Which gear from the last 2 DLCs are worth bee-lining toward?

[Lampros]

I actually didn't play the last 2 DLCs, though I bought them. Are there gear worth bee-lining to from those DLCs? And when should I do those contents in general anyways?

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Lampros said:

I actually didn't play the last 2 DLCs, though I bought them. Are there gear worth bee-lining to from those DLCs? And when should I do those contents in general anyways?

both SSS and FS are late-game DLCs. You can do SSS earlier, but I know people here have complained in the past about the difficulty spike when playing sub-level-19 parties. If you're interested in just getting some gear, you can try it earlier and just bail on doing the final few fights. FS is definitely end-game DLC. You can try to do it earlier (level 18 or so), but I'm pretty sure it's just straight-up targeting level 20 parties. Even at level 20 with a pretty-OK party it can be rather brutal on PotD.

There's a lot of good gear, but "bee-lining" towards them might not be feasible. In SSS, Least Unstable Coil and the special soulbound axe are good picks. There's also a great xbow/arbalest (forget which). In FS, all of the weyc's gear is pretty good, but it pretty much requires you to do the entire DLC to get them all.

[Lampros]

1 minute ago, thelee said:

both SSS and FS are late-game DLCs. You can do SSS earlier, but I know people here have complained in the past about the difficulty spike when playing sub-level-19 parties. If you're interested in just getting some gear, you can try it earlier and just bail on doing the final few fights. FS is definitely end-game DLC. You can try to do it earlier (level 18 or so), but I'm pretty sure it's just straight-up targeting level 20 parties. Even at level 20 with a pretty-OK party it can be rather brutal on PotD.

There's a lot of good gear, but "bee-lining" towards them might not be feasible. In SSS, Least Unstable Coil and the special soulbound axe are good picks. There's also a great xbow/arbalest (forget which). In FS, all of the weyc's gear is pretty good, but it pretty much requires you to do the entire DLC to get them all.

 

Ah, ok; I am planning on my return run being a PoTD run, too. So I guess I should take it slow. Thankfully, however, I recall that you can get to level 20 with a lot of the base game content still left. So I'd still be able to utilize DLC content...

[thelee]

3 minutes ago, Lampros said:

Ah, ok; I am planning on my return run being a PoTD run, too. So I guess I should take it slow. Thankfully, however, I recall that you can get to level 20 with a lot of the base game content still left. So I'd still be able to utilize DLC content...

yeah, after SSS/FS you can come back and roflstomp nemnok/the shimmering isles/the final act, and even try your hand at the megabosses. that's pretty much how i route my party (unless i need something specific from nemnok or the fampyrs) so I can play around with some of the shiny treasures you get late.

[AndreaColombo]

If you’re keen on getting some of the gear earlier so you can enjoy it for a longer chunk of the game, I believe one of the later patches added the possibility to export pre-made characters with gear so that they’re available as hirelings in subsequent playthroughs. You may create a couple of hirelings, give them the items you want with the Unity Console or cheats, export them and hire them in your proper playthrough. (Note the hirelings with high-level gear have a steep hiring cost.)

[Lampros]

17 minutes ago, AndreaColombo said:

If you’re keen on getting some of the gear earlier so you can enjoy it for a longer chunk of the game, I believe one of the later patches added the possibility to export pre-made characters with gear so that they’re available as hirelings in subsequent playthroughs. You may create a couple of hirelings, give them the items you want with the Unity Console or cheats, export them and hire them in your proper playthrough. (Note the hirelings with high-level gear have a steep hiring cost.)

 

Hmm, my understanding is that unique items have the chance to cause game instabilities when they are spawned through imported characters. Or so I recall the devs warning. Has this been changed?

[AndreaColombo]

I don’t recall their saying it would cause the game to become unstable. Unbalanced, likely—you’d have access to items way earlier than intended and eventually land two copies of them when you’re supposed to only have one. Your call whether to use both. 

[Lampros]

1 hour ago, AndreaColombo said:

I don’t recall their saying it would cause the game to become unstable. Unbalanced, likely—you’d have access to items way earlier than intended and eventually land two copies of them when you’re supposed to only have one. Your call whether to use both. 

 

Hmm, I will try to find that quote. I'd been only exporting characters with non-uniques thus far. Of course, there is also that concern with balance indeed if I start importing uniques, too

[Lampros]

4 hours ago, AndreaColombo said:

I don’t recall their saying it would cause the game to become unstable. Unbalanced, likely—you’d have access to items way earlier than intended and eventually land two copies of them when you’re supposed to only have one. Your call whether to use both. 

I found it:

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/106389-how-to-import-and-export-premade-characters/

I guess I didn't precisely recall the wording though. The operative words were "unforeseen consequences," and it doesn't necessarily mean instability. It probably means some quests may get broken, if the items are obtained from quests. Here it is:

On 10/18/2018 at 6:55 PM, Cdiaz said:

Be aware that you will be able to import characters that have unique items and that you will be at risk of unforseen consequences to gameplay.

Edited October 12, 2020 by Lampros

[Haplok]

Seeker's Fang rapier from SSS Seeker's Path is really sweet for martial/hybrid ciphers and possibly worth somewhat beelining towards if you play a Cipher.

[Boeroer]

Note that if you use the console's "iroll20s" and "giveitem" commands to give a character a unique item and then export him - the save game where you import him into will also be marked as "cheated" and you will get no achievements/Breath Blessing points. You'd have to acquire the unique item in a "proper" way and then export it or you'd have to use a mod.

[AndreaColombo]

There’s a mod on the Nexus that lets you cheat without disabling achievements, so that might work. Alternatively, the Unity Console should do (though it makes my game stutter like crazy so I usually remove it after using it.)