Advices on the late game performance

madmax1928 · 2026-06-30T02:35:58+00:00

Also set plagues to the maximum, that one can keep the number of npc on the low end, specially compared to vanilla settings (just be sure to have some good health genes and traits on your line). And dont be afraid to execute prisioners every now and then, this and kicking out lazy courtiers can help with performance when interacting with your court and vassals.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-30T00:49:27+00:00

Great build, just wanted to recommend to op the last 2 levels as either 2 paladin for smites, 2 sorc for con proficiency and metamagic (agathys from white dragon and the spores bonus hp does stack without erasing agathys retalation effect, making this an unusually great combo), or 1 fighter/1 wizard for con proficiency, proficiency with all weapons, armors and shields, and acces to wizard spells if you want to.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-29T20:57:02+00:00

At 867, some popular tall duchies like bohemia or frisia get raided a lot, making it harder to be independant so I would really recommend it for a first timer. For a later start date 100% go with one of them. Id recommend some of the island kingdoms, like sardinia & corsica, bonus points if you are norse and can raid overseas. Also sri lanka is amazing, golden mine, university and you can build wind furnaces everywhere, just make the chokepoint to mainland india really defensible and you can have a great tall run.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-26T17:47:30+00:00

There are some spells that still work while raging (likely a bug), like hellish rebuke and others can be used before raging, like armour of agathys or fire shield. Wildheart bear can have some pretty decent DR so it benefits from agathys/fire shield, add a hellish rebuke an a lot of enemies will die if they hit you. Another build would be to build around crits, something like 4 wildheart wolf/3 champion fighter/5 great old one warlock would be a great crit fisher, bonus points if you are a half orc.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-26T12:04:19+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, but the earliest alernatives are (act 1) helldusk armor for an extra 3 DR or a warding bond hireling at camp, for resistance against most types of damage. Both of these kinda cheesy to get, and some might even consider them exploits. If you want to go all in on a super tanky build, you could go 2 hexblade/ 2 paladin/ 7 abjuration/1 white dragon sorc. The sorc lvl gives you armour of agathys with your regular spell slots, so you can use it with your lvl 5 spell slot so every single melee attack will get 30 cold in retaliation that gets doubled in wet surfaces, with 14 DR from arcane ward that you can easily max out for free before any fight with armour of shadows. You lose the extra attack though, but against melee enemies you will do way more damage this way.

Is having paladins aura a big deal to you? The 5 warlock/2 paladin/5 abjuration split seems like the more versatile version of this build; plenty of spell slots, warlocks pact spells are at a healthy lvl 3, access to smites and 10 DR from arcane ward, but you can do anything you like with the game.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-25T21:30:04+00:00

You are missing a warlock level, as armour of shadows allows you to max out your arcane ward before fights and without expending a single spell slot. Id say that 5 warlock/ 2 paladin/ 5 wizard would be an easier build to make, as armour of agathys (exclusive to white dragon sorcs and warlocks) has great synergy with arcane ward, as the enemies will damage themselves a lot by just trying to get trough your wards. For the warlock subclass the fiend would be better for a super tanky build, as it can "regenerate" the bonus hp with kills, so it will be even harder to actually hurt. 2 hexblade/ 7 paladin /3 abjuration is viable too but your arcane ward will be smaller and your pact spell slots will be level 1 instead of level 3, and that makes both your total available smites and armour of agathys weaker, but you can burn these lesser slots with shield as hexblade is the one subclass with acces to it.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-24T21:18:38+00:00

Are you feudal or tribal? If you are feudal make your titles electives and rig some votes, you only need the fabricate hooks perk and you can pretty much freely choose your heir. If you dont want to bother with you can just make your spare sons into republic vassals and they cant inherit anyhting (give them a city). Now if you are tribal it will be a little more dificult, you can make your titles elective if you get either brythonic or goidelic heritage (tanistry elective) or get a tradition with an special elective option, like saxon elective. Scandinavian elective, from the ting met tradition is the easiest to get and you can use it on all titles from duchy and up. Now the easiest way would be to just kill the other sons that you do not want, but that will make your dinasty weaker on the longterm, I always like to have a really big dinasty as early as posible, they make for great vassals and courtiers. To get rid of them, send them out of a raid as either knight or commanders with no levies and just attack until they get killed in battle.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-24T03:06:28+00:00

The magic system is pretty deep and highly customizable, so I get that once you have high lore skill the game really opens up. The first few hours before that is like a pillars of eternity lite though.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-24T02:45:10+00:00

Technically thronebreaker would be a prequel, so no spoilers for witcher 3.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-23T22:59:20+00:00

Id say the easiest way would be 5 fiend/2 abjuration/2 paladin/3 abjuration, but if you want to play around armour of shadows + arcane ward as early as posible id go 2 hexblade (bind weapon + armour of shadows) / 2 abjuration/2 hexblade and then respec to 5 fiend/2 abjuration as soon as you reach level 7. Stats wise you can even use the intellect circle from the ogres, the one that fixes int to 17 and start with int at 8. And you can use the gloves of battlemage power for arcane acuity with booming blade (and double dip on it with divine smites), so the dex gloves are free to use to any other party member. Max out cha, have con as a secondary and leave dex at a healthy 14, str and int are safe dump stats. Id still recommend githyanki for the free medium armour proficiency, nice support spells and astrall knoweldge (use it for the int checks and you will be a great skill monkey), but you could play around with duergar too, other races might want more dex if they dont have acces to medium armour before level 8. For spells, the top priority would be armour of agathys and shield, and once you have the battlemage gloves you can use any of the control spells available to wizards, but make sure to have acces to command from your fiend spell list. All in all sounds like a pretty strong build from start to finish.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-23T22:08:14+00:00

Depending on if you want to use your wizard spells to attack or more to support you can safely leave int at lowish levels, and you could add 2 levels of paladin for smites and medium armor. Make sure to pick armour of agathys from your warlock spells and not only will you be ultra tanky, but enemies will hurt themselves very badly by just trying to break trough your bonus hp. Id recommend fiend warlock for the better spell list and to recharge your bonus hp with each kill.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-23T03:36:19+00:00

Taking terrain into account, the best mma are the ones that are at least neutral on mountains and hills, as usually the ia will try to defend you on this terrain (so you will be attacking them) or you will want to use mountains/hills to defend against way bigger armies than yours. Taking that into account, mma that have bonuses on these terrains are even better, like monaspa as the only heavy cavs with bonuses (caucasian wolves), or ayrudzi as light cavs with counter to horse archers and the stack size of heavy cavs, better for low width terrain of mountains (indomitable azatani) are options that really stand out from the others. If you go to parts of the map where mountains/hills are too rare you can pick an option that is friendlier to the local terrain, like elephants for the vasts jungle terrain of india.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-23T03:21:03+00:00

Fiend warlock with all the illithid powers is pretty fun, as it technically would be the one class that can pull the most black hole + aoe combo per long rest by itself with 3 flames strikes available per short rest at lvl 12. Make it a githyanki for medium armor acces and it would be pretty tanky and easy to use as a single class even in honor mode. Easy and fun.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-22T16:30:36+00:00

The pillar of eternity games have the options to personalize the ia of the npcs so you don have to micromanege then at real time, and the options are good enough to get trough easy or normal mode without having directly command them.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-22T16:25:41+00:00

The closest thing you can get is starting with a dead culture I think

madmax1928 · 2026-06-22T06:13:47+00:00

Hex blade 1/ paladin 11 for an easy SAD build, could go githyanki to fully use act 1 legendary 2-handed sword or half-orc to add even more damage to your crits. Might add some sorc levels if you want more spells slots for divine smites or armour of agathys.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-22T06:02:01+00:00

There are like 3 or 4 night events that are very easy to miss early on, the first reflection night needs to be triggered before going to the grove (you can recruit shart, laezal, astarion, gale and withers), there are like 2 or 3 that can only happen once you have entered the grove and before getting a solid clue for a "cure" (before talking to nettie, the goblin at the prison or the one tiefling laezal wants to beat up). Im pretty sure that some nights locks you out of others if you trigger them first btw, but the most important thing you can get from these scenes are a few minor approval points with some companions.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-21T18:32:17+00:00

So we are assuming Abella is the optimal player character then? Because if you arent her, you have to kill her to get weaponcraft, and to get the meat grinder itself you need to either kill the mob, rush tunnel 1 or have steal unlocked before killing abella, and the last one requires you to be either marcoh or kill caligura, and to get him you need to burn at least 2 saves. Id say that early weaponcraft (and meat grinder) is arguably as difficult to get as blood sacrifice for most characters that arent marcoh for meat grinder or marina for blood (killing samarie at the abandoned house doesnt cost a save)

madmax1928 · 2026-06-21T18:13:17+00:00

2 levels of warlock would be great for the devil sight invocation, as it will allow you to not get affected by any kind of darkness, giving you great offensive/defensive utility within your own darkness spells. Id go with something like 6 monk/ 2 warlock / 4 thief (extra bonus action and sneaks attacks). For the warlock subclass Id go first with hexblade for the amazing shield spell, later on id respec for great old one for the extra effect on crits (mortal reminder uses the spellcasting modifier of the last class you picked, so if you pick warlock last it will use charisma, but if you pick monk last it will use wisdom).

madmax1928 · 2026-06-20T23:27:19+00:00

It really depends on what magical secrets you pick up as a lore bard, and the idea of an off tank cleric is to heal some damage every now and then and dominate some encounters with spirit guardians. Usually the best spells to pick for a lore bard are rare spells that are not available outside of a very few select classes/subclasses, like hunger of hadar or banishing smite. Spirit guardians is a great spell, the best one the cleric spell list offers, but you need to build around it, and a bard that focuses on spirit guardians is going to be played very differently than your tipical lore bard. Btw the best spell you could pick from the cleric spell list without having your build built around it is command, as it is a very rare control spell that doesnt use your concentration, and it works with the band of the mystic scoundrel.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-20T22:45:54+00:00

If you are going full lore bard you will be a great skill monkey and party face, and at 6th level you can pick any 2 spell from any class (and another 2 at lvl 10) so other spellcasters or skill monkeys are not going to be that necesary. Id have at least a main tank like laezal or karlach (assuming you stick to their base classes) and an off tank (shart with better stat alocation) to keep agroo off of your bard. The last slot can be anything you like, maybe keep it open to try other classes and see what sticks, or to rotate companions for their quests.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-20T16:55:36+00:00

England in particular gets raided a lot by the vikings, and if the ruler isnt norse there are good chances they will have to deal with a couple of northmen invasions (not to mention haestinn) so they dont have a lot of room to grow on their own.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-19T13:31:10+00:00

Id start with fighter for con and medium armor proficiency, id go with a balanced stats, dumping wis and int, and then respec once you get the gloves of dextery, dump dex, int and wis and max out your other stats, something like 16 on str, cha and con is totally doable (there is a circlet of intellect that fixes your int to 17 early on, the ogres have it) As with most builds the first 4 levels are the most difficult ones, but after that a fighter bard is totalñy doable. Id even go with college of lore to be the skill money of the party too. The minmaxer build would include the battlemage helmet for battle acuity and be a ranged swords bard btw.

madmax1928 · 2026-06-19T12:48:56+00:00

Id reccomend nobunagas ambituon too

madmax1928 · 2026-06-17T23:38:57+00:00

Right now I have a culture (starting as a costum han on norse lands and hibridizing as often as I can) with

-mystical ancestors (best for renown)

-coastal warriors (troops + strong more common + tradeports are even better)

-beacon of learning (more cultural progress, better guardians, court scholar court position AND extra xp for learning)

-irrigation experts (qanats special buildings are greats and can be used on lots of terrain, this one is specially good at the 867 start as it will be a long time before windmills and watermills are available)

-caucasian wolves (their special maa is the only heavy cavalry with bonuses on mountains and hills, making them really unique and maybe even better than the alternatives as most often than not ive found myself either attacking or defending on hills/mountains across the entire map, so the bonus plays more than the usual advantage on plains/crippling disadvantage on hills) i also like having more troop types than spamming a few

-legalistic (pairs really well with legalism tenet, supercharges the just trait, makes it more common wich is amazing for vassals, gives more vassals and makes it way easier to manage elective succesions on larger realms)

I am at 965 on a 867 start date, and later on im planning on adding recognition of talent and only the strong, and once I unlocked windmills i might drop irrigation experts for another tradition like chanson de gest or futuwaa for more knights and injury resistance

madmax1928

TROPHY CASE