Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

[Driderman]

I "settled" for using Whispers of the Endless Paths instead. Hot damn!

[Morty]

As much as I hate crafting in most games, at least it does avoid this kind of nonsense by letting us make our own gear. Well, sometimes. Unless it's too much of a pain to actually craft anything. At least Deadfire doesn't have DOS2's insane gear treadmill, so using what you happen to find or simple Fine/Exceptional stuff is enough.

But really, if they wanted to emphasize unique weapons, they should have bothered to at least somewhat balance them out among different types.

[Psyren]

As much as I hate crafting in most games, at least it does avoid this kind of nonsense by letting us make our own gear. Well, sometimes. Unless it's too much of a pain to actually craft anything. At least Deadfire doesn't have DOS2's insane gear treadmill, so using what you happen to find or simple Fine/Exceptional stuff is enough.

But really, if they wanted to emphasize unique weapons, they should have bothered to at least somewhat balance them out among different types.

I have to wonder if you accidentally cranked the difficulty up to maximum on your DOS2 playthrough or something. I'm in Arx (Chapter 4) and overgearing everything I face by a significant margin. My only area of worry is my thief, who has low-ish magic armor and so ends up susceptible to elemental attacks and curses if they get focused, but since they're an archer positioning around all that is easy.

Speaking of archers, getting back to Pillars - my understanding is that you get no rogue party member in PoE1, is that accurate? I was planning to make my Watcher a ranger-y high-skilled type that I could bring with me into PoE2.

[Tome]

Speaking of archers, getting back to Pillars - my understanding is that you get no rogue party member in PoE1, is that accurate? I was planning to make my Watcher a ranger-y high-skilled type that I could bring with me into PoE2.

Only without the DLC. WM1 adds a monk and a rogue and WM2 adds the final missing class with a barbarian companion.

So if you have the DLCs you'll have a companion with the same class no matter what. Fortunately there's no real downside to doubling up on most classes, you can always use more dps/tanky front liners/priest buffs.

[Psyren]

Only without the DLC. WM1 adds a monk and a rogue and WM2 adds the final missing class with a barbarian companion.

So if you have the DLCs you'll have a companion with the same class no matter what. Fortunately there's no real downside to doubling up on most classes, you can always use more dps/tanky front liners/priest buffs.

Thanks for the tip! Ooh, and monks you say...

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Thanks for the tip! Ooh, and monks you say...

From what I've been given to understand, most Monk abilities don't really scale all that well

[Tome]

From what I've been given to understand, most Monk abilities don't really scale all that well

They do, actually! Or, more specifically, they scale off your weapon damage, which is probably pretty high thanks to your fists scaling really well. Full attack with bonus damage, increased attack speed, cleansing debuffs, summoning two clones etc are all great.

[Driderman]

Quick question: Is the game worth it? I've been looking for something like Divinity: Original Sin 1&2 but never found anything like that. Pillars are looking somewhat similar, but I am still not sure

I adore them both, even though they have their flaws. I'm not even a big fan of old-school stat-crunching games, which they certainly allow, but just set the difficulty to easy and you should be good to go.
Weird thing about Pillars 1 is that without the expansions it's sort of lacking a mid-game. Seems like the narrative is supposed to go something like(very slightly spoilerish if you don't like knowing area names)

Spoiler

Show

Gilded Vale> Caed Nua> Defiance Bay> Stronghold/White March Expansions> Twin Elms > End Game

but without the White March expansions the only thing you really have to do after Defiance Bay is Caed Nua, which is "just" a 15-level dungeon crawl with a bit of stronghold management on the side.

I get the impression that Pillars 2 may also lack a bit of strong narrative design, I suppose both games suffer from the fact that they are designed to be very open-ended. Pillars 2 also has a lot of (minor) bugs that needs to be worked out but so long as you don't respec it's perfectly playable. I recommend getting the mod that gives you an in-game cheat UI, to fix stuff that is broken or just annoying.

[houlio]

Quick question: Is the game worth it? I've been looking for something like Divinity: Original Sin 1&2 but never found anything like that. Pillars are looking somewhat similar, but I am still not sure

The first game is kinda flat. The first act was a real slog for me to get through. The second act was fun and I felt it had a pretty good flow, along with some decent branching storytelling. The third act then feels a lot like cleanup duty through to the end.

White March is a lot of fun and has a much tighter story.

Deadfire for me is a lot more fun so far than the first game. The quests are individually a lot more interesting. While there’s still a lot of go to place to kill dudes, you get a lot of different resolution options.

I’d almost say 1 is skippable, but 2 really wants you to have played through 1 first.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

What's the best way to play a Cipher in melee? I know they need lighter armor, but are robes or padded armor better?

[Tome]

What's the best way to play a Cipher in melee? I know they need lighter armor, but are robes or padded armor better?

1 or 2? If 2, single class or mutliclass and what subclass?

In 1 you can go with lighter armour and use a pike or staff to attack from behind Eder. Just CC anything that looks at you funny. Mental Binding, Borrowed Instinct/Tactical Meld, Amplified Wave, Ringleader, Time Parasite etc are all really strong powers.

In 2, melee ciphers probably want medium armour and the doggy that reduces your penalty from armour. Grab your preferred dual wielded weapons for offence - I'm favouring maces right now. Still figuring out which powers work best.

Light armour is working fairly well for my inquisitor, but she has her paladin side to give her huge bonuses to her defences and heal what does get through.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Um...both, honestly? I'm looking to do a MASTER PLAYTHROUGH of both games. I'm not sure if I want to multiclass in the second game or not, though. Doesn't that prevent me from learning the final abilities of the class? Or do the classes not have capstones like that?

[Morty]

A multi-class character can't learn the level 8 and 9 abilities of either class.

Deadfire is more forgiving of light armor because you can heal the damage, while in Pillars 1 the lost health will add up even if you regain endurance. And ciphers don't have a lot of it.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

So do I go with heavier armor and eat the penalties in the first game to protect myself? I was looking to master two-handers because of:

Spoiler

Show

Abydon's Hammer in the first game and Whispers of the Endless Paths in the second.

[lord_khaine]

How valuable are the level 8 and 9 monk abilities?
Was considering a wizard multiclass.

And how big are the reward from having played though 1?

[Tome]

So do I go with heavier armor and eat the penalties in the first game to protect myself? I was looking to master two-handers because of:

Spoiler

Show

Abydon's Hammer in the first game and Whispers of the Endless Paths in the second.

At first, sure, wearing heavier armour will really help. At higher levels it becomes basically irrelevant though, due to the way damage and DR scale, and your primary defence should instead be a high deflection and the ability to CC everything. That's the point where you switch to lighter armour.

Two handers are great. In particular, look out for Tidefall and Tall Grass as good weapons to use before you get that particular weapon.

How valuable are the level 8 and 9 monk abilities?
Was considering a wizard multiclass.

And how big are the reward from having played though 1?

If you want to multiclass to wizard, do it. They have some great self-buffs and multiclass really well due to the way grimoires work (you don't need to invest in many wizard abilities when you can just use grimoires for all your spells). On the other hand pure monk is also pretty great, so don't feel like multiclassing is required.

You lose almost nothing by not importing a save, as the utility for building a background is very in depth. There's no questlines or content you'll be locked out of like in mass effect or anything.

[Aotrs Commander]

You lose almost nothing by not importing a save, as the utility for building a background is very in depth.

I'll say.

If anything, if you have only played the once, and close to when it came out, you probably won't remember what half the stuff it asks about is...! I'd have to fricking google stuff to remember what chunks of it were...

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Thanks for the advice, Tome! What does CC mean? Crowd control?

[houlio]

How valuable are the level 8 and 9 monk abilities?
Was considering a wizard multiclass.

And how big are the reward from having played though 1?

Just to add, I’ve been playing through Deadfire as a monk/wizard. It feels fine mechanically. When I can’t punch my enemies into submission, I can fry them with magic. I prioritized might and dex with con taking a secondary focus, which works pretty well for your blasty wizard spells. Your buff don’t last quite as long, but you also kill things really quickly.

[Tome]

Thanks for the advice, Tome! What does CC mean? Crowd control?

Yep. Ciphers do it really, really well.

Spoiler: PoE1 Cipher Powers

Show

Level 1

• Antipathic Field: Good damage power, even into the endgame.
• Eyestrike: A debuff instead of crowd control, but it does target Fortitude instead of Will like most of your powers.
• Mind Wave: It's a Fortitude based CC, but it can be extremely tricky to aim and has an exceptionally short duration.
• Soul Shock: Small AoE damage. Not great, but it's still spammable AoE damage.
• Tenuous Grasp: Mind control is the best CC. However it suffers from far too short a duration.
• Whisper of Treason: Gives better control than Tenous Grasp and for a longer duration. The single best first level power.

Level 2

• Mental Binding: Take this. Let me repeat; TAKE THIS POWER. Single target paralysis with an AoE immobilise tacked on. Paralysis is deadly in this game, as it both prevents you doing anything and drops your defence to zero. And critting in this game is based off beating defence by a large enough degree. This is so good, and so easily spammed, that even at max level you will still be using this a lot.
• Amplified Thrust: Does a good chunk of single target damage, but it will eventually be outpaced and, well, casting Mental Binding and attacking a few times is probably a better way to kill a single target.
• Mind Blades: Fairly middling multi-target damage.
• Phantom Foes: Auto-flanks targets in an AoE. Not terrible, but you can just have one of your melees actually flank a target fairly easily in most cases.
• Psychovampiric Shield: Debuffs an enemy to give you bonus defence. Melee Ciphers live and die by this power. The debuff is pretty worthless, but the bonus defence is amazing.
• Recall Agony: Increases the damage the enemy takes for a time. Not bad but, well... Mental Binding does it better. Can still be useful for beefy targets that are immune to Paralysis, Prone, Stun and mind control.

Level 3

• Ectopsychic Echo: Ooh, finally another decent damage power. You'll need a bit of positioning to make use of it, but it racks up damage very quickly on anything hit.
• Fractured Volition: AoE Debuff. unfortuantely it's not a very good debuff. It does really well at enabling Rogues' sneak attacks though.
• Pain Link: A portion of the damage dealt to a party member is applied to enemies around them. Good on your tank, in theory, but if your tank is taking that much damage you're likely better served by debuffs or CC to keep them alive.
• Puppet Master: The bigger, badder sibling to the first level mind control abilities. Still single target but now the target fights for you at 100% effectiveness. May or may not be worth it, as there are better versions coming soon.
• Secret Horrors: Very similar to Fractured Volition, but applies a slightly better debuff. Unfortunately it's also one that enemies are frequently immune to.
• Soul Ignition: Big single target damage resisted by Fortitude. There's a much better verion later on however, and even that is rarely used except when you're trying to dump excess focus to keep your soul whip active.

Level 4

• Body Attunement: Both weakens an enemy's damage reduction and boosts your own. Similar to Psychovampiric Shield, except the debuff is really useful too. As a melee cipher, you probably want this.
• Going Between: A 25% chance of downgrading aa crit/hit/graze an ally takes by one step. It's... okay, but Pain Block is usually better unless you're stacking similar effects.
• Mind Lance: Okayish damage in a line. Kind of forgetable, and as a Cipher AoE damage isn't really your job. Leave that sort of thing to the wizards, barbarians and druids.
• Pain Block: An excellent armour buff for an ally and it heals them as well. Quite useful for keeping your tank alive in difficult fights.
• Silent Scream: Very similar to Mental Binding, except it does Raw damage instead of immobilising and Stun instead of Paralysis. Useful for all the same reasons as Mental Binding, but you mostly use it when soemthing is immune to Paralysis and not Stun - or you just want the nifty damage tacked on.
• Wild Leech: Randomly steals 10 points of an attribute and gives them to you. If you could control which attribute it'd be decent, but as is it's too likely to steal something useless like Resolve. Used to be useful for leeching from party members when you needed to pass a difficult attribute check, but then they made it Combat Only.

Level 5

• Borrowed Intinct: Another in the series of "debuff target to buff yourself" powers. The debuff is basically useless again, but the buff is really good. The main thing it gives is accuracy (more accuracy = more crits and easier time landing CC powers) but it also boosts your defences. It exists in competition with Tactical Meld.
• Detonate: A better version of Soul Ignition. Still only used it when trying to burn excess focus, as CC + attacks is better damage.
• Ringleader: You know what's better than mind controlling an enemy? Mind Controlling a whole bunch of them. Can swing difficult fights in yoru favour with a single cast. Unfortunately you can't attack mind controlled targets without breaking the mind control.
• Tactical Meld: Gives the same incredibly useful accuracy boost as Borrowed Instinct, only without having to beat the enemy's Will defence beforehand. Doesn't boost defence, but the tradeoff can be worth it if you're trying to use the accuracy boost to land Will-targeting powers (most of your good stuff) against a target with a good will defence.

Level 6

• Amplified Wave: Taaaaaaaake this. With roughly the same priority as Mental Binding, TAKE THIS. It hits a massive area for good damage and knocks everything prone for a fairly lengthy duration. Prone is a hard CC like paralysis and stun. This power is amazing. You can chain them back to back to keep entire encounters locked down.
• Disintegration: An upgrade on Soul Ignition and Detonate. Still not that effective but you may take it anyway as there's only three powers at this level anyway.
• Mind Plague: Hey, you know how mass mind control can be really good? What if it jumped from target to target instead of being a circular AoE? And confused (which lets you still target them) instead of charming or dominating them? Yeah, this is pretty good... but it's the same cost as Amplified Wave, and Amplified Wave is better unless the enemies are all immune to it. But only three powers at this level, so you take it anyway.

Level 7

• Stasis Shell: It's a single target hard CC that targets Will. Some of your best powers do that. Unfortunately, it also makes the enemy invulnerable whilst they're affected. Still, there's only two powers at this level so you may as well take it anyway.
• Time Parasite: The ultimate incarnation of the vampiric self buffs. This one gives an absolutely massive boost to your attack speed. Attack speed boosts get better the more or them you have. As soon as you get this power, take off your armour and equip some gauntlets of swift action. It's amazing.

Level 8

• Defensive Mindweb: Allows the entire party to use the best defence among them. This is incredibly strong, but is held back by it's small area that requires your party to stay grouped tightly together. Still, great when you need it.
• Reaping Knives: Equips an ally with some energy blades that are as deadly as they are cool looking, and gives you a big chunk of focus every time they deal damage with them. For best effect use them on an ally specced for dual wielding.

In summary, the must-have powers are: Mental Binding (level 2), Amplified Wave (level 6), Time Parasite (level 7) and either Borrowed Instinct or Tactical Meld (level 5).

I'm still experimenting with the powers in Deadfire to figure out the best options there. Hopefully I'll eventually be able to write a similar list for that.

Also, I remember you wanted to do an 'everything right' style playthrough? You don't actually need Resolve, as I just pulled one off with Resolve as my dump stat. Having high Per/Int/Mig/Dex and Lore usually gave me an alternative option to get things done how I wanted them, and in PoE1 you can redo your attribute allocation by respeccing at any merchant.

The hard part is getting the best ending at the end of the second DLC. Easiest way is to actually head off to do the DLC before you finish Act 2.

Spoiler: White March II Ending Spoilers

Show

At the end of the DLC you must convince someone of something to earn the best ending. You do this by proving three points, each of which you need to be able to provide two pieces of valid evidence for and present them in the right way.

The first point has no options with any real prerequisite. Bringing the Rogue or Paladin companions may be useful, but you can do it without them.

The second point you have to make requires you to have resolved either the barbarian or monk companions' quests in a particular way. Which is to say, either the barbarian must have chosen to forget or the monk must have moved on from his past. You also have to have the respective companion in your party for the final confrontation.

The third and final point is the really tricky part. There are three arguments you can present and each of them is easily invalidated by previous actions. To succeed you need to be able to do at least two of these.

• Your Wizard companion is involved in one argument you can make. It will fail if you have encouraged him in a positive direction. Chances are, you won't be getting this one.
• The second argument is easy enough unless you acted a certain way at the end of Act 2 of the main story. Chances are good that you will want to act that way. Therefore, do this before you finish Act 2 so you can both have your cake and eat it.
• The third argument can be invalidated by certain responses when doing quests for the Knights of the Crucible in Act 2 or by not releasing the souls at the end of part 1 of the DLC. Releasing the souls is the nice option basically, and if you do this quest before Act 2 then you may well not have doen the Knights of the Crucible quests yet.

The third point is the really tricky one.

[Tome]

Okay, so I've done a bit of reading and testing to confirm how PL and Empower work. This post appears to be spot on.

Spoiler: Summary

Show

For every Power Level you have above a non-weapon based ability's minimum, it gains the following:

• Accuracy +1/PL
• Damage +5%/PL
• Penetration +0.25/PL (rounds up to the nearest .1)
• Duration +5%/PL
• Projectile Count/Jumps +????/PL

If the ability has multiple projectiles or jumps from target to target, Power Level may or may not increase the number of projectiles/jumps at a rate determined by the power. Not all abilities will indicate this.

To use an example from my testing with Cipher powers, Mind Blade and Mind Plague get extra jumps at a rate of +0.5/PL. They will also happily bounce back and forth between the same targets so long as there's at least two left.

You also get a bonus to accuracy equal to the minimum PL required for the ability. This isn't properly shown in tooltips.

Weapon-based abilities get the duration scaling and apparently some unknown bonus to damage (but probably the same +5%/PL bonus).

Empower gives an ability a +10 PL bonus to non-weapon abilities. In other words: +10 Accuracy, +50% Damage, +2.5 Penetration, +50% Duration and some number of additional projectiles/bounces if applicable. The extra projectiles/jumps make abilities that have this scaling ideal targets for Empower. Empowered weapon-based abilities appear to get +20 Accuracy, Damage +50% and +5 Penetration.

What this really means for most players is:

• Spells with multiple projectiles or which jump between targets are really good to Empower.
• The -2 Power Level from being multiclass isn't going to have too much effect on your abilities scaling, and even less if they're weapon based.
• Ascendant Ciphers could just treat the subclass as a boost to focus generation and ignore the whole Ascendance mechanic if they want.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Yep. Ciphers do it really, really well.

Spoiler: PoE1 Cipher Powers

Show

Level 1

• Antipathic Field: Good damage power, even into the endgame.
• Eyestrike: A debuff instead of crowd control, but it does target Fortitude instead of Will like most of your powers.
• Mind Wave: It's a Fortitude based CC, but it can be extremely tricky to aim and has an exceptionally short duration.
• Soul Shock: Small AoE damage. Not great, but it's still spammable AoE damage.
• Tenuous Grasp: Mind control is the best CC. However it suffers from far too short a duration.
• Whisper of Treason: Gives better control than Tenous Grasp and for a longer duration. The single best first level power.

Level 2

• Mental Binding: Take this. Let me repeat; TAKE THIS POWER. Single target paralysis with an AoE immobilise tacked on. Paralysis is deadly in this game, as it both prevents you doing anything and drops your defence to zero. And critting in this game is based off beating defence by a large enough degree. This is so good, and so easily spammed, that even at max level you will still be using this a lot.
• Amplified Thrust: Does a good chunk of single target damage, but it will eventually be outpaced and, well, casting Mental Binding and attacking a few times is probably a better way to kill a single target.
• Mind Blades: Fairly middling multi-target damage.
• Phantom Foes: Auto-flanks targets in an AoE. Not terrible, but you can just have one of your melees actually flank a target fairly easily in most cases.
• Psychovampiric Shield: Debuffs an enemy to give you bonus defence. Melee Ciphers live and die by this power. The debuff is pretty worthless, but the bonus defence is amazing.
• Recall Agony: Increases the damage the enemy takes for a time. Not bad but, well... Mental Binding does it better. Can still be useful for beefy targets that are immune to Paralysis, Prone, Stun and mind control.

Level 3

• Ectopsychic Echo: Ooh, finally another decent damage power. You'll need a bit of positioning to make use of it, but it racks up damage very quickly on anything hit.
• Fractured Volition: AoE Debuff. unfortuantely it's not a very good debuff. It does really well at enabling Rogues' sneak attacks though.
• Pain Link: A portion of the damage dealt to a party member is applied to enemies around them. Good on your tank, in theory, but if your tank is taking that much damage you're likely better served by debuffs or CC to keep them alive.
• Puppet Master: The bigger, badder sibling to the first level mind control abilities. Still single target but now the target fights for you at 100% effectiveness. May or may not be worth it, as there are better versions coming soon.
• Secret Horrors: Very similar to Fractured Volition, but applies a slightly better debuff. Unfortunately it's also one that enemies are frequently immune to.
• Soul Ignition: Big single target damage resisted by Fortitude. There's a much better verion later on however, and even that is rarely used except when you're trying to dump excess focus to keep your soul whip active.

Level 4

• Body Attunement: Both weakens an enemy's damage reduction and boosts your own. Similar to Psychovampiric Shield, except the debuff is really useful too. As a melee cipher, you probably want this.
• Going Between: A 25% chance of downgrading aa crit/hit/graze an ally takes by one step. It's... okay, but Pain Block is usually better unless you're stacking similar effects.
• Mind Lance: Okayish damage in a line. Kind of forgetable, and as a Cipher AoE damage isn't really your job. Leave that sort of thing to the wizards, barbarians and druids.
• Pain Block: An excellent armour buff for an ally and it heals them as well. Quite useful for keeping your tank alive in difficult fights.
• Silent Scream: Very similar to Mental Binding, except it does Raw damage instead of immobilising and Stun instead of Paralysis. Useful for all the same reasons as Mental Binding, but you mostly use it when soemthing is immune to Paralysis and not Stun - or you just want the nifty damage tacked on.
• Wild Leech: Randomly steals 10 points of an attribute and gives them to you. If you could control which attribute it'd be decent, but as is it's too likely to steal something useless like Resolve. Used to be useful for leeching from party members when you needed to pass a difficult attribute check, but then they made it Combat Only.

Level 5

• Borrowed Intinct: Another in the series of "debuff target to buff yourself" powers. The debuff is basically useless again, but the buff is really good. The main thing it gives is accuracy (more accuracy = more crits and easier time landing CC powers) but it also boosts your defences. It exists in competition with Tactical Meld.
• Detonate: A better version of Soul Ignition. Still only used it when trying to burn excess focus, as CC + attacks is better damage.
• Ringleader: You know what's better than mind controlling an enemy? Mind Controlling a whole bunch of them. Can swing difficult fights in yoru favour with a single cast. Unfortunately you can't attack mind controlled targets without breaking the mind control.
• Tactical Meld: Gives the same incredibly useful accuracy boost as Borrowed Instinct, only without having to beat the enemy's Will defence beforehand. Doesn't boost defence, but the tradeoff can be worth it if you're trying to use the accuracy boost to land Will-targeting powers (most of your good stuff) against a target with a good will defence.

Level 6

• Amplified Wave: Taaaaaaaake this. With roughly the same priority as Mental Binding, TAKE THIS. It hits a massive area for good damage and knocks everything prone for a fairly lengthy duration. Prone is a hard CC like paralysis and stun. This power is amazing. You can chain them back to back to keep entire encounters locked down.
• Disintegration: An upgrade on Soul Ignition and Detonate. Still not that effective but you may take it anyway as there's only three powers at this level anyway.
• Mind Plague: Hey, you know how mass mind control can be really good? What if it jumped from target to target instead of being a circular AoE? And confused (which lets you still target them) instead of charming or dominating them? Yeah, this is pretty good... but it's the same cost as Amplified Wave, and Amplified Wave is better unless the enemies are all immune to it. But only three powers at this level, so you take it anyway.

Level 7

• Stasis Shell: It's a single target hard CC that targets Will. Some of your best powers do that. Unfortunately, it also makes the enemy invulnerable whilst they're affected. Still, there's only two powers at this level so you may as well take it anyway.
• Time Parasite: The ultimate incarnation of the vampiric self buffs. This one gives an absolutely massive boost to your attack speed. Attack speed boosts get better the more or them you have. As soon as you get this power, take off your armour and equip some gauntlets of swift action. It's amazing.

Level 8

• Defensive Mindweb: Allows the entire party to use the best defence among them. This is incredibly strong, but is held back by it's small area that requires your party to stay grouped tightly together. Still, great when you need it.
• Reaping Knives: Equips an ally with some energy blades that are as deadly as they are cool looking, and gives you a big chunk of focus every time they deal damage with them. For best effect use them on an ally specced for dual wielding.

In summary, the must-have powers are: Mental Binding (level 2), Amplified Wave (level 6), Time Parasite (level 7) and either Borrowed Instinct or Tactical Meld (level 5).

I'm still experimenting with the powers in Deadfire to figure out the best options there. Hopefully I'll eventually be able to write a similar list for that.

Also, I remember you wanted to do an 'everything right' style playthrough? You don't actually need Resolve, as I just pulled one off with Resolve as my dump stat. Having high Per/Int/Mig/Dex and Lore usually gave me an alternative option to get things done how I wanted them, and in PoE1 you can redo your attribute allocation by respeccing at any merchant.

The hard part is getting the best ending at the end of the second DLC. Easiest way is to actually head off to do the DLC before you finish Act 2.

Spoiler: White March II Ending Spoilers

Show

At the end of the DLC you must convince someone of something to earn the best ending. You do this by proving three points, each of which you need to be able to provide two pieces of valid evidence for and present them in the right way.

The first point has no options with any real prerequisite. Bringing the Rogue or Paladin companions may be useful, but you can do it without them.

The second point you have to make requires you to have resolved either the barbarian or monk companions' quests in a particular way. Which is to say, either the barbarian must have chosen to forget or the monk must have moved on from his past. You also have to have the respective companion in your party for the final confrontation.

The third and final point is the really tricky part. There are three arguments you can present and each of them is easily invalidated by previous actions. To succeed you need to be able to do at least two of these.

• Your Wizard companion is involved in one argument you can make. It will fail if you have encouraged him in a positive direction. Chances are, you won't be getting this one.
• The second argument is easy enough unless you acted a certain way at the end of Act 2 of the main story. Chances are good that you will want to act that way. Therefore, do this before you finish Act 2 so you can both have your cake and eat it.
• The third argument can be invalidated by certain responses when doing quests for the Knights of the Crucible in Act 2 or by not releasing the souls at the end of part 1 of the DLC. Releasing the souls is the nice option basically, and if you do this quest before Act 2 then you may well not have doen the Knights of the Crucible quests yet.

The third point is the really tricky one.

This is incredibly helpful! That part was one of the things I was most worried about! I had no idea you could go do that stuff before the end of the 2nd act!

Out of curiosity, what's the best light armor a two-handed weapon cipher should wear? Robes like Gwisk Glas? Padded armor like Vengiatta Rugia?

[Keltest]

This is incredibly helpful! That part was one of the things I was most worried about! I had no idea you could go do that stuff before the end of the 2nd act!

Out of curiosity, what's the best light armor a two-handed weapon cipher should wear? Robes like Gwisk Glas? Padded armor like Vengiatta Rugia?

With armor, I find its often a question of what you can get away with. Ciphers are nice in that they can basically sustain combat forever as long as nothing kills them, so more and faster actions are always desirable for them.
If youre going melee, I would personally err on the side of the "heavier" armor until its demonstrated that you can survive in the robes or whatever.

[Tome]

This is incredibly helpful! That part was one of the things I was most worried about! I had no idea you could go do that stuff before the end of the 2nd act!

Out of curiosity, what's the best light armor a two-handed weapon cipher should wear? Robes like Gwisk Glas? Padded armor like Vengiatta Rugia?

Yep. The White March opens up pretty much as soon as you get your stronghold. It will be a bit tough when you first go in (hint: abuse mental binding and remember that priests get spells to immunise your party to given status effects), but by the time you leave you'll be max level. You may also want to clean out as many act 2 sidequests as posdible and most of the endless paths before you do it, just to power up a bit more.

Honestly, I ended up just grabbing the clothing I liked most and enchanting it - looks good and has no speed penalty. The unique robes and padded armour available before act 3 are actually little different from enchanting your own, but can save you some materials (why are rubies so scarce?).

Vengiatta Rubia is nice, but you literally have to kill the strongest enemy in the game to get it. I guess Angio's Gambeson is both useful and can be acquired before it becomes pointless, or you could always borrow and upgrade Aloth's unique armour.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

With armor, I find its often a question of what you can get away with. Ciphers are nice in that they can basically sustain combat forever as long as nothing kills them, so more and faster actions are always desirable for them.
If youre going melee, I would personally err on the side of the "heavier" armor until its demonstrated that you can survive in the robes or whatever.

How much heavier are we talking? Leather? Scale? Or is that TOO heavy?

[Driderman]

How much heavier are we talking? Leather? Scale? Or is that TOO heavy?

Well, how much recovery time du you want on your abilities? For me, 35% for a class as dependent on it's abilities as the Cipher seems like a lot.

[Morty]

1 or 2? If 2, single class or mutliclass and what subclass?

In 1 you can go with lighter armour and use a pike or staff to attack from behind Eder. Just CC anything that looks at you funny. Mental Binding, Borrowed Instinct/Tactical Meld, Amplified Wave, Ringleader, Time Parasite etc are all really strong powers.

In 2, melee ciphers probably want medium armour and the doggy that reduces your penalty from armour. Grab your preferred dual wielded weapons for offence - I'm favouring maces right now. Still figuring out which powers work best.

Light armour is working fairly well for my inquisitor, but she has her paladin side to give her huge bonuses to her defences and heal what does get through.

Where might I find this dog? Between that and Armored Grace I might eliminate the penalty for chainmail almost entirely.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I believe the dog's name is Nalvi, and they can be found at the east side of Junvik Village.

According to the wiki, Cutthroat Cosmo, the space pig with a hat from the Scavenger Hunt promotion provides a similar reduction to armor penalty.

[Tome]

Where might I find this dog? Between that and Armored Grace I might eliminate the penalty for chainmail almost entirely.

His name is Abraham and he's found on the balcony of the luminous adra mill in Neketaka.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Well, how much recovery time du you want on your abilities? For me, 35% for a class as dependent on it's abilities as the Cipher seems like a lot.

Well, the lower the better, but from what I'm being told here that's something I'll have to work towards as I build my Cipher, and when I'm starting out I'll need more solid protection until I reach that point.