How to get Potent Robe as Dark Urge: You need to beat Alfira unconscious, right before the cutscene in question, where she would otherwise die. When you long rest and get the cutscene, reload, go to the grove, and attack her, with nonlethal attacks toggled on. Then, rest as normal. A different NPC will appear and die in the cutscene instead, and Alfira can be encountered in act 2 as normal
The trigger for the cutsceen as far as I'm aware is visiting the blighted village. So when your done in the Grove just knock her out then run to the village and long rest, should trigger the new scene
You can save before you long rest until you get the event, then load your save and knock her out. Make sure you don’t aggro her while you do or she might not give the quest/robe in act 2 from what I’ve heard. I’ve just used the orc Paladin hireling to bonk her on the head from stealth and it’s worked fine.
I really appreciate how you explain why these items are so useful, and how to use them. There are so many "don't miss these items!!!" sort of videos but if you're not necessarily an expert in all the mechanics of the game you might not understand why they're so good. You do your best to explain why, and its very helpful. Two of my favorite items and tactics are a ring I found that makes you immune to blindness. So I can cast one of the spells that makes a fog cloud that makes you blind and just hide in it sniping everything around me. Or for super fun cast it on enemies and enter melee with them. To even further ruin their day I have the boots of Spiderstep so I'll cast Web on them as well.
Something fun about Arcane Acuity: it affects the DC of Illithid powers! So even if you don't have a great caster party member for the Helmet of Arcane Acuity, you could in theory just give it to someone who can make a lot of attacks, and then they can still get some value out of it via scrolls and Illithid powers.
Yes! A full class battlemaster can still get a ton of use out of it with Band of the Arcane Scoundrel + the twice per combat Tasha's you get from completing Save the Monk quest at the very beginning of Act 3. Its just good all around.
@@Aestus_RPG Is it really twice per combat? That seems so good to me but all the wikis say it is once per long rest. Is there something special you have to do to get it twice per combat rather than once per long rest, or are the wikis wrong (certainly possible-- wouldn't be the first time lol). I'm about to hit Act 3 on my Dark Urge run and I am running an illithid power barbarian/thief using the Helmet of Arcane Acuity. This seems like a natural addition to the build!
@@Build-a-Barbarian-Workshop The wikis are wrong. They are going off the tool tip, which says once per long rest, but its actually twice per combat, which is really weird. I was so confused why it kept refreshing, so I did some tests and discovered it was actually twice per combat.
Luminous glove in conjunction with calous glow ring lets you apply radiant orbs on so many things you would not expect like thrown bombs, ground effects like burning ground and electrocuted ground, and adding luminous armor on top allows you to apply radiant orb nova even when throwing healing potions. Alternatively, having all these items and using a spell like magic missle or scorching ray lets you apply 10+ radiant orbs in your AOE. I've tried to map out all the interactions with luminous armor/luminous glove/coruscating ring/calous glow ring and there is so much interesting interaction. This item group's radiating orb effects is maybe the most potent utility when playing tactician+ if you ramped up enemy attack rating to rediculously high amounts. Gives light cleric amazing party value. Would also love to see a tier list of all "item mechanics" in the game and how to build around them. Orb was mentioned here but also things like reverberation which was fixed with patch 3.
To make the radiating orb spirit guardians build even better, 1 level storm sorcerer lets you use your movement then fly to another group of enemies. Even in large battles you can hit nearly every enemy with radiating orb. Add the shield and you’re going first frequently. Currently playing that build as shadowheart and it’s pretty nuts.
The Sharpened Snare Cuirass, portent dice, halfling luck, and stacking spell save dc makes Flesh to Stone/Gold pretty much always succeed on any enemy lacking immutable form.
A great combo for arcane acuity I've found is sword bard with lv 1 cleric dip for access to Command. Command is an enchantment school hard cc that doesn't require concentration and can target multiple enemies with upcast, so you can use it on a bonus action to disable multiple enemies every turn, even while concentrating on another cc or buff. It basically means most enemies will never get to act unless they win initiative against you (unlikely due to high dex and equipment options) or are immune to most CCs (most commonly undead, which is why I ended up going cleric 2 for turn undead). I think the full build was something like fighter 1 (for archery to land flourishes better, and equipment proficiencies), sword bard 8 (2 feats, sharpshooter and dex ASI), wizard 1(for all the wizard spells since we have level 6 slots with 11 full caster lvls), war cleric 2 (command and turn undead and guided strike).
Combo idea: Poisoner's Gloves (poison damage inflicts poisoned condition), Brootmother's Revenge (weapon coated in poison and deals 1d6 poison damage after getting healed) and Derivation Cloak (heal yourself 1d4 when inflicting poison) Should be self sustaining and give a nice chunk of healing and bonus damage. Since you're also inflicting conditions on every hit you can combined it well with arcane synergy, for example on a bard or blade warlock with max charisma for a big damage boost. A bladelock + swords bard multiclass should be amazing with this. You'll add your charism modifier to damage twice (arcane synergy and blade pact) and won't even need to cast spells to get arcane synergy. Late game you can swap Derivation Cloak for Ring of regeneration and use a different cloak. Braindrain cape could be a good option, if enemies succeed saves against your poison they keep getting -1 to other saves.
i gave up playing my previous run because of lightcleric spirit guardian and lumunious armor.i feel like at this point i can solo or duo game so i started another without cleric :D btw i really like your style explanation theorycrafting hope larian do more also you do more thx again
Helmet of arcane acuity is basically built for sword bard. With the ring you get in act 3, sword bard basically can crowd control the enemies right at the firat turn. Hat of fire acuity is also great same as the helmet version but for spell caster. The thunder version is less useful imo because of thunder spell selection just does not allow you to stack it fast enough
Eldritch knight with Helment of Arcane acuity + winter's clutches gloves + mourning frost (or potentially cold enchant from the drake throat glaive) seems pretty good too :D If encrusted with frost works with eldritch strike you should get extremely reliable freezes.
totally agree with the luminous cloves. However, be careful when using it on Tactician, I encountered enemies (esp Sharrans) that reflected back radiant damage x2. With spirit guardians that goes wrong real fast ^^ BTW, your analysis is really well thought out. Care to offer you favourite team of 4 (Skills and gear)? I find that really interesting since most solo guides (rightfully) assume the perfect gear composition. On a team of 4 you need to compromise though. I am working on a team that gets around with the least amount of long rests and would like some input 🙂 thanks
I really like these videos. So many, many videos about some broken act3 item (surprise, everything there is broken) I like being able to build around early items that are interesting but not broken (looking at you Luminous Armor)
As people have said, potent robe is available for dark urge but you'll need to quick save before going to long rest post goblin camp. When you know she's going to show up that long rest, jump to the grove and knock her ass out. After that immediately long rest and the scene will play out as normal with alfira replaced with a funny Dragonborn bard
The biggest problem I have in the game revolves around the potent robe exactly. You can get it on DU, but if you DONT kill the goblins you cannot get the robe. Which means no minthara + potent robe ( as well as fire acuity hat and many other amazing items). Punishing people for playing evil when there are almost 0 rewards for being evil really stinks
You can still get both the fire acuity hat and Minthara as a companion in the same playthrough. The Strange Ox is not tied to the fate of the Tieflings.
Shield of scorching reprisal is one of the best shield in the game. The class action it gives really strong for High Ac character for them to walk around and deal damage to enemy and waste their opportunity attack
Something to consider for Act 3: Cold Snap. A dagger that when held in your off-hand applies two turns of Chilled to any enemy which misses you with an attack. Description says it needs a saving throw, but is currently bugged to be 100% reliable. Combine this with an Armor of Agathys build (abjuration wizard, etc) and you can be reliably doing 60 retaliation damage by running around trying to proc attacks of opportunity. This makes AOA builds even better than they already were because it lets you build for high AC without impacting retaliation damage nearly as much. An enemy which misses you once then hits you once does just as much damage as an enemy who hits you twice (with the added bonus that you only lose one arcane ward stack rather than two, and the Chilled status sticks around for another two turns after).
Well damn, potent robe would come in handy right now. I talked to the Tiefs, then wulbren got his hammer, asked him to wait, killed ALL the guards, and opened all the doors. Halflings survived and escaped, Tieflings glitched out and stood at the door the halflings left through never moving until going back to the inn and apparently they died?
The best part about this list is that Alfira was killed by HER OWN HARPER PARTY MEMBER casting ice storm (or similar). IN A SCRIPTED EVENT... and this is like a week ago, after all the patches. I even reloaded because I didn't want my own team to die., not knowing about the robe at the time... but of course, rinse and repeat... ON A MUCH PATCHED GAME DURING A SCRIPTED EVENT. Complete BS, glad I got hosed out of common items everyone else gets. Hurray me.
Boots of arcane bolstering are actually really good. The description there is incorrect. It is not you that needs to be threatened but the target. In that case if you dash you get to add your proficiency bonus to damage instances. I built Gale as a magic missile user with these boots and have 2 Rogue and 10 Evocation wizard. With these boots you get to add your proficiency bonus to each magic missile. It even gets better if you use shriek. Your proficiency bonus gets to be added to each thunder damage instance as well. He can one shot any boss in the game with this setup. So it is definitely an item to build around.
I think you can unequip the risky ring durring combat as a free action. So forr the first turn, go nuts with attacks, and when you are done unequip it...
You can use the risky ring to pair with the bleed build from the act 2 weapons vid. From h there you can take the ring off for free and the one action to put it back on to restart the chain is kinda 🤫🤫 also it can be a equipped item u can remove for the free cast glitch if you use it as it’s another item you can take off
Sorry about the spam, but also wanted to mention that gloves of the battlemage is still bugged as of hotfix 6 in that it does not trigger arcane acuity. Just so folks don't go out of their way for it atm and/or waste time in any confusion when attempting to use them.
lvl 2 Light Cleric wearing Luminous Armor got me 25 stacks of Radiating Orb on some grouped up enemies yesterday with a single cast of Radiance of the Dawn xD
Interesting note about the boots of Arcane Bolstering for spore druids (who want to engage in short range to use halo of spores anyway). Not only does this proficiency bonus add to halo of spores, it adds to both die with symbiotic entity active. I haven't hit level 10 yet, so I can't confirm whether this is true for spreading spores. Still kind of a gimmick, but it works pretty well when enemies aren't necrotic resistant. Ideally, you get proficiency boost x2 from halo of spores and x2 from moonbeam (one on cast, one at start of enemy turn.) Late game you could instead concentrate on cloudkill to hit more targets. Of course this requires: not losing concentration, enemies not resistant to the 2 most resisted damage types, and not losing your temp hp, but it's a fun gimmick. My spore druid has 3 levels in thief atm so he has 2 bonus actions and can use one to dash and otherwise uses offhand attacks to stack arcane acuity. Biggest drawback is college of sword bards can still do this better.
In regards to arcane charge, as of hotfix 6 the effect also nerfs the character's movement speed by 50%. This means that it will negate the movement bonus of a dash. Also, since each trigger from boots of arcane bolstering produces 2 stacks(caps at 2 stacks/turns - and the stacks do not provide effect per stack), on the character's follow up turn, they will have half movement speed. Furthermore, the damage bonus from arcane charge appears to only apply to spells with an attack roll. So yes to scorching ray(per ray as well) and no to magic missile.
ur so thorough at doing these videos. subbed! is there any chance you can do a video on all the permanents buffs you can get in the game? like the Hags Hair or Loviatars Blessing?
Yeah it's simplified down so party members typically act next to each other and combats can typically be balanced around knowing when certain creatures will act in initiative especially with the encounters where you fight swarms of enemies
Talking about brain drain gloves, there are gloves of baneful striking which is really good imo. They give 1d4 penalty to saving throws for 2 turns after weapon attacks. Imo it's more flexible as it does not need a condition (i.e. must do psychic damage) and it affects all saving throws (str, dex, and cons including the mental too). But ofc no stacking to 7 stacks though. It's easier to achieve imo with some tradeoff as mentioned before. The gloves of automaton, I missed it because of existing bug in the game that even if you save Barcus Wroot from the windmill and talk to him at Grymforge, he still won't appear in camp hence not appear as well in last light inn. The reddit posts I found said that you should initiate dialogue with him at Grymforge with other characters (not your main) in order to not having the bug :(
I heard that the alternate dragonborn bard will show up if youve knocked Alfera out before you progress to act two and trigger that Dark Urge scene. I havent tried it but maybe shell be at LLI if you do that and kill the dragonborn???
Four months later and I can tell people are still sleeping on Radiating Orb and the Luminous Armor. I'm using it for my Honor run and tried looking to see what it looks like with different dyes. And no one has posted a picture of the Luminous armor dye variations!! Literally half the armor suits have dye variation pictures out there but arguably the best armor in the game is still missing!!
It's not that people sleep on it. It's just that it's meh. It has the same problem as all debuff builds: the best debuff is killing the enemy. There are very few fights where debuffing an enemy is worth while over killing it.
@@Nerazmus Um, Radiating Orb builds aren't for debuffing One enemy . . its for debuffing ALL the enemies (and making them further debuff and damage themselves on their turns). The build doesn't reduce your damage output. You still get to use all the big offensive damage spells and strategies. Its pure bonus on top of damage! The only 'weakness' Luminous Armor has is that better armors provide more AC or other defensive effects . . but by your own admission . . . you should be killing enemies, not worrying about defense, and the Radiating Orb debuffs provide more defense than any armor can.
Worth pointing out that coruscation ring didn't work with spirit guardians. Tried many different combinations of illuminating myself and none of them worked. Also enemies lose a stack of radiant orb at the start of their turn. So for example if you just have the gloves and deal 1 instance of radiant damage per turn (which is likely if you aren't hasted) you don't actually get any benefit save for a -1 to their AOOs. Now to be fair I didn't have the armor, so maybe that changes everything. I also wasn't light cleric who probably gets the most mileage out of the ring assuming it works. But in my playthrough I found the radiating items to be very underwhelming. The armor is also only 15 AC so it's hard to believe you'd want to keep that for the entire game.
Yeah, I've noticed it doesn't work after recording this. It seems like when BG3 tooltips say "deal damage with spells" they actually mean "deal damage with a targeted spell." AoE spells often are excluded. If you think the 15ac is an actual problem you haven't thought it through. When it gives a -7 to enemy attack rolls that 17 becomes a 24. More importantly, your allies 22 becomes a 29. Its the best AC item in the entire game.
Im finding more and more items to boost the dmg of magic missle into ballistic category. Thanks. Im gonna have to test the ring of absolute power, hex and boots of arcane bolstering to see if they add dmg to each missile as they should.
Shrieking song(1-4) wet status+lightning charge(2), ring of callous glow(2), empowered evocation(5) are the modifiers that apply to EACH missile that ive discovered and tested so far. 48-72 dmg with a lvl 1 spell slot, the spell cant miss and no saves against it. 108-162 at 6th level upcast btw. (plus 2-16x2 from the lightning charges detonating, not sure if the item modifiers effect this dmg)
14:00 I still hope that some modder will show some mercy with me and change the spells Cloud of Daggers, Fire Wall, Spirit Guardians, Insect Plague, Moon Beam to the tabletop rules ( proc only at the beginning of the enemy's turn, and when an enemy enters the AoE, e.g. via Forced Movement) that Solasta also used. - Until then, all these spells are in my eyes basically unusable, as in: of broken power level. Spirit Guardians, THE Cleric staple spell, is just the worst offender, as it weaponizes movement, on the list.
Not sure why you went with the Brain Drain Gloves instead of the Ring of Mental Anguish. They give mental fatigue when enemies fail a saving throw against your spells or abilities. I had a build on wyll where I was mainly using hunger of hadar, and it would easily stack up on enemies inside. This made it way easier to cast damage focused spells directly into the hunger AoE and reliably get full damage.
To the Boots of Arcane Bolstering You need to be threatened. Could you use the daredevil gloves to make this better for a close/medium range caster? I’m thinking you get disadvantage normally if you’re in “threatened” or close range? Spit balling here by the way. Hope it helps! Thank you for the video sir. ❤
I wonder if there's a big list somewhere of what equipment at what locations provides lightning charges, momentum, reverberation, heat, arcane synergy, arcane acuity, arcane charge, force conduit, radiating orb and mental fatigue.
I wonder if being a construct prevents you from being healed by an ally. Spells like cure wounds in 5e DnD don’t work on things like constructs or undead. In the same vein; I wonder if you can get healed from potions as a construct, or drink potions in general? 🤔
Question for acuity: it says when you do 'damage with a weapon attack'. Does the extra damage from things like the +2 poison damage ring count for the 'damage'?
I dont really understand how how the orbs work. sacred flame applies 6, guardian spirit 4 and radiance 2. callous glow ring does not seem to make a difference in the number of stacks applied, they dont do a seperate instance of radiant damage. the gloves show 2 dc rolls, one 13 (the items dc?) and the other 18 (my chars dc?), passing both still applies the orb with no difference in number of stacks. also, I am not sure the armour works exactly as it should. when I stand next to an enemy and use radiance it gets a lot of stacks. when I use sacred flame it gets no stacks at all, instead sacred flame adds +2 to orbs to the unit I hit thats far away. Coruscation Ring I dont think works with spirit guadrians which might be the reason why it gets 4 instead of 6.
@@Kem3s So I wouldn't need to go to extreme lengths to get them again? What's done is done revisting the same shit is boring. lol you know at least have a new game + and doll up a new game + with options to change things around.
can anyone confirm the brain drain works to 7 stacks tho? i remember itried it and it did not go higher than 2 turns... it seemed stupidly strong if it did go higher so i just left it after testing it once
I just tested it, and it does seem to stop at 2 turns. There is definitely something bugged about it, because it fails to stack when the enemy has 1 turn. I'm frustrated that this slipped past me in testing, thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Sorry, it means "Crowd Control." Its a term that (I think) came out of World of Warcraft to refer to abilities which impose status effects and debuffs on enemies. Hypnotic Pattern, Sleep, Color Spray, and Trip Attack are all examples of crowd control.
Which act 3 ring were you talking about that will let you get the 7 stacks in a single turn? I’m drawing a blank. Edit: I think i may have misunderstood, I’m guessing you meant you could do some crazy stuff with band of the mystic scoundrel after you get 7 stacks in 1 turn
I know this isn’t act 2 but in your act one weapons you really forgot the hamarhraft. The things potential for abuse is of the charts. The level two monks ability to make jumps for free and by level 5 I’m doing 40 jumps in a turn. I’m not even proficient with the weapon. Can’t wait to see what the gloves of reverberation do with it. Lightning charges give you +1 damage every other turn doing 40d4+40 damage he play style is absolutely stupid though and not really fun. And I’m only really playing it as long as I am to see how much I can break the game. Honestly when you start doing 20 jumps or more a turn it gets monotonous.
I would have included shield of devotion. You can buy it from the trader at last light it gives you shield bash, an extra first level spell slot, and the shield of devotion aid spell which heals you by ten and increases max hp by ten
No shout out for Armor of agility? Best armor for a dex ranger without a doubt. 17 base AC and then add your modifier. 23 AC with DEX 20 and that's without any other AC gear. You can get as high as AC 26 and still have your stealth bonus. Turns rangers into death machines. Plus you get +2 to all saving throws.
The power of arcane acuity items represents a lot more theorycraft than consistency. Here's what i mean: The downside of the arcane acuity items is that, generally speaking, the later in the fight that you use a control spell the less valuable it is. Enemies tend to use their most powerful attacks early , so cc-ing them after this point is of exponentially less value. This means that items that only provide a DC bonus after some amount of set up - even a single round - are far less good, because there is a greater chance that the wearer himself will get downed or cc-ed while he is dicking around. This is especially the case when you compare items in the same slot that increase your spell DC directly, allowing you to simply cast whatever you were going to cast FIRST without elaborate combos. Yes, there are some corner case builds, like sword bard, that can potentially get some mileage out of this buff by attacking a ridiculous amount of times and then casting a spell. However, even in this case, consider that the best status effect in the game is death. Simply put something in that slot that would have increased this theoretical sword bard's damage and use those multiple attacks to just kill whatever you were going to CC instead of going for some elaborate combo. It's just more reliable in the long run.
Good points, but I don't think you've thought this through to the end. I've noticed good CRPG players get trapped in a paradigm of upfront damage being the one and only reliable way to play. But its clearly not. Some of the things you say here depend on that kind of, I think flawed, thinking. For example, is there a greater risk that you'll get downed/CCed in the first round of combat, or that you'll fail to kill your priority target in the first round? What if you invest all in on killing priority targets before they can act but miss a few to many times? Now they are alive, and you have nothing to show for it. Of course, you can build for this to be extremely unlikely, but the same things goes for surviving the first round. If you build your team around it you can reliably survive long enough to stack up the overpowered effects Larian has introduced to the game. Besides that, and you mentioned this, there are a ton of builds that can fully stack Arcane Acuity and still cast spells on the first round. You say they are better off just building damage and killing there target, but there are far fewer builds that kill bosses in a single turn than can CC them in single turn. Once a target is CCed they die instantly.
Yeah, not just CRPG players, but even some TT players who spend too much time in optimization threads and nova spreadsheets. It's easy to get caught up in viewing everything from a flow-chart/states machine perspective. Not directed at @rwulf as in good faith I think they are just making a discussion out of concerns. Anyways, just to add to supporting the potential of arcane acuity: a good consistent and effective example of utilizing arcane acuity is dual wielding crossbows and using a bonus action ranged attack to get a trigger. An example of synergizing it with another build item would be a certain ring from act3 that allows illusion and enchantment spells to be cast as a bonus action after a weapon attack.
