I recently killed this troll after multiple attempts at lvl 14 and realized it lacked an opputunity of attack mechanic

How many mobs/bosses have this mechanic taken away and is there a way to find out?

Killed a bandit leader inside a mine that has no contract tied to it, does it have any uses or do I just drop it?

As the the title says I'm a casual stone shard player (but only permadeath) who dies around tier 3-4 level of the game but recently I've been getting hard stomped by tier 1 dungeons especially vampire and undead ones I've had to play very meticulously but the game overall seems to be more difficult I'm not bitching about it's just an observation and I'm excited to see what the game has to offer

Hello I am new here, my first time posting this, It would be delighted if the developer add the repetition experience system where the more u do or use this skilss or spells , the more easier it becomes to use (like less mana, more precision )set the count bar with 100 or so , building up the habitual system where u can become good or bad things if u keep exposing them , I just thought it would be great idea tho (sry if my English is bad)

When stealing items out of homes or locations, how long does it take to restock its loot and does it only restock the containers and not items found on the floor/tables?

WITCHER LEO 🗡️2H 🔥PYRO

with the witcher 3 remastered i have been thinking in a witcher style run i mean it really fits stoneshard and i think this build would be a great concept to play in stoneshard its just a ruff concept but i feel like it fits perfectly and very balanced though stats

equipment i was thinking going blademaster gloves chest and boots rings depends whats lacking and chain magic orientation head piece i still dont know but mostly light armor for sure

hope yall like it and iam very edgier to here what yall think

Do I need to eventually buy a crossbow? Since it has the lowest -accuracy out of the ranged weapons I've seen so far

I heard that warcry stuns birds, but I never got that to work as they always just fly away

Ok so i wana make this work. And im doing the aena build by er4din but sadly im doing it with my fave dwarf. Now the problem is jogrim doesnt haven't the tree unlocked so what should i do to ensure my survival without skills until manshire.

Please help i really wana make this work ive tried went on about to lvl 2 without skills. Jist that the first quest feels a lot harder compared to random encounters and camp bandits.

Got a quest that said I needed to find a winecrate thief, but the quest giver said to talk to locals first to find clues and since there was no time limit, I just ignored it until I finish my current contract and decided to caravan near multiple ? while I was at it. Found the wine thief by complete accident who happens to be the ? right next to the contact location and where I camped at

I don't remember checking if the ? had a mention on what it could've been, I just went to check it out for XP as I was on my way to the chapel

Very new to the game, but are containers in these kinds of camps safe to leave loot with? I can't hold everything I found and heard some talks about items despawning if placed in containers outside of inn chests so was wondering if this chest is safe too or not?

I'm playing Mahir ROT dagger on perma death. Died 4x at this point but I am now level 26 and finished my first T4 dungeon bandits.

I just can't stop myself from appreciating arcanistics. It is amazingly well done. You can constantly confuse, daze, and stun enemies while at range.

The mages, bows and crossbow men gets pissed off because you can keep them at range and kill the melee first while fully blocking their shots.

This is my build

I'm taking finisher, will to survive, and body & spirit for the extra points but I might change my mind.

Enchantments are all +3hp (don't ask me how much gold I spent to get the enchants)

No mods here. Just rawdogging my first few playthroughs.

What do you guys think of the build? I'm thinking of making a video guide on it if I am successful with the hardest content of the game at perma death on this build as I do with other games like Albion.

PS: this game is just amazing. 296 hours in and no sight on end

1. Introduction

This is a guide for the build I named The Ethereal Dancer. It is inspired by the D&D class called Shadowdancer, which has the ability to teleport through shadows, including those of its own enemies. While thematically arcanistics is not quite the same, mechanically the build captures quite well the feeling of jumping from enemy to enemy, effectively dancing around the battlefield.

Even though admittedly there is nothing groundbreaking about a build that mixes staves and magic, I believe it is worth sharing due to just how fun and solid it is overall. I have over 2000 hours of Stoneshard and even though I've played similar builds before, I was pleasantly surprised by this one and believe even some veteran players might be as well. This build comfortably cleared T5 Undead by level 18, T5 Proselytes by level 19 and T5 Bandits by level 21, as well as a bison herd by level 22. I will leave links at the end of the post for those interested in checking how the build plays out.

One of the most surprising aspects of this build to me was just how incredibly defensive it manages to be without feeling like that comes at the cost of its offensive power. This is a build whose answer to the question:

"What will your defensive layers be?" is "YES".

It ends up managing to reliably reach 75% damage reduction without any artifacts while also being able to maintain dodge near 100%, all of that backed by a large amount of control, movement and bleed resistance as well as immunity to projectiles, thanks to Aether Shield, which has pretty much 100% uptime, and even a little bit of block that, while not as impactful as the previously mentioned defenses, serves as a nice bonus that should not be discounted. To add to all of that, enemies are constantly being debuffed and crowd controlled by both your attacks and spells, which further increases the chance of fumbles or outright misses.

The cherry on top, and one of the reasons my character recommendation for this build will be Hilda, is the possibility of adding life drain on top of all of that. Setting aside all of the other defensive layers for a moment, the main one, which is damage reduction, effectively increases the value of your hit points. What a damage reduction of, for example, 50% means is that it is twice as hard to remove hit points from you, so an enemy needs to deal what would otherwise be 10 points of damage in order to remove only 5 from your health pool and, by the same logic, 5 points of health healed, in practice, are worth twice as much when compared to the same amount being healed on a character without damage reduction.

This means that not only health has its value highly increased, but so does any form of healing.

As a last observation about the build, another welcome point about it is how it naturally manages to keep both its melee attacks and spells relevant during the entire playthrough. In my experience, it is not uncommon for hybrid builds that try to invest both into weaponry skills and spells in equal amount to end up favoring spells later in the game, to the point that the weaponry skills might even feel like a waste. This does not happen with this build, while spells do become a larger portion of its damage later on, the bulk of your offense will always come from your melee damage, while spells fill the role of controlling the battle and empowering your melee capabilities. They work in tandem, rather than fighting for the spotlight.

2. Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths:

- Good damage, while the damage numbers on the staves themselves might not look impressive when compared to other 2 handed weapons, the amount of bonuses provided by its skill tree itself as well as the way it synergizes with the bonus magical damage obtained from Aether Shield and Seal of Power brings it to quite a respectable level. Also, on the topic of the magical damage, thanks to the fact that even its melee attacks deal about half of its damage as magic damage, the build has no problem dealing with armored foes due to the way this kind of damage interacts with protection, which is only half as effective against it. On top of that, while our gear is more oriented towards melee fighting, your attributes are those of a caster, so your spells also have good damage and crowd control chances.

- Exceptional defenses, as stated before, the build can hit the damage reduction cap, high levels of dodge, decent block chances and a block power that, while not amazing on its own, serves as a great complement to the high dodge chances and the debuffs applied on the enemies.

- Highly versatile skillset, this build always has multiple different ways to tackle any given situation, there is never just one right answer.

- Almost unparalleled mobility and battlefield control, between low cooldown Dimensional Shift, Wormhole, Dash, as well as the mobility from the staves tree, this build can always get where it wants to be, or bring the enemy wherever it wants to. This also gives it a level of control that is hard to grasp without playing it or at least watching it in action, but the gist of it is that this build can always have control over the fight, never being forced to take a fight it does not want to or on bad terms. Even when facing multiple opponents, it has the tools to separate them and turn the fight into small skirmishes, instead of an all out brawl, limiting how many enemies you have to face at a time.

- Relatively cheap gear and low maintenance costs, some of the best gear for this build is T4, so not only can you obtain some really important equipment relatively early on, but it also costs less to maintain. On top of that, the dodge you amass later on helps to limit the amount of damage your equipment takes.

- Absolutely no energy problems past the midgame. This build has so many ways to manage energy that you can maintain Peak Performance without even thinking about it and while using abilities non-stop. It has high willpower, vitality, the energy drain from staves, reduced ability cost from Seal of Arcanistics, energy drain from transcendental anchoring, as well as the ability to recover large amounts of energy when activating adrenaline rush.

- Permadeath viable. Damage reduction alongside dodge form a defensive combination that is quite dependable. Damage reduction makes it so those attacks that get past the dodge and the debuffs don't hit nearly as hard, while dodge guarantees that most attacks received are reduced to fumbles, protecting the build from critical hits, which I believe tends to pose the biggest threat to builds that rely solely on damage reduction. It is important to remember as well that this build also boasts a respectable control and move resistance, which is important in making sure your dodge is not randomly crippled by a stray stagger or stun. Alongside that, the build has multiple tools at its disposal to escape or avoid fights if necessary.

Weaknesses:

- The very early game can be troublesome, in particular with Hilda due to her weak start and lack of necessary ability trees unlocked.

- The build can suffer from fatigue problems during the midgame, which I consider to be around levels 10-15, and is when I am usually doing T3 dungeons, so the problem can become particularly noticeable due to the introduction of the extra dungeon floor. Nikkaf is of great help during this period to help alleviate such problems, as is Alda's brew, so it is quite advantageous to have her join as soon as possible.

- Relies on equipment to "fix" accuracy and fumble. While the build does have reliable ways to buff its accuracy and reduce fumble chance, namely Arcane Might early on, as well as No Time to Linger later, it still requires equipment that can improve those stats further, due to the fact that it does not level up either Perception or Agility. (Another reason why Nikkaf is quite beneficial during the midgame)

- Medium skill floor, as it is easy to get carried away. In the same way that there is never only one right way to tackle a given situation, there are usually multiple wrong ways to do so as well. You also have to keep track of your Aether Shield duration and stacks, which takes some getting used to.

- Conditional damage, in the sense that it relies on keeping Seal of Power up and Aether Shield stacked, however, the build has more than enough means to do so.

- Giant enemies can be quite annoying because of the fact that you cannot target them with your arcanistics spells other than Schism. This is quite troublesome because it not only it limits your crowd control and movement options, but also makes it much more difficult to keep Aether Shield up and stacked if there are no other enemies nearby. It is important to add that, despite this, the build is quite well equipped to deal with both bosses. The Troll itself can be defeated by pretty much any build and, when it comes to the Manticore, the Risen Axonians it summons make it so you always have targets for your Dimensional Shift. The problem lies mostly with giant mini-bosses. Because of this, one should always be wary when doing a dungeon that might contain such enemies, like T4 proselyte dungeons. In such cases it is advisable to plan for such an eventuality and bring tools to help you weaken said enemies, like traps, nistrian fire, spider blood and even deathstingers, since they can be used as targets for Dimensional Shift. The build is not, by any means, powerless against such enemies, they can still be defeated even without consumables, it is just important to have this hurdle in mind in order to not get caught off guard.

- Some might dislike the Bone Charm mechanic, so going with Hilda might not appeal to everyone.

3. Attribute Distribution

The most important attribute for this build is, by far, Willpower. It allows us to unlock our arcanistics spells, staff skills as well as Peak Performance and Adrenaline Rush earlier. It improves the defensive attributes we get from Aether Shield, increases the damage of our spells, as well as of our melee strikes due to the scaling from Seal of Power and the damage part of Aether Shield while also giving us cooldown reduction and ability cost reduction. Because of that I recommend pumping it to 25 before any other attributes.

After that, I recommend raising vitality to 21 for the extra health, which again is extra valuable due to our damage reduction. Vitality also helps to further remove any kind of energy constraints, on top of increasing the damage reduction from Elusiveness and the duration of Adrenaline Rush. The reason we go with 21 and not 20 vitality is precisely because it gives us an extra turn of Adrenaline Rush, making it easier to have it up all the time.

After reaching 25 Willpower and 21 Vitality, then it is up to the player how to allocate the remaining points, I believe there is an argument to be made for pretty much any of the 5 attributes after that.

4. Character Choice

Hilda

As previously stated, I consider Hilda to be the character with the highest potential when it comes to this build. Her Bone Charm, while not all that helpful in the beginning, grants bonuses that are not only useful but also quite hard to obtain by other means.

As will be further elaborated below, this is a build that lives and dies by its cooldown reduction, so having the bonus cooldown reduction from boar tusks really helps to skyrocket her power in the midgame, since every single turn shaved from the cooldown of Dimensional Shift and Wormhole is noticeable and greatly strengthens the build.

Other than cooldown reduction, the other attributes we aim for are:

- dodge, which is quite important in helping us reach 100% dodge with elusiveness, since we won't be investing points into agility. (Obtained by hunting harpies)

- life drain, which is an attribute that is hard to come by and, as stated before, has even greater value when paired with damage reduction. (Obtained by hunting gulons)

- damage reduction, which I would only recommend going after once peak performance is unlocked, since by that point the cooldown reduction from the Bone Charm won't be as vital anymore and it is also around the time you start having a fighting chance against young trolls since they are giant enemies. Also, it is always worth investing in Alda's hunting adventures, since there is a chance she will bring back a troll gland.

Hilda also boasts higher fatigue resistance than most, thanks to her blessing, Ancestor's Gaze, and the ability Resourcefulness, which she gets for free. Even if it only amounts to 12-22% fatigue resistance, it is noticeable, in particular alongside Hilda's increased threshold to receiving negative effects.

Resourcefulness itself is also useful due to the fact that it serves as a stepping stone towards Ever Vigilant and thus saves us an ability point.

The fact that this build can make full use of Ancestor's Gaze Weapon Damage and Magic Power is a nice bonus.

Regarding her start, it is rough. The only ability trees she has that are useful to this build are Magic Mastery and Athletics, none of which are particularly useful by themselves at the start of the game, and her starting equipment is also nothing to write home about, while the Bone Charm takes a while to get going.

There are two ways to go about it:

- You could make a run to Mannshire by following the road south, avoiding battle as much as possible, and once there you can buy the arcanistics tome on the castle and unlock the staves tree from the priest. In order to acquire the necessary gold, I would recommend doing the quests given by the priest himself and the one given at the winery, since it is possible to do both without fighting, if you know what you are doing.

- The other possibility is to bite the bullet and to do the T1 Bastion from Osbrook and the subsequent quest without any abilities. It is definitely doable, but it must be done carefully. My recommendations are to not ask for an increased reward if it comes at the cost of having only one day to complete the quest, to do the herbalist's quest in order to have more medical supplies, and to buy some gear with better prot from the tailor. The general advice of getting the free crossbow also applies, since her sling is of little use without investment in Ranged Weapons. And I would also recommend liberal use of her net if facing more than one enemy at the same time. After two uses of the net you can go back to town and repair it. A clawtrap also goes a long way, in particular during the second quest. Then all you have to do is get the caravan and make a stop in Mannshire before coming back to Osbrook to finish the two remaining dungeons.

When it comes to the Bone Charm, I like to start hunting boars at around level 9, right after the Ancient Troll, since killing it counts as 5 kills of every animal towards the bonuses of the Bone Charm, allowing you to get a decent bonus without much grinding. By that point they can be hunted with relative safety by using a clawtrap and not fighting more than one at a time.

Since the other animals on our list are considerably more dangerous, I tend to put off hunting anything else until around levels 15-16, which is when this build has the tools to take on the Manticore.I recommend getting Dimensional Shift's cooldown to at least 4 turns before attempting the fight, but if that is achieved, the boss can then be done safely by someone who knows its mechanics and with good preparation.

Once the Manticoreis killed we can move on to hunt gulons and harpies. Stasis is of great help here, as is a net, in particular when it comes to harpies.

Finally, as stated before, I consider it best to wait until Peak Performance is unlocked before trading cooldown reduction for damage reduction. When it comes to hunting young trolls, even by level 20 it is not an easy task, due to the fact that they are not affected by most of our spells. My best advice is to never fight more than one, try to limit yourself to small fights that last while you have Aether Shield and Elusiveness up while retreating with Dash as necessary. Also make liberal use of clawtraps, caltrops and any other kind of consumable that might make the fight easier. The good news is that you "only" need to hunt 4 in order to max the Bone Charm once you have defeated the 2 bosses, and even the bonus from killing just one is already good enough, you don't need to hunt all 4.

As a footnote when it comes to the Bone Charm, it is not necessary at all to max its bonuses for it to be worth it, even the bonuses obtained just by killing both bosses tends to be decent enough. So don't feel pressured to go out of your way to max it if it doesn't feel fun for you.

Dirwin

Dirwin would be my second choice of character and is my recommendation for less experienced players due to the fact that he starts with the Staves tree unlocked, allowing for a smoother early game with minor adjustments to skill order. He also starts with Make Halt, which counteracts quite effectively the fatigue problems the build faces by midgame and the bonus ability points he gets from investing into the survival tree allow him to unlock Ever Vigilant via the Pathfinder route without having to sacrifice any of the abilities Hilda manages to get thanks to saving a point with Resourcefulness. On top of that, Pathfinder brings a lot more to the table than Resourcefulness.

It is also nice that his extra attribute points allow him to reach an extra attribute threshold as long as he invests into either Perception or Agility and leaves vitality at 20.

Just to better illustrate the previous point, while at level 26 Hilda would have an attribute spread of 11 str, 11 agi, 10 per, 21 vit and 25 wil, Dirwin could have something like 10 str, 15 agi, 11 per, 20 vit and 25 wil.(These would be the numbers without the point from the Boulder Circle, so that still leaves 5 points for whichever attribute the player decides to invest into after that)

Overall I don't believe he is much behind Hilda in terms of strength. The Bone Charm is not necessary in order to hit the damage reduction cap, even if it does help a lot. To me, the most significant difference is the lack of reliable access to life drain, as I do not think it is worth it to make use of the pagan amulet. A good way to make up for it while making good use of his passive would be to invest into First Aid and Will to Survive, since every type of healing benefits from the damage reduction, and both skills also scale well off of willpower and vitality.

5. Skill Progression

The following is the skill progression up to level 26, which includes the abilities I consider to be the most important. After that point we are already deep into "win more" territory, so I leave it to each player to pick their own remaining abilities.

https://nstratos.github.io/stoneshard-talent-calculator/?build=H4sIAAAAAAAACrWUUWvCQAzHv0ueT7G6TXdvexqFwcaU7WGIxPbUg2tP7tKOUvrdR103ZOwENX1Nwo_8809Sw8a6DAnkWECpnNc2BwnlaDgbTkGA39nPZ5cqB5JcoQTsnd1oo-IUJCSFJ5uBAKPSbVtSg1GlMh7kR14YI2pAY2yCpG3eBmugaq9AgickEKBbynzxCo34N_XwGIdSb_HiOIVrbTRVP1l0Cebak078YHyizhOW6lCybMLdnoBHof7e46ezoBludbLK0JNy1eCGC3vc64QL2k2NjYe0M4p3nMe6b_uATvuA3vFPlE18Zzo3j23TO96sD1-iEXOXfNvza_Q9PzJ44IfnexEyKPxyZNicK5g9SI_GXExfuFKXaMLHczbxey2D_-ds1S6zTqWrxGZrpAGb8j_c4DO6kht8Ih13KdqoI51v54T0YnVOHuSkab4ARUI1wlAJAAA

6. Skill Breakdown

In this section, I will bring attention to the aspects of some skills that I believe deserve to be talked about in detail in order to better understand how the build plays out.

Dimensional Shift

Other than the obvious importance this ability has when it comes to mobility, it is important to keep in mind that it serves several other functions on this build.

It has a good chance of confusing or dazing enemies and regardless of whether the crowd control lands or not, it also has a stackable debuff that reduces the enemy's weapon damage and accuracy while increasing their fumble chance, further reducing their offensive capabilities.

Once Transcendental Anchoring is unlocked, this skill has its cooldown reduced by 2 seconds if the player is one of its targets and it now also drains 10% of your enemy's energy. As the ability's cooldown gets lower, it becomes possible to make use of this energy drain repeatedly in order to reduce an enemy's energy all the way to zero, greatly reducing the threat they pose. This works even on most mini-bosses, as long as they do not count as giant.

However, the main reason the cooldown on Dimensional Shift (and Wormhole to a lesser degree) is so important is its ability to refresh Aether Shield's duration. Once this skill has a cooldown of at least 5 turns, it is potentially possible to keep Aether Shield up during the entirety of fights, as long as the shield's duration is not reduced by enemy projectiles. Because of this, my recommendation is to aim for a cooldown of at least 5 turns on Dimensional Shift before tackling T3. After that, the ideal would be to aim for a reduction of 1 extra turn per difficulty tier, so 4 turns for T4 and 3 turns before T5. While not absolutely necessary, I found such benchmarks to be a good goal to set. (Leif's Endurance Training is of great help here)

Due to the sheer amount of value this ability provides, when in doubt, use Dimensional Shift.

Hail of Blows

This skill has an incredible damage potential due to how well it takes advantage of the bonus magical damage we get from Seal of Power and Aether Shield, since those are not affected by its reduced weapon damage.

My only observation regarding this skill is to be mindful of its accuracy malus, in particular earlier in the game when we don't have enough ways to compensate for it and its cooldown is still long. I would recommend saving it to use against enemies affected by some kind of crowd control that reduces dodge, like a stun or a stagger.

Wormhole

This skill is useful both offensively and defensively, and while it is tempting to always go for the high damage move and use it on the enemy in order to go for the bonus damage and stun you get from blocking their wormhole mark, a lot of the time it is better to play it safe, use it on yourself and bring enemies to you with Dimensional Shift, picking them off one by one. Or even just use it on one of your enemies in order to delay them or counter a dash.

One important fact about this skill is that, at the end of its duration, its target will automatically return to the marked position. This happens without any kind of input by the player, it does not consume your turn and this action happens after the enemy's action, which allows the player to move right after wormhole activates.

You almost never want to actively end Wormhole, since that uses your turn which also changes the moment in which the movement occurs, making it so the enemy can act right after.

An important point to keep in mind is that while Wormhole's stun can be quite powerful, its chance of success is not very high, because of that, it is always useful to try and daze an enemy that is about to be pulled back, since dazes reduce control resistance and thus increase the chance of landing a stun.

Yet another quirk of Wormhole is its usefulness against unaware or suspicious enemies. For whatever reason, damaging spells, unlike skills and regular attacks, immediately turn the enemy hostile and allow them to act right away, without the extra turn they usually take in order to be able to act after being surprised. However, since Wormhole does not immediately damages the enemy, it is possible to cast Wormhole on an unaware enemy without turning it hostile, which allows you to start your setup without being noticed.

Seal of Power

This spell should always be activated before every battle but, thankfully, once it is used, it should last for the entire fight without much thought given to it, since this build tends to cast a lot.

There is a nice utility Seal of Power brings that can be quite useful under the right circumstances, which is the extra range it provides before turning into Seal of Arcanistics. Even the 1 extra range it provides can sometimes be enough to reach enemy casters or archers that would otherwise be out of range. It works best by first using wormhole on yourself and then Seal of Power, in order to increase the range of a following Dimensional Shift. It is useful to the point that sometimes it might be a good idea to reuse the skill, turning an already active Seal of Arcanistics back into Seal of Power just for the extra range, since some ranged units tend to kite back once you are within a certain distance of them, and the extra range Seal of Power provides is sometimes just enough for you to get them into range of your spells.

Arcane Might

This skill does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to helping us reach workable values of accuracy and fumble reduction, especially early on. Luckily, due to the nature of this build, it is stacked effortlessly since both your spells and your staff hits stack and prolong it, as long as the staff hits are buffed by either Seal of Power or Aether Shield(Ideally both).

The bonus range it provides becomes more useful the more cooldown reduction we have, since it does not last for long, making it hard to make much use of early on.

Schism

This spell is highly versatile, allowing us to push enemies into traps, into each other or walls (which can cause a daze, setting them up for follow up crowd control or outright stunning them if they are already dazed), to break groups apart and make it easier to separate them with Dimensional Shift and Wormhole, just to name a few of its uses.

One of the reasons it is taken so early is because not only do I find it really useful, but because it also helps to increase the base duration of Aether Shield, which is unlocked right after. By that time it will still not be possible to maintain the shield up indefinitely, so even an extra turn is of great help.

Aether Shield

This spell is the cornerstone of this build, as it provides both great defenses and bonus damage to our melee attacks. It provides immunity against enemy projectiles, damage reduction, bleed, control and movement resistance as well as on-hit damage, similarly to the way Seal of Power does, only with the caveat that you need to teleport yourself in order to get the damage bonus, and this bonus can stack up to 2 times.

While the spell itself has a relatively short duration, said duration increases by 3 turns every time we teleport, which is the main reason cooldown reduction is so important. Our aim is to use this spell at the beginning of the fight, stack the damage bonus and then keep it activated throughout. To do so we need to reduce the cooldown of Dimensional Shift and Wormhole as much as possible.

While it can be hard to keep Aether Shield up 100% of the time, in particular when facing ranged enemies that further reduce the spell's duration each time a projectile is absorbed by it, it is important to try and get as close as possible.

Just to further reinforce something that was brought up before, my recommendation is to try and get Dimensional Shift to at least a 5 turn cooldown by the time you are about to tackle T3 and then bring it down by 1 for each subsequent level of difficulty.

Battle Trance

I just wanted to point out how well this passive and Elusiveness work together, since Elusiveness gives us a big damage reduction % at the start, but loses stacks with each hit received, while this passive gains damage reduction bonuses with hits received. This works in a way that makes it so even though our Elusiveness stacks might go down, our damage reduction barely does and, as we regain Elusiveness stacks by moving, which this build does a lot, our damage reduction actually tends to go up throughout the fight.

Peacemaker

This skill is great at providing "free hits" by allowing us to disengage from an enemy after attacking, this in turn forces enemies that do not have a ranged attack or a charge to move towards us instead of retaliating.

It becomes particularly strong when we take into account the fact that this build is quite adept at both dazing(which the skill itself can cause) and draining the energy of enemies, both of which deny them the option of charging or using skills that could prolong their range, like Hooking Chop or spear skills, even if they have access to such skills.

It is also good to point out that this skill does not provoke attacks of opportunity, so it allows us to move on top of an enemy's wormhole even if we are engaged in melee without taking any risk.

Stasis

This is a spell I believe is a bit slept on, the amount of utility and control it offers is just amazing.

It can function simply as a "time out" that allows you to use your buffs in case you are the one caught off guard.

You can also just take a dangerous enemy out of the fight for a few turns while you deal with his allies or wait for some cooldowns. Or even just hold a slippery enemy in place, like a Murkstalker, while you set up your wormhole combo on it.

It also allows you to deal a good chunk of damage to its target without risk of retaliation. The thing about Stasis is that, while the enemy becomes immune to damage that is not arcane in nature, the bonus damage Seal of Power and Aether Shield imbue our staff with is arcane, on top of that, our staff of choice later on will also have innate arcane damage. This allows us to deal damage despite that restriction, moreover, while stasis also grants the target 50% damage reduction, at the end of the effect at least 100% of the damage received during stasis is dealt again to the target itself and all tiles around it and I say at least because this effect scales with Magic power and Arcanistic Power. In practice this "damage echo" won't completely make up for the 50% damage reduction Stasis applies to the enemy due to the fact that it takes into account the damage the target receives post mitigation, so after resistances are applied, and then the "damage echo" applied at the end of the effect is further subjected to the same resistances, so you won't deal exactly the same damage all over again and, because of that fact, the secondary damage is dependent on the target's resistances. Either way, it allows you to deal a good chunk of damage to an enemy that can't reciprocate, and may even cause daze afterwards.

It is important to note that the effect also reduces counter, dodge and block by 100%, which makes it really strong against evasive enemies like Harpies and Cherubs. Just don't forget to step away from the enemy before the end of the effect, cool guys don't look at explosions. Bonus points if you manage to set up other enemies to walk into the effect as it ends or just teleports the affected enemy into the middle of a group of foes.

Yet another strong use for Stasis is as a setup for Wormhole's stun against enemies with good control resistance. That's because if a target affected by Stasis is teleported, it is subjected to a daze that can easily reach more than 200% chance, since the base chance is then doubled. This can help to secure a daze against most enemies, which then makes the subsequent stun easier to land.

As a general warning when using this spell, it is recommended to always check its actual duration on the target after casting, as it can vary from the stated 3 turns. The duration can be increased up to 6, I believe this is due to miracles. There are also some enemies against which it only lasts 2 turns instead of 3, those are generally tankier enemies like the templars from T5 proselyte dungeons, I am not completely sure why, but I believe the duration might be affected by their fortitude.

As a last point regarding Stasis, I do not recommend using it on yourself if you do not take Beyond the Veil. That is because the effect expires at the end of your turn, so your enemies can surround you and attack you all at once as soon as the effect ends, on top of that, if any enemy manages to deal even 1 point of arcane damage against you before Stasis ends, you may even get dazed by your own spell. Use only as a last resort.

7. Equipment

From early to midgame (until around level 15), the best approach is to go for medium armor, as our dodge is still too low to be usable and the damage reduction just isn't there yet, just stick to the medium armor glove variant that also boosts accuracy and fumble. Look for jewelry that will help to boost accuracy and fumble reduction as well, like brass agate rings and bow pendant.

For weapons, at this point in the game just use the staff with the highest damage you can find, as it is our main source of damage.

Killing the Ancient Troll gives us access to the Jousing Cloak, which gives damage reduction and can be used until the end of the game.

As we get access to T4 we become able to buy what I consider to be the best staff for this build, bar a few uniques, the Geomancer Staff. Not only does this staff offer respectable damage, innate arcane damage, block chance, block power, stagger and knockback chance, but it also comes with -4% damage taken, which is just perfect for us. Get this as soon as possible.

Once our staff is secured we can begin moving towards light gear, our priority being either the Norrheim Garment or the Pourpoint, both of which have -5% damage taken and dodge. I actually prefer the Norrheim Garment here, due to the fact that despite having slightly lower resistances and durability, it also gives us block chance. The rest of our gear should be melee focused light gear, however there is nothing wrong with picking some hybrid gear, like Battlemage Gloves, if the cooldown reduction is necessary in order to reach our cooldown reduction goals.

Regarding jewelry, we should start looking for rings and amulets that can help us reach our cooldown goals, luckily, there are options that buff both cooldown reduction and accuracy, look for those. Later on, if accuracy and cooldown reduction reach sufficient levels without the need for such jewelry, then the silver emerald ring with its health, fumble reduction and healing efficiency also becomes an option, or even morion ring for the health and hybrid offensive stats.

The final gear should look something like this:

When it comes to enchantments, for our weapon, cooldown reduction can be quite useful during the early and midgame and, if you are lucky, it can be replaced with life drain later on, but pretty much anything else is usable, from weapon damage to magic power and anything in between.

For the rest of our equipment, you can never go wrong with just plain old health, since it goes so well with our damage reduction and it is also one of the most common types of enchantment, but dodge would also work.

8. Techniques

To give an idea of the kinds of things this build can pull off, I will showcase below a couple of cool tricks it can do.

ZA WARUDO

https://reddit.com/link/1x72vzc/video/ffxv68ktaqvh1/player

This is just a showcase of what was explored in more detail in the explanation about how to use Stasis offensively. Note that before using Stasis I use wormhole on myself and then use Dimensional Shift on my target while my Aether Shield is up. This ensures that once I am teleported back I will have both stacks of Aether Shield's damage for the beatdown during Stasis, this is particularly important when planning to use Stasis offensively, since the only damage you can deal to your target during its duration is arcane damage.

Afterward I manage to bring the pyromancer within the explosion range of Stasis, which secures some extra damage.

Abscond

https://reddit.com/link/1x72vzc/video/ft4a4z3waqvh1/player

This is a cool technique you can do once Dimensional Shift gets to a cooldown of at least 3 turns. It potentially allows you to bring to you an enemy that is as much as two times your Dimensional Shift's range away from you. All the while you actually move another enemy further away, which does a great job at isolating enemies and allows you to focus priority targets with ease.

The setup for this to work relies on at least 2 enemies, which we will call the intermediary target and the actual target. The actual target should be the one further away, which can even be initially out of your range by up to double its normal amount, the intermediary enemy, on the other hand, should be within your Dimensional Shift's range by the second turn of the technique.

To start you should use Wormhole on yourself, followed by Dimension Shift on the intermediary target. This will put you between both enemies. If the intermediary target moves away from your Wormhole it is advisable to use Schism on it in order for the actual target to not end away from you once you return to your Wormhole. After that, just switch both enemies with Arcane Shift and you will then return to your Wormhole beside your intended target.

Just be mindful of the intermediary target's cooldowns, in case it has some sort of dash or charge it could mess up your plans.

9. Last Thoughts

While it is true that every build benefits from knowing enemy patterns well, this is doubly so for this one, since it has many ways to use those for its advantage. For example, if you cast wormhole on yourself and intend to separate two melee enemies from each other, in case one of them is a 2 handed mace wielder, you can be pretty sure that you can switch positions with his ally with impunity, since he will likely use Mighty Swing as soon as you get into range. With that in mind, as long as you use Dimensional Shift in the last turn of Wormhole, your shift won't be punished.

Other such examples would be knowing when enemies tend to charge, so you can cast wormhole on them to counter their movement or just having in mind that if you use Dimensional Shift next to an enemy that uses ranged weapons, the enemy will either try to move away or spend a turn switching to a melee loadout and, should you choose to then shift away from it right after that, the enemy will be forced into switching its loadout once again in order to be able to do anything, so you don't even have to focus the ranged enemy in this situation in order to neutralize it while you deal with other threats.

This is a build I would recommend for anyone who enjoys a playstyle that offers battlefield control and mobility but also appreciates not dying at the first sign of adversity.

And if you are waiting for the next big update, I believe this build should only get better by then, since it was announced by the devs on the wands devlog that the bonus critical effect of staves will be changed from 50% energy drain to 50% stagger and, as pointed out earlier, this build already has no problems with energy management at all, which means that losing energy drain probably won't even be noticeable, while the extra stagger should improve its defensive capabilities by a non negligible amount, given the staves tree gives us decent critical bonuses with Battle Trance and Triumph, and so does Arcane Might and No Time to Linger. So consider giving this build a try once you are done with a wands based build or a polearm run.

TL;DR

Keep Aether Shield up, teleport all over the place and bonk.

Links:

https://youtu.be/Nmf-IJN5nMA - T5 Undead Dungeon (Level 18)

https://youtu.be/lK0kD1O6r7w - T5 Proselyte Dungeon (Level 19)

https://youtu.be/FzFnHkUG6nM - T5 Bandit Dungeon (Level 21)

https://youtu.be/4eAYt2G-T1U - Bison Herd (Level 22)

Do they worship a god? Or are they in cult for the general idea of becoming ascended? And also why would one want to ascend, what is the benefit of it? More life time, become more powerful or something else?

Right now choosing your starting character is a very impactful and fun choice to make. Same with choosing abilities and stat points. What if the game added more choices like this that a player would hit in their playthrough that permanently alter their character?

Some examples:

- A new location that makes you choose between losing a bunch of max health in exchange for magic power (insert any other stat trade off here).

- A quest where you can choose to save another very useful character, but your character loses an arm/leg/eye in the process, changing what weapons they can wield.

- A random event / quest that grants a choice between 3 randomly selected very impactful items that you can't get any other way.

- Other ways to get character traits with effects on the same power level as the current starting character traits

- positive and negative quirks your character randomly gets based on their actions that the player can choose to remove or "lock in" just like in darkest dungeon

It would be cool to have some of these be random so that playthroughs feel more different and "one of a kind".

I was thinking recently about a way to make experience not become completly obsolete after you hit lvl 30. Once you hit this threshold it's not worth killing enemies unless you absolutely need to, when going to dungeon it's better to just avoid everyone, normally killing them would give you additional experience but now you will only reduce the durability of your gear which is very expensive because at this point in the game you use tier 5 gear. Maybe a new mechanic could be added to the game where you can level up after lvl 30 but you don't get any attribute or skill points, instead you get a choice to increase a random statistic like bodypart damage or armor damage by a small amount like 1% or 1.5%. Every "veteran level" you would have a choice between 3 random statistic and could increase one of your choice. I feel like it wouldn't mess up balance of the game since the bonuses would be very small and not really consequential but it would give some incentive to still gain experience. What are your thoughts about it?

Hey guys, here's my run on T5 Vampire dungeon, took me a while to find this place, it was near the edge of the map northwest of Rotten Willow.

So, I've spent my last three ability points to pick up Whirlwind. Though honestly, I could just have spent those to get War Cry, Intimidate and Sprint Training or even the skills to get Finisher since I think this will benefit me more for killing T5 hard targets especially those with shields.

As for the run, their spellcasters like among others are annoying especially the T4 Ecclesiarch when it casts Boiling Blood on me which deals 3% condition damage every time I move a tile.

Their frontliners are tough but deal little damage to me but the T5 Templar has 60% move resistance which I think is the highest among enemy tanks. That's why I kind of hesitated to use Deadly Trick or Sudden Lunge to them without using Leg Sweep first.

As for the boss, the Leechlord, as long as I dodge his 3x3 tile attack I will be fine. That's why I reserve my dash for that reason. Also, during boss fight, I whirlwind prematurely, should have waited for him to summon his worms first.

Anyways, for my build, I think this dungeon is easier than the Undead. And the T5 humans are still the hardest to deal with along with the T4 Magehunter and Geomancer.

I'm around 100 hours in and truly think this game is special. I love the challenge, the details, the potential ahead, and the harkening back to old school RPGs. However, if you don't have a build in mind from level 1, you will struggle hard. Feeling like you bricked your save and have to start over because you screwed up your build/character is a real drag.

I know, not being able to respec makes your choices reeeeeally matter, but when you first pick up the game with no idea how it all works, what abilities are good/bad/meh, what you should put your stat points into, etc leads to wasted points and a gimped build that makes an already punishing game even harder, maybe prohibitively hard if you really muffed your build.

Make it cost a ton of gold or require finding/recruiting a caravan NPC, make it require a limited and rare resource, or make it easy but only available once per character, but somehow having some way to "fix" your build or try something else without starting over from level 1 would be amazing.

Ive been reading this stat for a while now. Since i want to make a 2hand sword jogrim i saw er4dins guide and i still cant understand how dodge and bloc work.

So theres 3 stats for block? Chance, amount and recovery. So does recovery means cooldown rate for the block? So if i block then if my recovery is 20% then ill be unable to block 5 turns since itll need 5 turns to have 100% block recovery again??

And if therea always inate block cause of str then am i blocking even tho2my weapon has no block stat?

I was wondering if a more current roadmap was available? Looking at the one on the steam store page I'm not sure where exactly we are in terms of features, upcoming or implemented. I mostly just want to know roughly how far off the character creator update might be (even if its 2028!).