I took Grave Calling for a stroll against Dorudugan, and encountered something weird.

 

I was able to Paralyze Dorudugan using the sabre despite its body resistance and despite what the combat log says happened. Huh?

Eccea's Arcane Blaster was able to paralyze it, too, but I can see an explanation for that, since it Petrifies, which I understand to be a logical tier 4 affliction which I suppose could be knocked down to Paralyzed by resistance.

Am I missing something, or should paralyzing using Grave Calling be impossible?

Scrap

Whatever effect Grave Calling uses is not a normal affliction, so it appears to bypass resistances and even immunities. Definitely seems like one of them bugs in the player's favor.

23 hours ago, Scrapulous said:

Eccea's Arcane Blaster was able to paralyze it, too, but I can see an explanation for that, since it Petrifies, which I understand to be a logical tier 4 affliction which I suppose could be knocked down to Paralyzed by resistance.

I'm 90% sure petrification is the same as paralysis mechanically. Both should be T3 dexterity afflictions.

Afaik petrification gets tuned down to paralysis by resistance...?

According to https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Status_effects_(Deadfire)#Afflictions they're the same.

35 minutes ago, omgFIREBALLS said:

According to https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Status_effects_(Deadfire)#Afflictions they're the same.

According to https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/afflictions-and-inspirations  they are not.

Mechanically they do identical things, but petrification is treated as a T4 effect, so resistance will only turn it into a normal paralyze.

 

You can absolutely mess up even megabosses who only have resistances by using a petrification effect (i believe all of them are vulnerable to this, though whether or not you can surmount their defenses are another issue).

edit: this is really obvious with belranga, who after enough minions killed will be periodically paralyzed by the minion spiders, who use their petrify poison indiscriminately.

edit 2: this is really useful with the tier 9 wizard spell petrification, which petrifies *permanently* if used against a near-death foe, and this still works when resisted down to a paralyze. in practice it is not fully useful against hauane o whe and likely sigilmaster auranic, but i have definitely done a run which completely immobilized the oracle in FS, dorudugan, and belranga (with minor help against hauane).

edit 3: hmmm i haven't tried it against auranic, but using petrification against auranic could soft-lock the game. auranic has a death shield until she uses last trick or all obelisks are dead, so permanently paralyzing auranic while an obelisk is still up (and shielded) might lock you in the fight.

Edited August 8, 20205 yr by thelee

On 8/8/2020 at 3:11 PM, thelee said:

edit 3: hmmm i haven't tried it against auranic, but using petrification against auranic could soft-lock the game. auranic has a death shield until she uses last trick or all obelisks are dead, so permanently paralyzing auranic while an obelisk is still up (and shielded) might lock you in the fight.

Uh, wow. Not quite the same, but something very like this just happened to me while trying to take Auranic. Really good guess. None of the obelisks were up; I took them all out before I focused on her. She was at near death, activated Last Trick, then cast Paralyze on Eder. It missed him, but grazed her, I presume as a result of the spell reflection from Konstanten's room. She petrified herself and I can't kill her.

I don't know why she won't die, really, as I understand the mechanics, her death shield should be complete.

yikes, the way the death shield might be implemented, it might only be checked at like, literal near death (much like watchful presence can interfere with death and heals you instead), which may be impossible if paralyzed. that sucks! i'll have to update my guide with this gotcha. it would appear to be a developer error - other effects (watchful presence, auranic activating last trick) completely ignore things like prone or afflictions, so clearly it's possible to script things so this wouldn't happen.

 

i had a bizarre thing happen to me last night in FS, where mirke got hit with petrification at near death. i don't think the developers ever really anticipated players being hit with petrification, because boy oh boy did it suck. combat ended, but mirke was still petrified! after a save/load, i could move her around and she would respond to my clicks, but in combat she would have a full recovery bar that would never disappear. resting didn't help. suppress affliction didn't help. i had to take my pair of engwithan bracers and repeatedly re-equip it on mirke and that repeated resistance let me dispel it. if mirke had already had resistance, i think i would have just been screwed and mirke would've been effectively dead.

Edited August 11, 20205 yr by thelee

I hadn't realized that Grave Calling was such a powerful weapon. I think I might try a new PoTD run focusing on it. Might a fanatic (berserker/kind wayfayer) dual wielding grave calling and magran's favor (for a fire and ice effect) be a good build for this? FoD while frenzied would crit a lot, and white flames exalted endurance would help keep the character alive. I'd have a troubadour companion summon skellies to get some chill fogs up. Does this sound like a good approach? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

You have to kill the skeletons with Grave Calling. Dual wielding can lead you to land the killing blow with the wrong weapon. Making sure you don't can mean you have to deal with very annoying micromanagement. 

Thanks, Boeroer. So unless you wield only Grave Calling, you might have to kill several skeletons to get Grave Calling to proc, right?

One solution is to dual wield the saber and a one handed firearm (pistol, blunderbuss). That way you have dual wielding attack speed but only attack with the melee weapon when in melee range. Not optimal for full attack abilities, though.

Thanks for the suggestion, Haplok. I wonder if this would be a good approach for a soulblade transcendent, since most monk abilities are primary attacks, as is soul annihilation?

It is very reasonable, yes. In this case you'd likely want to use Tuotilos Palm bashing shield to get fast attack speed and very good defenses. 

Thanks, Haplock. I'll use Tuotilos Palm shield except when I want to transform skellies into chill fog clouds, in which case I'll replace it with a blunderbuss per your earlier recommendation.

On 8/13/2020 at 6:43 AM, Boeroer said:

You have to kill the skeletons with Grave Calling. Dual wielding can lead you to land the killing blow with the wrong weapon. Making sure you don't can mean you have to deal with very annoying micromanagement. 

I think you are confusing with Chilling Grave, this is the other sword enchantment branch (Grave Bound ), in theory you just need to stack any 10 hits, then the next crit could process paralyze

 

Chilling Grave and Grave Bound are interconnected. As you note you have to stack 10 hits to be able to paralyze with crits by Grave Calling.  But If you have procced chillfog by killing a vessel with Grave Calling, crits with the weapon itself AND crits with chillfog will paralyze foes. This feature makes the weapon very OP, although it takes some work to set this up, unless you're fighting vessels, in which case it should happen easily so long as you can crit reliably. Upgrading Grave Calling to mythical will increase the chance for this to happen.

1 hour ago, abot said:

I think you are confusing with Chilling Grave, this is the other sword enchantment branch (Grave Bound ), in theory you just need to stack any 10 hits, then the next crit could process paralyze

 

I am not. Chilling Grave does trigger Grave Bound as I explained above. 

10 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I am not. Chilling Grave does trigger Grave Bound as I explained above. 

Ah, sorry, I did not understand yours was an answer to the previous post, not referred to what is needed to enable grave bound