The Ultimate discussion thread

[wildeyn00700]

11 hours ago, thelee said:

good to see someone experimenting with a different approach with good success, I'd like to know more about how your build plays out because frankly I'm a little surprised that a straightforward troubadour/ranger can be so effective and safe.

the only thing I'd be truly worried about are the fights in SSS and FS (which you said you hadn't tried yet) where you don't have a lot of maneuvering room and Vela might not have a safe place to be (especially when fighting the security system in FS), though maybe you can stock up on enough withdraw spells to make it work.

The build relies mostly on killing with summons, and on an important fact: in turn-based, Vela STAYS STILL even without being terrified, IF she stays not terrified. 

So, for a typical fight, take the Tortuk fight on the Dunnage docks.  I send my boar (boar is huge because it regenerates after getting knocked out nearly every combat) to attack one of the powder monkey adds, while my MC is sneaking far away over to the left around a sort-of-corner by the steps of the deck (not pier).  I learned the hard way to suicide my boar rather than to try to save him.  Trying to save him draws enemies near myself and/or Vela, and they coded Vela in an extreme sort of way, where she runs into combat way too insanely, and enemies do target her sometimes.  So, my boar will use its movement to run to the right, even farther away from me.  The enemies will head after the boar.  For this fight, I might be lvl 11 with upgraded Wurms and also normal Ogres.  I move forward on my turn (half movement dots b/c in stealth), and summon wurms as far from myself and as close to enemies as I can.  The actual summoning spell finished on turn 2. As opposed to Ogres, Wurms tend to get initiative right after being summoned.  This is important because it means they can move closer to the enemy right away before the enemy moves closer to them, which prevents creep of the fight getting closer to Vela.  Now, the enemy is basically locked.  If they have the firepower to kill my summons before I can make more, then I stay in stealth and I am fine.  Nearly always, they cannot kill my summons, so I leave stealth and help fight a bit with a 2h ranged weapon (or not, if I don't want to have decay of the weapon for no reason).  However, I use my judgement and don't leave stealth until the fight is under control enough so that I won't get enemies messing with me.  It would be very bad to be out of stealth and get interrupted while you are summoning, and be left with no chants and no summons.  However, there are a million belt-items that can summon 1/rest for emergencies I always keep a fresh one handy.  It is rare I need to use one.

20 int with items is a magic number, btw, for duration in rounds, especially once you get lvl 19 with ancient weapons.  15 int is enough for resummoning Ogres and Wurms.  You only need to use the original skeletons in the first cave, since you can get to lvl 4 before the digsite fights.

The only active ranger abilities I use, and very rarely obviously (since they are per-rest until and unless you get brilliant of course I do a no-rest run for all the bonuses and for Eothas time), are marked prey (non upgraded) and evasive roll (which is awesome sometimes mid-combat when Vela is safe).  Passives are things like resilient companion, 2h weapons, Marksmanship, shield, concentration, and then you have have so many extra talents that you take stuff like extra weapon slot, fast running, and 1-3 of the +10 saves ones, since why not.  Definitely take survival of the fittest, lucky, toughness, and such.  None are breakers, but they add up and few talents are critical.  Once you get ancient weapons, you still want to have upgraded wurms, and that is all you need.  I don't use other invocations, but somebody might find some narrow use for a damage one.  Chants, you mostly want ancient memory and at lvl 20 the one that makes skeletons (which don't unsummon your ancient weapons, by the way).  15% fire damage on weapons is useful a little bit, and dragon wailed is almost irrelevant but you may use it a bit.

Dordugan is a somewhat special case, as you have to beat him yourself, with the chant-skeletons.  Because of how this all works, it has to be in real time, so Vela has to get terrified.  You start with Vela in the bottom right, and use your boar to start combat and lead Dorud close to her to get her terrified, then shoot him and lead him to the other side of the map.  It is then easy to keep him far enough that his massive range abilities still don't ever hit her.  Otherwise, he'd be fully impossible, but once you do that, you fight him a lot like Kaylon did in his video on youtube.  Because of Abydon's challenge, you'd want 3 good ranged weapons and would need to kill him before they break.  For this one fight, you'd want the invocation that gives you str and +2 pen (among some other stuff - forgetting the name of it) since that means you can pen with other ranged weapons (not just the Essence Bow) along with the marksmanship ring.  And of course the cloak that heals you from fire. 

So, your own abilites don't matter much.  I wouldn't ditch anything too strongly, although maybe dex can go down pretty far.  You need enough int to get to 20, and maybe to 25 eventually would be good.  Perception for traps and hitting.  And enough con to not die to stuff that hits you sometimes like the undead dragon.  I had 10 might for this build, but I'd try to go higher for Dorudugan if I could.  Resolve can probably be ditched, but overall it helps to not be overly squishy sometimes (such as against the water dragon and the risen undead dragon).  There are a lot of fights in the game, and not all can be handled from stealth.  When getting Revku's burden cloak, for example, you get ambushed by fire bats and a naga and stuff, and you need to help in the fight so that Vela isn't killed.

Turn based combat pulls more enemies, from farther away, than real time usually does.  For example, in the hanging sepulcher, I started combat in that room with the risen guys, and the darguls and shade actually joined the fight, but for some reason the wraith stayed out of it.  Still, this build is so powerful in situations like that, that I beat all of them, or rather, my Ogres and Wurms did (however, I believe I was lvl 16 when I did that, which is fairly high level).  Wurms are great when you want to take down low-hp enemies who are in back, like Risen Archers and that Priest and such.  Ogres have a ton of hps and once you have sweeping attack, that is really good for lvls 16-19, which can involve a fairly large amount of non-boss but not easy fighting, including some bounties.  I beat that goldpact group bounty (Beina, I believe) who also has that ironclad, for example, as well as the 4 guys with the treasure map pieces, as part of leveling up.

In the cave with the bog witches in outcast's refuge, I did real time and that way didn't pull the witches in the farther room, but in turn based they all jumped in.  So, as I said in my first post, I keep aware of the benefits and drawbacks of turn-based and of real-time and switch as appropriate.

For a pet, I use the animancy cat mostly, and for some fights like the Beast of Winter, the troll that makes you immune to engagement is great. 

Edited July 3, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Wotcha]

I didn’t think it was possible to toggle between real time and turn based, but you are talking like it is. How does that work? I thought you chose at startup and that was a permanent choice for that playthrough. 

[wildeyn00700]

12 minutes ago, Wotcha said:

I didn’t think it was possible to toggle between real time and turn based, but you are talking like it is. How does that work? I thought you chose at startup and that was a permanent choice for that playthrough. 

Nope - it is doable and within the rules for Ultimate to do so.  You hit the tilde key (below ESC) and then type: settacticalmode followed by either a 0 or 1, then press [ENTER]  1 is turn based; 0 is real time. 

As a quality-of-life thing, of course in turn-based you turn the combat speed all the way up... but then don't forget to turn it all the way back down for real time.  If you do have a char that is good for turn-based, note that you HAVE to switch if you do any city battles in Nekataka such as Cotta or the Imp or Katrenn, or else the guards jump in.  In normal real-time, the guards don't spawn and attack, so that is a bug but that is what Obsidian is best at (having games with tons of bugs) heh.

Edited July 3, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Enoch]

15 minutes ago, wildeyn00700 said:

 within the rules for Ultimate to do so.

Err... really?  Using the dev console? 

It may not be explicitly expressed, but it would shock me if this was the case. 

[wildeyn00700]

3 minutes ago, Enoch said:

Err... really?  Using the dev console? 

It may not be explicitly expressed, but it would shock me if this was the case. 

Ultimate rules explain explicitly that you can use the console, just not for anything that involves Iroll20s.  Also, in a similar context, it mentioned explicitly that turn-based can be toggled on and off during the game, not just at the beginning. I think that is found in the original announcement about Ultimate.  It is plenty of a ridiculous challenge already.  It seems they didn't see a reason to restrict you to just one mode.

I'm not aware of whether there are any other uses of the console besides this; I never used it before, and just figured it out because of the turn-based/real-time toggle.  I looked it up once I encountered the bug in turn-based where Nekataka guards attack you when they should not.

Edited July 3, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[wildeyn00700]

It may be of interest, with a priest/chanter (trying out to see how the leveling goes, with all challenges on except TOI, Eothas, Wael, and Skaen), I killed the monsters between the beginning of the main dig site underground (starting with the sporelings, crystal spider, wisps, wurms) and continued the same fight all the way through killing the adra ooze and essence anomalies and such, so no sneaking was required except for past the panthers, which I think is minimal.   Not sure if it is 100% repeatable, because Vela seemed to get left behind a bit at first, but the basic idea was to pull Sporelings with the speed chant to run faster, then summon Wurms and flee and the Wurms aggro the sporelings and the rest of what comes, and then combat stays active and you sort of carefully hop to the next set of mobs with something like 1 wurm to active them (but they don't keep chasing when the wurm disappears).  I got to the next phase of the Eothas challenge with 1-2 days cushion, which means you can do something similar in the 1st cave on the beach if you want extra experience and such.  There will also likely be plenty of opportunities to do the same sort of thing, where you find a fight you can win somewhere in an area without Vela getting killed, and then activate other monsters, who then sit around waiting for your summons to arrive and safely kill them.  The priest part of my character was irrelevant for this, any chanter can do it.

Also, it is probably common knowledge, but if you exit the docks part of Maje in the bottom left, that lets you enter Gorecci St in the right place. 

Edited July 3, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Wotcha]

5 hours ago, wildeyn00700 said:

 

Also, it is probably common knowledge, but if you exit the docks part of Maje in the bottom left, that lets you enter Gorecci St in the right place. 

That is NOT common knowledge, as far as I am aware, but if it's true, that is AWESOME.  I want to try that.  You can sneak through the enemies but it takes a decent amount of stealth and is very tricky.  If it's possible to avoid it entirely, that's terrific.

[Waski]

8 minutes ago, Wotcha said:

That is NOT common knowledge, as far as I am aware, but if it's true, that is AWESOME.  I want to try that.  You can sneak through the enemies but it takes a decent amount of stealth and is very tricky.  If it's possible to avoid it entirely, that's terrific.

 it is common knowledge, there is also "trap pulling", "spell pulling", relaoding items ( like missile gloves ) by having 2 and stacking them in inventory etc, maybe we should do "deadfire tips&tricks" topic

[Wotcha]

1 minute ago, Waski said:

 it is common knowledge, there is also "trap pulling", "spell pulling", relaoding items ( like missile gloves ) by having 2 and stacking them in inventory etc, maybe we should do "deadfire tips&tricks" topic

I've read through quite a bit of the forums (I lurk for a long time before I ever get up the courage to post!), but I missed the Gorecci Street one.  I hadn't heard of the reloading items one either.  Maybe I should use the holiday weekend to trawl the forums again looking for such gems!

[thelee]

12 hours ago, wildeyn00700 said:

Ultimate rules explain explicitly that you can use the console, just not for anything that involves Iroll20s.

This is true, but I was understood that as being some sort of "you can use console if your game bugs out" sort of thing.

The idea of switching back and forth between real-time and turn-based via console commands for your own advantage seems to me to be very gray area, since it might not be "in the spirit of the challenge." Josh has said advantageous bugs are OK (since it's their fault), but i'm not so sure about advantageous console commands. I.E. it might be ok to use that to avoid city guards attacking you and ending your run, but to selectively use it to get an advantage in fights, I dunno...

maybe compared to Brilliant exploits it's no big deal, but that just feels a little bit like just finding the weak points within the game mechanics itself.

Edited July 3, 2019 by thelee

[Wotcha]

6 minutes ago, thelee said:

This is true, but I was understood that as being some sort of "you can use console if your game bugs out" sort of thing.

The idea of switching back and forth between real-time and turn-based via console commands for your own advantage seems to me to be very gray area, since it might not be "in the spirit of the challenge." Josh has said advantageous bugs are OK (since it's their fault), but i'm not so sure about advantageous console commands. I.E. it might be ok to use that to avoid city guards attacking you and ending your run, but to selectively use it to get an advantage in fights, I dunno...

maybe compared to Brilliant exploits it's no big deal, it just feels a little bit less like just finding the weak points within the game mechanics itself.

On that note, there's a bug I've noticed in turn based.  I haven't figured out the entire parameters of it.  You can trigger instant-cast of casting-time spells under certain circumstances, which I think are 1) you haven't used any of your movement, and 2) your spell, if cast, will not go off until a lower initiative in the following round.  What you do is start casting the spell, then hover your cursor over the "Delay Turn" button, but don't click it, and then move your cursor away.  Your spell cast will move its slot in the turn order from whatever initiative it was next turn, to the same initiative in the CURRENT turn, even if your own initiative is already past that.  In such a case, when you end your turn, the spell goes off immediately afterward.

Obviously this is super, super useful.  Equally obviously, it cannot possibly be intended.  It's egregious enough that I wouldn't necessarily want to bet my Ultimate playthrough on it, although given the "advantageous bugs are all Obsidian's fault and fair game", I wouldn't rule it out entirely.  It could be extremely powerful for something like a Chanter build where getting a summon off instantly instead of in the following round could be very clutch indeed.  It's also great for party coordination (not much of a consideration for Ultimate, obvs), where you can delay all your team's turns, get your cast-time crowd-control spells instantly, and then get to enjoy the advantages of all the prones or one-round duration effects with your own team before the enemy gets a chance to act and shake the prones/one-turn durations off.

[wildeyn00700]

1 hour ago, thelee said:

This is true, but I was understood that as being some sort of "you can use console if your game bugs out" sort of thing.

The idea of switching back and forth between real-time and turn-based via console commands for your own advantage seems to me to be very gray area, since it might not be "in the spirit of the challenge." Josh has said advantageous bugs are OK (since it's their fault), but i'm not so sure about advantageous console commands. I.E. it might be ok to use that to avoid city guards attacking you and ending your run, but to selectively use it to get an advantage in fights, I dunno...

maybe compared to Brilliant exploits it's no big deal, it just feels a little bit less like just finding the weak points within the game mechanics itself.

 

I didn't read it as a gray area; when I read the rules I understood them to be clearly saying it was ok, and that was before I was interested in, or knowledgeable of how, to switch.  Ultimate is absurd enough that I'm not going to give myself any further disadvantages.  Besides, suppose you pick turn-based as your main original choice.  Turn-based has bugs constantly (in addition to the guards jumping in bug, there is also a bug that adds a 15 second pause every few turns in various fights, such as against Concelhaut, which is soul-sucking, making a fight take 2 hours instead of 1), so switching to real time sometimes is mostly for dealing with that.  Few, if any, non-bugged fights need real time.  Anyway, as I said, Ultimate is silly enough without adding assumptions about stuff that makes it even more impossible.

Here is why I think they allow switching: turn-based is known to be slow as heck, far slower than other games that have turn-based.  Fights can literally take an hour or more, against normal monsters, not even bosses.  Switching to real-time sometimes, to deal with that, is likely intended.  Dorudugan took me about 3 hours of real time, or more, in REAL TIME.  In turn based, it may have taken many more hours.  They also seem to want to have a game that uniquely allows players to use either mode, and the modes are supposed to be balanced, which also means they have to let players switch.  Plus, they intentionally allow it.  They could easily have made switching unavailable for Ultimate, like they made 1roll20s commands disabled.  I actually was worried for a sec, since I've just been playing in simulated Ultimate to test, so I just made an actual Ultimate character and tested to see if you could switch in Ultimate, and you can.

Anyway, I think I've made this into a bigger deal than it actually is.  With my build and my test game, I'm doing essentially every fight in turn-based anyway.  Only Nekataka-guard-bug fights and Dorudugan have been done real time, and Outcast's Refuge where you have a similar bug-ish issue with mobs (several witches) coming from an entirely different room in turn-based, that doesn't happen in real time.  And I could probably do both of the latter fights (everything outside of the Nekataka guard bug) in turn-based if necessary.  My build may not work for other reasons, but the turn-based/real-time switch isn't really a big deal.

Edited July 3, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Decadency]

I think my run is doomed  I've got like 21 day left (59 days past). I'm in SSS now (after the bridge interraction) and I haven't been to FS and Beast of Winter. The main problem is that Belranga is too far away (I killed Nemnok before the fire dragon - that was a mistake and waste of time). My calculations say that I need 23-24 days

Don't now if I should start another run or try to finish this one.

My kills:

Nemnok, Fire Dragon, Watershapers Guild Dragon, Giant Wurm, Concelhaut. And also did 5 fights in SSS (Vela almost died on spiders, which is Seeker's challange, cause of a mistake but I got lucky).

Edited July 4, 2019 by Decadency

[wildeyn00700]

12 hours ago, Decadency said:

I think my run is doomed  I've got like 21 day left (59 days past). I'm in SSS now (after the bridge interraction) and I haven't been to FS and Beast of Winter. The main problem is that Belranga is too far away (I killed Nemnok before the fire dragon - that was a mistake and waste of time). My calculations say that I need 23-24 days

Don't now if I should start another run or try to finish this one.

My kills:

Nemnok, Fire Dragon, Watershapers Guild Dragon, Giant Wurm, Concelhaut. And also did 5 fights in SSS (Vela almost died on spiders, which is Seeker's challange, cause of a mistake but I got lucky).

Still, it looks like you may be the first to complete it.  You've proven your concept in a mirror game, right?  Tactician/priest or do I have that wrong?  edit: just saw your video below, so I see you are a mage/priest.

I'm still looking to prove my concept with ranger/chanter, and may definitely still fail to do that.  I have part of FS and all of SSS to go, not in an actual Ultimate, but in a test game.  I'm also starting to look at a chanter/priest, played much like I am playing my chanter/ranger except for that way I have priest spells and combos for any fights if/when I run into a wall with the my current character.

I was hoping that the Eothas challenge wouldn't be overly difficult, if one makes a character that can win the necessary fights without resting.  It sounds like that may not be the case.

Edited July 5, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[lunattic]

8 hours ago, Decadency said:

I think my run is doomed  I've got like 21 day left (59 days past). I'm in SSS now (after the bridge interraction) and I haven't been to FS and Beast of Winter. The main problem is that Belranga is too far away (I killed Nemnok before the fire dragon - that was a mistake and waste of time). My calculations say that I need 23-24 days

Don't now if I should start another run or try to finish this one.

My kills:

Nemnok, Fire Dragon, Watershapers Guild Dragon, Giant Wurm, Concelhaut. And also did 5 fights in SSS (Vela almost died on spiders, which is Seeker's challange, cause of a mistake but I got lucky).

Still, that sounds really impressive! It does seem like you're the furthest of everyone here. Hoping to see a recording soon

[Decadency]

3 minutes ago, lunattic said:

Still, that sounds really impressive! It does seem like you're the furthest of everyone here. Hoping to see a recording soon

Well... If I fail - my next run will be better with less borring stuff.

[Decadency]

This is how I almost failed my run with a stupid mistake but got lucky 

 

Edited July 5, 2019 by Decadency

[wildeyn00700]

On 7/2/2019 at 10:38 AM, thelee said:

good to see someone experimenting with a different approach with good success, I'd like to know more about how your build plays out because frankly I'm a little surprised that a straightforward troubadour/ranger can be so effective and safe.

the only thing I'd be truly worried about are the fights in SSS and FS (which you said you hadn't tried yet) where you don't have a lot of maneuvering room and Vela might not have a safe place to be (especially when fighting the security system in FS), though maybe you can stock up on enough withdraw spells to make it work.

I just did FS for the first time, and it worked!  Vela seems to take less damage than characters and summons do, from the security system.  I did that fight successfully just now.  The hard part is actually not until Maura and the 2 librarians show up right in the middle, as that can happen right on top of Vela.  Until then, she is fine.  What I did was kill the armors and get ready to withdraw Vela right as an animated weapon killed the last power conduit, and then try to get the attention of Maura and the librarians with my summons.  Maura still cast on Vela a couple of times, but they were non-damaging spells.  I am near the oracle, but I just watched a video of it that showed pretty clearly how you aren't forced to have Vela right up in the middle of the fight, so I should be fine (famous last words - heh).  I defeated the Memory Hoarder, although right at the last minute, he tried to head all across the area for seemingly no reason, after Vela.  He was nearly dead and I got his attention back.  Trouble would have been if he did it earlier and got close enough for her to hit her with screams.  One Librarian also randomly headed for her once as well, but I killed him before he got to her.  I proactively killed the Librarians once I saw that they were going to get activated anyway.

So, "just" SSS (whch I haven't seen at all, pretty much, to prove the concept; I am worried about the dialogue-initiated battle against Pokohoa (sp?) and not sure how the other fights are positioned there either.  I have to do Drowned Barrows and check to make sure I can kill the Sigilmaster and the Ooze and the Guardian, but I have a friend who has mostly proved out the ooze and sigilmaster as doable. 

But for now, another DLC conquered, so I'll allow myself to feel triumphant for a day before my hopes are perhaps dashed to bits in SSS...

By the way, I ran into an odd thing that I believe is a bug.  I respecced at the imp vendor in FS (to unlock the 26 mech door to hurry things along and see what happened), and I believe it wiped out all of my resting bonuses when I did that. Anybody else ever encounter something like this?

Edited July 5, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Decadency]

5 minutes ago, wildeyn00700 said:

By the way, I ran into an odd thing that I believe is a bug.  I respecced at the imp vendor in FS (to unlock the 26 mech door to hurry things along and see what happened), and I believe it wiped out all of my resting bonuses when I did that. Anybody else ever encounter something like this?

Well... I lost my resting bonuses after the bridge in SSS. It's like resting without food.

[Raven Darkholme]

Respeccing shouldn't get rid of resting bonuses, sounds like a bug.

[Decadency]

Finished SSS ) Vic's advices helped me a lot.

Edited July 5, 2019 by Decadency

[Decadency]

The next are Hauani O Whe and Dorudugan

[wildeyn00700]

10 hours ago, Decadency said:

Finished SSS ) Vic's advices helped me a lot.

 

Grats! Keep it up.  Working on SSS now myself, first time I'm seeing the content.  Any advice in particular that I should be aware of, or was the advice mostly class specific?

Edited July 6, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[wildeyn00700]

22 hours ago, Decadency said:

Well... I lost my resting bonuses after the bridge in SSS. It's like resting without food.

Just did that bridge for the first time.  Dex 14 and athletics 8 gets you across.  Not sure if you need to know the bridge sucks first, which is mech 14, surv 13, or a steath check might examine successfully also - not sure of that one.

Finished with the fights prior to going outside the arena in SSS.  Flame nagas took a while in real life, but only 3 hrs in game time.  So far, the fights are a lock, but at least 2 of them, judging from videos, may be a problem for my character.  We'll see. 

Edited July 6, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[wildeyn00700]

Um, how on earth does anybody do the Changeling's Dance?  Is there any way to get out of doing that fight, or of winning it on Ultimate?  I can't do invocations or use belt items, so there is no play that I can think of at all.  Do some classes spells work?  How did you manage it, Decadency?

Ohhh... if you go to a different location on the main map to get a different artifact, maybe you can avoid that fight.  I'll check it out.

Edited July 6, 2019 by wildeyn00700