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

[Enuhal]

Introducing Risk, the Pale Elf Oracle (Ancient/Psion)

Risk is basically Trisk without the T. Also, the name is fitting because full level scaling makes the entire experience a lot riskier compared to my previous Oracle run. If you want to know more about Trisk and how I came up with this Oracle build, see the introduction to her run here: https://tavernrpg.com/threads/tales...y-i-ii-no-reload-thread.468/page-5#post-10618

So, Risk was actually able to beat all upscaled dig site battles with only Edér and Xoti in his party (and Aloth for the sub-arena level/ancient training hall). She is mostly a carbon copy of Trisk, but the ability and proficiency points are slightly improved, geared more towards midgame scaling. The actual main difference for Chapter 1 is that Edér and Xoti are recruited as single class fighter and priest this time - the reason for that is that I want to keep them around instead of recruiting the more powerful faction-based companions such as Maia and Pallegina, because I haven't made up my mind in terms of the endgame choices yet, so I want a faction neutral group (otherwise, to keep everyone, I would be forced to do super lategame content such as Nemnok and Splintered Reef, which I am not 100% comfortable with at this point). So, my 3 obvious choices are Edér, Xoti and Aloth. The final slot has to be a sidekick (though Serafen rarely leaves the party, there are still some choices he won't go with), so I am planning to pick up Konstanten once I reach Neketaka, given that he has impressed me by far the most in my sidekick runs.

Settings, as previously mentioned: PotD, full only-upwards level scaling, only official companions and sidekicks are allowed to ever join the party. We get past the early game up to level 4, Edér picks up club proficiency for Bewildering Blows and we start calling in sporelings and charming boars at the digsite:

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Edér is nearly knocked out by the final boar because our damage output is so low if there is no enemy left to be charmed, but barely stays up. We clear out the foreman's quarters and adra pool before moving towards the arena. However, something very quirky and rare happens to us as we move northwards to the east, picking up some of the loot along the edges: The beasts down there patrol from time to time, and one of them is very far north, actually spotting the party. I often stealth when moving past this route, but after having to restart the early game multiple times in a row, I played a bit more quickly and sloppily. This unplanned combat actually turned out to be a huge advantage for us: Two young panthers ran towards the party, but apparently they didn't notify the other beasts of our presence and approached by themselves - allowing us to thin out the big group a bit without any downside:

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Now, with enemy numbers reduced, I decided not to fight the battle in the pit, planning to pull the beasts towards a chokepoint instead (because with fewer enemies, the impact of the gunpowder barrel would be lower, plus, it has been kind of hit or miss for me). However, on my way back west, once again travelling on the northern edge of the arena, we got spotted AGAIN! This is not common - yes, stealthing here would be ideal, but I've moved around this area plenty of times without stealth and got spotted maybe once (which I only remembered after it happened again this time around). This time, the entire group noticed my movements. Notably, I had not rested with Captain's Banquets yet - not exactly ideal. Actually, even worse: This happened pretty much immediately after we killed the young panthers, and our per encounter abilities didn't get the opportunity to reset yet. The party ran towards the entrance to gain some ground, hoping to maybe reset combat (Xoti is wearing a belt to boost her stride and keep up with the other two, who both have the Fast Runner ability). No reset happened, and I had to stand and fight near the edge of the map:

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Well, running away maybe helped with one thing - the wurms didn't join combat, so we only had to deal with one boar, two young panthers and the young drake. Risk called in sporelings, who helped with tanking but died unusually fast. Whispers on the boar was the obvious play here, as we can't deal with gore attacks in the longterm:

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Edér getting crit by the fear aura, on the other hand, was far from ideal. We focused our attention on one of the panthers first. Risk tried to charm the other one, as damage output on Edér was just too high. Since our first charm spell was only a graze, the boar also had to be whispered to again. The fear aura prevented Edér from using his own abilities to heal up, and Xoti tried to go for a Restore - but she was just a fraction of a second too late. Edér got knocked out:

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This was very bad, because Edér also had swapped out his armor out for a brigandine, for higher armor rating, so he would not get up again with Second Chance - Xoti was the one wearing the Saint's War Armor. Now, on the plus side, one of the panters was gone by now, and Risk still had a charmed boar to keep the dragon busy. She managed to charm the second panther as well, and the two charmed animals plus Xoti and Risk took down the drake:

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However, since Risk had no first level druid spells left to call in sporelings, there was simply no way that Xoti and her could ever stand up to a level 7 boar. We used hold beasts, tried to go for some damage, but the output just wasn't good enough and the duration too low. The two started running, with Xoti only able to keep up thanks to her stride bonus. Resetting combat on this map is sometimes possible if you have a speedboost and run for a decently long time. However, young panthers are also unusually fast, and they can keep up with Fast Runner (but because they don't get engagement, you can just dodge their hits by running out of melee range). I made an attempt to re-charm the boar and tried to get it to kill the panther, but with this only being a graze, there just wasn't enough duration here, and I didn't like my chances with another Whisper, as the range is short and the casting time quite long.

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After running a full circle around the arena and back to the entrance, we were able to lose the slower boar - a single young panther was something I felt comfortable with, and we took it down with the help of our spiritshift, which we still had left:

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Now, here's where fighting far away from the arena comes in as a big advantage - Edér simply got back up, despite several beasts still being alive in the center, unlike what happened in the previous attempt. There's a boar and a wurm left to kill, we leave most of the tanking to sporelings:

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After that, everyone takes a well-deserved rest. So, this was not how I planned to approach this battle at all - the two random pulls from the north did partly help us out (the first did, the second one not so much) - this was also far from clean, since we had to reset combat once and barely got any advantage from our abilities outside of Whispers of Treason spam. However, a victory is a victory. Taking this battle with our restrictions is pretty brutal, and I while this exact outcome might not be easily reproducable, we will certainly take it. Aloth joins up as a single class wizard, and we move into the dungeon. Here, we just make sure to keep at least one spider per group charmed at all times - both, ideally. Edér can't get paralyzed, that would be pretty deadly. Aloth adds some AoE debuffs and damage:

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With Bewildering Blows, not even the spirits, who have decent will defense, are safe from Risk's Whispers:

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Sporelings tank at the front as we use our pistols against this final group. We isolate, tank and kill the adra ooze:

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We still have the ancient training hall to clear out. Note that we had reached level 5 for that one, but that was hardly an upside, with the enemies scaling up even more, which gave the skeletal sorcerer more powerful spells to use against us. Trisk, being especially vulnerable when dealing with vessels, was still key here by keeping the powerful warriors charmed as much as possible:

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However, this wasn't an easy battle for us - the party is not exactly well-suited for dealing with skeletons. While we were able to take down the wizard, the fighter skeletons were basically unkillable with our pitiful damage while their Constant Recovery was still going - we basically used all of our abilities to limited effect, Xoti got knocked out (and back up thanks to Edérs armor), and Risk, who was crucially keeping the tides of battle in our favor with constant charm spam, also took an injury - after Recovery finally ran out, we were able to deal the final few blows with pretty much nothing left in the tank:

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[Enuhal]

Risk, the Pale Elf Oracle (Ancient/Psion) - First Update: The Big Questing Route

Act 1 is done, with many injuries this time around, but this should, in theory, be the hardest part of the run. We sail to Neketaka and recruit Konstanten, but don't rest quite yet despite our injuries, because I first wanted to complete Xoti's companion quest (she takes an automatic injury here), which is done basically just via talking to two people in Neketaka if you pick her up before talking to any souls and clear the entirety of Maje Island. After that, we rested with Hylea's Bounty to get our skills up for all the upcoming conversations and scripted interactions.

Everything went well in Neketaka, and we did not a single random encounter this time around, so, aside from the two brine imps in Queen's Berth, we engaged in absolutely zero instances of combat. Fort Deadlight was, as per usual, no trouble. However, our first real fight after the end of Act 1, the Dunnage street battle, is rough: We call in our summons (sporelings/ogres) and get our buffs going, but Trisk gets hit hard by the pistoleers - her Ancient downside really comes into play here, and she's downed immediately after finishing her summoning spell, which also despawns the summons:

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Aloth got us some control over the battlefield with the Dull-Mindedness and Enervating Terror combo, and with the ogres still going strong we were able to power through despite the early knockout:

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Despite the injury on Risk, we sail to Motare o Kozi and use Thief's Putty to get enough stealth for a safe non-violent completion via Spine of Thicket Green, and turning in the quest gets us to level 10. Now, the party rests with Konstanten's Massage, and we're hopefully ready to start fighting battles on the regular and will soon head to the south.

 

[Enuhal]

Risk, the Pale Elf Oracle (Ancient/Psion) - Second Update: Southern Exploration and a trip to Crookspur

Most of the battles in the south go very well, until we get to the Oathbinder's Sanctum. Aloth somehow hits himself with his own Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring in what I can only assume is some kind of bug that I've never seen before (no spell reflection involved):

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The other one's from the scripted interaction - not sure why I didn't use a grenade again here. Combat in general is quite challenging - you can really tell the difference between the official companions and a more optimized party when full upscaling evens out the playing field and you don't fight with a level advantage. Still, after resting with some prepared food, we clear out the place:

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After hunting down more ships and pirates in the area, we soon have our first 30k gold and travel to Crookspur, avoiding enemy ships on the way, to buy the Patinated Plate and upgrade its recovery time. This is meant for Risk: As an ancient, she needs the highest possible armor class for the midgame principi ship battles. We soon get to level 11, which is where Konstanten gets Biting Winds and starts contributing to damage significantly. However, while I try to be more careful with potential spell reflections, there is a situation, when going for the Rafiq ship battle/bounty, where an enemy wizard casts spell reflection while the Biting Winds spell is already in the air (its projectile moves quite slowly). I am able to pause and cancel the second Biting Winds cast, but even one reflection is very bad for us:

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Once the spell really starts bouncing around between our party, both Aloth and Konstanten get hit multiple times and take an injury. Luckily, Xoti didn't get hit and was able to resurrect them both:

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Time to return to the city and turn in a bunch of quests.

 

[Enuhal]

Risk, the Pale Elf Oracle (Ancient/Psion), Third Update - More Bounties, including a big battle with Katrenn and half of Neketaka

On our return to the city, we visit Rymrgand's Realm:

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After that, we fight & explore a bit more to the east (including the ancient death guard - resting with Captain's Banquet for this battle as per usual), but return after a short while because I decide that my ship needs more speed upgrades and a spyglass. While we're back, we also take on the Katrenn bounty, and this one turns into a rather big battle. First, Katrenn, as one of the Dunnage bounties, is scaled up brutally with full scaling - all of her constructs are triple red skulls, Katrenn herself three levels above us. We end up luring her to the east for easier positioning:

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While Katrenn is defeated, it takes a long time to take down even one of the constructs - and while we're attempting this, suddenly the whole neutral crowd around us goes hostile, and high level Neketaka guards are called in. I did not use any AoE abilities with friendly fire - I know to be careful with those during this and other city battles, so why this happened was initially a mystery to me.

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Luckily, these guards, despite their high level, are poorly equipped and not super dangerous. I was able to fight my way out, only losing a tiny bit of reputation and losing the opportunity to train with the one skill trainer in the area - luckily, no other quests were affected.

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However, that was not all: It turned out that one construct hadn't followed us and was left in the western part of the map, so we got into another fight - and once again, tons of civilians turned hostile after a while, including many magranites and a high level monk. I was happy to have Pain Block on a psion, giving me essentially infinite healing over time if needed, for these very long encounters, as new waves of enemies started moving in:

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That was pretty brutal. I was looking for the potential culprit when it comes to the sudden civilian hostilities, and I think I've found it:

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Fathom's Redress makes no mention of the AoE here being foe-only. I'm 99% sure this was the issue, and I will avoid this belt in the future. We made it out with zero injuries, and in the long term, the only thing we lost was one skillpoint each in alchemy and religion, which shouldn't have any serious impact. Next up, more exploration and bounties:

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Since I was now headed to Dunnage anyways, I decided to kill Torkar, the final foe for the local bounty questline. However, his allies dealt a surprising amount of damage - Konstanten gets hit by quite a few of them and is knocked out - I blame the Confounding Blind:

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I need to remember that he's not wearing the Patinated Plate in this run. Luckily, Xoti can get him back up, and because Torkar and his group are heavily scaled up, we even return to early game strats and dominate a bunch of his allies to reduce the incoming melee damage:

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Not the easiest battles for us here. We are getting stronger, though. Both Xoti and Risk are finally catching up on getting powerful AoE spells on their own (so far, Aloth had to carry most of the AoE damage), and Edér can just run into huge enemy groups, activate Vigorous Defense/Unbending and we can spam AoE spells on him and the enemies - as long as Unbeding is active, he can't really die.

 

[Enuhal]

Risk, the Pale Elf Oracle (Ancient/Psion), Fourth Update - Exploration and big battles in the North-Eastern Archipelago

We quickly finish up the eastern and southwestern exploration - it's basically only one battle each, no trouble here. Things get more interesting once we move to the north-east. Flamewalker Vessali is a bit of a test because flame naga marauders are always a threat, but Aloth's illusion spells deal with them quite nicely:

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On the way, we clear out almost all ships on the map (except for the Coral Queen). I also decide to go for a very early Berkana's Folly, at just level 15. Some of these mercs are quite tough and take a long time to die, but having a a chanter and a psion with regenerating class resources helps a lot with these longer battles:

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Concelhaut himself takes quite a while to take down - his damage is also fairly impressive and he's able to take down Konstante, but Xoti resurrects our skald and we get our victory, getting to level 16:

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Note that I'm using Konstantens secondary chant here, Thick Grew Their Toungues, which gets rid of concentration - it's really only useful for very specific boss-type enemies that can build up concentration stacks and are important to interrupt, but in those cases, it's really quite powerful. We get tier 8 abilities now for our single-class characters, which is very helpful. After boarding the Coral Queen we return to Neketaka for the Hanging Sepulchers. Xoti has just gotten access to Dismissal, and since even with level scaling, enemy levels are unevenly distributed and only scale up to +4 or +6 from their original levels, there are quite a few skeletons that she can take down outright, making the area easier and faster for us:

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After handing in the quest at Dunnage, we continue working for Furrante and take down the leaders at Ori o Koiki (mostly to support the VTC - I've decided that I want to do their faction ending again, but this time on the side of Alvari - not really a different ending in terms of gameplay, but a slight variation with different ending slides). This gets us to level 17, and we return to the north-east for the final encounters here. The possibly easiest one turns out to be the most problematic: At the Coal Mine, Konstanten sends out his empowered Biting Winds, as per usual (now upgraded), and while the slow projectile is in the air, the enemy wizard casts Arcane Reflection. The resulting bounceback is absolutely devastating and nearly wipes out our entire party. Xoti gets back up thanks to the Ring of Reset, Edér survives due to being very tanky, Xoti nearly dies again as the bounces finally stop - Luckily, we also wiped out the enemy at the same time, and while combat is still going, it's because an enemy priest had withdrawn one of their allies - in the meantime, Xoti resurrects our entire party with the help of Konstanten. Quite close! Though Edér also had one self-resurrection still left (thanks to the high-level fighter ability):

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This leads me to the question - is Biting Winds worth the risk? It's, by far, the most powerful chanter damage spell imo, and Konstanten can absolutely dominate with it. This is only the second reflection during this entire run - but both times it's been pretty damn bad, this time nearly fatal. One approach would be to only use it if there are no living enemy wizards on the battlefield (usually it's fairly easy to tell after one or two seconds due to the ability usage), but since there are so many groups with wizards, it woud heavily restrict the spell - and Konstanten, being a skald, really wants to use these offensive invocations. Still, he could just call in animated weapons instead if we see a wizard, and maybe follow up with Biting Winds once the wizard is gone. I think this is the more reasonable approach for no-reload play, but it will significantlly restrict Konstanten's power.
Well, on to the Ancient Battlemage Lich - curiously enough, despite us being only at level 17, Xoti kills him with Dismissal. Maybe because I empowered the spell - not sure if the character level clause is really more related to power level, that would be quite interesting - or maybe his scaling is a bit wonky:

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We also do the final two bounties and are now at level 18, ready for the Old City and the remaining main- and faction quests.

 

[Enuhal]

Risk, the Pale Elf Oracle (Ancient/Psion), Fifth Update - Old City, Faction- and Mainquests

We delayed the Old City for so long because my hope was that access to Dismissal would make the area far less tedious - indeed, we're outleveling these vessels even with full upscaling by now, and Xoti deals with most of them rather easily by herself:

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Edér gets trapped in Writhing Tentacles during the battle at the pool, but Unbeding Trunk allows him to easily survive:

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Even the Giant Cave Grub no longer outlevels ut at this point, and is fairly easy to take down:

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Next, we move to Hasongo, where we also still have to complete Edérs companion quest. No trouble here, and we make it to level 19, unlocking our final tier of abilities. With that, I felt ready for Shadow under Neketaka. Here, I learned that the flame naga marauders do indeed max out at level 20 in terms of level scaling, so delaying that quest until you nearly match them is definitely a valid strategy, since there's no notable loot here anyway. Things went quite well here this time around:

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On to Poko Kohara - Xoti can actually Dismiss even the upscaled Engwithan TItan by now - very helpful:

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We quickly complete Dirty Laundry - in Neketaka, I also run into a random encounter I've never seen before - though it's quite easy:

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Next, we help out at Sayuka, without fighting the kraken of course. Now, we're ready to travel to Ashen Maw, which should get us to level 20.

 

[Enuhal]

Risk, the Pale Elf Oracle (Ancient/Psion), Final Update - Endgame

Indeed, right as we enter the Ashen Maw we reach level 20. Combat here is quite easy, as there are few battles and we deal peacefully with the dragon.

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For the endgame, we're siding with the VTC, but against Director Castol. Sabotaging the powderhouse is easy enough:

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We sail into the storm, the water dragon takes out the guardian and we fight the two engwithan sentinels - even empowered Dismissal is not enough to take these out with upscaling, so there is a real battle here, but we have tons of ways to deal with them - we lower their AC and increase our penetration (Konstanten alone has three options here, and both Edér and Aloth contribute an additional one) - they are destroyed rather quickly, and with no injuries this time around:

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Our final battle are the Principi led by Furrante. We're basically spaming AoE spells such as Wilting Wind and Symbol of Eothas - not too difficult. Konstanten takes a good amount of damage, but is kept alive. Victory is soon ours!

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All right! That's full upwards-only level scaling with only official companions. Not easy by any means - we took 13 total injuries, which is a lot. Konstanten ended up being the damage leader, followed by Aloth. Xoti was still ahead of Risk, who is more support- and summons focused (and Xoti has both Blessed Harvest and strong fire damage AoE in the lategame).
Here are the party stats after the finale:

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In terms of challenges, I've done what I hope to achieve for now - but I've already started one more run, with the purpose of testing our a bunch of multiclass combinations and subclasses I haven't used before and find to be interesting & potentially fun and powerful.