Tales of the Watcher: A Pillars of Eternity I + II No Reload Thread

[Enuhal]

Tales of the Watcher: Pillar of Eternity I + II No Reload Adventures

Greetings, Watchers!

This thread serves as a place to share your no-reload adventures in the world of Eora. No matter if you are chasing after Thaos, Eothas or both, as long as you're in search of adra and ready to write about your experiences, you're welcome here.

Some basic rules for the runs:

1) All difficulty levels from normal/classical (for newer players) to path of the damned are elegible, though since these runs are meant to be challenging, story mode and easy/relaxed should be avoided for this thread.

2) While these should be no-reload runs, they don't need to be played on Trial of Iron mode. Why would you not want to play on this mode specifically meant for this type of challenge, you might ask? Well, especially if you're a bit newer you might want to continue the run even after a failure to learn more about later parts of the game, or you might want to be able to have earlier saves to look back to for some testing for future runs. Some people even like to re-play (off the record) certain battles with a different strategy just to see what they could've done differently. All of these things are impossible on Trial of Iron, as the game only allows you to have one save that gets deleted when you die.

3) Expert mode is entirely optional, as are any of Magran's Challenges for Deadfire. The same is true for level scaling.

4) I personally currently don't intend to play with Berath's Blessings in Deadfire. They can give you a huge advantage, especially early on, heavily changing the difficulty curve/balance of the game. If you want to use any of them for your run, make sure to clearly state which ones you are picking in your opening post. In general, the opening post should contain all the modes and settings you are intending to use.

5) Detailed combat descriptions and screenshots are appreciated (at least for particularily challenging encounters) - these games are very tactical with a large variety of different possible approaches, and much of the fun is in sharing these strategies and learning about new ones. The possibilites are nearly endless!

6) Roleplayed runs are very welcome, of course, but by no means a requirement.

7) You may play the game in real time with pause mode as well as turn-based mode, whichever you prefer. When it comes to turn-based mode I have zero experience and will not be able to provide any input, but I am sure that others will.

If you're unsure about any rules or possible edge cases, feel free to ask - most of those things are decided by community consensus, which is why I'm not being any more detailed in this opening post. These are enough rules for now! Let's find us some engwithan machines and luminous adra pillars!
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The Secret Archives of the Hand Occult

Somewhere in the Deadfire Archipelago, on a remote island, rarely visited by ships, there lies a secret library, where worshippers of Wael, scribes of the Hand Occult, write and re-write history. In this library, there lies a book called the "Tome of the Watchers", which lists and describes the names and histories of notable Watchers throughout Eora. Here are a few excerpts:

Notable Watchers of the Dyrwood [Watchers who have completed the PoE1 no-reload challenge]:

Notable Watchers of the Deadfire Archipelago [Watchers who have completed the PoE2: Deadfire no-reload challenge]:

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader, played by @Enuhal
Settings: Path of the Damned
Introduction: http://tavernrpg.com/threads/tales-...eternity-i-ii-no-reload-thread.468/post-10111
Finale: http://tavernrpg.com/threads/tales-...eternity-i-ii-no-reload-thread.468/post-10162

Legendary Watchers [Watchers who have successfully gotten through both games without reloading]:

Watchers who have perished [Watchers whose attempts have ended in death]:

 

[Enuhal]

Introducing Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader (Shieldbearer of St. Elgca / Unbroken) - Hunting Eothas through the Deadfire Archipelago

Hello everyone! Time to start our journey into the Deadfire Archipelago. I'm an experienced Pillars of Eternity I player with 11 complete runs (at least three of them on Trial of Iron / Path of the Damned modes, including a Frozen Crown run) and 468 hours sunk into the game according to Steam. However, when it comes to the sequel, I am far less knowledgable. I have completed only two runs in total - one right when the game came out in 2018, one after the release of all of the DLCs, in 2021. The first run I started on veteran difficulty, changing to classic early on when I ran into trouble on the opening island, changing to relaxed when facing the Giant Cave Grub in the Old City and changing to Story Mode when facing the Megabosses and the DLCs - the changes in game mechanics really did a number on my abilities, and I didn't really feel like reading about all the things that changed in the sequel. My second run I played on classic difficulty all the way through, including megabosses and DLCs. I got a bit more familiar with the mechanics, and very few reloads were required until I entered the DLC/Megaboss encounters.

After a discussion about a possible PoE no-reload thread came up in this forum, I decided to check if I would be able to complete the early parts of the game (most notably Gorecci Street and the Engwithan Digsite, widely considered to be amongst the most dangerous parts of the game) on Path of the Damned in a safe and reliable fashion. After about 10 attempts I developed a strategy for myself, and I felt confident to give it at least a try, and following up with a test run, where I successfully made it out of the early game (only to die in the - relatively easy - midgame due to my lacking knowledge of some of the encounters), I now want to have a go at it in a true no-reload run. I have chosen the following settings:

Path of the Damned difficulty. That's pretty much it. Nothing else - no Trial of Iron mode (if I die, I want to be able to see how I could've beaten the encounter for future attempts), no expert mode (I need the information on enemy stats at this point), no level scaling (I generally hate this mechanic in roleplaying games. In my opinion it mainly makes games more tedious), no Magran's Challenges, no Berath's Blessings.

This is planned to be a completionist run, excluding all DLCs and megabosses, which I don't feel comfortable facing on PotD. I am even uninstalling all of the DLCs, including minor things like the Scalliwag's Pack or the various Scavenger Hunt rewards - these add some small items to the early game inventory, which don't make the biggest difference (except for, maybe, the Captain's Feasts you can get for free), but I want to be on an even playing field with player who don't own these DLCs. I am mostly playing with the official companions, except on Maje Island - until my party is full, I will be recruiting two adventurers to help us out with the dangerous early game encounters.

Here we go. Let's create our Watcher. Oh, we're playing on real time with pause. I kind of forgot that turn based mode was an option. Our first choice is our Pillars of Eternity I history. I go with the generic "Benevolent Soul" history, which is close to the expected "good guy" choices (which fits for our Shieldbearer of St. Elgca).

Spoiler

Not optimized for the best gameplay outcomes, but everything makes sense. It does grant you Hylea's Bounty, a powerful limited use food item, as a reward for pledging the hollowborn souls to Hylea - a good early game reward. Berath would also grant you a very powerful item, while the rewards for Skaen/Woedica and Galawain are only relevant later on, and you don't get anything for siding with Rymgard or Wael (though you propably shouldn't have expected to get anything out of that in the first place, considering the nature of these gods).

Now, to create our character. We choose a male wild orland (which grants resistance to resolve afflictions and is one of my typical choices, together with pale elf, for tanky PoE1 characters as well), pick multiclass with Paladin/Shieldbearer of St. Elgca as our first one (flames of devotion as a first ablity, mostly for the accuracy bonus - it won't be used a lot, what we would really want is lay on hands) and Fighter/Unbroken as a second (picking disciplined barrage, another way to boost accuarcy). The result is a "Crusader" multiclass. Both of these choices give us lots of engagements and defensive abilities. The goal here is to make a character that is very hard to kill and can engage a ton of enemies.

For our attributes, we max out resolve and constitution. Resolve is not nearly as useful in Deadfire as it was in PoE1 (it's no longer a primary stat for speech checks), but I want my character to be somewhat consistent to what I would've played in the first game, and I do like very high deflection. Picking Ixamitl Plains as our culture (where a lot of orlans are from), we end up with 20 resolve, 18 constitution and the other stats at 10. We pick the mercenary background, which is mostly a flavor choice.

As for proficiencies, we pick "bewildering strikes", the club modal, which is crucial for our early game strategy. It lowers enemy will defense by a strong 25 points. We also pick "block", the modal for medium shields, which is propably the best shield modal.

Triozum's soul returns to his body, and we meet up with the loyal Edér:

Spoiler

We don't have much time to talk. Our ship, the Defiant, is under attack by pirates. Time to grab our gear and move out. Benweth, a hostile principi captain, awaits us for a short talk. This is a good time to talk about our characters background:

While this is not a roleplayed run, I made sure to create a character that makes sense within the world. The Ixamitl Plains are home to many orlan tribes. Triozum has learned to fight from an earlier range, defending his tribe from enemy raiders. Eventually, he met a Shieldbearer of St. Elgca, who tutored him in the values of her order. Triozum realised that diplomacy is a better way to achieve security compared to violence. He started initiating peace negotiations between warring tribes, but one of those peace deals went wrong, ending in betrayal - Triozum was left with the blame and had to leave his home. He wandered around as a mercenary for a while before trying for a new start in the Dyrwood - cue the events of PoE1.
Shieldbearers favour diplomacy and honesty in their speech, while they despise aggression and cruelty. Note that lying is permitted, despite honesty being valued highly. In my interpretation, Shieldbearers will, at times, make deals even with shady characters as long as it prevents further violence. This will mirror my gameplay choices: I will try to avoid violence, especially in the early game, whenever and however possible, even if I have to side with pirates or other criminals to do so.

Of course, there are gameplay reasons for this as well: When you fight, you can die, especially on PotD, especially in the early game. If you don't fight, you survive (except for some scripted events or traps, I guess). The penalty for this is: Less loot, less gold, less reagents for gear enchantments. The advange: Oftentimes easy experience. So, all that is to say, we pick diplomatic options when we can, as this also helps our "Faith and Devotion" defense bonus:

Spoiler

We set our AI script to auto attack only for now. We will often times turn AI off entirey, though. Easy enough to flank and take down the enemy pirates, while we use our meager disciplined barrage + flames of devotion abilties whenever we can:

Spoiler

A storm is bound to crash our ship - we save one of our sailors, Chiputec, a fellow traveller from the Ixamitl Plains, during a scipted sequence:

Spoiler

On the beach, Edér officially joins the party, as a swashbuckler (fighter/rogue). We will start our adventures on Maje Island next time.

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - First Update: Port Maje and Vilario's Rest

Our crew is scattered around Vilario’s Rest, but the beach is also crawling with hostile wildlife. We hope the sailors can fend for themselves for a while – we need to gather allies to prepare a rescue mission for those that fled into the nearby sea cave. Triozum and Edér leave the beach without engaging in any battles, planning to return soon. On the way north towards Port Maje we encounter some dawnstars at Ilonet’s Fork, and Edér helps them with their wagon using his might attribute. Soon we’re at the port, where we first recruit Xoti as a single class Priest/Harvester of Gaunt. We enter the Kraken’s Eye tavern, where we pick up the task “The Better Man”. Triozum uses diplomacy to convince Galian to leave.

Spoiler

We return to Thorel, getting a decent chunk of experience. Next, we enter the jail and talk to Rum-Dumb Riggere. To free him, Edér steals the prison key from Savia (we make sure everyone stays stealthed the entire time), who SOMEHOW doesn’t notice that there’s anything wrong here.

Spoiler

We talk to Riggere again at the market. This gets us to level 2.

I won’t mention skill choices upon level up, only abilities. Skills don’t matter too much for the most part, and due to the party skillcheck system I am mostly going for 2 in each one before our more permanent party members get to specialize in one or two skills each (our current mechanics/stealth person will get a bit ahead by putting 4-5 points in both of these skill before spreading out their choices, though).

Triozum picks up the “Deep Faith” ability to improved his defenses.

Edér takes disciplined barrage.

Xoti picks interdiction as a new spell.

Level 2 is also required to hire adventurers, since they always come one level below the Watcher, so you can’t recruit any at level 1. It’s 250 gold each for level 1 companions. Our party isn’t full, and there are some tough battles ahead. At the Kraken’s eye, Triozum meets the moon godlike sisters Layenna and Layanna – both local ex-pirates who have since turner to nobler pursuits.

Layenna is a Warden – to be precise, a Druid (Ancient) / Fighter, taking the charm beasts spell and spiritshift: bear plus disciplined barrage. Charm beasts is the entire reason we’re recruiting a druid here, as there are two difficult battles against mostly beasts ahead in the near future. Since we’re only needing this one level 1 spell, there’s no need for her to be single class – the fighter multiclass helps with accuracy for the spell thanks to disciplined barrage.

Both sisters will put dexterity, intelligence and perception at 16, the other stats at 10 – both are from the deadfire archipelago, with the raider background, war bow proficiency for the “Overdraw” modal and scepter proficiency for “Destructive Channeling”. I like scepters in deadfire because they are ranged weapons, yet they deal crushing/slashing damage, which is a great way to diversify damage types.

Layanna, the other sister, is a Psyblade (Cipher/Fighter), picking whisper of treason as her crucial ability. This will work in concert with Triozum’s club modal – that’s the plan, at least. Once again we also add disciplined barrage for more accuracy plus the same stats and weapon proficiencies.

We buy two warbows, two scepters, two brigandines and a second sabre for Edér. The brigandines are for Edér and Triozum. Xoti gets to equip Edér’s Saint’s War Armor – she needs to stay alive so others can stay alive. We also pick up a pair of swordman’s bracers from a crate at the market for Triozum.

Triozum talks to Rinco at his home, picks up his quest and meets the governor. We discover a hidden ring of unshackling at the eastern part of town – curious, I hadn’t seen that one in my previous playthroughs. Layenna will keep it for now. Back in the jail we pick up the quest from Savia and take the lockpicks from one of the cells (we couldn't see those previously – the sisters have better perception than the other party members). In general, Edér picks up everything he can in the town (which is basically everything except for the chest in the governor’s house, which is too well guarded).

Now, how to deal with Gorecci Street? Well, I spend my 10 reloads for PotD testing on the Engwithan Digsite, mostly. I didn't bother trying to take on this encounter. The street is solved by leaving the city, entering from outside so we start to the southern part of the map, stealthing along the western part of the map and talking to Ilari. No reason to fight one of the deadliest battle of the game when we can just talk to each other, right? Not a method I came up with, it’s been commonly mentioned even back then in 2018 when I actively followed the obsidian forums as the game was released.

Spoiler

Layenna and Layanna level up.

Layenna picks up “Fast Runner”, her sister gets “Lingering Echoes”. We find a hidden protective eothasian charm in the well, Layanna gets that one for now. Xoti reaps some souls, and we return to turn in the quest and talk to the kraken’s bartender about Rinco, which I forgot to do earlier on. We travel to Satahuzi and buy Shorewalker’s Sandals from Eofina. Triozum has use of these to compensate for his low stride due to his Unbroken subclass.

We convinze Mokeha to give back Rinco’s coin purse and return it:

Spoiler

This results in level ups for Triozum, Edér and Xoti:

Triozum: Fast Runner

Edèr: Escape

Xoti: Holy Meditation, Weapon and Shield Style

We leave town for now and see if we can find anything helpful on the island before we return to assemble our crew. We buy some goods at a rice farm, enter the Upoho Wharo Woods and convince the druid guarding them that we’re here to help – he gives us a wise teeth necklace. Nice.

Spoiler

Layenna equips it for now. A potential xaurip encounter is avoided with our survival/stealth skills at Whakura Pass.

Okay. We have now done what we can without fighting. We need to gather our remaining sailors at Vilario's Rest. Triozum uses athletics to help Irrena and heasl her via survival skill. The young boars at the beach are easy enough to defeat. Soon all of the crew but Beodul are rescued, and we enter the sea cave.

To the east, some beetles and vessels wait for us – all done without trouble, using our disciplined barrages and xoti’s blessed harvest to improve damage output, plus flanking opponents when we can and switching from war bows to scepters whenever we have to target skeletons. Further north we run into the rusted copper construct. For a preview to Engwithan Digsite battle strategies, Triozum applies bewilderings strikes with his club modal, and Layanna follows up with whisper of treason, turning the construct to our side to help us fight the revenants:

Spoiler

Triozum loots a ring of minor protection. We free Beodul to the west by disarming the nearby traps.

Spoiler

Layenna and Layanna level up.

Layenna: Nature’s Mark

Layanna: Fast Runner

Some sea bats to the west are dealt with, we dive to another tiny part of the cave, visit the small outside area and talk to our assembled crew. Time to return to the port. There, we sell what we don’t need and buy a ring of minor deflection and the Death’s Maw helm for Triozum plus the physicker’s belt for Xoti. We craft a hearty breakfast. Now it’s time to move to the digsite. I normally wouldn't buy some of those relatively weak items, instead saving up for bigger and better things, but I want every little bit of help I can get for the upcoming encounters. Next time, things are about to get dangerous.

 

[Alesia_BH]

Yay!

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Second Update: Engwithan Digsite, Part I - Outside area and smaller buildings

Lots of detailed combat descriptions to follow - I have been spending most of my testing time prior the this run on the upcoming encounters, so I want to share the strategies I have developed, though I won't mention any uses of disciplined barrages, that would just be too much detail - you can generally assume that I make sure to have a barrage active whenever one of our fighter multiclasses is about to cast an impactful spell (and if they don't, it's propably because I forgot to use it). Okay, here we go: First battle, young boars, wurms and, most notably, (adult) boars.

Triozum takes up position near the wooden stairs at the entryway to the digsite, with the others behind. We create a little bit of a chokepoint there so not all of the enemies will be able to attack us at once. The adult boars are especially deadly. Layanna moves forward to lure the first group of beasts towards the others, taking one shot to gain some extra focus before moving behind Triozum:

Spoiler

The beasts charge towards us, the boar in front - Triozum hits it with bewildering blows (the club modal), layanna casts whisper of treason - but misses, despite the now very low will defense of the boar. However, the other beasts are a bit confused and are blocking each other while trying to catch up with their leader, so we have enough time for a second attempt - luckily, that opening shot moved Layanna above 20 focus. This time, we get the boar on our side for a duration of 18 seconds:

Spoiler

We move a bit forward to take down the wurm who has now arrived - finally, the beasts gather their wits and fully approach us. Xoti buffs us with holy meditation, Layanna is able to take a good shot at another young boar which grants her enough focus for an empowered whisper of treason, charming the second adult boar just as the first whisper expires:

Spoiler

However, the charm quickly breaks again (before it would expire, so we must have accidentally hit the boar). Even Triozum can't survive two boars hitting him for very long, so we need a backup: Time for Layenna to cast (empowered) charm beasts. As Xoti, with radiance, and Triozum himself, with lay on hand, keep our watcher alive, we get control of all of the boars, though the young boar is only grazed, meaning the duration will be short:

Spoiler

With the boars on our side we can take down the wurms that are attacking us at range. The young boar turns as we kill the first wurm, Layenna has to spiritshift into a boar to protect her somewhat exposed sister (spiritshift: bear provides an engagement). Edér helps her out by flanking the young boar, together they take it down and our spiritshifted druid uses terryfing roar against the remaining boars once they turn on us. Layanna moves downstairs, ready to team up with Triozum for another club modal + whisper combo as soon as the situation allows for it:

Spoiler

The whisper hits just in time - Triozum was taking a lot of damage and had to resort to an empowered lay on hands. Now we can flank the remaining hostile boar, Edér goes for empowered crippling strike, soon we are in a winning position - the whisper is easily long enough to take this one down, and we get into position for the second one. We flank it and shoot it down:

Spoiler

The first difficult battle is done. These boars are quite deadly on PotD - I've seen one of them kill Edér with just two hits during my testing.

A short interlude, as we explore the smaller side areas of the digsite - those offer minor battles that are not much of a challenge, except for one of them. The luminous adra pool and the foreman's office are easy enough to clear out:

Spoiler

We also find and equip the cat Gosha around the outside part of the digsite. The ancient training hall is more challenging and a significant encounter against a group of skeletons, including a skeletal sorcerer. Here, we switch to our scepters and carefully disarm traps to give us an area to fight in. Since we're going to rest after this encounter we also use some of our drugs for minor benefits. As the skeletons approach, we go for another bewildering blows + whispers combo while buffing with holy meditation and summoning empowered sporelings (doing these three areas is also an opportunity to for us to make use of our "empower" points before the planned rest). The skeleton warriors and the archer deal lots of damage to Triozum, who has to go for empowered lay on hands - the whisper hits for a good duration, and Edér activates his saber modal, skipping past the enemy line to engage the sorcerer with an empowered crippling strike:

Spoiler

The lay on hands arrives in time. The sporelings appear and help Edér in his battle against the sorcerer - actually, Edèr gets some great hits here and neutralizes this threat by himself. Good job Edér! Meanwhile, Xoti goes for radiance and interdiction - almost as if we were playing PoE1, though both abilities are much weaker here:

Spoiler

Interdiction really angers the skeletons - they even move out of engagement to go after Xoti, who is quite vulnerable, so we whisper some words of betrayal to the strongest remaining warrior. Layenna goes for nature's mark and spirit shift. Meanwhile, Edér and the sporelings now take on the archer. Soon, only the charmed skeleton remains and is surrounded.

Spoiler

Very good. We get a fine leather armor, hunting bow and robe out of the deal - the sisters equip the fine armor pieces, Edér takes the hunting bow as a secondary weapon. We let the drug effects run out and prepare a rest with some powerful food buffs: We use Hylean’s bounty on Triozum, hearty breakfast on Edér and Mariner’s Porridge on the others.

Now for the second big battle, and possibly one of the most challenging ones of the run - the fight against the young drake, who is aided by boars, young panthers and wurms. This battle, of course, like most of them, could be skipped by stealth. I wouldn't want to do it with only the Watcher, Edér and Xoti, but it is certainly doable (given enough practice and a refined strategy). The moon godlike sisters are really going to shine here if all goes according to plan.

Once again we create a chokepoint at one of the ramps, and Layanna gets to shoot first. Layenna, meanwhile, drinks a potion of spirit shield, as we can't afford getting interrupted when we cast charm beasts. The empowered charm gets us everything but the wurms in the enemy backline:

Spoiler

Our temporary allies take down the wurms for us. We look at the charm durations, seeing that the drake will stay with us for a little longer. Layanna shoots at some young panthers to gather focus. Luckily, the enemy position blocks the boar from actually attacking us:

Spoiler

Layanna is ready with empowered whispers of treason (after Triozum gets a club modal hit in) as soon as the drake turns on us. The drake gets in a quick breath attack on our party, but it doesn't do too much damage - after that, it's ours for a nice 27 seconds:

Spoiler

Layanna has gathered enough focus to even go one step further: She charms the boar in the middle of the enemy line:

Spoiler

This gives us enough time and help to take down the young panthers - only the two most dangerous foes remain, the boar and the drake. The boar turns first, but Layanna's follow-up whisper misses. Time for Layenna to step in: Charm beasts targeted so that it only affects the drake, not the boar:

Spoiler

As the boar falls, we now have to contend with the drake. Time to use Xoti's holy meditation to counter its fear aura, at least for a while. The drake hits us with a dangerous breath attack, but we're quick to counter with holy radiance:

Spoiler

We're almost out of abilities by now - Edér gets fully hit by the aura and can't do much anymore. However, both sisters land good hits with their overdrawn warbows, finishing the fight in our favor:

Spoiler

And here we are - the drake has fallen. A very good outcome, getting through the outside area without any wounds! This also means we can leave our Hylea's Bounty food buff intact for the upcoming dungeon. Nice!

Now, we talk to Aloth, ask him to join us and send Layenna back to the beach in order to guard the crew of the Defiant (she hands her gloves to her sister and the necklace + ring to Aloth). Aloth picks Chill Fog, Thrust of Tattered Veils and Arcane Veil as his additional spells.

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Third Update: Engwithan Digsite, Part II - The arena sub-level

Inside the dungeon, we use the champion's amulet, opening a secret room where we find an amulet of health for Triozum. Moving south, we deal with the floor puzzle and pick up the gladiator's sword. Further west, we run into our first group of enemies - brine imps and crystal eater spiderlings. The spiderlings are dangerous due to their paralyzing bite ability, which, I believe, targets reflex defense - Triozum's weakness at this point, due to his Unbroken subclass and not having access to weapon and shield style yet. We pull the group back towards a chokepoint, and to our delight they end up in a position with brine imps in front, blocking off the path for the crystal eater spiderlings, meaning that they can't attack us. Layanna goes for a whisper, which fails, but Aloth does amazing work with chill fog and combusting wounds:

Spoiler

Chill fog is one spell that survived the nerfs to various powerful PoE1 tools very well - it's still pretty incredible. One of the brine imps teleports closer to us, but that's fine - they don't deal too much damage either way. While it takes quite a while, our ranged attackers start shooting down the first spider:

Spoiler

Amazingly this one brine imp is still blocking off the other spider after that. Well, we'll take it, I guess:

Spoiler

Since we don't have an opportunity to flank here the higher levels of these foes are a bit of a problem when it comes to deflection, so it really helps that Edér has upgraded to a fine ranged weapon. Well, the brine imps are easily cleared up, Xoti can use her blessed harvests for that. For a lot of battles you will see her stand around, seemingly doing nothing - the reason being that I don't want her to go into recovery in case she needs to go for a quick withdraw, healing spell or inspiration spell. Once I feel safe about a situation she often starts attacking with her crossbow.

Further north, there's another group of mixed enemies, involving another spiderling. Our chokepoint is apparently not as good as the last one - these enemies are able to spread around Triozum, and the spiderling gets into melee range, which is quite dangerous. Triozum misses with his club, and a whisper attempt misses as well:

Spoiler

We go for holy meditation this time around, only for the little bit of extra resolve (more deflection to avoid spiderling hits, especially since Triozum is flanked at times). Aloth casts empowered chill fog, Layanna goes for a second whisper try once Triozum hits the spider, Xoti prepares an interdiction:

Spoiler

The whisper works but breaks immediately - maybe because the spider takes damage from our chill fog? Not entirely sure. Well, interdiction once again makes some enemies turn towards Xoti - I will have to test this more, I am really starting to believe that there is some kind of aggro mechanic within this spell. Luckily, the spider stays on Triozum, being the most dangerous foe by far - we are able to take out the others with mostly just regular attacks, and eventually the spider is alone. It didn't get to paralyze Triozum even once - maybe Hylea's Bounty with the +10 extra defenses really did the job here:

Spoiler

Triozum, Edér and Xoti level up:

Triozum: Fighter stances (yay!), weapon and shield style (tempting to go with the zealous auras, but I want to do something for our terrible reflex defense first). Rending smash (mace proficiency). Our go to stance is defender stance, but we go into warrior stance for boss fights/single enemies when we remember it.

Edér: Fighter stances as well (warrior stance), blinding strike, rapid shot (hunting bow proficiency)

Xoti: Pillar of Faith, destructive channeling (scepter proficiency)

Further west, we run into some copper constructs - this is actually a very easy battle, for once:

Spoiler

To the north is the final group of the dungeon/chapter. It contains an adra ooze and a bunch of ghosts, whisps and imps (I didn't realize, until looking it up after the battle, that the ghosts essentially take half damage from most weapons - guns would have been appropriate here). We'll pull these foes pretty far back to another corridor - some of the enemies trying to follow us are held up by the big adra ooze, so they arrive slowly enough for us to almost take down one of the essence anomalies just with regular attacks before the battle truly starts:

Spoiler

Aloth goes for the reliable chill fog + combusting wounds plan; Meanwhile, Layanna only gets a short whisper, as these enemies have high will defenses, even with the club modal applied and the usage of an empowerement point:

Spoiler

Still, for a while we face less pressure and get another source of damage. We start shooting down our foes - once again Edér does good work with his fine hunting bow, and eventually we take down the greater anomaly:

Spoiler

Triozum needs two lay on hands during the cleanup, but that's fine. It takes a while to kill the adra ooze, but eventually we flank it and get it done:

Spoiler

We've gone through the entire opening island without a single wound. Very nice. My previous practice run looked far worse, and that was after all the testing already, so it seems like we have absorbed even more lessons about the mechanical changes by now.

As we talk to Eothas, Layanna and Aloth level up:

Layanna: Mental Binding, Fighter Stances, Arquebus proficiency

Aloth: Mirrored Image, Wand proficiency

Xoti’s quest advances as she harvests more souls, we talk to the governor, get the blessing of the dawnstars (which we forgot to get earlier on, but maybe there is a skill check in Neketaka where we can use the +2 religion) and return to our ship. Once we leave towards Port Maje (gathering some supplies around the island), Furrante's ship approaches us and Serafen joins the party – as a pure barbarian. I caution everyone not too familiar with the game to never take Serafen as any kind of cipher with you (honestly, even having him just on the ship is possibly too risky in case of boarding battles) – his wild mind subclass is like a wild mage, having random effects from time to time which can be positive, but also devastating – way too risky for no reload purposes in my opinion. We hire all sailors at Port Maje, but don't buy anything else.

I won’t talk much about my Defiant crew, since I don’t do ship combat, only boarding battles. Just to mention: It’s very good to get sailors with only a single skill, because only those can reach 4 points in that position (there’s a cap of 4 skill points in total for most sailors, so if you start with points spread around amongst two skills, you can only ever reach level 3 in one of them.

Serafen’s level ups: Barbaric yell, thick skinned, accurate carnage, two-handed style, quarterstaff proficiency (defensive strike)

Now, we move north towards the big city. This is our last challenge - not to encounter any hostile ships. We would likely lose any boarding battle at this point, as we don't have the numbers to defend the Defiant. On the way, we land on a small island for some provisions and gain some salvage from a shipwreck, plus the very useful laughing imp cameo!

Spoiler

Luckily, no hostile ship gets even within our sight. We make it to the capital safely.

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Fourth Update: Neketaka - Exploration, thievery and non-violent quests

First things first: Everyone levels up as we arrive in Neketaka

Triozum: Zealous Aura (this will mostly be zealous endurance)
Serafen: One Stands Alone, Bloody Slaughter
Aloth: Fireball, Noxious Burst (to have different damage types and target different defenses)
Xoti: Dire Blessing, Divine Mark
Edér: Two Weapon Style

The moon godlike sisters are tasked with protecting the crew in our absence. We will probably only see them during some boarding battles from now on.

The party immediately heads towards the palace, only making a stop in Periki’s Overlook to buy a pair of Burglar’s Gloves from Iolfr after selling everything we don’t need (the money is barely enough, but this will help us to open locked chests and disarm more difficult traps and could eventually pay for itself). Triozum recruits Maia Rua (as a Scout - Fighter/Rogue) and Pallegina (as a Herald - Paladin/Chanter) at the palace – Edér is sent to escort Pallegina to our ship, and we ask him to take charge of the crew in our absence. Maia joins us to complete the party - she is also the only official party member with a good perception score, crucial for finding traps and hidden objects, and powerful ranged damage dealer.

My ability picks for Maia: Vicious companion, resilient companion, marksman, blinding strike, scepter proficiency, gunner.

Maia will also be our mechanics person now, and we push her mechanics to 5 - after that, the ability distribution will be a lot more even. The party we will use for almost all of the run (with the exception of some personal quests) is now complete: Triozum in the front lines, together with Serafen, supported by Xoti, and Maia plus Aloth at the back.

Maia equips the the protective eothasian charm and burglar’s gloves. Now, there’s going to be a lot of walking around, looting/stealing and talking to do. We have good speech skills plus Hylea’s Bounty (we could also have used the resting bonus from the Port Maje tavern as a substitution), so there are usually quite a few options for non-violent solutions.
In the palace we talk to the prince, find an exceptional large shield – great for Triozum for now – and a fine scepter, a secondary weapon for Maia. We make sure NOT to enter Lady Epero’s estate despite having the mechanics to pick the lock. There are high level enemies inside, and going in there without knowing that almost cost me my test run – I was able to leave after spotting a high-level guard dog just before combat would likely have started (it’s for a mid-game bounty).

At Muhai’s estate we pick up her task and find the dog Eviee, which is a very useful one. We also take up the cornett of waves at Takano’s estate for later. Back to Queen’s Birth, where we start with more minor tasks – Salt in the Wound is first: We arrange a duel only to the first blood, distract Orso with an insult and then tell Larro not to kill him - honor is satisfied, but nobody dies. Serafen, happy with my decisions so far, gifts me a Cipher’s Shackle. Nice! Triozum equips it, swapping it for his amulet of health, which Serafen gets.
We pick up “The Shipwright’s Plight” and some oysters from a local vendor – oysters are part of the reagents for “Captain’s Banquet”, a type of food that I will eventually want to craft for potential battles against Fampyrs later in the game. In a random home, we find the dog Xopn’aua, which we will use for now due to the skill boosts it provides (Eviee will be a go-to for combat if we remember the swap). We also buy Maia some boots of stealth from the cobbler here – we could find them for free later in the game, but they will make certain interactions in the city easier.

Here's also the only encounter we won’t be able to talk our way out of for now – 2 lowly brine imps. I almost feel bad for them:

Spoiler

We steal from the luminous adra mill (for a later quest), talk to Sanza and meet the feuding families. The sailors near the wild mare are distracted by Zili’s music - in the tavern, the party picks up a quest from Kahn, hires Ushizu und Tuliak for the Defiant crew and talks to Radora. We also recruit Konstanten as a chanter and give Kahn the diary from upstairs. It’s night time, so we can’t enter the Valian outpost. Instead we make it to the Gullet for the other family feud quest. Since there is a timer for the peaceful solution on that questline and I don't know exactly how it works and how short it is, listening on Persa at The Hole (with a stealthed Maia) is all we do there for now. Some thugs threaten us on the way out, but we talk our way out of the encounter. Another level up:

Triozum: Divine Purpose
Aloth: Ryngrim’s Repulsive Visage
Xoti: Despondent Blows
Maia: Shot on the Run
Sarefen: Bloodlust

Back at Queen's Berth, a meeting between the family heads is arranged. The dialogue choices here have to be carefully picked – the profit incentive is, eventually, what gets both families to agree on ending the feud:

Spoiler

The party not only gets some ship upgrades but also 2 very nice exceptional weapons out of the deal after talking to both household heads again (the mace is in fact going to be Triozum’s new weapon for a while). Amazing what you can do with a little bit of diplomacy.

At the VTC HQ, we talk to Lawenu outside and convince Luca to help him out for “Coming to Terms”. Triozum also picks up “The Storms of Poko Kohora”. It should be mentioned that the game blatantly lies about the quest level here – the quest level indicator suggests that this is a level-appropriate quest at level 6, but you would have to face the super tough engwithan titan, which no one should really attempt so early on (well, at least not me). Once it gets dark (we use the wait function to skip 2 hours) we also talk to Cotta in the alley for "The Shipwright's Plight" – we ask Serafen for his opinion and agree to go with Cotta’s deal to keep the peace. Zamar isn’t too happy, but nobody has to die and we gain some Principi reputation. With all tasks and quests done in Queen’s Berth, we travel to Periki’s Overlook, where we buy a vithrack brain from the herbalist for a later item enchantment.
Fassina’s quest at the Dark Cupboard is accepted, and Maia steals some items from the shelves: Another amulet of health, The Spine of Thicket Green (Serafen’s new weapon – great against vessels, especially, and it's very useful to keep around for a later quest), exceptional scale armor for Triozum, an exceptional small shield and ring of focused flame for Aloth, a new grimoire that we’re NOT going to equip (it's a super risky one), and a trollhide belt for Triozum from upstairs.

While we pick up the quest, we don't plan to enter Arkemyr’s Manor, which is too dangerous for us right now (there’s a possible peaceful solution for this involving equipping the robe of the archmage but I’ve not been able to pull it off in my test run - the imps and golems stayed hostile despite me equipping the robe - since I’m not 100% sure that I can achieve it, this will get delayed). Worthless Idiot is hired as a navigator, we recruit Tekehu as a druid (and send him to the ship) and find another exceptional scale armor, this time for Serafen, downstairs. A quick experiment: Yes, we even can take Ngati’s girdle by distracting Iofri with some spark crackers.

Spoiler

It's good to know that I can pull this off, and while this is an intended game mechanic that would allow me to steal the the Devil of Caroc Breastplate with the help of Thief's Putty, I decide against doing that. First of all, that breastplate is not available for many background histories, second of all, while it is perfectly legitimate, getting access to legendary armor this early on seems a bit much (the other powerful things I'm taking are only at exceptional enchantment level, which is what the later Neketaka quests reward anyway - see "Family Pride"). The belt, however, is far from overpowered, so we give it to Triozum and swap the trollhide belt to Aloth (he can use the regeneration anyway, due to destructive channeling).

The next task on our list is "Sealed Fate" and we enter the Bathhouse, picking up the satchel upstairs. As we return to Queen’s Berth, we accept Talfor’s escort to avoid trouble, and reveal Degnos’ betrayal for some extra gold (actually, this was not my intention - I kind of picked that dialogue option by accident). We also buy a pelt from the cobbler (for another item upgrade later on) and speak to Luca again as the morning rises, to recruit him into our crew (though we might not ever need a boatswain).

 

[Enuhal]

Next stop: The Sacred Stair. First, we deal with Xoti’s companion quest here at the Temple of Gaun and Spire of the Soul Seekers, which allows us to upgrade her lantern with a spell resistance aura (though she gets a wound for it – I guess this one is unavoidable, but no reason to rest yet). We also recruit Edér for a short talk at the temple to progress his quest. Her Last Request is finally completed, by turning the body over to the high priest for some Huana reputation.

Level ups for everyone:
Triozum: Determination and Greater Lay on Hands
Serafen: Spirit Frenzy and Barbaric Roar
Xoti: Devotions of the Faithful (nerfed, but still good) and Spell Shaping
Aloth: Confusion and Spell Shaping
Maia: Two-Handed Style (works with ranged weapons as well) and Dirty Fighting

We’re able to steal the shield Magran’s Blessing at the temple (it's super close, Maia’s stealth level with the boots was barely enough) – I don’t think I’ve ever taken or used that one, so I’m going to try it out on Triozum - I guess we can give our exceptional large shield to Pallegina. Triozum also picks up the quest Eulogy for the Dead at the temple of Berath – this one we will delay for a long time, it’s super dangerous if my memory is correct. Ydwin is recruited as a Cipher, we pick up “A Glimpse Beyond” but don’t do it yet – this one involves a high level boss at the end. Pallegina is swapped in for a little bit to start her questline here.
Time to visit the Royal Deadfire Company at the Brass Citadel. Here, we pay of Bertenno’s Debt for Fassina's gloves, recruit Emeini for our ship and talk to a few important people - soon we're back at the Dark Cupboard to return the gloves - we even get some money out of it.

Next, the Gullet – we speak to the beggar, Biha, Pitli and Enoi in order to pick up some quests. At The Hole, we recruit Birta for the crew (not really worth it, honestly). Seduzo is convinced to take Biha and her family along by threatening to expose his dealings to the RDC, and he also tells me how to get into Delver’s Row. Upstairs, we pay Orron to give up his place on the ship for Biha’s kids. We swap in Pallegina for a second to advance her personal quest once more.
After a quick return to Biha we finally enter the Narrows – first visiting Dereo’s Hideout, whom we give the Cornett of the Waves we stole earlier on to. Next, on to Delver’s Row – here we buy some Thief’s Putty in case we encounter a chest or trap we can't deal with (not sure if we will need it). Maia steals The Red Hand, her new favorite weapon (I've used this on her in my second playthrough and absolutely loved it), and the drowner’s lung medicine for Pitli:

Spoiler

Pallegina, once again swapped in, gets another update for her quest, and we enter the Undercroft to talk to Mad Morena – Triozum establishes a deal to feed the Gullet and gives her three crates of luminous adra for her other quest. Maia also takes some Principi colors, so we could now do “Blow the Man Down” in an entirely peaceful fashion (though that will have to wait for a bit). Everyone levels up – we made it from level 5 upon arriving at the city to level 8 without striking a single blow (if you don’t count those 2 brine imps in queen’s berth).

Triozum: Rapid Recovery, War Hammer Proficiency
Serafen: Unflinching, Morning Star Proficiency
Aloth: Ironskin, Rod Proficiency
Maya: Gouging Strike, Pistol Proficiency
Xoti: Combat Focus, Wand Proficiency

Turning in our quests to Enoi, Pitli and the prince means we’ve done what we can in Neketaka for now. Xoti equips Halgot’s Warmth. Not a single random encounter during our travels from district to district, except the scripted one for Sealed Fate. A bit strange, I had around 3 during the test run at this point. We finally rest again, at the Wild Mare, using Konstanten’s Massage as our resting bonus – we’re about to fight soon, and this one is quite a powerful option (though very expensive). Before we can leave, we need to level up and equip all the companions, sidekicks and adventurers we’ve left on the ship – they will help us out during boarding battles, so they need to be ready.

Now we're ready to leave the city. The quests that still remain here are too dangerous for my tastes to tackle at this point. Instead, Triozum plans to explore the islands around the southern Maje region next.

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Fifth Update: Exploring the archipelago south of Neketaka

We sail towards the Oathbinder‘s Sanctum first and encounter the Diccila, our first bounty target and boarding battle. Deck-to-deck combat involves a lot of characters and is quite fast-paced. Xoti buffs the party with dire blessing and casts devotion of the faithful (something she will do for nearly every battle from now on), while Serafen goes into spirit frenzy, Aloth starts with arcane veil and ironskin (he will usually go for 1-2 protective spells at the beginning, due to being very squishy – this also gives Xoti time to cast her buffs, so his aggressive spells will be more impactful) and Maia goes for a gouging shot (since her attacks are slow and powerful, almost all of her shots can usually be modified in some way - mostly as gouging shots or (accurate) wounding shots at this point). Aloth adds combusting wounds as I realize at this point (way too late) that Ryngrim’s Repulsive Visage is NOT the spell I thought it was – I confused it with Ryngrim’s Enervating Terror… too bad (I don’t do retraining in this run due to personal pride).
Meanwhile,you can see why it was useful to level and gear up our companions: Konstanten wrecks the enemies at the rear by calling in two ogres. At the same time, Ydwin end Edér enter the enemy ship on the other side. The remaining foes will soon be surrounded.

Spoiler

Maia takes down Diccala, and soon the victory is ours.

Into Oathbinder’s Sanctum. A group of shadows is easily disposed of. Downstairs, the same happens to some beetles and desert imps – these are probably intended to be fought on the way to Neketaka, not after already doing most of the quests there, so … yeah, we outlevel these enemies:

Spoiler

But we cannot underestimate them. In the northeastern part of the third level, there are dank spores with a bunch of sporelings and vine lurkers. Dank spores, same as in PoE1, are dangerous at any level due to intellect afflictions they can apply – we pull back out of range of dank spore attacks to take out the sporelings first:

Spoiler

I didn’t know what vine lurkers could do – they pull Xoti across the battlefield, alone, towards them. She immediately uses withdraw to keep herself safe. Triozum gets pulled back as well, but he should be fine - Sarafen can tank the sporelings for now.

Spoiler

This does take us into range of the dank spores, and while we clean up the sporelings and lurkers, once we approach the spores Xoti gets charmed.

Spoiler

Same thing happens to Aloth a bit later, but Xoti gets free and keeps everyone alive with two healing spells – victory is ours.

Spoiler

Also, I kind of forgot that I had a ring with supress affliction. Oozes and trolls wait in the next level. They can’t disturb our positioning, and Triozum holds the front line. Aloth can fireball the mass of enemies from a safe distance. Fairly easy. Next some xaurips. Now THAT is a good barbaric roar, Serafen:

Spoiler

Finally, we find Oswald, being accosted by a bunch of steel garrote types. Big battle down here. The usual dire blessing + devotions, but Aloth goes for confusion this time around, while Serafen uses his roar to interrupt the backline and Maia starts shooting at the spellcasters. Serafen, seeing as the enemy spellcasters are going for another round of spells, interrupts the backline AGAIN. Nice work from our orlan pirate. Aloth prepares noxious burst, which is bound to hit hard.

Spoiler

While the woedican agents are able to threaten our own backline with some quick teleportation (maybe via "Escape"), they are taken down before they can injure anyone, and the battle is ours:

Spoiler

Some rotghasts are taken care of to the south before we leave. Maia equips the Cowl of the Piercing Gaze. We sail further south, towards some xaurip caverns – having to take down some xaurips and sand blights on the way. The actual cave is a bit underwhelming compared to the Temple of Woedica – this is the warchief after Maia hits him with the red hand (well, it hits twice in a row, so it’s two hits, really).

Spoiler

We sail a bit west to pick up some supplies near fort deadlight and run into Well-Weathered Cormio, another ship battle ensues. Easy enough, not worth commenting on. We got after the Meryl the Mad bounty, where we get a stone of power for Aloth. Next, the ship of Assila Wave-Skipper, and we pick up Elewy’s Locket (good for Xoti) at an island far south where we also find the Temple of Tangaloa Ruins. Captain Angfor has a bunch of crazed marauders here, and once again Maia tries to go for the spellcasters.

Spoiler

Confusion gets the ogre pirate to our side, which basically ensures our victory. Around that time the party levels up:

Triozum: Aegis of Loyalty
Xoti: Rapid Casting, Revive the Fallen
Aloth: Rapid Casting, Farcasting
Maia: Accurate Wounding Shot
Serafen: Leap, Uncanny Luck

We sail further east and north, and board Beggar Wifruth (the lowest level ship in the game, I believe). Next is the Purakau bounty and the Tahae bounty.

Spoiler

A ring of overseeing is very helpful loot here for Xoti. We sail south again for Ruddy Rabel, another low level ship. On the way back we encounter a crookspur captain, which we are barely able to escape. That would’ve been dangerous!

Spoiler

We circumnavigate the Neketaka island and fight the ship of Biakara. This one is a bit harder, and Aloth gets under heavy pressure, using call to slumber to secure his survival.

Spoiler

However, he suddenly dies to friendly fire – overwhelming wave by Teheku. Wait. Isn’t Teheku’s watershaper subclass supposed to stop friendly fire for water and frost spells? Yes, it is – how did this happen? Does his subclass feature not work if he’s not in the party? Does anybody know?

Spoiler

Well, in any case, Xoti resurrects Aloth and we still win easily. Our first wound (second if you count Xoti’s during her personal quest). We also take down Hurangi's ship directly next to the city. Instead of going right into Neketaka, the party leaves by foot to kill Nomu the Marauder for another bounty – his ring is also what gets Maia to 20 perception, meaning she should be able to detect all hidden things now.

We turn in various quests – mostly bounties, the exploration quest and the quest for Kahn. A spyglass is acquired, and, due to the wound on Aloth, we rest with food: Our second of three Hylea’s Bounty charges for Triozum, fried ugly for both Aloth and Xoti, glazed chops for Serafen, mariner’s porridge (because I had nothing better left) for Maia. We have apparently also found a dragon pendant (probably in a shipwreck) that Serafen is going to equip. A quick trip back to Port Maje for Maia’s quest, “Courier’s Calling” – from there, far southwest to the sandswept ruins (avoiding all other encounters on the island) – we are far below the level of this area, but we don’t need to fight here – we barely need to do anything, because Maia has 20 perception. She disarms some easier traps here for the XP, but mostly we open the secret door, take out the sigils of death at range with spells and scepters and find the hidden switch to turn off all traps and even the final mechanism at the end that would start a scripted sequence that can kill you off.

Spoiler

We pick up some exceptional gear and the “Last Word” hammer, a potentially good tanking weapon which Triozum will try out.

I have fairly detailed knowledge of the place because it ended my test run – if you don’t have 20 perception and use the switch, the scripted event at the end can successfully be done by throwing a grenade at the door 3 times in a row. That works 100% of the time. What always kills you is going for 3 necrotic spells (which is what ended my test run – spell options have always been good for me in scripted interactions until that point). What might scores are exactly required for the other option, I don’t know. I recommend only going there with either 3 grenades (which are easy to get) and high mechanics + thief’s putty, or 20 perception on a character (can be improved by +3 just by resting in the Dunnage tavern, I think, and as demonstrated there are 3 easy to find equipment pieces to boost perception (though the ring will only boost perception on certain classes), so if you have someone starting with 14 or 15, that should be enough.

BTW I did go here much later in my test run, so there is still content left I have recently seen. I will mention when I get past the stuff that I’ve already done on PotD.

Now, we land at Fort Deadlight, raising the Principi colors. This and Dunnage shall be our next stops.

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Sixth Update: Dealings with the Príncipi sen Patrena

They key for a peaceful Fort Deadlight approach, aside from having the Principi flag, is not to do anything or go anywhere not needed for the quest until it’s done (after that, you can explore freely) – so we head straight to the court, where we talk to Mirke and Syri.

Next: The eastern ramparts, telling the guard that Snake-Eyes cheats at gambling. Maia sneaks towards the rum, avoiding the patrol, and we return to Mirke. We move outside and south-west, where we start a drinking contest with Ruddy – we use sleight of hand to pretend to drink. This allows us to enter the forge as the guards run over to check out what’s going on. A quick chat with Lamond, and we enter the dungeons. Most of the guards have left, and we sneak northeast, to the kitchen, where we talk to Cookie and get her stew. Ungwith catches us on the way back out, but as we raise our hands she simply escorts us away, so we go back to court, talk to Mirke, the party gets really going and Benweth arrives. I decide, for once, not to trap the harpsichord with a grenade, instead talking to the guy and making a deal with him, using diplomacy. A score of 7 is required to bring this line of dialogue to a successful end, which we have thanks to Hylea’s Bounty (resting at the Kraken’s Eye would have done the job as well).

Spoiler

We miss out on a very strong armor that way, but we do get a ton of principi reputation, so that’s nice.

On to Dunnage! We have to avoid the ship of Dour Old Forwin on the way, as well as Rafiq the Red Beard (who almost catches us). Here we buy stormwind sails (not available in Neketak) for the travel speed - no palm sails for this run, as all DLCs are uninstalled. Next, we swap in Pallegina to finish her personal quest. We talk to Tatzatl, and, using the correct dialogue options (except for the cruel one - we don't pick that, but it's not needed), we convince him to spare Giacolo and his research. At the Balefire Tower, we talk to Furrante, which nets us a new quest, some reputation and a cloak of protection for Triozum. Also, everyone levels up:

Triozum: Vigorous Defense, Liberating Exhortation
Xoti: Farcasting
Aloth: Ryngrym’s Enervating Terror (the correct one this time!)
Serafen: Interrupting Blows
Maia: Concussive Shot, Withering Strike

At the King’s Coffin, we get Pietro’s quest and buy some oysters and a luminous lobster from Harken – luminous lobsters are the other crucial ingredient for captain’s banquets. We also recruit Llendreth and Foeldas for the crew. Now to the radiant court, where we buy more luminous lobster from Birna and talk to Rosenalla and Calandra for their respective quests. Triozum picks up all that Pietro would need for "Iron Gut" and we finish the task before paying Taerna’s debt to Harker (intimidating him into only taking 700 cp). Barqami is recruited for the play, and we return to the court to watch the fruit of our efforts – well, that's the plan at least. On the way, some thugs accost us – seems like we do have to fight here, for once. These start off surrounding us, so we can’t establish a good frontline. Aloth casts both arcane veil and ironskin as Triozum heals him with greater lay on hands. Eamund, our main enemy, switches to attack Maia, who is not good in melee combat at all, but Sarefen knocks him down with his roar so she can run to range.

Spoiler

Still, the battle is tough – Maia and Xoti take a lot of damage, and while Triozum heals up Maia, Xoti is in trouble, attempting to withdraw herself: She does it, with only 35 hp left. The clearup is not too difficult after that.

Spoiler

Now we finally get to watch the play, with boots of stone and a minor protection ring added to our stash.

We want to get our luminous lobsters for the banquets, and there's no time like the present – a total of 15 should do. Travelling between court and coffin to both vendors while waiting 12 hours after each visist does the trick (the merchants restock their inventories after a while) – the oysters actually take longer to get here, as 4 are needed for each banquet. We only get enough for 5 for now, as only one fampyr encounter is available to us this early on, and we're going to return here anyway. Before we leave, we upgrade our armor and shields to exceptional, though we lack the funds for additional enchants, especially for weapons. Money is still tough and will be so for a while.

We level up our remaining crew again (well, most of them haven't even gained a level) as we return to Fort Deadlight, since Captain Aeldys is sending us an invitation to talk, and we can now explore and plunder the place freely (and also progress Serafen’s quest in the process). The Entonia Signet Ring is among the plunder and looks especially useful for Triozum. Seems like we don’t get to recruit Mirke if we do things that way, she likely only comes along if we kill Benweth.

On our way back to Neketaka we board Chornu’s ship. I'm thinking about our options - we might try for Arkemyr's Manor next, as long as we still have a Hylea's Bounty buff on Triozum - maybe we can succeed to achieve the peaceful approach just this once? Our levels should be high enough to at least survive the attempt if we fail.

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Seventh Update: Arkemyr's Manor, Fampyrs and Hasongo

There are two new bounties that we can go after in Neketaka: Lord Admiral Imp and Lady Epero – there’s a third, but that one’s a bit too tough for now. At the luminous bathhouse, we also progress Serafen’s personal quest. With that out of the way, we move to the Dark Cupboard, invest in the shield Lethandria’s Devotion (it’s insane how cheap superb and legendary items are compared to how expensive it is to upgrade existing items to such a status), go upstairs, and use the grappling hook to move over to Arkemyr’s Manor, sneaking upstairs to his bedroom. Nice loot here, aside from the robes we find another ring of overseeing, an exceptional scepter and boots of speed. Triozum equips the robe and tries his luck.
As we return… the ironclad construct is neutral! Huh, why did that work? Well, last time I did get into a fight before making it to the bedroom, so maybe that’s it?

Spoiler

We convince yellow-eyed three that we are, in fact, Arkemyr, and he gives us his crystal. And just like that, we walk unhindered through the manor and loot the vault.

Spoiler

Well, that was easy.

Ningauth’s Teachings is now Aloth’s new grimoire, we take the cloak of major protection, the unique morning star (which Serafen might use from time to time) and a wurm figurine, amongst other things. Next, we return the tablet to the RDC, talk to Arkemyr and recruit Fassina as a wizard. We leave the city by foot and eat our captain’s banquets in preparation for an upcoming fampyr encounter, heading towards Maukuto’s Canopy first – there are some dank spores there, so the banquets can do double duty. Triozum gets pulled in by the lurkers, but we don’t really care.

Spoiler

Not surprisingly, this is much easier when we are immune to intellect afflcitions:

Spoiler

Not much user for the frostseeker bow for this group, though, but we can give it to a sidekick. We level up the extra party members and invest in some arcane lanterns for our ship travel speed. Now to the east, towards the island with the forgotten catacombs – let’s hunt some fampyrs and get ourselves a good armor for Triozum. First we have to get past some skeletons and rotghasts. Inside, the death guard fanatic and its minions, including the fampyrs, approach, but are quite helpless against us due to the banquets and Triozum’s strong defenses. One of the fampyrs teleports to our backline via escape though:

Spoiler

Aloth and Maia take him down together, the other enemies keep standing in our wall of fire and take lots of damage from Serafen.

Spoiler

We loot the reckless brigadine as our prize.

With that done, we finally sail to Hasongo to continue with the main quest – everyone levels up as we land.

Triozum: Exalted Endurance
Serafen: Improved Critical, Brute Force
Xoti: Practiced Healer, Spiritual Ally
Aloth: Call to Slumber, Gaze of the Adragan
Maia: Debilitating Strike

We talk to the survivors and enter into the naga ambush. Splitting my party here is a mistake – I wanted Aloth and Maia to shoot at the naga from downstairs while the others went up, but Aloth got taken down by arrows with neither Xoti nor Triozum in range to heal him – mirror image wasn’t enough as a defense, I should have added ironskin.

Spoiler

Serafen jumps across the barrels, Xoti starts summoning a spiritual ally on the other side. Maia kills her second naga from downstairs – the naga shaman actually helps us out with overwhelming wave, destroying his own barrel wall:

Spoiler

A poorly played battle, the wound for Aloth was easily avoidable

Spoiler

We use a grappling hook, swim left in the kitchen and use a prybar to talk to a naga soul which will allow for a peaceful quest resolution later on. There is one big naga group that we still have to take out to proceed. We pull back behind a gunpowder barrel, which we blow up as the enemy approaches – the explosion hits some of them, but we could’ve fireballed a bit later for a stronger effect:

Spoiler

While the naga shamans summon blights with their totems, we start using some of our empowers to upgrade our spells and attacks. We also get to play a bit with Ninagauth’s Shadowflame, which is basically a frost-based fireball with a paralyze effect, only available via the grimoire we looted from Arkemyr’s Manor.

Spoiler

After our victory, we enter the dining hall and the workshop – and the rampart, which we forgot to go to earlier. Now Maia can fire the cannon at the central naga group. We go through the roof of the fleetmaster’s office, taking some naga archers out once again (but this time from a superior position), and move to the lighthouse. Sugaan can be talked down with the help of the naga soul – Maia isn’t happy, but accepts our decision. Xoti equips Sugaan's necklace - we quickly swap Edér in to progress his personal quest and leave for Neketaka.

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Eighth Update: Companion Quests, some Bounties, and the Old City

On the way back to Neketaka, we take down the ship of Kuaro – it’s close to our level and we have someone wounded, but we still have empower points – Aloth unleashes a devastating empowered freezing pillar here:

Spoiler

Because he’s right there, we also take Radulf’s ship. In the city, we deliver the bounty and talk to the queen – which grants us level 12. Level 12 kind of opens up the map a lot – a ton of quests are around this level and a lot of scary-looking faction quests look at lot less scary now.

Triozum: Reviving Exhortation, Large Shield proficiency
Serafen: Wilder Hunter, Great Sword proficiency
Maia: Predator’s Sense, Blunderbuss Proficiency
Aloth: Weapon and Shield Style, Medium Shield Proficiency
Xoti: Champion’s Boon, Rod Proficiency

We level up the crew as well and finally buy a new ship, a Voyager – which has 10% more travel speed compared to most ships. Another useful investment is a steel anchor, maximizing our travel speed for now except for 3% that I could get from the hull (but I’m broke again) – this will help a lot with our futre exploration plans and escaping dangerous ships. Now, we finish up Edérs companion questt. On the way to Sacred Stairs we finally get a random encounter, the one with the young woman and the skuldraks – we save her with Xoti's withdraw:

Spoiler

With our new ship, we easily catch up with Eothas’ Vanguard and prevent a tragedy with diplomacy and resolve after a rather easy boarding battle:

Spoiler

A quick visit to Sayuka is in order to complete Serafen’s quest is in order as well – we let Remaro go, doing nothing else in the city for now (we’ll be back) and talk to Malnaj, though the conversation ends in combat – Malnaj dies fast, and we’re now done with companion quests except for Aloth (which will have to wait for a while) and Maia (who's quest is very simple and just requires some travelling). We turn in Bounties at Dunnage next, taking on Dewisa the Shark along the way – she’s at our level and has a big crew, plus lots of ranged fighters – Triozum tanks a ton, we throw in call to slumber after stabilizing Aloth, and it's clear that a rest is soon in order:

Spoiler

Rafiq the Red Beard also gets taken down during our travels, as well as Myrlesfen the truly insane, who gets charmed by Ydwin during the battle – thanks Ydwin!

Spoiler

His constructs outlevel us and are hard to kill, but they don’t deal too much damage.

So, we turn in the bounties, buy a steel helm and return to Neketaka, where we also invest in the boneframe hull – our voyager is now fully upgraded, except for the endgame stuff. Now we rest with Konsatenten’s Massage and make our way, finally, to the Old City (another random encounter on the way – some alleyway deal for a figurine, but we just call the guards instead).
Most of Old City isn’t worth describing in detail since we've delayed it this long – lots of battles, but we outlevel our foes – we go the overlook and take the conch, swapping to scepters and fighting a bunch of skeletons.

Well, wouldn't you know? It turns out we don’t outlevel all enemies in the city. Huh. There's a "Mad Harvester" down there, whom we were able to take down with Serafen’s leap and interrupt plus Maia’s shots at range, but his construct is actually level 13.

Spoiler

The boss here, the giant cave grub, can be quite dangerous and is at our level (the main reason we delayed this quest quite a bit - it was really tough for me in my very first run, and since them I have a lot of respect for it). By now we have tools to deal with it – we don’t need to risk a party member as we use Xoti's spiritual ally to flank it:

Spoiler

I’m using Aloth’s thrust of tattered veils to interrupt its big attacks, and once he’s cast both of them we're switching to Maia’s concussive shot – once I start that pattern, the grub doesn’t get to use a single big move until it dies:

Spoiler

Stuff like that, checking stacked concentations, getting rid of them and going for targeted interrupts, are things I never did during my first run and only learned about at the very end of my second one, when I took on the megabosses (specifically, a certain ooze - who kind of forced me into improving my understanding of that mechanic) on a reasonable difficulty level. While we won't be doing megabosses here, this experience has proven to be very helpful. The loot is not too important for us – Modwyr is a great weapon, but we use captain’s feasts if we need immunity to intellect afflictions. We return to Dereo and sell some stuff – with the money, we can afford our first superb enchantment, using it for Triozum’s reckless brigadine.

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Ninth Update: Tikawara and a lot of Exploration to the East, Southeast and Southwest

We sail east, towards Tikawara, where we buy Acina’s Tricorn for Maia – we free the languafeth hatchlings right away so we can peacefully resolve that quest, deal with the stolen fruit, using our speech skills, and help out Harama to finish Maia’s quest. With the plucked fruit tasks complete, we level up:

Triozum: Guardian Stance, Righteous Soul
Serafen: Spirit Tornado, Blood Thirst
Xoti: Storm of Holy Fire, Minor Avatar
Aloth: Combat Focus, Uncanny Luck
Maia: Driving Flight, Deep Wounds

Triozum hires Rukowa for the crew and moves inland for the languafeth quest, which we peacefully turn in. Time to sail to the engwithan waystation even further east and face the Engtwithan Titan. We fight our way through the desert, and liberating exhortation comes in clutch against the powerful terrify condition when fighting drakes:

Spoiler

But we have our own terrify applications – Serafen’s spirit tornado is especially powerful. Now for the boss around here, the Engwithan Titan. This construct almost ended my test run – it destroyed my entire party except for the watcher, who had to kite it while gouging strike bleed damage slowly took it out. We don’t want to have to resort to that. However, while we lure it towards the west, we discover that this allows us not to get the risen skeletons involved that usually assist it, as they presumably don’t see any target to fight. That seems like useful information!

Spoiler

First things first, while we buff up (the usual dire blessing + devotions, mirror images, rage etc.) we also use some interrupts to get rid off the stacked concentrations of the boss, so we can interrupt its attacks in the future. Perfect:

Spoiler

Also Serafen’s staff is really good here as a weapon, being both crushing damage and anti-vessel (despite the staff being clearly designed for druids). Our high levels for this area help us out a lot, and the titan, deadly to us in my testrun at level 10, easily falls at level 13. It seems like a lot of the game, once you get past the opening island (which is propably almost always quite difficult, unless you solo-stealth past everything), comes down to the knowledge of how dangerous each encounter truly is on PotD and choosing a reasonable order in which to do them.

We fight our way through the dungeon – battles of various difficulty, but none that are too hard– down here is a soulbound dagger that, when upgraded, is one of the best bosskillers in the game (it futured prominently in my megaboss battles in my second run) , but it’s not good for our party, sadly.

Spoiler

Downstairs, Maia takes down some essence batteries from a safe range. We promise Anahura to destroy the adra (which we do to get some RDC reputation). The battle down there is not that hard, the titan is way more dangerous.

Spoiler

Before we sail back, it’s time for some exploration – we rescue Rekke to the north, recruiting him as a Brawler (Fighter/Monk), enter the ship of Veen, Oheiro and Ond, and take the Ikorno bounty, where Aloth lands some helpful gazes of the adragan:

Spoiler

As we hunt the next bounty, Onadere the Temptress, the party levels up:

Triozum: Unbending (one of the most powerful defensive abilties in the entire game, and one of the main reasons I picked the fighter-part of this multiclass)
Serafen: Tough
Xoti: Pillar of Holy Fire
Aloth: Improved Critical
Maia: Uncanny Luck

We also take the ships of Burunga, Anes and Faina, all fairly easy at this point. After selling some stuff at a random farm, we can enchant the Red Hand and Xoti’s unique items to superb before entering the subterranean temple to the east, where Gulfaryc waits, though the battle isn’t too hard at this level. A quick turn to Tikawara and we sail south, exploring the area around the black isles, carefully avoiding the high level ship of Fyrgist and the Black Isle Bastards. Once we manage to land, we deal with the Hall of the Unseen riddle, making sure not to split our party too much (the doors open shortly after the battle against the various spirits begins):

Spoiler

Now we sail all the way to the southwest, mostly to explore the Ruins of Amira’s Roost. We also take down Dour Old Forwin since his ship is in the area. On the island, there's a surprise: We enter the blighted bog, which is, as it turns out, actually dangerous. I chose a different dialogue option here in my test run which resulted in me leaving, so I didn’t know about this battle – we are outleveld by up to two levels here, much to my shock. We unleash fire spells and empowers, barely saving Aloth with two quick healing spells – and luckily, the main enemy spellcasters die pretty fast:

Spoiler

However, the oozes, and especially the lurkers, who keep spamming insect plague-type spells at us, are very, very tough. With our healing spells and even the watcher ability, we barely stay alive – once, we have to free Xoti from a charm from the dank spore in the background with liberating exhortation, and both Aloth and Xoti are nearly out of spells. We have to make sure Maia goes only after the oozes as Serafen only goes after the lurkers, due to their immunities:

Spoiler

It ends up being a close victory – and toughest battle in a long while:

Spoiler

The wound on Triozum you can see here is from the scripted interaction that started the battle, though. No one actually fell down, though it was close multiple times and we had basically no healing abilities except for potions left.

The battle in the actual ruins is way easier, though Xoti gets a wound from another scripted interaction on the way:

Spoiler

The southern part of the map is now fully explored, though we have skipped some high-level encounters such as The Steel Preacher, Fyrgist or The Splintered Reef. We've not been to Neketaka for a while, and it's time to return with a huge number of quest turn-ins, which should provide us with tons of experience and gold.

 

[Alesia_BH]

Since I haven’t played Deadfire yet I’m not reading this, but I still love this thread. I’m looking forward to firing up a PoE run!

 

[Enuhal]

@Alesia_BH I'm looking forward to your run!

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Tenth Update: Dunnage Bounties and Motare o Kozi

Back in Neketaka, finally - we take a rest at Konstanten's room to get rid of our wounds and turn in some bounties, exploration quests and report to the faction leaders. We also wait for Maia’s return after she turns in her personal quest, as we don’t want to travel without her. With all the turn ins, we level up again:

Triozum: Superior Deflection
Serafen: Spell Resistance
Xoti: Scion of Flame
Aloth: Malignant Cloud
Maia: Evasive Roll

Now we do the Katrenn bounty, only available at night, and visit Delver’s Row to buy new armor for Xoti: The Garari Cuirass, our first legendary item. Next, we hunt down Rock-Stomper Rodul so we can turn in all Dunnage bounties at once. That’s a pretty high level boarding battle, quite a few of these foes outlevel us, and we employ gaze of the adragan + delayed blast fireball to deal tons of damage to a huge mass of opponents. Spell shaping helps a lot here:

Spoiler

Torkar in Dunnage itself is next – a bit of a rough battle because some enemies join from the north (ranged attackers with veil-piercing weapons are pretty dangerous), but no trouble over all. We also pay all the trainers in town (and later on in Sayuka and Neketaka as well) and capture the Beina bounty, which I forgot to get, on the way back to Neketaka.

We quickly visit Sayuka, deliver the fetchquest part of the next RDC questline and buy some +4 might food here. Back in Neketaka, we also acquire +2 might gloves from the Orlan Peddler at the RDC. The party also gains another level up:

Triozum: Overbearing Guard, Inspired Defenses, Flail Proficiency
Sarefen: Heart of Fury, Panther’s Leap, Estoc Proficiency
Xoti: Dismissal, Resurrection, Mace Proficiency
Aloth: Wall of Many Colors (we're mostly taking this one because Aloth is now using the scepter from the Black Isles and we want to make use of the +2 on illusion power levels), Kalakoth’s Freezing Rake, Small Shield Proficiency
Maia: Concussive Tranquilizer, Perishing Strike, Arbalest Proficiency

Motare o Kozi is next. We save Baltia – the reason we pushed our might stat via food and gloves is that we can rescue and add her to the crew. With a good stealth skill any maybe some sparkcrackers plus a druid or Spire of Thicket Green (which we have – it’s been one of Serafen’s primary weapons for a long time - it needs to be actively equipped, though, as I noticed when first trying to talk to a tree) we can do this entirely peacefully, sneaking to the various corrupted trees and healing them. The trees to the west and east are easy to reach, the final one to the south does require some spark cracker distraction.

Spoiler

Now, all three daughters help us convince the rotted lady not to attack. We turn in the quest in Neketaka.

This is the point where I'm done with all the content that I have seen in my previous test run. I didn't stick to the same order (I went to Tikawara earlier in the test run but delayed visiting the Principi bases and Hasongo), but essentially, after going to Motare o Kozi I made my way to the ruins of Amira's Roost and the Sandswept Ruins (both already done in the current run), where the scripted sequence at the end killed my party because I tried to get past the door with corroding spells. So, everything from now on is content I've not done on PotD before, only on classical difficulty (and it's been 3 years for that one).

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Eleventh Update: A Trio of Faction Quests

It's time to progress the various faction questlines - first, "A Glimpse Beyond" for the VTC, a quest we could’ve done much earlier but never got around to – the boss here is very sturdy, but we are at his level by now and place him into a wall of many colors, which ends up paralyzing him

Spoiler

We make sure not to taunt the Beast of Winter, as this interaction can instantly kill you if you do. Next we do the “Dirty Laundry” quest, a tiny bit of follow-up for the VTC, which is easy enough to do peacefully with our speech skills. This robs us of our resting buff, so we go to Konstanten’s Massage again.

The next faction we're helping out are the Principi, at the hanging sepulchers – it seems like we outlevel the vessels here pretty strongly – even Maia can kill them very quickly with the recently added “Double Tap” enchantment on the Red Hand arquebus and doesn't need to switch to her scepter. Using blessed incense to boost our religion skill, we are able to come to a peaceful agreement with Yseyr and even get his sword, which, I think, we don't actually need yet.

Spoiler

After handing in Eulogy of the Dead, we go to the Watershaper’s Guild for “Shadow under Neketaka.” The battles down there are a bit tough, the naga and their allies do pack a punch:

Spoiler

We try to convince the dragon at the end of the quest to set apart a tiny fraction of his soul to keep the watershapers’s power while it can still escape.

Spoiler

Once again we consume blessed incense, this time to boost our animancy skill. We have JUST enough skill to do it, and even get a promise of aid from our new dragon friend.

Spoiler

After returning to the queen, we explore some more of the inland area of the Neketaka island. This mostly involves battles against some high-level xaurips. I use some antidotes here due to the prevalence of plaguestrikers (I’m just assuming that they use poisons). During one of the battles, the party levels up:

Triozum: Armored Grace
Serafen: Blooded
Xoti: Tough
Aloth: Tough
Maia: Improved Critical

In the xaurip main base, we, for once, get in a superior combat position and easily pick them off as they try to approach us, despite their plaguestrikers teleporting into our backline from time to time – Xoti can heal Maia up for quite a while by now.

Spoiler

We now have a ton of cash, but lack some materials (mostly rare gemstones) for further enchantments. A quick detour: We hunt down Fyrgist and the Black Isle Bastards. Gaze of the Adragan and Wilting Wind really do a lot of damage to them:

Spoiler

Our reward is an amazing club that Triozum will use for tanking. We sail back north, to Sayuka, where we will do some work for the RDC so they don’t miss out on our services - for now, we're trying to keep every faction happy. First we go for the quest "Hunting Season" – no peaceulf resolution is available here as far as I know, we pull back from the sigils of nightmare and unleash Aloth’s AoE spells while the others hold the line and pick up enemies that slip away from Triozum.

Spoiler

Now we go underwater for the Overgrowth quest. The battles here are easy enough, except that we – for the first time – intentionally don’t avoid combat and anger Galawain, so he sends a kraken to fight us (a decision mostly done because we're travelling with Maia and want the RDC to really like us). We deal with a few tentacles first before engaging in melee combat. As we notice a weakness to perception afflictions, we hit our foe with curse of blackened sight:

Spoiler

While the kraken can take a lot of punishment, it doesn’t do too much damage to us, especially since we can interrupt it if needed. The beast is slain.

Spoiler

Aloth gets a nice helm out of the whole ordeal, and we return to the RDC outpost., turn in quests at Neketaka and Dunnage, where we repeat the oyster shuffle for our next 5 captain’s feasts, visist Aeldys and head for the north, to Ori o Koiko.

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Twelfth Update: Ori o Koiko, Second Fampyr Battle and Crookspur

On the way to Ori o Koiko, we find a ship that lets us finally progress Aloth’s companion quest. On the island, the passphrase the queen gave to us allows for a peaceful approach, but lack of game knowledge results in Triozum taking a fatigue injury that is totally unnecessary when climbing atop of a cliff. Aloth's quest, to my surprise, ends with just a little bit of talking (I haven't ever taken Aloth - or Serafen - along for a full playthrough of Deadfire, which is the main reason I brought both of these along this time around).

On the way south towards Crookspur, due to Triozum's fatique injury, I decide to rest. Since there's an island full of fampyrs in the vicinity, why not take the opportunity to eat our captain's banquets and clear those out? In the northern area, we interrupt a ritual with some high-level opponents. Hey, famprys: Have you heard about the gaze of the adragan?

Spoiler

The battle goes really well. Without their domination abilities, these fampyrs aren't too much of a threat. A heart of fury from Serafen finishes the remaining foes pretty soon:

Spoiler

At the nearby crypt, there are ancient fampyrs waiting for us. A quick look at their defenses and the first round of combat immediately tell us that these are way more powerful than the ones we met outside. Maia goes for concussive tranquelizers on the spellcasters to get rid of their buffs, meanwhile, three of them decide that they really need to chase down Ishiza:

Spoiler

Maia does cleanse their buffs, but Ishiza dies, and we get to see how tough these guys really are. Serafen takes heavy damage, Xoti and Triozum try to keep him alive as Aloth goes for a gaze of the adragan

Spoiler

However, all the healing isn't enough, propably because Serafen had the sickened affliction on him, which I didn't notice at the time but can see now in the screenshot. He falls, and Xoti starts casting Resurrection instead. Xoti’s resurrection luckily lands very quickly and without any interruptions, and Aloth tries to terrify the three northern enemies:

Spoiler

Ryngrim's Enervating Terror does the job– all 3 northern famprys are terrified for 25 seconds, which basically means they are no threat, and we gain an advantage in numbers. Maia finally takes down the first spellcasting fampyr, and we’re now in a good position.

Spoiler

The Terror lasts pretty much exactly as long as it needs to for us to take out the others - victory is achieved – that was harder than I expected. For foes at our level, these fampyrs did really well:

Spoiler

Aloth gets a new cloak out of the trouble. Finally, we move south towards Crookspur, though we don't enter the fort immediately. Silent Dhwrgas is another bounty on our list. We want to keep using the captain’s feast for a while, so we craft a luminous adra potion for Serafen and take it during that bounty battle – seems like it fully stacks with resting bonuses, so I guess since I have tons of money now I should craft a few of these, including for Triozum, maybe even just for skill checks. As we enter Crookspur, the party levels up:

Triozum: Hold the Line
Serafen: Threatening Presence
Xoti: Spell Resistance
Aloth: Expose Vulnerabilities
Maia: Play Dead

In Crookspur, first thing we do is buy the unique items from the merchant as I don’t know if they will still be available once we clear out the slavers (turns out the merchant doesn't turn hostile) – I accidentally land in the auction, and, since Serafen wouldn’t like doing anything here other than attacking, we start a fight in the courtyard. Not difficult, these aren’t very high level enemies. We free the slaves here and down in the dungeons – here we pick up The Willbreaker, a new weapon for Serafen.

Up to the fort, where we take out the leader of the slavers with ease:

Spoiler

Since we've recently level up our crew, we board the final named ship on the map, The Coral Queen, and take on the Rathun captains (Once-Matron Doryga, the other ship we hadn't boarded yet, sadly disappeared from the map after we took down Crookspur).

Back to Neketaka and Fort Deadlight, to turn in our quests. The party levels up once again, reaching level 19:

Triozum: Unbreakable, Stoic Steel
Serafen: Driving Roar, Prestige
Xoti: Blessing of Wael, Prestige
Aloth: Minoletta’s Missile Salvo, Prestige
Maia: Survival of the Fittest, Deathblows

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Thirteenth Update: Final Bounties, North-Eastern Exploration, He Waits in Fire

Since our resting bonus is gone for some reason (I have literally no idea why), we eat some Mohora Wraps, and, as we’re in the area after visiting Aeldys in Fort Deadlight, take down the Steel Preacher. Xoti uses dismissal for an instant kill. Next, Flamewalker Vassali. We learn how awesome driving roar is – this would allow us to play Serafen as basically a ranged spellcaster (though since this is only available super late in the game, it's porpably not reasonable to plan for that). Incredible damage for very little class resources. Uamoro the pretender is our next bounty, and we enter the flooded cave. Since “Double Tap” via The Red Hand is able to instantly kill the lich, that wasn’t too much of a battle. Now, the collapsed coal mine:

Spoiler

Urnox Breinth is the last bounty alive on the map and easily taken down. Now, we make our way to the fire naga lair, Kohopa’s Fang. This one’s a bit rough: we took some hits from totems and sigils on our way, but didn’t want to rest again. The fire traps aren’t easily disarmable in combat, so Aloth casts spells from below and Serafen jumps above the firewalls:

Spoiler

Uvaala, the boss here, is lured backwards so we don’t have to deal with more of her traps:

Spoiler

At this point I realized that I completely forgot about Berkana’s observatory – okay, we’ll pack that in on the way back to Neketaka!

First, a quick rest, with Mohoka wraps for Serafen/Maia, Crusted Swordfish for Xoti/Aloth and our final Hylea’s Bounty for Triozum. We fight our way through the Torn Bannermen. Concelhaut’s troops are lured backwards, at a chokepoints Triozum makes his stand and Aloth blasts the enemy backline with a few aoe spells – soon only the archmage survives, and he can't stand alone against us:

Spoiler

We return to the city, turn in the bounties and Arkemyr’s quest and receive our final level up. Not much content remains: “He Waits in Fire” to progress the main quest line, the three most difficult and high level optional areas (outcast’s refuge, drowned barrows, splintered reef) and the actual endgame.

Triozum: Spell Resistance, Small Shield Proficiency
Sarefen: Blood Surge, Pollaxe Proficiency
Xoti: Salvation of Time, Medium Shield Proficiency
Aloth: Arcane Cleanse, Large Shield Proficiency
Maia: Deadly Surprise, Crossbow Proficiency

We enchant a lot of gear to legendary, but we lack materials, specifically emeralds and adra bans, for weapon enchants. I might have spend some emeralds for upgrades that weren't needed, not sure, but it definitely feels like planning around weapons that already come with a legendary enchantment might be a good idea. I do remember that the DLCs offer way more upgrade materials, though.

Time for the Ashen Maw. We take a peaceful approach with the rathun and could do the same with the dragon, but I do want to take the battle here, just to try it – shouldn’t be too hard as we’re at max level now. The dragon terrifies Xoti early on, Triozum saves her with liberating exhortation

Spoiler

Aloth fires a devastating empowered missile salvo at our foe, probably the most powerful damaging move available to us:

Spoiler

Serafen with two hearts of fury, Maia with a couple of special shots and Aloth with a killing bolt eventually do the job. As I expected, due to our levels there isn’t too much real danger here:

Spoiler

More importantly, we get a special ingredient to upgrade one of our items to legendary – we pick The Red Hand. Btw, I have no idea where Serafen got his wound from. Very strange. Well, the dragon's torc lets us peacefully go further. Probably due some wrong dialogue picks, I have fight the final group of rathuns, though they pose no trouble at all. We talk to Eothas and complete the quest.

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Fourteenth Update: Endgame Preparation and The Splintered Reef

A cutscene takes us back to Neketaka, where we pick up a quest for The Splintered Reef. We can also do one more VTC quest without committing to a facation: Skipping Ahead, which is relatively easy – one big battle underground, and we’re on our way back to the city. A little fight on top of the tower, and we’re done:

Spoiler

We can also deal with the leadership situation in Dunnage, as long as we don’t actually return with the floating hangman. I was going to expose Furrante for his dealings with slavery but it seems I chose the wrong path to do so and instead freed Aeldys before getting into a huge fight with Furrante’s people. Luckily our position allowed Triozum to hold the stairs, which allowed our spellcasters to throw huge AoE spells into the room:

Spoiler

We do the oyster shuffle one last time for 5 more captain’s banquets and rest with those, sailing towards the Splintered Reef, our first of 3 lategame locations still on the list. A quick ambush is our first encounter there. Xoti, is Dismissal a good spell?

Spoiler

Seems like it. We enter the tavern and talk to Copperhead – a fampyr walks in and we get into a huge fight, though these foes are mostly quite weak:

Spoiler

After freeing the captives, we meet Copperhead in the boathouse and ask him to create a diversion for us as we enter the crypts. A big fight breaks out, and Xoti’s dismissals get rid of most non-fampyr vessels, clearing up the battlefield:

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Maia uses evasive roll to jump out of some writhing tentacles and we're quickly in a winning position:

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Inside, we get into a battle with quite a few enemy spellcasters – perfect for Aloth to try his arcane cleanse, which immediately takes down all enemy buffs and is an AoE spell to boot!

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We find a quartermaster who hopefully has the key to that difficulty 18 door to the south – we are able to use Xoti’s dismissal for everything except for the named fampyr:

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The runemaster down south is next, and we open the door towards the final area. We meet Menzaggo, the boss around here – I guess we could go for a peaceful solution, but that would be profoundly evil, and we don’t want our captain’s banquets to go to waste. I was expecting an epic battle, but it seems like he can just be killed by "Double Tap" – Maia immediately takes him down. Okay, maybe we do need level scaling after all to make some of these later PotD encounters more challenging, now that I'm actually reading up on the mechanics and not just pressing random buttons or repeating PoE1 strategies.

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There are still some high-level fampyrs left, but they aren’t powerful enough to take us down.

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We smash the orb, talk to Copperhead and head northwards again, buying some dragonwing sails on the way out.

 

[Enuhal]

Triozum, Wild Orlan Crusader - Fifteenth Update: Outcast’s Respite and Drowned Barrows

Outcast’s Respite is our next target. First, we have to pass the boot-suck bog, which contains some incredibly hard skill checks – survival fails, but Triozum is able to pull of athletics (though not diplomacy, so we avoid a wound but end up in a fight anyway):

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Triozum holds the line, assisted by Serafen, Aloth goes for big AoE damage, Maia makes sure not to shoot at the lurkers, who are immune to pierce damage, Xoti buffes everyone. We follow up with storm of holy fire and freezing rake. The battle ends soon after. Now to the actual Respite, where we start with a quick fight against some oozes before we pull the bog witches back across the bridge. They don’t really want to follow us, but we’re at least able to stand out of glyph range:

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We profit from this chokepoint way more than they do – one witch jumps in the back, the others fall quickly as we can now unleash missile salvo with a perfect target area, and Triozum easily holds the line:

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Triozum can brew a potion to permanently increase his resolve here, and since we have the materials, why not? Finally, to the Junvik village and Drowned Barrows – we climb through the left eye and enter Nemnok's domain. soon getting into battle with a bunch of scriveners, though that first fight is not too difficult. Another huge battle occurs further in – Triozum holds the line, Serafen spams his roar, Xoti and Aloth unleash their AoE spells, Maia shoots from the back:

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These enemies have lots of hitpoints, but they can‘t get through Triozum’s defenses. Maia finds three entire emeralds! Great! Finally we can upgrade Serafen’s weapon to legendary. Now we’re missing adra ban for our final legendary upgrades (the weapons for Xoti and Aloth), but those are not super important.
Another huge battle starts downstairs – we go for empowered wilting wind, but we don’t have the greatest chokepoint and some enemies make it past Triozum:

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Arcane dampeners hurt us a bit here, but a missile salvo takes out a chunk of enemies – Xoti is a bit in trouble at the north though, getting interrupted multiple times and turned into a pig via "Form of the Helpless Beast" - the first time I've been hit by this spell:

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However, greater lay on hands plus liberating exhortation is enough to save her.

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We scepter down some sigils of death and disarm traps before exploring southwards – that battle is much easier than the on to the north

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Another fight to the far north that’s not too hard, and we go downstairs.

First, we make a deal with Nemnok – I presume I can fight him later if I want, but I want to free Kaali first. We already have all the grimoires that Nemnok wants – or so I thought – apparently one of them is not in my inventory? Maybe we sold it already? I didn't want to search for it – we turn in two parts of the quest and simply force-attack the giant imp god.

Nemnok teleports across the battlefield after taking some damage from our opening salvo:

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Serafen makes sure to interrupt Nemnok’s most dangerous spells with his roar, while Aloth takes out the eastern enemies with AoE spells:

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The right side is cleared up – Nemnok manages to cast meteor swarm, which could potentially be deadly, but it's targeted around Triozum whose defenses are just too powerful - There has never been a reason, throughout the entire run, for him to even active "Unbending" - Since the midgame, he never has taken anything close to serious damage - but Serafen interrupts Nemnok's missle salvo attempt, which might have been able to even hurt Triozum.

Time to go for our own missile salvo. Nemnok is almost isolated by now:

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Nemnok teleports to Aloth, who still has mirror images and refreshes ironskin. Finally all his allies are gone – Maia once again dispels his buffs, and we go to town with all we have left in terms of damaging abilities:

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Eventually, Aloth is able to hit him with Gaze of the Adragan:

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We achieve victory:

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A very long battle, but we avoided taking a lot of damage (probably due to some good interrupts) and got no wounds out of it. The rewards include a new shield and great armor (which we can't enchant due to lack of materials, so it's sadly not worth using, otherwise I'd give it to Serafen), plus a good staff. Time to return to Neketaka one last time.