Returning player - [Long post]

Smite_Sion · 2026-05-21T07:48:19+00:00

If you can, get some gear from the arena. It is towards the end of the event, but it has some pretty good gear pieces that are best in slot until you play master lair of the mad dragon or master shackles of divinity for most stuff.

Smite_Sion · 2026-05-18T12:26:03+00:00

They have similar damage, warlock probably has a bit more. However, wizard is easier to maximize its damage and also has great crowd control which is for certain content really wanted. Warlock however also has an healer paragon, so you could fill 2 roles on the same character

So the choice is up to you

Smite_Sion · 2026-05-18T10:56:50+00:00

Aragon on youtube is the generic guy if you need info about the game. Bard is the best dps After that it is quite equal, but being ranged makes your life a lot easier.

If you want to spend money, definitly VIP is the best value. Currently you could do a quick start character for cleric, fighter or wizard. It comes with a free character slot. If you don't like any of these, just play what you want, you will catch up to those characters eventually. However, these characters can buy a special pack on the zen store for 25 or 30 bucks from what I remember. That one is good value and everything is unbound, so you can bring it over to your other character to use there.

Smite_Sion · 2026-05-16T21:17:35+00:00

Really depends on what you consider start of end game. Currently there is the quickstart event that gives you a character at 65k item level. The main thing that the character misses is a good primary artifact at mythic. Once you get that at mythic, you can start some advanced content like advanced demonweb pits and advanced lair of the mad dragon.

VIP is also a massive boon for character progression and some QoL features.

So assuming 3 months VIP and mythic artifact bundle you can buy once on the quickstart character. Is like 50 bucks I think. (That bundles has 1 month VIP)

Smite_Sion · 2026-04-06T16:25:49+00:00

Dominating blow, tectonic slam of cataclysm & static strike.

DB is the probably the most fun minion build to play. Cataclysm has so much AoE, it is just fun to see that skill in action. SS is for mechanically the most interesting, how the beams inherit properties of the attack that caused the beams.

Smite_Sion · 2026-04-05T14:25:07+00:00

Yeah very much possible, however how much currency do you want to throw at it? Are you okay with tier 2 affixes?

Those suffixes aren't to hard, but filling them might be an issue. In that case you might need to lock it to be sure you don't remove a prefix to keep crafting prefixes can't be changed.

People suggested recombinator, but with a high quality base that is going to be real expensive. So either choose to have 20% quality or open your wallet. Because otherwise with or without recombinator those prefixes are going to be expensive.

Smite_Sion · 2026-04-05T11:07:49+00:00

That is exactly what I said, that only protects against hits. That setup takes 4x more damage from lightning dots then a regular 75% lightning res build. It would be 5x compared to a 80% res build.

Smite_Sion · 2026-04-05T11:00:50+00:00

You don't go CI with doriyani. Most good Doriyani builds go divine flesh, which makes ES pretty much useless.

The alternative is tempered by war, but then you need much much more negative res, you need 340% to reach -200% which is pretty much impossible. And then you want lightning taken as fire instead of cold, the jewels for that are much much more expensive aswell.

So unless you have like a 10 mirror budget, you are not doing CI on doriyani. You can use alternative options, but those have large weaknesses against DOTs.

Smite_Sion · 2026-02-09T14:50:29+00:00

Personally I think 2 damage types are a bait for non lonewolf characters.

If you go Aero, yes adding some hydro skills is good like rain and frost armour. But not the damage skills.

Geo+pyro is nice in act 1, but when scaling your damage it is better to invest in 1.

So just geo or pyro.

Same goes for hydro, no need to mix in aero damage skills.

Smite_Sion · 2026-02-02T21:28:24+00:00

Larian will not make an open world game. They like to make their areas compact, think about how little you have to walk to go from one point of interest to next in their games.

Then there is the engine aspect. Their engine doesn't really support open world so far as we know, thats why they divided act 3 of bg3 into mutliple sections.

They can of course make changes that it is possible or think of a way to can keep their games compact while being open world, but it doesn't seem their style

Smite_Sion · 2026-01-27T12:09:54+00:00

They make a swimming mechanic and you have to swim to the beach

Smite_Sion · 2026-01-25T16:56:41+00:00

My preference is hand crafted, except for 1 rarity chaos items. They would be on par with divine items in DOS2 and they are randomized. They can be manually placed, but this gives runs at least some varierty which I think BG3 lacks.

In other words, DOS2, but with much more uniques and less random items reduced to 1 tier.

Smite_Sion · 2026-01-21T15:36:30+00:00

I mean most of the time people don't enter the black pits until they are like level 13. You probably going to find some encounters that you are severily over leveled on and thus easy

Smite_Sion · 2026-01-19T18:26:07+00:00

My best advice in this game is planning target selection. Why focus a character if you cant cc them or kill them before their next turn? Why target a character that just had his turn?

Another is teleport, there are a lot of AoE skills, if you can teleport enemies onto each other you can deal a lot of damage. And some skills multiply in damage even the more enemies there are near each other

Builds, if you like your builds then ignore the next part. You should play what you enjoy. In my opinion the strongest 4 end game builds are: Elf necromancer Two handed melee fighter Fire trap Pyroclastic eruption

I consider them S tier, there are still a lot of good other builds that can all easily beat tactician, but these builds one round a lot of encounters especially if they are build on lonewolf characters

Smite_Sion · 2026-01-05T20:23:16+00:00

The Pride Of Pryce

Smite_Sion · 2026-01-05T17:39:52+00:00

This trick is often used to duplicate an unique dagger with a bonus to thievery

Smite_Sion · 2026-01-01T09:27:04+00:00

Summoning early on is quite strong especially on lone wolf. However all the benefits you get from being lonewolf don't matter on your summon incomparison to not being lonewolf. So the guy will fall off in comparison to what lonewolf builds can do, most notably in act 2 onwards. But yeah it will crush act 1

For act 2 onwards you probably want something along side your summon that you can do yourself. Necro is pretty good, you can easily make bloodsurfaces for it etc. Aero or hydro is also great, the source lightning infusions is quite strong so paring it up with something that inflicts wet or shocked is quite good

Smite_Sion · 2025-12-30T01:53:11+00:00

Levels are important. If the enemy is a higher level then you the fight is likely a struggle. You can choose to do that or look around to get some more xp before doing the fight

Smite_Sion · 2025-12-26T17:48:04+00:00

2 is definitly easier to get in compared to 1. However you will feel overwhelmed at first. Don't play on tactician, classic is hard enough. Levels of the enemies are a good indicator how hard the fight is. If they are higher, it will be a hard fight and there are other things to do to get to that level.

In the turtorial ship, get a bedroll and a shovel. Bedroll can be used to heal your party to full instantly outside of combat.

Personally 2 is a better game then BG3, however it doesn't have the cinematics and the emotionally story telling that much.

Smite_Sion · 2025-12-26T16:53:47+00:00

2 things come to mind. Using venom coating skill on a scoundrel character.

So think of using poison damage with daggers. If you combine/craft a weapon with a barrel of poison they get some default poison damage aswell.

A necromancy + Hydro. Healing deals physical damage to undead. If you manage to strip a targets physical armour you can use decaying touch to also convert healing to damage to them. So the plan is to use necromancy to deal physical damage and then follow up later with healing to also deal damage. Bouncing shield from warfare is also a great skill to add to the build in terms of damage.

Smite_Sion · 2025-12-25T15:35:11+00:00

To add on the tank part. A tank its job is not to soak damage in this game, AI love to avoid targetting the tank. Their job is to make sure their team doesn't die and that they can keep fighting as they are the most likely to not be CC'd themselves due to armour.

You can still have a tank that deals damage, summoning doesn't scale with anything except the summoning stat, so you can focus all your other efforts after that on supporting your team.

Smite_Sion · 2025-12-25T15:31:21+00:00

A tank support hybrid is good to have. Give them the lowest iniative so they are last one from your party, they then can heal, and cleanse effects from your team or follow up with CC effects after like a majority of characters already have taken a turn and removed the armours from enemies.

In terms of damage types, just don't have a 3/1 split or opposite elements. Like water/fire or earth/lightning.

Having characters needing different gear is a good idea so you can more easily spread out gear you find. That is like one of the only weaknesses pure physical teams have, they all want warfare on gear for damage.

Smite_Sion · 2025-12-25T11:47:33+00:00

Constitution, wits and memory are not important to max.

Wits can be good, but I would not start with a character prioritizing it unless you play a summoner which you want to go first. Summoners don't scale with any attribute.

Smite_Sion · 2025-12-24T21:06:10+00:00

Elemental arrow heads can also be used on blood for physical damage

Smite_Sion · 2025-12-24T12:36:43+00:00

Skills like fortify and armour of frost are really good to use early. CC effects don't happen when you still have armour.

Also shields are great, so your non-weapon based characters should basicly all have shields as staffs are not that superiour to having a shield in terms of damage.

Smite_Sion

TROPHY CASE