[CLASS BUILD] The Anvil, the most tough monk around

[Boeroer]

Yeah - nothing beats Turning Wheel that early in the game when it comes to retaliation. And the higher accuracy and deflection helps, too.

[dgray62]

2) in some battles you will had to rely on potions. Potion animation Atm is *very* bugged, lose your run because you fail to drink an healing potion 3 time in a row ( happened to me in a couple of battles) is very depressing

 

This may very well be a bug, but I imagine that in reality, quaffing a potion in the midst of combat would not be easy, nor should it be. Ideally this would be an action that is subject to interruption, although I'm not sure if this is how game mechanics actually work.

[Boeroer]

Interrupts would be ok, but the game cancles the whole process randomly and you never know when and why. You have to pause every 0.5 seconds and click on the potion icon again to make sure the game doesn't "forget" that you wanted to drink a potion.

[dgray62]

Yes, this certainly is a bug. I actually gave up trying to use healing potions in battle some time ago due to this. I usually just rely on passive healing, and healing spells when necessary.

[Boeroer]

In solo, especially Trial of Iron, it's very annoying. 

[dgray62]

The days were pretty wrong in my last play through. Not only that some containers didn't have the same overall loot list e.g. Raedric's chest not containing the Gloves of Manipulation (I did a full month long cycle to check). I suspect in one of the more recent patches Obsidian completely reworked the "random" loot tables.

 

I have had the same problem with multiple playthroughs, JerekKruger. I have discovered two things. First, if your MC is not the first in the order of characters, for some reason random loot changes, and does not match the tables. I used to put squishy characters to the back, and when I did this, I never got the expected loot. This was before I realized you could have custom battle arrangements for the characters. Secondly, on some playthroughs, for reasons that are not clear to me, you just get different loot. It occurs maybe 10% of the time when I start a new game.  If I don't find the expected loot in the Gilded Vale Inn, I start over.

[Dr <3]

 

2) in some battles you will had to rely on potions. Potion animation Atm is *very* bugged, lose your run because you fail to drink an healing potion 3 time in a row ( happened to me in a couple of battles) is very depressing

This may very well be a bug, but I imagine that in reality, quaffing a potion in the midst of combat would not be easy, nor should it be. Ideally this would be an action that is subject to interruption, although I'm not sure if this is how game mechanics actually work.

In reality you can't put people on fire just singing, nor transform in a badass boar or cast fireballs. Or in a Place where the local reality permits to do such things drink a potion in the middle of the fight should not be such strage. This is a game and have to be fun, and the mechanichs have to work well.

For example i like a lot how potion works in tyranny: istant effect + cooldown for prevent abuse/spamming. Much better then Poe where do you have a fair long animation ( bugged and easily interrupted), so you can't rely at all in potion effect.

Edited April 22, 2017 by Dr <3

[jazzthing]

I'm Level 7 right now an in mid Act 2. This is my first solo run and I started PotD right off the bat (though I finished PotD with a party). The beginning was hard an the learning curve unforgiving. I started with points in stealth to do some quests without fighting an getting some loot and then respecced.

 

Lessons learned:

 

1. Mages / Priests just wipe the floor with you because usually they have lots of meat in front of them.

2. Because of that you absolutly need all figurines you can get your hands on.

3. Potions are as unreliable as Dr <3 said

 

So far so good. It's fun, but I can't see my monk killing a dragon, but we'll see

Anyway, nice guide and build idee!

[Dr <3]

When you will have 600+ life and 100+ accuracy (and lvl 16) dragons will become doable, have Faith.

 

Edit: more then figurines, corners in the map are your friends. Try to let at max 2-3 mobs attack you. And consider this is one of the sturdier build possible, solo potd is much more difficult than team potd, need different tactics.

Edited April 28, 2017 by Dr <3

[Boeroer]

In solo, it's a great advantage of the monk over the barbarian that he has a cone-shaped attack rather than a circle shaped. It means that staying in corners not only lets you survive more easily, but also helps your damage output (all enemies will line up in a cone-shape) while with a barb it will lead to less damage. 

[smjjames]

Hm, no 'Two-Weapon style' talent? I'm using this (or perhaps a variant) of it for Zahua, going to grab the two-weapon style talent since it seems useful.

Edited April 29, 2017 by smjjames

[Dr <3]

Hm, no 'Two-Weapon style' talent? I'm using this (or perhaps a variant) of it for Zahua, going to grab the two-weapon style talent since it seems useful.

Two weapons talent is very strong if the majority of your attacks are auto-attacks.

But in this build, after some lvls virtually all your attacks will be only torment reach spam ( which is a full attack), and i'm quite sure that two weapons talent do Little for that.

[Boeroer]

It does nothing for the time in between the two strikes of TR, but you can spam TR even faster with it because it reduces the recovery between every use.

 

If you are already at 0 recovery because of Swift Strikes and durgan steel it's obviously pretty useless (unless you want to wear more armor or use Vulnerable Attack).

Edited April 30, 2017 by Boeroer

[Valsacar]

I just wanted to report that I used this build (with only minor adjustments) for my Ultimate run and it was quite successful.

 

The lower levels were a bit of a pain, I think I had to restart about 8 times before I got going.  

 

First, I sold everything during the intro quest (for both of us) since that guy pays about 5x the normal prices.  Then in gilded vale I killed the backer NPC near the temple entrance (can kill without anyone in town caring) to get their plate armor.  That helped a lot.  I rushed a few money making quests and bought the animat summon.  He was useful to distract, heal, and help get mobs to stay in a line for torments reach.

 

I got the gloves and searing ring, and left the rest of rodricks alone for a while.  I pushed to act II as fast as possible, getting to Stalwart at level 5 or 6 (stopped to get the shade summon, which I used the whole game).  That was a pain, but there's a lot of good equipment and xp to be had there.  It took MANY trips in and our of Stalwart (I could handle single ogres, up to 2, before needing to rest).  Luckily it lets you leave Stalwart during the ambush.

 

Collected what equipment I could get quickly (boots of speed were really helpful early-mid and again when I fought Llenn) and then proceed to knock out WM1 quests.  I did have to take a couple breaks due to running out of money (lots and lots of flame shield potions) so I did things like rodricks for quick cash.

 

I killed all companions (except the Monk... apparently you can't kill him) on sight, so I couldn't screw up and accidentally take them (plus free equipment to sell!).  That bit me in the ass with Penn... never got the sanguine plate.  There's another item that gives +2 survival, so that was fine.  I used that stolen plate (with upgrades) for most of the game (until I got the soul-bound one who's name I can't think of how to spell right now).  I put corrosive lash and the biggest quality upgrade on Yenwood (I wasn't thinking with the lash, originally I wanted to go higher with the quality... but it worked out well enough).

 

Once I was nearly done with WM1 (around level 10-11) I went and did some more equipment collecting.  I had most of the recommended equipment by the end of WM1.  I did use a rod (I forget which one) as my secondary, as I found it useful in a few places.  Lots and lots of food (the best for each stat/DR I could find).  Quick items were summon (shade mostly, I had the spider one later on as a backup between rests), regen potion, healing potion, flame shield.  I only changed those a couple times, once in the battery against the shades (recovery potion, that stuck affliction was a problem for me at that time) and sometimes arcane reflection.

 

Steadfast, Yernwood, Ryona's and searing flame were the stars of my equipment, they all worked really well together.  Later on consaul...whatevers head was a key player in almost every major battle.

 

Only places I had issues with was the start of WM1 (just took a long time, and very careful planning), the sirens in the battery (speed boots, ranged weapon, and recovery potion were key), and Llen.  Other than that, things were pretty easy.  Oh yeah, the ambush after getting Steadfast was a pain too.  Did I mention steadfast is awesome?  I had it maxed out right after getting it.  Once done with the ambush I did the mines quest, Steadfast was maxed before that quest was over.

 

I already mentioned the ogres in Stalwart, pretty much just take out the first two, leave and rest, come back and do a slow path around the bottom.  Speed boots would have been really nice to have here, but the ogres are slow enough you can outrun them (but the wolves can be a pain if they knock you down and let a group of ogres catch up).

 

Battery was mainly speed boots to peel off guys (hopefully a lone siren),  flame shield helped kill things pretty quickly.  If perma stuck by the sirens use ranged if they are close to dead or recovery potion.  If you're pretty close, torments will let you slide even while stuck.

 

WMII ambush was a bit of a pain, I was around level 11 I think.  I used shades to move two guys north while I ran sw.  One followed me, took him out as quickly as possible (basically same pattern I describe below, only I didn't have connie yet).  After that healed and peeled off another.  The final one was hard, I was pretty much out of healing at that point, barely survived.  Key with them is to ALWAYS be in melee range, if you're not they may use that damn fire attack which if it doesn't kill you will leave you nearly dead (at least at the level I was at, later on it was just annoying).

 

I didn't do any dragons or big fights until level 16.

 

Alpine wasn't too hard, lower left corner, ranged to start the fight, (food buffed first, of course) then flame shield.  Torments reach does the rest, just keep alive (trying to be around 50% health) and keep flame shield up.

 

Adra I did the quest to get scale breaker, pretty much ignored all the trash mobs (did that for most big fights).  Mage skull dude was a big help here, and I used this opening for nearly all big fights.  First flame shield (always start far enough away to get that up before they get to you).  Scale breaker.  Summon connie, crushing doom and searing flame.  Then torments reach as far as possible.  Corrosive touch from connie is normally my next target, but on the dragons you need a trash mob nearby (dragon is so big he can't get close enough to the center for him to cast it, but hitting a trash mob next to him will affect him).  Normally connie is dead after that, but if he's not I use him to distract or take care of trash mobs.

 

Next I did Llen... that was hard.  First summon shades, send them slightly north (to get dragons attention) then northwest.  I ran southeast, one apprentice followed me so I killed him once I was down there.  Shades didn't last long, but got all other trash mobs out of the way and the dragons.  Llenn was isolated, slowly went north and got her attention, pulled just her and she died easily.  Next was dragons, I wanted just the big guy but I ended up with both and 2 trash mobs.  This worked out well.  Same pattern as Adra (big guy was in front).  Killed one trash mob in front of the dragon (which worked out well, steadfast triggered) then used connie to get the little guy lined up and distracted (connie didn't last long, but he served his purpose).  Flame shield, and torments all the way.  And LOTS of healing.  When the first dragon died the other was already badly wounded, so he fell shortly after.  Then relax... ah crap, the trash mobs.  I had NO healing left, no summons, and just 2 flame shields.  Health was around 800.  Picked off the trash mobs, using 1 flame shield, and ended that fight with only 200 health left (yes, health, not endurance).

 

After that, sky dragon was a joke, never even thought about healing.

 

Magrans faithful weren't too bad, I approached from the east then ran east and got myself stuck in a corner so only 1-2 could hit me at a time.  Searing flame and torments did the rest.

 

Thaos was basically the same, stuck myself in a corner, same pattern as above (minus the scale breaker).  Statues fell easy, connie distracted Thaos (used crushing doom on him to keep his magic as minimal as possible) then he died.

 

Note on flame shield, I used it even against things immune to flame as blood testament still added raw damage.

 

Note on blood testament, they're bugged, after EVERY battle you need to unequip and re-equip them.

 

For resting I would use the trails (+3 con) bonus, then go to wilderness and get +60% healing, then salty mast for +2 might/con.  I used that until I needed to heal, would camp once and normally leave the next time I needed to camp (unless I was nearly done with an area).

 

That pretty much sums up the major fights and basic path I took to get to the end.

[Torin]

Thanks Valsacar for the report.

 

How do you manage Adragans and their petrifying attack as a soloer?

[Dr <3]

Since you took your time to condivided your efforts and exerience, i will try to comment your awesome post at the best of my abilities.

 

DISCLAIMER: i used my build in a "abnormal" solo run, since i recruited some companions to do some stronghold quest. All that i will write comes from my memory, there can be some mistakes around. 

As a remainder, if someone else want to try this build to try the ULTIMATE achivement, remember that:

1) potion are bugged : sometime the game start the "drinking animation" but nothing is going to happen. So if you want to risk and drink a healing potion when in low endurance, you can find yourself dead before you are really able to drink it. Try to drink it when you reach half health.

2) Blood testament gloves are bugged too : you need to re-equip them after every combat or they won't work. If that sicks you, just go for Ryona gloves or Accuracy gloves or speed gloves.

3) You don't need to "upgrade" the enemies (es: go to Stalwart after lvl 9) to earn the achivement.
 

 
First, I sold everything during the intro quest (for both of us) since that guy pays about 5x the normal prices.  Then in gilded vale I killed the backer NPC near the temple entrance (can kill without anyone in town caring) to get their plate armor.  That helped a lot.  I rushed a few money making quests and bought the animat summon.  He was useful to distract, heal, and help get mobs to stay in a line for torments reach.
 
I got the gloves and searing ring, and left the rest of rodricks alone for a while.  I pushed to act II as fast as possible, getting to Stalwart at level 5 or 6 (stopped to get the shade summon, which I used the whole game).  That was a pain, but there's a lot of good equipment and xp to be had there.  It took MANY trips in and our of Stalwart (I could handle single ogres, up to 2, before needing to rest).  Luckily it lets you leave Stalwart during the ambush.
 
Collected what equipment I could get quickly (boots of speed were really helpful early-mid and again when I fought Llenn) and then proceed to knock out WM1 quests.  I did have to take a couple breaks due to running out of money (lots and lots of flame shield potions) so I did things like rodricks for quick cash.

 

Ok for selling everything at start, exept if you are tring to slay the whole caravan (i always do that for fun). In that case is useful to buy a weapon with reach (pike or quarterstaff) and a good armor, so you can corner yourself, let a single "paesant" hit you while you slowly kill the carvan boss, the guards, heodan and Calisca.

 

Plate armor, animat figurine, gloves of manipulation and seraing ring are the item you really need do get ASAP.

 

I always go to roedrick via upstair temple, speak with him, everyone is a friend now, loot the whole castle ---> more or less 3000 free gold

 

After finishing act 1 i take a different route. I'll wait to go to Stalwart until lvl 9-11, since as you noted the Ogres are by themself a bad machup for this build :slow hard hitters, with tons of hp, so your retaliation do little against them and you lose every battle a lot of health. They won't kill you, but kill them takes too much time and effort on low levels.

 

Usually is much safer to do some quest in town to lvl up and earn cash (march steel dagger, the svef smuggler quest,  kill the thiefs in copperlane district to get a Droemel invitation, salty mast quests, brave Derrin quest, the Frontonero quest, the lighthouse quest(a bit later), ecc ecc

 

For sure i ALWAYS go ASAP for

- all the Droemel quest for the talent and the cash (3500 for selling the gem)

- Grab the shadow figurine from the Valian embassy (need 9 mech)

- the first crucibe knight quest for buy the "shood of faith boots"

- the quest for the Sanguine Plate --> YES, you can do it even in solo. You just have to speak  with Pellagina after thet Droemels kills the merchant (i forgot his name). You don't need to have her in your party.

- The cemetery quests for : the Adra Beetle figurine AND the Gift of the machine talent

- Go to Drydford village ASAP just for buy the girdle of mortal protection (cheap and very useful at the beggining, no fight needed, you can buy it in the Leathersmith store)

 

Note that after that (that actually is early mid-game) you have 2/3 of the build already done.

 

Only after that i would go for Stalwart, no need to rush for it.

 

Ah nearly forgot: once you get in WM1 and beat the sige, do ASAP the ogre cave. If you do it WITHOUT KILL ANY OGRE INSIDE (the ogres outside doesn't count) [wich means sneak to the ice cave in the right, go down, kill the languefath, disarm a trap, kill the ice blights, go upstairs] you can have a farily peaceful discussion with the matron, and at the end you can go outside and find an ogre merchant where you can buy tempered helm and more important : fenwalkers. That item alone turns fight vs languefath in a cakewalk, no more paralyze for you at all or quite.

 

In most fights figurine are not even needed, but i always take 2 or 3 of them in the quick slot just in case

 

After you assembled the core of the build you can do more or less as you want. Usually i even start act 3 before go for Stalwart , for add to my equipment Aila Braccia (another antil languafeth/ range mbs tool) and Blood Testament (again no difficut combat involved)

 

My Thoughts for "hard" fights in the next post

 

[Valsacar]

Thanks Valsacar for the report.

 

How do you manage Adragans and their petrifying attack as a soloer?

 

Defenses were really high, I just ignored them.

[bigwillystyle]

I just wanted to say ... solo-ing with this right now.  I beat those #&^@*(# phantoms in Caed Nua and it was GLORIOUS.  I've never felt so on edge in this game, but amazing.  

[Dr <3]

Thks, that fight is actually one of the most fun with this build.

[bigwillystyle]

Thank you again for putting this up - I got up to lvl 12 and I am getting ready to tackle the final room of Durgan's Battery, which should be ... challenging!

 

I tweaked a couple of things: Stunning Blow at level 5 [Full Attack, helpful with certain enemies] and I swapped the order of Crucible of Suffering and Iron Wheel.  Otherwise everything is spot-on.  Great build.

 

One thing I will note: Rooting Pain has an interesting bug that I never noticed before.  If I have Stunning Blow queued up to attack and Rooting Pain triggers, it rolls a Stun attack on everyone that Rooting Pain hits.  I've stunned 3-4 enemies at a time accidentally!  This isn't of course optimal - we want people to hit us! - but it is fun at times.

[Dr <3]

Secret bugs behind every corner... Nice to know

 

Btw the final battle is much easier than the ambush of spirits after you took the last "dragon eye" shpere... Just stick to a corner and bring with you llengrath and healing potions

Edited August 24, 2017 by Dr <3

[bigwillystyle]

Well, you were right about the forge room.  It was (in comparison) a breeze.  Watching the Spirit Wizard cast Shadowflame repeatedly on his own crew was entertaining.

 

This is my first deep into the game solo run, and I've learned to be a lot more tactical.  Potions of Major Recovery and figurines got me through some insane battles in the Mines & Foundry.  Hard to go back to six-man POTD after solo-ing some of the hardest fights in the game.

 

My equipment for Durgan's battery was pretty diverse:

 

Neck: Cloak of the Dying Boar or Rygrmand's Mantle

Gloves: Blood Testament

Armor: Wayfarer's Hide (the +25 vs. Paralysis was money!)

Boots: Consecrated Ground or Long March or Speed (I kited one battle a bit while getting the hang of Battery Sirens solo)

Rings: Deflection / Protection / Bartender's / Combusting Wounds depending on the battle

Weapon Set 1: Whispers of Yenwood + Spirit Slaying Sabre

Weapon Set 2: 2 Exceptional VEssel Slaying Axes

 

I should be able to get TCS and FCS with this run.  Not sure if I am up to tackling the Ultimate, we'll see.

[Dr <3]

Good luck for your adventure! A guy told me that he managed to do the ultimate with this build, still i do not reccomand this build if you want to go for it. Mainly because by design you have to rely a lot on potions, and the drinking mechanic was and still is very bugged. So it is a bit risky, a chanter is much safer. Nontheless being very sturdy helps a lot, so surely is doable and the build itself could forgive you minor mistakes in fights ( not like a druid or priest where if you get stunned is gg).

 

Now that you tried the " solo drug " there is no way back to the full party...

Edited August 25, 2017 by Dr <3

[mosspit]

Just wanna give a quick thanks to Dr <3 for this build.

 

I have had about 7 playthroughs under my belt and never really liked the idea of extreme dumping of stats. But for the current playthrough, I decided to do things differently so I included a 3Res/7Dex monk. Playthrough was nothing special - 5man (in the spirit of deadfire) and ToI. Using builds I havent used before.

 

I was pleasantly surprised with the ease of the early game. Caed Nua spirits and elementals, Anslog Compass mushrooms, and The Black Meadow bandits were quite smooth. High Mig/Int makes veteran recovery very effective and High Per/Mig means enemies are killed faster and less likely to turn the encounter to an Attrition battle. I am not far in having reached Defiance Bay but the first act has always been the most inconsistent for me for my ToI playthroughs. It just changed my perspective that a highly-skewed build (min-max) can achieve consistency this way

Edited August 30, 2017 by mosspit

[Dr <3]

One of the thing that made the build strong is that you couple very high hp and high fortitude.

High hp render you able to tank a lot of dmg, so actually having high deflection or reflex is not stricly needed. Girdle of mortal protection synergize even more, since crits do just a little more dmg than the normal hits. And you have also a lot of DR.

High fortitude render you very resistant / immune most status effect ( prone/paralyze/stun ecc) from the beginning, so most of the difficult fights magically becames cakewalks.