Pillars of Eternity

• You can assign hotkeys to abilities by pressing the key in question while hovering over the ability. This is extremely handy with frequently used abilities such as Fighters' Knock Down.

• Especially on higher difficulties, Pillars is largely a game of finding enemies' weak points and focusing on them. For example an enemy with high Deflection but low Will is better dealt with Will-targeting attacks than physical ones. Weaknesses can (and should) also be created; For example the Priest spell "Divine Mark" targets Will and lowers the target's Deflection, making it easier for your physical attackers to deal with the aforementioned type of enemy.

• Crowd control is king in combat. Using all your available tools to keep your enemies prone, stunned, paralyzed, charmed, stunned or otherwise incapable of acting (or preferably acting for you) is the most reliable way of making even the toughest fights go your way.

• The more enemies of a certain type (excluding people) you defeat, the more information you'll have about their strengths and weaknesses. Their detailed statistics and descriptions can be found in the Bestiary section of the Cyclopedia.

• Entering "Scouting mode" (alt by default) not only puts your character in stealth mode but also automatically searches your surroundings for traps and hidden objects. Detecting things (and dealing with them in the case of traps and locks) is based solely on a character's Mechanics skill, so one character should focus heavily on it while the rest can spend their points elsewhere.

• Detecting traps is a Mechanics vs. trap level check while disarming them is a harder check. There's no randomness; either you have the skill or you don't.

• Speaking of recruits, hiring "generic" party members at Gilded Vale is actually a good idea; they're inexpensive, help fill out your party, and once you have a full roster of named characters you can use them to garrison your stronghold and run errands for you there.

• Some tooltips can be a little misleading, for example the Cipher talent Greater Focus ("The Cipher has +10 maximum Focus") is far better than it sounds as it also provides +10 to their base Focus, enabling the use of higher level abilities earlier in each fight.

• The difference between "AoE", "Friendly AoE", and "Foe AoE" is really important. Wizards tend to have the flashiest offensive spells, but Ciphers and Druids are also offensive powerhouses and have a much easier time not incinerating the rest of the party in the process.

• Don't neglect crafting and enchanting, both can be done from very early on and are easy to do as they require neither separate crafting stations or abilities. Even a simple accuracy or damage enchant helps a lot, and even powerful Unique items can be improved provided you don't try to apply an enchantment type already present on them.

• Some fights, generally ones taking place after a scene, won't let you get into a proper formation beforehand. For this reason it can be a good idea to put your tank into the party leader position (click and hold down on their portrait) and from there sort your characters from toughest to squishiest to avoid having your backliners ending up at the front at the start of such fights.

• Don't break engagement unless absolutely necessary. Your cursor will turn red if you try to move a character who's engaged in melee; breaking it without using an ability to avoid the disengage attack and they'll eat a ton of damage, often enough to be fatal for non-tanks.

• Speaking of AoEs, high Intellect provides not only bonus range but also some spell shaping; the outer, yellow section of an offensive AoE spell hits only enemies, even if allies are within it too.

• It's always worth exploring every area fully, some party members are slightly out of your way. After picking up two at Gilded Vale, I recommend fully exploring the areas south and west, there are three more party members to be found between Gilded Vale and Dyrford Village.

• Ciphers leech focus based on damage dealt, so a cipher with a slow but powerful weapon will get fewer attacks but generate more focus per attack.

• A Spiritshifted Druid is considered unarmed and using both hands (claws) to attack, meaning their attacks benefit from both the "Weapon Focus: Peasant" and "Two Weapon Style" talents.

• For fresh Chanters, get Reny Daret's Ghost and ignore the Skeleton summon. Reny Daret's Ghost does good damage, stuns with backstabs and can be summoned behind enemy lines. The Skeletons instantly crumble to any damage and just fucking suck. You get relatively few new Chanter songs and invocations throughout the game, so make them count.

• I usually tell people to make their main a Cipher since they're powerful and one of the most dynamic classes, and they have tons of unique dialogue. Way more than any other class, and possibly more than all other classes put together. You also get the Cipher NPC last or close to last.

• You're probably going to want to stick with ranged DPS characters because as mentioned in the quote AOE is an issue, and the overall difficulty level of the game is no joke; you can't afford to just soak damage on characters not built for it.