything in its path with high hit-to-crit conversion Subclass: Berserker/Devoted Author: Vonmama Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Contemplative (Monk/Priest) The Fists of Vengeance |HOT| does excellent single target and aoe damage and is very versatile Subclasses: Helwalker/Priest of Woedica |MOD| Author: 1TTFFSSE Game Version: 2.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - Skaen's Godsworn Ripping enemies to shreds with Skaen's blessed weapons or your fists Subclasses: Helwalker/Priest of Skaen Author: Wolken3156 Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Crusader (Fighter/Paladin) Bloodsail - The Pirate Paladin Crusader version: stand your ground, Devoted and Goldpact passives/heals make him very tanky; dps is good Subclasses: Goldpact Knight/Devoted Author: diamondsforever Game Version: 3.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Fanatic (Barbarian/Paladin) The Brutish Knight |HOT| A tanking barbarian in light armor Subclasses: Berserker/Kind Wayfarer Author: Pharaun159 Game Version: 1.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Imperial Fanatic Pumping out crits with the Last Word, silencing mobs while being resistant to every affliction Subclasses: Berserker/Bleak Walker Author: Theosupus Game Version: 2.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Harbinger (Chanter/Rogue) The Cunning Duelist Subclasses: Skald/Trickster A hamstringing specialist capable of inflicting all types of afflictions Author: Ascaloth Game version: 2.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - The Harbinger of Berath A tank who's using key gear, Persistent Distraction and Chanter phrases simultaneously to boosts defenses an armor rating and to unlock Deathblows passively. Subclasses: Troubadour/Streetfighter Author: Ganrich Game Version: 1.1(beta) Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - The Sweeper Agent The Sweeper's main focus is an interrupt and utility build that is tuned more towards range, but it can handle well also as a midline melee. Subclasses: Troubadour/Streetfighter Author: Metaturtle Game Version: 2.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Herald (Chanter/Paladin) The Fire-Breathing Drake Beathes fire with Dragon’s Dowry, summons an army of fire-breathing drakes to her side and buffs her allies with the Mith Fyr and Shared Flames Subclasses: Troubadour/Shieldbearer Author: TheMetaphysician Game Version: 4.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: Pallegina The Healing Wall |HOT| A main tank who doubles as powerful endurance healer Subclasses: Troubadour/Shieldbearer Author: Climhazzard Game Version: 1.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - Sir Sit-a-Lot What is the most effective but laziest way of soloing PotD? Subclasses: doesn't matter/doesn't matter Author: Marigoldran Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: Pallegina The Sword Singer (A) |HOT| Single or AOE tanky high melee DPS with extreme self healing, CC/offensive spells, summons, AOE healing/buffs and infinite Resources on Level 19 Subclasses: Troubadour/Kind Wayfarer Author: Voltron Game Version: 1.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - Tuono e Fulmine |POPULAR| how to make Pallegina hit like thunder and strike like lightning Author: Ascaloth Game version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: Pallegina ------------------------------ Holy Slayer (Paladin/Rogue) Bloodsail - The Pirate Paladin Holy Slayer version: getting flanked an/or bloodied, utilizing Streetfighter bonuses to dish out great DPS while using Goldpacts Gilded Enmity to lessen damage Subclasses: Goldpact Knight/Streetfighter Author: diamondsforever Game Version: 3.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - The Bleak Huntress |HOT| Sniper assassin with high initial burst damage, high accuracy and nice roleplay fluff Subclasses: Bleak Walker/Assassin Author: Voltron Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Faceless Dancer |HOT| Solo retaliation tank Subclasses: Bleak Walker/Trickster Author: 1TTFFSSE Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Holy Hand Grenadier Lob explosives which debuff your foes with DOTs and afflictions. Paladin defenses let you safely self-afflict distracted with the blunderbuss modal and have constant streetfigther speed bonus. Subclasses: Goldpact||Bleak Walker||Kind Wayfarer/Streetfighter Author: arkane83 Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - Stop-N-Go extremely tanky high dps build that hovers in the Bloodied/Near Death zone while stacking stand-still abilities and teleporting around the battlefield Subclasses: Goldpact Knight/Streetfighter Author: whimper Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Howler (Barbarian/Chanter) The Lord of the Imps |HOT| |POPULAR| Summon small, squishy skeletons, smash them with Gravecaller, triggering Blood Thirst and generating an army of imps Subclasses: Berserker/Beckoner Author: Dortek Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Inquisitor (Cipher/Paladin) The Adra Infused Duelist Fast, deadly and can strip enemy defenses down to allow allies to pummel away Subclasses: Soulblade/Kind Wayfarer Author: dbarbarian14 Game Version: 2.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - The Redeemer |HOT| 2h solo character built around the synergy between paladin (high defenses and survivability), cipher (high damage) and The Whispers of the Endless Paths (AoE, Riposte) Subclasses: Soulblade/Goldpact Knight Author: Kaylon Game Version: 3.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Three Aspects of the Inquisitor no FoD Inquisitor for solo PotD Subclasses: Soulblade/Goldpact Knight Author: Vonmara Game Version: 3.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Loremaster (Chanter/Wizard) The Stress-free Master |POPULAR| The most stress-free PotD solo runner Subclasses: Beckoner/Evoker Author: ppscurry Game Version: 1.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Marauder (Barbarian/Rogue) The Lightning Sphinx |HOT| self-buffing lightning lash Marauder Subclasses: Berserker/Assassin Author: 1TTFFSSE Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Mindstalker (Cipher/Rogue) The Company Man Roleplaying build for PotD Subclasses: Ascendant/Streetfighter Author: Cyrus Blackfeather Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - The Dishonored Play like Corvo: stick to the outskirts of combat backstabbing to build up focus then firing off cipher abilities. Subclasses: Soulblade/Assassin Author: Statis_Sword Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: Veteran Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Ravager (Barbarian/Monk) The Furry Ravager Tmaximize the spamming of bonus attacks via crits and the right weapon choice. Subclasses: Berserker/Helwalker Author: thundercleese Game Version: 2.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - The Slayer The Slayer is constantly trying to die, but is just too good at killing to have succeeded at his goal yet Subclasses: Berserker/Helwalker Author: Theosupus Game Version: 2.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - The Tiny Smasher Tiny AoE damage dealer with the goal of maximizing Might and Intellect or Constitution Subclasses: Berserker/Helwalker Author: Belegc Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: Classic Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Sage (Monk/Wizard) The Burning Sage Capable of high damage magic and highly buffed melee dps Subclasses: Helwalker/- Author: Lokithecat Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - The Mirrorback Can shift between powerful AOE blasting, single target DPS and a "mirror mode" in which it reflects attacks and spells back at attackers Subclasses: Helwalker/- Author: whimper Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Lancer of Galawain Using Citzal's Spirit Lance to generate lots of wounds with autoattacks Subclasses: Shattered Pillar/- Author: Cyrus Blackfeather Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - Thougt and Memory Long range striker who carpet-bombs enemies with spells and pokes them from afar with Citzal's Spirit Lance + Instruments of Pain Subclasses: Helwalker/- Author: Cyrus Blackfeather Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - ------------------------------ Scout (Ranger/Rogue) The Deep Leap |HOT| |POPULAR| deceiving and evading AoE *booom* fake Assassin Subclasses: Ghost Heart/Trickster Author: Boeroer Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Seer (Cipher/Ranger) The Glanfathan Soul Hunter a defensive ranged build, puppet master, high acc Subclasses: Ascendant/Ghost Heart Author: mant2si Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - One-Eyed Jack Versatile dual-wielding melee and ranged striker with crowd control capabilities Subclasses: Soulblade/Ghost Heart Author: doggiep0op Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: Veteran Solo: Untested Companion: - The Will-Bender |HOT| Turns Whisper of Treason (and other mind control) into a highly accurate ability - and comes with a bodyguard! Subclasses: Ascendant/- Author: Braven Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Shadowdancer (Monk/Rogue) A Dance with Death A seemingly fragile glass cannon that can attacks fast, dodge everything, deal with mobs, and get out of the stickiest situations alive Subclasses: Helwalker/Trickster Author: Vonmara Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Drunken Master Wander around in an alcohol and drug fueled stupor lulling your enemies into surrounding you then suddenly explode into motion Subclasses: Nalpasca/Streetfighter Author: Theosupus Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - The Eccentric Scepter-Trick single target dps and good debuffer Subclasses: Helwalker/Assassin Author: Silvaren Game Version: 2.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - The Fast Assassin the classical rogue: a dual wielding backstabber who attacks as fast as possible and is good in debuffing enemies Subclasses: Shattered Pillar/Assassin Author: Madscientiest Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: Veteran Solo: No Companion: - The Howitzer ranged crowd control/dps Subclasses: Nalpasca/Assassin Author: Dorftek Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Shaman (Barbarian/Priest) The Harbinger of Doom Dark Shaman build: Burn and sacrifice yourself and enemies for Skaen's sake Subclasses: Berserker/Priest of Skaen Author: mant2si Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Shepherd (Paladin/Ranger) Commander Shephard A sniper arquebus build with an insane amount of accuracy Subclasses: Bleak Walker/Sharpshooter Author: ppscurry Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Sorcerer (Druid/Wizard) Elemental Arsenal Stay back, buff, throw a Stun/Blind/Paralyse, look for the smallest AR/Defense rating, cast, repeat. Plenty of room for adaptation, no grimoire/weapon switching, no PL to keep track of. Subclasses: Fury/- Author: Beriel Game Version: 3.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Spellblade (Rogue/Wizard) The Spymaster Makes use of Wizard's defensive spells as well as high Constitution to maintain Flanked and Bloodied status for the Streetfighter's speed/damage bonuses Subclasses: Streetfighter/- Author: Cyrus Blackfeather Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - ------------------------------ Spiritualist (Chanter/Cipher) Rymrgand's Artitst |HOT| snowballs early into a biawac of destruction and test the power of your gaming contraption Subclasses: Beckoner||Skald||Troubadour/Soulblade||Ascendant Author: Metaturtle Game Version: 2.1 Difficulty: Veteran Solo: Solo Companion: - The Siren The Siren is about control - both of your enemies and of summons - with a good amount of debuffs on top. Subclasses: Beckoner/Beguiler Author: Toadbat Game Version: 2.0 Difficulty: Veteran Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Swashbuckler (Fighter/Rogue) Armorbreaker |HOT| Sturdy two-handed striker, focusing on high penetration estocs and area of effect capabilities Subclasses: Devoted/Streetfighter Author: Haplok Game Version: 2.01 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - The Iron Hammer Fights defensively and outlasts his enemies by locking them down in engagement and picking his moment for devastating retaliatory attacks Subclasses: Unbroken/Trickster Author: Theosupus Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - The Queen's Executioner Heavy AoE alpha strikes with Oathbreaker's End with respectable single target damage to mop up Subclasses: -/Assassin Author: thundercleese Game Version: 2.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - ------------------------------ Templar (Paladin/Priest) The Champion of Magran Mixes the best support spells and abilities with the strongest fire based abilities to make a strong flexible dps/support char Subclasses: Bleak Walker/Priest of Magran Author: Ansalon Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - The Dark Knight of Wael |HOT| High defense single-target damage dealer Subclasses: Bleak Walker/Priest of Wael Author: BalkothThe Feared Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Thaumaturge (Priest/Wizard) Effigy's Bombardement |HOT| Caster that combines both divine and arcane magic Subclasses: Priest of Skaen/- Author: araj123 Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Deathless Thaumaturge - no short description - Subclasses: <any Priest subclass>/Bloodmage Author: brasilgringo Game Version: 4.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Electric Dyslexic |HOT| Self-empowerment by taking in the absolute highest lightning damage you can generate through use of Maelstrom Scrolls Subclasses: Priest of Wael/- Author: Hulk'O'Saurus Game Version: 3.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Theurge (Chanter/Druid) The Healbot Party heal bot for heavy duty healing Subclasses: Troubadour/Livegiver Author: 1TTFFSSE Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: Tekehu (minus the Troubadour perks) Tāwhirimātea, the God of Storms Shock, freeze, and heal in a single package Subclasses: Stormspeaker/Watershaper Author: Ascaloth Game Version: 2.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: Tekehu ------------------------------ Transcendent (Cipher/Monk) The Transcendent A midline skirmisher that can debuff and charm enemies Subclasses: Soul Blade/Nalpasca Author: Climhazzard Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - ------------------------------ Universalist (Druid/Priest) The Keeper of the Wheel support/ healer as well as a consistent buffer/debuffer and reliable DOT dealer Subclasses: Animist/Priest of Berath Author: Stardusk78 Game Version: 1.1 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - ------------------------------ Votary (Monk/Paladin) Burn Baby Burn! |HOT| Gives Paladin both superb single target burst and a AoE nuking option. Subclasses: Helwalker/Shieldbearer Author: Voltron Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Eternal Votary |HOT| A tanky yet potent damage dealer for soloing PotD Subclasses: Helwalker/Paladin Author: Sharp Game Version: 1.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - No Pain - no Brains A retaliation based build where you also retaliate against yourself. Triggers rooting pain constantly while not dying. Subclasses: Helwalker/Paladin Author: Braven Game Version: 1.0.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ Wanderer (Monk/Ranger) The Big Game Hunter Capable of inflicting massive single target damage at range with an arquebus. Subclasses: Helwalker/Ghost Heart Author: bigwillystyle Game Version: 2.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Untested Companion: - ------------------------------ War Caller (Chanter/Fighter) The Sword Singer (B) |HOT| |DEPRECATED| Single or AOE tanky high melee DPS with extreme self healing, CC/offensive spells, summons, AOE healing/buffs and infinite Resources on Level 19 Subclasses: Troubadour/Devoted Author: Voltron Game Version: 1.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - The Turbocharger |HOT| |DEPRECATED| A dual wielding melee crit monster, which recovers resources, enabling it to spam charge Subclasses: Troubadour/Devoted Author: Raven Darkholme Game Version: 1.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - ------------------------------ Warden (Druid/Fighter) The Green Knight A frontline bruiser/support/healer Subclasses: Devoted/Lifegiver Author: ntavanga Game Version: 1.0 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: - ------------------------------ Zealot (Priest/Rogue) The Undying |HOT| High risk and very high dps by stacking near death enhancing effects Subclasses: Priest of Skaen/Streetfighter Author: Dorftek Game Version: 1.2 (beta) Difficulty: PotD Solo: Yes Companion: - Let's learn with Umezawa! |HOT| Versatile and mobile Zealot, tanking on huge packs of enemies or jumping around behind enemy lines to assassinate troublesome foes Subclasses: Priest of Wael/Streetfighter Author: thelee Game Version: 1.2 Difficulty: PotD Solo: No Companion: -

I would like to make a build of Elric of Melnibone from Michael Moor****'s books for RP and PoTD upscaled solo with Berath Blessings (not neccesary Megabosses). It will be nice if you can share your thoughts to make a fun build. I would appreciate if you would detail everything about the race, stats, equipment, skills, abilities, etc. You can see some information about him at this link: https://outskirtsbattledomewiki.com/index.php/fictions/5337-character-profile-elric-of-melnibone As you can see, he has a lot of powers that fits differents classes and is difficult to make a build around him. My first thought was a Devoted/Soulblade with Sanguine Greatsword/Voidwheel/WotEP, high Alchemy using drugs and the Cipher Powers. Race: Pale Elf (you can customize the look very similar with white skin and hair and red eyes and sickly) Stats(with BB): 18/9/18/18/18/9 / 18/6/18/21/18/9 / 20/5/20/20/20/5 Devoted + Cipher = +3 Penetration, so you can reach: 12(Mythic) + 3(Devoted/Cipher) + 2(Potion/food) + 1(Flanked) + 2(Body Attunement) + 1(Blackened Plate Armor) = 21 Armor Penetration. I would like to make him as fast as possible (more fun) with Mob Stance, Armored Grace, Pet, Equipment and Consumables. He also have a very powerful ring, but I don't think there is any that powerful. Thanks for your suggestions!