Er4din

It only spawns from the elven vendor in Brynn port, which of course itselfisnt guaranteed. in my experience, any given item that is sold by port merchants can be reliably obtained in 2 merchant rotations.

Even if it doesnt spawn here, its not the end of the world. You can purchase a tier 2 mace upon arriving in Mannshire and play with that instead. At this level, Militia Morningstar is your best alternaative, as it has 19 base damage, as well as stagger and innate bleed chance.

Hey, thanks. That sounds like a great innovation. If you are willing to reset the run until bran spawns, this can be done consistently. As the guide describes, the early game is lacking in offensive skills until level 7-8, so it can be a little rough. Ive been contemplating rejecting pathfinder and ever vvigilant in favor of an earlier Setup. But im not sure how this would meaningfully change the state of the build in the hands of a beginner player.

I might just add a note suggestingreplacements for the survival investment that this build takes

Heyo, that is a brilliant question.

Medium armor was buffed noticeably in the Blood Omens patch. The changes to Custom adjustments allow the combination of medium armor with light boots, which offer fantastic dodge and counter chance values.

Furthermore, the addition of entirely new gear pieces like the Border Guard Birgandine and the Blademaster boots further help hone into this new-isb medium armor dodge archetype.

I've thought about how this build would perform in medium gear, and ive discussed the concept privately with a couple people. My personal opinion is that moving into medium armor does not play into the strengths of this build, and is instead a sidegrade which helps split your "eggs" between a larger number of "baskets" when it comes to your defenses.

The core principle which rules over this build is the use of dodge and enemy-fumbled strikes to stretch your light shield's block power as much as possible, giving you near total damage immunity while in the heat of combat. To remind - dodge turns hits into fumbles, which cannot crit or apply special effects like bleed ot daze, and also deal half damage. Since the damage is halved, that is half as much damage that your block power needs to absorb, all while having access to the insane Block Power Recovery available to all light shields.

As it is, this build already takes next to no damage as early as level 16, when it gets Hold the Line! from shields. This is also around the time when i would expect the player to switch into tier 4 light armor, with individual pieces of tier 3 or 5 mixed in depending on availability.

In all of those 16 levels, there is no time to pick up custom adjustments, which is required for a medium armor dodge build. In other words, theres no way to remain in medium armor past tier 3 without meaningfully compromising the skill order.

I think that approaching the build with a medium armor mindset definitely has merit if you are planning to play until the ultra late game and collect a full collection of tier 5 unique gear. I think with that end goal, medium armor does come out on top in terms of power.

To achieve this, I would probably delay moment of retribution, Not this Time, and Sudden Lunge, changing the skill order level 8-15 to Blade maintanence, embodiment of resilience, fencer stance, Brace for impact, Battleforged, Elusiveness, Custom Adjustments, Last Bastion and still taking Hold the Line! at level 16.

I have to say, were approaching dangerously close to it being a different build, as we are trading off the proactive utility of sudden lunge which can turn off an enemy for 2 turns, for teh passive defensive utility of medium armor.

I cannot vouch for the effectiveness of this approach levels 11-20, but i am reasonably certain that it will work in the lategame.

That being said, if youre just keen to try out the new dodge focused medium armor, i highly recommend you check out my Blademaiden guide instead. It perfectly showcases this emergent new archetype and in my not-so-humble opinion is the best 2h sword build currently in the game.

You can check it out here:

https://gamestegy.com/post/stoneshard/1721/blademaiden-arna-2h-sword

Hey. Thanks for checking out the build.

yes, it definitely still works in 0.9.4 but there have ben several changes

1) There was a bug wish dagger counter crits which had them deal less damage than they were supposed to. Blood Omens fixed that.

2) Thrown daggers deal noticeably more damage in the early game. a point blank dagger throw deals more damage han a regular attack. its worth relying on / using thrown daggers for longer, and its worth stacking up on tier 2/3 daggers for throwing pueposes as you move through the game

3) Lighting changes made stealth more dynamic and complex. in late game dungeons both the skill floor and skill ceiling rose this patch.

Additionally, a recent hot fix reduced sound's ability to penetrate walls and wall corners, so you have to position a bit more aggressively when trying to lure enemies with shouting.

None of these changes fundamentally changed the build or broke it in any way.

the changes to the light and sound system introduced several new techs -

You can collect some stones before entering the dungeon. you can throw them to cause noise and split tightly packed enemies. the noise from a thrown rock has a lower radius than shouting - i encourage you to experiment with the new sound system and find setups that work for you.

Thank you, you’re too kind. I’m glad you like it.