Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 5

[Sarex]

Was trying to do Drezen without resting, but Blightmaw without spells or buffs was not going to happen. My horse named Horse is the first death in the game... Cammelia is overpowered.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

7 hours ago, majestic said:

Guess you're not getting the Azata option then, and, uhm... probably also no early access to your favorite waifu, Aru.  

Arue is also a better archer than Lann or Wenduag.....in addition to being the most blatant waifu bait I have ever seen. The moon motif makes me think of the Sailor Moon theme to boot.

5 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Was trying to do Drezen without resting, but Blightmaw without spells or buffs was not going to happen. My horse named Horse is the first death in the game... Cammelia is overpowered.

Camellia is helpful, is she not?

[Sarex]

11 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

Arue is also a better archer than Lann or Wenduag

Better than Lann? Now I'm sad...

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

38 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Better than Lann? Now I'm sad...

Yes, better than Lann and you should be sad for doing Arue-chan dirty. Later game he can probably get better theoretical damage than her, but he suffers from a lack of accuracy bonus to his attacks. Perfect strike is good, but it's much more limited than instant enemy is and without that he is going to struggle against higher level enemies. It's probably ok on normal though.

Should add a disclaimer that this assumes a straightforward Zen Archer build for Lann. You could go Mutation Warrior for the rest of his levels and come out with very good accuracy, or do something crazy like make him a Cleric. Lann has a lot more versatility in the vanilla game because he starts at level 1 while Arueshalae starts much higher.

I'd also say that Wenduag is a better archer than Lann too, but I like to respec her to a Mutation Warrior because it's better than the plain Fighter and feels like it fits her in terms of lore.

[Sarex]

10 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

Yes, better than Lann and you should be sad for doing Arue-chan dirty. Later game he can probably get better theoretical damage than her, but he suffers from a lack of accuracy bonus to his attacks. Perfect strike is good, but it's much more limited than instant enemy is and without that he is going to struggle against higher level enemies. It's probably ok on normal though.

Should add a disclaimer that this assumes a straightforward Zen Archer build for Lann. You could go Mutation Warrior for the rest of his levels and come out with very good accuracy, or do something crazy like make him a Cleric. Lann has a lot more versatility in the vanilla game because he starts at level 1 while Arueshalae starts much higher.

I'd also say that Wenduag is a better archer than Lann too, but I like to respec her to a Mutation Warrior because it's better than the plain Fighter and feels like it fits her in terms of lore.

As far as I know I can get her later still, sucks but Lann is doing his part in the party right now.

[majestic]

Lann is actually a pretty decent NPC, if you ignore his, uuuh, personality quirks. He can be used as any number of things, a Cleric or as Divine Hunter, which is @Gromnir's favorite, for instance. There were some domain related shenanigans with the Divine Hunter I think, no idea if they've been fixed. There are also some videos on YT where Lann is specced as Divine Hunter 3 / Sacred Huntsmaster 16 / Fighter 1 build - that certainly has its merits too, but it would probably be better to take a level of Demonslayer, a Ranger subclass that is really frontloaded with the bonuses to the most common enemy type - you guessed it, chaotic evil outsiders.

Cleric Lann has the issue of him worshipping Iomedae. Not that Sosiel is much better in his choice of available domains without spending Mythic abilities on getting more, but at least he has full Cleric progression - or almost full, if you use him as intimidator. Or you could just ditch him and build yourself a mercenary worshipping Erastil, the ludicrous god of good domains.  

That said, don't undererstimate the value a blaster cleric can bring to the party. Domain abilities are great so even after the change to Guarded Hearth  they can be considered a necessity in every party and there's a lot of gear you can use to increase cold damage dice, and if you take a single level of Cross-Blooded Sorcerer you can get Water Elemental and White Dragon for an extra cold die and energy damage to cold conversion. Use Loremaster to pad your spell book, a Mythic Ability to add another cold die with an added Silver dragon bloodline.

There are some really juicy spells that deal screen wide massive damage that you can meta-magic all over your higher level spellbook. Can probably do that on Sosiel too if you want an all-in-one package, but poor Sosiel went to the school of having utterly useless feats and a stupid deity. Alas. 

Edited January 3, 2023 by majestic

[Sarex]

4 minutes ago, majestic said:

Lann is actually a pretty decent NPC, if you ignore his, uuuh, personality quirks. He can be used as any number of things, a Cleric or as Divine Hunter, which is @Gromnir's favorite, for instance. There were some domain related shenanigans with the Divine Hunter I think, no idea if they've been fixed. There are also some videos on YT where Lann is specced as Divine Hunter 3 / Sacred Huntsmaster 16 / Fighter 1 build - that certainly has its merits too, but it would probably be better to take a level of Demonslayer, a Ranger subclass that is really frontloaded with the bonuses to the most common enemy type - you guessed it, chaotic evil outsiders.

Cleric Lann has the issue of him worshipping Iomedae. Not that Sosiel is much better in his choice of available domains without spending Mythic abilities on getting more, but at least he has full Cleric progression - or almost full, if you use him as intimidator. Or you could just ditch him and build yourself a mercenary worshipping Erastil, the ludicrous god of good domains.  

That said, don't undererstimate the value a blaster cleric can bring to the party. Domain abilities are great so even after the change to Guarded Hearth  they can be considered a necessity in every party and there's a lot of gear you can use to increase cold damage dice, and if you take a single level of Cross-Blooded Sorcerer you can get Water Elemental and White Dragon for an extra cold die and energy damage to cold conversion. Use Loremaster to pad your spell book, a Mythic Ability to add another cold die with an added Silver dragon bloodline.

There are some really juicy spells that deal screen wide massive damage that you can meta-magic all over your higher level spellbook. Can probably do that on Sosiel too if you want an all-in-one package, but alas poor Sosiel went to the school of having utterly useless feats and a stupid deity. Alas. 

Looks at my build...best I can do is a lvl 10 zen-archer. If I hit a wall on some optional boss, or see that it's getting too hard, I'll look in to multiclassing. The issue for me is that if I wanted to multiclass I would have to look at all the classes and figure out what combinations are good, I don't have the prerequisite pathfinder/d&d knowledge. I could also look at some builds, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the game for me (like auto leveling). At this point it's on the border of being fun while not going overboard with the builds.

Saying all that I still love hearing all of your suggestions and will probably try to go for some broken builds on my second playthrough, if I ever do one (maybe even in this one).

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

19 minutes ago, majestic said:

Lann is actually a pretty decent NPC, if you ignore his, uuuh, personality quirks.

I don't ignore them. The man annoyed me so much I took the silly little cat. At least my Knight Commander wasn't a lady, or she'd have to punish him for sexual harassment.

56 minutes ago, Sarex said:

As far as I know I can get her later still, sucks but Lann is doing his part in the party right now.

You can get her and do her full arc too afaik, early recruitment is mostly a treat for Azatas.

Spoilers for several things story related

Right now the only companion you can't get are the Lich undead slaves. You can get Wenduag....but she either betrays you or leaves until act 5 and then doesn't come with a quest or character development. In all of these cases the companions are similar to mercs with unusual backgrounds rather than full companions.

I haven't played a path that can get Galfrey as a companion, but you don't get her until the final dungeon, like Tartuk in Kingmaker. I assume she's some kind of Paladin.

With Arueshalae you can make her turn back evil, which is so naughty it makes Ember mad. For the most part she acts like the rest of the good party members, and her questline is about becoming good for real. Just don't act like Bruno and you'll be fine.

[Sarex]

21 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

You can get her and do her full arc too afaik, early recruitment is mostly a treat for Azatas.

Spoilers for several things story related

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Right now the only companion you can't get are the Lich undead slaves. You can get Wenduag....but she either betrays you or leaves until act 5 and then doesn't come with a quest or character development. In all of these cases the companions are similar to mercs with unusual backgrounds rather than full companions.

I haven't played a path that can get Galfrey as a companion, but you don't get her until the final dungeon, like Tartuk in Kingmaker. I assume she's some kind of Paladin.

With Arueshalae you can make her turn back evil, which is so naughty it makes Ember mad. For the most part she acts like the rest of the good party members, and her questline is about becoming good for real. Just don't act like Bruno and you'll be fine.

Still kicking my self for missing the Azata... At one point when figuring out what to do with the with the wardstone, I decided that I wanted to do the full angel path so I knew I was going to get locked out of Aeon. Had I gone for the achievement to unlock all the mythic paths I would have looked up how to get all of them and at that point would have backtracked to fix the miss, now it's way too far... Then again apart from some xp not too big of a loss.

Spoiler

You mean wanting to hold hands with her?

 

Edited January 3, 2023 by Sarex

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

17 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Still kicking my self for missing the Azata... At one point when figuring out what to do with the with the wardstone, I decided that I wanted to do the full angel path so I knew I was going to get locked out of Aeon. Had I gone for the achievement to unlock all the mythic paths I would have looked up how to get all of them and at that point would have backtracked to fix the miss, now it's way to far... Then again apart from some xp not too big of a loss.

  Reveal hidden contents

You mean wanting to hold hands with her?

 

To be fair, you have to do some metagaming to unlock all paths because they have some pretty conflicting triggers in terms of roleplaying.

With the Azata you missed another conflict with Hulrun where he takes a break from guarding his hole to try torturing a college student instead of fight the demons or undead taking over the market square. And some Azatas singing you a song.

Actually yes. Arue is ashamed of being a succubus and overtly trying to **** her will not make her happy. She still sticks around and you can do her quest I think, but no more waifu for those inclined.

Pretty much if you want a crazy waifu you can have secks on a corpse with Cammy and then later do it again in the blood of her father's servants. Both of those seem a lot more on brand for Bruno anyways.

[Sarex]

5 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

To be fair, you have to do some metagaming to unlock all paths because they have some pretty conflicting triggers in terms of roleplaying.

Yep. As far as I remember there is a ton of XP and you can hit level 20 pretty early, so I am going to RP as much as I can while not locking myself out of the true ending.

7 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Actually yes. Arue is ashamed of being a succubus and overtly trying to **** her will not make her happy. She still sticks around and you can do her quest I think, but no more waifu for those inclined.

Pretty much if you want a crazy waifu you can have secks on a corpse with Cammy and then later do it again in the blood of her father's servants. Both of those seem a lot more on brand for Bruno anyways.

 

 

Spoiler

Yeah I pretty much know her quest line and there should be no issues as I am going for the tsundere (queen).

The bigger issue with the crazy wifu is what to do after I kill her. Will probably get a merc to replace her.

 

[majestic]

@Space KP, Baby

Spoiler

Queen Galfrey is a Thundercalled Bard. No, not kidding. A pretty good one at that, and you can get her as Lich, just need to make sure she dies in Iz.

@Sarex well... yeah, one can make pretty decent builds all around with mercenaries. Shamans are a pretty good class actually, when they don't come with the caveat of tolerating Bruno's soulmate.

Edit: evil nerfs have made a huge chunk of damage coming out of my favorite mercenary cheese build go the way of the dodo, but Brown-Fur Transmuters still have their place. Geniekind/Barrage might no longer work, but enlarging horsies and riders is still fun. As are pets turned into dragons. Bunch of other fun stuff you can do too.

Edited January 3, 2023 by majestic

[Gromnir]

3 hours ago, Sarex said:

Was trying to do Drezen without resting, but Blightmaw without spells or buffs was not going to happen. My horse named Horse is the first death in the game... Cammelia is overpowered.

keep in mind you may do blightmaw after your mythic powerup. is noting which prevents you from coming back to blightmaw as long as it is before your final act ii drezen confrontation.

 

1 hour ago, majestic said:

There are also some videos on YT where Lann is specced as Divine Hunter 3 / Sacred Huntsmaster 16 / Fighter 1 build - that certainly has its merits too, but it would probably be better to take a level of Demonslayer, a Ranger subclass that is really frontloaded with the bonuses to the most common enemy type - you guessed it, chaotic evil outsiders.

speaking o' shenanigans, the demonslayer level needs come after levels o' sacred huntsmaster. why? 'cause choosing demonslayer first removes demons from your list o' favored enemies for sacred hunstmaster. 1 level o' demonslayer after sacred huntsmaster means you get +8 v. 1 category o' demons and +4 v. the other two categories. unfortunate, while demonslayer favoured enemy bonus does stack with sacred huntsmaster, it effective halts your sacred huntsmaster favoured enemy demons progress.

why? why does taking demonslayer early prevent sacred huntsmaster progression o' favoured enemies?

'cause.

HA! Good Fun!

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

So spoilers are messed up on mobile so apologies there.

@majestic

Are we talking about normal version or the uh.....not normal version? Because I know about the latter and assumed it was because there aren't evil Paladins implemented and that it evokes the banshee. Kinda weird if the main build is one, because that lady screams Paladin.

@Sarex

I hit level 20 and have most of Act 5 to go, I think you can probably hit the cap twice and that xp is extremely plentiful in later game. Just try to not to fail as a Paladin because you didn't pick enough "[Attack] You Broke The LAW! DIE! (Lawful)" options.

And if you're looking for a replacement for someone helpful, it depends on how you use her. If you're using her as a tank, Woljiff surprisingly makes a good replacement via all the spells he gets, unless you fight something with True Seeing, while Ember delivers solid hexes. But that helpful companion does really fill a unique niche, being both capable at casting and tanking with the potential to do both well, so you may be best off using a merc or an animal companion.

[Gromnir]

3 hours ago, Sarex said:

Better than Lann? Now I'm sad...

no, not better than lann. rare does anybody on these boards go pure archer, but a lann zenn archer with a shortbow is an absolute monster and outpaces pretty much any other ranged companion.

however, is a few builds with arueshalae and lan multiclass builds which is arguable superior in terms o' what they add to a party, but while a zen archer is front loaded with many benefits coming in the first three levels, a shortbow wielding lann zen archer gets extra attacks and damage other combos will have difficulty reaching, and chances are they only match vanilla zen archer lann very late in the game. 

don't feel as if you are any kinda underpowered keeping lann as a vanilla zen archer, but perhaps counter-intuitive, do switch to shortbow if you have chosen longbow. zenn archers do monk unarmed damage with a shortbow and this increases with the various size bonuses you will no doubt enjoy.

HA! Good Fun!

[Sarex]

18 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

keep in mind you may do blightmaw after your mythic powerup. is noting which prevents you from coming back to blightmaw as long as it is before your final act ii drezen confrontation.

I would have still needed to rest I think as I was pretty spent by that point.

8 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

Are we talking about normal version or the uh.....not normal version? Because I know about the latter and assumed it was because there aren't evil Paladins implemented and that it evokes the banshee. Kinda weird if the main build is one, because that lady screams Paladin.

She is a Paladin when normal.

8 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

I hit level 20 and have most of Act 5 to go, I think you can probably hit the cap twice and that xp is extremely plentiful in later game. Just try to not to fail as a Paladin because you didn't pick enough "[Attack] You Broke The LAW! DIE! (Lawful)" options.

Usually I pick the Lawful option for the main quest as it's usually not too bad there and then do other stuff for the side content.

8 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

And if you're looking for a replacement for someone helpful, it depends on how you use her. If you're using her as a tank, Woljiff surprisingly makes a good replacement via all the spells he gets, unless you fight something with True Seeing, while Ember delivers solid hexes. But that helpful companion does really fill a unique niche, being both capable at casting and tanking with the potential to do both well, so you may be best off using a merc or an animal companion.

Will see how my tower shield tank works out in the later acts, pretty much depends on that.

2 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

don't feel as if you are any kinda underpowered keeping lann as a vanilla zen archer, but perhaps counter-intuitive, do switch to shortbow if you have chosen longbow. zenn archers do monk unarmed damage with a shortbow and this increases with the various size bonuses you will no doubt enjoy.

I was using him with a shortbow until somewhere in Drezen and you are right, he is much better with a shortbow.

Edited January 3, 2023 by Sarex

[Gromnir]

Just now, Sarex said:

I would have still needed to rest I think as I was pretty spent by that point.

is there some reason you ain't resting? multiple rests in drezen is bad as your abyssal corruption increases unseen, but am personal always having rested at least once. make certain to use resting supplies provided.

HA! Good Fun!

[Sarex]

6 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

is there some reason you ain't resting? multiple rests in drezen is bad as your abyssal corruption increases unseen, but am personal always having rested at least once. make certain to use resting supplies provided.

I wanted to see if I could do it and there is one achievement for liberating Drezen quickly, but I think that achievement is timing the whole act 2.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

13 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Usually I pick the Lawful option for the main quest as it's usually not too bad there and then do other stuff for the side content.

The one that gets me is telling that demon lady it's ok to experiment/torture her kid. Very strange writing.

13 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Will see how my tower shield tank works out in the later acts, pretty much depends on that.

Hmm, is this your main Paladin? If so, adding shield ac to your mount is not bad at all. But it is kind of hard to keep up with dodge tanks getting Wis/Cha to AC.

[majestic]

19 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

Are we talking about normal version or the uh.....not normal version? Because I know about the latter and assumed it was because there aren't evil Paladins implemented and that it evokes the banshee. Kinda weird if the main build is one, because that lady screams Paladin.

Right, you have to romance her, and she'll join at Threshold, as a default Paladin. Pretty boring.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Just now, majestic said:

Right, you have to romance her, and she'll join at Threshold, as a default Paladin. Pretty boring.

That's what I thought. Seems like Martyr could be a good fit, as she certainly wants to be one.

[majestic]

6 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I wanted to see if I could do it and there is one achievement for liberating Drezen quickly, but I think that achievement is timing the whole act 2.

That is... I think purely based on your crusade morale, not the amount of time you spend on your way to Drezen.

4 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

Hmm, is this your main Paladin? If so, adding shield ac to your mount is not bad at all. But it is kind of hard to keep up with dodge tanks getting Wis/Cha to AC.

Still broken. Mount while holding the shield, then remove it. The pet will retain the AC from the shield. Yep. That's a thing...

Edited January 3, 2023 by majestic

[Sarex]

2 minutes ago, majestic said:

That is... I think purely based on your crusade morale, not the amount of time you spend on your way to Drezen.

You need to do it under 60 days or something like that, open and not destroy the gates in Drezen. Don't know if there is anything else.

7 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

The one that gets me is telling that demon lady it's ok to experiment/torture her kid. Very strange writing.

Russian literature and all that.

8 minutes ago, Space KP, Baby said:

Hmm, is this your main Paladin? If so, adding shield ac to your mount is not bad at all. But it is kind of hard to keep up with dodge tanks getting Wis/Cha to AC.

It's Seelah. She is a Fighter/Tower Shield Specialist, I wanna see if I can get the tower shield/bastard sword crit heal to work on her. My main Paladin I tweaked a little to dual wield. Turns out that is what I did in kingmaker too.

[xzar_monty]

Annoying how some of this stuff is designed. Apparently[*] I failed in rescuing Trever for my party because I happened to do the Battlebliss questline before having a certain conversation at the Fleshmarkets with Sosiel in tow. I would understand if I lost the chance of saving Sosiel's brother because of a conversational choice I'd made, but to have everything hinge on the sequence of actions is a bit arbitrary and impossible to plan for without blatant metagaming.

 

[*] That's how it looks to me in retrospect. I could be wrong of course.

[Gromnir]

35 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Annoying how some of this stuff is designed. Apparently[*] I failed in rescuing Trever for my party because I happened to do the Battlebliss questline before having a certain conversation at the Fleshmarkets with Sosiel in tow. I would understand if I lost the chance of saving Sosiel's brother because of a conversational choice I'd made, but to have everything hinge on the sequence of actions is a bit arbitrary and impossible to plan for without blatant metagaming.

 

[*] That's how it looks to me in retrospect. I could be wrong of course.

if you did all the previous sosiel conversations regarding trever correct, and is not intuitive what is correct, then you do not strictly speaking need to do the fleshmarkets convo with wirlong and sosiel before the battlebliss confrontation.

Spoiler

what you will need is for your main character to have a high enough perception to recognize trever when you are alone after being kidnapped by irmangaleth (sp?) 

can't rely on party perception as you are solo for the interaction.

edit: in our opinion, the most annoying aspect o' trever recruitment is you need make the correct convo choice with sosiel on three(ish) separate occasions in acts two and three to be successful. get one interaction wrong many tens o' hours removed from the battlebliss confrontation and your trever recruitment is a fail w/o you being aware o' the error until long after is reasonable to reload and fix the problem.  is particular annoying as the correct dialogue choices is...

Spoiler

the cynical options. 

which maybe ain't what you would guess is the best way to encourage sosiel, eh?

HA! Good Fun!

Edited January 4, 2023 by Gromnir