Starting combat and staying stealthed forever without Traps or similar abilities

[Not So Clever Hound]

Hi folks,

Apologies if this is already well known, but definitely not by me.

If your game is RTwP, approaching enemies from stealth and very quickly unstealthing/stealthing with the Alt key starts combat but keeps you stealthed. So more or less the same thing as the "trap trick" used by some in The Ultimate, but without any hassle.

So if you're a Troubadour/Psion/Nalpazca or whatever, you will automatically start generating resources, if you're an Assassin/Something you will have access to combat-only openers while keeping Assassinate. If you want to summon while staying out of enemies' sight (e.g. Psion/Troubadour with summons + pain link) you can keep the fight going without ever going out of stealth - as with the trap trick. Of course, it's even better with Berath's Challenge on (combat doesn't end).

In the video I posted below, it's even a bit more weird (I didn't have Berath Challenge on):

I approach enemies > unstealth/stealth with the Alt key > combat starts while I'm stealthed > I wait until having 7 phrases to cast Animated Weapons > just at this time the encounter resets and summons disappear > encounter starts again while I'm still stealthed and back at 6 phrases > at 7 phrases I cast Animated Weapons and this time the fight goes on > I just walk away still stealthed > animated weapons wreak havoc until duration ends > encounter stops > of course i'm still stealthed so I can rinse & repeat.

 

[Boeroer]

I do not think that was known - I never read about this before. Cool!  

[Constentin Lévine]

I agree, that is a very well find! Using "simply" the alt key insteed of items-abuse, it is "simply" brilliant !

[Not So Clever Hound]

 I've just been toying with this with a few recent solo builds and I can say that it bumps up the usefulness of any Chanter MC significantly... now you can just start almost any cosy fight from stealth, summon Animated Weapons > have the enemy waste away their hardest hitting stuff > keep summoning Animated Weapons until you want to do whatever you want. I find it especially great with the Loremaster that can resummon a fresh batch of Animated Weapons on the enemy group that is now all out of tricks, and start launching über Freeze AoE abilities.

This inspires me to finally do a Solo SC Beckoner fully reliant on awesome summons but I fear that on Upscaled PotD it's going to remain painful... 8 Weapons is amazing but their base PEN fully leveled is 12 and many enemies feature really high kinetic damage AR... Instruments of Death can get +1 from Animancy Cat, +1 from the "and the arrow sings" Chant, +3 from "And With Furious Vengeance" incantation. So you can get to 17 PEN with Animated Weapons. But that's still not that high for Upscaled PotD (knowing your Animated Weapons won't Crit a lot given meh ACC). Of course you get 2x Arcane Assault with the wands, which deals Raw damage - but still sounds like a drag...  Blackened Plate Armor could be useful, but the radius of Usher's Visage and Death in Life isn't great. 

Otherwise there is Pain Link with a Beckoner/Psion, but that's been already done and done. I need to think more about the SC Beckoner and try and see where I can get. Any thoughts welcome.  

Edited December 19, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound

[Not So Clever Hound]

So.. SC Wizard really didn't need to get any more powerful and cheesy than it already is  but you can permanently steal Essential/Substantial Phantom with Grimoire Imprint, which now makes you able to easily summon those from stealth forever... and equip items that trigger big AoE effects on kill to have a never-ending supply of arcane suicide bombs.

What about a Wizard/Psion that permanently steals Summon Sporelings and (why not) Wild Growth from an Ancient with Minor Imprint, then uses Pain Link on those forever from stealth... while still being a Wizard and a Cipher when need be.

[Constentin Lévine]

Does a kill from Ninagauth's Killing Bolt on your ending-life current summon proc the Slippers of the Assassin invisibility And the ghost? That sound great to do an infinite Shadow loop, although in reality the ghost should be die too fast by ennemies.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Constentin Lévine

[Not So Clever Hound]

Something funny I just experimented with based on @Constentin Lévine's finding and the one above. I had an Ascendant/Tactician, 2 priests (SC or MC doesn't matter) and a SC Wizard, with Berath Challenge on.

1) While everybody is stealthed, have the Ascendant alone approach the enemy and quickly unstealth/stealth. Combat starts, because he's still stealthed Tactician triggers Brilliant, i.e. automatic focus generation.

2) While his focus slowly fills to the max, have him go back to the group still all stealthed.

3) As soon as he reaches Ascended thanks to Brilliant, go through a full routine of Ancestor's Memory + BDD + SoT chain-casting for the entire party.

4) The Wizard then also casts Temporal Cocoon on everyone, which beneficial effect gets prolonged by the chain casting of SoT (this is why you need 2 priests, so they can each prolong Cocoon for the other).

5) Just leave them continue to cast SoT on each other like weirdos for as long as you like (why not a few hours) until you're ready to go actually do the fight. It won't last long: you'll have tens of thousands of seconds of untargetability by the enemy, cannot-die, brilliant for everyone and ascended for the Psyblade.

6) Once the fight is over, Ancestor's Memory and BDD will go away, but not Temporal Cocoon... your entire party is now permanently untargetable by any enemy.

This is probably the easiest/safest way to achieve Party God Mode purely within the confines of the base game mechanics and without using Strand of Favor at all .

[thelee]

funnily enough, i've been doing this trick for a long time, mostly for ambushes. i say funny, because i just replied in that other thread never knowing/thinking to equip items without soulbinding them, so it just goes to show you what you think is well-known might not actually be.

 

in ambushes you can do it if you have auto-pause: enemy spotted, just stealth as soon as the game pauses. it doesn't always work because sometimes i feel like the game forcefully unstealths you (esp coming out of dialogue), and other times the enemies are so close they break stealth very quickly, but when it does work you can get off a few buffs or improve your positioning before you get revealed. (and very occasionally positioning works out that you can scurry away and set yourself up with buffs or start doing cheesy stuff)

 

On 12/19/2021 at 8:13 AM, Not So Clever Hound said:

So more or less the same thing as the "trap trick" used by some in The Ultimate, but without any hassle.

i actually think it's slightly more of a hassle. sometimes you get frame skips, sometimes your timing is a little off (at least for me and my terrible gamer reflexs) and it doesn't work out. might be fine for a typical run where you can reload, but if you're doing ironman mode or the ultimate i would stay safe and use traps (which is what i did). 

[Not So Clever Hound]

27 minutes ago, thelee said:

i actually think it's slightly more of a hassle

Interesting. I'm not particularly skilled but so far it's been 100% reliable once I got the hang of it. But I play with saves/reloads allowed so sure there's less pressure. I'm also playing at max game speed, maybe it matters somehow for the reliability/timing of the Alt key move..? Dunno.

32 minutes ago, thelee said:

in ambushes you can do it if you have auto-pause: enemy spotted, just stealth as soon as the game pauses.

Yes, that's nice. For encounters that are supposed to start with a talk (i.e. enemies are not yet red circles), the Delayed Fireball is also a very easy way to skip dialogue, make everyone hostile and deal a bit of damage while still being stealthy away from enemies - and with the Tier 7 spell refunded by the time the encounter begins.

34 minutes ago, thelee said:

i say funny, because i just replied in that other thread never knowing/thinking to equip items without soulbinding them, so it just goes to show you what you think is well-known might not actually be.

Yes, it's interesting how the mind works. Also, I guess Deadfire has deep enough mechanics (sometimes a little weird) to remain a potential for mistery and epiphanies among veterans even to this day .

[Waski]

pretty sure i saw that trick (unstealthed/stealthed) in one of the ultimate runs

[dgray62]

This is a great find. It's nice to start combat and buff without the enemy seeing you. But you definitely have to be fast to make it work. I think I'll start a run with Berath's challenge on with a SC bloodmage MC, and four hirelings: SC priest, SC beckoner, tactician/ascendent and darcozzi/troubador (for the quick switchings of the shields for debuting and healing). No need for 2 priests if you have a SC wizard, since the latter can steal Salvation of Time.