What impresses me the most is the speed with which you go through the game.
Ha! And here I've been thinking I've been going too slowly!
(I don't work or have a family, so it's not too hard to move quickly. I can play all day, if I want and PoE can be finished in a day, without much difficulty.)
If I ever try soloing the game, I'd most likely pick someone who would still fight here and there. Your story is very entertaining and full of tips.
Astrid's not a bad fighter. As you may have noticed, she's dominated all of her encounters so far- she rarely takes injuries at all. I'm sure she could do more. I just haven't let her.
In future playthroughs, I'll experiment with sidequests and such. I'd like to see what she can do -subject to the constraint that I don't like the detection edge, pull and separate method, except in circumstances where it seems plausible (like the Raedric Dungeon)
Astrid, Pale Elf Rogue (Solo)- Entry 6: Dyrwood Sidequests
And we're back!
This post is out of chronological order. Please forgive. Astrid completed the Dyrwood side quests prior to entering Cliaban Rilag. I included Cliaban Rilag in the last post to maintain thematic consistency. Right call? Wrong call? I doubt anyone cares. Anyhoo. Here we are. And from here we shall proceed.
We'll be covering Cat and Mouse, A Farmer's Plight, Nest Egg and Blood Legacy. Across all quests, Astrid completed a total of three fights.
As a proud member of House Doemenel, Astrid sided with Medrith in Cat and Mouse. Instead of luring out Nyre, Astrid killed her. Because why not? Astrid used her standard battle method here, which by now has changed slightly. Before leaving Defiance Bay, Astrid purchased the Munacra Arret. That item, and it's three Whispers of Treason per rest, leaves Astrid well position to handle mid game fights with a minimum of adjustment to her battle plan. Her summons are dropped. Her Touch of Rots are deployed. After that, she uses the Arret to create additional chaos in the battle zone. Randos are picked off with Forgiveness at her leisure. It works very well. Too well really. Some of these items will be targets for restriction in the future.
To Farmer's Plight. We completed this quest with stealth alone. Entering the cave is a cinch. Walking through it isn't too challenging either- especially with Hedge Maze and Iqali bonuses. Astrid took the short cut, rather than walking near the spider queen. There are two types of spiders here, for our purposes: runny-runnies and lazy-lazies. The runny-runnies go back and forth through the short cut corridor on the top side, the north. The lazy-lazies just chill to the south. We stayed as far south as possible through the entrance and then walked straight across, exiting like we started. That kept the runny-runnies north of us and the lazy-lazies south of us. Yay!
Same thing on the way back. Done and done.
We did nest egg next. We used Int 16 to nudge the wizard into leaving and then we took on the remaining crew. An immediate Shadowing Beyond allowed us to evade the opening salvo and, for the time being, steer clear of the monk. Here we see Astrid re-engaging by dropping her spirits, letting them pull aggro instead of her.
Eventually, the monk did attack Astrid. A second use of Shadowing Beyond took care of that.
Repositioning, we started sowing disorder in the ranks with Whispers of Treason.
And done. We used two grappling hooks to get the egg down crack free.
Onto Blood Legacy. Little fighty-fight here. Hardly worth mentioning, but Astrid fights are kind of rare. So here you go: look at that.
So, we entered the ruins with the skeleton key proffered from the spider cave. Mechanics 8 gets you through this door. We took the Aritifcer Hall rest bonus to get us to 8. That led to a problem later on.
To get to Wymund, the only other things Astrid had to do was get the crypt master key and open the door. It's easy enough to stealth to the door, but I'm not exactly sure what score is required. Without her Hedge Maze bonus, Astrid couldn't quite pull it off. We had to use Shadowing Beyond and leave.
We returned a few days later, this time with Hedge Maze and Iqali bonuses. No worries now.
We told Wymund we'd help him and then we betrayed him, warning Lord Harrod. Hooray for deceit!
And that's that for the Dyrford side quests. But you know what? So long as I'm here, I might as well knock off that Leaden Key ambush.
We opened with Shadowing Beyond and then re-engaged with our shades on point. Then we went to work with the Rotfinger Gloves. Do you know the Lenny Kravitz song Let Love Rule. In my head I'm singing Let Rot Rule because I'm a dork from knife to fork and I just remembered how hot Lenny Kravitz is.
The battle is winding down. People are dying and that dude in the middle is on our side now.
And done!
We'll continue soon. For now, Astrid is going to chill and have a few drinks over at Studio 54.
Astrid, Pale Elf Rogue (Solo)- Entry 7: Twin Elms to Thaos
Hey, everyone! I put this entry in a spoiler tag, since Julius hasn't seen this content yet. Click the tag. See the post. Yay!
We're almost home, kids! This is the penultimate post of Astrid's run. Exciting, huh? I bet you're wondering what happened, right? Maybe you're also wondering how Astrid got through all the nasty-nasty on the Burial Isle? Well, in this post you'll find out about the nasty-nasty. You'll have to wait till the next to find out about Thaos.
But first: We have some item business to attend to. When Astrid arrived at Twin Elms, she was single mindedly focused on catching Thaos. She found time to poison Simoc -and to kill Raedric- but aside from that she was all about collecting her items and catching her prey. So, what was the packing list? To make things easier, let me show you Astrid's load out just before the Thaos fight:
Now, in addition to that stuff, we needed Aru-Brekr, Blaidh Golan, Boots of Stealth, Rymrgand's Mantle and the Gloves of Manipulation. I think -think- that's it. Hold on....Ok. One more thing: Godansthunyr with a shocking lash and vessel slaying. (And while I'm on the subject of upgrades, We Toki has corrosive and kith slaying. Forgiveness has long had corrosive and kith slaying. Our armors have Dex two.)
It took us a little while to gather all that. But once we did -and once we had returned from our gratuitous gold and XP mission to Raedric Hold- we had the experience we'd need to reach L10 before Thaos, along with all the goodies we'd need to take him down.
For the record, we went Hylea, peaceful. Not hard to guess, huh?
K. Let's go to the Burial Isle.
If you go north and then west, there's basically one group of spirits that you need to get by. That's what we did. There are a couple of runny-runny spirits that you have to watch out for, but they aren't a serious risk. The only one that posed a threat to Astrid was the one seen below, and that's just because I screwed up. Astrid should have been on the south side of the staircase, not the north. We ducked out just in time, saving us a Shadowing Beyond cast.
(Btw, we're running Hedge Maze + Iqali here, with Boots of Stealth. IIRC, we were at Stealth 15)
Now for the tough part: that large group of spirits just before The Pit.
The best practice here is to max out your movement rate and intelligence. I got at little lazy on that, skipping Casita's and Farmer's. We want Blaidh Golan and Rymrgand in case we're revealed and Boots of Stealth + Hermit Hat in the hope that we won't be. We do not -I repeat DO NOT- want Footpad + Shod in Faith. For that matter, we don't want any combination with Shod in Faith. Shod in Faith is bad -very, very bad! Why? Because if you get crit with a fear effect, Shod in Faith will trigger and that will cause you to break from invisibility. Which sucks, right? So we don't want that.
Ok. So we reveal ourselves to someone who doesn't have a disabling range weapons -like that shade over there. That triggers combat and we can activate Shadowing Beyond.
Now you'll see why we should really max speed and intelligence. We've got to go through a lot of stuff. The faster we go, and the more time we have, the safer we are. Do you know the Velvet Underground song Run Run Run? Well, yeah: that....
And...Voila!
Same plan here. This time we took a Movement Rate resting bonus and ate our Farmer's Spread. We should have eaten Casita's too.
Making it!
We refresh Shadowing Beyond in the corridor. There's a trap on the dark bricks- watch out for that.
Got it!
Ok. We rest now. And then it's time for some drakes! Well, not really...
I remembered the Casita's this time...
We want to be out of stealth -out of stealth- when we trigger the encounter. That will start combat sooner, letting us activate Shadowing Beyond quicker. And again: No Shod in Faith! We hit the shadows and then broke east, as fast as we could.
We do it again.
We want to head south this time -south and east. There's not a whole lot of room down there, but there's enough for us to end combat and hit stealth. And while the drake and shadows are distracted, killing Wael, we break for the door.
Yuppers indeedy! It's time for the Thaos fight! The big show! Check the spoiler tag to see the fight!
But first: Let's talk about Astrid.
Character Record
Inventory
Build
Skills: Stealth: 10, Athletics: 3, Lore: 2, Mechanics: 6, Survival: 2
Abilities: Crippling Strike, Dirty Fighting, Finishing Blow, Reckless Assault, Blinding Strike
Talents: One Handed Style, Shadowing Beyond, Deep Pockets, Weapon Focus: Knight, Unstoppable
Boons: Hylea’s Boon, Gift from the Machine
Does anyone have any questions?
Our resting bonus? Great question! We took Accuracy Bonus v Vessel- attained by donning the Rugged Wilderness Cap before our nappy-poo.
Any more questions? Ok then!
Our plan, as you've likely surmised, is to knock people on their butts. More precisely, we want to knock the Headsman and the Judge on their butts- maybe even Thaos once or twice. We intend to do so with We Toki, leveraging our One Handed Style accuracy, our high Dex and our high Per. Our offensive potions, Deleterious Alacrity of Motion and War Paint will facility that, with speed and added accuracy. Our defensives are trash, but our enemies won't be hitting much because they'll be spending almost all of their time on their tuckuses. Or at least we hope so. How did it go?
Great, actually! Just great! Now the question is: Am I being sarcastic or not? You'll just have to see.
Here's Thaos. He's a jerk. We don't like him.
But he's not that jerk we want to kill right now. We want to kill the big jerk, the guy with the hammer. Casting Shadowing Beyond will let us do that. Why? Because he'll chase. And Thaos won't. And without Thaos's spells, he's toast.
Astrid runs west. She drinks a DAoM potion and gets to work. We Toki says, "Down boy!"
And that's basically all it took. Astrid's axe is accurate. And with her Dex it's fast enough to hit again before her enemies can get up. DAoM and War Paint take it all over the top. The Judge got exactly one swing in. His animation is on it's feet here, but as you can see, he's prone, according to the engine.
One down.
Let's do it again, shall we?
The Headsman faired a little better, landing two strikes and eliciting an endurance potion quaff. He didn't have much of a chance, though.
I've done this two-handed with We Toki and Godansthunyr and at levels 9 or 10 One Handed does seem to work better.
Just Thaos now. Our main concern is Cleansing Flame. In my experience, if you can get him to cast it on a summon, you'll never see it again. We give him some beetles. As soon as we put them down, we have one break north.
That insures that that'll be at least one beetles under our control when it's time for Thaos to cast Cleansing Flame. Got him!
The rest is easy. We shoot him in the face.
Dump some rot on him when goes Shields for the Faithful.
And when he gets to badly injured, unleash the Finishing Blows.
It should go without saying that we were evading his spells, disengaging whenever he started to cast. And as you might imagine, we found time to quaff every now and then, too, to increase our efficiency. The only spells that hit us were Thaos's Dominations, which appear to be targeted directly on the foe, rather than having an AoE, like most spells. Those weren't very danger though: the durations were short and Thaos never really took advantage.
Thaos is at near death. He's on his keist. This is looking good.
And yes! Astrid has done it! She has become my first PoE solo no reloader. Hooray!
That was fun! The question is what next? Should I give her a chance on PotD? Try a new class? Move her over to Deadfire? Share your thoughts. And feel free to share your comments as well. Thanks for following, everyone!
Congratulations, Alesia! Impressive stuff! Grim Face is already preparing a banquet at Caed Nua. It's still in a rather neglected condition, but what does it matter for a fun celebrating party with friends? I don't promise refined treats but Farmer's Spread and Casita Casserole are in plenty. And Darkest Rauatai Cookies for sure! Since Obsidian forums are down at the moment I'll post my thought here. PoTD on itself will not change too much for Astrid if she'll proceed with similar approach in my opinion. Moving over to Deadfire is viable option as it should happen sooner or later anyway and I have pretty dim hopes for a successful blind Deadfire no-reload run. Game mechanics is quite different there so it will take time to adjust. But I'll be definitely happy to be wrong with that and Astrid will claim a title of the first full saga no-reload queen.
Congrats @Alesia_BH - though I had no doubt about the outcome of this run. Reading your posts, I feel like you were a tiny bit overprepared considering you were playing on normal difficulty
Now I'm curious to see a PotD solo run, and if you'd have to change your approach at all (propably, a little bit, but not too much? maybe some more easy sidequests for safety?).
I still can't play Deadfire right now due to hardware issues, so I won't be able to appreciate a continuation of the run on the same level, but feel free to explore the game - though, as I have played it once before my hardware broke down, I would agree with @Serg_BlackStrider that a blind no-reload would be incredibly ambitious due to the changes in the system, unless there's a lot of reading and preparation done, which wouldn't really make it blind. Considering the sheer amount of work done in the obsidian forums on how to solo deadfire, even with severe restrictions/god challenges, following some of the ideas there would certainly make it possible even without a ton of firsthand experience (One of the things I did when I was still able to play deadfire was following the approach of a speedrunner over there step by step, which resulted in a very easy and quick triple crown run without much trouble at all - and that's despite me being pretty bad at Deadfire and even having to skip some of the megabosses, as I was simply unable to defeat them with my regular party).
I haven't read your last 3 posts, @Alesia_BH because I don't want to spoil myself. I find it amazing how quickly you went through the game and how stealthy your run seemed from the reports. Before you started it, I hadn't imagined it would be like that.
I didn't read the Obsidian forums, I didn't read about PoE 2 not to spoil myself. Just like many other players of PoE, I felt not ready to embrace PoE 2 before actually finishing PoE for the first time. So whenever I get there, it will be all blind for me.
On the question of whether you should replay PoE on the PotD difficulty, I'd say that if you want to do it, maybe do it with another class/type. Because while the number of enemies will differ (which might lead to bigger challenges of staying invisible) and the bosses you have to fight will be harder to hit, it should be more or less the same for the character who is basically evading fighting unless needed. The difference between Veteran (the difficulty I first played PoE at) and the PotD was felt by me immediately when I actually started fighting groups of enemies. I'd say the Temple of Eothas was that place which caused "Whoa" feelings, and then Caed Nua. Of course, the PotD difficulty shines in battles against Ogres, Adragans and banshees.
And I recall questions about what difficulty players should first play PoE when it released. The usual approach was that if you're a veteran IE player, then Veteran minimum. But they meant for a party play, of course. So if you attempt a blind run in PoE 2 with only 1 character, Normal will be more than appropriate.
Congratulations, Alesia! Impressive stuff! Grim Face is already preparing a banquet at Caed Nua. It's still in a rather neglected condition, but what does it matter for a fun celebrating party with friends? I don't promise refined treats but Farmer's Spread and Casita Casserole are in plenty. And Darkest Rauatai Cookies for sure!
Congrats @Alesia_BH - though I had no doubt about the outcome of this run. Reading your posts, I feel like you were a tiny bit overprepared considering you were playing on normal difficulty
Yeah. Before starting this run, I'd completed two solo rogue playthroughs. The first ended at Thaos, when I failed to position my summons properly and caught a Cleansing Flame. The second ended in the Court of the Penitents. I hadn't figured out the Shod-in-Faith issue yet and died to that a few times until I did.
By the time I started Astrid, I was pretty certain I had it down. My only concerns were the spirit groups before and after The Pit. Happily, those went great.
Now I'm curious to see a PotD solo run, and if you'd have to change your approach at all (propably, a little bit, but not too much? maybe some more easy sidequests for safety?).
I'm curious, too. I'm leaning towards running a rogue in PotD. Possibly Astrid, possibly a slightly different character.
As for the differences, I imagine I will be seeking added experience, although, truth be told, I'm not sure how I'd go about that exactly at this point. I'm playing with Astid's save know to figure out which quests can be done safely. After that experimentation, I'll probably give it a go.
Deadfire remains on the horizon, in any case! I'll probably run a new character and try to get my first play through done before Serg finishes PoE. As that point, I'll export Astrid, alongside Grim Face. That's the plan, at least!
Best,
A.
Btw, @JuliusBorisov I'm so, so sorry about the un-spoiler tagged screenies! I forgot that you haven't finished yet. I can go back and change that, if you like, to make it easier for you to view the page.
Hello, everyone! A couple weeks ago I promised to return with a PotD solo attempt. Well, good news everyone: the time has come. Meet our challenger.
Alia, Pale Elf Rogue (PotD Solo)
Game Version: 3.7.0.1318 with White March I & II, Difficulty: Path of the Dammed, Settings: Maim Before Death: On; Injuries: On; Expert Mode: OFF, Mods: None
Character Description: What is there to say about Alia? Honesty, I'm not sure. Alia is the fourth in a line of characters I built in preparation for a PotD solo. Sadly, her personality is the least developed of the four. And by that I mean it's non-existent. Her portrait is cool, though. She looks like a noble: a refined noble. Breaking free of her roots, perhaps? Maybe. Anyhoo. I'll fill this in if and when I come up with something. Who does she look like to you?
Gaming Notes: After completing my first PoE solo no reload on core, I set my sights on a PotD attempt. Following an exploratory run, I launched into action with a character that made it all the way to the second drake encounter in Sun and Shadows, falling just before Thaos. I took a break after that disappointment and ran a new character. That one fell in Galwain's Maw, due to a positioning error. Where her predecessors failed, Alia hopes to succeed. I can't guarantee a victory, but I'm confident Alia will put in a respectable showing. Wish her luck!
Alia, Pale Elf Rogue (Solo)- Entry 1: Caravan Camp to Caed Nua
Show of hands: Who here remembers Astrid? That was a stupid question, naturally. This is the internet: I can't see your hands. I'm going to assume, though, that most of you would have raised you digits had you the venue to do so, and cover Alia's early game movement with sparse detail, using Astrid's posts as a reference point. Fair enough?
Ok. Speaking of differences, here's Alia's pre-Caed Nua build.
With the exception of Shadowing Beyond and the skill point distribution, everything about Alia is different from Astrid. And yet they are very nearly the same character. Astrid and Alia were both setup as one handed crit specialist in the early game. The only distinction is the approach: Astrid went for hit conversion percentage, Alia went for acc. I'm not sure which approach I like better, in the general case, but I was glad to have the additional acc on PotD.
So, let's get to the action. Alia breezed through Cilant Lis and then headed straight to Raedric Hold for the standard embarassingly metagame-y solo character item raid. She collected the fine brigandine, Ring of Searing Flames, Gauntlets of Manipulation and Boots of Stealth. Adding in the Ring of Minor Deflection she found at The Black Hound, and the Esternwood crossbow and she was well on her way to a complete early game item set. Alia's route through Raedric Hold very nearly identical to Astrid's. She collected items from the sanctuary and then descended into the dungeon on the 1rst. The guards were taken down one by one in discreet locations.
On the second, she collected her last items and then departed- exiting via the ramparts rather than the sewers. On PotD, I think that's the best practice: The sewers are pretty crowded and the ramparts seem pretty safe.
Next, we visited Black Meadow to complete The Smith's Shipment and pick up all the other goodies. Then -in a departure from Astrid's route- we went to Mahdmr Bridge for Ferry Flotsam. The first looter was taken down almost immediately with an opening crossbow bolt and an arrow trap. The second put up a respectable fight, but we were never in danger here since Alia elected to keep rather than sell Gaun's Pledge. I like that move: Gaun's Pledge can be a difference maker in the early game.
Upon returning to Guilded Vale, we dropped off Tuatanu's crate and purchased a Blunting Belt. We settled Against the Grain soon after.
In Late for Dinner, Alia used Blinding Strike (crossbow) -> arrow trap to nix bandit 1 ASAP. Arrow traps are legitimately useful in the early game.
The other two went down without a fuss.
Our item collection schedule called for a visit to Esternwood on the 6th and a trip to the Eothasian Temple on the 7th. That yielded Torc of the Falcon Eyes and Rymgrand's Mantle.
Buried Secrets was completed entirely with stealth. This move always makes me nervous but it has never been a problem.
With Weapon Focus: Knight, Alia elected to upgrade Yenwood, raising it to fine and adding a lash. The Caed Nua hall required a Shadowing Beyond cast this time. Alia cast Shadowing Beyond, let the spirits contact her, and then broke for the door. Easy-peezy.
We used the spiders against Maerwald, mostly because we wanted legs for Fan of Flames scrolls. Bulwarks helped against the blights.
@Alesia_BH , It's both fascinating and an honor to see you pioneering and mastering the "no-reload challenge" in Pillars of Eternity, as you did in Baldur's Gate all those years ago on the old Bioware forum.
@CrevsDaak came in a bit later with the concept of the "minimal reload", which was really great for me since I don't have the constitution for no-reload play.
I remember that all those years ago, at first, I made a few combative posts along the lines of "You people are crazy, why in the gods' names are you doing this?", and I was treated with patience and gentle explanations. Over time, because of the initial diplomatic treatment I received, I became hopelessly influenced by the whole "no-reload" and especially "minimal reload" culture that has been continued here on the Beamdog forums.
To this day, I have a really hard time reloading a save in any game, as it makes me feel like I've lost the game. I think I've been both blessed and cursed by that mindset.
Best of wishes to you for your PotD solo no-reload!
Alia, Pale Elf Rogue (PotD Solo)- Entry 2: Defiance Bay
The distinctions between PotD and Normal may not be seen, but they are felt. Alia's Defiance Bay battles look like Astrid's. Don't be fooled, though: there were differences. Fights lasted longer; enemies were more dangerous; death was always closer. Fortunately, Alia found herself able to thrive with a few adjustments.
When Astrid arrived in Defiance Bay, she sought the Oaken Scarab figurine and the Rotfinger Gloves. With those items in hand she felt capable of taking on all comers. Alia, in contrast, took a more measured approach, building additional capacity before launching into combat.
After a quick trip into the catacombs on the 9th to pick up the Rugged Wilderness Hat, Alia completed Something Secret, Rogue Knight, At All Costs, Brave Derrin, A Voice from the Past, Unwanted, Never Far From the Queen, The Man Who Waits, and The Final Act in that order. That allowed her to accumulate a significant amount of gold and experience with but one fight: the battle with Helig in A Voice from the Past.
Before taking on Helig, Alia secured the Obsidian Lamp. Fletcher's Stay + Gjefa allowed her to unlock the chest. Here we see the shades in action, mobbing Helig while Alia finishes from a far. Astrid's ranged weapon was Forgiveness. Alia prefers a crossbow.
The crossbow was fast enough to allow Alia to kite the remaining revenants. This wasn't necessary. I just enjoyed the novelty: this wouldn't have worked with Forgiveness.
Moving on to Never Far From the Queen, Alia, whose base strength is 10, used a +1 might armor enchantment and goldrot chew to reach might 14, allowing her to intimidate the practice guy and secure her hood.
The Man Who Waits followed soon after. This was done entirely with stealth once again.
Additional early item goals included the Rotfinger Gloves, the Munacra Arret and the Silver Crow Axe. Oaken Scarab + Obsidian Lamp + Rotfinger Gloves + Munacra Arret were instrumental to her strategy in the midgame. To illustrate: Supply and Demand.
Oaken Scarab
Rotfinger Gloves->Munacra Arret. The primary purpose of Whispers of Treason is to insure that enemies will continue to have a target when the beetles unsummon. On PotD, battles can last long enough for that to happen.
Once the beetles disappear, it's shade time. Alia fires away with her crossbow as the battle draws to a close.
The other kith fights were fought in the same way, more or less. Some groups made it to the shade phase, others did not. Dodwyna and crew never saw the shades. First the beetles.
Then the rot. Combusting Wounds is a nice additional, time permitting.
Endgame.
The Two Story Job crew put up a better fight: they got to the shades at least.
This shot was taken just after the final Touch of Rot was released. Alia has charmed Slecg in advance of shade time.
And done.
All Hands on Deck and The Parable of Wael were uneventful. Alia used the same method in both.
Seeking one last level up before facing Marshall Wenfeld, Alia headed north to complete two Guilded Vale quests she missed: A Mother's Plea and Vengeance from the Grace
Since Marshall Wenfeld wears full plate, we swapped out the Silver Crow axe for Ravenwing, upgraded with a shocking lash and kith slaying. We built this weapon just for him. Alia wished to keep Wenfeld in engagement for the first few rounds in order to prevent him from wandering off and drawing in the crucible knights- hence the out-of-character emphasis on a melee weapon. (For my rogues, melee weapons don't really matter until Twin Elms.)
For better or worse, Wenfeld scorched himself with a Pillar of Holy Fire. We only got one swing with our purpose built, carefully constructed weapon. Shed a tear.
After that, we used shades to keep Wenfeld pinned. Although she's built for melee in anticipation of the endgame, Alia prefers to fight at range.
That left us with one more quest: Undying Heritage. We used stealth here, save a single fight on the ground floor of the tower. The only tricky parts were outside, on the way to and from Icantha.
This was tight, but we made it without Shadowing Beyond.
Shadowing Beyond was required here, both out and back.
We rested to insure we'd have an emergency Shadowing Beyond in reserve, in the event of an accident. We cast over by the gate, near Icantha's place and then raced toward the tower. This is the last hurdle of the quest. Run, Alia, run!
@Alesia_BH , It's both fascinating and an honor to see you pioneering and mastering the "no-reload challenge" in Pillars of Eternity, as you did in Baldur's Gate all those years ago on the old Bioware forum.
Thanks, @BelgarathMTH! That's kind of you to say, although I doubt I'm pioneering anything. I'm late to the PoE party and I'm guessing PoE solo no reloads are fairly common. How common I can't say.
There is a Trial of Iron mode, and an associated achievement, but it seems to be an open secret that most of those are completed by force quiting before combat ends. Unsurprisingly, it's hard to get a good sense of proportions since many are disinclined to share. It seems like the norm is to attain the achievement badge and then remain silent on the issue of whether or not it was, in fact, a no reload, as we describe it. There's nothing wrong with that: different community, different norms. It just complicates the issue of determining no reload frequency.
(Personally, I think Trial of Iron mode and it's associated achievements, while well intentioned, end up doing a disservice to the no reload style of play, since they provide a tangible incentive to obfuscate. Transparency is the most essential of essential norms in no reload player communities.)
I remember that all those years ago, at first, I made a few combative posts along the lines of "You people are crazy, why in the gods' names are you doing this?", and I was treated with patience and gentle explanations. Over time, because of the initial diplomatic treatment I received, I became hopelessly influenced by the whole "no-reload" and especially "minimal reload" culture that has been continued here on the Beamdog forums.
Very cool! I love that story! If there's one thing I'm proud of in my career as a BG player, it's that I think I helped people be nice. The awesome things is that very nearly everyone -and by that I mean I can't think of a single exception- who has participated in the no reload challenge over the years can say the same. Hooray for everyone!
Alia, Pale Elf Rogue (PotD Solo)- Entry 3: Dyrford
I have a lot of free time: I mean a lot of free time. If I had a teensy tiny bit more free time, I'd totally put together an online tourism marketing campaign for Dyrford, complete with a jingly commercial. That sounds great.
Anyhoo, Alia didn't need a marketing campaign to get her to Dyrford: She, like, had to go. But compulsory or not, Alia enjoined her vacation. And can you blame her?
Good times!
The Nest Egg doofuses were more threatening. I use Autopause: Enemy Sighted to insure that I can time my first action perfectly. The dialogue before this fight throws that off: there's no automatic pause between the dialogue and combat start. As a consequence, these blokes got a little too close for comfort.
Fortunately, Alia was able to get a Shadowing Beyond cast in just in time.
Then it was beetles down, followed by a textbook victory. Once again, we used Int 16 to get rid of the wizard and two grappling hooks to get the egg down safely.
Our next target was Korgrak's cave. On normal, Astrid sneaked pass the spiders outside the cave. On PotD, I think it's safer to kill them. We didn't pull any punches here.
Once we were in the cave, we stealthed to Korgrak using the short cut tunnel. Remember: keep the runny-runnies to the north, and the lazy-lazies to the south. I have a little rhyme to help me remember that. It goes runny-runny: sunny-sunny; Lazy-lazy: mayonnaise-y. That makes sense, because sunny means south and mayonaise-y mean north since mayonnaise is white like snow. You just have to remember to flip it around, because it's backwards: Runny-runny is really north and lazy-lazy is actually south, right? Oh! And don't forget: it's all good the first way if you live in Australia because everything is upside down there. Got it?
Right.
Once we got to Korgrak, we high fived him and welcomed him to the team. He's putting the hurt on Raedric's Undead Army as we speak.
Next, Blood Legacy. By the time Alia got to Blood Legacy, she had 5 base points in mechanics. I like to do this with Hedge Maze + Gjefa bonuses. Hedge Maze grants +2 to stealth and Gjefa +1 to mechanics. 5 + 2 (Gloves of Manipulation) + 1 = 8. Mechanics 8 is the magic number for Dyrford. Mechanics 8 is particularly important in Through Death's Gate, as you'll soon see. In Blood Legacy, mechanics 8 let Alia open this door, granting her access to the inner sanctum key and bloodless quest completion.
Onto Through Death's Gate. This is one of the trickier quest for my solo rogues. With a mechanics score less than 8, there are three scary bits. With mechanics 8, there are but two.
The first challenging part is the druid room. The menpwgra in the center of the room is hard to get by: A Shadowing Beyond cast is required. As in all Shadowing Beyond race-throughs, we want to maximize our movement rate and Intelligence. I like to use the Orlan Bramble ring here, too, since there's a risk of being hobbled. Blacsonn could make sense as well, now that I think about it.
On PotD it's a good idea to pull and kill the sporelings: there's just too many of them. Fan of Flames scrolls work great for that. This is why we wanted those spider legs back in Caed Nua.
Btw, Remember to wear the Hermit Hat when pulling the sporelings!
With the majority of the sporelings nixed, exiting was much safer.
Ok. Next level. I totally screwed this up...The plan had been to use Mechanics 8 to open the final door and bypass the oh-so sketchy spirit room. Unfortunately, I absent mindedly rested, dispelling our Gjefa bonuses. Faced with the choice of returning to Ondra's Gift or negotiating the spirits, we chose to backtrack and see Gjefa again. That meant we had to pass through the druid and sporeling rooms three times. Remind me never to do that again!
The upside, I guess, is that we got to fight this battle, the final confrontation of the quest, fully rested. That fight is totally winnable with Whispers of Treason and Fan of Flames scrolls alone, though.
So that's that: We're going to Twin Elms everybody! Yay!
Alia, Pale Elf Rogue (PotD Solo)- Entry 4: Twin Elms
Hey everyone! If you'd like to see Alia's next entry, click the spoiler tag! The entire post is in it. @JuliusBorisov hasn't been to Twin Elms yet and I don't want to spoil him!
Some of you seem to think that Alia is moving quickly. The Leaden Key disagrees.
Fast? Slow? Whatever. Just don't get in Alia's way. The Leaden Key assassins learned that the hard way. Simultaneously I learned a lesson the hard way: when you separate enemies for tactical advantage it not only strains plausibility it leads to ugly, embarrassing screenshots.
Like this, for example. Here we see Alia to the east of the map, with a fighter and a chanter, both drawn from the fray with Shadowing Beyond. This fight looks way less cool than it could have, huh?
Oh, well. Here we see the Leaden Key Rogue throwing down with a charmed fighter and three shades. Alia, meanwhile, is playing pinata with the Leaden Key Wizard. No candies in there, I'm afraid.
Upon arrival in Twin Elms, Alia completed Hard Bargain and Sacrificial Bloodline before heading into Teir Evron. We talked to all four god groups, with the intention of completing at least three of the quests, possibly four.
The Nest Above the Clouds was first. Stealthing may seem lame to some on RP grounds. I beg to differ. In fact, I think it makes perfect sense. I mean, if you had a choice between fighting all this and walking around it, what would you do? I'd totally go around- an not just because I am epicly lazy.
We completed The Nest Above the Clouds peacefully and then proceeded to Into the White Void. With Int 19, this can be completed peacefully. All you need to do is pick up the Blue Crystal Key in the east and then walk over to the northwest. This was almost too easy, but we'll take it. Prison of Ice is easily completed once the elves are gone.
My last rogue fell in The Old Queen and the New King. It happened right here:
My character had accessed the back of the maw with a grappling hook. Upon reaching the other side, she was tired. And as luck would have it, there were two enemies there: a lion and a lion clansman. Not wanting to fight fatigued, I tried to escape and rest. Sadly, that didn't work. We ended up drawing in other enemies and dying a horrible death. Alia had no intention of making the same mistake. She took down the lion and lin clansman ASAP. Fatigue be damned.
After chit-chatting with Sul, Alia decided to fight Oernos. She opened with Shadowing Beyond and then ran. Even invisible, this was kind of scary.
Ahh!
Ahhhhhh!
Where was Alia going, you ask? Here:
Because when do you ever get to see lions and bears fight each other? This was super-fun to watch. And look: Alia even stole the kill, thanks to a well timed finishing blow.
The fight didn't end with the death of Oernos. This turned into a brawl, spread throughout the Maw. I enjoyed this, and it actually makes sense. There was a stand off between warring factions. All they needed was a catalyst. Alia was that catalyst. No regrets here.
That brings us to Alia's near death experience. At the Mercy of the Tribes is without question my least favorite quest in the game. There's nothing wrong with it in a technical sense, or in a story sense. It's just too tempting and too dangerous. Dungeon Delver is awesome; Stelgaers are not.
My plan here was thin on details. The intent was to use Whispers of Treason from the Arret and Spirit Spiral to make the stelgaers fight each other. Aside from that...I don't know? Use the choke point and hope for the best? Terrible plan.
By the time we ran out of summons and Whispers of Treason charges, we were left with this:
That's sort of a best case scenario, and yet it was still exceedingly dangerous. Alia was knocked unconscious and brought back by the Ring of Wonder. She was one more hit from death. And then:
Just in time. I mean just in time! I'll never do that again-not without a better plan, that is.
Hunter Brother went better. The stelgaers went down with ease- partly because an elder had failed to join the fray.
The blights and lurkers were taken down in batches, with a rest in between. This would have been a bit much otherwise.
And that, my friends, was Alia's last Twin Elms quest. All that remained was to pack up and head off to the Burial Isle.
Alia, Pale Elf Rogue (PotD Solo)- Entry 5: The Burial Isle
Psst! The post is in the spoiler tag. Check the spoiler tag! You won't regret it
Alia's passage to Thaos was more eventful than Astrid's. Fortunately, the precautionary measures that I put into place but hadn't tested worked splendidly. Alia was revealed at an in opportune time, but she survived.
The stroll to the The Pit went smoothly. Surprisingly, it's possible to get through all this without using Shadowing Beyond.
Things got interesting in a bad way shortly after the descent. This spirit encounter is always nerve wracking. Like Astrid, Alia initiated combat by revealing herself to a spirit that lacked a disabling weapon. She then raced for the door, wearing Blaidh Golan, Rymgrand's and the Hermit Hat, while running Farmer's Spread and Casita Casserole. The logic here being that we want to maximize our survivability in the event of an untimely reveal while also minimizing the likelihood of a reveal through movement rate and intelligence. It's a good plan.
Unfortunately, there is a chance element at play here. If the pursuing spirits bunch up in the wrong way, the path to the exit can be partially blocked, impeding progress. That delay can lead to an untimely reveal. Like this:
Blaidh Golan and Rymgrand's Mantle to the rescue. Alia emerged virtually unscathed, although she did end up pulling two animats, leading to this scene:
Onto the drakes. The first one was and is easy. It would be pretty hard to lose a character here. Trigger the encounter out of stealth. Activate Shadowing Beyond ASAP, run east with max movement rate, using Farmer's Spread and a rest bonus, and max intelligence, using the Hermit Hat and Casita Casserole. It couldn't be simpler. Just don't wear Shod in Faith! No Shod in Faith! See that crit from a fear effect? If Alia had been wearing Shod in Faith, Consecrated Ground would have triggered and she would have been revealed. Shod in Faith is great, except when it isn't and when it isn't it's really, really bad.
I was a bit nervous about the second drake encounter since my first PotD solo no reload attempt ended here. I had delayed activating Shadowing Beyond slightly, and that caused the drake to be pulled slightly east, blocking the exit. That needn't have been fatal, but I neglected to hedge against the possibility of fighting the drake, thus my character lacked Prayer Against Fear and Bulwarks. Happily, Alia was ready. She executed stealth perfectly and she was prepped to fight if it came to that. Fortunately, it didn't. See that notification about Wael fighting shades? That means we're good: the path is clear.
Every item has a purpose. One choice, the Torc of the Falcon Eyes, is obviously sub-optimal, but 1 Per point wasn't worth the trouble of fighting the lighthouse spirits. In future fights, I'll likely change the glove slot: the Rotfinger gloves weren't used at all. I'm happy with everything else, although I remain undecided on the We Toki + Starcaller, Two Handed Style + Adventurer versus We Toki, One Handed Style + Vicious Fighting issue. I'm leaning towards the latter these days, although Alia did ok with the former.
The plan is to use We Toki + Starcaller, both with vessel slaying, against the judge and headsman. Sheathed in Autumn, with kith slayer + freezing lash, is for Thaos.
As for the other items:
The Hermit Hat is for Thaos's confusion spells; Heldrik's Coat, for the Judge's prone on hit; the Ring of Unshackling is for Cleansing Flame; the Boots of Speed, for spell evasion and potion quaffing; the Blunting Belt is great because hooray for DR; the Ring of Wonder is there because everyone makes mistakes.
Our camping bonus is accuracy v vessel. The Rugged Wilderness Hat got us to Survival 4.
Ok. Let's get this party started!
This is Thaos. I have it on good authority that he wears his grandmother's dirty underpants.
We opened with Shadowing Beyond and then raced west. Our next objective was to apply DoAM and War Paint before engaging. We really, really, really want to get this turkey stunned or on his keist before he can cast Devotions for the Faithful. Devotions for the Faithful slows everything down.
We started out well on that front.
But then we failed to keep him locked, due to a dirth of criticals. At this point, I was wishing I had gone One Handed + Vicious.
It's all good though: Woedica's Judge falls.
Despite an early blindness, we had trouble landing stun or prone via. That Shining Beacon cast made us run. Happily, we successfully evaded.
That's better!
Two down.
Time to finish this. The sketchy part was evading Cleansing Flame. The beetles were plan A; the Ring of Unshackling, plan B. Plan A worked.
Next, we stalled awaiting the expiry of Shields for the Faithful. Note that we've switched to Sheathed in Autumn.
Once Shield for the Faithful expired, we engaged.
From here on out we chipped away while evading spells. We made steady progress, but we didn't always evade as well as we could have.
I need to get better at that.
Thankfully, Alia had enough healing on hand to compensate for my ineptitude.
And done! Say hello to my first PotD solo no reloader, everyone! Hooray!
What's next? Honestly, I'm inclined to run another rogue. This time I'd like to work in some bounties, some White March content and some Caed Nua. I'll let you know when I'm ready to go ahead with that. For now, let's celebrate Alia's victory. You go girl! Pale elves forever!
I'm currently playing a priest. The plan is to complete a normal NR and then move on to PotD, like I did with my rogues. Should I refrain from posting the normal run and just wait until i'm ready to try PotD, or is there interest in a normal run?
@Alesia_BH : personally I would love to follow your normal NR (is it solo as well?). It will be another excellent opportunity to compare a various approaches to priest's builds (yours, Concrete Monster's up there on Obsidian boards and mine).
My current character reached level 11 with but one completely avoidable reload. My intention is to finish up her active run and then start a new one that I'll cover here.
So far, I'm finding the priest to be much, much easier than the rogue, at least on normal. The early game isn't any harder with a priest and the late game, pre-Burial Isle, is far simpler. The Burial Isle will be harder on the priest, I'd imagine, but over-all the priest feels more capable. I'm more inclined to explore with her, more likely to try a completionist run with her.
My current character reached level 11 with but one completely avoidable reload. My intention is to finish up her active run and then start a new one that I'll cover here.
So far, I'm finding the priest to be much, much easier than the rogue, at least on normal. The early game isn't any harder with a priest and the late game, pre-Burial Isle, is far simpler. The Burial Isle will be harder on the priest, I'd imagine, but over-all the priest feels more capable. I'm more inclined to explore with her, more likely to try a completionist run with her.
Best,
A.
Great! Looking forward for that!
And yes, the priest is more than capable on his/her own (even solo on PoTD), like this build illustrates. More over, most (if not all) official Deadfire Ultimate successful runs are with a some kind of priest multiclass.
I'd vote to support @Serg_BlackStrider on this. There might be differences between difficulties, and it'll be very fun to read about them. Also, your reports are really nice.
A completionist? Do you mean you'll go for the dragons and stuff?
A completionist? Do you mean you'll go for the dragons and stuff?
Well, strictly speaking a completionist approach (in my opinion) doesn't mean you should kill all those dragons and stuff. Yes, you need to face them and resolve a meeting one way or another but it doesn't have to be violent. Personally, I always play as a completionist but usually trying to not shed unnecessary blood.
Ok, everyone! It's time to introduce my new character. Meet Alena
Alena, Meadow Folk Priest of Wael (Solo)
Game Version: 3.7.0.1318 with White March I & II, Difficulty: Normal, Settings: Maim Before Death: On; Injuries: On; Expert Mode: OFF, Mods: None
Gaming Notes: After completing no reloads on normal and PotD with a rogue, I've decided to move onto a different class. I chose a priest because priests seem to have the highest ceiling of all PoE characters and I would like to take on some off-questline challenges. The plan is to complete a run on normal and then move onto PotD, as I did with my rogues. We'll see how that goes. Early results are encouraging, I must say: priests rock!
(@Serg_BlackStrider. These stats are for a normal PoE run specifically. On PotD, with the intent of moving onto Deadfire, I'd up Per)
Alena, Meadow Folk Priest of Wael (Solo)- Entry 1: Caravan Camp to Caed Nua
Rumor has it that the early game is hard for priests. Alena disagrees. Alena says she's just as capable of any character: she just has to do things differently. I think she's right.
Alena handled the early game much like her rogue predecessors. The only difference was in the order of her actions, with that order being largely determined by her initial skill point allotment. Let's take the item raid on Raedric Hold as an early example.
Safely navigating the Hold and recovering the Gloves of Manipulation requires stealth 5 and mechanics 4, with the 4th mechanics point available through Laborer's Rest at The Black Hound. That combination, stealth 5 and mechanics 4, is not available to a priest until level 4. And that meant Alena had to take a different approach.
She entered the Hold on the 20th at Level 3, with stealth 5 and mechanics 2 + 1 (Laborer's Rest).
That allowed her to retrieve the Boots of Stealth, but not -not- the Gloves of Manipulation. That's ok, though: because Boots of Stealth would get her to L4 and thus Act II. How? I'm glad you asked...
Stealth let Alena complete the Smith's Shipment.
That was followed by Ferry Flotsam- a quest that Alena, as a priest, handled better than her rogue predecessors.
Opening arbalest shot->Interdiction
Divine Marks
On PotD, this might be different. On PotD, that Interdiction might be an Inspiring Radiance. Whatever. The point is that Alena did great. I'm happy for her and she's happy, too.
Do you know what made Alena even happier? Reaching the oh-so crucial milestone of 5K coppers. Because 5K coppers buys you an animat. And an animat is a ticket to leisurely completion of act 1.
Great, huh? But some of you may be thinking: "Wait, wait: back up. How did she get 5k coppers?" Ok, well, selling Gaun's Pledge to Heodan was a good start. Then there were the random fine weapons strewn about, collected thanks to those shiny new boots. But you know what took her over the top? A robe and a quarterstaff.
I'm 100% against killing NPCs to sell their gear. But I'm also 100% for killing Durance on general principle. In this run, the latter trumped the former. You know how Pallegina is cool and nice but creepily sadistic toward Verzano? That's how I am with Durance. Every character biography should read:
Alena was just doing her part.
Anyhoo...
After completing Ferry Flotsam, Late for Dinner and Against the Grain, Alena was one quest shy of L4. Buried Secrets requires mechanics 4 + stealth, so that was out. Alena went with Vengeance from the Gravee. That was safe thanks to her animat buddy. PotD would require a different solution. Don't ask me what that is: I haven't decided yet.
Having attained L4, it was time to head to Caed Nua. On normal, stealth alone will get you to Maerwald. Just let the steward open the door and slip back into stealth. Hooray for easy!
Speaking of easy: Mr. Amazing the Animat made the Maerwald encounter that exactly. Shoutout to the cray-cray watcher himself for the assist on the blights. Flame blights do hate Chill Fog, and we couldn't have cast it with out you, Maerwald. Thanks!
Finished with some Fan of Flames scrolls.
And just like that our priest has made it to Defiance Bay. I'll post on the Bay soon.
@Jaheiras_Witness. Do you have any advice on soloing the wraith/battery siren encounters in Durgan's Battery?
Sorry, genuinely can't remember, it's been 1 or 2 years since I last played. Could you maybe outline what issues you are facing and that might trigger some tactical ideas?
From hazy memory, isn't it mainly fear and stun that are their main attacks? And are wraiths the ones that can grab you and drop you on traps?
Fear is easy to counter with just the level 1 Protection from Fear scroll. The rest might not be pertinent for different builds; my solo strategy was to create an invincible tank while you are going for a stealth and accuracy approach. Consequently I had max Fortitude (120-140 range fully buffed) so stun attacks were not even a danger. And any grazes can be further mitigated by using level 2 Scroll of Protection or Potions of Recovery.
It might be that you need to go for a more offensive strategy and try to take them out before they can get close to you. Or perhaps use scrolls of Confusion to even the odds. Anyway, why don't you outline what challenges you are facing and I'm sure people can chip in with ideas.
Comments
Ha! And here I've been thinking I've been going too slowly!
(I don't work or have a family, so it's not too hard to move quickly. I can play all day, if I want and PoE can be finished in a day, without much difficulty.)
Astrid's not a bad fighter. As you may have noticed, she's dominated all of her encounters so far- she rarely takes injuries at all. I'm sure she could do more. I just haven't let her.
In future playthroughs, I'll experiment with sidequests and such. I'd like to see what she can do -subject to the constraint that I don't like the detection edge, pull and separate method, except in circumstances where it seems plausible (like the Raedric Dungeon)
Anyhoo, thanks for the comments! Good hunting!
Best,
A.
And we're back!
This post is out of chronological order. Please forgive. Astrid completed the Dyrwood side quests prior to entering Cliaban Rilag. I included Cliaban Rilag in the last post to maintain thematic consistency. Right call? Wrong call? I doubt anyone cares. Anyhoo. Here we are. And from here we shall proceed.
We'll be covering Cat and Mouse, A Farmer's Plight, Nest Egg and Blood Legacy. Across all quests, Astrid completed a total of three fights.
As a proud member of House Doemenel, Astrid sided with Medrith in Cat and Mouse. Instead of luring out Nyre, Astrid killed her. Because why not? Astrid used her standard battle method here, which by now has changed slightly. Before leaving Defiance Bay, Astrid purchased the Munacra Arret. That item, and it's three Whispers of Treason per rest, leaves Astrid well position to handle mid game fights with a minimum of adjustment to her battle plan. Her summons are dropped. Her Touch of Rots are deployed. After that, she uses the Arret to create additional chaos in the battle zone. Randos are picked off with Forgiveness at her leisure. It works very well. Too well really. Some of these items will be targets for restriction in the future.
To Farmer's Plight. We completed this quest with stealth alone. Entering the cave is a cinch. Walking through it isn't too challenging either- especially with Hedge Maze and Iqali bonuses. Astrid took the short cut, rather than walking near the spider queen. There are two types of spiders here, for our purposes: runny-runnies and lazy-lazies. The runny-runnies go back and forth through the short cut corridor on the top side, the north. The lazy-lazies just chill to the south. We stayed as far south as possible through the entrance and then walked straight across, exiting like we started. That kept the runny-runnies north of us and the lazy-lazies south of us. Yay!
Same thing on the way back. Done and done.
We did nest egg next. We used Int 16 to nudge the wizard into leaving and then we took on the remaining crew. An immediate Shadowing Beyond allowed us to evade the opening salvo and, for the time being, steer clear of the monk. Here we see Astrid re-engaging by dropping her spirits, letting them pull aggro instead of her.
Eventually, the monk did attack Astrid. A second use of Shadowing Beyond took care of that.
Repositioning, we started sowing disorder in the ranks with Whispers of Treason.
And done. We used two grappling hooks to get the egg down crack free.
Onto Blood Legacy. Little fighty-fight here. Hardly worth mentioning, but Astrid fights are kind of rare. So here you go: look at that.
So, we entered the ruins with the skeleton key proffered from the spider cave. Mechanics 8 gets you through this door. We took the Aritifcer Hall rest bonus to get us to 8. That led to a problem later on.
To get to Wymund, the only other things Astrid had to do was get the crypt master key and open the door. It's easy enough to stealth to the door, but I'm not exactly sure what score is required. Without her Hedge Maze bonus, Astrid couldn't quite pull it off. We had to use Shadowing Beyond and leave.
We returned a few days later, this time with Hedge Maze and Iqali bonuses. No worries now.
We told Wymund we'd help him and then we betrayed him, warning Lord Harrod. Hooray for deceit!
And that's that for the Dyrford side quests. But you know what? So long as I'm here, I might as well knock off that Leaden Key ambush.
We opened with Shadowing Beyond and then re-engaged with our shades on point. Then we went to work with the Rotfinger Gloves. Do you know the Lenny Kravitz song Let Love Rule. In my head I'm singing Let Rot Rule because I'm a dork from knife to fork and I just remembered how hot Lenny Kravitz is.
The battle is winding down. People are dying and that dude in the middle is on our side now.
And done!
We'll continue soon. For now, Astrid is going to chill and have a few drinks over at Studio 54.
Best,
A.
Hey, everyone! I put this entry in a spoiler tag, since Julius hasn't seen this content yet. Click the tag. See the post. Yay!
We're almost home, kids! This is the penultimate post of Astrid's run. Exciting, huh? I bet you're wondering what happened, right? Maybe you're also wondering how Astrid got through all the nasty-nasty on the Burial Isle? Well, in this post you'll find out about the nasty-nasty. You'll have to wait till the next to find out about Thaos.
But first: We have some item business to attend to. When Astrid arrived at Twin Elms, she was single mindedly focused on catching Thaos. She found time to poison Simoc -and to kill Raedric- but aside from that she was all about collecting her items and catching her prey. So, what was the packing list? To make things easier, let me show you Astrid's load out just before the Thaos fight:
Now, in addition to that stuff, we needed Aru-Brekr, Blaidh Golan, Boots of Stealth, Rymrgand's Mantle and the Gloves of Manipulation. I think -think- that's it. Hold on....Ok. One more thing: Godansthunyr with a shocking lash and vessel slaying. (And while I'm on the subject of upgrades, We Toki has corrosive and kith slaying. Forgiveness has long had corrosive and kith slaying. Our armors have Dex two.)
It took us a little while to gather all that. But once we did -and once we had returned from our gratuitous gold and XP mission to Raedric Hold- we had the experience we'd need to reach L10 before Thaos, along with all the goodies we'd need to take him down.
For the record, we went Hylea, peaceful. Not hard to guess, huh?
K. Let's go to the Burial Isle.
If you go north and then west, there's basically one group of spirits that you need to get by. That's what we did. There are a couple of runny-runny spirits that you have to watch out for, but they aren't a serious risk. The only one that posed a threat to Astrid was the one seen below, and that's just because I screwed up. Astrid should have been on the south side of the staircase, not the north. We ducked out just in time, saving us a Shadowing Beyond cast.
(Btw, we're running Hedge Maze + Iqali here, with Boots of Stealth. IIRC, we were at Stealth 15)
Now for the tough part: that large group of spirits just before The Pit.
The best practice here is to max out your movement rate and intelligence. I got at little lazy on that, skipping Casita's and Farmer's. We want Blaidh Golan and Rymrgand in case we're revealed and Boots of Stealth + Hermit Hat in the hope that we won't be. We do not -I repeat DO NOT- want Footpad + Shod in Faith. For that matter, we don't want any combination with Shod in Faith. Shod in Faith is bad -very, very bad! Why? Because if you get crit with a fear effect, Shod in Faith will trigger and that will cause you to break from invisibility. Which sucks, right? So we don't want that.
Ok. So we reveal ourselves to someone who doesn't have a disabling range weapons -like that shade over there. That triggers combat and we can activate Shadowing Beyond.
Now you'll see why we should really max speed and intelligence. We've got to go through a lot of stuff. The faster we go, and the more time we have, the safer we are. Do you know the Velvet Underground song Run Run Run? Well, yeah: that....
And...Voila!
Same plan here. This time we took a Movement Rate resting bonus and ate our Farmer's Spread. We should have eaten Casita's too.
Making it!
We refresh Shadowing Beyond in the corridor. There's a trap on the dark bricks- watch out for that.
Got it!
Ok. We rest now. And then it's time for some drakes! Well, not really...
I remembered the Casita's this time...
We want to be out of stealth -out of stealth- when we trigger the encounter. That will start combat sooner, letting us activate Shadowing Beyond quicker. And again: No Shod in Faith! We hit the shadows and then broke east, as fast as we could.
We do it again.
We want to head south this time -south and east. There's not a whole lot of room down there, but there's enough for us to end combat and hit stealth. And while the drake and shadows are distracted, killing Wael, we break for the door.
And that is how we do that: No combat at all.
I'll post the Thaos fight soon.
Best,
A.
Yuppers indeedy! It's time for the Thaos fight! The big show! Check the spoiler tag to see the fight!
But first: Let's talk about Astrid.
Character Record
Inventory
Build
Skills: Stealth: 10, Athletics: 3, Lore: 2, Mechanics: 6, Survival: 2
Abilities: Crippling Strike, Dirty Fighting, Finishing Blow, Reckless Assault, Blinding Strike
Talents: One Handed Style, Shadowing Beyond, Deep Pockets, Weapon Focus: Knight, Unstoppable
Boons: Hylea’s Boon, Gift from the Machine
Does anyone have any questions?
Our resting bonus? Great question! We took Accuracy Bonus v Vessel- attained by donning the Rugged Wilderness Cap before our nappy-poo.
Any more questions? Ok then!
Our plan, as you've likely surmised, is to knock people on their butts. More precisely, we want to knock the Headsman and the Judge on their butts- maybe even Thaos once or twice. We intend to do so with We Toki, leveraging our One Handed Style accuracy, our high Dex and our high Per. Our offensive potions, Deleterious Alacrity of Motion and War Paint will facility that, with speed and added accuracy. Our defensives are trash, but our enemies won't be hitting much because they'll be spending almost all of their time on their tuckuses. Or at least we hope so. How did it go?
Great, actually! Just great! Now the question is: Am I being sarcastic or not? You'll just have to see.
Here's Thaos. He's a jerk. We don't like him.
But he's not that jerk we want to kill right now. We want to kill the big jerk, the guy with the hammer. Casting Shadowing Beyond will let us do that. Why? Because he'll chase. And Thaos won't. And without Thaos's spells, he's toast.
Astrid runs west. She drinks a DAoM potion and gets to work. We Toki says, "Down boy!"
And that's basically all it took. Astrid's axe is accurate. And with her Dex it's fast enough to hit again before her enemies can get up. DAoM and War Paint take it all over the top. The Judge got exactly one swing in. His animation is on it's feet here, but as you can see, he's prone, according to the engine.
One down.
Let's do it again, shall we?
The Headsman faired a little better, landing two strikes and eliciting an endurance potion quaff. He didn't have much of a chance, though.
I've done this two-handed with We Toki and Godansthunyr and at levels 9 or 10 One Handed does seem to work better.
Just Thaos now. Our main concern is Cleansing Flame. In my experience, if you can get him to cast it on a summon, you'll never see it again. We give him some beetles. As soon as we put them down, we have one break north.
That insures that that'll be at least one beetles under our control when it's time for Thaos to cast Cleansing Flame. Got him!
The rest is easy. We shoot him in the face.
Dump some rot on him when goes Shields for the Faithful.
And when he gets to badly injured, unleash the Finishing Blows.
It should go without saying that we were evading his spells, disengaging whenever he started to cast. And as you might imagine, we found time to quaff every now and then, too, to increase our efficiency. The only spells that hit us were Thaos's Dominations, which appear to be targeted directly on the foe, rather than having an AoE, like most spells. Those weren't very danger though: the durations were short and Thaos never really took advantage.
Thaos is at near death. He's on his keist. This is looking good.
And yes! Astrid has done it! She has become my first PoE solo no reloader. Hooray!
That was fun! The question is what next? Should I give her a chance on PotD? Try a new class? Move her over to Deadfire? Share your thoughts. And feel free to share your comments as well. Thanks for following, everyone!
Cheers,
A.
Now I'm curious to see a PotD solo run, and if you'd have to change your approach at all (propably, a little bit, but not too much? maybe some more easy sidequests for safety?).
I still can't play Deadfire right now due to hardware issues, so I won't be able to appreciate a continuation of the run on the same level, but feel free to explore the game - though, as I have played it once before my hardware broke down, I would agree with @Serg_BlackStrider that a blind no-reload would be incredibly ambitious due to the changes in the system, unless there's a lot of reading and preparation done, which wouldn't really make it blind. Considering the sheer amount of work done in the obsidian forums on how to solo deadfire, even with severe restrictions/god challenges, following some of the ideas there would certainly make it possible even without a ton of firsthand experience (One of the things I did when I was still able to play deadfire was following the approach of a speedrunner over there step by step, which resulted in a very easy and quick triple crown run without much trouble at all - and that's despite me being pretty bad at Deadfire and even having to skip some of the megabosses, as I was simply unable to defeat them with my regular party).
I didn't read the Obsidian forums, I didn't read about PoE 2 not to spoil myself. Just like many other players of PoE, I felt not ready to embrace PoE 2 before actually finishing PoE for the first time. So whenever I get there, it will be all blind for me.
On the question of whether you should replay PoE on the PotD difficulty, I'd say that if you want to do it, maybe do it with another class/type. Because while the number of enemies will differ (which might lead to bigger challenges of staying invisible) and the bosses you have to fight will be harder to hit, it should be more or less the same for the character who is basically evading fighting unless needed. The difference between Veteran (the difficulty I first played PoE at) and the PotD was felt by me immediately when I actually started fighting groups of enemies. I'd say the Temple of Eothas was that place which caused "Whoa" feelings, and then Caed Nua. Of course, the PotD difficulty shines in battles against Ogres, Adragans and banshees.
And I recall questions about what difficulty players should first play PoE when it released. The usual approach was that if you're a veteran IE player, then Veteran minimum. But they meant for a party play, of course. So if you attempt a blind run in PoE 2 with only 1 character, Normal will be more than appropriate.
Thanks, Serg! Looking forward to those cookies!
Yeah. Before starting this run, I'd completed two solo rogue playthroughs. The first ended at Thaos, when I failed to position my summons properly and caught a Cleansing Flame. The second ended in the Court of the Penitents. I hadn't figured out the Shod-in-Faith issue yet and died to that a few times until I did.
By the time I started Astrid, I was pretty certain I had it down. My only concerns were the spirit groups before and after The Pit. Happily, those went great.
I'm curious, too. I'm leaning towards running a rogue in PotD. Possibly Astrid, possibly a slightly different character.
As for the differences, I imagine I will be seeking added experience, although, truth be told, I'm not sure how I'd go about that exactly at this point. I'm playing with Astid's save know to figure out which quests can be done safely. After that experimentation, I'll probably give it a go.
Deadfire remains on the horizon, in any case! I'll probably run a new character and try to get my first play through done before Serg finishes PoE. As that point, I'll export Astrid, alongside Grim Face. That's the plan, at least!
Best,
A.
Btw, @JuliusBorisov I'm so, so sorry about the un-spoiler tagged screenies! I forgot that you haven't finished yet. I can go back and change that, if you like, to make it easier for you to view the page.
Quick Note: I completed my first PotD solo with reloads today. I think I'm ready to try a no reload soon. I'll let you know!
Best,
A.
Alia, Pale Elf Rogue (PotD Solo)
Game Version: 3.7.0.1318 with White March I & II, Difficulty: Path of the Dammed, Settings: Maim Before Death: On; Injuries: On; Expert Mode: OFF, Mods: None
Character Description: What is there to say about Alia? Honesty, I'm not sure. Alia is the fourth in a line of characters I built in preparation for a PotD solo. Sadly, her personality is the least developed of the four. And by that I mean it's non-existent. Her portrait is cool, though. She looks like a noble: a refined noble. Breaking free of her roots, perhaps? Maybe. Anyhoo. I'll fill this in if and when I come up with something. Who does she look like to you?
Gaming Notes: After completing my first PoE solo no reload on core, I set my sights on a PotD attempt. Following an exploratory run, I launched into action with a character that made it all the way to the second drake encounter in Sun and Shadows, falling just before Thaos. I took a break after that disappointment and ran a new character. That one fell in Galwain's Maw, due to a positioning error. Where her predecessors failed, Alia hopes to succeed. I can't guarantee a victory, but I'm confident Alia will put in a respectable showing. Wish her luck!
Show of hands: Who here remembers Astrid? That was a stupid question, naturally. This is the internet: I can't see your hands. I'm going to assume, though, that most of you would have raised you digits had you the venue to do so, and cover Alia's early game movement with sparse detail, using Astrid's posts as a reference point. Fair enough?
Ok. Speaking of differences, here's Alia's pre-Caed Nua build.
Skills: Stealth: 7, Athletics: 0, Lore: 2, Mechanics: 3, Survival: 0
Abilities: (L1) Blinding Strike (L3) Reckless Assault
Talents: (L2) Weapon Focus: Knight (L4) Shadowing Beyond
Here's Astrid's:
Skills: Stealth: 7, Athletics: 0, Lore: 2, Mechanics: 3, Survival: 0
Abilities: (L1) Crippling Strike (L3) Dirty Fighting
Talents: (L2) One Handed Style (L4) Shadowing Beyond
With the exception of Shadowing Beyond and the skill point distribution, everything about Alia is different from Astrid. And yet they are very nearly the same character. Astrid and Alia were both setup as one handed crit specialist in the early game. The only distinction is the approach: Astrid went for hit conversion percentage, Alia went for acc. I'm not sure which approach I like better, in the general case, but I was glad to have the additional acc on PotD.
So, let's get to the action. Alia breezed through Cilant Lis and then headed straight to Raedric Hold for the standard embarassingly metagame-y solo character item raid. She collected the fine brigandine, Ring of Searing Flames, Gauntlets of Manipulation and Boots of Stealth. Adding in the Ring of Minor Deflection she found at The Black Hound, and the Esternwood crossbow and she was well on her way to a complete early game item set. Alia's route through Raedric Hold very nearly identical to Astrid's. She collected items from the sanctuary and then descended into the dungeon on the 1rst. The guards were taken down one by one in discreet locations.
On the second, she collected her last items and then departed- exiting via the ramparts rather than the sewers. On PotD, I think that's the best practice: The sewers are pretty crowded and the ramparts seem pretty safe.
Next, we visited Black Meadow to complete The Smith's Shipment and pick up all the other goodies. Then -in a departure from Astrid's route- we went to Mahdmr Bridge for Ferry Flotsam. The first looter was taken down almost immediately with an opening crossbow bolt and an arrow trap. The second put up a respectable fight, but we were never in danger here since Alia elected to keep rather than sell Gaun's Pledge. I like that move: Gaun's Pledge can be a difference maker in the early game.
Upon returning to Guilded Vale, we dropped off Tuatanu's crate and purchased a Blunting Belt. We settled Against the Grain soon after.
In Late for Dinner, Alia used Blinding Strike (crossbow) -> arrow trap to nix bandit 1 ASAP. Arrow traps are legitimately useful in the early game.
The other two went down without a fuss.
Our item collection schedule called for a visit to Esternwood on the 6th and a trip to the Eothasian Temple on the 7th. That yielded Torc of the Falcon Eyes and Rymgrand's Mantle.
Buried Secrets was completed entirely with stealth. This move always makes me nervous but it has never been a problem.
With Weapon Focus: Knight, Alia elected to upgrade Yenwood, raising it to fine and adding a lash. The Caed Nua hall required a Shadowing Beyond cast this time. Alia cast Shadowing Beyond, let the spirits contact her, and then broke for the door. Easy-peezy.
We used the spiders against Maerwald, mostly because we wanted legs for Fan of Flames scrolls. Bulwarks helped against the blights.
And done! We're off to Defiance Bay.
Best,
A.
You were one of the first who introduced me to the whole concept of the no-reload, along with @Gate70 , @ussnorway , @Grond0 , and @Corey_Russell .
@CrevsDaak came in a bit later with the concept of the "minimal reload", which was really great for me since I don't have the constitution for no-reload play.
I remember that all those years ago, at first, I made a few combative posts along the lines of "You people are crazy, why in the gods' names are you doing this?", and I was treated with patience and gentle explanations. Over time, because of the initial diplomatic treatment I received, I became hopelessly influenced by the whole "no-reload" and especially "minimal reload" culture that has been continued here on the Beamdog forums.
To this day, I have a really hard time reloading a save in any game, as it makes me feel like I've lost the game. I think I've been both blessed and cursed by that mindset.
Best of wishes to you for your PotD solo no-reload!
My memory in my old age is worse than ever, and it wasn't that great when I was young.
The distinctions between PotD and Normal may not be seen, but they are felt. Alia's Defiance Bay battles look like Astrid's. Don't be fooled, though: there were differences. Fights lasted longer; enemies were more dangerous; death was always closer. Fortunately, Alia found herself able to thrive with a few adjustments.
When Astrid arrived in Defiance Bay, she sought the Oaken Scarab figurine and the Rotfinger Gloves. With those items in hand she felt capable of taking on all comers. Alia, in contrast, took a more measured approach, building additional capacity before launching into combat.
After a quick trip into the catacombs on the 9th to pick up the Rugged Wilderness Hat, Alia completed Something Secret, Rogue Knight, At All Costs, Brave Derrin, A Voice from the Past, Unwanted, Never Far From the Queen, The Man Who Waits, and The Final Act in that order. That allowed her to accumulate a significant amount of gold and experience with but one fight: the battle with Helig in A Voice from the Past.
Before taking on Helig, Alia secured the Obsidian Lamp. Fletcher's Stay + Gjefa allowed her to unlock the chest. Here we see the shades in action, mobbing Helig while Alia finishes from a far. Astrid's ranged weapon was Forgiveness. Alia prefers a crossbow.
The crossbow was fast enough to allow Alia to kite the remaining revenants. This wasn't necessary. I just enjoyed the novelty: this wouldn't have worked with Forgiveness.
Moving on to Never Far From the Queen, Alia, whose base strength is 10, used a +1 might armor enchantment and goldrot chew to reach might 14, allowing her to intimidate the practice guy and secure her hood.
The Man Who Waits followed soon after. This was done entirely with stealth once again.
Additional early item goals included the Rotfinger Gloves, the Munacra Arret and the Silver Crow Axe. Oaken Scarab + Obsidian Lamp + Rotfinger Gloves + Munacra Arret were instrumental to her strategy in the midgame. To illustrate: Supply and Demand.
Oaken Scarab
Rotfinger Gloves->Munacra Arret. The primary purpose of Whispers of Treason is to insure that enemies will continue to have a target when the beetles unsummon. On PotD, battles can last long enough for that to happen.
Once the beetles disappear, it's shade time. Alia fires away with her crossbow as the battle draws to a close.
The other kith fights were fought in the same way, more or less. Some groups made it to the shade phase, others did not. Dodwyna and crew never saw the shades. First the beetles.
Then the rot. Combusting Wounds is a nice additional, time permitting.
Endgame.
The Two Story Job crew put up a better fight: they got to the shades at least.
This shot was taken just after the final Touch of Rot was released. Alia has charmed Slecg in advance of shade time.
And done.
All Hands on Deck and The Parable of Wael were uneventful. Alia used the same method in both.
Seeking one last level up before facing Marshall Wenfeld, Alia headed north to complete two Guilded Vale quests she missed: A Mother's Plea and Vengeance from the Grace
Since Marshall Wenfeld wears full plate, we swapped out the Silver Crow axe for Ravenwing, upgraded with a shocking lash and kith slaying. We built this weapon just for him. Alia wished to keep Wenfeld in engagement for the first few rounds in order to prevent him from wandering off and drawing in the crucible knights- hence the out-of-character emphasis on a melee weapon. (For my rogues, melee weapons don't really matter until Twin Elms.)
For better or worse, Wenfeld scorched himself with a Pillar of Holy Fire. We only got one swing with our purpose built, carefully constructed weapon. Shed a tear.
After that, we used shades to keep Wenfeld pinned. Although she's built for melee in anticipation of the endgame, Alia prefers to fight at range.
That left us with one more quest: Undying Heritage. We used stealth here, save a single fight on the ground floor of the tower. The only tricky parts were outside, on the way to and from Icantha.
This was tight, but we made it without Shadowing Beyond.
Shadowing Beyond was required here, both out and back.
We rested to insure we'd have an emergency Shadowing Beyond in reserve, in the event of an accident. We cast over by the gate, near Icantha's place and then raced toward the tower. This is the last hurdle of the quest. Run, Alia, run!
Made it! Alia is off to Dyrford.
Best,
A.
Thanks, @BelgarathMTH! That's kind of you to say, although I doubt I'm pioneering anything. I'm late to the PoE party and I'm guessing PoE solo no reloads are fairly common. How common I can't say.
There is a Trial of Iron mode, and an associated achievement, but it seems to be an open secret that most of those are completed by force quiting before combat ends. Unsurprisingly, it's hard to get a good sense of proportions since many are disinclined to share. It seems like the norm is to attain the achievement badge and then remain silent on the issue of whether or not it was, in fact, a no reload, as we describe it. There's nothing wrong with that: different community, different norms. It just complicates the issue of determining no reload frequency.
(Personally, I think Trial of Iron mode and it's associated achievements, while well intentioned, end up doing a disservice to the no reload style of play, since they provide a tangible incentive to obfuscate. Transparency is the most essential of essential norms in no reload player communities.)
Very cool! I love that story! If there's one thing I'm proud of in my career as a BG player, it's that I think I helped people be nice. The awesome things is that very nearly everyone -and by that I mean I can't think of a single exception- who has participated in the no reload challenge over the years can say the same. Hooray for everyone!
Best,
A.
I have a lot of free time: I mean a lot of free time. If I had a teensy tiny bit more free time, I'd totally put together an online tourism marketing campaign for Dyrford, complete with a jingly commercial. That sounds great.
Anyhoo, Alia didn't need a marketing campaign to get her to Dyrford: She, like, had to go. But compulsory or not, Alia enjoined her vacation. And can you blame her?
Good times!
The Nest Egg doofuses were more threatening. I use Autopause: Enemy Sighted to insure that I can time my first action perfectly. The dialogue before this fight throws that off: there's no automatic pause between the dialogue and combat start. As a consequence, these blokes got a little too close for comfort.
Fortunately, Alia was able to get a Shadowing Beyond cast in just in time.
Then it was beetles down, followed by a textbook victory. Once again, we used Int 16 to get rid of the wizard and two grappling hooks to get the egg down safely.
Our next target was Korgrak's cave. On normal, Astrid sneaked pass the spiders outside the cave. On PotD, I think it's safer to kill them. We didn't pull any punches here.
Once we were in the cave, we stealthed to Korgrak using the short cut tunnel. Remember: keep the runny-runnies to the north, and the lazy-lazies to the south. I have a little rhyme to help me remember that. It goes runny-runny: sunny-sunny; Lazy-lazy: mayonnaise-y. That makes sense, because sunny means south and mayonaise-y mean north since mayonnaise is white like snow. You just have to remember to flip it around, because it's backwards: Runny-runny is really north and lazy-lazy is actually south, right? Oh! And don't forget: it's all good the first way if you live in Australia because everything is upside down there. Got it?
Right.
Once we got to Korgrak, we high fived him and welcomed him to the team. He's putting the hurt on Raedric's Undead Army as we speak.
Next, Blood Legacy. By the time Alia got to Blood Legacy, she had 5 base points in mechanics. I like to do this with Hedge Maze + Gjefa bonuses. Hedge Maze grants +2 to stealth and Gjefa +1 to mechanics. 5 + 2 (Gloves of Manipulation) + 1 = 8. Mechanics 8 is the magic number for Dyrford. Mechanics 8 is particularly important in Through Death's Gate, as you'll soon see. In Blood Legacy, mechanics 8 let Alia open this door, granting her access to the inner sanctum key and bloodless quest completion.
Onto Through Death's Gate. This is one of the trickier quest for my solo rogues. With a mechanics score less than 8, there are three scary bits. With mechanics 8, there are but two.
The first challenging part is the druid room. The menpwgra in the center of the room is hard to get by: A Shadowing Beyond cast is required. As in all Shadowing Beyond race-throughs, we want to maximize our movement rate and Intelligence. I like to use the Orlan Bramble ring here, too, since there's a risk of being hobbled. Blacsonn could make sense as well, now that I think about it.
On PotD it's a good idea to pull and kill the sporelings: there's just too many of them. Fan of Flames scrolls work great for that. This is why we wanted those spider legs back in Caed Nua.
Btw, Remember to wear the Hermit Hat when pulling the sporelings!
With the majority of the sporelings nixed, exiting was much safer.
Ok. Next level. I totally screwed this up...The plan had been to use Mechanics 8 to open the final door and bypass the oh-so sketchy spirit room. Unfortunately, I absent mindedly rested, dispelling our Gjefa bonuses. Faced with the choice of returning to Ondra's Gift or negotiating the spirits, we chose to backtrack and see Gjefa again. That meant we had to pass through the druid and sporeling rooms three times. Remind me never to do that again!
The upside, I guess, is that we got to fight this battle, the final confrontation of the quest, fully rested. That fight is totally winnable with Whispers of Treason and Fan of Flames scrolls alone, though.
So that's that: We're going to Twin Elms everybody! Yay!
Best,
A.
It wasn't me. I do remember posting in said thread, but it was SapphireIce that originally made it.
Hey everyone! If you'd like to see Alia's next entry, click the spoiler tag! The entire post is in it. @JuliusBorisov hasn't been to Twin Elms yet and I don't want to spoil him!
Some of you seem to think that Alia is moving quickly. The Leaden Key disagrees.
Fast? Slow? Whatever. Just don't get in Alia's way. The Leaden Key assassins learned that the hard way. Simultaneously I learned a lesson the hard way: when you separate enemies for tactical advantage it not only strains plausibility it leads to ugly, embarrassing screenshots.
Like this, for example. Here we see Alia to the east of the map, with a fighter and a chanter, both drawn from the fray with Shadowing Beyond. This fight looks way less cool than it could have, huh?
Oh, well. Here we see the Leaden Key Rogue throwing down with a charmed fighter and three shades. Alia, meanwhile, is playing pinata with the Leaden Key Wizard. No candies in there, I'm afraid.
Upon arrival in Twin Elms, Alia completed Hard Bargain and Sacrificial Bloodline before heading into Teir Evron. We talked to all four god groups, with the intention of completing at least three of the quests, possibly four.
The Nest Above the Clouds was first. Stealthing may seem lame to some on RP grounds. I beg to differ. In fact, I think it makes perfect sense. I mean, if you had a choice between fighting all this and walking around it, what would you do? I'd totally go around- an not just because I am epicly lazy.
We completed The Nest Above the Clouds peacefully and then proceeded to Into the White Void. With Int 19, this can be completed peacefully. All you need to do is pick up the Blue Crystal Key in the east and then walk over to the northwest. This was almost too easy, but we'll take it. Prison of Ice is easily completed once the elves are gone.
My last rogue fell in The Old Queen and the New King. It happened right here:
My character had accessed the back of the maw with a grappling hook. Upon reaching the other side, she was tired. And as luck would have it, there were two enemies there: a lion and a lion clansman. Not wanting to fight fatigued, I tried to escape and rest. Sadly, that didn't work. We ended up drawing in other enemies and dying a horrible death. Alia had no intention of making the same mistake. She took down the lion and lin clansman ASAP. Fatigue be damned.
After chit-chatting with Sul, Alia decided to fight Oernos. She opened with Shadowing Beyond and then ran. Even invisible, this was kind of scary.
Ahh!
Ahhhhhh!
Where was Alia going, you ask? Here:
Because when do you ever get to see lions and bears fight each other? This was super-fun to watch. And look: Alia even stole the kill, thanks to a well timed finishing blow.
The fight didn't end with the death of Oernos. This turned into a brawl, spread throughout the Maw. I enjoyed this, and it actually makes sense. There was a stand off between warring factions. All they needed was a catalyst. Alia was that catalyst. No regrets here.
That brings us to Alia's near death experience. At the Mercy of the Tribes is without question my least favorite quest in the game. There's nothing wrong with it in a technical sense, or in a story sense. It's just too tempting and too dangerous. Dungeon Delver is awesome; Stelgaers are not.
My plan here was thin on details. The intent was to use Whispers of Treason from the Arret and Spirit Spiral to make the stelgaers fight each other. Aside from that...I don't know? Use the choke point and hope for the best? Terrible plan.
By the time we ran out of summons and Whispers of Treason charges, we were left with this:
That's sort of a best case scenario, and yet it was still exceedingly dangerous. Alia was knocked unconscious and brought back by the Ring of Wonder. She was one more hit from death. And then:
Just in time. I mean just in time! I'll never do that again-not without a better plan, that is.
Hunter Brother went better. The stelgaers went down with ease- partly because an elder had failed to join the fray.
The blights and lurkers were taken down in batches, with a rest in between. This would have been a bit much otherwise.
And that, my friends, was Alia's last Twin Elms quest. All that remained was to pack up and head off to the Burial Isle.
Best,
A.
Psst! The post is in the spoiler tag. Check the spoiler tag! You won't regret it
Alia's passage to Thaos was more eventful than Astrid's. Fortunately, the precautionary measures that I put into place but hadn't tested worked splendidly. Alia was revealed at an in opportune time, but she survived.
The stroll to the The Pit went smoothly. Surprisingly, it's possible to get through all this without using Shadowing Beyond.
Things got interesting in a bad way shortly after the descent. This spirit encounter is always nerve wracking. Like Astrid, Alia initiated combat by revealing herself to a spirit that lacked a disabling weapon. She then raced for the door, wearing Blaidh Golan, Rymgrand's and the Hermit Hat, while running Farmer's Spread and Casita Casserole. The logic here being that we want to maximize our survivability in the event of an untimely reveal while also minimizing the likelihood of a reveal through movement rate and intelligence. It's a good plan.
Unfortunately, there is a chance element at play here. If the pursuing spirits bunch up in the wrong way, the path to the exit can be partially blocked, impeding progress. That delay can lead to an untimely reveal. Like this:
Blaidh Golan and Rymgrand's Mantle to the rescue. Alia emerged virtually unscathed, although she did end up pulling two animats, leading to this scene:
Onto the drakes. The first one was and is easy. It would be pretty hard to lose a character here. Trigger the encounter out of stealth. Activate Shadowing Beyond ASAP, run east with max movement rate, using Farmer's Spread and a rest bonus, and max intelligence, using the Hermit Hat and Casita Casserole. It couldn't be simpler. Just don't wear Shod in Faith! No Shod in Faith! See that crit from a fear effect? If Alia had been wearing Shod in Faith, Consecrated Ground would have triggered and she would have been revealed. Shod in Faith is great, except when it isn't and when it isn't it's really, really bad.
I was a bit nervous about the second drake encounter since my first PotD solo no reload attempt ended here. I had delayed activating Shadowing Beyond slightly, and that caused the drake to be pulled slightly east, blocking the exit. That needn't have been fatal, but I neglected to hedge against the possibility of fighting the drake, thus my character lacked Prayer Against Fear and Bulwarks. Happily, Alia was ready. She executed stealth perfectly and she was prepped to fight if it came to that. Fortunately, it didn't. See that notification about Wael fighting shades? That means we're good: the path is clear.
Thaos remains.
Best,
A.
So: we've made it to Thaos. It's time for a throwdown. First, though, we should review Alia's build.
Skills: Stealth: 11, Athletics: 3, Lore: 2, Mechanics: 5, Survival: 2
Abilities: (1) Blinding Strike (3) Reckless Assault (5) Finishing Blow (7) Dirty Fighting (9) Fearsome Strike (11) Deathblows
Talents: (2) Weapon Focus: Knight (4) Shadowing Beyond (6) Deep Pockets (8) Weapon Focus: Adventurer (10) Two Weapon Style
Boons: Hylea’s Boon, Dungeon Delver
And her inventory.
Every item has a purpose. One choice, the Torc of the Falcon Eyes, is obviously sub-optimal, but 1 Per point wasn't worth the trouble of fighting the lighthouse spirits. In future fights, I'll likely change the glove slot: the Rotfinger gloves weren't used at all. I'm happy with everything else, although I remain undecided on the We Toki + Starcaller, Two Handed Style + Adventurer versus We Toki, One Handed Style + Vicious Fighting issue. I'm leaning towards the latter these days, although Alia did ok with the former.
The plan is to use We Toki + Starcaller, both with vessel slaying, against the judge and headsman. Sheathed in Autumn, with kith slayer + freezing lash, is for Thaos.
As for the other items:
The Hermit Hat is for Thaos's confusion spells; Heldrik's Coat, for the Judge's prone on hit; the Ring of Unshackling is for Cleansing Flame; the Boots of Speed, for spell evasion and potion quaffing; the Blunting Belt is great because hooray for DR; the Ring of Wonder is there because everyone makes mistakes.
Our camping bonus is accuracy v vessel. The Rugged Wilderness Hat got us to Survival 4.
Ok. Let's get this party started!
This is Thaos. I have it on good authority that he wears his grandmother's dirty underpants.
We opened with Shadowing Beyond and then raced west. Our next objective was to apply DoAM and War Paint before engaging. We really, really, really want to get this turkey stunned or on his keist before he can cast Devotions for the Faithful. Devotions for the Faithful slows everything down.
We started out well on that front.
But then we failed to keep him locked, due to a dirth of criticals. At this point, I was wishing I had gone One Handed + Vicious.
It's all good though: Woedica's Judge falls.
Despite an early blindness, we had trouble landing stun or prone via. That Shining Beacon cast made us run. Happily, we successfully evaded.
That's better!
Two down.
Time to finish this. The sketchy part was evading Cleansing Flame. The beetles were plan A; the Ring of Unshackling, plan B. Plan A worked.
Next, we stalled awaiting the expiry of Shields for the Faithful. Note that we've switched to Sheathed in Autumn.
Once Shield for the Faithful expired, we engaged.
From here on out we chipped away while evading spells. We made steady progress, but we didn't always evade as well as we could have.
I need to get better at that.
Thankfully, Alia had enough healing on hand to compensate for my ineptitude.
And done! Say hello to my first PotD solo no reloader, everyone! Hooray!
What's next? Honestly, I'm inclined to run another rogue. This time I'd like to work in some bounties, some White March content and some Caed Nua. I'll let you know when I'm ready to go ahead with that. For now, let's celebrate Alia's victory. You go girl! Pale elves forever!
Best,
A.
I'm currently playing a priest. The plan is to complete a normal NR and then move on to PotD, like I did with my rogues. Should I refrain from posting the normal run and just wait until i'm ready to try PotD, or is there interest in a normal run?
My current character reached level 11 with but one completely avoidable reload. My intention is to finish up her active run and then start a new one that I'll cover here.
So far, I'm finding the priest to be much, much easier than the rogue, at least on normal. The early game isn't any harder with a priest and the late game, pre-Burial Isle, is far simpler. The Burial Isle will be harder on the priest, I'd imagine, but over-all the priest feels more capable. I'm more inclined to explore with her, more likely to try a completionist run with her.
Best,
A.
Great! Looking forward for that!
And yes, the priest is more than capable on his/her own (even solo on PoTD), like this build illustrates. More over, most (if not all) official Deadfire Ultimate successful runs are with a some kind of priest multiclass.
A completionist? Do you mean you'll go for the dragons and stuff?
Well, strictly speaking a completionist approach (in my opinion) doesn't mean you should kill all those dragons and stuff. Yes, you need to face them and resolve a meeting one way or another but it doesn't have to be violent. Personally, I always play as a completionist but usually trying to not shed unnecessary blood.
Alena, Meadow Folk Priest of Wael (Solo)
Game Version: 3.7.0.1318 with White March I & II, Difficulty: Normal, Settings: Maim Before Death: On; Injuries: On; Expert Mode: OFF, Mods: None
Gaming Notes: After completing no reloads on normal and PotD with a rogue, I've decided to move onto a different class. I chose a priest because priests seem to have the highest ceiling of all PoE characters and I would like to take on some off-questline challenges. The plan is to complete a run on normal and then move onto PotD, as I did with my rogues. We'll see how that goes. Early results are encouraging, I must say: priests rock!
(@Serg_BlackStrider. These stats are for a normal PoE run specifically. On PotD, with the intent of moving onto Deadfire, I'd up Per)
Rumor has it that the early game is hard for priests. Alena disagrees. Alena says she's just as capable of any character: she just has to do things differently. I think she's right.
Alena handled the early game much like her rogue predecessors. The only difference was in the order of her actions, with that order being largely determined by her initial skill point allotment. Let's take the item raid on Raedric Hold as an early example.
Safely navigating the Hold and recovering the Gloves of Manipulation requires stealth 5 and mechanics 4, with the 4th mechanics point available through Laborer's Rest at The Black Hound. That combination, stealth 5 and mechanics 4, is not available to a priest until level 4. And that meant Alena had to take a different approach.
She entered the Hold on the 20th at Level 3, with stealth 5 and mechanics 2 + 1 (Laborer's Rest).
That allowed her to retrieve the Boots of Stealth, but not -not- the Gloves of Manipulation. That's ok, though: because Boots of Stealth would get her to L4 and thus Act II. How? I'm glad you asked...
Stealth let Alena complete the Smith's Shipment.
That was followed by Ferry Flotsam- a quest that Alena, as a priest, handled better than her rogue predecessors.
Opening arbalest shot->Interdiction
Divine Marks
On PotD, this might be different. On PotD, that Interdiction might be an Inspiring Radiance. Whatever. The point is that Alena did great. I'm happy for her and she's happy, too.
Do you know what made Alena even happier? Reaching the oh-so crucial milestone of 5K coppers. Because 5K coppers buys you an animat. And an animat is a ticket to leisurely completion of act 1.
Great, huh? But some of you may be thinking: "Wait, wait: back up. How did she get 5k coppers?" Ok, well, selling Gaun's Pledge to Heodan was a good start. Then there were the random fine weapons strewn about, collected thanks to those shiny new boots. But you know what took her over the top? A robe and a quarterstaff.
I'm 100% against killing NPCs to sell their gear. But I'm also 100% for killing Durance on general principle. In this run, the latter trumped the former. You know how Pallegina is cool and nice but creepily sadistic toward Verzano? That's how I am with Durance. Every character biography should read:
Alena was just doing her part.
Anyhoo...
After completing Ferry Flotsam, Late for Dinner and Against the Grain, Alena was one quest shy of L4. Buried Secrets requires mechanics 4 + stealth, so that was out. Alena went with Vengeance from the Gravee. That was safe thanks to her animat buddy. PotD would require a different solution. Don't ask me what that is: I haven't decided yet.
Having attained L4, it was time to head to Caed Nua. On normal, stealth alone will get you to Maerwald. Just let the steward open the door and slip back into stealth. Hooray for easy!
Speaking of easy: Mr. Amazing the Animat made the Maerwald encounter that exactly. Shoutout to the cray-cray watcher himself for the assist on the blights. Flame blights do hate Chill Fog, and we couldn't have cast it with out you, Maerwald. Thanks!
Finished with some Fan of Flames scrolls.
And just like that our priest has made it to Defiance Bay. I'll post on the Bay soon.
Best,
A.
Sorry, genuinely can't remember, it's been 1 or 2 years since I last played. Could you maybe outline what issues you are facing and that might trigger some tactical ideas?
From hazy memory, isn't it mainly fear and stun that are their main attacks? And are wraiths the ones that can grab you and drop you on traps?
Fear is easy to counter with just the level 1 Protection from Fear scroll. The rest might not be pertinent for different builds; my solo strategy was to create an invincible tank while you are going for a stealth and accuracy approach. Consequently I had max Fortitude (120-140 range fully buffed) so stun attacks were not even a danger. And any grazes can be further mitigated by using level 2 Scroll of Protection or Potions of Recovery.
It might be that you need to go for a more offensive strategy and try to take them out before they can get close to you. Or perhaps use scrolls of Confusion to even the odds. Anyway, why don't you outline what challenges you are facing and I'm sure people can chip in with ideas.