The Ultimate discussion thread

[thelee]

4 minutes ago, dunehunter said:

but u cannot use blood sacrifice out of combat neither?

doesn't matter. same trick as tactician. run in, shadowing beyond out, with a withdrawn vela, only instead of getting brilliant automatically you keep wall of flaming yourself until you get brilliant.

upon further thought might not work as well because there's the very real possibility that once vela pops back out she just keeps walking into your wall of fire.

*sigh* this is rough

Edited May 15, 2019 by thelee

[thelee]

hm, i just discovered that avenging storm can be extended by salvation of time. i'm not sure it'll help enough, but something to consider for another night of testing. any weapons that can cheese with avenging storm particularly well?

Edited May 15, 2019 by thelee

[dunehunter]

2 minutes ago, thelee said:

hm, i just discovered that avenging storm can be extended by salvation of time. i'm not sure it'll help enough, but something to consider for another night of testing. any weapons that can cheese with avenging storm particularly well?

Not Avenging storm, but Scordeo's Edge is pretty cheesy with Salvation of time @thelee The accuracy and 0 recovery can be extended.

Edited May 15, 2019 by dunehunter

[thelee]

7 minutes ago, dunehunter said:

Not Avenging storm, but Scordeo's Edge is pretty cheesy with Salvation of time @thelee

never really used the weapon - what's the cheese?

edit: lol never mind i found an old video on the forums. that in itself can be a combined cheese with avenging storm. does it seriously remove any recovery, even in 5.0?

Edited May 15, 2019 by thelee

[dunehunter]

16 minutes ago, thelee said:

never really used the weapon - what's the cheese?

edit: lol never mind i found an old video on the forums. that in itself can be a combined cheese with avenging storm. does it seriously remove any recovery, even in 5.0?

yes

[thelee]

6 minutes ago, dunehunter said:

yes

lololol dual wielding skaen spiritual weapons, with avenging storm, is like 4 attacks per second, combined with deadeye and potion of impediment that is an expected 1.6 interrupts per second (who even needs mule kick at that point?), not to mention very rapid, abydon-proof damage.

if this ends up working you're going to get 90% of the credit simply just for bringing it to my attention. the hardest part will just be keeping spiritual ally uptime  without losing vela withdraw uptime. (and the second hardest part will just be creating an efficient path to pick up scordeo's in the real version of the run)

Edited May 15, 2019 by thelee

[Waski]

50 minutes ago, thelee said:

another class for consideration - blood mage + skaen. wall of flame might be an easier way to try to trigger the brilliant cloak, and i think bloodmage has pretty good megaboss options (crushing doom/slicken spam hauani o whe and most bosses, not so sure about bosses that can't be interrupted though, but maybe it doesn't matter in those other cases if you or vela can't die).

Why would You need skaen priest with bloodmage?  Wall of fire is bad for triggering cloak because it can miss, only 1st lv missiles (autohit). 

[thelee]

Just now, Waski said:

Why would You need skaen priest with bloodmage?  Wall of fire is bad for triggering cloak because it can miss, only 1st lv missiles (autohit). 

the skaen priest is solely there for the infinite withdraw. consider me in the boat that will want to try an infinite withdraw approach until i can see that it's not viable (though dunehunter just gave me a big clue into a good priest-friendly approach) simply because it would erase a lot of the RNG involved in a higher-dps, finite withdraw build like SC monk or tactician/troubadour.

[dunehunter]

9 minutes ago, thelee said:

lololol dual wielding skaen spiritual weapons, with avenging storm, is like 4 attacks per second, combined with deadeye and potion of impediment that is an expected 1.6 interrupts per second (who even needs mule kick at that point?), not to mention very rapid, abydon-proof damage.

if this ends up working you're going to get 90% of the credit simply just for bringing it to my attention. the hardest part will just be keeping spiritual ally uptime  without losing vela withdraw uptime. (and the second hardest part will just be creating an efficient path to pick up scordeo's in the real version of the run)

Not paid a lot attention here in the forum but that weapon is imo the most OP one in the game. Glad i'm helpful!

[Waski]

20 minutes ago, thelee said:

the skaen priest is solely there for the infinite withdraw. consider me in the boat that will want to try an infinite withdraw approach until i can see that it's not viable (though dunehunter just gave me a big clue into a good priest-friendly approach) simply because it would erase a lot of the RNG involved in a higher-dps, finite withdraw build like SC monk or tactician/troubadour.

Are reaching lv16 would be hard?  Temporal cocoon is there for sc blood mage and you can cast it on companions. 

[abstrack]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

doesn't matter. same trick as tactician. run in, shadowing beyond out, with a withdrawn vela, only instead of getting brilliant automatically you keep wall of flaming yourself until you get brilliant.

upon further thought might not work as well because there's the very real possibility that once vela pops back out she just keeps walking into your wall of fire.

*sigh* this is rough

how get you brilliant with these tactic automatically??

[Decadency]

Does Salvation of Time upply on target in Stasis? Could be a safe way to keep Vela in it.

[Decadency]

Just now, Decadency said:

Does Salvation of Time upply on target in Stasis? Could be a safe way to keep Vela in it.

Just checked. It doesn't

[thelee]

7 hours ago, Waski said:

Are reaching lv16 would be hard?  Temporal cocoon is there for sc blood mage and you can cast it on companions. 

problem with temporal cocoon is that it doesn't block any damage over time effects. so while it's doable, it's riskier than withdraw, which both heals and blocks most damage.

[thelee]

6 hours ago, abstrack said:

how get you brilliant with these tactic automatically??

if you de-aggro all the enemies in a fight, and you don't have a perception affliction/aren't flanked, that fulfills tactician's requirements to be brilliant: no one in your party is flanked, and all enemies are flanked (except there are no enemies, so this last part doesn't matter).

[MaxQuest]

17 minutes ago, thelee said:

if you de-aggro all the enemies in a fight, and you don't have a perception affliction/aren't flanked, that fulfills tactician's requirements to be brilliant: no one in your party is flanked, and all enemies are flanked (except there are no enemies, so this last part doesn't matter).

According to gamedatabundles, you get Brilliant, if all of the following are satisfied:

• you are in combat (for more than 1s)
• there are no [friendly units in 150ft range, that are flanked and in combat] (destructibles don't count) (and it is unclear if INT influences the aura range)
• there are no [not_friendly units in 150ft range, that are not_flanked and in combat] (destructibles don't count) (and it is unclear if INT influences the aura range)

So.. when you de-aggro, you run back somewhere?

Edited May 15, 2019 by MaxQuest

[baldurs_gate_2]

So, what is the time limit from the eothas challenge? Tight one?

[Decadency]

Just now, baldurs_gate_2 said:

So, what is the time limit from the eothas challenge? Tight one?

Every main quest stage's got its own time limit. First stage before you get to the Adra stone is 4 days.

[thelee]

59 minutes ago, MaxQuest said:

According to gamedatabundles, you get Brilliant, if all of the following are satisfied:

• you are in combat (for more than 1s)
• there are no [friendly units in 150ft range, that are flanked and in combat] (destructibles don't count) (and it is unclear if INT influences the aura range)
• there are no [not_friendly units in 150ft range, that are not_flanked and in combat] (destructibles don't count) (and it is unclear if INT influences the aura range)

So.. when you de-aggro, you run back somewhere?

that's extremely useful.

all my successful de-aggro involves shadowing beyond back to where i engaged, but 150ft (~45m? i'm US but am used to all in-game measurements in meters) seems like a huge range that would basically cover many maps. i think shadowing beyond/untargetability--if there are no other targets for enemies to latch onto--removes all "not_friendly_units" from being in combat, so the third bullet point isn't even checked any more.

that being said, as mentioned before there have been times with cheatyface that i can't get brilliant in the middle of combat despite apparently having de-aggroed enemies, and i wonder if there's a particular interaction with those three conditions.

Edited May 15, 2019 by thelee

[thelee]

50 minutes ago, baldurs_gate_2 said:

So, what is the time limit from the eothas challenge? Tight one?

"You only have 3 days, 26 hours to finish Port Maje. You have 25 days to complete Hasongo. You have 26 days to complete Ashen Maw, and a similar amount of time to get to Ukaizo. This essentially limits your ability to explore, and really discourages you from searching abandoned settlements or burial grounds out on the world map. The time constraint is tight for the first act, but a little looser for successive acts (though not loose enough to go off and do all the DLC, at least until the final act). You can save some time and level up a bit by frontloading all the Nekataka quests in Act II (before going to Hasongo) since it only costs you a couple hours to go from district to district (versus days to travel on the map). This challenge also has the effect of requiring you to be much more deliberate about resting."

i might have gotten this slightly wrong in my guide - in all my recent runs I have 27 days to complete Hasongo. I must've measured from getting the boat instead of from getting Oderisi's notes, because act 2 timer starts in the latter, even though you have no options to do anything other than go get your boat. do note that in practice the mandatory sailing just to get to crit path quest points eats up a good chunk of the time for all acts (one should try to invest in making their ship real fast).

my discussion of all the challenges (except for the most recent one, the ultimate): https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/magrans-fires

Edited May 15, 2019 by thelee

[Tommy1984]

11 minutes ago, thelee said:

i might have gotten this slightly wrong in my guide - in all my recent runs I have 27 days to complete Hasongo.

The timer for the next stage is added to your running timer. So if you have 2 days left for finishing Maje, they are not lost instead you just have more time for the next stage (in your case 27 days instead of 25 days). At least that was how it was handled in my test runs for "The Ultimate". I haven't played past Neketaka yet, but I assume getting ship upgrades like Palm Sails and Lanterns helps you with this challenge. Don't know if its worth to get also the Voyager as ship.

[thelee]

15 minutes ago, Tommy1984 said:

The timer for the next stage is added to your running timer. So if you have 2 days left for finishing Maje, they are not lost instead you just have more time for the next stage (in your case 27 days instead of 25 days). At least that was how it was handled in my test runs for "The Ultimate". I haven't played past Neketaka yet, but I assume getting ship upgrades like Palm Sails and Lanterns helps you with this challenge. Don't know if its worth to get also the Voyager as ship.

good to know going forward because i was getting sloppy with my act 1 time because i didn't think it mattered.

[AndreaColombo]

@thelee since you've been running a Priest, could you confirm whether the Faith Attuned lash from spiritual weapons still scales with the Watcher's disposition scores?

It's supposed to follow the pattern you described here, however the lash is marked in the spiritual weapons' description as a fixed +20% (dynamic values usually can be hovered upon to reveal the variables influencing them.) Your post also mentions companions' spiritual weapons scaling with the Watchers' dispositions, but in my current playthrough Xoti's lash is 20% even though I maxed out on both Benevolent and Honest, and only have one rank in Eothas's disfavored dispositions.

[thelee]

11 minutes ago, AndreaColombo said:

@thelee since you've been running a Priest, could you confirm whether the Faith Attuned lash from spiritual weapons still scales with the Watcher's disposition scores?

It's supposed to follow the pattern you described here, however the lash is marked in the spiritual weapons' description as a fixed +20% (dynamic values usually can be hovered upon to reveal the variables influencing them.) Your post also mentions companions' spiritual weapons scaling with the Watchers' dispositions, but in my current playthrough Xoti's lash is 20% even though I maxed out on both Benevolent and Honest, and only have one rank in Eothas's disfavored dispositions.

i haven't tested it again recently, but since they introduced the revised lash it's always listed a fixed +20% lash, and it's never actually done that.

companions use your watcher's dispositions but obsidian-created npcs don't have any favored or disfavored dispositions (same with pallegina and vatnir) so that they can go into any party and be equally mediocre.

also when you're computing lash % you have to pay attention to rounding and penetration. lashes do their own PEN check, so be absolutely sure there are no confounding variables. (xoti should have a 25% lash)

edit - i've never actually tested xoti's spiritual weapon (i've used all PC-available spiritual weapon, but not xoti or vatnir, go figure), so it's also possible that xoti's spiritual is buggy and might not have any disposition scaling (not even the neutral +5% base bonus).

edit 2 - if i have some time i'll do some tests tonight, in a separate game. (can't do it in my cheatyface run because magran's makes it impossible to evaluate combat log)

Edited May 15, 2019 by thelee

[Boeroer]

Scordeo's Edge is not only great because of Blade Cascade but also because of Adaptive. It stacks with every other ACC buff since it's from an item 

Speaking about Avenging Storm: against mobs Hand Mortar is still the most awesome way to use it. Especially if you can crit a lot with Adaptive (+20 ACC) or even Strategic Shot (+30 ACC). As said earlier Blinding Smoke triggers Avenging Storm and every AoE attack roll from the mortar has the potential to trigger the AoE cone of Blinding Smoke. In addition to the Disorient. So Tactician/something sounds like a good idea. 

If you combine it with Pull of Eora & Clear Out you generate (AoE_targets_Clear_Out * AoE_targets_Hand Mortar * AoE_targets_Blinding_Smoke) hits which all trigger Avenging Storm.

And against single targets I would presume that Scordeo's Edge + Xefa's Empirical Explication should be very nice as well once Blade Cascade triggers. Or doesn't it remove reload time as well? Always used it with another melee weapon...

Edited May 15, 2019 by Boeroer