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Awesome! Glad to see there are other likeminded Immersioneers around! Feel like everyone is focused on “optimal builds” and running through the game as quickly and as “efficiently” as possible, even though that takes out a lot of the fun out of it…

Ice or lightning? Which one of them does extra damage in water? Do you also get lightning spreading as in DoS 1/2?

@@immersioneerboth

@@DirectFireDave Got it, thanks!

@@immersioneer None. There's a condition called 'wet' which imposes vulnerability to ice and lightning, as well as resistance to fire. It has to be indicated in the status effects of the creature. The fact of them standing in the puddle doesn't necessarily mean they're 'wet'. I was talking about completely different thing. If you hit puddle of water with any frost it freezes, the whole of it. Big puddle - big ice surface :-) Lightning also 'spreads' - makes water electrified, wich has a chance to electrocute enemies every turn. Not nearly as impactful as ice.

Awesome, great to have you on board! Yup, I wish the exclamation mark came on more often, but I’ll try to guess when she might have something to add.

No, it’s a “blind” relationship in that sense, haha, I only had her as a companion a couple of times when the game came out, but never focused on her and never romanced her. Yup, looking forward to it. I’m hoping the Githyanki stay involved throughout the plot, although I don’t know if that’s the case… there has to be a creche in / over the Mountain Pass, I would assume…

Yes, but I generally like to have all attributes at 10, unless there is a VERY good reason to have them at 8, like being a halfling or a non-martial class woman (or archer at least), or be particularly ugly or antisocial for 8 charisma (like Lae'zel) or maybe particularly dumb / uneducated character with 8 INT.

@@immersioneer Historical nitpick :-) Archers were probably the strongest guys on the medieval battlefield, those bows are no joke. I tried, spears and stuff are manageable for a moderately fit person, warbow is impossible

@@alexmashkin863 Yeah, I actually saw a documentary about this too. It was saying how the strongest samurai were archers, because the bow in fact requires more strength than wielding a sword. I always found this very interesting, but given that 99.9999% of people / video games don't know this, I stick with the stereotype.

Hmm, how does it work then? :/ That really sucks :/

@@immersioneer You could have 9, 3 from normal attacks, 3 from action surge, 1 from bloodlust, 1 from haste, 1 from bonus action at level 11. You could argue that hence, that haste and bloodlust perform better on a mage.

@@immersioneer It's a game engine 'feature', it applies only to a turn you activated it on, as soon as you end your turn Evasive Footwork ends. I didn't know that btw, because I never use it - Precision Attack is much better free action even if EF worked 😜

@@immersioneer The "one turn duration" means just the current turn. it helps against attacks of opportunity an ripostes, but that's all

@@jeremytan739 Nothing to argue, on honor mode Haste and Bloodlust are more valuable on casters :-)) That being said, even one extra attack is still extremely powerful even on a fighter :-)

In don’t know, I’m not convinced at all, especially on honour duo mode like this. AC +1 works throughout the game and I think is especially useful early in the game when every AC counts and you are too weak to alpha strike enemies. AC gets “used” as I mentioned multiple times per turn and many times per battle, whereas until level 5 we only use it 1 (maybe 2 with action surge) times per turn, and even then only if we actually do roll low damage. I feel AC is far superior, despite various class guides swearing by GWM as you saw. At higher levels, we will compensate for this by getting savage attacks, I think, which rolls damage dice twice anyway. What do you think?

@@immersioneer It's ok, just not optimal :-) Boosting AC is much less important for a fighter because they have heavy armor and also can take hits. Even with your fighters being specced a bit weirdly with low Con. What kills a fighter is inability to kill enemies and debilitating effects. Those are counteracted by optimizing for damage output and getting everything for Wis saves. Your approach is ok, you'll have a feat to spare for Savage Attacker. Your party will be very resilient anyway, and with good damage, just not optimal. Definitely enough to finish the game. Mobility, + to attack rolls, initiative and Wis saves - that's what you want the most besides damage :-) And a lot of potions, you will be taking damage and will have to heal, a lot.

@@alexmashkin863 I don't know, I see your logic, but I'm still not convinced. I see people praising GWM, but I just think even if you want to prioritise damage, this is pretty weak fighting style given how rarely it kicks in...

@@immersioneer I think you're confusing something. Great Weapon Master feat is absolutely incredibly amazing :-) It gives you flat 10 to damage and a possible extra attack using bonus action. All you have to overcome is -5 to attack. Great Weapon Fighting Style provides significant but not groundbreaking boost to damage by rerolling dice. It's better than you seem to think, but not busted or anything. Defence fighting style is always a viable choice.

Thanks a lot! I really appreciate the kind words and your support! Hope you enjoy the series and future content on the channel!

YT does that sometimes :/ Ok, good to know! It worked out in the end!

Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it! Glad you are enjoying them!

Thanks!

Really? Is that always the case?

@@immersioneer believe so

@@pihwht Thanks, good to know! I thought there would be an advantage... but a disadvantage actually makes sense. So if I'm facing a lot of ranged enemies, I need to go prone somehow :)

@@immersioneer ​ @pihwht No that isn't correct in BG3. It's like that in 5e, but that penalty was dropped when implementing the game. A condition giving either advantage or disadvantage based what weapon you use and what distance you are was probably deemed to confusing for people who have no experience with tabletop RPG rules. So in BG3 prone only affects attack rolls by giving advantage if the attack was made within 3m of the target

@@immersioneer ice or grease can help

Thanks a lot for this, this is very useful to know. How can this still be bugged after 1 year though…? We’ll keep this in mind!

Do explain! I think the Gith will go through the Mountain Pass, which I understand is a completely alternative path to the Underdark, so I guess they will never come here… I hope I’m right on that :)

@@immersioneer Near that animated armor you shot with an arrow of ice was a special stool. If a character sits on it, he'll comment about feeling stronger, and once he gets up he'll say something like "aww the strength is gone". The reason for that is that one of the legs of the stool is actually a club of hill giant strength. If you break the stool, like you accidentally did with the aoe from the arrow, you can loot the club and a nearby character will comment on it to draw the player's attention to it. The club certainly has its uses, even if only for out of combat jumps on characters with low STR As for the choice between going through the underdark or through the mountain pass, the game allows you to do both. Just do one and then backtrack to the other. It's actually advisable to do so, you'd miss out on a ton of experience and neat items if you skipped an entire area, not to mention the cool areas themselves, the encounters and the story bits you get in each. You can always roleplay it as simply testing the waters of both options before making the choice, which is honestly smarter than choosing blindly. Also, the "going through the underdark" refers to Grymforge alone, not to the entire underdark. If your gith skip such a huge area entirely you really risk getting underleveled which is not a good idea for an honor run with only 2 characters. So for both the gith and the rogues, I would really recommend doing both Grymforge and the Mountain Pass, and THEN choose which way to go.

@@immersioneer It's not alternative in terms 'either or', there are two ways, you can freely go between them or go back to any and all of them

@@IsilionNELE Ah good to know, thanks! Then there is a way to make Bernard friendly, as we thought? I guess we should have given him a different line in the poem dialogue? Good to know about the Underdark / Mountain Pass. I'm still hoping to go through just one area and see where that takes us :) I kind of wish now the game "gated" you into either / or area, as I think it's immersion-breaking to backtrack like that. We'll see just how "under-levelled" we might be though, haha, and decide then :)

@@alexmashkin863 But generally speaking, would you say it would be "hard" or more like "near-impossible" to just take a duo of characters through either one or the other? I want to keep it immersive, but I don't want to go into completely unfair fights that simply aren't possible to win or not possible to win without cheese and/or without knowing how they play out, i.e. in a blind first-time playthrough scenario...

Thanks a lot, appreciate it! This series kind of died off though, but I have two other new ones running on the channel, so take a look!

Yup, I’m sure it would be.

Yeah, the real luck was that they were spiritualist and fanatic pacifists! Otherwise, that defensive pact would have been much harder to get :)

We need Tavern Brawler for throwing, so for now I’m just maximising damage while we are level 3. And the hunting bow could actually be a good idea… although I think we’ll be losing concentration on it fairly quickly…

@@immersioneer TB will boost throwing immensely but is not required for it :-)) Ring of Flinging will give you more damage with thrown spear, than sword bonk though. You have decent Con save, so not the worst idea anyway - damage is damage.

Hmm, thanks for letting me know. I’ll listen through the episode to calibrate. I thought I had a good balance - I tested it a dozen times for this series.

@@immersioneer Maybe just me, but I noticed it from the episode 1 of this series

Yeah, we’ll try to manage this. I actually quite enjoy going into tough fights with less than full kit - keeps things immersive and interesting :)

Hmm… I was wondering about that, so thanks for confirming this… and does your scroll DC depend on your class spell casting ability? Or is it always INT?

@@immersioneer It depends on the casting ability of the class you took the latest level 1 in :-)) Hope it makes sense

I think I’m starting to get this, but I feel like if you surprised someone, you should always win the initiative roll as well… otherwise it’s a bit of a waste, no?

@@immersioneer Depends how interpret initiative I suppose. If you think of it as a character's overall quickness and ability to act fast in this combat, then it makes sense. Yes, you did surprise them, but they still faster than you, so you only get one turn of actions as a reward for a surprise 😁

Thanks! I was actually quite please it myself - I very rarely use that feature as I don’t like using candles for this, but here it made perfect sense and worked out perfectly!

And the creche! We have to put our trust in the Gith first!

@@immersioneer Oh, of course, but that is taken for granted.

I’m definitely planning to play through the entire game on both our Rogue play-through with Michael and this one. There are no specific requirements, other than staying alive. I was just on a BG3 binge and decided to start this playthrough in parallel and give it a different twist - singleplayer, companion, melee combat, gith race. I’m planning to manage this so that this Gith playthrough never runs ahead of the Rogue playthrough in terms of storyline. I will, however, also try to take a different route whenever possible to keep things interesting.

@@immersioneerThat's great news, I will definitely binge the playthrough when I find time😊🤘

Haha, thought I’s post a couple over the weekend to keep the pace up.

Thanks! Glad you are enjoying it and appreciate the support!

Haha, no, I don’t know who that is tbh. I really like the look of my character though :)

@@immersioneer He's an American Actor. Played in a lot of 80s action movies. Awesome playthrough, by the way. I like how it's slow paced and not riddled with mid/maxing exploits. Makes the run feel natural.

No, go ahead. I don't mind hearing advice. I have plenty of things to learn about the game, as you know, haha. Some things I don't do for my own subjective crazy immersion reasons though :)

@@immersioneer I've watched many many walkthroughs of this game and almost everyone makes this mistake. Normally I don't correct people and just let them play the game, but this is honor mode with a party of 2, so I do want to aid here and there when it comes to mechanics. On STR characters, like your 2 gith here, never uses bows, EVER. On STR characters, the bow slot is just for "stat sticks", weapons which give benefits for equipping them and not for using them. Bows and crossbows are DEX weapons. If you want to use a ranged attack with a STR character, throw a weapon because the Throw action, which counts as a regular attack, uses your STR (or your DEX if the thrown weapons has the Finesse trait and your DEX is higher) and will thus result in a higher hit chance and a higher bonus to damage. Make sure the weapon you throw has the Thrown trait so that it deals full weapon damage. This is doubly true if you want to use Bound Weapon on your eldritch Knight, if the equipped weapon doesn't have the Thrown trait you're better off throwing a weapon from your inventory. Some special weapon effects may not trigger when thrown, e.g. the +x enchantment bonus from magical weapons does oddly not apply to the attack roll but does apply to the damage roll. Some weapons have special effects which only trigger when thrown. Another big benefit from throwing weapons instead of shooting bows is that the damage type of the Throw attack matches the damage type of the weapon used, e.g. slashing for handaxes and bludgeoning for light hammers. Remember the Grym fight? So the best advice is to collect a stock weapons and have some variety in the available damage types. Personally, my STR characters have pouch with all their thrown weapons in and then I place that pouch in their hotbar, so I can easily access the weapons from there, and then right click Throw. Also, now that I've finished the video, Evasive Footwork on Lae'zel doesn't do what you think it does. Again a mistake almost everyone makes, but this time the fault lies squarely on the very ambiguous tooltip. The "for one round" duration is the current round and ends the moment you end that character's turn. That means enemies only have disadvantage on attacks during YOUR turn, i.e. only attacks of opportunities and (very rare) ripostes are affected. Frankly, absolutely not worth it. I see many people choose it because they think it lasts until their next turn, and then they activate Evasive Footwork when they're done with their turn and click "end turn", which then immediately ends it. Personally, I'd respec out of it and take Precision Attack because hitting is important and many tough enemies, such as Grym, have high AC. (note: Precision Attack doesn't affect thrown attacks!)

@@IsilionNELE that was stellar advice for everyone. 👍 whoever wrote tooltips for this game didn't always get it right, either because it wasn't always clear what needs to be described or someone else changed the mechanics later on and didn't think the tooltip warranted an adaption.

@@embreis2257 Thank you!

Hmmm, I didn't actually realise the strength of Trip Attack once we get Extra Attack. But that's why it didn't appeal to me from the start. Although, your strategy would also work on a big battle opener - trip + action surge attack and then x2 attacks from Tal'quir... I'll definitely pick it up next, I think.

Thanks! Took me a couple hundred hours too, haha! Welcome! I hope you enjoy the rest of it!

I think Wisdom is the single most useful one though, especially for passive checks for Lae’zel. Tal’quir could have it on charisma or intelligence for dialogue or arcana/investigation, but feel like need max perception / survivial, especially at the start, to find things in the world…

​​@@immersioneerTal'quir could also have it on DEX for sleight of hand, althought situational

@@AndrePkTo True, but I try not to change these things for situational reasons. That's why I find Wisdom is almost the only consistently good choice. The others require anticipating game events, which I don't like to do.

@@immersioneer Lae'zel already has proficiency in survival as a chosen skill. Just FYI

@@IsilionNELE Yup, I think she is a Soldier background. That means that Arcade Wisdom on her does not increase it further, right? Believe it or not, I only got to grips with Proficiency in the last couple of weeks... and I still get it wrong sometimes...

I will do it once we are past the first map, but for now, I want to keep the pace of the series up.

Yeah, I’m hoping we can hit it on the first map before the hag…

I like Riposte, given it’s effectively a free action and you can control it (as it’s a reaction). Precision attack sounds nice and I hear it mentioned often, but I’m not a big fan. I find with 18 strength and +1 weapon hit chances are mostly pretty good already, so 1d8 is a bit overkill. I find I most often wish my fighters did more damage than that they were more accurate. I didn’t realise Precision didn’t require a bonus action, which is very nice. Agree with Feinting on paper, but in practice I find it’s a great opener to a battle and can often be used once again during a battle when you don’t have to heal or need to go all in and secure a kill on the enemy. People bash it, but I feel in practice it’s great, especially at actual level 4 fights you have to fight with it in act 1.

@@immersioneer Precision is super valuable when you need to hit those GWM attacks on some high AC enemy. Feint as you say is great on paper, but just not always available when you need it, or you have to plan a start of the combat for it. Which is fine too. It's just the game gives you much better ways to gain an advantage than that.

Yeah, but we need to strike a very fine balance between spells that are a little bit useful all / most of the time and a few that are situational, but can turn the tide of battle.

@@immersioneer Also a consideration: there are powerful item effects in a game that require you concentrating on something or being disguised. Ritual spells are great for that as well :-) If you choose to use those items (or even get them in a first place)

Haha, I only realised you can throw them something like 150 hours into the game, so I have a long way to go :)

Yup, we discussed it after the episode was over. We thought we might throw them at group of enemies given we have quite a few of them now.

Thanks! Another episode coming tomorrow!

So we can or can’t use drow poison on him? I would think not, simply because he is not alive and therefore can’t be put to sleep?

@@immersioneer Normally, he would be immune to sleep. I say "normally" because I haven't personally tested it with him specifically. Constructs aren't alive, so he shouldn't be affected, but there's a theoretical chance that he's "special" or so.

@@IsilionNELE Got it, thanks! I wish this was explained clearer in the game, although I hope it just works as we would think intuitively.

I went on a month-long holiday after that last episode and the series never got much traction, so I moved on from it. Honour Mode was also released which is exactly what I wanted from that series, so there wasn't really a point in continuing. I will definitely come back to solo playthroughs in the future, I have a couple of ideas I'm super excited about.

@@immersioneer i see , ill keep an eye on ur new upcoming vids then , ty for answering anf for ur quality content <3

@@youssefliebertu2256 Cheers! I have two awesome solo playthroughs in mind, but I need to get better at the game to try them.

Thanks a lot! Glad you like it! Yeah, Auntie Ethel is a cool character. I’m also not a bit fan of Shadowheart, but I might explore her story in a duo some time in the future.

Awesome, thanks! I’m enjoying the dialogue very much as well and I like that I can fully indulge in it given main character is also a Gith!

Awesome! Glad to see the algorithm working! Hope you enjoy this series and the rest of the channel!

Nope, they are alive and well! I was just itching to do more BG3 :)

Really? I thought it was ok for the most part. Sometimes when I zoom in the in-game sounds get pretty loud, I noticed that. Unfortunately, the BG3 sound controls are a bit weird and hard to dial in properly. I always find the narrator's voice too quiet and the world ambient sounds too loud, but I don't think there is a way to adjust them any further :(