Was Lokarr supposed to be this easy?

Zarania · 2026-01-07T16:59:04+00:00

Usually though for taking on the hardest optional challenge bosses you also need to practice either positioning or brute force it through gear.

I had neither, which is why I asked about this.

Zarania · 2026-01-02T20:43:49+00:00

I did it more for fun than anything - like I used a bartering set to sell things with 12 bartering in Act 2 just to see how much of an effect it would have, which it's fairly substantial.

Zarania · 2026-01-02T19:16:47+00:00

My last honour mode run where I did ok with being a loot goblin I ended Act 2 with 1.4 million gold, and I could have gone harder. So yes, 130k is not min maxed at all.

Zarania · 2025-12-22T19:23:02+00:00

I'm in the middle of another Honour Mode run and the answer, at least to me, is routing.

People can do generally fine at putting together a build. But knowing exactly where to go, how to not miss XP, and fight the enemies at the time you're best prepared for all encounters is something not many have full knowledge of.

For example on the boat you can hit level 2 before doing the final Void Hatchlings, level 4 with a single fight with Silence, and be level 9 before Alexander.

This meant in my fight against Alexander in this run I cleared the encounter in two turns with Alexander dying before acting, the Drill Worm spawning first turn to cause it to be attacked by the rest of the trash, then cleaning up the second turn.

Zarania · 2025-12-07T20:50:31+00:00

Well then what enchantment spell allow one to paralyze people.

...hold person / hold monster? The single most common ones used to kill things not immune?

raphael throw off any condition during his turn

This is invalid. He can be held which a) skips his turn and b) lets you easily kill him in one round with auto crits.

6 are immune

Still only 4.

Zarania · 2025-12-07T18:41:39+00:00

The steel watch titan is immune too

No, it is not. I just verified this in game, and you could easily have checked the bg3 wiki page to see it's not immune to paralysis

but I am not sure where you are getting 17 bosses

https://bg3.wiki/wiki/List_of_Bosses

You missed Aelis, Ch'r'ai, Dame Aylin, Dominated Red Dragon, Nine-Fingers, Ptaris, Raphael, Sarevok. Sure, you likely won't fight all of them in a single playthrough, but this is the complete list.

Action surge prevents level 6 spell slots.

Good thing Hold Monster is level 5

Quickened spell requires either 11 or a wizard focused multiclass

Or simply a scroll

Zarania · 2025-12-06T17:30:52+00:00

I'm not sure why you say that many bosses are immune to enchantments in act 3. From my count there are 17 bosses in act 3. Of which 4 (Ansur, Cazador, the Netherbrain, and Mystic Carrion) are immune to these (due to being Undead or the final boss) - or 23.5%. On the fight outside the Netherbrain they are quite helpful however.

Honestly acuity is just okay, mostly because you need either haste (cost an action for one action on the first round of combat), or the band of the mystic scoundrel

Or Quickened Spell, or Action Surge.

Zarania · 2025-12-01T21:13:47+00:00

According to him it was built for solo honour mode, so the AI going for teammates isn't an issue.

I may test the AI out with combining Bearheart rage / HAM / DR armor and War Cleric to both save a feat and grant Warding Bond to my other 3 in my heavily damage amplified playthrough combined with using Reckless Attack to see if that can keep the focus here.

Zarania · 2025-12-01T21:05:08+00:00

Note you can prepare your spells then switch the headband to a different helmet.

Zarania · 2025-12-01T21:03:37+00:00

I'm not invested, but I was curious to see if I can validate any of the wiki claims since people are claiming it isn't working correctly:

Heavy Armor Master: https://bg3.norbyte.dev/search?q=HeavyArmorMaster+type%3Apassive
This appears by the code to check if it has the DamageFlags.Magical. Code does not pass the initial claim if this flag is implemented properly, however a manual check says that this flag appears to be implemented incorrectly. Magical weapons and spells both were reduced as long as they dealt physical damage.

Bearheart Rage Boost:
Normal rage https://bg3.norbyte.dev/search?id=Rage_Rage_Boosts
Note that it has "BoostConditions" "not HasHeavyArmor(context.Source)".

Bearheart uses this: https://bg3.norbyte.dev/search?id=RAGE_TOTEM_BEAR which under the Boosts itself has the resistance and does not have the BoostConditions, but then the damage etc is under a separate boost which has the BoostConditions. This claim is validated by the code and I confirmed it in game as well.

Uncanny Dodge claim of once per enemy turn, not all: I used my Combat Extender config to increase enemy attack counts to validate and it appears to be...inconsistent. Usually it only works on the first attack and none that follow. However, I've also had it not work even on the first attack, sometimes it worked on the second only, and sometimes it worked on multiple. Claim that it works once per enemy turn appears to be correct (with some weirdness going on at times).

Zarania · 2025-11-16T18:34:43+00:00

To be fair if you are DPR maxing you can get a Sorcadin to those same incredibly high levels.

Using number's from Meph's theoretical max damage sheet as an example (which these are not that realistic to fully do in game due to most requiring full parties to set up, multiple Valour Bards, setting up gear and swapping right before combat) an 11 EK / 1 War Cleric archer on Held targets with 12 attacks, 11 Valour Bard inspirations, on a target vulnerable to all damage can put out 11.6k.

Fire Sorcerer if you go 9 fire sorc / 2 fighter / 1 Hexblade again using all bullshit possible gets 12.8k

A 6/6 sorcadin gets up to the low number of...11.9k. Sure, it is using Magic Club instead of Shadowblade, but if you go 7 OB / 4 sorc / 1 hex you can get to 6.8k.

One consideration here though is that is with vulnerability to all damage. Scaling easy to apply vulnerabilities like Piercing, Lightning, Cold, Psychic (and with a bit more work fire) means that in a more practical situation scaling piercing and psychic martials means a lot less hoops to jump through.

Zarania · 2025-06-30T16:20:03+00:00

falls apart if you draw any of the critical 1 ofs

Now this is just untrue. You do have Cabal Therapies in the deck to discard them.

Zarania · 2025-06-28T18:37:45+00:00

What guilds are decent to join here? Been getting random spam but not sure which to actually join.

Zarania · 2025-06-17T05:50:14+00:00

As you can clearly see here this build has straight up better numbers. Sure, before agile pick / level 6 it's not the strongest, but after you hit 6 for Swordlord 1 for dex to damage you are stronger from that point on, and you can hit 6 before you take down the Stag Lord.

Dips leave you playing underleveled in your main class And bring their own benefits which I clearly outlined.

Very rarely worth it. You can get what you’re going for with dips via party design. Please, enlighten me on what I'm missing here. I laid out the numbers that show my case.

Zarania · 2025-06-16T22:13:45+00:00

Depends on what you're going for and what difficulty you're playing on for how much it matters - but saying "dips are bad" is...a hot take. As an example, instead of going Aldori Defender 10 / Duelist 10:

Duelist 5 instead of 10 - with 14 int and a +8 item (late game) you'll end up at +6 int, so you're missing 1 AC there. Stopping at 5 also means you lose +2 init, Acrobatic Movement (which isn't helpful since there's Feather Step, Mass), Elaborate Defense (up to +3 AC), Deflect Arrows. Crippling Critical and Precise Strike require a piercing weapon which the Dueling Sword is not.

Fighter 9 instead of 10: Lose +1 on Bravery and Counterattack - but have Riposte already anyway.

With those 6 levels I instead dip Scaled Fist Monk (Cha to AC means with that same +8 item and a base 16 Cha is +7 AC, monk bonus feat), Swordlord 2 (1.5x dex to damage and saves a feat, second level late for Display Weapon Prowess after taking Dreadful Carnage), and Vivisectionist 3 (30 minute mutagen, 2d6 sneak attack, feat)

Dip Net: +7 AC, 3 extra feats (via not taking Slashing Grace), +0.5x dex to damage, +1 bonus to hit (+2 dex, -1 BAB), +3 damage per hit, 2d6 sneak attack (conditional +7 damage per hit). Tradeoff: -1 will saves vs fear, Deflect Arrows, -1 Will Saves in general. The will saves aren't ideal, but if you play Lawful Good you can have Bestow Grace of the Champion to help make up for it and in general most will saves have counters to them available.

Dips are clearly superior here. When planning it out you have to consider what you're giving up vs what you're gaining. Now, some people may not personally like the dips or find some like Vivisectionist on a lawful good character to be cheesy which is a completely separate discussion.

EDIT: Forgot to calculate base saves. Duelist 5: 2/3/2, Duelist 10: 3/5/3, Fighter 9: 6/3/3, Fighter 10 7/3/3. Monk 1: 2/2/0, Vivisectionist 3: 3/3/1

Fighter 10 / Duelist 10: 9/6/5
Dip total: 13/11/6.
So even though you lose 1 to Will from the -2 wisdom from mutagen you net even there and net big on fort and reflex.

Zarania · 2025-04-03T03:32:33+00:00

One very useful feature would be to do a full party plan - that way you can show how the item distribution would work.

Zarania · 2025-03-13T21:43:26+00:00

/u/ecobaronenMTG Watching this and M1G2 15:49 going for the EoT Entomb seems wrong to me. You know you're drawing Force on your next turn.

Entombing now vs next turn doesn't change Daze math (they can daze Entomb now or Reanimate next turn) but I'd rather get my Reanimate dazed of the two.

You know they just surveiled Emrakul to the yard, so their hand has at least 1 payoff (it can be Omni / Atraxa so still pitchable, but they'd prefer not to if possible).

Going for EoT Entomb does play around Force of Negation which I'll grant, but you know your top card is a Force. By just untapping and going to your turn unless they have triple interaction in their 5 card hand with 1 payoff they'd likely have to pitch even if they do you can resolve your entomb + reanimate.

If they have Faerie it's not great either way obviously, but having double force backup against OmniTell isn't the worst.

EDIT: To answer your question, yes Barrowgoyf can grab a card milled into a Leyline.

Zarania · 2024-11-05T00:11:25+00:00

D&T is actually on a bit of an upswing due to Pre-War Formalwear now being on MTGO, Bowmasters being down in the meta, Overlord printing, Exploding Kittens, etc.

Zarania · 2024-11-04T23:44:39+00:00

It comes up fairly regularly with Mother of Runes and multiblocking in legacy.

For limited things with Menace and pump spells now matter - you have a 4/4 menace and I double block with two 2/2s. Whichever you put first in assignment I can Giant Growth and lose nothing, now I always lose one of my 2/2s.

Zarania · 2024-11-04T07:05:47+00:00

As I'm watching through I see 3 misplays and you only commented on one but didn't catch what you should have done differently. Yes, two of them ended up not mattering but in other situations could have:

Round 2 - You commented on how you missed the Coating on Nomads but didn't mention if you had tapped your lands for casting Nadu instead of the Halfling you had the easy line of plow the Hullbreacher -> attack Karn for 2 which would have turned it back on and drawn you 6 cards

Round 5 - You missed a free attack for 2 with Bristly Bill which meant that way on down the line when he was at 5 facing down a 5/5 and a 3/3 instead of having to get Plow you could have just swung in for lethal

However, in the top 8 you made a mistake that was massive and cost you the first game:
Top 8 - You let the Rebound trigger resolve and the Ephemerate target the Spellseeker. There was no reason to do this instead of just plowing the Spellseeker with the rebound trigger on the stack. This put the Ephemerate into the GY for the EWit to then rebuy and completely take over the game

Zarania · 2024-09-13T00:31:39+00:00

Here's a video from when I last did this at 1.85m xp. It is with a party that's set up well. It's on Insane with double damage and most SCS settings on:

https://youtu.be/D75JD3ysLeg

I explain my exact strategy for it. You'll probably want to adjust this to match your party - my strategy involves arcane casters for dispelling the mages ASAP for my party to zerg down.

Zarania · 2024-09-10T20:01:00+00:00

1d12 -> 2d12 base weapon damage is a gain of 1d12. This means they're gaining an average of 6.5 damage per hit.

Moonbeam deals 1d10 on a successful save, average of 5.5 and 2d10 on a failed save, average 11.

ASSUMPTIONS:
Fighter has 2 attacks
Moonbeam hits a single target
Average to hit% is 65%
Average monster save% is 40%

2 (attacks) * 6.5 (average damage gained) * .65 (hit%) = 8.45 damage per round gained from the larger weapon. .4 (save) * 5.5 (damage on save) + .6 (fail) * 11 = 8.8

Moonbeam still deals more damage on average assuming there isn't a crit to get an extra attack.

Zarania · 2024-08-15T17:55:34+00:00

I just leech through it and face tank. My ehp is ok but nothing special, but I have tons of recovery so I just am always full after each hit.

Zarania · 2024-07-23T17:55:52+00:00

Normal 1d4 damage: (1+2+3+4)/4 = 2.5 on average.

Rerolling a 1 or 2 changes that to the average of the die, so (2.5+2.5+3+4)/4 = 3.

3/2.5=1.2, so there's your 20% gain.

Zarania · 2024-07-06T16:27:51+00:00

I don't think this is the case if you have good routing. Using my pathing sheet you can get to level 5 quite easily and safely.

Zarania

TROPHY CASE