What Classes (Single/Multi) Are Considered Best For Solo?

[Stardusk78]

I have never soloed the game before and am considering it; I would not mind doing a Blood Mage but I have no idea about its viability. What builds and classes are considered to be best, any suggestions or build recommendations?

[Shai Hulud]

3 hours ago, Stardusk78 said:

I have never soloed the game before and am considering it; I would not mind doing a Blood Mage but I have no idea about its viability. What builds and classes are considered to be best, any suggestions or build recommendations?

Are you playing vanilla or do you have the community patch? 

Are you willing to do "cheesy" things like use wall of draining or salvation of time to make yourself invulnerable? Or do you want something more straightforward? 

Blood mage / anything can solo the game if you use wall of draining properly. I like blood mage / soul blade personally, but blood mage / tactician is insanely good and a bit more accessible, since you won't need potions of final stand every fight. Unbending is extremely strong solo, particularly with wall of draining since you can extend it to the point where you are healing more damage than you can take every round. And with tactician, Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure lets you get brilliant inspiration any time you want. Before getting ABD, you can do it with potions of invisibility.

Tactician / Skaen is very strong for similar reasons, you can use salvation of time to extend buffs and shadowing beyond to proc brilliant to get more salvation of time. That and Barring Death's Door makes you immortal. 

For tactician builds make sure you have ON berath's challenge, it keeps you from fleeing from combat which is necessary for invisibility to proc brilliant. 

Priest / anything can do it, Skaen is usually chosen for Escape and Shadowing Beyond which help a ton until you get barring death's door and salvation of time combo. Tactician / Skaen and Skaen / blood mage are probably strongest. 

Assassins are quite good due to assassinate passive, you need berath's challenge OFF for maximum benefit, the idea is you do large spike damage then disappear, regain assassinate passive, spike damage, repeat. Kinda boring IMO but some people like it. 

Troubadour / psion is a great combo that can solo the game mostly relying on summoning things and buffing your summons. 

Monks are one of the more straightforward options. Forbidden fists are probably the best non-mage and non-priest options (those can make you immortal with wall of draining and salvation of time). You need to community patch for FF attack to work properly with some things like building focus. FF / soul blade is really good and can solo everything. Probably any FF can, if properly built. 

Tell me what you're looking for and I can be a lot more specific 

Edited April 8, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Kaylon]

Playing solo requires good knowledge of the game not only for the build itself (stats, items, abilities), but also for the order to do the quests, which battles to avoid, what choices to make, what tactics to use in the hard encounters, how to get the best items fast, etc.

Pure casters have to avoid fights until high levels (when they get their strong abilities) and also require constant buffing.

If you want to enjoy the game from the beginning, I would recommend classes that are strong from the start until the end like:

• forbidden fist monk - tanky melee damage dealer (starts with good single target dmg and self healing ability)
• darcozzi paladin/troubadour - versatile tank (starts with good AoE dmg, good defense and passive health regen)
• troubadour/blood mage - caster (starts with summons, passive health regen and good ranged damage)
• steel garrote/blood mage - tank/damage dealer (starts with great defense, passive health regen and passive draining ability)
• tactician/assassin - sniper (attacks enemies from stealth and kills them one with an arquebuse)
• troubadour/arcane archer - summoner archer (can use summons from stealth and then attack from range with bow)

[Stardusk78]

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Are you playing vanilla or do you have the community patch? 

Are you willing to do "cheesy" things like use wall of draining or salvation of time to make yourself invulnerable? Or do you want something more straightforward? 

Blood mage / anything can solo the game if you use wall of draining properly. I like blood mage / soul blade personally, but blood mage / tactician is insanely good and a bit more accessible, since you won't need potions of final stand every fight. Unbending is extremely strong solo, particularly with wall of draining since you can extend it to the point where you are healing more damage than you can take every round. And with tactician, Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure lets you get brilliant inspiration any time you want. Before getting ABD, you can do it with potions of invisibility.

Tactician / Skaen is very strong for similar reasons, you can use salvation of time to extend buffs and shadowing beyond to proc brilliant to get more salvation of time. That and Barring Death's Door makes you immortal. 

For tactician builds make sure you have ON berath's challenge, it keeps you from fleeing from combat which is necessary for invisibility to proc brilliant. 

Priest / anything can do it, Skaen is usually chosen for Escape and Shadowing Beyond which help a ton until you get barring death's door and salvation of time combo. Tactician / Skaen and Skaen / blood mage are probably strongest. 

Assassins are quite good due to assassinate passive, you need berath's challenge OFF for maximum benefit, the idea is you do large spike damage then disappear, regain assassinate passive, spike damage, repeat. Kinda boring IMO but some people like it. 

Troubadour / psion is a great combo that can solo the game mostly relying on summoning things and buffing your summons. 

Monks are one of the more straightforward options. Forbidden fists are probably the best non-mage and non-priest options (those can make you immortal with wall of draining and salvation of time). You need to community patch for FF attack to work properly with some things like building focus. FF / soul blade is really good and can solo everything. Probably any FF can, if properly built. 

Tell me what you're looking for and I can be a lot more specific 

Thanks for the reply. I have the community patch and I was hoping for something that was not pure cheese. I don't think I would turn on all of the challenges, probably just normal PTOD solo since it is my first time.  I tested out a Soulblade/Tactician in Port Maje but it took forever to kill enemies. Maybe I built it wrong but basically it was after Berath's Blessings:

 

Might 10

Constitution 10

Dexterity 10

Perception 22

Intellect 16

Resolve 22

On normal playthroughs, Resolve is usually a dump stat for me so maybe I overtuned it? but I just could not kill enemies efficiently. Bloodmage/Tactician does seem to be the easiest to make work but I would not mind a priest, even so without renewable resources solo seems quite difficult. I had not considered Troudabour/Psion; what would the advantages of that be and in general how should stats be, whatever the build/class? With Tactician Skaen you just Shadow Beyond, get Brilliant and wait for resources to accumulate and then return to combat? Otherwise not sure how one would proc Brilliant.?

I am not even sure what gear I should be using. Sorry for all the questions and thanks for the help.

 

 

[Shai Hulud]

1 hour ago, Stardusk78 said:

Thanks for the reply. I have the community patch and I was hoping for something that was not pure cheese. I don't think I would turn on all of the challenges, probably just normal PTOD solo since it is my first time.  I tested out a Soulblade/Tactician in Port Maje but it took forever to kill enemies. Maybe I built it wrong but basically it was after Berath's Blessings:

 

Might 10

Constitution 10

Dexterity 10

Perception 22

Intellect 16

Resolve 22

Did you level yourself up with the console? Because a lot of strong builds start out kinda weak. Soul blades don't get their best spell until level 13 (borrowed instinct). When I'm testing builds I usually load a L20 character with lots of gear in the SSS arena, remove his gear, then use console "opencharactercreation" to make a new character, then "addexperience 200000" to get him to L20 (or whatever). 

Tactician / soul blade sounds good because phantom foes can flank everyone, but for that to work it has to land vs everyone, and even then, brilliant is kind of useless on the cipher side. So it isn't as good a combination as it might seem initially. Also you have no way solo to avoid the penetration and accuracy penalty of not having an ally. So you always have -1 pen and -10 accuracy. Cipher can make up for that with hammering thoughts and borrowed instinct, but still. A tactician / blood mage can just summon an essential phantom every now and then. Tactician / skaen can summon spiritual ally. 

Your stats are not how I would have spread them but there are many ways to build characters depending how you want to use them. I'm assuming since it is a soul blade you want to melee more than cast spells. Your stat spread is okay for that, though you really don't need that much resolve. Just wear the ring of the solitary wanderer to make up for the +hostile effect duration, and keep up psychovampiric shield and you can dump resolve quite a lot. You want max INT almost always though. I'd probably have done 12/9/14/20/18/4 assuming I'm a wild orlan. Before berath. So 14/11/16/22/20/6 I guess. Your stats seem too high, they should sum to 88 with berath. Yours sum to 94.

1 hour ago, Stardusk78 said:

On normal playthroughs, Resolve is usually a dump stat for me so maybe I overtuned it? but I just could not kill enemies efficiently.
Bloodmage/Tactician does seem to be the easiest to make work but I would not mind a priest, even so without renewable resources solo seems quite difficult. I had not considered Troudabour/Psion; what would the advantages of that be and in general how should stats be, whatever the build/class? With Tactician Skaen you just Shadow Beyond, get Brilliant and wait for resources to accumulate and then return to combat? Otherwise not sure how one would proc Brilliant.?

Yeah I think you don't need that much resolve because psychovampiric shield is +5 and borrowed instinct is +20 all defenses. Your might is too low for soul annihilation to do much damage or build focus fast.

Blood mage / tactician is a lot of fun. Tactician / skaen would also work. All you have to do to proc brilliant is use arkemyr's brilliant departure or shadowing beyond respectively. But with blood mage you also have blood sacrifice which once you have unbending built up you can spam as much as you need. You do need Berath's Challenge on, but don't worry, it doesn't make the game harder at all for solo. Berath's challenge is two things: if you go unconscious for 10 seconds, you're dead. Since you're solo, this would happen anyway. And the second thing is you can't flee battles. That's what allows invisibility to proc brilliant, because for some reason when you "flee" with invisibility the enemies start to ignore you after a few rounds. Normally combat would have ended there, but with berath challenge they're all considered flanked at that point for some reason. 

And yes you use either invisibility spell, then wait like 3 or 4 rounds and brilliant will proc, then you just wait and they refill both fighter and wizard / priest resources. Blood mage can also proc brilliant with chill fog, may be useful at lower levels. Also interrupts give back fighter resources, but it isn't "any" interrupt, you have to interrupt a spell or ability, something with an icon. Mule kick interrupts on graze, and if you're using citzal's spirit lance and you mule kick, you mule kick EVERYONE in the lance AOE radius, so you can often do that for free if one of those people is trying to cast something. You can also interrupt with things like the slicken spell.

I'd use similar stats for either a blood mage / tactician or blood mage / skaen as they're both caster / fighter hybrids. Something like 9/12/14/20/19/4 for blood mage (need a bit of CON for blood sacrifice), for skaen maybe 13/8/14/20/19/4. You don't have to dump CON and RES that much though, could do like 9/10/12/20/19/8. Most important thing is high PER and INT and decent DEX so your spells last a long time, your attacks and spells have good accuracy. Resolve doesn't matter much for deflection because blood mage and priest both have so many buffs.

Troubadour / psion is fun if you like summoning things. That's most of what you do. You don't need a lot of the traditional combat stats like mig / con / res because it's your summons fighting and you shouldn't be getting hit much or doing direct damage that much either. The Ancient Instruments of Death are really good, though you don't get them until level 19, but other summons are quite good in various situations, like the wyrms, the ogres, the will o wisps., even the lowly skeletons. You can cast pain link on your summons which returns damage to things attacking them. You can also buff them with pain block, echoing shield, tactical meld, use ectopsychic echo for beam damage, as well as using direct spells like ringleader and mental binding. If you like summoning and crowd control, this is the build. Stats I would go like 9 / 8 / 18 / 20 / 19 / 4 (as an orlan, but you can be whatever, though little point in being human). 

1 hour ago, Stardusk78 said:

I am not even sure what gear I should be using. Sorry for all the questions and thanks for the help.

Hey I like doing this kind of thing

It depends which of these three builds you pick, though gear for tactician / skaen and tactician / blood mage are similar. Here is a tactician / blood mage gear. I tried to pick gear that is available in the first half of the game, though really this gear is fine the whole way. The sword is important, squid's grasp. You need that or the club kapana taga for the flanking immunity, and devil of caroc breastplate you should enchant with mechanical mind so you can't be confused. You can still become shaken if you summon a weapon and get flanked. The late game pet retina can help with being flanked. What I like to do is start with squid's grasp and a shield (lethandria's devotion is good but whatever you want), cast a bunch of buffs from llengrath's martial mysteries, switch grimoires to arkemyr's grimoire (or arkemyr's illuminating discoveries), cast arcane veil, then all the wizard buffs are up, cast unbending trunk and a wall of draining, position yourself or cast CC spells as necessary so you won't be flanked, then cast citzal's spirit lance. You'll lose flanking immunity but the weapon is insanely good and distributes mule kicks. 

You can of course attack with whatever other weapon you prefer, but put squid's grasp in your offhand. Not only for the flanking immunity, but you also get +20% attack speed when threatened by 3 or more enemies. It is really good solo, you can get it at treasure trove in dunnage. 

Here's what I picked at each level (not necessarily in this order)

Disciplined Barrage, Knock Down, Slicken, Chill Fog
Fighter Stances, Weapon and Shield, Two Handed, Confident Aim
Disciplined Strikes, Mule Kick, Rapid Recovery, Hold the Line, Bear's Fortitude
Charge, Weapon Specialization
Conqueror Stance, Unbending, Tough, Uncanny Luck, Armored Grace, Pull of Eora, Rapid Casting
Improved Critical, Martial Caster
Unbending Trunk, Weapon Mastery, Wall of Draining

I should note I skipped Vigorous Defense and Refreshing Defense because although these are very good, the +20 defense doesn't stack with Llengrath's Safeguard, which gives +20 all defenses AND +5 armor, so the safeguard is better, though you get it a couple levels later I think, so you might want Vigorous Defense in the meantime and respec later.

Note you don't really need to memorize any spells, but I'd take at least Wall of Draining, Chill Fog, and Slicken for their utility to the class, and I personally love Pull of Eora because it groups enemies nicely and interrupts them (though I don't think it returns points like other interrupts), mostly it is just awesome for setting people up for citzal's spirit lance or AOE spells. Wear Upright Captain's Belt or take Hold the Line so you'll be immune to the push/pull effect from Pull of Eora.

I can go into my picks for Skaen if you want though I'm less familiar with that build, can also do troubadour / psion, I am pretty familiar with that build

Items starting at helm and going counterclockwise: cap of the laughingstock (gives you +10 accuracy vs deflection and if you have a phantom summoned or use mirror image it gives you immune to resolve afflictions so now flanked won't cause shaken or confused)
charm of bones
devil of caroc breastplate (take devil's due and mechanical mind)
ring of the solitary wanderer
boots of the stone
pes (or frau nils or abraham, replace later with blinky or retina)
girdle of mortal protection (can replace later with girdle of eoten con)
entonia signet ring (stays good, may want to replace with ring of prosperity's fortunte when rich)
gauntlets of accuracy (stays good, lot of good bracer choices)
giftbearer cloth (use cape of falling star or cloak of greater protection before you get this, once you get you want history at least 15)

weapons griffin's blade, squid's grasp, kapana taga, lethandria's devotion

other equipment of note: rekvu's fractured casque gives immunity to interrupts if you have an injury. Just run over a caltrops trap to get a wrenched knee (-25% stride), stride doesn't matter since you have deletrious alacrity of motion. Or you can kill yourself with necrotic lance for acute rash (fortitude debuff) or with fire for serious burn (-2 dex). These are the least bad injuries and in some cases absolutely worth it, particularly the wrenched knee, there are caltrops traps at poko kohara ruins. If you need to clear injuries drink luminous adra potion, which also gives you +2 all skills, and it stacks with hylea's bounty.

For solo runs you should try not to rest so you can keep dawnstar's blessing and nature's resolve. Just use hylea's bounty early, or hot razor skewers which you can buy in neketaka would also be good for this build. 

Guide for no rest run

 

Edited April 9, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Stardusk78]

I don't really know how to directly reply with quotes, I find it quite clunky but those are good ideas. I use a few mods, including the one that gives you access to companion classes so one idea I had was Tactician/Watershaper, no harm Chill Fog would be the obvious selling point and you get other stuff like Returning Storm but I guess it would lack in Defences? If I could avoid Blood Mage I would like to, did a normal campaign with one and it was great but don't want to repeat it if possible.  Now this would all just be a norma POTD solo, without the challenges since it is my first time so I guess I could make it work? One of the biggest questions I have is skills; what backgrounds and skill distribution is best since you are soloing and cannot rely on others?

[Shai Hulud]

1 hour ago, Stardusk78 said:

I don't really know how to directly reply with quotes, I find it quite clunky but those are good ideas. I use a few mods, including the one that gives you access to companion classes so one idea I had was Tactician/Watershaper, no harm Chill Fog would be the obvious selling point and you get other stuff like Returning Storm but I guess it would lack in Defences? If I could avoid Blood Mage I would like to, did a normal campaign with one and it was great but don't want to repeat it if possible.  Now this would all just be a norma POTD solo, without the challenges since it is my first time so I guess I could make it work? One of the biggest questions I have is skills; what backgrounds and skill distribution is best since you are soloing and cannot rely on others?

I haven't played druids much...that could work but you don't have a super reliable tactic like shadowing beyond or arkemyr's brilliant departure. And yes defences would be considerably worse than a mage or priest.

Also you can actually steal that chill fog spell as a blood mage. Biakara has it, among other watershapers. She sails around Hasongo. In case you didn't know, to steal a spell permanently, take a grimoire with minor grimoire imprint (like aloth's grimoire, do not memorize it), cast it on an enemy spellcaster, then if you graze or better the spell appears in your quickbar. If you get a spell you want to keep, cycle to another grimoire and it will stay permanently. 

I stole party friendly chill fog in my ultimate run. Used it most fights, just threw it down on top of me at regular intervals. Very useful, though I had unlimited casts of it.

Well you can certainly go tactician / skaen, that is super reliable, though in my opinion a bit too easy compared to blood mage. I mean blood mage is also easy but it takes a bit of technical knowledge and setup to become immortal, whereas with a tactician / skaen it's really just barring death's door -> salvation of time -> shadowing beyond -> brilliant -> salvation of time -> buff whatever -> salvation of time -> keep buffing -> salvation of time over and over, the end. 

You don't need an uber powerful build like these but soling on POTD upscaled is actually pretty difficult if you're trying to do it "legitimately" without cheese strategies. 

Background...I usually pick artist, dissident, or explorer for the history. Stealth and mechanics are also useful throughout the game. 

For your skills you should invest heavily in stealth to at least 7 points, and put the rest of the points in mechanics for active skills, while for passives take diplomacy to about 13 for most of the game, then later you can respec with history maxed for combat, assuming you use the giftbearer cloth, otherwise you don't particularly need history. There are a lot of survival checks. The hard survival checks mostly come later in SSS. There are hard arcana and metaphysics checks in FS but you don't need to pass them. 

Stealth, mechanics, diplomacy, and survival. History if wearing giftbearer cloth. Other skills you may want if using certain items, like metaphysics for essence interrupter. 

If you grab the boots of stealth ASAP in deadlight that will help, also the burglar's gloves in periki's. Hylea's bounty in addition to the huge health and defenses boost gives +2 all skills, and luminous adra potions gives +2 all skills, and they stack, though you may have to save/reload to see them stack. So after you buy training you should have 5 to 7 points even in skills you didn't invest in, enough for easy checks. Carry lots of thiefs putty and the other unguents to bring those skills to 7 to 9. Mostly thief's putty, but they're all useful so don't sell them. 

Edited April 9, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Stardusk78]

So I have decided on the rather simple route of Herald Shieldbearer/Troubadour; maximum defences and healing as well as summons. I think I lack the technical know-how atm to plan out something much more complicated so this is just endure and slowly kill I guess? using Community Patch and going Death Godlike. 

[Shai Hulud]

15 minutes ago, Stardusk78 said:

So I have decided on the rather simple route of Herald Shieldbearer/Troubadour; maximum defences and healing as well as summons. I think I lack the technical know-how atm to plan out something much more complicated so this is just endure and slowly kill I guess? using Community Patch and going Death Godlike. 

I need to make a proper guide for tactician / blood mage and tactician / skaen. There's a tiny bit of setup I guess. 

Godlikes are a trap unless you really know what you're doing...particularly death godlikes since they benefit from fighting near death. 

Troubadour / psion is not complicated FWIW. Summon things, buff things. Send summons to fight things. 

[Stardusk78]

Quote

Troubadour / psion is not complicated FWIW. Summon things, buff things. Send summons to fight things. 

What is it about the Psion that makes it better than Beguiler in this scenario?

[Kaylon]

3 hours ago, Stardusk78 said:

So I have decided on the rather simple route of Herald Shieldbearer/Troubadour; maximum defences and healing as well as summons. I think I lack the technical know-how atm to plan out something much more complicated so this is just endure and slowly kill I guess? using Community Patch and going Death Godlike. 

Death Godlike is useless unless you can benefit from Barring Death Door and a human (who can also wear a helmet) is most of the time a superior choice. If not for RP purposes I would recommend a pale elf instead (his racial bonuses are the best). 

Shieldbearer isn't a very good choice for solo because his subclass bonuses help only in a party. The best paladin subclass for solo is the darcozzi (easy to RP too) - the dmg shield has a very long duration and keeps adding damage to all enemies that hit you in melee and the cold resistance is nice too.

Summons are very weak at the beginning and take a long time to cast. Pick instead Thrice Was She Wronged... which can be used (multiple times in a row) to frontload damage against multiple enemies.

[Caeyrii]

13 minutes ago, Kaylon said:

Summons are very weak at the beginning and take a long time to cast. Pick instead Thrice Was She Wronged... which can be used (multiple times in a row) to frontload damage against multiple enemies.

I've gone back to the game just recently to actually finish it this time (stopped after defeating the slime superboss as a solo Herald, Darcozzi/Troubador). Lost a bit of knowledge of my playthroughs. I like 'Thrice' shout as a source of early damage as well, but I'm being conflicted in whether to invest in MIG or in DEX, as the latter does really give noticeable difference in summon time. What do you suggest? 

[Shai Hulud]

9 hours ago, Stardusk78 said:

What is it about the Psion that makes it better than Beguiler in this scenario?

I made a rough guide in this thread on psion/troubadour, and abot (resident psion/troubadour expert) also posted a lot of stuff. The abilities I listed are what I'd typically take at later levels. For individual battles you sometimes want to respec because certain summons may be usesless in that battle, and you'd prefer more cipher spells. I've never been much of a fan of the thrice was she wronged spell, but kaylon does have a point, the very early summons are kind of bad. But...paired with psion you are fine. You can still easily win fights with them but it may take a while. Take soul shock at L1 and cast that on top of your summons for early damage. Even the wyrms you get at level 4 aren't that bad, particularly once you reach level 7 on cipher side and can cast pain link on them. With pain link they just have to go out there and get killed and they'll do damage. Their upgrade at level 10 / 11 is also quite good. The very top tier summons is the instruments of death at l18, but you can get by with the lower ones until then. It is very easy to reach L7 without combat, just stealth through maje and stealth through deadlight. Tadah, you're L7. Not that you have to do this, but it's faster than grinding out low level encounters without meaningful rewards. 

Psion builds up focus passively, as a troubadour builds up phrases passively (and very quickly with brisk recitation on). The two go together very well and you can often cast cipher spells on your summons while far enough away the enemy won't even attack you. If they do head towards you, use whispers of treason on them if you took it at L1, which I'd suggest. 

I think you'd enjoy this, it's a fun play style that can handle nearly every battle without resorting to cheese tactics. 

5 hours ago, Caeyrii said:

I've gone back to the game just recently to actually finish it this time (stopped after defeating the slime superboss as a solo Herald, Darcozzi/Troubador). Lost a bit of knowledge of my playthroughs. I like 'Thrice' shout as a source of early damage as well, but I'm being conflicted in whether to invest in MIG or in DEX, as the latter does really give noticeable difference in summon time. What do you suggest? 

MIG tends to be overrated, there are a few builds where you should max it but generally you want it in the 7 to 14 range. You also don't need to max dex because there are diminishing returns on action speed. For a herald the stats depend whether you're melee herald or using pistols (or whatever), for melee I'd probably do something like 13/10/13/19/18/3, dumping resolve doesn't hurt a paladin's deflection that much because of deep faith but if you want something tankier try 9/12/10/19/18/8. For ranged herald you really don't need resolve or much con, you can keep summons between you and enemies even solo, I'd do 13/7/16/19/18/3

Edited April 9, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Stardusk78]

21 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

I haven't played druids much...that could work but you don't have a super reliable tactic like shadowing beyond or arkemyr's brilliant departure. And yes defences would be considerably worse than a mage or priest.

Also you can actually steal that chill fog spell as a blood mage. Biakara has it, among other watershapers. She sails around Hasongo. In case you didn't know, to steal a spell permanently, take a grimoire with minor grimoire imprint (like aloth's grimoire, do not memorize it), cast it on an enemy spellcaster, then if you graze or better the spell appears in your quickbar. If you get a spell you want to keep, cycle to another grimoire and it will stay permanently. 

I stole party friendly chill fog in my ultimate run. Used it most fights, just threw it down on top of me at regular intervals. Very useful, though I had unlimited casts of it.

Well you can certainly go tactician / skaen, that is super reliable, though in my opinion a bit too easy compared to blood mage. I mean blood mage is also easy but it takes a bit of technical knowledge and setup to become immortal, whereas with a tactician / skaen it's really just barring death's door -> salvation of time -> shadowing beyond -> brilliant -> salvation of time -> buff whatever -> salvation of time -> keep buffing -> salvation of time over and over, the end. 

You don't need an uber powerful build like these but soling on POTD upscaled is actually pretty difficult if you're trying to do it "legitimately" without cheese strategies. 

Background...I usually pick artist, dissident, or explorer for the history. Stealth and mechanics are also useful throughout the game. 

For your skills you should invest heavily in stealth to at least 7 points, and put the rest of the points in mechanics for active skills, while for passives take diplomacy to about 13 for most of the game, then later you can respec with history maxed for combat, assuming you use the giftbearer cloth, otherwise you don't particularly need history. There are a lot of survival checks. The hard survival checks mostly come later in SSS. There are hard arcana and metaphysics checks in FS but you don't need to pass them. 

Stealth, mechanics, diplomacy, and survival. History if wearing giftbearer cloth. Other skills you may want if using certain items, like metaphysics for essence interrupter. 

If you grab the boots of stealth ASAP in deadlight that will help, also the burglar's gloves in periki's. Hylea's bounty in addition to the huge health and defenses boost gives +2 all skills, and luminous adra potions gives +2 all skills, and they stack, though you may have to save/reload to see them stack. So after you buy training you should have 5 to 7 points even in skills you didn't invest in, enough for easy checks. Carry lots of thiefs putty and the other unguents to bring those skills to 7 to 9. Mostly thief's putty, but they're all useful so don't sell them. 

I just realised the Withdraw for Priests triggers Brilliant for the Tactician; it is quite amazing!

[Kaylon]

17 hours ago, Caeyrii said:

I've gone back to the game just recently to actually finish it this time (stopped after defeating the slime superboss as a solo Herald, Darcozzi/Troubador). Lost a bit of knowledge of my playthroughs. I like 'Thrice' shout as a source of early damage as well, but I'm being conflicted in whether to invest in MIG or in DEX, as the latter does really give noticeable difference in summon time. What do you suggest? 

The strength of the herald comes from his ability to outheal the damage taken and that is achieved by maxing his healing and defenses (max might, per, res, dump dex/con). Dex is basically a dump stat because the melee dps gains are negligible and the other sources of damage (Thrice..., Brand Enemy and Damage Shield) are affected only by might. As for the loss of reflex, the shield will make up for it. The herald is not a dps machine, but someone who will outlast all his enemies.

[Shai Hulud]

5 hours ago, Stardusk78 said:

I just realised the Withdraw for Priests triggers Brilliant for the Tactician; it is quite amazing!

I wasn't aware withdraw procced brilliant but I guess it makes sense as you're "invisible" when withdrawn. I've never seen it before because usually you proc brilliant to try to get some effect like blade cascade from scordeo's edge, or buffs like barring death's door to become relatively permanent with repeated casts of salvation of time, which you can't do when withdrawn.

But that would be very useful until you get the higher level spells, particularly if while withdrawn you get back the casts of withdraw. You could cast it repeatedly until all your spells and fighter resources are back. The spells you get back are random I think, only way to be sure you get back a certain spell tier is to have that be the only one you're missing. 

[Shai Hulud]

3 hours ago, Kaylon said:

The strength of the herald comes from his ability to outheal the damage taken and that is achieved by maxing his healing and defenses (max might, per, res, dump dex/con). Dex is basically a dump stat because the melee dps gains are negligible and the other sources of damage (Thrice..., Brand Enemy and Damage Shield) are affected only by might. As for the loss of reflex, the shield will make up for it. The herald is not a dps machine, but someone who will outlast all his enemies.

Not how I would have spread the stats but I'll defer to your expertise on this. My experience with paladins is relatively limited and heralds really just Pallegina. I guess it's pretty different solo, and in a great many fights just outtanking things is sufficient to win, though these kinds of builds inevitably have trouble with certain fights where enemies heal themselves (like Dorudugan, or the vithrack and moon spiders in forgotten sanctum).

My line of thought was you'd generally have a wall of summons and good healing, hence little need for resolve. But I can see that dexterity is not very important either, granted phrases build up automatically and invocations are rate-limited by phrase buildup more than dexterity.

[Kaylon]

32 minutes ago, Shai Hulud said:

Not how I would have spread the stats but I'll defer to your expertise on this. My experience with paladins is relatively limited and heralds really just Pallegina. I guess it's pretty different solo, and in a great many fights just outtanking things is sufficient to win, though these kinds of builds inevitably have trouble with certain fights where enemies heal themselves (like Dorudugan, or the vithrack and moon spiders in forgotten sanctum).

My line of thought was you'd generally have a wall of summons and good healing, hence little need for resolve. But I can see that dexterity is not very important either, granted phrases build up automatically and invocations are rate-limited by phrase buildup more than dexterity.

The herald can of course use summons, consumables or adopt a different style of play if needed, but 99% of the time he just needs to stand in a corner or a bottleneck and beat everyone to death.

PS. And the most important thing - always use max speed mode during fights. 

[Caeyrii]

5 hours ago, Kaylon said:

The strength of the herald comes from his ability to outheal the damage taken and that is achieved by maxing his healing and defenses (max might, per, res, dump dex/con). Dex is basically a dump stat because the melee dps gains are negligible and the other sources of damage (Thrice..., Brand Enemy and Damage Shield) are affected only by might. As for the loss of reflex, the shield will make up for it. The herald is not a dps machine, but someone who will outlast all his enemies.

Thanks (to Shai Hulud as well)! Cleared up my character-paralysis. Now to figure out how to babysit Vela with one, lol. 

[Shai Hulud]

12 hours ago, Caeyrii said:

Thanks (to Shai Hulud as well)! Cleared up my character-paralysis. Now to figure out how to babysit Vela with one, lol. 

Babysite vela with a herald? That is going to be very difficult, but you do have a few options, but none of the best ones are available early. In general you want Vela to get paralyzed with fear far away from any enemies (or at most one easily killed enemy), and either start combat right then or have her stay there. These are the ways I know to do that (abot aka pale shelter taught me most of these)

1) Traps - You can use traps to kite a single enemy towards Vela, kill said enemy, and run off towards the fight before battle ends. This is a little risky because the single enemy can focus on Vela, so have withdraw scrolls as backup. A better method is to use one trap to pull an enemy, then throw sparkcrackers so the enemy steps on the trap, starting combat far away from Vela. But Vela will also run towards the sparkcrackers if she isn't completely behind you so it requires good timing. You can also place a second trap within the detection circle of the first trap, getting the enemy to step on the trap, but this can be difficult on some enemies.

2) Starting combat stealthed - Press alt twice rapidly within the detection radius of an enemy (doesn't work on all enemies, like nagas and some beasts will chase you). This starts combat stealthed but Vela will still be unscared. Use a scroll of binding web to freeze Vela for about 20s. This should only be used in simple fights since it won't actually scare her, and once the immobilization is over she will come looking for you, but it does buy you time if you have no better method, and you can try to keep the fight away from vela but she'll inevitably run towards you. You may have time to kite the enemies away from her. Probably by that point she finds you you'll have had about 30s and can use a withdraw scroll on her if needed to finish the fight. Also as a troubadour you have the option of simply sending in summons from stealth. Vela will stay near you and her stealth is bad so you have to stay pretty far back from the fight. This method is cheesy and may take a long time because most summons are bad at combat, but some are surprisingly good, like the wyrms do a lot of fire damage, and the animated weapons are good vs anything that doesn't have insane damage resistance. As soon as you do something aggressive you'll get unstealthed, so you can't brand enemy for example. 

3) Reverse pickpocketing bombs - This only works on kith enemies who start out with white circles like Concelhaut's group, you can sneak up to one with high enough stealth and decent sleight of hand, shift-click the enemy, place a bomb, and sneak away before it goes off. This is useful when it works but it won't work in a majority of situations since you can't reverse pickpocket most enemies. 

4) Belt of Magran's Ire - Shoot Vela with a blunderbuss (procs 4 times per shot) until the fire blight spawns, then she'll get paralyzed and combat won't end unless you kill the blight. Don't kill the blight, it will follow you, just lead it away towards the fight (hopefully going around the bad guys and pulling them in opposite direction). This works in nearly all cases but requires a deck of many things item. Also can be annoying to proc this, and if you have on abydon you'll have to repair the blunderbuss a lot, so don't sell any blunderbusses you acquire, the generic ones are perfectly fine for shooting vela. This is IMO the second safest method.

5) A Whale of a Wand - this is the best item on maps where Vela starts far from enemies. While holding a whale of a wand, you can cast spells on her repeatedly with a 5% proc chance that she is "charmed" which starts the combat music, and she will go looking for enemies if there are any nearby, but when the music ends she will become scared and stay in that spot permanently (until changing maps or reloading anyway). This is at Bekarna's Orrery. Not sure a herald can cast anything on her though. Maybe flames of devotion counts. Can also use scrolls like pull of eora or ray of fire which are nice because they proc a lot, especially pull of eora as it does no damage. Also I suspect as a chanter if you start a fight stealthed (use method 1 to 3), the combat music triggers and now you can cast your chanter spells. Lead Vela to a map corner, and *now* you can cast chanter spells on her to proc sea stories. EDIT: Tested this, doesn't work since the spells are all foe AOE only, not even the "rejoice my comrades" spell works. Also tried lay on hands and flames of devotion, lay on hands definitely doesn't work, flames of devotion I did manage to turn her into a pig, but that's probably a sign it won't work, the ability is treated as a weapon attack and not a "spell" so I think your only option with this method and 6 is to use scrolls.

6) A whale of a Wand + Spider Silk Robe - this is the single best combination and works for pretty much every fight. Enchant the spider silk robe to cast binding web, it is per encounter and resets every round even if you have woedica challenge on. So you cast the web on Vela, then attack her with spells while carrying a whale of a wand, recasting binding web when it disappears, eventually you'll proc "Sea Stories" and charm Vela. Then cast another binding web on her, the charm should run out before the immobilization, and she will stay there until you change maps or reload. 

7) Scrolls of withdraw - Always carry at least one stack as backup, but in most fights you shouldn't rely on these as primary strategy especially as a herald since you will need many casts to get through long fights, possibly more casts than you can carry. 

Methods 4 5 and 6 are the most reliable, good luck

----

Edit: Have to use scrolls as far as I can tell to proc sea stories since the chanter spells are foe only and the paladin ones aren't actually "spells". I tested minoletta's concussive missiles, which works but only hits a few times so not ideal. Pull of Eora is okay as it does 5 hits and doesn't damage her. Your best bet is ray of fire scrolls, they hit 11 times and won't kill her with 6 arcana (got her to bloodied from unharmed in my testing), so on average you'd only need 2 scrolls to proc sea stories, though carry more as it could take five or so if unlucky. 

Also binding web scrolls DO proc sea stories so they are a great option as well, particularly since they'll hold her in place also. You get 6 hits per scroll so on average need 3ish (unfortunately binding web from spider silk robe doesn't proc sea stories, but is useful to get her to be still). Though ray of fire seems to have similar effect in ending charmed once she's hit by the next tick of the ray. 

Just buy ray of fire, binding web, and pull of eora when you see them and also buy their ingredients. I think you'll have enough scrolls to freeze her on the bigger maps, and can just use the fire blight on smaller maps like megabosses and SSS fights. 

It's a shame the binding web ability on Spider Silk Robe doesn't do it, because you can cast that all day.

 

Edited April 11, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Kaylon]

With 2 pairs of Missile Gloves it might be possible to proc the charm from the wand. However there are abilities that look like spells (all paladins abilities and I think also invocations), but aren't considered spells (and don't get the damage bonus from Captain's Banquet for example).

Vela adds a very high layer of difficulty, especially for the herald. However there's an easy method to deal with most encounters (easier if you play with Berath's Challenge activated). Basically you should learn to trigger the combat from stealth (using traps) and then use summons to kill the enemies (while you and Vela remain stealthed the entire fight and far away from the enemies). You can pull enemies into traps (and trigger combat mode) using sparkcrackers or drawing the attention from enemies by going near them (more risky). Someone even claimed it was possible to finish the entire game (megabosses included) using this tactic. 

[Shai Hulud]

2 hours ago, Kaylon said:

With 2 pairs of Missile Gloves it might be possible to proc the charm from the wand. However there are abilities that look like spells (all paladins abilities and I think also invocations), but aren't considered spells (and don't get the damage bonus from Captain's Banquet for example).

Thats a good idea, also fireball necklace, but if its like the "spell" binding web from spider silk robes it may not be treated as an actual spell. I'll check it later though.

Yeah I couldn't proc sea stories with any invocations or paladin abilities...

2 hours ago, Kaylon said:

Vela adds a very high layer of difficulty, especially for the herald. However there's an easy method to deal with most encounters (easier if you play with Berath's Challenge activated). Basically you should learn to trigger the combat from stealth (using traps) and then use summons to kill the enemies (while you and Vela remain stealthed the entire fight and far away from the enemies). You can pull enemies into traps (and trigger combat mode) using sparkcrackers or drawing the attention from enemies by going near them (more risky). Someone even claimed it was possible to finish the entire game (megabosses included) using this tactic. 

I wouldn't call it easy...and some enemies will chase you down even stealthed. They also will encroach on the summons until in some cases you're out of room and get unstealthed.

Using fire blight or whale of a wand is the safest way if you don't have a class with infinite withdraw casts like tactician / skaen, or temporal cocoon. 

You could do a lot of content from stealth but psion / troubadour is much better suited as you can cast pain link on the summons and actually damage high AR enemies this way. Still there are fights you can't do like this. Some of the SSS content. Hauani O Whe probably. Not sure how you'd prevent merges with only the summons. I mean I know you can split them but sending them from a safe position takes a while, and rate of damage is pretty low even with the wyrms... Also that encounter (and others) you can get hit with attacks that target your summons, the summons movement can create symbiotes etc.

This has happened to me quite a few times where I get unstealthed from attacks bouncing off summons though I can't recall which fights. 

Sigilmaster Auranic fight the obelisks will target you even stealthed. Possibly you can kill them anyway like this if you're far enough back in the cave *and* the humans stay where they are. Yeah maybe actually, this one might be doable. Sigils are immune to pierce/slash so the instruments of death are no good, but probably some combination of summons could do it, assuming their summon duration isn't removed from the obelisk of cleansing (like the corrosive splash from HOW can run out summons time). But maybe, I'll say...possible.

But dorudugan cannot be defeated with summons alone. Nor the encounter in Sissak's Lair (that one you can't even start stealthed). Summons can't sufficiently damage Dorudugan without pain link to outpace his healing. He heals himself with helfire barrage and helfire. One charged helfire barrage can heal him like 800 health. If you micromanage the summons you could possibly have them run away and then back so his targeting misses himself. But you can't avoid the helfire that covers nearly the entire map. That will always heal him.

I can't even do it with a psion / troubadour using pain link. Takes about an hour to get him hurt and he stabilizes there without direct attacks. Even with direct attacks I can't do it without conduit and/or blade cascade. Unless there is some way to trick his AI into not using helfire and helfire barrage I dont think it is possible from stealth with vela using summons...

You could complete the game like this, but definitely not all the content. Not Dorudugan, probably not HOW. Probably not Neriscyrlas due to oblivion's call healing her. Definitely not the changeling's dance and subsequent slayer path content. Not a lot of optional content like Sissak's Lair fight, certain fights in the enclosures where paladins spam light of pure zeal, etc.

Also it would take absolutely ages, which is why I'm pretty sure no one has actually done it. Watch pale shelters ultimate run. It is super long even though he fights directly in most fights and procs conduit blade cascade etc. And he had pain link...for a class that doesn't, like herald, summons fighting megabosses (besides belranga) would take many hours. And if an enemy heals itself you are just screwed. 

[Stardusk78]

@Shai Hulud I don't suppose you have a set up for that Psion/Troubadour set-up, the more I look at it the cooler it sounds, sounds less stressful and less management intensive as well as others; I have been testing stuff out and so far the Herald has done best but the Spiritualist sounds nice too....

[Shai Hulud]

56 minutes ago, Stardusk78 said:

@Shai Hulud I don't suppose you have a set up for that Psion/Troubadour set-up, the more I look at it the cooler it sounds, sounds less stressful and less management intensive as well as others; I have been testing stuff out and so far the Herald has done best but the Spiritualist sounds nice too....

Sure. I posted this build in another thread but will update it based on more experience with it

14/9/12/19/19/3 mig/con/dex/per/int/res, race probably go wood elf or wild orlan but not that important (just don't go godlike), old vailia artist

Char creation: The Thunder rolled like waves on black seas, Soul Shock, come soft winds of death
2 Iron Will
3 Lingering Echoes or whisper of treason
4 Gernisc Slew the Beast / Psychovampiric Shield
5 At the sound of His Voice the killers froze stiff
6 Mental Binding
7 Ancient Memory / Pain Link
8 My Son Do You See... 
9 Hammering Thoughts
10 Oh But Knock Not.. / Pain Block
11 ...and their screams reached the heavens
12 Its crash could not be denied
13 The Lights Danced Across the Moors / Borrowed Instinct
14 Echoing Shield
15 Farcasting
16 Eld Nary / Disintegration or Tactical Meld
17 The Empty Soul
18 Quick Summoning 
19 Called to His Bidding... / Rapid Casting
20 Many Lives Pass By..

This isn't exact as you get better summons on leveling up so you won't generally need all these summons at higher levels, and at low levels you might want the "thrice was she wronged" invocation. Like you can drop the ogres and wisps once you get instruments of death, except for fights against things with very high pierce / slash resistance. Ogres do physical damage but not as well as the instruments of death. The wyrms do ranged fire damage which remains useful for enemies with a lot of physical resistance. The wisps do ranged electrical damage. So if you drop a summon replace with weapon and shield style, secret horrors, bears fortitude, puppet master or whatever else you want

Generally you want brisk recitation ON so you can cast more invocations. At low levels before you get echoing shield "thick grew their tongues" chant is good for breaking concentration. Before ancient memory "come soft winds of death" is fine. Once I get ancient memory and higher my chants look like

A: Ancient Memory
B: Many Lives Pass By
C Many Lives Pass By, Ancient Memory

Use B most of the time, before you get that you'd use A, or if you need healing, can use C if you want a mix of healing and summons

Equipment: 
Head: Horns of the Bleak Mother (helm of white void later, rekvus fractured casque sometimes), buy horns from merchant in queens berth
Neck: Charm of Bones (buy from orlan in brass citadel)
Chest: Miscreant's Leather (Magnera's Chain if you expect to get hit), get miscreant leather in deadlight
Rings: Ring of minor protection + kuarus ring or chameleon ring
Feet: Bounding Boots, or boots of the stone
Back: Cape of the Falling Star or Gift bearer cloth
Hands: Gauntlets of Accuracy (can get in engwithan waystation)
Waist: Upright Captain's Belt (before this girdle of mortal protection)
Pet: Animancy Cat (buy from animancer guy in sacred stair)

Weapons: Don't much matter besides probably want Sasha's Singing Scimitar for refreshing finale, and a shield. Probably want a pistol in other hand or a bow, but usually you don't directly attack things, you cast summons, buff them, sometimes cast cipher CC, cast psychovampiric shield on enemies or your own summons, cast borrowed instinct to boost accuracy and defenses when you need to land something like CC or Disintegration, can also debuff with secret horrors and psychovampiric

Summons first few levels are weak, you can take the skeletons and cast soul shock on them but it is easy to wait for better summons, the wyrms at l4 are decent and especially their upgrade, once you get ogres at l10 you'll have an easier time 

Edited April 11, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Stardusk78]

Thanks!