[CLASS BUILD] Lactose Intolerant Armored Arcanist - Solo Upscaled POTD with Balance Polishing Mod

[Not So Clever Hound]

Lactose Intolerant Armored Arcanist - Solo Upscaled Path of the Damned with Balance Polishing Mod

Class: Goldpact Paladin Blood Mage

Game Version: Real Time With Pause. Made to play with Balance Polishing Mod and the Community Patch, but will work basically the same without.

POTD Solo Viable: Yes, all Upscaled.

Megabosses: I farmed Belranga, Dorudugan and Auranic for their mythic stones, without honor. Didn't try Hauani.

Companion: Nope.

 

 

 

-----WHAT IS INTERESTING ABOUT THIS BUILD?-----

 

 
For some time now, I've been trying different ways to build a Wizard that could solo at max difficulty, with all the Balance Polishing Mod components including nerfs, and without using anything that could be remotely considered as cheese. BPM already deactivates the funny business around Wall of Draining, Salvation of Time, Strand of Favor etc. On top, it changes Blood Sacrifice to prevent healing for 6 fixed seconds after using the ability. So I built around those parameters. I also didn't want to use Grimoire Imprint shenanigans at all. So I'd like to finally share this build because it does all that I intended in a deceptively simple and brutally effective way, although it's not the fastest at solving encounters... but it's all automated, which is nice. I will detail briefly the proposition and how it works below, and then I'll put the stat/equipment details etc. Please note that Balance Polishing Mod makes it slightly better (e.g. buffed Fire Godlike passive AR) but it can play just as well in vanilla.

 

The core proposition is simple and stays the same from start to finish, it just gets better as we go and grab more gear and abilities:

-Pile up an absolute truckload of Armor Rating through passive/active abilities and items, to push the vast majority of incoming attacks into severe under-penetration (-75% damage). You'll still find a few enemies that have Penetration 24-26 on a Graze/Hit (!) but that's rare and manageable.

-Pile up high defenses that are easy to maintain through only a couple casts (basically only passive defenses plus Infuse with Vital Essence and Llengrath's Safeguard) to push the vast majority of incoming attacks to Misses (0% damage) and Grazes (-50% damage). You'll still find a few enemies that have autohits and miss-to-graze conversion but that's manageable.

-Have max Resolve (35) and Ring of the Solitary Wanderer to cut all hostile effect durations short (approx. -80% duration).

-Have a big health pool and some reasonable sustain healing (23hp per 6s, nothing to write home about) to stay bloodied almost all the time (to always trigger Fire Godlike passive +2 Armor Rating and Blood Rage +10 Accuracy from Akola's Apex Ward, more than negating the Large Shield malus).

-Use the Large Shield Modal to further neuter any ranged/Reflex targeting attacks (-50% damage).

-Offensively, use Concelhaut's Draining Missiles or early on, Corrosive Siphon, to transfer enemy health to our health.

-Convert some of that health to replenish spells and repeat the whole process until there is no more enemy health to steal, which means there are no more enemies and the encounter is won.

 

So here is the full breakdown of a high-level encounter:

-Ideally, approach enemy from stealth, find a nice position to make a stand. This build likes being out in the open because it can't be flanked (Kapana Taga) and wants to be engaged by 5 enemies to get max defense bonus from Entonia's Signet Ring. Stay in that position for a few seconds to build the 3 stacks of Armor Rating (Stoic Steel).

-Begin the encounter by casting Brand Enemy on a priority target (ideally a healer, or an annoying squishy). At this point, we start with defenses in the 170s-200s and Armor Ratings between 21 and 27 (Mythic Magnera's Chain, Stoic Steel, Kapana Taga, Akola's Apex Ward, Gilded Enmity). Not too bad.

-My AI script will switch on The Wall modal, start casting Infuse with Vital Essence, Blood Sacrifice until under 50% health, then Llengrath Safeguard. At this point, we have the defenses as per the screenshot above, all in the 200s and minimum Armor Rating is 24 (!). Incoming damage is minimal and importantly, very predictable. Even Bloodied we still have around 250 health.

-Then the AI script will chain cast Draining Missiles, prioritizing enemies by lowest Fortitude, and keep casting Blood Sacrifice in-between to keep us Bloodied and full of spells and maintain uptime on Vital Essence and Safeguard. Apart from Safeguard, we want to only ever cast Ability Tier 2 spells to maximize Blood Sacrifice's usefulness. Draining Missiles are very good because they always do the same damage even on Grazes, and having 6 projectiles means they'll always do something. We love consistency and predictability. It is also important to not have too much dexterity in BPM, to have Draining Missiles fired just when the -100% Healing debuff clears out - projectile travel time and target distance play a role there too, so I went conservative with my dexterity, doesn't matter.

-Draining Missiles benefit from Brand Enemy +damage so we want to selectively put this on high-priority enemies, but keep some zeal for occasionally casting Lay on Hands if needed on long fights, to reset our primary resource pool i.e. Health.

-The encounter will slowly solve itself as enemies fall. There is actually some upside to taking enemies one by one: we limit the level of extra threat generated by the Blood Mage passive when enemies are below 50% Health. So we keep everybody nice and healthy to keep incoming damage under control while we remove threats one after the other.

 

To my surprise, I never had to reload a fight once with this build doing everything on Upscale, even doing tons of mistake (forgetting to pick Stoic Steel on a respec in Splintered Reef, forgetting about The Wall modal in Trial of the Naga, having the script break causing my toon to dumbly autoattack in melee the Ancient Liche Battlemage for 10mn...). It also punches quickly above its level, .e.g I went to facetank Torkar at level 14 without any trouble. With all the little synergies, the math is in its favor to somehow always comes out on top, never being really in trouble. You might wonder if it also works well when enemies can do a lot of Raw DMG. Well, Frightened Child didn't pose any problem, same for all the Vithrak luminaries, the Oracle of Wael... Just a no-cheese, no-nonsense, slow and steady achiever.

 

-----STATS & BUFFS-----

 

 

Race: Fire Godlike

Background: Ixamitl Plains – Hunter

 

FINAL STATS WITH ALL PERMABUFFS AND NO-REST BUFFS AS OF 5.0 (without combat buffs):

 

Might 14 (8 Base +2 Berath +1 Gift from Machine +1 Rabyuna’s Boon +2 Alchemic Brawn)

Constitution  23 (15 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Brawn +3 Girdle of Eoten Constitution +1 Hemp Pet) +5 Infuse with Vital Essence

Dexterity 15 (7 Base +1 Godlike +1 Rabyuna +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Guile +2 Amira’s Blessing)

Perception 19 (14 Base +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Guile +1 Savage Cunning)

Intelligence 18 (13 Base +1 Godlike +2 Berath +2 Alchemic Wits) +5 Infuse with Vital Essence

Resolve 35 (18 Base +1 Ixamitl +2 Berath +1 Effigy Resentment Pallegina (sorry, bird lady) +2 Alchemic Wits +2 Nature’s Resolve +2 Rikuhu’s Blessing +2 Rabyuna +1 Cauldron’s Brew +2 Token of Faith +1 Solitary Wanderer Ring +1 Boots of the White)

 

ADDITIONAL PERMABUFFS:

 

Food: Hylea's Bounty

Adratic Glow

All Trainings

Dawnstar Blessing

Luminous Adra Potion

Nature’s Resolve (Accuracy)

Savage Cunning (Survival)

Galawain’s Gift

Magran’s Blessing

Immunity to all Sigils

Infamous Captain, Bonus Skills, Champion Stats, Port Maje vendor, Fully discovered Map, Bonus Money… invested all 105 Berath’s Blessing Points

 

SKILLS

 
Mechanics 13-ish then max Athletics, Diplomacy 12-ish then max Survival.

 

 

-----ABILITIES-----

 

 

ACTIVE

Paladin: Gilded Enmity, Brand Enemy. Lay on Hands. Zealous Aura, Exalted Endurance

Wizard: Mirrored Image (for early game). Infuse with Vital Essence. Llengrath's Safeguard.

 

PASSIVE

Common: Weapon & Shield. Tough. Improved Critical. Spell Resistance. Bear's Fortitude. Bull's Will. Snake's Reflexes.

Paladin: Deep Faith. Retribution (optional). Divine Purpose. Iron Gut (optional). Inspired Path. Righteous Soul. Virtuous Triumph. Stoic Steel.

Wizard: Spirit of Decay (for Corrosive Siphon in the beginning). Farcasting.

 

 

-----GEAR-----

 

 

Weapon Set 1: Kapana Taga (Mythic , All Comers, Lone Champion), Akola's Apex Ward (Mythic, Hunter's Vigor, Hide and Tooth).

Weapon Set 2: doesn't matter.

Head: Nothing.

Neck: Token of Faith.

Chest: Magnera's Chain (Mythic, Padded Underlayer, Magnera's Commitment).

Cape: Cape of the Falling Star.

Grimoires: Iron Clasped (primary), Ninagauth Teaching (for Death Ray - early on or when we need more burst damage), Arkemyr's illuminating discoveries (not needed).

Gloves: Bracers of Greater Deflection.

Rings: Solitary Wanderer + Entonia's or Ring of Protection for fights with few engaging enemies.

Boots: Boots of the White (to mitigate our only AR weakness, Freeze).

Belt: Girdle of Eoten Constitution.

Pet: Hemp (+Constitution and +Fortitude is good).
 

 

That's it. I'm also happy to give the AI scripting details if needed, or pointers on the early game. I haven't posted a video to spare you the lengthy fights but let me know if you'd like to see it in action. Let me know if you have any comments or questions!

Edited January 7, 2023 by Not So Clever Hound

[Not So Clever Hound]

Sorry about the clunky formatting guys, the forum is giving me a lot of trouble these days. Took me 30mn to find a way to post everything without having the forum blocking the post for whatever reason...

[Constentin Lévine]

34 minutes ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Sorry about the clunky formatting guys, the forum is giving me a lot of trouble these days. Took me 30mn to find a way to post everything without having the forum blocking the post for whatever reason...

That appear the forum "bug" after some minutes : refreshing the page before Submit the reply seems to solve the problem.

 

That can be a potent build in a party, to make some experiments with new ideas etc without some too hard risk!

[Not So Clever Hound]

24 minutes ago, Constentin Lévine said:

That appear the forum "bug" after some minutes : refreshing the page before Submit the reply seems to solve the problem.

 

That can be a potent build in a party, to make some experiments with new ideas etc without some too hard risk!

Merci Constentin ! It seems that I have other issues because even with your trick I cannot post certain things as I used to be able to (like the forum will allow me to post "POTD" in all caps but not the same with o and t in small caps... weird!)

Yeah it's very sturdy and so hard to kill it can be a great experimenter. It's a very brute force type of build so it's not subtle at all but it just illustrate how the combination of really high Armor and pretty good everything else (Defense rolls, healing, overall health...) can make a big difference. You see the game differently when almost all enemies on Upscaled POTD cannot reach you with more than single-digit damage.

Edited January 7, 2023 by Not So Clever Hound

[dgray62]

23 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Sorry about the clunky formatting guys, the forum is giving me a lot of trouble these days. Took me 30mn to find a way to post everything without having the forum blocking the post for whatever reason...

Thanks! Looks like another great solo build. For some reason the forum blocks about half of my posts, and I have no idea why. This is the main reason I've been posting less these days. Sometimes it doesn't even let me react to posts.

[Not So Clever Hound]

24 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

Thanks! Looks like another great solo build. For some reason the forum blocks about half of my posts, and I have no idea why. This is the main reason I've been posting less these days. Sometimes it doesn't even let me react to posts.

Thanks @dgray62 I'm having exactly the same problems. So far I've been able to piece together via trial & error that some kind of new filter or bug doesn't like too much formatting and will break on some acronyms mixing upper and lower case letters. But it's not consistent. The build above... I had to start posting it line by line (!!!) until I figured out the stuff that was blocking the post (which I think was Path of the Damned written with "o" and "t" in lower case letters and "P" and "D" in upper case).

We've entered the Path of the Damned difficulty level of forum posting  

Edited January 8, 2023 by Not So Clever Hound

[Shai Hulud]

Wow that's a tanky tank! How are the defenses that high? That has to be in-combat with all buffs procced I guess? 

Do you have any videos of this build? Really cool to see you're still making awesome builds. 

Congrats on making a cheese-free build that's viable, though I'm guessing it's an absolute grindfest. Killing enemies with Draining Missiles (a 7 second cast targeting FORT) must take ages. Also how the heck do you get Akola's Apex Ward with this? Don't you have to like tank your reputation really early and then board a high level ship and solo your way through it, again, really early? IDK I've never tried it, but I haven't been able to tank my rep at all with most factions period. When I killed the queen it didn't even tank it. I had 5 with the dawnstars despite slaughtering everyone in their temple.

Why not Undying Burden instead of Eoten Con? -1CON for extra damage resistance, which should be pretty significant since you're usually bloodied (always 5+% if I understand the mechanics)? The extra Second Wind is just gravy. +2 fortitude is nice but your fort is pretty high, would be even higher with bear cub...

Where do you get boots of the white? I've never found them and it doesn't say in the wiki. Also, are freeze attacks common enough to justify using the boots much in your opinion, vs. something like Boots of Stability or something with movement utility like Rakahn Field Boots or Bounding? I don't think you have any way to move around the battlefield quickly...but I guess that's maybe not an issue since solo without Vela.

And don't take this is a criticism, it's aimed at the mod, but if a mod reduces the most viable classes into grindy tanks, why use it? Just the challenge? I think high recovery time is one of the worst aspects of Deadfire. If you compare how the game plays to its predecessor or older RTWP games, it is SLOW. AS. HELL. So much so that I couldn't play it when it came it out. I didn't start to enjoy it until I cheesed out recovery and sped up the fights. It's interesting, but sometimes exploits or even bugs can make a game better, IMO.

I still haven't tried the mod. Maybe when I get really bored. Running through DOS2 again. Is there a list somewhere of what BPM nerfs exactly? LIke you seem to imply grimoire imprints still work which is probably the most broken thing in the game, and I'm including SOF and SOTP.

Probably won't be able to post this so this is all an exercise in futility. Haven't been able to post in my thread for days. Roll for 20...go!

[Not So Clever Hound]

8 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

How are the defenses that high? That has to be in-combat with all buffs procced I guess? 

Indeed, that's in combat with all the passive defenses procced and only the 2 active defenses I use: Llengrath's Safeguard and Infuse with VE. If you're using an Arcane Knight that wants to use Wall of Draining to extend short lived buffs, you can get all defenses in the 220-230 range (e.g. extending First to the Fight and Drawing Parry from Furrante's Breastplate and Duskfall). Effectively making you out of reach for anything under 150ACC. But in practice I realized, being in the 200s was enough and that sky-high AR was as or even more important. You actually face quite a few enemies with hard-hitting autohit abilities (Fampyrs, Librarians, Oracle of Wael...) - removing 80%+ of that damage is very good. You also face quite a few enemies that have over 150 ACC so you need to soak up that damage too. Only very few baddies have both very high ACC in the 140-150 range and PEN in the mid 20s (e.g. the ridiculous Monk in The Bloodletting SSS fight, his Skyward Kick hits at 26PEN and I assume, Crits at 39PEN...). I found that 200 All Def + 24 minimum AR + Regen from stealing enemy HP was as foolproof as it gets.

I'll see if I can post a video later - indeed the fights are looong but at least you don't have to do anything, except occasionally use Brand Enemy or once in a while in boss fights cast Lay on Hands. I still finish all fights with half my Zeal, at least.

Akola's Apex Ward is super easy to get early. Once out of Maje, go collect all the good sailors and the nice cannons at the Smithy in Brass Citadel. Sail around the map and sink ships for easy experience and to build crew experience high. Now you can take tough ships in boat fights and your char has gained a few levels. Go to Serpent's Crown, Takano's Estate and murder everyone. Now you have -3 Rep with Huana and can go sink the ship to get Akola. Then proceed with your questing and in no time your Huana rep is at +3.  

Undying Burden is a nice suggestion, however I think Eothen has more incremental impact here (+Fort and +HP) because of how inversions work in the game, as @thelee demonstrated in his Almanac and in various threads. DMG reduction is calculated as an inversion, so it's behaves like % negative effect reduction modifiers: when you already have 35 Resolve (or pushing anything in severe Underpen), additional modifiers won't make any difference. If I already have a -75% reduction, adding another -30/-50% will only put my total reduction around -80%. After that, no additional modifiers will have any significant impact.

Boots of the White are looted in the first fight above the village in BoW, once you beat the Messenger the first time and get the icepicks to climb up.

I personally like to play BPM because indeed I like the challenge of removing some of the most powerful cheese and still find a way to solo consistently. It removes the temptation to "regress to the average that works"  and forces me to really think differently and streamline the builds. I find it's actually interesting because you end up having a lot of cheesy heuristics in this game, as in many others. Find X, then Z abilities, then use that over and over and be invulnerable... Using BPM breaks those habits. For instance, forcing yourself as a SC Mage to not proc Wall of Draining every single f****ing fight... helps me rediscover time and time again that you can have Wall of Many Colors active instead, often for even more impact (and definitely more fun IMO).

This build above, I found it because of (or thanks to) BPM but it's actually more consistently powerful than my Wall of Draining Arcane Knight because it does always good, even when there is no good target to wall-of-drain. Just take longer and is less demonstrative. Everything changed in BPM is logged by @Elric Galad on Nexus (see below). Buffs and Nerfs can be implemented separately and also you can individually remove any buff/nerf or anything you want to not include in your game, while keeping the rest of the package.

https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/438?tab=description

Edited January 12, 2023 by Not So Clever Hound

[Boeroer]

If you are using Wall of Draining (and playing around with being bloodied) a lot I would take a look at the Magnificient Escape Cape.
It's an early item and when becoming bloodied it unlocks the use of the Escape ability which - in addition to the mobility - grants +50 deflection for a few secs which can be prolonged with WoD. Since it's a buff from an item it will stack with almost everything (except Escape itself, but Paladin/Wizards don't have that). Since LL Cool's Safeguard is a "+20 to all defenses" buff it will stack with indivudual defense buffs (see Arcane Veil for example). So you can conveniently get +120 deflection with Escape+Veil+Safeguard, extendable with Wall of Draining. You won't even get grazed by anything that targets deflection. Combine with the other stackable item-buffs such as from Duskfall etc. for extra ridiculous deflection and defense numbers. 

On the other hand it is more fiddly to use/less convenient than a plain Cape of Greater Deflection for example. But if you can make it work it's a bit like god mode - at least against the usual melee and ranged attackers. I used this to make an "Offensive Parry" Arcane Knight (Steel Garrote/Bloodmage) viable in the late game on PotD because otherwise it was hard to gain enough deflection to be fun to play (solo).

This also works with the Mask of the Weyc - but that comes superlate and doesn't stack with Arcane Veil so I usually don't consider it for any x/Wizard. 

---

If I remember correctly you can use the Shining Bulwark's aura with an Essential Phantom to gain an additional +1 AR: switch to the Shinig Bulwark, summon Phantom and then switch to your other shield setup. The Phantom should give you +1 AR. This doesn't work if you keep using the Shining Bulwark yourself: all active bearers of it get excluded from its aura. The +1 AR buff from the aura stacks with everything afaik. 

---

One of the best boots for solo (not Ultimate bc. no pause) are Bounding Boots - at least for me. If you cancel the jumping animation before landing (cancel as soon as the target green circle appears) the per-rest use will not get substracted and there will be no effect upon landing - but you will have moved for free. Very long range, no recovery, only short animation. Gets you into and out of all sorts of troubles.  Of course it's a bit cheesy to exploit the boots in such a way...

I find Boots of the White occasionally, but I remember a spot where thy seem to be a fixed drop: on the top of the mountain in the BoW-DLC, where you fight those crazed pilgrims after you did climb up there. One of those guys always drops them iirc.

I also consider Boots of the Stone solid footwear. I usually have several of those in the early-mid game already - and they provide RES vs. MIG affl. which the Paladin doesn't get via passive.


 

[Not So Clever Hound]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

I find Boots of the White occasionally, but I remember a spot where thy seem to be a fixed drop: on the top of the mountain in the BoW-DLC, where you fight those crazed pilgrims after you did climb up there. One of those guys always drops them iirc.

Indeed as I mentioned they always drop there.

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

If I remember correctly you can use the Shining Bulwark's aura with an Essential Phantom to gain an additional +1 AR: switch to the Shinig Bulwark, summon Phantom and then switch to your other shield setup. The Phantom should give you +1 AR. This doesn't work if you keep using the Shining Bulwark yourself: all active bearers of it get excluded from its aura. The +1 AR buff from the aura stacks with everything afaik. 

Nice idea! Theoretically, I think you could maximize AR by using my build + this shining bulwark trick + having Giftwrapper as a pet + using Fine Aedyrian Mead for food (save/reload to make it passive) and proccing the right Kaul's Stance from Eager Blade at the beginning of the fight (obviously then you need 3 weapon sets). I believe this could shortly give you 24 + 1 + 1 + 1 +1 = 28 Minimum AR. That's a lot of trouble to get there  but it can give nice ideas to get variants around the build and still grab similar AR.

I also forgot to mention that in the build I get +3 Deflection against Melee from Akola and +20 All Defenses against MIG/DEX/RES Afflictions from Divine Purpose. As you know, this is so good because the +20 is also applied to damage rolls that come with the Affliction components (unlike Affliction immunities, which only cancel the Affliction). On a high-defenses build and especially with max RES, +def against afflictions is MUCH better than affliction immunity.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Not So Clever Hound

[Unkreed]

 

Hello! Very cool build, but I would like to see your AI script))

[Boeroer]

On 1/12/2023 at 10:10 AM, Not So Clever Hound said:

Indeed as I mentioned they always drop there.

Ah sorry, I must have skipped that part. 

 

[Not So Clever Hound]

There you go. I have one simplified behavior for simple encounters where I rely purely on passive defenses (90% of even high-level stuff):

 

Then I have the full behavior below for hairier encounters where I want additional defenses. It's in 2 screenshots:

 

Most of the time, everything works well on automation, you just have to decide here and there to cast brand enemy, or maybe lay on hands, or force a blood sacrifice below 50% health. Even in boss fights I'm basically relaxing having a coffee or multitasking to check what's up once in a while. The Oracle of Wael I just redid the first fight with the simplified behavior and didn't touch it once - I was just having a beer and playing ball with my kid.

 

Edited January 14, 2023 by Not So Clever Hound

[dgray62]

This is a great build. I think I will try it after I finish my current run, a FF monk/priest taking advantage of an item (Moonbow) in a mod recently added to Nexus that grants Major Grimoire Imprint, allowing any class to have fun with spell stealing, and enabling me to steal all the priest spells, which means a good number of Wizard and Druid spells as well when you take the various priest subclasses into account.

Why not pick up Flame Shield for the nice +10 freeze AR? It would also give you extra burn retaliation when hit.

Edited January 15, 2023 by dgray62

[Not So Clever Hound]

11 hours ago, dgray62 said:

This is a great build. I think I will try it after I finish my current run, a FF monk/priest taking advantage of an item (Moonbow) in a mod recently added to Nexus that grants Major Grimoire Imprint, allowing any class to have fun with spell stealing, and enabling me to steal all the priest spells, which means a good number of Wizard and Druid spells as well when you take the various priest subclasses into account.

Why not pick up Flame Shield for the nice +10 freeze AR? It would also give you extra burn retaliation when hit.

Thanks! Sounds fun. 

i thought about using flame shield (or the mini flame shield of a Darcozzi) but in practice I want to keep the build super lean and use as few active abilities as possible, to maximize the efficiency of the AI script and of Blood Sacrifice. But there definitely are fun variants to play around with to get a more active build.

They wouldn't necessarily be more powerful but maybe feel a bit more dynamic. For instance I was for a time using Crushing Doom on top of Draining Missiles as part of my routine, for example against the Messenger. Also if you want to inject just a tiny bit of cheese, you can take great advantage of casting Draining Touch with the Iron Clasped and switching grimoires to have the weapon last until fight end…

Edited January 16, 2023 by Not So Clever Hound

[Yellow-eye four]

I wonder if +1 armor from bloodied fire godlike and +2 burn armor worth, going fire godlike? Can anything oneshot you from 25% if not then will death godlike speed up the encounter?

[Shai Hulud]

I tried to post this ages ago but I got error messages every time I tried to post. For some reason I can post again and I saved the wall of text so bam

--------
I assumed you had to board Whenena Eel's Kiss because that's usually how the ship loot works right? Thanks for clarifying. 

Not sure I'm following you about "inversions". I assume you mean reduction in things (like recovery time, or in this case damage taken) is lessened the more you have. Like if you have a ton of recovery reduction (say 90%) it takes another 20ish stacks of Scordeo's Trophy to get to 91%. So since enemies mostly under-pen at -75%, an extra 5 to 10% is probably calculated more like 1 or 2 percent I guess? Still I'd be more worried about the enemies that don't underpen. Unless they all do. I don't have much experience with super tanky builds like this.

I don't want to be invulnerable I just want to make combat bearable. I never use Wall of Draining for whatever that's worth. There's the post-combat ritual of cycling Strand of Favor for 10 seconds in some builds but if it reduces combat time from an hour to a few minutes I think it's fine. For me, I'd rather see mods that ramped up difficulty, enemy AI etc. vs. nerfing everything so the only way to win is to make yourself better at the stand-there-and-sponge-HP-strat than the enemies. And, not a criticism (since I know you didn't intend this as a Magran's Fires build) but this guy will lose his armor and weapons in nearly every fight with Magran's Fire challenges on, and sinking a bunch of ships is probably near impossible. Boarding is only safe way to do ship combat with Wael and it's still super dangerous.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I feel like Deadfire is fundamentally flawed by its grindy combat. That flaw could be eliminated through cheese via Scordeo, but with BPM it's back to fights taking ages and not complex fights with complex strategies, just LONG fights because your enemies have a pool of 5000+ HP, while you do maybe 60 damage every 6 seconds, and a few simple scripting blocks can handle everything. I mean this guy doesn't even move, right? Because of The Wall? From a metagaming perspective it is very impressive you made a build that can still win in BPM without "cheese", but it just looks so boring. Was hoping to see some vids, maybe it isn't as bad as I'm imagining.

And thanks again for answering all my questions so thoroughly, I always enjoy your threads/posts.

I looked through the BPM list. Some of the changes look okay but pretty minor effect. I like fixing Arcane Dampener. But so much is nerfed I don't think most Magran's Fires challenges will even be possible. Might make the game better for parties but I don't usually play with one. Lot of it looks like just removing anything that's effective to meet challenges that were intended to be near impossible (e.g. Ultimate). I think you could still do it with a build like this one but it would *require* grimoire imprint. You just don't have enough withdraw scrolls or resources to protect Vela in a fight that takes 10 minutes, much less 30. Would still be easy to lose Vela because without reducing recovery time she can come out of withdraw while you have a 4 second recovery from something, and damn, your run has ended. Would have to time her withdraws. If it could be scripted it might be possible but I can't figure out how to script anything around Vela. 

I know the mod is not meant for Ultimate but I can't seem to go back to regular play. Got used to the challenge of babysitting Vela and everything else. It's kind of fun. 

-------

@Yellow-eye four

I was thinking the same thing regarding the fire godlike. Well, not so much necessarily death godlike, though that would be cool. Just there are a lot of good helmets that would help here, like Blackened Plate Helm's +1 Engagement works with Kapana Taga, or my favorite the Cap of the Laughingstock gives you a +10 accuracy vs deflection, though I guess this guy doesn't normally target deflection. Champion's Helm also gives a decent action speed buff, Rekvu's Fractured Casque could be useful as the downside of an injury is completely gone since this guy doesn't move (just walk over a caltrops trap that gives wrenched knee).

Could maybe even use Deltro's Cage Helm, in theory blood sacrifice should extend the duration but...nope, doesn't. Well, could script in something to alternate with blood sacrifice to damage yourself, like minoletta's minor missiles, just needs to be done once per 20 seconds or whatever. IDK how it would work in practice, maybe not that well, but I've just never been a fan of godlikes because you can't alter your helm to suit the situation.

But it does work with the tankiest tank of all time thing.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Shai Hulud]

On 1/16/2023 at 1:06 AM, Not So Clever Hound said:

Thanks! Sounds fun. 

i thought about using flame shield (or the mini flame shield of a Darcozzi) but in practice I want to keep the build super lean and use as few active abilities as possible, to maximize the efficiency of the AI script and of Blood Sacrifice. But there definitely are fun variants to play around with to get a more active build.

They wouldn't necessarily be more powerful but maybe feel a bit more dynamic. For instance I was for a time using Crushing Doom on top of Draining Missiles as part of my routine, for example against the Messenger. Also if you want to inject just a tiny bit of cheese, you can take great advantage of casting Draining Touch with the Iron Clasped and switching grimoires to have the weapon last until fight end…

lol a tiny bit of cheese, perma draining touch hand is the cheesiest thing ever, and worse, it is boring cheese. Better to steal a fun spell. I like escape but I guess that wouldn't help this guy much since his deflection is already god tier, but it would let you move around without losing The Wall (I think). Taste of the Hunt. It is like having draining touch but much better as it targets deflection and heals more. Still boring though.

----

And while we're talking about cheese, isn't it kind of cheesy for a PALADIN to murder tons of innocent civilians and pirate his way across Deadfire just to power-game a cool shield?

Edited January 19, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Not So Clever Hound]

8 hours ago, Yellow-eye four said:

I wonder if +1 armor from bloodied fire godlike and +2 burn armor worth, going fire godlike? Can anything oneshot you from 25% if not then will death godlike speed up the encounter?

BPM makes Fire Godlike +2 AR while Bloodied, +4 Burn AR and the tiny retaliation works all the time so it's slightly better than in Vanilla and getting 24 AR is nice on Upscaled to be foolproof in most fights (e.g. in case you get shortly debuffed with Sunder Armor or Rusted Armor, which wouldn't last long anyway).

[Not So Clever Hound]

56 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

I assumed you had to board Whenena Eel's Kiss because that's usually how the ship loot works right? Thanks for clarifying.

No, you actually get the unique loot + slightly more generic loot if you sink the ship than if you board it. But granted, sinking ships is harder or nigh impossible with certain Magran's Fires on. Generically speaking, I didn't make this build with Magran's Fires or The Ultimate in mind.

Yes, you got what I meant with inversions/reductions with diminishing returns. I wasn't very clear.

I agree with what you say about the grindy combat with certain late game enemies, not even Megabosses. The Messenger has >6k HP, the Porokoa has almost 4K, the Oracle 3K... And while the Messenger has an obvious weakness to Fire, Armor Ratings are generally very high. The Oracle has 16 base elemental AR and its Hindsight ability works like Inspired Defenses, which is annoying. It tends to push you into a grindfest and removes from the equation certain builds that could be otherwise very cool, or pushes you to use cheese or abuse Arcana. But at the same time, I keep coming back to it so there must be something nice about it .

Here is a video about the grindfest on the first Wael fight, video probably needs to load a bit more to be in HD. Beware, it's painful to watch. I wasn't using the full AI on this one because just my passive defenses and spamming blood sacrifice and draining missiles is enough. Just one point I healed because for some reason enemies got a couple lucky hits. Otherwise as you can see, it's slightly boring and quite indestructible.

 

 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Not So Clever Hound

[Yellow-eye four]

10 minutes ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

BPM makes Fire Godlike +2 AR while Bloodied, +4 Burn AR and the tiny retaliation works all the time so it's slightly better than in Vanilla and getting 24 AR is nice on Upscaled to be foolproof in most fights (e.g. in case you get shortly debuffed with Sunder Armor or Rusted Armor, which wouldn't last long anyway).

+2 AR and always retaliate see. In vanilla, its only +1 and retaliate on hit targeting deflection for 1-2 under penetration damage .

I tried the build on community patch with no BPM. Start fire godlike, although it needs to chug potions early game, after getting a few gears, it cannot die. I find it so slow so I use unity console to change to death godlike.

Death godlike give +3 ACC +1.5 missile +15% additive damage, but I need to blood sacrifice to 25% instead which is quite risky.

I have a question, how to get rikuhu blessing without removing all my other rest bonus?

 

[Shai Hulud]

1 minute ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

No, you actually get the unique loot + slightly more generic loot if you sink the ship than if you board it. But granted, sinking ships is harder with certain Magran's Fires on. Generically speaking, I didn't make this build with Magran's Fires or The Ultimate in mind.

Yes, you got what I meant with inversions/reductions with diminishing returns. I wasn't very clear.

I agree with what you say about the grindy combat with certain late game enemies, not even Megabosses. The Messenger has >6k HP, the Porokoa has almost 4K, the Oracle 3K... And while the Messenger has an obvious weakness to Fire, Armor Ratings are generally very high. The Oracle has 16 base elemental AR and its Hindsight ability works like Inspired Defenses, which is annoying. It tends to push you into a grindfest and removes from the equation certain builds that could be otherwise very cool, or pushes you to use cheese or abuse Arcana.

 

Eh? You get more loot sinking ships than boarding? That isn't right I don't think...unless it is specifically for the "vegeance ships"? I've done tons of ship encounters and in general you get way more loot from boarding.

Can you expand on "abuse Arcana"? I must have missed something. Most of the exploits I used in my Ultimate run I figured out for myself (though I'm sure were already well-known), which personally I find fun. I didn't notice anything weird about arcana...

Yeah Messenger is ridiculous, not only does he have stupid high HP but in general he heals faster than you can damage him without hacking recovery (and even then it is hard solo). I'd be interested in seeing how you tackled that fight...(*cough, record something, *cough)

This game should have a fallen paladin mechanic, or some kind of alignment system, because this guy is for real a serial killer and a pirate with a "righteous soul" and "virtuous triumph". 

[Not So Clever Hound]

22 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

Eh? You get more loot sinking ships than boarding? That isn't right I don't think...unless it is specifically for the "vegeance ships"? I've done tons of ship encounters and in general you get way more loot from boarding.

Ah maybe you're right. I remember a thread about this but can't find it. Doesn't matter much anyway as in either cases you get the unique loot.

22 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

Can you expand on "abuse Arcana"? I must have missed something. Most of the exploits I used in my Ultimate run I figured out for myself (though I'm sure were already well-known), which personally I find fun. I didn't notice anything weird about arcana...

I'm just saying max Arcana is a way late game to circumvent the resources problem in bullet-sponge fights, loading up on high damaging spells. Meteor Shower, Maelstrom, the Insect DoT scrolls... Tornado got a big buff in BPM. And of course Rusted Armor in certain cases.

22 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

(*cough, record something, *cough)

I added the first Oracle fight in the post above as I had just redone it to check on something. I don't think I still have a save close to the second Messenger fight but I can redo the first encounter later.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Not So Clever Hound

[Not So Clever Hound]

19 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

This game should have a fallen paladin mechanic, or some kind of alignment system, because this guy is for real a serial killer and a pirate with a "righteous soul" and "virtuous triumph". 

Ha, that's true. Well to be fair it's not a goody-two-shoes paladin but a goldpact, so basically a lawful neutral mercenary. The fighting style at least is very aligned to what a goldpact arcane knight should be  pragmatic, immobile, ruthless. 

[Shai Hulud]

41 minutes ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Ha, that's true. Well to be fair it's not a goody-two-shoes paladin but a goldpact, so basically a lawful neutral mercenary. The fighting style at least is very aligned to what a goldpact arcane knight should be  pragmatic, immobile, ruthless. 

To be fair lawful neutral paladins don't murder the natives and become pirates. They just don't. If your guy is chaotic evil, sure. Maybe even neutral evil. Could argue a Bleak Walker might do it, but even Bleak Walkers are only cruel and ruthless as a means to complete contracts, so, probably a stretch for them as well. Bleak Walkers are lawful evil I think. But I don't really care about role-playing, just was pointing out the inherent subjectivity of what is considered "cheese" and why I don't find the concept useful. There are exploits (things the devs probably didn't intend but conform to the mechanics, like say wall of draining and salvation of time interaction), and there are bugs (Strand of Favor behavior), but I don't necessarily have a problem with even bugs unless they trivialize combat. Your Armored Arcanist may not be lore-friendly but he doesn't use and bugs or even exploits, and that's pretty impressive. 

Watched the Oracle fight and on fast mode it actually isn't quite as bad as I was expecting, but...fighting on fast mode is suicidal in iron runs (unless your script is absolutely foolproof) especially with Vela. This fight would take 25 minutes in slow mode, longer with Magran's Fires challenges on. And there are much longer fights than this. You don't actually use the weapons much so they'd probably be fine but your shield would break in nearly every fight and the armor in most of them. Maybe you could stock up on generic Legendary Plate Mail, and if it breaks late enough in the fights it might still be possible. 

But...build not meant for iron probably, and definitely not meant for Ultimate. The challenge was meant to be near-impossible and with BPM may actually be impossible. I'm just thinking out loud because I'm attracted to impossible challenges. 

Very cool build and Thee God-Emperor of Tanks.