I also have a hireling who's job is to exclusively serve as Astarion's personal bloodbag for that sweet Happy buff! The rest are mannequins for the cool armours and clothes my party doesn't use :)
Warning!!!! Please be careful with this one. In ACT3 when I did this Dame Whoever went crazy and attacked me. Then half my camp attacked me. In act3 if you have her you should leave camp before having your way with the hireling. Also note, for reasons of buffing it is also a good idea to leave camp for faster grouping.
PSA: Lesser Restoration removes Bloodless. So if you didn't feed Gale the Amulet of Silvanus, you can safely let Astarion bite you and not waste a spell slot doing so.
If you completely empty your party, then have someone with instruments proficiency and an instrument equipped play, the party members will cluster around the music-player. Makes it much easier to hit them with Aid, FoH, etc.
Honestly I dont think this is "cheesy". Role playing perspective, you are trying to save the world and you have a bunch of people in your camp that instead of doing NOTHING they can at least "Hey I made some potions while you were out, take them, it may help" or some type of Druid/Cleric "bless" you after a long rest "May the Gods/Nature protect you" and cast some buffs
I, unironically, had a Cleric hireling in camp to heal me because I thought the number of short rests I had would be limited until Kagha got off her bitch horse. And to stay faithful to my Roleplaying, I PAID HIM EACH TIME.
Extra Fun fact quality of life tip to keep Companions (Hirelings and normal party members) from running away when you aren't controlling them: Step 1: you jump into Turn Based, Step 2: spend their entire movement, Step 3: hop off of controlling them, Step 4: turn off Turn Based, End Result: they will stay where you left them until you jump back on them and move a tiny bit, at which point they will realise they now have movement again.
@@coffeecreamguy What I meant was, in camp, when every party member wants to go back to their tent (or to Withers for the Hireling), instead of staying put so you can cast Aid on the entire party, without having to figure out which camp set up has your companions tents closest to each other. Ungrouping does wonders when you need to go control the one party member who didn't make the jump, and you don't want all the others to re-cross that jump, but it isn't the situation I'm talking about here.
Worth noting that if you did want to go the Warding Bond route, unless they changed it in the last 2 weeks Gale heals himself while in camp. So, if you aren't using him in your party, you can respec him for Warding bond and not have to worry about him dying in camp, provided you don't take enough damage to one-shot him.
Just because you front-loaded the information I subscribed and watched the whole video. Big respect for that. No clickbait. No watchtime padding. You tell us exactly what to do in summary
So, for those who play on Tactician Difficulty, and even generally just those who play at all: please get a Druid Hireling. They get access to Darkvision, Freedom of Movement and Longstrider as spells. But by far the most useful spell is *_Goodberry._* If you’ve ever been annoyed about how Tactician doubles the resource cost for a Full Long Rest, a 5th Level Circle of the Land Druid can create up to 40 Goodberries per long rest, thanks to Natural Recovery. Goodberries can be used to heal, yes, but their superior use is as Camp Supplies. Each Goodberry is worth 1 Camp Supply. This really eases the need to search for Supplies, and outright removes it altogether on Balanced or lower.
You’ve come so far as a content creator over the past 9 months. I’ve watched you go from making builds at level 11 all the way to level 12. In all seriousness I have to say your channel and discord are one of my favorite finds of last year. Keep up the great videos Sparty.
My preferred order for leveling up the halfling hireling is Wizard 2 > Rogue 1, level 4 doesn't matter, and at level 5 make them Wizard 2 / Lore Bard 3, to get herself to enhance ability (leaving the guidance for another character) and still have the expertise on medicine
New player here (100 hrs into the game, but only lvl 7) - subscribed - clear and informative info, exactly what i was looking for. Thx! Don't need the warding bond yet as the game is just too easy. I'm still on balanced mode for now - due to frustrating and sluggish mechanics and a complete lack of information in-game on what-does-what exactly. Was looking for a hireling-build because spending 5-ish spell-slots pre-buffing your party is outright stupid. Note: last time i played D&D was 40y ago when internet did not exist and computers were more expensive then cars. Still... for me, BG3 is a dream come true. Larian Studios did a fantastic job and the support from enthusiasts and content creators is just amazing! /kiss
A faster way to get hill giant potions is to save volo, use astarion to steal from him in camp (make sure you talk to him at least once but DONT continue his quest) Use the level up trick to keep resetting his invemtory, if you enter camp standing next to auntie ethel you can steal 300+ gold from volo, leave camp, buy 3 hillgiant pots from auntie ethel, rince repeat. Plus you can steal level based scrolls, potions amd camp supplies. If you dont do his quest he will stay in camp till the end of act 2, in act 3 go straot to the docs to get him back in camp and steal all the end game scrolls you desire.
I think I farmed her for like 40 hill giant potions before finally advancing her quest. Definitely don't try stealing from her, she'll get angry and run off even if she doesn't catch you. One time she got mad because she caught me sneaking too much.
More cheese: Don't skimp on protection from poison, freedom of movement, and death ward. All non concentration. Aid cast at 6th level +30hp, very nice. Also you can have every character have the devotee mace. Spec your camp followers for 12th level cleric use the Divine intervention. Get the mace. Every character can have one or even 2, to pop that healing effect. Also, respecing will reset spell slots to full. Also spec them out with 2 levels of bard to get song of rest. If you are building your party to be short rest dependent, you can get a bunch of them, extending your adventuring day. Lots of things to do with camp followers. Great video. Love your channel!
You can make your Potion Maker your Steal Bot at the same time if you want: 1)Choose Brianna Brightsong 2) Keep her Bard, max Wisdom and Dexterity, Proficiency in Medicine and Sleight of Hands 3) Second Level Rogue, Proficiency in Stealth, Expertise in Medicine and Sleight of Hands 4) Rest into Transmutation Wizard, for Spells choose Disguise Self, Invisibility, Cloud Fog, Darkness etc 5) Silver Pendant, Gloves of Thievery. Smugglers's Ring and Shapeshifters Boon Ring. 6) additional gear and feats that fits Shapeshifter Ring is very powerful but i dont like to use it in your main party because i dont want to change the appearence of the Main Party or to change gear all the time on my party. For Shapeshifter Boon Ring, split her from the group, cast fog cloud on the strange ox in act one, attack him, let him kill her, resurrect her, talk to the ox again, choose to give him money and you can buy the ring from him. Now you will see him in Act2 again :)
I believe you can put heavy armor like Adamantine Plate plus the mastery on the warding bond camp character to heavily reduce the damage they take so you dont need to check in on them often.
Abjuration Wiz is what _really_ breaks it, because at least last I tried, the game didn't track the ward losing stacks when you weren't in camp >_> So they were essentially invincible.
Here's a hireling cheese I figured out that is honestly kinda busted. Once you reach level 10, one thing you can do to absolutely abuse the hireling system... is to get the Hireling Cleric. Use his Divine Intervention to get yourself the Mace, have him throw it onto the ground, then pick it up on one of your normal characters and dismiss the Hireling. The Hireling will be gone... the Mace will remain. You now have a +3 Legendary Mace, with excellent stats and a healing buff. Keep in mind however that you can only use this Hireling to do this ONCE. This is exceptionally powerful, especially since Shadowheart will still have HER Divine Intervention, which is super useful for the Opulent Revival. Opulent Revival will restore all of your allies who are standing, as if they'd long rested... and yes, it's used in combat. If they're downed, it will get them up with half their hit points... so make sure to use a potion or something to get them standing, BEFORE using Opulent Revival. But... here's why this is just broken. You can respec ANY character in your camp, not just yourself... and if you respec them as Clerics, each of them will have a Divine Intervention to abuse. You see where I'm going with this, right? You can technically get a mace for every single person in your camp... giving every single one of them that healing buff. But wait... there's more. Because... as I just discovered, you can even respec hirelings... which means you can do this trick with Hirelings 12 TIMES! There are 10 main companions and 12 hirelings, plus your character... which means you could get this Legendary "once per playthrough" mace, a grand total of 23 times, if you were so inclined. Or you could get a few of the maces, then start using the Divine Interventions to get chests with potions and camp supplies. All of which is to say, this particular method is absolutely BROKEN. Also, for anyone wondering how much the mace sells for, it's 663 gold... not enough to waste Divine Interventions just for money.
Extra trick with hirelings: If you want more enchantments from Drakethroat Glaive or more uses of an equipment that has a cooldown on either long or short rest, just leave the item equipped on the hireling and then dismiss/re-recruit the hireling. Any equipped items get their cooldowns reset and you can re-use the item without resting. Pretty useful for Phalar Aluve and getting multiple enchantments from Drakethroat Glaive (outside of using twinned spell). Just do note that this trick allows you to enchant more than 2 weapons. Enchanting the same weapons replaces the old enchantment.
Transmuted stone also persists into the final fight since it's a carried item, while most other buffs disappear when you reach the Emperor/Orpheus and High Hall and have to be reapplied from within your active party.
Oh that's really sweet. I came here to mention that Gale heals himself for some reason and is the perfect warding bond puppet if you don't use him in your party. But this is so much nicer!
The few extra buffs I have figured out for hireling abuse is a few spells, that being darkvision for the people who don't have it, death ward, freedom of movement, and hero's feast. Also having a bard hireling isn't a bad option either just to be sitting on 1 inspiration for each character. I have begun to really respect freedom of movement as a spell thanks to the honor run that I have been abusing in and discovered most of these things.
For the camp buffing character, as others have said, Gale won't die. Also, going full cleric instead of wizard gets you access to Death Ward and Freedom of Movement which will prevent the characters from being knocked out the first time and instead leave them at 1 hp and prevent movement speed from being reduced by magic or difficult terrain and make you immune to paralysis and being restrained respectively. If you want that transmutation stone just make another hireling, Death Ward and Freedom of Movement are much stronger than the stone.
Dude, 4 hireling clerics with warding bond on the whole party, heroes feast, death Ward, aid, freedom of movement, and protection from poison on all 4 active party members is the way to go
Just adding to the algorithm because I appreciate your video style of TLDR, starting on this adventure finally and like watching mechanics not spoilers content.
With the transmutation stone you can use the wizard and cast it on a party member then send the stone from your inventory to your camp. Your wizard can then cast longstrider on the same party member and he will get his transmute charge back and be able to cast transmute stone on another party member. If you repeat this process for every party member in that order you can have a transmute stone buff on every person. Just remember they have to be in your active lineup to receive the transmute stone.
I believe you can only have one active Transmuter's stone at a time, and casting it again makes the original one disappear. The only way to have multiple stones is to have multiple Transmutation wizards.
@@Princess_Salamiyeah this isn’t true. If you send the stone to your camp then cast longstrider your wizard can cast transmute stone on another character and they both retain the buff. If you do exactly what I said. One wizard can buff the whole party. I do it every long rest.
@@Flashchenzo To further make this go absolutely nutty, you can cast 1 of each of the transmuter stones on each of your party members, but only if you send the stone to camp after every cast. You can have every single party member have the CON proficiency, extra movement speed, enhanced darkvision, fire resist, lightning resist, etc., all at the same time. On top of that, the movement speed transmutation stacks with longstrider, bringing that paltry 9m movement speed to a blistering 15m. It is so broken, but it makes honour mode so much more doable.
Another thing you can do with your hirelings is give them 1 level of Druid to give them Goodberry. It might not seem like the most powerful thing but you can easily end up with hundreds of free 1d4 healing potions to heal you up between fights. You can also use them as camp supplies in case you run out of food Oh and Astarion can bite a hireling at the start of the day to easily activate Happy
if you pick up the shapeshifter’s boon ring from the strange ox in act 1 or 2, you can add another 1d4 to the medicine check in addition to guidance while disguised, which is a ritual spell
Send a mage hand to slap Strange Ox while your party is hiding in the prison area. After the Ox kills the hand, talk to him with the hand's controller. He'll open a trade window so you can give him money to improve your relationship, but the ring is right there and you can buy it for about 200 gold.
I just got into the potion brewer on my honor mode run a few days ago. Just after the goblin camp, I was able to brew 17 potions of speed, which will honestly last me throughout most of the game. That being said, I think you should consider taking a few levels of cleric after level 4 wizard so that the Alchemist can cast enhance ability on themselves and not waste your party's slots.
Level 6 Transmutation wizard gets you the Transmuter Stone, so I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about multiclassing. At level 9 Brinna with 8 levels of Wizard/1 Rogue has +13 to Medicine checks, and can re-roll 1s, so she only fails the Medicine Check on a 15.
The idea of having a buffer from camp is super cool. It’s been always there, but I never thought of it. Thanks for pointing it out. Now I’m using a camp character to buff my active team with Freedom of Movement and Death Ward.
Only started messing with hirelings in my honour mode run. Would of never thought of these, you have earned a like and sub. What I was doing was making 3x extra clerics to swap out with Shadowheart when her spell slots ran out. I also viewed it as a way to get multiple custom characters grouped with your Tav (I feel weird changing the origin characters at Withers) and was thinking of silly things like "I could make four monks and we could be like the ninja turtles" which later evolved into "I can turn everyone into a monk" for a future playthrough lol.
@@paultapping9510 In the UK the late 80's cartoon was edited because nunchucks were controversial at the time. I believe they were edited to be a sectioned staff instead (nunchucks without chains). Later series I believe he used a grappling hook or just a chain instead. As for weapons to use, maybe flails.
@BigDavie2000 oh yeah, I forgot about flails, I've only come across like... one, that I can remember. Good shout! Lol, I've just realised as well that a turtle gang would be even more on point, because the big bad is just like Krang!
I set up all the hirelings as buffing stations. Make them cast mage armor, long strider, warding bond, aide, and I have them all cast false life to increase their own HP so the warding bond doesn't kill them as easily.
Great video! For my honor mode run, I made Brinna my pickpocketer. Thief Rogue with sleight and stealth proficiency and expertise, the guidance necklace for self buff, Smugglers ring, advantage gloves from Zhentarim hideout all mean that I’m likely only to fail on a Nat 1, so halfling luck makes that a lot less likely. I have also only had to use them once, but I have her some emergency get away items as well. The helmet from mushroom colony and ring from dead gnomes in Grymforge area that let you cast a free invisibility. As long as Brinna is by herself (everybody else back in camp) she can just go invisible and get away if I do fail a steal check. The only time it didn’t work was when she got caught stealing from the Zhent trader in the Act 1 hideout. When Brinna went invisible and got away, the Zhent went nuts and started throwing fire bombs and blew up the entire hideout. Luckily I had already gotten the items from him, and just lost out on a couple hundred gold. This was a bit of setup but has been a lot more fun that save scum stealing I did in my first play through.
Very helpful, wished I figured this out earlier - like many, many things in this game. Learning curve is almost straight-up, if you haven't touched D&D since about 1982 like me. Some refinements at Level 9 and for Level 12. Go 4 Knowledge Cleric - 4 Transmutation Wizard - 1 Rouge. Now it's one stop shopping for the ability enhance. Also you get the commoner version of Githyanki Astral Knowledge spell in Knowledge for the Ages. Feats ASI 2x1, Lucky. For the last 3 I'd go Bard Lore or Valor - - more expertise, more skills. Keep in mind with all these Elixirs and Potions, Brianna can not only be the Hair Club President, but also a client for the full Bourne Legacy meets BG3 effect. Even with stats STR-10 DEX-12 CON-14 INT-14 WIS-18 CHA-10 and not being a great Bard or Archer - she still can do Bard and Archer things. Omni-capable: fighting, casting, inspiring, healing. Starts to make 30 Check locks a lot less scary.
I did it exactly the same way you did but i can’t put my expertise in medicine when i pick Rogue at Level 5. The game just won‘t let me.. I had to pick Bard and wait till Level 7 for the second expertise. That’s the only way to make it work.
For the cleric side. It’s better to just max into Cleric for one character so you can use max level aid and another cleric for hero’s feast. That way you get both hp buffs. Then you have gale or a separate character who stays at camp for the wizard or 3rd cleric for the other warding bond and buffs. P.s didn’t know about the pact throwing thing. Thank you.
Level 11 Cleric Level 1 Druid. Gives you full spell slots. You can cast your heroe's feast and max level aid. As well as other buffs (death ward, freedom of movement) then convert all other spell slots into goodberries. (your transmuter stone characters can also take 1 level druid to make goodberries as well) This results in tons of out of combat healing potential and free long rests even on honor mode.
Me being a tank main, I genuinely appreciate the love & gushing over an ability like Warding Bond like we see here. I'm still fairly new to THIS game. But I'm far from new to build crafting in rpgs, mobas, &/or mmos. It's been kind of mind blowing roaming through youtube seeing tons of "tank guides" for BG3 where everyone seems to think tank means high ac, high health pools, healing spells, & heavy armor. With ZERO consideration for damage reduction. Which even for me on my 2nd run overall (1st on tactician currently in act 3)...It took me on my 1st run as a Barbarian....to unlock the bear heart upgrade to IMMEDIATELY see how under appreciated & game changing damage reduction actually is. So much so that I noticed how much I was missing it playing on Tact as a fighter...I BADLY missed being resistant to everything, lol. That was until I found Warding Bond. Which is essentially "we have Bear Heart at home". Just instead of the rage mechanic...it's managing 2 health pools at all times. Idk damage reduction is just one of those things where I question why more content creators aren't talking about it when they make these defense guides. Entertaining a hypothetical...if you had a monster that hit for 200 hp per attack...vs 2 party members...1 with 600 hp with no Ward Bond or Bear Heart...with the other with 500 hp & literally EITHER of the 2...the monster kills the higher hp guy in 3 hits. Where as he kills the resistant guy in 5. Which one arguably is the better option for a tank??? Just food for thought.
I really love this kind of thing. It's there if you want to really go as tough as possible...or not use some or all if you think they're broken. All within rules. Real life Dungeon Master might disagree but it's just fun seeing what can be done. 😁👍
I just asked in twitch chat a few days ago if camp builds are legit and now there is this amazing video! I hope switching party members will improve in the future to be less clunky.
To make it even gamier, you can respec Gale for the party buff companion with warding bond and leave him in camp. He's got an auto-heal function like NPC's for some reason, and it's been really saving my honor mode run. Having a sorcerer companion to twin spell things is also helpful. You can twin-spell the Drakethroat Glaive's elemental weapon buff on two party members for extra elemental damage until long rest.
I assume gale’s auto-heal is to avoid him standing in a damaging surface in camp and accidentally setting off a nuke in the middle of fae-run. Tbh, impressed they thought of that
I dont know if its common knowledge but i found an exploit for drakethroat glaive, so all my characters have elemental buff on their weapons , an it lasts forever.
This guide is a godsend for my honor play through I just recently started! Thought of stopping it since I was sure I bit off more than I can chew. But I might give it a try now.
I think a warding bond camper is a legitimate strategy. In a tabletop campaign, I can picture a Warding Bonder with a "healer" both "camping" away from combat while the WB recipient fights the big bad with the rest of the party. It's the next step after keeping the Wizard at the back, the WB is just "further" back. When the cheese is on the menu, order it. I feel that Bonding is more personal and is cheesier when done for someone else, but not judging.
One Hireling idea I do have is the ultimate pickpocket specialist that plunders the city dry-off coin. to send to "steal from shops of the game". Thus making use of the "reputation system and steal without consequences for your own character party".
if you want the warding bond cleric - making them abjuration wizard can give a shield that doesn't kill the hireling - the abjureation shield doesn't go down because they are not being hit directly
I play on the PS5 and once I switched to rogue at level 4 I wasn't permitted to put any points into Medicine. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. I note that on the pc you seem to have Acrobatics which is unclicked when you switch to Medicine. On the PS5, I'm not granted Acrobatics, only Slight of Hand. Even unclicking that doesn't permit me to choose Medicine. Any suggestions?
I have three cleric hirelings and made one camp companion I never take with me into a cleric. I have them all cast warding bond, hero's feast and aid onto my party before we go adventuring. I don't care if it's cheese or not, I am doing my first tact playthrough and I don't think I would have gotten through the house of grief without the buffs.
As always, awesome guides. I guess you could just go back to the main map to have your entire party together, buff all up and then jump to camp and dump the wizard
Dont forget that with the transmuters stone that you can send the stone to camp -> use any ritual cast transmutation spell -> use any other stone buff. Basically, you can put every bonus on every character as long as you just keep sending it to camp after each use.
I personally have three hireling SPECT into full cleric, so I get warding bond, death ward, freedom of movement, protection from poison aid and longstrider on all four of my characters
Big fan of a Barb hireling to hold all the gear. Much easier to equip from the party screen and if you get the Bear perk it will increase their carry weight to hold most every magical item in the game, might have to stick some heavy armors in the trunk but so far hasn't been an issue.
I like combining the two buffers on Gale for a lot of reasons. 2 transmutation wizard and 10 knowledge cleric (Mystra, of course.) gale heals himself in camp, 2 levels in wizard allows him to learn disguise self and longstrider, you can get the shapeshifters boon ring as early as act 1 from the strange ox in druids grove, giving you a D4 added to ability checks while disguised, knowledge of ages for wisdom, enhance ability wisdom and guidance he can cast on himself, drakethroat glaive to buff somebodies weapon, warding bond,death ward, freedom of movement, you name it. Lucky and an ASI into wisdom and you barely ever fail the medicine check and I’ve only had him go down once in camp from an explosion that hurt all party members at once. You could even brand him and give him the absolutes aid talisman for advantage on death saving throw if you wanted
One I was surprised not to see was the thief hireling. In order not to take reputation hits on Astarion or my PC, I have my thief hireling gear up with the shapeshifter hat, shapeshifting buff ring (forget name), Smugglers ring, Gloves of power, guidance amulet and the dex boost/cat's grace body suit when I get it. Then she goes around and robs all of the vendors of potions, camp supplies, scrolls and thieves tools until I have all I need, doing a partial rest to reset inventories after each loop.
The idea of having a hireling be a potion seller, back at camp gives me good memories of Dragon Age Origins, with the two dwarven merchants Could help with more roleplaying aspect; save the grove get a druid instantly. Find a priest that heals and removes diseases and curses, etc Would love to see what kinda roleplaying and broken shenanigans can be had with unlimited hirelings
Another Warding Bond trick is to take the feat Heavy Armor Master and the best damage reduction armor you are not using in your party to cut doen immensely on the damage they take from the bond. Since they are a cleric, you can also use any excess spell slots to cast Cure Wounds type spells acting as "free" potions.
I changed the wizard hireling to bard, set him up with the highest charisma and persuasion possible, specifically only for selling trash to npc’s, but at level 3 bard also gets enhance ability, a concentration that lasts until long rest. Having the camp bard use enhance ability on wisdom checks is excellent
Rogue gets expertise with one level. At level 9 Brinna with 20 wisdom and expertise in medicine gets +13 to medicine checks. She only fails on a 1 or 2, and she re-rolls 1.
@@freman007 10 rogue gets reliable talent which means all rolls under 10 become a 10. This means a 2 level transmutator wizard 10 rogue can never fail there med check for potions. And doesn't need to self buff to do it. And no longer requires halfling luck either.
For the alchemy hireling, 4 levels in transmutation wizard, 1 level in rogue and then I would suggest Knowledge Cleric, they have a channel divinity that will help with medicine, as well as getting enhance ability as a level 2 spell
I found it especially game breaking to apply these buffs to summons. Suddenly even a lvl 3 skeleton or 1HP familiar becomes a tank with 16AC, mage armour, feast, longstrider, death ward, lvl6 aid... it really feels abusive.
For the Warding bound it's best using abjuration wizard with as many levels as possible. I usually mix it with sorcerer for twin cast and save on spell slots. Abjuration wizard gains damage reduction up to 12 so that the damage from the bond is almost negligible.
@@joeregan. never a hireling has died in my games even when bonded to 4 of my characters. Remember that they receive the same damage your bonded character received, which is halved thanks to resistance to all and mostly avoided if you have high enough armour on them.
You only need "Gale" as cleric and cast warding bond, mage armor, aid to all of your party members(3 out of 4 for aid). I can easily achieve 18-20 AC with bonus 10-20 maxHP for every party member before the end of act 1. I hope they'll fix this since honor mode are so easy when everyone has perma warding bond without negative condition.
I always get two clerics and one wizard hirelings, use warding bond (through spells and rings) on my tanks, aid to get more life, poison resistance (hero's feast at a higher level), freedom of movement and, if I still have some spell slopts, I use death ward on summons like divas or djinn, bears and wolves
The Halfling aswell makes for a perfect thief. At lvl 12 you can have a 8 wizard/ 4 rogue build with 20 dex and 20 wisdom allowing you to combine the transmutation wizard for the transmutation stone and potion brewing with the best thief in the game.
When you start a new game have someone sign in and splitscreen with you. Or just use second controller. You can run a dark urge and tav playthrough same time and have extra character In the beginning
Just wanted to share that when I heard the 89% not subscribed, I had to check if I was or not. (I wasn’t, but I did) Was so desensitized to all the usual screen popups, but that number really hit so hope that helps a bit.
Another thing I noticed is any character at camp that takes damage will auto heal if they don't die as long as they are not in your active party so keep that in mind as well unless they patched it.
Knowing that they are undead, it makes doing this a fun idea if you are a Necromancer. Just the idea that you don't want anyone living to die in pursuit of this quest, so you go to a much more impressive master of Necromancy, and have him bring back departed heroes.
If you are going to this level of min maxing for potions, I think it's worth mentioning extracting all is not really that good of an idea unless you really can't find that new recipe you learned/ingredient you need to craft to learn it. You can't pick what "any" ___ ingredient unless you only have the ones you want to use on you and all the others in a bag on the ground and not accessible by the crafting. I find it much easier to just craft the ingredients from the raw mats when you're ready to craft potions to avoid the juggling and still maintain efficiency and not wasting rare ingredients when I could be using something for a basic poison
Same here. On my honor mode run, I started out avoiding the more dangerous "optional" encounters (Grym, etc) but by the end of it I had built enough confidence that I did everything I could; although usually in the safest way I could think of (Sharran compound died one at a time to my Monk, who hopped away after each kill and came back till only Viconia remained.) I was surprised to see that only .1% of players have finished honor mode. @@TurnersTea
I have the artificer mod, and they get infusions, and you can layers a shit ton of infusions on any character, like +2 ac, +2 spell save dc, weapon enchantment, repeated shot for ranged characters etc etc, alchemist artificers can also make unique potions that give another +2 ac, +1 to all attacks and damage, permanent fly, +10 m movement speed… they also get improved alchemy, anyway XD my point is if you really wanna go nuts with camp casting get the mod 😂
I really love this a thing on the game, on normal playthrough this is VERY OVERPOWERED and unnecessary but on Honor mode, if you want to increase your chance to not failed a run, and you’re patient enough while reaching level 6 at act 1 you can prep for act 2 and 3 and make so much potions and elixir as well steal so much fucking gold with the money exploit so you don’t have to worry about it lolz. Just amazing!
BIG DOWNSIDE to these camp buffers. In the final act, on the final mission, during the final attack, the game automatically pushes a long rest onto your group. This forces all camp buffs to fall off. You then cannot then go back to camp to apply buffs. I lost my longstride, my aid, my bound weapon, my drakethroat glaive buff (because despite pushing a long rest, it did not reset the cooldown on the item), my elixirs and my warding bond all on the final mission of my honor mode playthorugh. luckily, already plenty strong by end of game and finished successfully but that was an eye opener to say the least.
@@TurnersTea yea, this was my honor mode run. I didnt even see the chest lol. But i did hear about the mindflayer long rest heal bloom thing being removed so i had prepared for that.
Another interesting use for your buffing Cleric may be to go Nature domain. Goodberry for free is basically a free healing potion every day. I also think having a Cleric at camp to buff, heal, remove curses is actually pretty logical way to use Clerics. Idea of battlefield medic versus coming back to a camp.
Incidentally, people really sleep on the Nature Cleric as a build. It is the best crowd control cleric in the game. As with all clerics, you get the incredible cleric spell list, but starting level 5, you also get Spike Growth (!!), then Plant Growth (!!), as well as a slew of other CC options which other clerics don't get: Insect Plague, Sleet Storm, Wall of Stone, Dominate Beast, Grasping Vine. On top of all that, they get Heavy Armor proficiency and a useful damage reduction reaction which they can use to protect any member of the party from elemental damage. In fact, I think I'm going to go home and respec Jaheira right now. I could use that sixth-level spell slot for Planar Ally anyway.
You didn't mention hero's Feast cleric buff. Can a 2nd hireling camp caster use warding bond on other warding bond caster for extra survivability? DO YOU KNOW IN CAMP THE ICON @ BOTTOM LEFT WILL OPEN YOUR CHEST WITHOUT HAVING TO CLICK ON CHEST. such a time saver! OH yea!, Astarion can use bite on hireling in camp after long rest for perm. HAPPY buff.
Almost finished first run. Not embarrassed. Thought I'd update my findings and final build approach on Brinna the one-person-band: Wizard-Rouge-Bard-Cleric. Multiclass progression to 12th Level. 2 to Wizard to Get Transmutation Class. 1 in Rouge - this get's you the expertise in Medicine sooner, +1 more expertise and another skill.
5 in Bard, pick College Valor for the improved Bardic Inspiration for combat, gets you Song of Rest for extra short rest, 2 more expertise.
4 in Cleric, pick Life Domain. Since the last class defines the spell cast modifier, this aligns with the boosted WIS, even though the starting caster class is Wizard. This gets you guidance, poison protection, and aid. Note the Wizards Saving Throw proficiency remains: Intelligence & Wisdom which I'd rather have than WIS and CHA with Cleric. This nets an Effective Spell Caster Level of 2+5+4 = 11, which gets you the Level 6 slot for a 25 HP boost with an up cast Aid: Level 2: 5HP + 4x5HP up cast = 25 HP. **This is a pretty important point to note - you may not get 6th level spells, but you can get 6th level slots to up cast to if ESL = 11.** I also equipped Wonderous Gloves for extra Bardic Inspiration shot, Boots of Brilliance for 1 Bardic Inspiration restore. Final Ability Scores: STR-10 DEX-10 CON-14 INT-14 WIS-20 CHA-12 2 feats went into getting WIS to 20, CON to 14 (I think on CON). Primary Skill Mods: Investigation: +10 Insight, Perception, Medicine: +13 each. Once into Act 3 and having established contact I tour in roughly this order: Pro-tip - don't turn in Dribbles for reward until very last, because the circus leaves and you lose Stoney-Boney, Popper. Stoney-Boney Popper Styling Horst (I call him Fleetwood Mac and would bet some GP there's on-going weed use in his life) Heapside Strand for Thrumbo Undercity Ruins for the Penitent. Bone Cloak Lady from the Underdark back in town Flower lady in the graveyard northside of town Helisk. The approach is to leave behind the tankiest companion with most HP and Brinna goes out with the rest. She Bards everyone up, poison protects, the 6th Level Aids. My character acts as trader, then swaps alchemy bags with Brinna, she goes into turn mode, casts guidance on herself, extracts and crafts. My final approach is to extract-craft-sell then go on till I can do it again and finish when raw material is exhausted at vendors. Do this at each day start after long rest. Proceeds go to buying potions/elixirs I don't have, arrows, scrolls. Always l click on the right side ingredient to check what's being burnt, for making more valuable stuff to sell - elixirs for potions for example, higher levels for either. I like to sell my poisons and most protection elixirs, and arcane cultivations, especially the higher level ones can make a lot of cash. Make sure to peg out trading value as can be afforded, by donating in 100 GP increments, I like to go 400 GP at a time. Increments, because you get more mileage from donations as you donate. This will, done right, get your discount way down. My Tav character has only 10 CHA, but with Rouge expertise and Guild Artisan background has +8 persuasion and pegged out I get -108% discount and benefit buying/selling. Good approach is to donate excess armors or magic stuff you can triage for sale: some can earn a lot of credit/money, but may not be useful to your party. The alchemy thing has created a whole commerce sub-game in my play-thru. The stuff I care about most now on just about finishing: Potions: Speed, Invisibility. Elixirs: Universal Protection (acts like potion, doesn't wipe out other elixirs, 10 turns), Cloud Giant Strength, Alert. Use Scrolls, Gear for: Dimension Door, Misty Step, See Invisibility, Flying, Jumping, Feather Fall.
Yo, I just wanted to say that I subbed right away when you mentioned an 89% unsubscribe rate, I watch your videos on the regular even though stuff like this may not apply to me (who hasn’t even beat the game yet and plays on balanced🤣🤣). Regardless, I know a great creator when I see one, I learned a lot from your channel in the past few months, and you have a great speaking voice, which always helps! Good luck turning around that rate Around! 💪🏽
Honestly, the role-play of hiring some guy to just take some of your dmg instead of you is actually kinda funny. Imagine the buffest biggest mustaches man you can imagine, sitting in a tavern advertising his "You get hit? I get hit" service.
I also have a hireling who's job is to exclusively serve as Astarion's personal bloodbag for that sweet Happy buff! The rest are mannequins for the cool armours and clothes my party doesn't use :)
THAT'S WHAT I FORGOT! I'm doing the same on my honor mode playthrough :)
Imagine if it’s Liver King’s new job 😂
Warning!!!! Please be careful with this one. In ACT3 when I did this Dame Whoever went crazy and attacked me. Then half my camp attacked me. In act3 if you have her you should leave camp before having your way with the hireling. Also note, for reasons of buffing it is also a good idea to leave camp for faster grouping.
I started doing the same today. He will one day provide a fancy weapon, remove curses etc, but now he's just breakfast.
PSA: Lesser Restoration removes Bloodless. So if you didn't feed Gale the Amulet of Silvanus, you can safely let Astarion bite you and not waste a spell slot doing so.
If you completely empty your party, then have someone with instruments proficiency and an instrument equipped play, the party members will cluster around the music-player. Makes it much easier to hit them with Aid, FoH, etc.
what is FoH ?
@@pensandolobien2Fear of Heights. Not an optimal buff. I don’t use it.
Feast of Heroes
Oh, derp, Heroes Feast.
@@brettmartin2804 hahahha
Honestly I dont think this is "cheesy". Role playing perspective, you are trying to save the world and you have a bunch of people in your camp that instead of doing NOTHING they can at least "Hey I made some potions while you were out, take them, it may help" or some type of Druid/Cleric "bless" you after a long rest "May the Gods/Nature protect you" and cast some buffs
Yup. Game doesn't let you bring 12 party members, you should at least get some value outta them.
I, unironically, had a Cleric hireling in camp to heal me because I thought the number of short rests I had would be limited until Kagha got off her bitch horse.
And to stay faithful to my Roleplaying, I PAID HIM EACH TIME.
Shar's blessings not good enough for you? 😤
Extra Fun fact quality of life tip to keep Companions (Hirelings and normal party members) from running away when you aren't controlling them:
Step 1: you jump into Turn Based,
Step 2: spend their entire movement,
Step 3: hop off of controlling them,
Step 4: turn off Turn Based,
End Result: they will stay where you left them until you jump back on them and move a tiny bit, at which point they will realise they now have movement again.
Super useful! ❤
Or just split them from the group - that way they don’t move unless you specifically move them
That is amazing. Thanks for the tip.
@@coffeecreamguy What I meant was, in camp, when every party member wants to go back to their tent (or to Withers for the Hireling), instead of staying put so you can cast Aid on the entire party, without having to figure out which camp set up has your companions tents closest to each other.
Ungrouping does wonders when you need to go control the one party member who didn't make the jump, and you don't want all the others to re-cross that jump, but it isn't the situation I'm talking about here.
Thank you for this! Very useful
Worth noting that if you did want to go the Warding Bond route, unless they changed it in the last 2 weeks Gale heals himself while in camp. So, if you aren't using him in your party, you can respec him for Warding bond and not have to worry about him dying in camp, provided you don't take enough damage to one-shot him.
Patch 7 and Gale still heals himself. Only dies after your party takes a huge AOE damage
Just because you front-loaded the information I subscribed and watched the whole video. Big respect for that. No clickbait. No watchtime padding. You tell us exactly what to do in summary
So, for those who play on Tactician Difficulty, and even generally just those who play at all: please get a Druid Hireling. They get access to Darkvision, Freedom of Movement and Longstrider as spells. But by far the most useful spell is *_Goodberry._*
If you’ve ever been annoyed about how Tactician doubles the resource cost for a Full Long Rest, a 5th Level Circle of the Land Druid can create up to 40 Goodberries per long rest, thanks to Natural Recovery. Goodberries can be used to heal, yes, but their superior use is as Camp Supplies. Each Goodberry is worth 1 Camp Supply. This really eases the need to search for Supplies, and outright removes it altogether on Balanced or lower.
Me with 4000 camp supplies: yeah interesting
You’ve come so far as a content creator over the past 9 months. I’ve watched you go from making builds at level 11 all the way to level 12.
In all seriousness I have to say your channel and discord are one of my favorite finds of last year. Keep up the great videos Sparty.
HAHAHAHAH right!? My videos have gotten so much better because of that level. Thanks so much for watching man
My preferred order for leveling up the halfling hireling is Wizard 2 > Rogue 1, level 4 doesn't matter, and at level 5 make them Wizard 2 / Lore Bard 3, to get herself to enhance ability (leaving the guidance for another character) and still have the expertise on medicine
New player here (100 hrs into the game, but only lvl 7) - subscribed - clear and informative info, exactly what i was looking for. Thx!
Don't need the warding bond yet as the game is just too easy. I'm still on balanced mode for now - due to frustrating and sluggish mechanics and a complete lack of information in-game on what-does-what exactly.
Was looking for a hireling-build because spending 5-ish spell-slots pre-buffing your party is outright stupid.
Note: last time i played D&D was 40y ago when internet did not exist and computers were more expensive then cars.
Still... for me, BG3 is a dream come true.
Larian Studios did a fantastic job and the support from enthusiasts and content creators is just amazing! /kiss
I been using the Potion Maker in my playthrough for Elixer of Barkskin since Act 2, because I like the way it looks when it's applied to me.
Based
Gotta keep those drip stat numbers up.
A faster way to get hill giant potions is to save volo, use astarion to steal from him in camp (make sure you talk to him at least once but DONT continue his quest)
Use the level up trick to keep resetting his invemtory, if you enter camp standing next to auntie ethel you can steal 300+ gold from volo, leave camp, buy 3 hillgiant pots from auntie ethel, rince repeat.
Plus you can steal level based scrolls, potions amd camp supplies. If you dont do his quest he will stay in camp till the end of act 2, in act 3 go straot to the docs to get him back in camp and steal all the end game scrolls you desire.
I think I farmed her for like 40 hill giant potions before finally advancing her quest.
Definitely don't try stealing from her, she'll get angry and run off even if she doesn't catch you. One time she got mad because she caught me sneaking too much.
More cheese:
Don't skimp on protection from poison, freedom of movement, and death ward. All non concentration. Aid cast at 6th level +30hp, very nice.
Also you can have every character have the devotee mace. Spec your camp followers for 12th level cleric use the Divine intervention. Get the mace. Every character can have one or even 2, to pop that healing effect.
Also, respecing will reset spell slots to full.
Also spec them out with 2 levels of bard to get song of rest. If you are building your party to be short rest dependent, you can get a bunch of them, extending your adventuring day.
Lots of things to do with camp followers.
Great video. Love your channel!
You can make your Potion Maker your Steal Bot at the same time if you want:
1)Choose Brianna Brightsong
2) Keep her Bard, max Wisdom and Dexterity, Proficiency in Medicine and Sleight of Hands
3) Second Level Rogue, Proficiency in Stealth, Expertise in Medicine and Sleight of Hands
4) Rest into Transmutation Wizard, for Spells choose Disguise Self, Invisibility, Cloud Fog, Darkness etc
5) Silver Pendant, Gloves of Thievery. Smugglers's Ring and Shapeshifters Boon Ring.
6) additional gear and feats that fits
Shapeshifter Ring is very powerful but i dont like to use it in your main party because i dont want to change the appearence of the Main Party or to change gear all the time on my party.
For Shapeshifter Boon Ring, split her from the group, cast fog cloud on the strange ox in act one, attack him, let him kill her, resurrect her, talk to the ox again, choose to give him money and you can buy the ring from him. Now you will see him in Act2 again :)
I think you can just give him a slap with Mage Hand for the same effect. No need to watch a halfling get gored to death. 😅
I believe you can put heavy armor like Adamantine Plate plus the mastery on the warding bond camp character to heavily reduce the damage they take so you dont need to check in on them often.
Abjuration Wiz is what _really_ breaks it, because at least last I tried, the game didn't track the ward losing stacks when you weren't in camp >_>
So they were essentially invincible.
@@Avoncarstienstill worked that way when I checked fairly recently. It’s so broken it feels wrong to use it😭
@@padawan-fd2jxthe Kethric Thorm way
(╭☞ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )╭☞
@@padawan-fd2jx cheese on cheese on cheese 😅
A high con dwarf for your cleric hireling with Aid also seems to eat the damage well...
this channel makes the game much more interesting for me, so nice to have someone willing to explain all the stuff
Here's a hireling cheese I figured out that is honestly kinda busted.
Once you reach level 10, one thing you can do to absolutely abuse the hireling system... is to get the Hireling Cleric. Use his Divine Intervention to get yourself the Mace, have him throw it onto the ground, then pick it up on one of your normal characters and dismiss the Hireling. The Hireling will be gone... the Mace will remain. You now have a +3 Legendary Mace, with excellent stats and a healing buff. Keep in mind however that you can only use this Hireling to do this ONCE.
This is exceptionally powerful, especially since Shadowheart will still have HER Divine Intervention, which is super useful for the Opulent Revival. Opulent Revival will restore all of your allies who are standing, as if they'd long rested... and yes, it's used in combat. If they're downed, it will get them up with half their hit points... so make sure to use a potion or something to get them standing, BEFORE using Opulent Revival.
But... here's why this is just broken. You can respec ANY character in your camp, not just yourself... and if you respec them as Clerics, each of them will have a Divine Intervention to abuse. You see where I'm going with this, right? You can technically get a mace for every single person in your camp... giving every single one of them that healing buff.
But wait... there's more. Because... as I just discovered, you can even respec hirelings... which means you can do this trick with Hirelings 12 TIMES! There are 10 main companions and 12 hirelings, plus your character... which means you could get this Legendary "once per playthrough" mace, a grand total of 23 times, if you were so inclined. Or you could get a few of the maces, then start using the Divine Interventions to get chests with potions and camp supplies.
All of which is to say, this particular method is absolutely BROKEN. Also, for anyone wondering how much the mace sells for, it's 663 gold... not enough to waste Divine Interventions just for money.
Extra trick with hirelings: If you want more enchantments from Drakethroat Glaive or more uses of an equipment that has a cooldown on either long or short rest, just leave the item equipped on the hireling and then dismiss/re-recruit the hireling. Any equipped items get their cooldowns reset and you can re-use the item without resting. Pretty useful for Phalar Aluve and getting multiple enchantments from Drakethroat Glaive (outside of using twinned spell).
Just do note that this trick allows you to enchant more than 2 weapons. Enchanting the same weapons replaces the old enchantment.
Transmuted stone also persists into the final fight since it's a carried item, while most other buffs disappear when you reach the Emperor/Orpheus and High Hall and have to be reapplied from within your active party.
Protip. Wavemothers robe on the warding bond character. cast water at their feet. they perma regen and won't die. Enjoy.
Oh that's really sweet. I came here to mention that Gale heals himself for some reason and is the perfect warding bond puppet if you don't use him in your party. But this is so much nicer!
As a new player, I'm surprised I hadn't heard about hirelings more. Thanks for the awesome content!
The few extra buffs I have figured out for hireling abuse is a few spells, that being darkvision for the people who don't have it, death ward, freedom of movement, and hero's feast. Also having a bard hireling isn't a bad option either just to be sitting on 1 inspiration for each character. I have begun to really respect freedom of movement as a spell thanks to the honor run that I have been abusing in and discovered most of these things.
For the camp buffing character, as others have said, Gale won't die. Also, going full cleric instead of wizard gets you access to Death Ward and Freedom of Movement which will prevent the characters from being knocked out the first time and instead leave them at 1 hp and prevent movement speed from being reduced by magic or difficult terrain and make you immune to paralysis and being restrained respectively. If you want that transmutation stone just make another hireling, Death Ward and Freedom of Movement are much stronger than the stone.
Ty for this
Dude, 4 hireling clerics with warding bond on the whole party, heroes feast, death Ward, aid, freedom of movement, and protection from poison on all 4 active party members is the way to go
Pretty sure Protection From Poison is useless, if you have Heroes' Feast already
You can only have 3 hirelings.
If you're going to do that you want to make your non-active party members Clerics.
@@freman007 This is what I do. Essentially all the characters I don't play are clerics so they can heal my main party lol
You can make Gale into a buffer and if he sits at the camp he will heal hinself while having warding bond on!
Just Gale? Never tried it with him. Revivified plenty of dead hirelings after tough fights, though.
@kittydaddy2023 as far as I know, there might be others
Yeah Gale triggers that revival protocol thing if he dies so he self heals to avoid that
Just adding to the algorithm because I appreciate your video style of TLDR, starting on this adventure finally and like watching mechanics not spoilers content.
My absolute pleasure brother!
I like your style. I'm gonna start doin this too. Also, thanks @italianspartacus
With the transmutation stone you can use the wizard and cast it on a party member then send the stone from your inventory to your camp. Your wizard can then cast longstrider on the same party member and he will get his transmute charge back and be able to cast transmute stone on another party member. If you repeat this process for every party member in that order you can have a transmute stone buff on every person. Just remember they have to be in your active lineup to receive the transmute stone.
I believe you can only have one active Transmuter's stone at a time, and casting it again makes the original one disappear. The only way to have multiple stones is to have multiple Transmutation wizards.
@@Princess_Salamiyeah this isn’t true. If you send the stone to your camp then cast longstrider your wizard can cast transmute stone on another character and they both retain the buff. If you do exactly what I said. One wizard can buff the whole party. I do it every long rest.
@@Flashchenzo To further make this go absolutely nutty, you can cast 1 of each of the transmuter stones on each of your party members, but only if you send the stone to camp after every cast. You can have every single party member have the CON proficiency, extra movement speed, enhanced darkvision, fire resist, lightning resist, etc., all at the same time. On top of that, the movement speed transmutation stacks with longstrider, bringing that paltry 9m movement speed to a blistering 15m. It is so broken, but it makes honour mode so much more doable.
Another thing you can do with your hirelings is give them 1 level of Druid to give them Goodberry. It might not seem like the most powerful thing but you can easily end up with hundreds of free 1d4 healing potions to heal you up between fights. You can also use them as camp supplies in case you run out of food
Oh and Astarion can bite a hireling at the start of the day to easily activate Happy
Man I subbed because you explained you want people to skip around to find info. Definitely need more content creators like you.
if you pick up the shapeshifter’s boon ring from the strange ox in act 1 or 2, you can add another 1d4 to the medicine check in addition to guidance while disguised, which is a ritual spell
Act 1 Emerald Grove
I never fail checks with max wisdom + medicine + enhance ability
Send a mage hand to slap Strange Ox while your party is hiding in the prison area.
After the Ox kills the hand, talk to him with the hand's controller.
He'll open a trade window so you can give him money to improve your relationship, but the ring is right there and you can buy it for about 200 gold.
I just got into the potion brewer on my honor mode run a few days ago. Just after the goblin camp, I was able to brew 17 potions of speed, which will honestly last me throughout most of the game. That being said, I think you should consider taking a few levels of cleric after level 4 wizard so that the Alchemist can cast enhance ability on themselves and not waste your party's slots.
Bards get enhance ability also, AND get skill boosts, so I've always levelled my alchemist hireling as a bard after the two wizard levels.
Level 6 Transmutation wizard gets you the Transmuter Stone, so I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about multiclassing.
At level 9 Brinna with 8 levels of Wizard/1 Rogue has +13 to Medicine checks, and can re-roll 1s, so she only fails the Medicine Check on a 15.
The idea of having a buffer from camp is super cool. It’s been always there, but I never thought of it. Thanks for pointing it out. Now I’m using a camp character to buff my active team with Freedom of Movement and Death Ward.
Only started messing with hirelings in my honour mode run. Would of never thought of these, you have earned a like and sub. What I was doing was making 3x extra clerics to swap out with Shadowheart when her spell slots ran out. I also viewed it as a way to get multiple custom characters grouped with your Tav (I feel weird changing the origin characters at Withers) and was thinking of silly things like "I could make four monks and we could be like the ninja turtles" which later evolved into "I can turn everyone into a monk" for a future playthrough lol.
HECK YEAH MONK GANG xD
Love this idea! I suppose daggers would do for sai but what would you use for nunchucks? Dual-wielding clubs maybe?
Whichever mace or morning star has the ball and chain thing on the tip. So if those are clubs then yes, clubs.@@paultapping9510
@@paultapping9510 In the UK the late 80's cartoon was edited because nunchucks were controversial at the time. I believe they were edited to be a sectioned staff instead (nunchucks without chains). Later series I believe he used a grappling hook or just a chain instead.
As for weapons to use, maybe flails.
@BigDavie2000 oh yeah, I forgot about flails, I've only come across like... one, that I can remember. Good shout!
Lol, I've just realised as well that a turtle gang would be even more on point, because the big bad is just like Krang!
I set up all the hirelings as buffing stations. Make them cast mage armor, long strider, warding bond, aide, and I have them all cast false life to increase their own HP so the warding bond doesn't kill them as easily.
Great video! For my honor mode run, I made Brinna my pickpocketer. Thief Rogue with sleight and stealth proficiency and expertise, the guidance necklace for self buff, Smugglers ring, advantage gloves from Zhentarim hideout all mean that I’m likely only to fail on a Nat 1, so halfling luck makes that a lot less likely. I have also only had to use them once, but I have her some emergency get away items as well. The helmet from mushroom colony and ring from dead gnomes in Grymforge area that let you cast a free invisibility. As long as Brinna is by herself (everybody else back in camp) she can just go invisible and get away if I do fail a steal check.
The only time it didn’t work was when she got caught stealing from the Zhent trader in the Act 1 hideout. When Brinna went invisible and got away, the Zhent went nuts and started throwing fire bombs and blew up the entire hideout. Luckily I had already gotten the items from him, and just lost out on a couple hundred gold.
This was a bit of setup but has been a lot more fun that save scum stealing I did in my first play through.
A replacement if you don't want an entire hireling for bound weapon is a lifeberry druid for healing, camp supplies, and a couple of druid buff spells
Very helpful, wished I figured this out earlier - like many, many things in this game. Learning curve is almost straight-up, if you haven't touched D&D since about 1982 like me.
Some refinements at Level 9 and for Level 12.
Go 4 Knowledge Cleric - 4 Transmutation Wizard - 1 Rouge. Now it's one stop shopping for the ability enhance. Also you get the commoner version of Githyanki Astral Knowledge spell in Knowledge for the Ages. Feats ASI 2x1, Lucky.
For the last 3 I'd go Bard Lore or Valor - - more expertise, more skills.
Keep in mind with all these Elixirs and Potions, Brianna can not only be the Hair Club President, but also a client for the full Bourne Legacy meets BG3 effect.
Even with stats STR-10 DEX-12 CON-14 INT-14 WIS-18 CHA-10 and not being a great Bard or Archer - she still can do Bard and Archer things.
Omni-capable: fighting, casting, inspiring, healing.
Starts to make 30 Check locks a lot less scary.
I did it exactly the same way you did but i can’t put my expertise in medicine when i pick Rogue at Level 5. The game just won‘t let me.. I had to pick Bard and wait till Level 7 for the second expertise. That’s the only way to make it work.
Heros feast is great too. Cleric mace. Ward bond rings.
For the cleric side. It’s better to just max into Cleric for one character so you can use max level aid and another cleric for hero’s feast. That way you get both hp buffs. Then you have gale or a separate character who stays at camp for the wizard or 3rd cleric for the other warding bond and buffs. P.s didn’t know about the pact throwing thing. Thank you.
Level 11 Cleric Level 1 Druid. Gives you full spell slots. You can cast your heroe's feast and max level aid. As well as other buffs (death ward, freedom of movement) then convert all other spell slots into goodberries. (your transmuter stone characters can also take 1 level druid to make goodberries as well) This results in tons of out of combat healing potential and free long rests even on honor mode.
Me being a tank main, I genuinely appreciate the love & gushing over an ability like Warding Bond like we see here. I'm still fairly new to THIS game. But I'm far from new to build crafting in rpgs, mobas, &/or mmos. It's been kind of mind blowing roaming through youtube seeing tons of "tank guides" for BG3 where everyone seems to think tank means high ac, high health pools, healing spells, & heavy armor. With ZERO consideration for damage reduction. Which even for me on my 2nd run overall (1st on tactician currently in act 3)...It took me on my 1st run as a Barbarian....to unlock the bear heart upgrade to IMMEDIATELY see how under appreciated & game changing damage reduction actually is.
So much so that I noticed how much I was missing it playing on Tact as a fighter...I BADLY missed being resistant to everything, lol. That was until I found Warding Bond. Which is essentially "we have Bear Heart at home". Just instead of the rage mechanic...it's managing 2 health pools at all times.
Idk damage reduction is just one of those things where I question why more content creators aren't talking about it when they make these defense guides. Entertaining a hypothetical...if you had a monster that hit for 200 hp per attack...vs 2 party members...1 with 600 hp with no Ward Bond or Bear Heart...with the other with 500 hp & literally EITHER of the 2...the monster kills the higher hp guy in 3 hits. Where as he kills the resistant guy in 5. Which one arguably is the better option for a tank??? Just food for thought.
I really love this kind of thing. It's there if you want to really go as tough as possible...or not use some or all if you think they're broken. All within rules. Real life Dungeon Master might disagree but it's just fun seeing what can be done. 😁👍
honestly sir I really liked the 1 min break down at the front of this video so i know if i wanna stay.. and i will stay
I just asked in twitch chat a few days ago if camp builds are legit and now there is this amazing video! I hope switching party members will improve in the future to be less clunky.
To make it even gamier, you can respec Gale for the party buff companion with warding bond and leave him in camp. He's got an auto-heal function like NPC's for some reason, and it's been really saving my honor mode run.
Having a sorcerer companion to twin spell things is also helpful. You can twin-spell the Drakethroat Glaive's elemental weapon buff on two party members for extra elemental damage until long rest.
I assume gale’s auto-heal is to avoid him standing in a damaging surface in camp and accidentally setting off a nuke in the middle of fae-run. Tbh, impressed they thought of that
I dont know if its common knowledge but i found an exploit for drakethroat glaive, so all my characters have elemental buff on their weapons , an it lasts forever.
Do elaborate @@VDViktor
My hirelings met Shadowheart at Shares Caress and woke up in my camp soaking in a tub of ice, missing all of their organs.
Thanks, I was planning on creating a transmutation wizard at camp as my alchemist. This showed how to do it.
This guide is a godsend for my honor play through I just recently started! Thought of stopping it since I was sure I bit off more than I can chew. But I might give it a try now.
I always use my Transmutation Wizard for Mage Armour-ing my characters & summons.
Else fantastic video as usual!
I think a warding bond camper is a legitimate strategy. In a tabletop campaign, I can picture a Warding Bonder with a "healer" both "camping" away from combat while the WB recipient fights the big bad with the rest of the party. It's the next step after keeping the Wizard at the back, the WB is just "further" back. When the cheese is on the menu, order it. I feel that Bonding is more personal and is cheesier when done for someone else, but not judging.
I do it for one character I think it's okay. if I were to do it for like the whole group with multiple hirelings, and I switch them or something; no.
When I ran a party that didnt have a rogue I did give my SOH items and graceful cloth to a hireling and "hire" him to go steal stuff for me. :D
Gale probably ate that necklace you were looking for.
One Hireling idea I do have is the ultimate pickpocket specialist that plunders the city dry-off coin. to send to "steal from shops of the game". Thus making use of the "reputation system and steal without consequences for your own character party".
if you want the warding bond cleric - making them abjuration wizard can give a shield that doesn't kill the hireling - the abjureation shield doesn't go down because they are not being hit directly
I play on the PS5 and once I switched to rogue at level 4 I wasn't permitted to put any points into Medicine. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. I note that on the pc you seem to have Acrobatics which is unclicked when you switch to Medicine. On the PS5, I'm not granted Acrobatics, only Slight of Hand. Even unclicking that doesn't permit me to choose Medicine. Any suggestions?
For the first one, you can also take the magic initiate : Cleric (or Druid) so they can cast guidance on themselves
I have three cleric hirelings and made one camp companion I never take with me into a cleric. I have them all cast warding bond, hero's feast and aid onto my party before we go adventuring. I don't care if it's cheese or not, I am doing my first tact playthrough and I don't think I would have gotten through the house of grief without the buffs.
As always, awesome guides. I guess you could just go back to the main map to have your entire party together, buff all up and then jump to camp and dump the wizard
Dont forget that with the transmuters stone that you can send the stone to camp -> use any ritual cast transmutation spell -> use any other stone buff. Basically, you can put every bonus on every character as long as you just keep sending it to camp after each use.
I personally have three hireling SPECT into full cleric, so I get warding bond, death ward, freedom of movement, protection from poison aid and longstrider on all four of my characters
Don't forget Heroes' Feast
Big fan of a Barb hireling to hold all the gear. Much easier to equip from the party screen and if you get the Bear perk it will increase their carry weight to hold most every magical item in the game, might have to stick some heavy armors in the trunk but so far hasn't been an issue.
I like combining the two buffers on Gale for a lot of reasons. 2 transmutation wizard and 10 knowledge cleric (Mystra, of course.) gale heals himself in camp, 2 levels in wizard allows him to learn disguise self and longstrider, you can get the shapeshifters boon ring as early as act 1 from the strange ox in druids grove, giving you a D4 added to ability checks while disguised, knowledge of ages for wisdom, enhance ability wisdom and guidance he can cast on himself, drakethroat glaive to buff somebodies weapon, warding bond,death ward, freedom of movement, you name it. Lucky and an ASI into wisdom and you barely ever fail the medicine check and I’ve only had him go down once in camp from an explosion that hurt all party members at once. You could even brand him and give him the absolutes aid talisman for advantage on death saving throw if you wanted
In Honor Mode I made a businesswoman that has max charisma and Expertise in persuasion that does all of my deals with merchants for max profit.
Dude...that's...really smart and fun. I never thought of doing that, but I'm stealing your idea!
@@CKZaibatsu Enjoy the extra gold pieces!
One I was surprised not to see was the thief hireling. In order not to take reputation hits on Astarion or my PC, I have my thief hireling gear up with the shapeshifter hat, shapeshifting buff ring (forget name), Smugglers ring, Gloves of power, guidance amulet and the dex boost/cat's grace body suit when I get it. Then she goes around and robs all of the vendors of potions, camp supplies, scrolls and thieves tools until I have all I need, doing a partial rest to reset inventories after each loop.
Have been using your bardadin build and can’t stop watching your vids. Awesome stuff. Going to def use these hirelings. Easy sub for me!
The idea of having a hireling be a potion seller, back at camp
gives me good memories of Dragon Age Origins, with the two dwarven merchants
Could help with more roleplaying aspect; save the grove get a druid instantly. Find a priest that heals and removes diseases and curses, etc
Would love to see what kinda roleplaying and broken shenanigans can be had with unlimited hirelings
Another Warding Bond trick is to take the feat Heavy Armor Master and the best damage reduction armor you are not using in your party to cut doen immensely on the damage they take from the bond. Since they are a cleric, you can also use any excess spell slots to cast Cure Wounds type spells acting as "free" potions.
I changed the wizard hireling to bard, set him up with the highest charisma and persuasion possible, specifically only for selling trash to npc’s, but at level 3 bard also gets enhance ability, a concentration that lasts until long rest. Having the camp bard use enhance ability on wisdom checks is excellent
If you dip into Spore Druid with your Warding Bond hireling, you can also give yourself temp hitpoints.
Im 500 houes in and never thought of some of this stuff as im startinf honor mode. You are a massive legend and have earned your like and sub
For the party buffer, there are some 4th level cleric spells, available at 7th level, that are quite good.
I think for your potion maker, you can multi class to Bard to get the expertise and self cast Enhance Ability
Rogue gets expertise with one level.
At level 9 Brinna with 20 wisdom and expertise in medicine gets +13 to medicine checks. She only fails on a 1 or 2, and she re-rolls 1.
@@freman007 10 rogue gets reliable talent which means all rolls under 10 become a 10. This means a 2 level transmutator wizard 10 rogue can never fail there med check for potions. And doesn't need to self buff to do it. And no longer requires halfling luck either.
For the alchemy hireling, 4 levels in transmutation wizard, 1 level in rogue and then I would suggest Knowledge Cleric, they have a channel divinity that will help with medicine, as well as getting enhance ability as a level 2 spell
I found it especially game breaking to apply these buffs to summons. Suddenly even a lvl 3 skeleton or 1HP familiar becomes a tank with 16AC, mage armour, feast, longstrider, death ward, lvl6 aid... it really feels abusive.
Sounds like you're ready for Honour mode.
For the Warding bound it's best using abjuration wizard with as many levels as possible. I usually mix it with sorcerer for twin cast and save on spell slots. Abjuration wizard gains damage reduction up to 12 so that the damage from the bond is almost negligible.
Worth giving heavy armor prof for armor that reduces damage?
@@joeregan. never a hireling has died in my games even when bonded to 4 of my characters. Remember that they receive the same damage your bonded character received, which is halved thanks to resistance to all and mostly avoided if you have high enough armour on them.
You only need "Gale" as cleric and cast warding bond, mage armor, aid to all of your party members(3 out of 4 for aid).
I can easily achieve 18-20 AC with bonus 10-20 maxHP for every party member before the end of act 1.
I hope they'll fix this since honor mode are so easy when everyone has perma warding bond without negative condition.
I always get two clerics and one wizard hirelings, use warding bond (through spells and rings) on my tanks, aid to get more life, poison resistance (hero's feast at a higher level), freedom of movement and, if I still have some spell slopts, I use death ward on summons like divas or djinn, bears and wolves
The Halfling aswell makes for a perfect thief. At lvl 12 you can have a 8 wizard/ 4 rogue build with 20 dex and 20 wisdom allowing you to combine the transmutation wizard for the transmutation stone and potion brewing with the best thief in the game.
When you start a new game have someone sign in and splitscreen with you. Or just use second controller. You can run a dark urge and tav playthrough same time and have extra character In the beginning
Just wanted to share that when I heard the 89% not subscribed, I had to check if I was or not. (I wasn’t, but I did) Was so desensitized to all the usual screen popups, but that number really hit so hope that helps a bit.
It does indeed thank you bro :)
Awesome video. I have been doing Aid and Longstrider and Darkvision on Lae'zel but didn't think of the rest.
Another thing I noticed is any character at camp that takes damage will auto heal if they don't die as long as they are not in your active party so keep that in mind as well unless they patched it.
Knowing that they are undead, it makes doing this a fun idea if you are a Necromancer. Just the idea that you don't want anyone living to die in pursuit of this quest, so you go to a much more impressive master of Necromancy, and have him bring back departed heroes.
Hireling stones got patched out.
fascinating, i’m still level 4 but i’m gonna make the alchemy wizard + come back to this later
If you are going to this level of min maxing for potions, I think it's worth mentioning extracting all is not really that good of an idea unless you really can't find that new recipe you learned/ingredient you need to craft to learn it. You can't pick what "any" ___ ingredient unless you only have the ones you want to use on you and all the others in a bag on the ground and not accessible by the crafting. I find it much easier to just craft the ingredients from the raw mats when you're ready to craft potions to avoid the juggling and still maintain efficiency and not wasting rare ingredients when I could be using something for a basic poison
The amount of stuff you can do in this game is so overwhelming. I think im close to act 2. I probably missed so much lol
it's ok to miss out on things. Gives you a reason for multiple playthroughs!
@@TurnersTea is it worth playing a "good" run and switching to an "evil" run before finishing each act? Just so I can stay surprised ish?
Same here. On my honor mode run, I started out avoiding the more dangerous "optional" encounters (Grym, etc) but by the end of it I had built enough confidence that I did everything I could; although usually in the safest way I could think of (Sharran compound died one at a time to my Monk, who hopped away after each kill and came back till only Viconia remained.) I was surprised to see that only .1% of players have finished honor mode. @@TurnersTea
I have the artificer mod, and they get infusions, and you can layers a shit ton of infusions on any character, like +2 ac, +2 spell save dc, weapon enchantment, repeated shot for ranged characters etc etc, alchemist artificers can also make unique potions that give another +2 ac, +1 to all attacks and damage, permanent fly, +10 m movement speed… they also get improved alchemy, anyway XD my point is if you really wanna go nuts with camp casting get the mod 😂
another thing you can do is have every hireling respec into cleric once, cast miracle and get a ton of free resources/get your legendary weapon/ etc.
wait a second bound weapon works not only for the caster ??? mindblown... seriously 750 hours and I still learn new stuff...
I really love this a thing on the game, on normal playthrough this is VERY OVERPOWERED and unnecessary but on Honor mode, if you want to increase your chance to not failed a run, and you’re patient enough while reaching level 6 at act 1 you can prep for act 2 and 3 and make so much potions and elixir as well steal so much fucking gold with the money exploit so you don’t have to worry about it lolz. Just amazing!
BIG DOWNSIDE to these camp buffers. In the final act, on the final mission, during the final attack, the game automatically pushes a long rest onto your group. This forces all camp buffs to fall off. You then cannot then go back to camp to apply buffs. I lost my longstride, my aid, my bound weapon, my drakethroat glaive buff (because despite pushing a long rest, it did not reset the cooldown on the item), my elixirs and my warding bond all on the final mission of my honor mode playthorugh. luckily, already plenty strong by end of game and finished successfully but that was an eye opener to say the least.
Potion of angelic sleep and having a cleric and a wizard solved this for me.
@@TurnersTea yea, this was my honor mode run. I didnt even see the chest lol. But i did hear about the mindflayer long rest heal bloom thing being removed so i had prepared for that.
Another interesting use for your buffing Cleric may be to go Nature domain. Goodberry for free is basically a free healing potion every day. I also think having a Cleric at camp to buff, heal, remove curses is actually pretty logical way to use Clerics. Idea of battlefield medic versus coming back to a camp.
Incidentally, people really sleep on the Nature Cleric as a build. It is the best crowd control cleric in the game.
As with all clerics, you get the incredible cleric spell list, but starting level 5, you also get Spike Growth (!!), then Plant Growth (!!), as well as a slew of other CC options which other clerics don't get: Insect Plague, Sleet Storm, Wall of Stone, Dominate Beast, Grasping Vine.
On top of all that, they get Heavy Armor proficiency and a useful damage reduction reaction which they can use to protect any member of the party from elemental damage.
In fact, I think I'm going to go home and respec Jaheira right now. I could use that sixth-level spell slot for Planar Ally anyway.
@@tantalus_complex I also think going Nature to get Shillelagh can help with the Cleric's % to hit problems early game.
I rarely sub but this guy seems super nice, hes like this is what im doing if you want to go ahead youre welcome to. Like dang dude you earned my sub
You didn't mention hero's Feast cleric buff. Can a 2nd hireling camp caster use warding bond on other warding bond caster for extra survivability?
DO YOU KNOW IN CAMP THE ICON @ BOTTOM LEFT WILL OPEN YOUR CHEST WITHOUT HAVING TO CLICK ON CHEST. such a time saver!
OH yea!, Astarion can use bite on hireling in camp after long rest for perm. HAPPY buff.
Almost finished first run. Not embarrassed. Thought I'd update my findings and final build approach on Brinna the one-person-band: Wizard-Rouge-Bard-Cleric.
Multiclass progression to 12th Level.
2 to Wizard to Get Transmutation Class.
1 in Rouge - this get's you the expertise in Medicine sooner, +1 more expertise and another skill.
5 in Bard, pick College Valor for the improved Bardic Inspiration for combat, gets you Song of Rest for extra short rest, 2 more expertise.
4 in Cleric, pick Life Domain. Since the last class defines the spell cast modifier, this aligns with the boosted WIS, even though the starting caster class is Wizard. This gets you guidance, poison protection, and aid.
Note the Wizards Saving Throw proficiency remains: Intelligence & Wisdom which I'd rather have than WIS and CHA with Cleric.
This nets an Effective Spell Caster Level of 2+5+4 = 11, which gets you the Level 6 slot for a 25 HP boost with an up cast Aid: Level 2: 5HP + 4x5HP up cast = 25 HP.
**This is a pretty important point to note - you may not get 6th level spells, but you can get 6th level slots to up cast to if ESL = 11.**
I also equipped Wonderous Gloves for extra Bardic Inspiration shot, Boots of Brilliance for 1 Bardic Inspiration restore.
Final Ability Scores:
STR-10 DEX-10 CON-14 INT-14 WIS-20 CHA-12
2 feats went into getting WIS to 20, CON to 14 (I think on CON).
Primary Skill Mods:
Investigation: +10
Insight, Perception, Medicine: +13 each.
Once into Act 3 and having established contact I tour in roughly this order:
Pro-tip - don't turn in Dribbles for reward until very last, because the circus leaves and you lose Stoney-Boney, Popper.
Stoney-Boney
Popper
Styling Horst (I call him Fleetwood Mac and would bet some GP there's on-going weed use in his life)
Heapside Strand for Thrumbo
Undercity Ruins for the Penitent.
Bone Cloak Lady from the Underdark back in town
Flower lady in the graveyard northside of town
Helisk.
The approach is to leave behind the tankiest companion with most HP and Brinna goes out with the rest. She Bards everyone up, poison protects, the 6th Level Aids. My character acts as trader, then swaps alchemy bags with Brinna, she goes into turn mode, casts guidance on herself, extracts and crafts. My final approach is to extract-craft-sell then go on till I can do it again and finish when raw material is exhausted at vendors. Do this at each day start after long rest. Proceeds go to buying potions/elixirs I don't have, arrows, scrolls.
Always l click on the right side ingredient to check what's being burnt, for making more valuable stuff to sell - elixirs for potions for example, higher levels for either.
I like to sell my poisons and most protection elixirs, and arcane cultivations, especially the higher level ones can make a lot of cash.
Make sure to peg out trading value as can be afforded, by donating in 100 GP increments, I like to go 400 GP at a time. Increments, because you get more mileage from donations as you donate.
This will, done right, get your discount way down. My Tav character has only 10 CHA, but with Rouge expertise and Guild Artisan background has +8 persuasion and pegged out I get -108% discount and benefit buying/selling.
Good approach is to donate excess armors or magic stuff you can triage for sale: some can earn a lot of credit/money, but may not be useful to your party.
The alchemy thing has created a whole commerce sub-game in my play-thru.
The stuff I care about most now on just about finishing:
Potions: Speed, Invisibility.
Elixirs: Universal Protection (acts like potion, doesn't wipe out other elixirs, 10 turns), Cloud Giant Strength, Alert.
Use Scrolls, Gear for: Dimension Door, Misty Step, See Invisibility, Flying, Jumping, Feather Fall.
Yo, I just wanted to say that I subbed right away when you mentioned an 89% unsubscribe rate, I watch your videos on the regular even though stuff like this may not apply to me (who hasn’t even beat the game yet and plays on balanced🤣🤣). Regardless, I know a great creator when I see one, I learned a lot from your channel in the past few months, and you have a great speaking voice, which always helps!
Good luck turning around that rate Around! 💪🏽
my mind was blown! I'm only use them as goodberry dispenser. got like 40 camp supplies a day(I'm lv. 3)
Honestly, the role-play of hiring some guy to just take some of your dmg instead of you is actually kinda funny. Imagine the buffest biggest mustaches man you can imagine, sitting in a tavern advertising his "You get hit? I get hit" service.
Will you be covering the Old World? Would love to hear your thoughts on the new rule books.