What have been some of your takeaways and must haves?
Lost the first one to w’wargaz as I thought I could do it without a throw barb ( could not ) Cut to him summoning 3 swords at every party member. That dude is no joke with the legendary actions.
Started a new one playing as gale. Died early but chose to continue for practice. Ketheric was next trouble. He seems like a multi attack check. If you’re not aware every death within 40 feet of him is a new undead aoe birth. Dual crossbow thief warrior for crowd and oathbreaker for single target damage. About to go against the aspect and semi dreading it.
Only cleared about half of act 3 in the past, but plan to finish it with this gale honor practice save.
What have been your key takeaways from honor mode? Any must have builds or gear for your personal playstyle?
It’s been a good step up from tactician feeling different but not overly bs imo.
You must log in or # to comment.
My take away is that my 2H fighter with high and resistance thanks to Shadowheart has made Honor mode very easy. I’m halfway through act 3. Haven’t come close to TPK. Also stealing everything with my vampire bro helps considerably to gear up.
Laezels been in that role for me with the githyanki gear. She’s still falling occasionally.
What’s your go to 2h weapon?
I was using the watchers guide for a while, then Larethian’s Wrath for most of the game. Recently got the Giant Slayer. It is a beast.
Also I went Eldritch Knight for my fighter. Shield has saved my ass so many times I couldn’t justify maneuvers over it when I was already dealing decent damage and tanking like a hero of old!
I have yet to finish one. I got damn close and was about to sacrifice Gale for the win but forgot the hammer and that was that. I’ve gotten a bunch to act 2 or 3 but I really don’t like A3 all that much - so many tedious quest lines - and I tend to just start over as soon as I get sick of it.
I recently tried taking Ansur at level 10 as soon as I got to A3 and that was hilarious. I’ve only done the fight once and when I got there everyone was positioned right under him. At the end of turn 1 I had three people down and one at about 25% from basically a single attack. I didn’t even get to his big attack. I think I escaped and my game is technically on hold.
I cripple myself because I hate casters and paladins. My party every single game is Lae’zel as BM fighter, Karlach as throw barb, Shart as light cleric (usually in camp except during A2), Astarion usually as Monk or hand xbow ranger. Durge varies wildly, but obviously generally has to be a Cha character. I only use the other characters during their storylines.
Anyway it’s going shit. I’m taking a break from honor mode. I wish I could do the legendary effects on other game modes for practice. Some of them are particularly brutal if you aren’t prepared for them.
but forgot the hammer
What do you mean you forgot the hammer? You don’t need any hammer when Gale blows up. He goes up by himself and there is a cutscene and he goes boom.
Yeah but I had to side with the emperor first.
Yeah but you can still just send up Gale. As long as he is in your party when you get to the brainstem up to the final fight you can send him up there. Unless they changed it in a patch.
I don’t think so but I fucked up the dialog tree and died because I did not want to side with the emperor.
and died.
Yep, that’ll end the run.
I struggled with it a bit at first, probably because I hadn’t spent a ton of time in Tactician, so I was learning multiple layers of things in some encounters. With my current run, I’ve got all of the Act 2 map open but I haven’t started delving other than the Meenlock fight. Came very, very close to ending my run in the Owlbear Cave and with Grym.
At this point I’m running into the same issue I always have on hardcore/ironman/nuzlocke-style runs; I’ve passed the initial touch-and-go stage and reached the point where I’m confident in taking on fights, but I feel compelled to grind on lesser stuff before I proceed in order to give myself the best chance for the bigger stuff. I haven’t even done all of the Creche yet. I haven’t touched the run in weeks because it feels like work at this point.
My first attempt was with a Githyanki monk. Easy Peasy. Most mess-ups I had were due to misclicks. Like when I killed half of the guests at the Tiefling party.
I honestly think that honor mode is dumb. I ain’t playing through several hours only to wipe out because everything is done by the roll of dice and critical failures are a thing. I could save scum; but then why would I play honor mode if I was going to do that? It seems like a thing for a very specific type of player, and I am not in that group.
Honor mode is the only one with legendary actions. You can always just keep playing when you die.
I guess you could play on Custom to have legendary actions and have more than one save, right?
Not without mods, as legendary actions only come from activating honor mode.
@aaaa @BurnedOliveTree there’s an option to turn them on. So it’s not just honour mode, that’s just the mode that gives you one save and restart on death.
Don’t know. All I do know is that you cannot enable them for an already started game.
My 1st successful honor mode playthrough i did it as a vengeance paladin with shadowheart as a life cleric, astarion as a gloomstalker assassin, and wyll as a sorlock. I used invis potions and barrelmancy for all sorts of shenanigans. You can steal lots of stuff using an arrow of darkness or darkness the spell. Lots of great gear is just lying out in the open. You have to be really mercenary in honor mode. Feelings are for those who don’t have the golden dice. So kill anyone for good gear if you can get away with it. A good example is the lady near the gith creche. She gets murdered for her gear. Usually after a failed pickpocket attempt. Same with the creche trader. Try to do as many combats as you can because you won’t be overleveled like in normal playthroughs so you’ll need the xp.
Edit: Also I was playing dark urge because the fight against Orin is simple af when you play as dark urge who has slayer form.
We played through as a vengeance paladin, life cleric, evoker and rogue. We also played through as heroes, doing all of the heroic side quests except Us and the crossroads Gith and taking all of the good options. And in the end, we chose to fight instead of sacrificing our friend.
Was it difficult? Yes. But can you be a hero and beat honor mode? Oh yes. We did it our very first try.
@TwoBeeSan we succeeded on our first attempt and we did it by being heroes. We took the heroic path every time. Honestly, I feel like you haven’t REALLY bested Honor Mode unless you’ve played through as a hero.
These mortal lives did not expire. And we took the fight to Big Squishy without sacrificing our robed friend, robbed the devil in his own house, and taught the fae a deadly lesson twice.
@diotima @TwoBeeSan also pissed in shar’s face and smacked down more than a few sharrans. Taught grym a lesson in hosting guests and cazador learned the hard way not to underestimate anyone.
The gith learned not to piss off adventurers by torturing and killing innocent people.
Ansur learned not to jump to conclusions.
The emperor learned not to be a lying bitch.
And the netherbrain learned what a paladin smite feels like.
I’ve completed two Honor Mode runs and the only thing I still haven’t done is kill those two friggin Cambions in the tutorial fight. It’s not too much more difficult than tactician, but the more restrictive action economy makes the round limit and increased HP more difficult to work through. Best I’ve done is get the last one down to 12 HP before the ship crashes.
The rest isn’t much more difficult than Tactician though. A couple of Legendary Actions and the single save restriction are more of an annoyance than difficulty increase.
For builds: Thief Rogue 4/Swords Bard 6/Fighter 2(MC or Astarion), Eldritch Knight 11/War Cleric 1(Lae’zel) or Wildheart Barbarian 8/Thief Rogue 4(Karlach), Light Cleric 11/Tempest Sorcerer 1(Shadowheart), and Abjuration Wizard 10/White Draconic Sorcerer 1/Tempest Cleric 1(Gale) make really short work of everything from lvl 5-6 on. There are less than 10 encounters in the game that this party can’t finish in 3 rounds at that point.
