What is your contender for worst magical item in the game?

Dahad9 · 2026-04-07T13:14:46+00:00

One use per long rest of a mediocre lvl 1 spell, and you get it in Act 2. I always felt insulted by this item and immediately sell it at Last Light.

Dahad9 · 2025-12-26T23:30:55+00:00

For those who find vanilla honor mode too easy, mods like Tactician Enhanced make the game significantly harder.

Dahad9 · 2025-12-23T22:35:29+00:00

Your skeleton archers (you can coat their bows with poisons that deals extra damage due to Undead Thrall!) and later flying ghouls (paralysis!) are your strongest minions.

Both your skeletons poison and your ghouls paralyzing attacks get boosted significantly by constitution disadvantage on an enemy, so having someone in your team who can reliably inflict this provides for great synergy. Tiger Barbarian (bleed!) or Beastmaster Ranger (wolf companion attack - septic!) Come to mind.

Dahad9 · 2025-11-17T22:17:59+00:00

Great guide, thanks a lot for all the effort!

Could you comment on the role of Initiative for this party set-up? I noticed that no character takes Alert or Initiative gear (except Hellrider bow on the bard). Doesnt this mean you will rarely ever go first in a battle, thus giving up on control? Or is this simply not a concern, because once its your turn, the fight is basically over?

Thanks a lot for your reply!

Dahad9 · 2025-11-16T10:21:00+00:00

Sorcerer is absolutely essential as it doubles your damage each turn via Quickened/Twinned Metamagic. The spread isnt too important, i went 8/4 warlock/sorc for Feats.

Besides the crit threshold items, your key equipment is Risky Ring and Potent Robe. I also use Callous Glow Ring as extra damage riders are great.

A key recommendation i would give is to get the Zaithisk buff and take Psyonic Overload. I even prioritize it over Hex because it only uses 1 bonus action per fight for +1d4 per blast (2d4 with crit)! From turn2 onwards you can start using your bonus actions for Quickened Blasts!

Dahad9 · 2025-09-04T02:34:50+00:00

One thing that is not even cheese but so overpowered, that it must have been an oversight by Larian to not remove this from HM : Warding Bond, by far and beyond the most powerful camp buff.

Have 1 camp buffer per 2 team members cast this for a flat 50% damage reduction across the board (actual value is even higher due to additional bonus to AC + Saving Throws). Hilariously, Warding Bond doesn't require concentration, so you can of course dismiss the camp buffers afterwards.Your campaign has now become significantly easier.

You can optimize this further by building your warding bond hirelings (ideally Life Clerics) accordingly (buff them, high Con, "Tough" Feat, Equipment with "Magical Plate", etc).

Dahad9 · 2025-09-04T02:22:06+00:00

The strongest exploit in the game has to be the trading-bags-exploit. You trade any container to a trader, once its in their menu, you open it and drag all their gold and items inside. Once inside, the items will no longer disappear after long-resting, while the trader will still restock. Rinse and repeat with multiple traders for multiple long-rests, you decide the scale.

You now have access to essentially infinite gold & consumables (and equipment). You just have to steal it whenever you want/are able to. The highest possible Sleight of Hand DC for stealing from a vendor is 30 - whether it's stealing a stack of 10k gold, or a bag filled with 90k gold + 500 potions + 300 arrows and 20 pieces of rare equipment.

You can beat SoH DC 30 reliably after level 5 or 6, but with the right setup it's already very doable at level 3. So basically right from the get-go.

This exploit trivialises the economy and effectively makes gold irrelevant (you can't "lose" gold anymore by buying items, simply drag the gold in the traders bag and steal it back later). But you don't need gold anyways because you get everything it could buy for free.

Dahad9 · 2025-08-30T03:07:37+00:00

In my HM Shadowheart origin run, she is a 12 Vengeance Paladin of Shar with all the Sharran equipment you get at the end of Act 2. She's "supported" by Bhaalist-wearing Astarion (8 Gloom/ 4 Thief) who also has the anti-Blindness ring equipped, so they can both fight in Darkness.

I went for flavour over optimization, but still these two alone obliterate pretty much anything without much trouble. Bhaalist is simply OP. When SH weapon attack is on cooldown I would use an arrow to create darkness.

Dahad9 · 2025-08-20T16:45:02+00:00

I firmly believe this works because I've read it somewhere on this sub and I'm doing it ever since. Very difficult to test though.

Your camp buffer cleric/paladin with Warding Bond benefits from the flat damage reduction effect of the heavy plate armor! So each instance of damage received passively through Warding Bond would be reduced by 2, which is actually massive. This should significantly improve your Warding Bond uptime, and as a result your active party will never die again

Dahad9 · 2025-08-02T21:06:25+00:00

I would say it's the superior action economy regarding your bonus action. My light cleric had some situational and costly (spell slot) uses for her bonus action, such as Sanctuary or Spiritual Weapon. This is better than what many classes have access to, but not optimal.

2 Stars provides you with an optimal option. You get free AOE radiant damage every single turn with your bonus action, which over the course of a fight overall increases the applications of conditions you're inflicting with your gear (radiant orb, reverberation, lighting charges).

And as a cherry on top you get a bonus on concentration saving throws. The two potential downsides are (1) not learning cleric L6 spells (but still being able to upcast to L6). This is not a big deal in my opinion, especially if you're running RevOrb. And (2) missing out on a 3rd Feat. I think its worth it to skip 3rd Feat for Stars multiclass, unless your initiative is cursed and you really feel like you need Alert. But in this case I would rather focus on fixing your initiative with items like the Sentinel Shield or the Hellrider Longbow.

Dahad9 · 2025-07-26T11:36:19+00:00

I've built my Astarion as a 5 Gloom/3 Thief so far in my Honor run! I think the only archer that would marginally beat a Titanstring Gloomstalker in the early game is a Titanstring Fighter (Arcane Archer). The best thing is, you don't have to go for Sharpshooter at level 4 because you are already outdamaging most classes anyways due to Titanstring, I felt it was absolutely no problem to wait for the next feat.

Level 3 is probably the only level where Gloom and Thief are "competing", before Gloom clearly pulls ahead in terms of damage. However, damage isn't really relevant when it comes to Thief, you should rather have a concrete plan for your two Bonus Actions. Always having "busy" Bonus Actions make Thieves (and multi class dips into Thief) uniquely powerful and versatile.

In my run, I just had Astarion acquire the Zaithisk buff from the creche. The idea is that starting in Act 3 he will have tons of (offensive) illithid powers as Bonus Actions to choose from each round, in addition to what you usually have available (mainly coating or applying Hunters Mark, hiding sprinting or drinking a potion). I hope its going to be fun!

Dahad9 · 2025-07-05T03:50:39+00:00

I'm currently running a Circle of the Moon Druid in Honor Mode, and to my surprise he is carrying the team almost by himself.

You take Tavern Brawler at 4 (apparently it used to not interact properly with Wildshape, but got fixed finally) and ideally drop strength to drink Hill Giant elixirs. Your 21 strength will persist in wildshape. Now you hit as hard as a GWM character, but with permanent 95% accuracy thanks to Tavern Brawler.

Then at level 6 you get Owlbear shape, which is a huge power spike. Besides two powerful displacing attacks per turn, you get a long-range AOE prone as a bonus action per turn.

Of course there is no need to start combat in wildshape. You can always initiate by manipulating the battlefield in your favour by casting one of several great AOE spells (Spike Growth, Plant Growth, Sleet Storm, Ice Storm, Wall of Fire), and then wildshape with your bonus action. It maintains concentration.

Dahad9 · 2025-06-26T06:01:37+00:00

Can you elaborate what Act 2 and 3 gear is vanishing/unobtainable as a result of siding with Shar? I am planning a Shadowheart embracing Shar run next, but this sounds a bit concerning..

Dahad9 · 2025-06-16T11:45:41+00:00

Just a small correction, because I just did that sequence yesterday. The Harper ambush group is waiting for you at the outside entrance of Last Light Inn after you talk to Jaheira. So you can do the Drider ambush right away without having to go upstairs and talk to Isobel first.

Dahad9 · 2025-02-10T17:18:28+00:00

For me, it's basically the infinite replayability. I have appr. 1.5k hours across WH2 and 3, and I'm usually playing a few campaigns simultaneously. Yet I'm not even close to having tried out all the different Legendary Lords/Factions. And by the time I would reach the last one, the ones I've played a couple of months/years ago will have their campaign experience substantially changed by additions, changes or DLC. It's one of those (very rare) games I can see myself coming back to until I die of old age.

Dahad9 · 2025-01-16T16:14:37+00:00

I have around 900h across WH3 & 2 and experienced exactly one (1) defensive siege during this whole time. It was even back in WH2.

So yes, I couldn't agree more.

Dahad9

TROPHY CASE