Pillars of Eternity

Character Creation & Early Game Advice

• The base game's group members cover all classes besides Barbarian, Monk and Rogue who you can pick up in the White March expansion. Recommended level for the White March is around 7.

• All classes and companions are viable, even on Path of the Damned. Cipher is a popular main character choice as they have the most unique dialogue choices and the Cipher companion is both relatively unpopular and comes in late. Fighter, Paladin or Ranger are all fairly simple if you don't want to micromanage much.

• The Temple of Eothas dungeon in Gilded Vale is much easier to tackle after you've recruited either some generic henchmen or the Priest and Chanter companions found in the nearby areas of Magran's Fork and Caed Nua, respectively. It's also an option to go around checking new areas for more party members until your group of 6 is full before going for quests or dungeons.

• All characters can be retrained from level 1 for a low cost at most towns, so don't worry about making permanent mistakes.

General Advice

• Pick up everything you can find and sell all gear you don't need as your stash has infinite space and items can be put in it at any time, even when looting.

• Out-of-combat consumables like food don't need to be assigned to hotbars, you can use them quickly by dragging the items to the character model in the inventory screen.

• Scouting Mode (Alt by default) acts both as stealth mode and search mode for detecting traps and hidden objects. Object detection (alongside lockpicking and trap handling) is based solely on a character's Mechanics skill, so having one person focus heavily on it is recommended, especially as hidden things are present in almost all areas.

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

• The more monsters of a certain type you defeat, the more information you'll have about their strengths and weaknesses. Check the Bestiary section of the Cyclopedia for their detailed information.

• NPCs with gilded names are Kickstarter backer characters and the "visions" you see talking to them are backer-written and irrelevant to the story, so you can freely ignore them.

• Few quests are permanently missable, the main exception being those involving (mid-game location)
  the Brackenbury sanitarum
  which should be completed during Act 2. A certain quest relating to an army later in the game seems narratively urgent, but has no time limit either.

Combat Advice

• Accuracy is the most important offensive stat overall as high Accuracy means not only fewer misses/grazes, but also more critical hits which translate to both higher damage and longer duration of status effects.

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

• Especially on higher difficulties, finding and targeting enemies' weakest defenses is key to winning fights. Weaknesses can (and should) also be created and most debuffs help a lot with this, for example the Priest spell "Divine Mark" targets Will defense and its effect lowers Deflection defense, making it easier for your physical attackers to deal with an otherwise hard-to-hit opponent.

• Crowd control is very important. Keeping your enemies prone, paralyzed, petrified, charmed or otherwise incapable of acting (or acting for you) makes life much easier. However be mindful that enemies under charm effects will count as allies, so they'll for instance benefit from your buffing spells and avoid the yellow "foe only" parts of area effects.

• Keep your enemies flanked if possible to reduce their Deflection defense. Making good use of flanking is especially important if you have a Rogue relying heavily of sneak attacks in your group, although several other common status effects enable sneak attacks as well.

• Higher Intellect increases the coverage of your area spells but not the part which can hit allies (red AoE), making it purely beneficial.

• Some fights that start right after a scene won't let you get into a proper formation beforehand. A good idea is to put your main 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.

• Don't break engagement unless you have a good reason to. 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 can lead to the character taking heavy damage from free enemy hits.

Class-specific Advice

• 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.

• Unlike in most RPGs, Monks can wear armor and wield weapons just as well as anyone else without suffering extra penalties. A Monk in medium armor strikes a solid balance between survivability and attack speed.

• Barbarians actually benefit from Intellect more than most classes since it increases the range of their many area attacks.

• 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, 'Reny Daret's Ghost' is probably a more reliable Incantation than the Skeleton summon due to the fragile nature of the latter. The duration is quite a bit shorter though, so keep that in mind. Both are best used for summoning them behind enemy lines for the purposes of flanking or being a bother to ranged threats.