Two character party for 3.0 (PotD)

[Torakka]

I actually did watch that already and it prompted me to clear those temple ruins and otherwise gear up before trying again. Also thanks for the tip about not talking, but just shooting one of the guards (both here and in that video)! Not starting the fight surrounded made kiting them to the doorway significantly easier and then it was just slowly killing them one by one.

Edited July 24, 2016 by Torakka

[Kazuma]

Lol now that you mention it Kaylon I either stumbled upon your video via google or I must have seen it linked here. Because your video made me realize I had been an idiot for trying to pull it off from the other door. Maybe I subconsciously avoided using a room that had a dead woman in it... but I'm ok using dead bodies I've piled up to kill more people?? The nonsensical virtual moral compass of a gamer.

Edited July 24, 2016 by Kazuma

[Boeroer]

The White Worms screenshot is from Endless Paths lvl 6. There's a ton of skeletal enemies. I wasn't overleveled (as you can see there are more grazes than crits). In fact I was too weak for that level, but I had a whole party and therefore could buff ACC and debuff the enemies defenses before my phrase counter reached 3 points and I could cast White Worms. I used an animal companion to drag all foes of the level to the entrance (no health loss then). It is one of the best spells for the early game and also not bad later on. It is a bit circumstancial of course. You need a big map with lots of enemies in it and they have to leave corpses. But it's also very easy to do bounties in WM if you get the bounty quests as soon as possible, don't clear the map before but instead lure all enemies of the map to one spot, kill them there and leave their bodies. Don't reaload by all means (except you died of course, then you screw up). Finally lure the bounty group there and one-shot them.

It's also possible to do it with the Adra Dragon if you can manage to lure all the xaurips to one place and then cast White Worms over and over while the dragon stands on their corpses. But it's a lot of a hassle. For all the other dragons it's no option though. 

 

Most important thing is to turn off the gib effects in the game options. When enemies explode with gib effects they leavo no bodies behind. Besides that drawback I find those effects ridiculous. Would be ok with certain spells like Detonate or so, but not just because you killed with a crit from a rapier or something.... 

Edited July 24, 2016 by Boeroer

[Raven Darkholme]

Lol now that you mention it Kaylon I either stumbled upon your video via google or I must have seen it linked here. Because your video made me realize I had been an idiot for trying to pull it off from the other door. Maybe I subconsciously avoided using a room that had a dead woman in it... but I'm ok using dead bodies I've piled up to kill more people?? The nonsensical virtual moral compass of a gamer.

I always used the other door before Kaylons and another guys vid, it worksd too it's just slightly more rng based .

[Kaylon]

The left door is larger and it's not possible to block them there reliably (only if they have pathing issues) - you better go into a corner. My first attempts were also on the left side because the initial idea was to split them and on that side you have more space to run. Also I was fearing that once I attack Raedric all the doors will open and guards from other rooms would aggro me, so I thought the most isolated place was the best choice. But once I understood I had to fight only the guys in the throne room I tried to find the best place to fight them...

[Kazuma]

@Boeroer - I was just kidding. Percentage wise you had almost 35% below the hit mark and a 2% crit rate. Nothing to write home about. My unnoticed sarcasm (posts are tone deaf) was due to my anecdotal observation that I miss a lot with white worms

 

Good idea on the WM bounties. I hadn't considered using it outside. I was going to wait on doing those but maybe not now. Iirc there is some gear to be had from them. Have to figure out where the bounties are and if there are any natural funnel points on the maps in question. I suppose you don't *need* a choke point. Especially if it's a single mob. Part of me wants to try them without white worms first. Worms are the backup plan But for sure I'll not clear any maps until I've done them. Speaking of which I haven't done the stronghold bounties either. Many things to do.

 

I'm with you on the exploding bodies. While I admit to playing the fallout games with bloody mess turned on at least the damage done is relatively consistent with the weapon used. Well.. mostly. To be sure it gets pretty old after a while. "Oh, look! Another body in pieces!" Though it's a wonder why cartoon style carnage was ever a novelty. I guess it just works with the tone of that series.

 

@Raven Darkholme - I just realized I've watched your old pally videos when I was just starting this playthru. That's one long video series man.

[Raven Darkholme]

@Boeroer - I was just kidding. Percentage wise you had almost 35% below the hit mark and a 2% crit rate. Nothing to write home about. My unnoticed sarcasm (posts are tone deaf) was due to my anecdotal observation that I miss a lot with white worms

 

Good idea on the WM bounties. I hadn't considered using it outside. I was going to wait on doing those but maybe not now. Iirc there is some gear to be had from them. Have to figure out where the bounties are and if there are any natural funnel points on the maps in question. I suppose you don't *need* a choke point. Especially if it's a single mob. Part of me wants to try them without white worms first. Worms are the backup plan But for sure I'll not clear any maps until I've done them. Speaking of which I haven't done the stronghold bounties either. Many things to do.

 

I'm with you on the exploding bodies. While I admit to playing the fallout games with bloody mess turned on at least the damage done is relatively consistent with the weapon used. Well.. mostly. To be sure it gets pretty old after a while. "Oh, look! Another body in pieces!" Though it's a wonder why cartoon style carnage was ever a novelty. I guess it just works with the tone of that series.

 

@Raven Darkholme - I just realized I've watched your old pally videos when I was just starting this playthru. That's one long video series man.

Haha yeah too many things I didn't know abut the game back then including using the right door. :D

[Boeroer]

Funny, I always use the left door where you can enter the throne room via the hidden stairs. It's because I hate it when I can't see the enemies properly (when they are obscured by walls/doors and so on). Never had a problem. I didn't even have the idea to use any other door.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Boeroer

[Torakka]

Few somewhat unrelated questions:

 

1) Gib effects and saving+loading both cause dead bodies to disappear. Does that mean their loot also vanishes?

 

2) When ability says something like "deals x damage / heals x endurance over y seconds" intelligence usually increases y. Is x then the total amount (as I would understand) or per tick amount (that would be more sensible, as intelligence would be useful instead of detrimental)? Based on the "weapon speed vs dr" thread here, I've understood that it is generally the latter although there seem to some exceptions. Or is the x the total amount, but intelligence increases it too when it increases duration, so damage / healing per second remains constant? I suppose this question could be simplified as "is intelligence good, neutral or bad for damage / healing over time effects".

 

3) What weapon you would recommend for my paladin? I originally intented to get Steadfast, but that's mainly because "soulbound" sounded like it might be intented to be one of the more awesome weapons. It does give immunity to frightened / terrified, but is that in practice more valuable than (for example) Draining, Guarding or Marking?

[Kazuma]

1) Well, afaik you don't need a body for loot drops. For example spirits don't (or rarely) leave a body behind (or maybe I'm blind) and yet you'll still get the occasional loot sparkle. But on the other hand I've seen bodies with keys I've left behind persist thru many loads (I try to pick everything I can unless it's one of those key only doors or the difficulty is too high). What I'm not sure of is if these bodies would count as such for white worm. But that doesn't really apply to you Short answer - Loot persists with or without a body as far as I've seen.

 

2) I'm actually curious about this too. The only HoT I have is LoH and I have a feeling low INT increases the hp per tick (as I only get 2 ticks). Whereas my second paladin has higher INT and seems to get 1or 2 more ticks with less healing per tick. But she also has lower MIG so it's not exactly a fair comparison.

 

3) I don't think I've gotten any soulbond yet, but I think I read somewhere you can't enchant them? So it limits what you can do with them build wise? Bittercut and late game Drawn-in-spring seem to be common recommendations but I honestly don't know enough about buff/ability stacking to have my own opinion.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Kazuma

[Raven Darkholme]

Funny, I always use the left door where you can enter the throne room via the hidden stairs. It's because I hate it when I can't see the enemies properly (when they are obscured by walls/doors and so on). Never had a problem. I didn't even have the idea to use any other door.

It does work so I never thought about it before either.

[Boeroer]

Few somewhat unrelated questions:

 

1) Gib effects and saving+loading both cause dead bodies to disappear. Does that mean their loot also vanishes?

The loot will stay (glittering symbol like a sack and stuff or something), but the body will disappear. So no worries about the loot.

 

Edit: overlooked Kazuma's answer, sorry - so what Kazuma said.

 

Soulbounds can't be enchanted, but they can be "leveled" by binding them to your soul and then doing certain tasks, like "Kill 10 beetles with this weapon (or 50 other enemies)". While you complete those tasks some new "enchantments" get unlocked. They also improve when it comes to "Fine", "Exceptional" and so on. Most go up to superb, but there are also some which go up to legendary or even mythic. Some cool stuff is even accessible from the start without soul binding. Like Stormcaller's shock DR reduction for example.

 

Normally, with healing abilities which use durations, the healing gets better with MIG and also INT. Somebody here like Kaylon, MaxQuest, Loren Tyr (who can look into the code or like to do excessive number testing) can tell you how exactly this works.

 

I can only say that Lay on Hands from my paladin with 3 INT sucks.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Boeroer

[Kazuma]

Well here's what my LoH tooltips say -

 

MC Pally

+94.9 Endurance over 3.8 Sec @ 18 MIG and 5 INT (3 Base)

 

Pallegina

+111.1 Endurance over 6.3 Sec @ 12 MIG and 15 INT (13 Base)

 

If this indeed reflects what happens in practice then it does seem like INT buffs healing done. It's hard to test as it doesn't seem to output the actual healing done to the log. The log tooltip just mirrors the character screen tooltip. I'm not sure the tick interval but anecdotally I want to say it's 2-3 seconds. Which would support my observation of two ticks on my MC (one tick to start, a second at 3 seconds, and then the buff wears off a fraction of a second later). Pallegina would get 3 ticks assuming I'm right.

 

If the stated healing is divided evenly over the number of ticks then in some ways you could say Pallegina's LoH is inferior, but you get one more tick.

111.1/3 = 37 Endurance / Tick vs. 94.9/2 = 47.4 Endurance / Tick. In the end it's only 10 Endurance per tick and 16 overall.

 

If it was the stated Endurance per tick then that's a big difference. Another 143 Endurance. But considering Pallegina only has 168 Endurance atm I don't think the ticks are healing approx. 2/3 of her bar. 37 sounds more reasonable.

 

*edit* The real benefit of INT is in AoE radius and buff duration. MC - 2.8m vs Pallegina - 5.2m

Edited July 25, 2016 by Kazuma