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Would be too much hassle to post and format for GoG forums. There you go. People have been asking for it or quite some time. Since I don't need the space below the post, feel free to leave your feedback here.

Incorrect statements:

(1) only role that really benefits from 25PB is something melee

All roles benefit from 25 pt buy, since there are enough good/great weapons/items that any class can do consistent damage without expending per rest resources. If you're not doing this you're missing half the game.

(2) the fact only unfair-viable melee companion is Valerie and you do need more than one melee.

Every companion save Jubilost is melee viable, and most benefit from being there for positioning/flanking purposes.

(3) all dex builds are out of the window.

Dex melee is inferior to STR melee due to Enlarging effects boosting strength. But there are ways and reasons (position for songs and spells, say) to have a DEX meleer aside from pure damage.

(4) Animal companions don’t count for much here as they don’t have mirror image and there is no way to give it to them. In effect it means that you will spend a minute buffing them before they get oneshot and you are left with less slots and wasted time.

You can tank the whole game with Okbo. It doesn't take a minute to buff him and most of the buffs are long lasting. Usually even a one shot crit isn't quite enough, especially if you top him off with Aid and the like, and giving him Outflank via Huntmaster makes him an offensive force.

(5) What you need is over-time effects that force a lot of checks. If you are stacked enough on casting stats/feats enemies are bound to fail even if it’s their strong save just by the sheer amount of saves forced. Only reasonable exception is glitterdust as it’s just that awesome.

Glitterdust is a second level spell that hits your own team and allows a save every round. The spell you're thinking of is Slow. If you're playing well over-time effects are fine but not great as you should be dispatching most enemies in a round or three. AoE control spells targeting weak saves are fine, especially debuffed by Shaken effects (that also turn on Shatter Defenses) and Archon's Aura and the like.

(6) By priorities you need:
Community III
Loyalty III
Divine III Although it might not happen as fast as you’d want.
Arcane III
Then every other primary III to unlock all advisors. Then whatever you have free advisor for, pretty much.

First priority is Divine 60 to unlock Arcane and Arcane 40 to unlock Teleportation Circles to save tons of traveling time. You can do that by building crosses of Shrines with a monument in the middle in your first three villages and keeping Harrim free to do events using all available crisis points. Any time not spent on rank ups/artisans delays quality items and various other kingdom benefits (immunities/mountain climbing, etc...). That includes rest. You get a lot more songs and bombs per rest than spells. Use a Bard and Jub and build everyone to fight.

Finally, mercs suck. Every companion gets powerful rewards from their companion quests and superior point buys.

No. casters only need 19 starting stat and some con. Nothing else matters. Archers are a waste of space since you could have sorc in the slot. Melee needs all that PB cause you can ramp AC off it. No rocket science. No, they are not. It's unfair guide, not casual guide. You won't be able to do even mansion with a dex build on unfair without a billion reloads. Not you can't. Pets get one-shot. by most anything and are glorified meatbags. Free meatbags are ok though.

(5) What you need is over-time effects that force a lot of checks. If you are stacked enough on casting stats/feats enemies are bound to fail even if it’s their strong save just by the sheer amount of saves forced. Only reasonable exception is glitterdust as it’s just that awesome. Slow doesn't do much. And you ain't getting shatter in A1. After there is stinking cloud and other hard CC. Who even takes slow when you can get clouds? You are not getting divine 60 and arcane 60 in a timely manner. While you can get both loyalty and community for 4 artisans. Only decent reward is the one valerie gets. Everyone else gets jack all. Most companions are 20pb with garbage stat allocation. Val is awesome cause 34 effective PB and she isn't saddled with some garbage like inquisitor and a useless god. Ekun is ok-ish, but his favored enemy is messed up, coupled with meh pet choice. Nok-nok gets oneshot by everything and it's dog, so not viable for unfair either.

Conclusion: thanks. Had a laugh. Especially at calling 58AC a tank. l2p.

(1) You can play a pure nuker if you want to, but that's far from the only option. Ranged characters should be your biggest damage dealers since they get so many full attacks. Every turn with a move is a turn without a full attack. Ranged toons move less. No wonder you think meleers have to be bulletproof - your fights are lasting three times as long as mine since you don't know how to deal ranged damage.

(2) You can pretend I'm casual if you want - everyone elese can see the truth. All my attachments are Unfair. Name a fight - I'll post pics blowing it out. On Unfair. With the companion of your choice in melee.

(3) I'm finishing up a playthrough with Okbo in melee (I don't really tank and spank since I play more offenese than defense) and he got one shot once by a Greater Zombie. Got cocky and should have had him on the Cleric instead. Other than that he's been great. Even survived two double 20 crits.

(4) I don't use Cloud because I don't need to cheese the game to cover up my shortcomings. It's a better game without it. Plus my fights don't last long enough for it to be that good against toons without a weak fort save. Slow is enemies only and stagger is a big game. Maybe your tanks wouldn't need to be so bulletproof if you learned how to use it.

(5) You might not be hitting Arcane 40 in time, but I did before Womb. Made a huge difference. All Masterpieces by curse 6. Play better.

(6) Everyone gets a substantial reward. Play the game sometime. You might enjoy it. I don't play Nok much, but again if you're getting one shot all the time, why not use your time playing better instead of writing guides full of incomplete at best information?

(7) Laugh all you like. I've got facts and evidence. You don't.

https://i.imgur.com/nME8uYX.png
https://i.imgur.com/iYQxQqn.png that's damage. Not whatever you're doing. Your suffer with micro instead of face-tanking is sub-optimal and costs time It's a guide how to beat unfair with the least effort. Not on how to challenge yourself with self-limitations. You can do the same, but in reverse order and get artisans faster while not delaying arcane much, if at all. Be more efficient. You don't need tele circles till varn is done. No. Linzy is a dex bard and those are garbage. Jae is saddled with inquisitor and even with undead path only reaches equivalent of 18wis. And doesn't have guarded health goodies. Ekun is weaker than a sorc a tristian still can't hold a candle to erastil cleric. Harrim too. Again, it's a guide, not an instruction how to suffer through unfair with stock companions while wasting time on excessive micro. screens above. there you can have https://i.imgur.com/I5K6uRo.png witch being oneshot by a sorc for good measure. Gl doing it with a ranger. And yes, she oneshots lantern king too. Several times.

That's an 8th level spell you can't even cast until lvl 16. Then you blow your wad in ten seconds roll over and go back to sleep. They've got a pill for that, you know. What I'm doing is that much damage every round without having to spend any resources at all so I can last a whole dungeon.

Which lets me do things way earlier than you thought possible. Because you have to rest too much.

The only thing I'm suffering is your misinformation that portrays the game as much more difficult than it is and thus spoils the fun of many new players.

I had my artisans up so early I had a ton of great gear in time for VTomb. That was the whole point. Having a circle/tower on the far side of Lake Silvermere is essential to saving a ton of time on ch. 4. Completed it in 5 days total from leaving capital to return, including no rest clear of tomb as can be seen in the attached pic. You're not doing that with Stormbolts you can't cast yet and crappy mercs who can't shoot a bow.

My Linzi is dominant. Sorry you suck so bad. Good Hope, Dirge, Inspire Courage/Heroics, even Frightening Tune in chs 5 and 6. Good spells to target Will early and Fortitude late. Her effective Dispel, Greater level is now 23. Can hold her own in melee with Image which puts her in good position for shouts and songs. Late with Vitals and two-weapon can even chip in with some damage.

Your guide is poor. I'm not suffering, far from it. I'm blowing the game out and having a ball. Then again, I've explored more than one third the game. You should try it sometime. And you shouldn't be misleading new players about what's viable and enjoyable in this game.

Now you have three Valerie Bard builds, one Fighter 5 / Bard 6 / Dragon Disciple 4 / Eldritch Knight 5 here, and in your new guide one Fighter 1 / Bard 7 / Dragon Disciple 4 / Vivi 3 / Slayer 3 / Scaled Fist 1 married to the Melee Sorcerer and one Fighter 5 / Bard 11 / Dragon Disciple 4 paired to the Sword Saint

Would you care to elaborate their different purposes, strenghts and weaknesses?

Also, I would be grateful if you could include a brief "how to survive with a very low will save" section.

First one is am evolutionary step to both of the later ones. Now the difference between #2 and #3 is easy. the former is is damage-oriented with minimal bard investment and uses robes. The latter is as much of a full bard as you'll ever need since level 6 bard spells are shit anyways and wears armor to get quick actions song so you can switch lingering easy and use both dirge and song at the same time. Mainly cause move action song likes to bug out if you try to switch it. Probably has something to do with AI trying to use full actions to attack. Whatever the reason might be, it's pita. As to why one is for sorc and the other for saint it's cause sorc gets frightful in actV, so he doesn't need dirge to begin with.

And there is a section about saves. Where you need is bestow grace, so it's not that low to begin with. Saint in question sits at 31 will with bestow by endgame. It's enough. And confusion and such are countered by heart/Heroic invocation/FoM. There are not so many instances where you have to save. And if domination effects were not bugged it'd be of no concern at all.

Thank you for your answer, I read the brief section about saves, but had the impression you had written about this topic at greater lenght in other threads and thought it would be nice to concentrate all that information in the guide.

BTW, if you were to drop the Erastil Cleric's pet, what would you replace it with?

For erastil, probably plant. Early-game barkskin is nice and you'd get mind blank late, so better than nothing. Although without a pet I'd strongly consider abadar nobility+travel to use as a discount freebooter. Also elemental swarm is a good spell, plus you get free dimension door and speed increase.
There is an option to go with a level of monk and protection instead of travel, but clerics are not made for tanking anyways, so it's easier to just not bother. In fact I'd drop vivi dip wholesale if you are not taking community domain. Another good thing about nobility is you never will have to learn heroism spells on a sorc, so that's decent. Downside is no longbow proficiency for ye. Would probably have to either take whatever else for shatter and use bows with bracers anyways or switch to crossbows or something.

Not to say you're lying, maybe you're indeed a god of isometric rpgs, but what you say is really doesn't match up with my experience with Kingmaker. Early unfair is without a doubt the hardest isometric experience i ever had, because of how inflated the stats of the enemies are. Unless you're excessively reloading or resting after every encounter i just don't see how are you doing the things you claim. Maybe you're MC is so strong he carries the team since the level one? Im pretty sure you can make do with whatever companions after you get through 1/3 of the game(as soon as you get certain abilities like deadly earth, pretty much nothing can stop you). Im not convinced you can do it from the start without massive reloads or rest spam.
Im pretty sure there's a walkthrough of a guy on youtube who run unfair with 6 sylvan sorcs, which is probably one of the best classes especially early and he didn't have an easy time either, despite being knowledgeable about the rules and mechanics.

Pretty sure that @Bezhukov was not talking about "new users" that start out on "unfair". I would hope that anyone like that (does that species even exist?) would take a hint from the word "unfair".

No doubt the first four levels (especially the first two) you're playing a different game. I've done that once which is enough for me. I now start on Hard then kick it up to Unfair at five. The key to my approach is leveraging team synergies. InEffect's builds are all solo builds that are decent enough, but he misses out on some of the things you can do in a field of +15 from team effects that you can't get away with on your own. My MCs are solid but the basic concept is that everyone improves the team and everyone can do reasonable damage with weapons.

With less rest and good Kingdom Management I get better items than he does and things snowball from there. There are four or five broken things (like Deadly Earth) that I just don't use to avoid trivializing the game. The result is a game that remains somewhat challenging played as designed with every companion having a role to play. I'm usually not a powergamer, it's just that this game is so well designed that my usual play style ended up being anong the most powerful and enjoyable things you can do and can readily handle enything that Unfair throws at you.

So aint playing on unfair. Problem solved. Case closed.

Good advice. Inspiring Command gives 2 Insight AC (in addition to AB) to your team, 3 + WIS times per rest.

Dream on Alice. Bestow only works on Good characters, Heart is rnd/lvl save boost or delay after the fact (bad action economy), and Invocation is Fear only. Shake it Off radius is 18ish ft, but you can always critical miss a save. Immunity/amelioration is the best best via Reg's Cloak, Spawn Cloak, Paladin, and Forest Knight's bracers.

Alternatively you can interrupt casters with the ranged characters and Sonic spells he doesn't know how to use.

"The latter is as much of a full bard as you'll ever need since level 6 bard spells are shit"

Just ignore him when he says shit like this. He's afraid to admit when he doesn't know what he's talking about. Bard 17 is gold. I'd go Bard 19 for spell pen and full Dispel, Greater, but you can afford to toss in a couple splashes at the end if that's your style.