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

Enuhal · Jun 10, 2025

The Return of Trisk - Deadfire PotD as an Oracle - South-Western Exploration and Return to Neketaka

Upon our return to the big city, we start out with the Dirty Laundry quest for the VTC. We don't quite have the skill requirements to get all 3 pieces of information here, but 2 will suffice (the result just seems to be that we don't get as much money). Next, time for Shadow under Neketaka. The two naga battles, especially the first one, are quite dangerous here, not only because of the snake people, but also because of the presence of bog oozes, who have infinite casts of Plague of Insects. However, this time around I was able to lure the first group out of their room, which seemed impossible during previous runs as they just wouldn't follow me upstairs. I also had plenty of antidotes to counter the insect spells (they are considered to be poison-based) and druid healing to get my hp back up, including the potentially very powerful high level option, Garden of Life:

The second group is generally a bit easier for me and proved to be no serious problem. This area is quite challenging with level scaling active, but without that option, it wasn't really too dangerous. I boosted my animancy skill via pet/resting option/consumables before dealing peacefully with the dragon. A no-reload run doesn't seem like the ideal place to try and test actually fighting this one.

Well, now that we're basically done with Neketaka (well, there's still Skipping Ahead near the endgame), we sailed to the south-west, clearing out the Ruins of Amira's Roost. With the highest level ships in the game being at level 16, which we have, by now, surpassed, we also decide to take the opportunity for a big ocean exploration session, taking down the remaining named ships, some of the easier high level bounties and picking up some gear around the map. This results in us getting even more experience and all the gear we really wanted to acquire, such as the tanking club from Fyrgist.

Next up, we will explore the north-eastern part of the map. We also have Sayuka still open, and we're definitely powerful enough to not skip the kraken fight there.

Enuhal · Jun 11, 2025

The Return of Trisk - Deadfire PotD as an Oracle - North-Eastern Exploration, Bekarna's Folly and Sayuka

We start our North-Eastern exploration with the few remaining land-based bounties in the game and clear out the Collapsed Coal Mine plus the Flooded Cave. Due to the lack of level scaling, the otherwise very rough ancient battle mage lich dies to a simple Double Tap from The Red Hand. We make it all the way to level 19, and should now be ready for the highest level challenges still remaining in the game. Our next stop is Bekarna's observatory, where we take on a huge group of high-level mercenaries:

Trisk has Amplified Wave added into her toolbox. Combined with her plague of insects, she does now a decent job at adding to Tekehu's overwhelming AoE damage. And now, this AoE damage extends past his usual frost and water spells into the incredibly powerful Great Maelstrom, one of the primary reasons to stick with a single class druid. Concelhaut's allies upstairs soon learn how devastating the damage really is:

Unlike the Missle Salvo (imo the most powerful endgame damage spell for wizards), this one deals its damage over a few rounds, so it's best used when enemies have found pretty fixed positions. I've also tried out adding sacred immolation into Pallegina's arsenal so she can make a contribution to our damage, but it's just not what it used to be in PoE1 - the damage isn't great, and the raw damage to herself is surprisingly notable. To be fair, her summons, especially now that she has learned "Called to His Bidding, the Ancient Instruments of Death", greatly contribute to damage already, but her personal visible damage output is fairly low compared to Edér, who does quite well with Riposte and his ability to punish enemies that try to leave engagement.

Well, Concelhaut falls rather quickly, and we travel to Sayuka, deal with the druids and move underwater. The languafeth are not much of a threat, and we're easily prepared to fight the kraken - no need to anger the RDC here. Sadly, we didn't have the ability points to pick up some of the classic "boss killer" cipher powers for Trisk, but we still have quite a few abilities to boost single target damage against big enemies:

Sadly, the eyes of a kraken only allow for gear upgrades to superb, not legendary, so we don't get too much out of taking this fight.

We're now at a point where we would, under normal circumstances, propably just go to Crookspur and the Ashen Maw before ending the game, but our party composition doesn't quite allow for that: Whatever faction we pick, someone out of Tekehu, Maia and Pallegina is going to leave us. The only way to avoid this: Pick no faction at all. In order to reach Ukaizo without the aid of a faction, we need some ship upgrades that require dealing with the most high level optional non-DLC content, including the Splintered Reef and Nemnok, so, we will need to add the Reef, far to the south-east, and North-Western Exploration into our plans.

Enuhal · Jun 12, 2025

The Return of Trisk - Deadfire PotD as an Oracle - Crookspur, Fampyr Island and Splintered Reef

The one thing that could potentially hold us back regarding the Splintered Reef is propably the amount of Captain's Banquets we can craft - they are crucial (or, at least, incredibly useful) for any fampyr encounters. Since there's another notable encounter involving fampyrs (at the fampyr crypt in the north-western part of the map), my hope is to do both of these areas with the same set of banquest - throughout the game, I have visited all kinds of sea food vendors whenever I happened to run by one, buying all oysters and luminous lobsters I came across, but I still only managed to craft a total of 7 additional banquets. Acquiring more is possible, for example with a lot of forced waiting (the vendors eventually reset their invenventory), but it's a tedious process. While this approach will involve a lot of travel, I don't want to take the risk of suffering injuries and being forced another rest inbetween those two fampyr areas if at all possible - however, on the way to the fampyr island, we decide to quickly clean out Crookspur to move along the various faction quests. This area is just easy in general, and it's almost impossible to not be overleveled when going there, so there's really no trouble.

Now, we deal with the fampyr island, which is certainly a place to be taken seriously - we aren't here at the right time for the extra encounter to the north, though, so it's just the crypt, and since I know now what to expect after the Triozum run, we get through it fairly well and without taking an injury. After that, we sail all the way to the Splintered Reef. We get Copperhead to do his distraction, make sure to buy the Dragonwing Sails and start clearing out the various areas. However, some of the traps here seemingly require quite a lot of perception to detect them, and since my standard formation has Maia (our high perception character) in the back lines, at one point Edér steps into a trap, obtaining an injury. However, at this point we have the resources to craft a bunch of luminous adra potions, and one of them gets rid of the injury while keeping his Captain's Banquet going. After a while, we reach the big boss, Menzzago. We go for a relatively open approach, confident in our high level spells.
We call in primordial oozes and animated weapons, and Tekehu goes for a big empowered Great Maelstrom:

The Maelstrom is powerful enough to heavily wound or take down most foes, the others take down the incoming guls, and we quickly destroy the surviving unnamed fampyrs. Their counterplay, involving Wall of Draining and Writhing Tentacles, is powerful, but doesn't do enough to actually hinder our big damage dealers. Soon, only Menzzago remains, and by himself he stands little chance.

Now, only three areas to the north-west remain (two of them required for the blackwood hull ship upgrade, which we need to finish the game), so we will have to sail all the way back over there.

Enuhal · Jun 13, 2025

The Return of Trisk - Deadfire PotD as an Oracle - North-Western Exploration, including Nemnok

Before venturing into the Drowned Barrows, we make our way to the fire naga area - easy enough to clear out at this point - and the bog witches. Incredibly, despite puting almost all of trisks abilty points since the midgame into survival and athletics, we still fail a check at the boot-suck bog, but the battle against the witches goes fairly well for us, and we're ready to move towards Nemnok and his cultists.

Outside of Forgotten Sanctum (which we're not going to do here), this is one of the few areas where we're dealing with masses of high level spellcasters. One problem here soon turns out to be the enemy AI's love for the "Form of the Helpless Beast" spell, which is not that easy to counter, as it is not an affliction - if the fortitude defense isn't high enough, the spell will hit and turn the party member useless, and if multiple wizards cast that spell on multiple party members, it can be pretty devastating. I encountered a battle upstairs where 3 of my party members got transformed. Luckily, outside of the affliction system, there's still Pallegina's Liberating Exhortation, which I have put an abilty point into for just such an emergency. Similiar to "Supress Affliction", it suspends all hostile affects, in this case only on one target, but for 20 seconds baseline instead of just 10. Since Pallegina barely spends her Zeal resource for anything, she had enough of those ready to get us through the battle:

We fight our way to Nemnok, starting with a peaceful approach, getting into a good position and preparing to fight. This foe is to be taken seriously, he can unleash the highest of spell levels, including stuff like missle salvo. However, his defenses are not as strong compared to many other significant bosses - his only innate immunity is to mind-affecting stuff, so a lot of afflictions do work on him, and he relies a lot on defensive self-buffs for his protection. To counter the defenses of high level spellcasters, Maia has picked up Concussive Tranquilizer, which heavily reduces the duration of any buffs on the target (by 30 seconds with each use), and since it only costs 1 Bond resource, she can essentially spam it if needed. First, we take care of Nemnok's huge number of allies - Tekehu and Trisk do a lot of work here with their most powerful AoE spells. Maia has, in the meantime, made sure that Nemnoks defensive spells quickly run out, and once he's mostly alone, we apply some pretty devastating afflictions to him:

His defenses at this point aren't strong enough to deal with a max level party anymore, and victory is soon ours.

We craft our blackwood hull and now have everything we need to sail to Ukaizo - except for the actual quest to do so. We still need to visit the Ashen Maw, and maybe get ourselves into a dragon battle for another legendary weapon upgrade in the process - if we can beat Nemnok, we can beat the red dragon there. After that, we should be able to sail directly from Neketaka towards the end, so the next update is propably going to be the last one.

Enuhal · Jun 14, 2025

The Return of Trisk - Deadfire PotD as an Oracle - Ashen Maw and Ukaizo (Finale)

The Ashen Maw should be fairly easy at this point - we barely have to fight anything there anyway, as most combat can be skipped with a few carefully selected dialogue options. I did pick a fight with the dragon, though, just to get another weapon upgrade and make things a bit more interesting. This dragon has notably low deflection and reflex defenses, though even his other ones aren't too difficult to overcome for us at this point. We apply some debuffs and just hit our foe with the usual combat abilities, no need to put out any special tactics here:

This is basically the last battle in the area already, and after dealing with the RP, we get teleported back to Neketaka. We make a tiny detour for "Skipping Ahead", which really isn't needed and gets us basically nothing, but the completionist in me wants to do that quest as well. Now, we make sure our ship is equipped with the Dragonwing Sails and Blackwood Hull, and we sail directly towards Ukaizo. This is the first time I can remember doing this version of the ending, and there's a surprise for me: Despite making the deal with the water dragon, as I usually do, the Guardian of Ukaizo isn't defeated by it during the scripted events leading up to our landing on the island. So, we finally get a fight against the Guardian!

It's been a long time since I fought this does, and it does have a few things going for it: Very strong fortitude defense, a decent amount of immunities and resistances, a LOT of hitpoints and various special abilities, including phases were it calls in various allied animats. Notably, our preferred weapon and damage types aren't very good at damaging it:

This is propably the longest fight in the run, and it really pays off that we have two classes with regenerating class resources here (Chanter and Cipher) - Pallegina can call in her animated weapons over and over again, and while Trisk doesn't have the notable boss killer cipher powers, she has picked up Ancestor's Memory as her final cipher ability, so she can restore anybody elses class resources in case that's needed. Anyway, we get rid of the various animats and now face the Guardian alone, who has been regenerating in the meantime:

Since deflection is the guardians weakest defense by far, and the fight is very long, most of our damage here is physical, and we add to it by using all of our various summoning spells. Trisk even ends up calling her good old sporelings, who were so very useful in Act I, and eventually, we slowly wittle down our foe and achieve victory:

Very well. Not the hardest fight in the end, but it was fun to actually have to face it this time around. We're not quite done, the faction battle remains, and with us not finishing any of the final faction quests, we don't actually know which faction we will face as no fleets were gathered near the Ofecchia Channel. It turns out to be the RDC (despite the fact that we restored the Luminous Adra near Tikiwara instead of destroying it), and we get into the very unusual situation of Maia ending up killing the Hazanui:

As per usual, this faction battle is more of a formality. And yes, this ending is a little bit weird, as Maia is usually very loyal to her organisation but doesn't even acknowledge what's happening here.

Now a short look at our final party stats:

Only two knockouts on Trisk and Maia - one of them each in the streets of Dunnage, the others in the Hanging Sepulcher. All in all, a very successful run, despite all of the hardships the party faced in Act 1.

Enuhal · Feb 28, 2026

I've started to go back to Pillars of Eternity once more, with the aim of doing some runs with the official companions I haven't used yet (at least in this thread). There are six of these in PoE 1 (Kana, Sagani, Grieving Mother and the three White March Companions, though in truth, I have played full runs with all of these except for Zahua and The Devil of Caroc in other contexts) and six more in PoE 2 (all the sidekicks, in that case - I have never really made use of these at all, except for Mirke for the endgame in one case when one of my companions permanently left due to story decisions, though that was not for a no-reload run), so they will have to be played with over the course of two runs due to party size restrictions.

Now, the problem here (and the reason I haven't used some of these all that much) is that some of these companions aren't available all that early on, or require some mid to high level battles to unlock them. Going to the White March early to unlock Zahua and Maneha, not to mention the Devil of Caroc who sits in an additional dungeon with level 11-12 traps and level 9 constructs at least, is a very risky proposition in no-reload gameplay. Well, I decided to just try my luck, which, in this case, wasn't enough. My estimate was that maybe, possibly, I could finish the ogre battle required to enter WM I at level 6 at the earliest, and this is where this run seized to be a no-reload one.

I was playing a rogue Watcher called Waban, very standard with lots of powerful single target damage increasing passives and the best dual-wielding weapons I could find at each time. In the party as well: Kana and Sagani as "new" companions (the first one as a secondary frontliner, eventually planned to mostly use the dragon chant, though at this point using support/defensive chants, the latter planned as a Stormcaller archer - one of the percs of unlocking WM I early on), Hiravias as a very strong damage dealer for both AoE and single target, Durance as a priest with all the buffs and, at this point, Edér as a tank, though I planned to replace him with Zahua, to see if a monk would be able to fill that role and to play a full game with this companion for once.

It was the opening salvo of cannon shots during the final ogre battle, combined with the winter wolf frost breaths, that immediately took out Edér in this battle - the result was an incredibly close encounter, where we were able to take down all the ogres, including their named leader, except for a single one - out of spells and abilities, we had nothing left to win:

I decided not to restart, though I was initially planning to report on this run as a no-reload attempt if I had managed to win this battle and successfully recruited Zahua at this very early stage. Instead, I played on in minimal reload style - so, making decisions as if I would still be in no-reload mode, but not quitting the run in case of an actual failure. The second attempt with the final ogre group, this time with me approaching from the east instead of the south, actually went very well - it wasn't all that close. Seems like I just had poor execution during my failed first attempt:

Good to know for the second run, though since I also need the Devil of Caroc for that one, things might get quite a bit more complicated, so it might be smart to wait at least until level 7. I made this minimal reload run a full one, doing all the expansion content, the Endless Paths, bounties and the archmages, with the plan of now preparing a history import for Deadfire, where I would attempt no-reload again with Waban. Galvino's Workshop, where I will need to go in a second planned run to get the DoC, still dealt quite a bit of damage to me at level 10, so I that one will be tough when I eventually get to it for real.

I had one other forced reload as I decided to face the Adra Dragon, at level 16 and with scale breaker - but dragons of any kind (not including Cail the Silent, who isn't a real dragon) can just destroy even an overleveled party if they happen to immediately follow up their breath attack with a wing attack and aren't immediately either disabled or destroyed. A good lesson to remember. No dragon fight is ever safe in PoE. Other than that, things went quite well - there was one potential scare with a trap that went beyond Waban's mechanics level, but we chose a peaceful resolution with Llengrath and even upscaled Thaos was really no threat at all to the party.

So, some conclusions: Hiravias beat everyone else on damage (though Sagani was propably a close second). Rogues can certainly do very high single target damage, but I think Hiravias is as strong if not stronger there with a full shapeshifter build, and he has a HUGE arsenal of AoE spells and even some support spells to make him that much more useful. Priests are still super powerful, no surprise. Chanters are too slow in their phrase gain in PoE1, thank god for the changes in PoE2, but the dragon chant is extremely powerful. Stormcaller rules. So far, no surprises, I knew all that. The big question mark was the performance of Zahua as a primary tank - I gave him pretty defensive gear, and he got knocked down maybe only three times, so that's pretty good. However, he also didn't offer anything special to the party except for tankiness - kind of playing out like a fighter, but with less options for engagement. And, of course, a paladin is vastly superiour due to performing a similiar job but also offering tons of party support (and even strong late game damage with sacred immolation in a full run such as this one). Pretty much what I expected, tbh. Still not a fan of monks in that game, but I'm propably always using them wrong - my previous attempt with a custom companion NPC monk who was more of a damage dealer also didn't impress me too much.

In any case, Waban (still a single class rogue, without a subclass) can now enter Deadfire with a clean slate, for an attempt at a Pillars of Eternity 2 only no-reload game. My plan is to recruit the following party: Rekke (as a primary tank, despite his bad stats - single class fighter); Vatnir (single class Priest of Rymrgand - before we can recruit him, Xoti will fill his slot), Ydwin (single class Cipher, propably operating at range) and Tekehu (Watershaper; we have one slot for a full companion, and we've never sided with the Huana in this thread, so this will be an opportunity to do that).
The main problem here is, simliar to PoE1, that Vatnir requires us to venture into mid to high level expansion content. In this case, we have to fight the Messenger at the beginning of BoW to actually recruit him. This expansion is meant for level 14+, and since I have tested all the expansions for no-reload viability with Triozum earlier on, I think going there at level 14 could easily end the run (the battle wasn't even all that easy at level 20). Still, I do plan to try my hand at it, so, similiar to PoE1, there's a good chance that this run will end up in the minimal reload camp due to that decision (if I don't make another major mistake earlier on anyway, though I'm decently confident there). Rekke also requires sailing quite far away, but I think this should propably work out, as I never had too much trouble with fleeing from pirate ships.

In the next post, I'm going to formally introduce Waban into the Deadfire no-reload challenge. So far, I've only done the intro and got to level 2 - I am recruiting adventurers until I can fill the party with real companions/sidekicks, just so that I can safely do early game stuff such as the digsite battle without thinking about it too much. In this case, an Oracle (Ancient/Psion, my favorite combo by now) and a Sharpshooter (not something I've used before, but since the Oracle can handle our crowd control needs by her own, I was just looking for additional ranged damage here).

Enuhal · Feb 28, 2026

Introducing Waban, Hearth Orlan Rogue, to the Deadfire Archipelago

So, I've imported Wabans gamestate into Deadfire, picked up Edér and Xoti, done two quick quests to get to level 2 and recruited an Oracle and a Sharpshooter to help us out in the early game until we get more party members. After clearing out the sea cave, we completed the remaining Port Maje sidequests (sneaking into Gorecci Streat from the wildnerness entrance to avoid any combat) and got to level 3. Buying all the useful equipment we could afford, we made our way to the digsite.

Whispers of Treason is enough for the initial group of boars and wurms, as we use the ladder to get into a position easily blocked off by Edér if needed:

For the skeletons inside the training hall, we take the eastern entrance, lure the initial fighter far back with Edér and intercept the incoming wizard with the remainder of our party, preventing him from casting any spells as we surround and kill him - the same is done to the other skeletons, though the ones with a fighter class are a bit tough to kill. Luckily, we have sporeling summons to assist us:

Honestly, taking this somewhat risky battle propably isn't worth it until reaching level 4.

For the drake battle, we do not use Captain's Banquets this time around, hoping that we're strong enough anyway with an Oracle on our side. While the first breath attack deals strong damage to us, Xoti heals us back up as we start using Whispers, first on a boar, after that on the young drake itself.

Once the effect is close to running out, we cast charm beast to get the remaining animals to turn on the drake, which works out quite well - we do get hit by a second breath, but Xoti finishes the enemy with Blessed Harvest, for a devastating 112 points of damage:

After that, a few more Whispers and the battle is ours. Our Oracle retires, and we pick up Aloth.

Next time, we will move into the sub arena level and hopefully start assembling our planned party.

Enuhal · Mar 1, 2026

Waban, First Update - Assembling our Team

Well, this run almost came to a premature end during the final battle in the arena sub-battle. I went into this fight without giving it much thought. It seems like the months of not playing Deadfire made me forget that it can be really challenging - in this case, the wurms in the enemy backline dealt quite a bit of damage to our party and I was unable to reach them, and I was running out of healing spells. I had no choice but tu run, and Waban barely got away and was able to reset combat:

Not exactly the most promising start. However, after getting the party back up and resting, it was easy enough to take down the now reduced number of remaining foes:

In retrospect, I should've kept the Oracle - the ability to spam Whispers of Treason can't be overstated in usefulness for the early game.

We left Port Maje - not sailing to Neketaka right away, instead moving north-east to find Rekke. For that purpose, I bought 100 extra of each food and drink rations. I actually overshot the region northwards and almost sailed into Ondra's Mortar, but was able to adjust - without even meeting a single pirate ship, only maybe two neutral Huana ships all in all. Rekke was recruited, and we sailed to the Big City, picking up Tekehu and Ydwin. The temporary party is complete (Waban, Rekke, Ydwin, Tekehu, Xoti) - Xoti should get replaced once we recruit Vatnir, but as mentioned previously, I can't expect to even attempt that before reaching level 14, so it's going to be a while. I also quickly completed Xoti's companion quest because she gets an injury here before moving outside and resting with Hylea's Bounty for the skill boosts required to peacefully solve the vast majority of Neketaka quests, which is next on the agenda.

Also, I'm realizing I never mentioned the settings for this run: We're playing on PotD, as per usual, but with no level scaling. No Berath's Blessings etc. The PoEI minimal reload run was played on PotD with full difficulty scaling, but due to our unusual routing it was only available to us for Sun in Shadow.

Enuhal · Mar 2, 2026

Waban, Second Update - Neketaka

A rather short update (though the playtime was several hours long): We did all the non-violent quests in Neketaka, only leaving open the entire Old City, A Glimpse Beyond and Eulogy for the Dead. The only combat encounter during our entire stay, which brought us straight all the way to level 9, were the two brine imps in Queen's Berth. I managed to remember/pick all the correct dialogue options to avoid combat otherwise, and we didn't get a single random encounter at all during our time in the city (which is good and bad - later on, especially the skuldrak encounter would've been welcome for the sword you can get there).
Here's a quick look at Waban's abilities now:

He's going to be a two-weapon damage dealer like in PoE1, but with a bit more tankiness, as he felt a bit too squishy in the first game. Rekke is a classical weapon and shield fighter tank, though his stats are far from ideal for the role (though they aren't all that good for any of his classes, unless you're going for some very specific fighter/barbarian shenanigans that seem too complicated to work out well for me). I'm hoping to make up for that by giving him really good gear. Xoti gets her usual restoration and inspiration spells, keeping her starting weapon and shield (which we need to upgrade to keep up - most of our money, except for the stealth boots and mechanics gloves which we bought so we could steal whatever we needed in the city, is going into gear upgrades for now), Tekehu goes for AoE water and frost powers with the corresponding shapeshifting bonuses as a single target option, and Ydwin will be a Red Hand ranged damage dealer with the most powerful cipher domination spells, buffs and debuffs available at each level. The party should be fairly well balanced all in all.

With that, our next plans are visiting Fort Deadlight and Dunnage for a few Principi main/sidequests, also hopefully mostly non-violent except for the Dunnage street battle. After that, we can safely start the exploration content.

Enuhal · Mar 3, 2026

Waban, Third Update - Principi-Business and Southern Exploration
We encountered no trouble in Fort Deadlight, I just started the party by stealthing around and blew up the cembalo. For Dunnage, I took the street battle seriously, using moonwell and priest buffs & heals plus puppet master on one of the ranged attackers to make sure I wouldn't take too much damage. No wounds, everything worked out quite well:

No levels gained here. We invested our money into some travel speed upgrades for the Defiant, which is not really needed, but since we're going to explore the south and southwest, it does make some sense. We started with the bounties, pirates and islands around Maje Island, also ventured into the Sandswept Ruins (because Waban has 20 Perception), evading Dour Old Forwin in the process, who tried to attack us twice. After that, we travelled north to the Oathbinder's Sanctum. Some shipwreck events propably got rid of our foodbuffs, and I didn't want to use Captain's Banquets just for this one encounter, so the dank spores down there where a bit more difficult to deal with - however, our various healing abilities kept us up and we completed the encounter without injuries:

After that, time to face Lödwyn. With Devotions, Dire Blessing, Moonwell and more (Tekehu's AoE damage spells, positioning Waban to take down spellcasters, Ydwin dominating a foe and debuffing the others after her first round of shots), the battle went quite well without any notable trouble:

We returned to Neketaka, took down the bounty in the nearby wilderness there and turned in various bounties and the exploration & sanctum quests, upgrading a few items in the process. We're up to level 10 now. I'm not 100% sure if I want to go to Hasongo now or sail to the east for more exploration and Tikiwara - we could also do A Glimpse Beyond or the old city, I guess.

OrlonKronsteen · Mar 3, 2026

Interesting run. I do have a question: do you engage in ship-to-ship combat in these runs, or avoid?

Enuhal · Mar 3, 2026

OrlonKronsteen said:
Interesting run. I do have a question: do you engage in ship-to-ship combat in these runs, or avoid?

I have never bothered to learn the ship vs ship combat system, but I do like the quick and direct boarding combat, so I do hunt down ship bounties, but always immediately pick the boarding option.

Enuhal · Mar 4, 2026

Waban, Fourth Update - Bounty Hunting and some minor quests

I decided to go for a bunch of bounties next: Mostly boarding battles, including quite a few at my current level, but I felt this party was very well set up for those. Tekehu is very valuable with his party friendly AoE power here, and I eventually gave him the soulbound Lord Darryn's Voulge to boost his storm spells. It also helps that we're wearing mostly pretty heavy armor at this point, even on damage dealers.

A useful note: I learned that, if you sail into a storm to upgrade this item, you get a special dialogue option and don't actually need to pass the usual checks to safely get out of it (that can actually end your run if you fail), so it's entirely safe to do so.

I also went after some land bounties, and while we did evade some of the most powerful ships in the game, we eventually got most relevant bounties in the southern half of the map. After that, we rested with Captain's Banquets in order to take down the Deathguard Fanatic and do the Battle for Frost Seeker. Sadly, we did take two wounds while going for A Glimpse Beyond (just do do something different during all the bounty hunting) - you really don't want to send your weaker party members into melee combat here, the two knockdowns resulted form disengagement attacks (kind of forced ones, as the next hit would've knocked down these party members anyway), so we rested with some other decent but not super powerful food after that.

All the bounty hunting brought us to level 12. We ended our journey with some of the north-eastern land bounties:

Next up, we're now heading to the Old City. We are also powerful enough to safely do Hasongo, Tikiwara (plus surrounding islands) and Motare o Kozi (since we have The Spine of Thicket Green), so we should easily make it to level 14, which is when I will take the big risk of the run and try to recruit Vatnir.

Enuhal · Mar 4, 2026

Waban, Fifth Update - Old City, Hasongo and Eastern Exploration

We successfully cleared the Old City - Waban had a rather easy time against the giant cave grub, as always with a cipher in the party - using its weakness to intellect afflictions to dominate it while taking down the grub burrows and active grubbs before flanking and taking it down.

We got to level 13 here, and I decided to sail to Hasongo next. No trouble here - the only difficult encounter against the big northern naga group was a bit challenging, but all in all no trouble as our damage output is fairly decent. With my defensive strategy, there's always a risk of getting overrun here - one of the reasons why I went to Hasongo rather late - but things worked out nicely this time around:

After that, we were still missing some experience for level 14 and decided to go for eastern exploration, clearing the eastern temple and the black isle puzzle dungeon. That brought us pretty much exactly to level 14 - we took a rest with some powerful food (not optimized, as I just don't know what will be the best against the messenger - never studied her abilities) and moved southwards to Harbinger's Rest. The following battle is most likely going to make or break the run, and I haven't fought it yet. If I fail, I will continue in minimal reload style, but only give maybe one final update on the efficacy of the sidekicks I've used and my experience with them - if I win, I do plan to pick up Vatnir and take him away, but I will return to Beast of Winter content around level 18, so there's still a risk here as I am not that familiar with it and have only ever done it at level 20. So, success will still not be guaranteed, but at least we will have a decent chance, as I am not really all that afraid of any other piece of content I plan to do (I will skip other DLCs, megabosses and propably the highest level optional content such as Splintered Reef, Nemnok and the areas required for the final exploration quest), except for maybe the final Huana quest (as I plan to pick their side) due to the timing component.

Enuhal · Mar 5, 2026

Waban, Sixth Update - Fighting the Messenger

All right, here's the big battle. First things first - two skulls. The Messenger appears to be level 16, not 14 - not what I wanted to see:

Stats and resistances/immunities:

Immunity to frost was something I expected, but still bad for me since it's Tekehu's primary form of damage. He does have boiling spray to deal some fire damage and a few electricity storm spells. It would've been good to know about the small weakness to blunt weapons, that would've impacted my choices going into combat. The resistance to dexterity afflictions was expected, but not ideal, otherwise I would've certainly tried to spam mental binding. I sent Waban to flank the beast, the others staying on the initial side, applied gouging stirke for the permanent DoT effect and started preparing my most important buffs, in this case Devotions, Moonwell, Dire Blessing and Weather the Storm (which I applied expecting some kind of frost damage dragon breath, though that didn't really come to pass), later on also Circle of Protection. Sadly, Waban was out of range for these due to the size of our foe. I also activated my armor piercing weapon modals on Waban and Rekke. Another notable factor is Tarn's Respite, which lowers deflection by up to 10 points thanks to a stacking debuff, so we should be able to hit fairly consistently with physical attacks (later on, I sometimes added in Nature's Mark as well).
Now, as far as the dragon's abilities, he soon applied Llengrath's Safeguard, and, from time to time, the high level spell Cloak of Death, which stuns attackers, while also calling in Luminous Revenants, which I ignored at first, but later on took the time to take down whenever Cloak of Death (which is a shorter lasting buff) was active. Having some kind of buff removal would've been crucial here, but I just didn't have that. I eventually used interfering strikes on Xoti's Sickle whenever she wasn't casting spells to further debuff our foe. I also made the mistake of applying Perishing Strike, after the Gouging Strike - this, as it turned out, was a waste of Guile at this early point in battle. I should have waited until the dragon was Bloodied or Near Death. Rekke activated his defensive buffs, and after that, my primary startegy consisted of using Ydwin's Ancestor's Memory on both Xoti and Tekehu while keeping it active with Salvation of Time, which worked for a decent amount of time and was important to also keep the other buffs active on everyone during this very long fight. I think I renewed buffs around 4 times with Salvation, using the opportunity to cast a few Boiling Sprays and Storm Spells, plus a little bit of healing with Xoti. We also called in summons, both with cleric and druid spells, plus statues, and things looked just fine for a decent while as our damage output was decent, and we were able to mostly outheal the dragon - she hit us mostly with one beam attack (which also seemed to prolong her own buffs), and a breath attack (which also caused terrify, though generally only on Ydwin - it didn't hit Waban in the back, and the other three had a Captain's Banquet going).

At this point, the dragon was bloodied, and I started to implement my finishing strategy of using three Devastating Blows and two Blessed Harvests (one of each empowered). However, at this point, we ran into a bit of a problem - I don't know by which mechanic, maybe it's just a passive, but at this point the dragons armor class jumped up to 19 - far above our penetration score even with weapon modals, and we had no abilities to lower armor at this point. He also started healing up with lay on hands (maybe applied by the revenants, not sure about that) and Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon - so, the damage from empowered Devastating Blow was rather pitiful as a result:

We brought the dragon to near death, but a second corrosive siphon brought him back to bloodied. Note the 19 armor:

At this point, I had to apply new buffs manually as the Salvation of Time loop was broken and I had to use Ydwin's focus almost exclusively to keep the party alive with Pain Block spells. Luckily, Xoti had the brilliant inspiration for long enough to still be pretty strong on spellslots. Had I saved the guile for a Perishing Strike during this period of the dragon healing up, we could've finished the battle right here (as it disables any healing effects). However, instead, we still had a long battle ahead of us. Sometimes, The Messenger turned around to Waban, who was also getting attacked by Revenant, but wearing the DoC Breastplate helped out quite a lot here, and Waban, who also has decent defensive ability picks, stood strong - though we eventually got rid of the revenants attacking him:

Luckily, the dragon was not healing up anymore. However, a Breath of the Void (which seems to be her unique breath attack) caught Ydwin, terrifying and soon killing her. Luckily, Xoti still had three resurrection spells at the ready, as I had saved them for such cases:

Another knockout hit Tekehu, but he was raised up as well. Xoti's healing spells were by now pretty much gone, so I had to resort to healing potions in addition to pain block. Still, with the dragon no longer healing, even with constant underpenetration, we started chipping away at her final bit of health:

And while Ydwin got knocked out for a second time, Waban was able to get a lucky critical hit in to finally finish the battle in our favor:

A very long and very tough battle. A bit of a knowledge problem here as well - had I known the stats and abilities of the dragon beforehand, this would've been a lot easier (having a chanter would've also helped quite a lot). Good thing I waited until level 14 to do this, and I wouldn't recommend doing this battle on PotD at this point (well, with Captain's Banquets, decent sources for fire and blunt damage, a cipher and a chanter, plus a way to either disable healing or reduce armor, it should propably work decently well), level 16 seems like it would propably be the safe choice.

Well, we recruited Vatnir (in my opinion, a downgrade from Xoti for no-reload play, but this was the sole reason we got here) - he got Xoti's old gear, learned the most crucial inspiration and restoration spells, but he gets quite a few AoE damage bonus spells, and I picked up Secrets of Rime for him. My hope is that, once he has applied Devotions and Dire Blessing (plus other needed buffs for specific encounters), he can contribute to party damage with those spells, though I am going to miss having acess to Blessed Harvest. Still, a lot of his unique passives apply only when on low hitpoints, which does not seem like a good approach for no-reload gameplay, and his constitution score is rather poor.

Well, we do get to pick him up and leave BoW for now. We will return at some point, propably at around level 18.

Enuhal · Mar 6, 2026

Waban, Seventh Update - Midgame questing, bounties and exploration

Now that our party is complete, there's lots we can do.

I decide to start with Tikiwara, both the sidequests and the faction quest - double tap is enough to kill the engwithan titan, the only slightly dangerous thing here are the paralyzing xaurips and the fact that I ran into a sigil of nightmares, forcing me to rest.

After that, back to Neketaka, where we complete the Hanging Sepulchers - no trouble at this point - and Dirty Laundry; We also run into the Kusi encounter - finally. I wanted the Griffon's Blade as a primary weapon for Waban for a long time, but I don't like forcing encounter by just constantly travlelling between districts.

Now, we are at level 15. So far, Vatnir has done at least some decent damage with some of his AoE spells, notably freezing pillar, though the fact that, unlike Tekehu, most of his stuff is not foe only is a bit of a hindrance. At least the same won't be true for his symbol spell, which should be quite useful.

Next up, Motare o Kozi. Most work is done by stealthing around with the Spine of Thicket Green - I could've gone here much earlier, but I wasn't sure what was needed to avoid battling the RDC ship after that - turns out 5 in Sleight of Hand would've been enough, easily achieved with party support (and yes, we could've also just out-sailed it).

We hunt down a few more ships and bounties before completing the south-western exploration and turning in a ton of quests. I decide to deal with Overgrowth next - first, a battle against the season druids:

Next, the underwater ruins. I decided on a whim to fight the kraken, which reminded me that it is wise to not underestimate that one, despite our level advantage. The kraken, to my surprise (I must have forgotten this) can dish out wounds in combat, without having to knock someone out, which makes it extremely dangerous in a no-reload setting. We first had to deal with the tentacles, and Vatnir had to resurrect two party members throughout the battle - Waban ended up with two wounds, which is not a comfortable place to be in; While I had tons of abilities still left in the tank, this battle didn't feel entirely safe to do. Notably, I might have actually died here without the auto-resurrection ring from the Deck of Many things, which Vatnir was carrying, because he was knocked out early on, and I wouldn't have been able to resurrect the others (down to 2/3 charges now):

I should really avoid that one next time, there's no real good reason to take it.

The Shadow under Neketaka is similiar, though I knew for this one from the struggles I had here previously that the first group of nagas and oozes is not to be trifled with, even with a huge level advantage. Especially the fact that these slimes can cast insect plague at will can not be ignored. While I was able to pull the enemy group upstairs and took the fight pretty seriously, Tekehu still ended up taking a wound at the very end.

The second battle is easier, and we boosted our animancy with Blessed Incense to both avoid the dragon battle and still make the queen happy, as we're siding with the Huana this time around.

After that, we explored the northeast, fighting the ancient lich battlemage - luckily, we had dismiss on Vatnir and enough levels on Ydwin to kill the lich with double tap, as this battle wasn't very easy either.

It seems our party doesn't scale too well into the lategame - our focus on single class characters with little powerful lategame payoff might be a reason (though Tekehu gets a big one at level 19 with Greater Maelstrom). The Coal Mine battle was easy, though. We fought the remaining named ships on the map - no trouble here - and hunted down the last few bounties, got ourselves the treasure from the dunnage bounty map and turned in everything - while I was just finishing up exploration at level 18, all the turn ins brought me straight to level 19, a level higher than I intended for my return to Beast of Winter.

We could easily do Berkana's Folly, Crookspur and Ashen Maw, the last remaining things I plan to do (as mentioned previously, we're skipping the three islands required for north-western exploration, Nemnok and Splintered Reef, plus any other DLC content), right now, and there's little point in completing BoW, but since we have Vatnir & Ydwin, we might as well try. This will be the second semi-unknown risk of the run, as I only ever have done this one with a fully geared max level party. We're also missing some legendary upgrades, but I can't remember if BoW provides us with any of those (Seeker, Slayer, Survivor certainly would).

Enuhal · Mar 7, 2026

Waban, Eighth Update - Beast of Winter, Berkana's Folly and Crookspur

BoW until the portal was relatively fine - we had some difficult battles against polar bears, but Sundering Blow, Rekke's level 19 ability, is quite useful against high armor enemies such as these:

Not exactly worth it as payoff for going single class fighter, but at least there's a bit of upside here. Greater Maelstrom is great, as per usual, and the two high level Rymrgand spells Vatnir gets are nice as well. The incarnate has tons of HP, but I rarely find myself wanting to make use of it, to be honest.

Now, into the portal we go. It turns out that for Rymrgands realm, the Dismissal spell is just king. Vatnir makes great use of it - all of those spirits... so easy to instantly take down. Scourges are not affected, and have strong armor class, but our new Sundering Blow combined with weapon modals and Waban's single target damage can do the job.

Just look at those dismissals!

Rekke's new getup:

The mace modal is another piece we can use for armor rating manipulation. Note that, in the flooded kingdom, we get some unique Rekke dialogue, which I have never experienced before, as there is some writing in his native tongue:

All in all, we take two wounds here, but heal them with luminous adra potions after resting once with very powerful food, which also increases armor penetration - I decided on that one instead of captain's banquet in preparation for our next meeting with the dragon, because Vatnir can provide Resolute via Holy Meditation to counter resolve afflictions.
In the end, the dragon battle was a decent amount easier than the first time - mostly because we had better tools to deal with high armor (even though it went up to 20 this time around), but also because of the three allied spirits (one of which can deal a huge amount of damage here). The dragon also doesn't call in vessels or get LoH here, instead jumping the battlefield with the barbarian leap ability - which is also what knocked out Ydwin at the end of combat. I should've used brilliant a bit more aggressively to give Waban more guile (something I completely forgot this inspiration can do the first time we fought the dragon), as he's by far our best single damage dealer and stills top damage counts at this point, despite Tekehu's AoE power.

This battle, which is the final notable one of the DLC for us, as we make a deal with Rymrgand, also takes us to level 20 - I would've expected the DLC to get us there faster - took us completing the entire thing to get this final level. On the way there, enjoy Vatnir destroying 12 enemies with a single spell:

After the DLC is done, we go to the Neketaka Old City to get the affliction upgrades (standin on corpse piles for constant sicken afflictions) which are required for the Soulbound upgrades with the BoW gearset Rekke is now wearing. I now from experience that you just won't get all of those by naturally playing the game (unless maybe you go to BoW super early). We also need 500 misses on the shield to get full upgrades. To that end, we do Berkana's Folly next, but since battles end very quickly due to our powerful high level AoE spells, we don't get nearly enough - Concelhaut himself basically dies to Greater Maelstrom/Symbol of Rymrgand, only needing a few hits afterwards:

After that, we move to Crookspur - since we're not getting the misses on Rekke that we need, we just park him near a few weak enemies and let them try to attack for a few minutes:

Eventually, full upgrades on soulbound gear are in. Sadly, we didn't get the resources to get a lot of our weapons to legendary (3 are still at superb) - BoW did nothing to help us here. Adra Ban, as per usual, is the bottleneck - we found one in Crookspur, but that barely helped. The slavers are killed, and we enter Magran's Maw next. No need to turn in quests yet, we don't gain anything from that anymore.

Enuhal · Mar 8, 2026

Waban, Final Update - Endgame

Ashen Maw is easy enough - pretty much everything here is heavily weak to frost damage, and we have a TON of that with both Tekehu and Vatnir, plus some of our gear from BoW. Because taking on the dragon provides us with a free legendary upgrade, I decide to settle the matter of the torc with violence - not too troublesome, as we're now pretty well versed in breaking down the AC of powerful enemies (though this one is not nearly as powerful as the dragon in BoW).

Rathu encounters are solved peacefully, so we now only have to do the final Huana quest. It's very easy, but there is a potential run-ending condition: Once you place the bomb in the RDC powder house, an invisible timer starts, and if you don't get out in time, everything blows up and you die. I don't have too much experience with this and don't even know how long the timer is, but it is potentially sketchy to introduce such a risk for no-reload play. Thankfully, as I made sure to clear the place before placing the bomb, and only had to fight like 3 additional guards after, we left the place with no trouble.

After that, we sail directly to Ukaizo with the help of the Huana Watershapers, ignoring ship combat. The water dragon takes down the Guardian for us, and the two engwithan titans are a bit of a joke by now, being vessels - one gets killed by Red Hand double tap, the other one via Dismissal.

Since we didn't bother to turn in the Crookspur quest, Furrante is still leading the Principi, and we have to fight him for control of The City Lost to Time. Most of it is done via empowered Greater Maelstrom (the most dangerous thing here is potentially walking into our own spell, as it deals devastating damage even to us).

This run actually ends up with propably the most positive outcomes I have ever had in the ending slides, aside from not doing the two other DLCs, which does cause some problems, and maybe the results not being good for Tikiwara. Nice.

As for some final stats and thoughts: First of all, regarding the sidekicks we travelled with. There's no real good reason to pick up Rekke outside of story stuff; His stats just aren't very good. Ydwin, however, does have a reason - if you're playing with official NPCs only, she's basically the only no-reload viable choice if you really want a Cipher, because Serafen's Wild Mind subclass is way too risky to pick up imo. Vatnir did an okay job, honestly I didn't feel his poor constitution too much. The additional offensive spells are useful, though they do feel a bit unneeded to me as I already had Tekehu for that role. I propably still prefer Xoti, and considering that picking up Vatnir is quite difficult and only possible later on, it's propably not worth it (it's also notable that he has barely any companion interactions, unlike Ydwin and Rekke, who have at least some).

We had a total of 11 injuries, which is pretty par for the course. Waban still led in damage done even in the end when Tekehu had some opportunity to cast Great Maelstrom. Pretty impressive for a melee single target damage dealer. It seems like the rogue really finds its strengths here in deadfire - I had some decent results with spamming the Gambit ability, for example. Compared to PoE1, the rogue is also very good at that, but the fact is that Waban got completely outclassed by Hiravias there - who not only dominated AoE damage, but also was at least as good in single target when spiritshifted. Since spiritshifting is heavily nerfed with deadfire, that wasn't something Tekehu could do. Ydwin is slightly behind Tekehu, despite using The Red Hand, though to be fair I didn't use too much damage-dealing cipher powers with her, giving her more of a support roll. Vatnir, despite being recruited late, was at least capable of overtaking Rekke. No direct comparison only for the time he was in the party is possible, so I don't know how he ranks compared to the others.

I will soon start the second of these planned runs to make use of the remaining NPC companions. My plan is to start reporting on it right away in PoE1 this time; There's a chance it might end the same way Waban's PoE1 experience did, with the attempt at early WM (Galvino's Cabin might be a bit of a problem, though I plan to wait until level 7 instead of 6 this time around), and in that case I will, similiarly to here, continue in minimal reload fashion and try again in Deadfire. However, this time this will not be a full PoE1 run, as I plan to mostly skip expansion content (except for picking up Maneha and DoC, and doing DoCs companion quest - Maneha's requires doing way too much expansion content, though), bounties, Endless Paths and even some base game battles that are difficult but of little consequence (mostly battles in Elmshore and in southern Stormwall Gorge). Let's see how things go.[/spoiler]

Enuhal · Mar 11, 2026

Introducing Aldare, Priestess of Wael - Chapter 1

Here's the promised second run, played on PotD. The plan is to play a shortened version of both games (for PoE1 that means: No bounties, no Endless Paths, no White March content except for recruitment purposes; For Deadfire, this means: None of the three expansion zones, no megabosses and skipping out on endgame content, i.e. the three north-western exploration zones (though, honestly, I propably can do the fire naga temple), Nemnok and Splintered Reef), and if the party dies, I will continue in minimal reload style.

Our new Watcher is Aldare, a wood elf priest. The deity choice doesn't matter too much in PoE1 - it's mostly about which types of dialogue choices you prefer, and a single bonus talent which mostly improves accuracy with two specific weapon types. It is a lot more impactful in Deadfire, where you get an entire suite of bonus spells, one for each caster level, plus significant differences in spirtual weapon, symbol and incarnate spells (the latter two are only relevant for single class priests). I chose Wael because: a) I find the god interesting in PoE1 (though less so in Deadfire); b) because I've come to appreciate quarterstaves in PoE1 for their range bonus (quarterstaff and rod are the weapon types Waelites can get a bonus to); and c) because I like the suite of bonus spells in Deadfire, as they offer a nice mix of defenses and illusion-based crowd control (plus, there are ways to boost illusion power levels in deadfire).

The choice of wood elf has two reasons: First, I want to maximize dexterity for PoE1 (where priests often try to apply as many buffs as possible in as little time as possible), and while the additional bonus for ranged attacks does very little here, in Deadfire this gets changed to a resistance to dexterity afflictions, which is very useful to block paralyze effects. Aldare is from the Deadfire Archipelago (more dexterity, plus some nice dialogue opportunities in PoE2), her background is Explorer (doesn't matter too much here). Aside from boosting deterity, other attribute points are put into intellect for a higher radius and longer duration for any buffs and debuffs.

As for our planned party: It includes Pallegina as a tank who also offers great utility (mostly because I also want to pick her up in Deadfire), Aloth as a supporting spellcaster mostly for debuffs, crowd control and minor AoE damage, and the three characters I haven't used in this thread before, that being Grieving Mother (ranged cipher), Maneha (two-handed blood thirst based barbarian, with firebrand as a powerful option) and, for the one I haven't made extensive use of at all, The Devil of Caroc (referred to as DoC - since I don't want to copy Wabans dual-wielding build and already have 2,5 frontliners (weak pathfinding in PoE1 makes me only want one or two, whereas three are perfectly fine in Deadfire), she will go for a ranged firearms weapon switch build).

The prologue was a bit rough - very low on accuracy and deflection, Aldare doesn't contribute too much - Calisca gets her brigandine and has to do quite a bit of tanking, but we get out of there in the end.

We make it to Gilded Vale, recruit Edér and Aloth, plus two player-created companions this time around - one, as I often do, to fill up the party before Caed Nua, the second one is a replacement for Durance - it doesn't make too much sense to double up on priests. I end up creating a druid and a rogue - the rogue will actually stay in the party until we pick up the DoC, because in order to get through Galvino's Workshop early, I need someone with optimized mechanics. We also take Kana along, pick up Durance's staff for Aldare and quickly clear out Valewood before helping the miller. Notably, I've made a knowingly suboptimal choice by picking up the Incomprehensible Revelation talent first. I did this to give Aldare a distinct identity as a Waelite Priest, even though Inspiring Radiance is clearly the better choice here (and will be my pick for level 4 - we will spend future ability points exclusively to boost Radiance and Interdiction).

Aldare, as we are done with Valewood and turn to the surrounding areas:

[/spoiler]
Things go fairly well all throughout the road to Caed Nua - having a druid, priest and wizard at this point does give us tools to deal with all sorts of foes - the druid is great for beast battles and fire damage, which is useful for many encounters here, plus single target power via shapeshiftin;, Aloth also deals decent fire damage and can apply AoE blind via chill fog, Ardare offers inspiring radiance (upon reaching level 4), bless, armor of faith and various level 2 damage or utility spells.

The only encounters that are somewhat problematic are, as is often the case, in the ruined Temple of Eothas - we rest twice in there and suffer a total of two injuries, but no serious risk of a run-ender. We just can see that our accuracy is still somewhat lacking, and shades are just a bit too strong in terms of both armor and damage output in the early game:

On to Caed Nua. There's the usual trouble with the phantoms - their stun can just be absolutely devastating - but we make it through, though some resting is required, as we can't go through any phantom encounters without some heavy spell usage. Maerwald is relatively easy to defeat, as we pull back out of his room and use our ranged abilities to disrupt him. Edér is holding back the blights, the others have arbalests or crossbows equipped, which are a great early game choice (Maerwald doesn't seem to use arcane veil, so no firearms needed) - the final nail in the coffin is Aloth, who successfully paralyzes the old Watcher:

Chapter 1 is done - now it's time to assemble our party. As mentioned in the previous post, that also means reaching level 7, mostly through Defiance Bay questing, because I don't think it's reasonable to try recruiting the DoC before that - Galvino's Workshop is most likely harder than the initial ogre assault, and even that one ended the no-reload status of Waban's PoE1 run at level 6.

Enuhal · Mar 12, 2026

Aldare, Priestess of Wael - First Update: Assembling our Party

First things first, we pick up Hiravias to replace our custom druid and travel to Dyrford Village for Grieving Mother, replacing Kana Rua. Now, to Defiance Bay, where our first target is recruiting Pallegina. During her recruitment quest, we side with the Doemenels - its just so convenient. Despite them being the designated evil faction, you can avoid so much combat by teaming up with them and get by far the easiest and fastest second faction quest, plus, this shortened type of run always ends up being short on cash, and you can get 10k from them as a reward.

The other early quest we need to do right now is The Scroll of Wael (also fitting for our subclass), because following Wael's will and burying the scroll, which we are, of course, going to do, only gets you access to the archives if you don't have the Deceptive 2 reputation, and since we're going to be very deceptive, we need to do it before too much of those dialogue options open up to us (I even avoided a few of these conversation options in Chapter 1 as I was already at Deceptive 1). Pallegina got a bit low on endurance here, but even early on, this battle isn't the most difficult, with returning storm, figurines and watcher abilities at the ready:

We also get an early attack on Caed Nua that we have to deal with right away:

To get to level 7, we have to do most sidequests in Defiance Bay; Generally we try to avoid combat, only having to do a few battles such as the fake Purnisc or the Crucible Knight quest:

At level 6, we also move to Raedrics Hold, siding with Kolsk, but not going for the direct assault this time, instead sneaking through the dungeon and helping the priest to get throne room access. We lure Raedric and his allies back, snipe the spellcasters and use our huge array of AoE spells while Pallegina blocks off access to the party:

Back to the Bay; Basically, we do every sidequest and task outside of the Lighthouse, the Forgotten and the quests that requires us going into the ocean. That, plus Never Far from the Queen, is enough. That's a nice Fan of Flames from Aloth:

Now, for the real challenge - the defense of Stalwart is first. The most important tool that level 7 allows us to access here is Aloth's confusion spell. Once we hit the final big ogre group, this is what shapes the battlefield to our advantage, with two great hits in succession. This also saves Pallegina, who initially gets knocked down and badly wounded, by turning the ogres surrounding her against each other. Grieving Mother also adds a lot of damage by using an item we got from a stronghold adventure (I am always pumping up my prestige to get as many of those as possible, as there are some great rewards), the Witches Hat, for the Menpwgra form, which, while limited in charges, allows access to powerful spells such as insect plague. Not ideal against these high fortitude enemies, but still quite good. We manage to win the battle without taking an injury (though Aloth gets very close), which is surprising, but good to see:

Now, we sadly have to turn away Hiravias to pick up Maneha, who gets some equipment to activate the Firebrand sword which we had pre-bought for her. Let's see if we can deal with the many dangers of Galvino's Cabin at level 7.

First things first, we made sure to rest with the Caed Nua mechanics bonus (I have prioritized building that one for just this moment), and we are careful not to let any unstable constructs explode in our face - tools we have here are mostly mental binding, crippling strike and other hobbled effects, just concentrated ranged damage or using a figurine summon to explode them. This works in all but one case, but the explosion only hit the tanky Pallegina. Luckily, for the most part, fire damage works very well down here and we have lots of access to it (shock damage, the other thing that works well, is sadly mostly gone now with Hiravias leaving):

We need quite a few spells for every major battle and always take some damage, to resting is inevitable - but we also have a Caed Nua attack incoming anyway, so we return to the fortress, running into some hostile deer on the way. Maneha shows the powerf of Firebrand + Blood Thirst by absolutely desotrying them:

We deal with the attack, rest up and return with full supplies and a new mechanics bonus. Noxious bursts, if doubled/tripled up, are still very dangerous - we try to dodge them if possible as they are telegraphed, but one time, Aloth instantly gets knocked out via a double hit:

Luckily, Pallegina already has reviving exhortation, as paladins get early access to such tools (this run reminds me how much better a paladin tank really is for the party in PoE1 compared to fighter or monk - the utility is priceless! Yes, they are slightly less tanky, but thats totally worth the tradeoff).

We take everything very slowly, often kiting enemies back for a while before turning on them (our rogue has Fast Runner, which helps with that - he shoots from stealth, retreats, maybe shoots again, and we see when the others want to join from a strong position). We only have to rest one more time as we carefully fight our way towards Galvino, picking up a unique pistol for the DoC in the process:

We recruit the DoC (and even have to pay for her!) - this one is a bit of a unique companion because she has a fixed armor piece, with fairly high recovery and AC for a rogue, which we can enchant, but also gets some drawbacks and immunities - from the wiki:
Immune to Poison, Disease effects, Can't use Food, Drinks, or Drugs, Immunity to Sickened, Unconscious, Dominated, Charmed, Confused, +1 Might, +1 Constitution
While the fixed armor isn't ideal, I think the immunities should come in very handy, especially for no-reload play. Next up, we well finish Chapter 2.

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

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