Alright, I've put up with this game so far, but I had to lower the difficulty to Normal.

Now, Tristian died on me, even though I did his and Jaethal's quests. Don't see a way to prevent it. Game's literally impossible at this point, since the other Cleric in the game is total shite and I'm about level 16.

What the fuck were you thinking with this? Are you legitimately mentally ill? Wish I didn't waste my time with this at all.

Deaths are mostly random and only some of them depend on quests done. FoD cut-scenes are 100% random because if your companion doesn't save it's done.
Pretty sure if you do both Tristian and Jae quests who kills who is random.

Endgame stretch is not bad now. I did it when you were stuck with permanent 50% ASF bug and there was no real way to counter wild hunt(now blind-fight gives immunity from gaze). The whole endgame is annoying and tedious, but not too hard atm.
You also can go lower on difficulty if you struggle and do better next time. This game expects at least some level of optimization from your builds because it's impossible to balance around bad ones. And it expects you to be buffed at all times.

I don't have blind fight since invisible enemies or blindness aren't a problem throughout most of the game, so there was no point in investing in it. Both my clerics and bard are dead, so no FoM (other than scrolls).

So no, the game doesn't require optimization. It's just a matter of knowing what you'll face in the last chapter and having to spec around it. That is absolute trash game design. Literally nothing in your build matters, except if you have Blind fight, in which case you win.

Doesn't even matter if you get FoM on your companions, since there's a chance that they'll randomly die, according to what you said.

Well first time I've done it I had to load on my hard-save before and to stock up on scrolls. Not too bad after that as scrolls and UMD fix most thing and it doesn't really matter what your team is so long as your main is decent enough.

Okay, somehow I missed that you can buy scrolls, including FoM, just outside the house... So at least that's there and the Wild Hunt are no longer a problem. I'm still salty that Tristian is dead. Though it makes me feel like I'll need to play a cleric if I replay this again.

Am back here now and it's honestly still a fairly huge pain in the arse. Copy-paste the same groups of enemies 1000 times, and off we go.

Have read different things regarding survival of Octavia + Regongar when you romance one of them. Some places said they'd both survive as long as you complete their companion quests and save the slaves/don't chase Janush. I romanced Octavia, but Regongar still died. Kind of prepared for the gut punches by making Valerie pure bard (1 level aside) and Jaethal as sword and board, but I still think it kinda sucks that companions you have played the entire game with is just blanked killed like this. Yes, yes, C&C, but it still feels terrible. Must have been better ways to deal with it than THIS.

Thankfully Tristian and Jaethal survived at least. Found some places saying both needed to be present for the quests so they could witness the important moments, but I never used Jaethal (her quest aside). She still survived though.

Also saw how darn hard it is to actually get her to NOT sacrifice her daughter this time. Freakin' miracle that I happened to pick the options that made that happen the first time through, entirely blind. Because this time I had to reload several times because the option never came up. Pure luck really. Would have sucked to have her and/or Tristian die on me the first time, as I used both.

Just another argument for having mercs ready once you hit the House.