Workaround for greater invisibility bug

[atm]

This is for unfair difficulty.
OK, greater invisibility isn't working. This is pretty brutal, from a tactical sense, since particularly for the first half of the game, this is the easiest way to get enemies to be flat-footed. I nearly stopped my playthrough, but decided to consider myself to be playing in challenge mode, and try and figure out how to progress without invisibility. Sharing my findings here, and hoping someone can add if they have found any ways to get around the bugged invisibility.

1) Be a magus, or hire a magus merc (or three). I hired a sword saint merc. Maguses are amazing, and prescient strike is one of the most OP abilities in the game. Be aware that for all maguses except eldritch scions it lasts for 2 turns per charge (I think eldritch scion is bugged?), and functionally makes your enemy flat footed (even activates sneak attack, if you have it). This makes it superior to invisibility since enemies can't get around it with blind sight (or anything, as far as I know).
As a side note, I consider it vastly better than dimension strike, which I often don't even take, as you get 2 rounds of it for one point of arcane pool, vs 1 round for 2 points. You can stack both, however, activating prescient strike one round, then in the next round it should still be up when you use dimension strike, allowing you to hit flat-footed touch for that round.

2) Blind them. I am using the shiny dagger you get (I think?) from the gray garrison, with greater magic weapon to boost its enhancement bonus, and with improved critical. If you built for it, you could probably get a character that could crit about 40% of the time (loremaster dip for improved improved critical, improved critical, and a luck effect). I found it will blind even balors on a crit, and once you do that every attack against them treats them as flat footed (if they don't have blind sight). For such an early weapon, the dagger is holding up really well. For best effect, put it on a magus who can prescient strike to get the first couple of hits, and hopefully crit, thereby making the mob/boss flat footed thereafter.

3) Boost your attack really, really high. In the late game, you kind of have to do this anyway since a LOT of mobs, even trash, can see invisible. This means making use of a lot of support abilities. I am running: skald song (+2 attack), visions of madness (currently giving +5 attack for 3 rounds per charge), guarded hearth (+7), good hope (+2), instant enemy on ranger (+6), animal growth on pets (+4), plus all the standard stat boosting buffs. Cleric domains can be amazing if you have domain zealot (max level good will give you +10 for a round, which stacks with madness' +10, all of which stacks with +20 from true strike) and if you can stack enough you can generally still hit things. True strike/ vital strike will let you do nearly your normal damage against even very tough bosses.

4) Use touch attacks. Late game, hellfire ray is king. Blasters IMO aren't very viable early game since the mobs all have elemental resistance, but can work against cultists which don't have the resistance. I have not taken a blaster with my current group, but having a dedicated ranged-touch blaster would be another way to play without invisibility. Magus would be good, since prescient strike would allow you to be targeting flat-footed touch, which is generally negligible even on unfair.

Wondering if anyone else has found other ways to keep going on unfair without greater invisibility being available.

[Dave]

Everything is correct, it is the title that is misleading.

The invisibility bug is game breaking for certain specs, annoying for some other, and totally "who cares about it"-able for others yet.

So your "workaround" simply means play with specs not affected by it like full bab classes or maguses, or casters that target AC, avoid any archer etc.

And also go with mercenaries, to make up for the fact your story companions won't hit a wall in front of them at least for the first half of the game.

Ecxample: My main char is a ray focused arcane trickster who doesn't care about invisibility since he targets touch AC. I won't pick Lann in my party since he won't hit anything, and cross my fingers for Seelah (who at least is full bab melee).

Basically...throw away my current playthrough and start a new 1 with few specific clases and mercenaries.....not really great :(

[jutschi78]

What bug are you telling about?
I don't use invisibilty since short after you get the spell, most demons have true sight. I go the shatter defense route and touch attack and buffing the archers as far as i could. Oh, and evil eye, hampering hex and Wolfif touch sneak attack spells for the debuffs on his sneak attacks.

[Dave]

Originally posted by jutschi78:

What bug are you telling about?
I don't use invisibilty since short after you get the spell, most demons have true sight. I go the shatter defense route and touch attack and buffing the archers as far as i could. Oh, and evil eye, hampering hex and Wolfif touch sneak attack spells for the debuffs on his sneak attacks.

1. Shatter defense route requires lvl 7 on a full bab class, lvl 9 for a 3/4 AB class, even more for others
2. Until well after Drezen, only a small % of non-boss enemies have true-sight, meaning you can get to lvl 10-11 by using invisibility spells
3. Greater Invisibility last 1 round per level, estended is 2 round per level. It is the MAIN spell to manage to hit enemies on UNFAIR, until you manage to get shatter defenses on everyone (and manage to shaken your enemies)

The Bug is simply that Greater Invisibility doesn't give you the concealment buff, attacking flat footed AC. This since 1.2 hit.

[atm]

Originally posted by Dave:

Everything is correct, it is the title that is misleading.

The invisibility bug is game breaking for certain specs, annoying for some other, and totally "who cares about it"-able for others yet.

So your "workaround" simply means play with specs not affected by it like full bab classes or maguses, or casters that target AC, avoid any archer etc.

And also go with mercenaries, to make up for the fact your story companions won't hit a wall in front of them at least for the first half of the game.

Ecxample: My main char is a ray focused arcane trickster who doesn't care about invisibility since he targets touch AC. I won't pick Lann in my party since he won't hit anything, and cross my fingers for Seelah (who at least is full bab melee).

Basically...throw away my current playthrough and start a new 1 with few specific clases and mercenaries.....not really great :(

Ah apologies I will try and change the title.
But you don't have to throw away any playthrough - just swap out one or two characters from your current party for a merc or two that addresses the flat-footed issue. This mainly only applies for the first half of the game, since by the second half invisibility is not very useful anyway.

[Dave]

I found the FINAL workaround.

Since i doubt the devs will be able to address the game breaking bugs soon, you know...with russia invading Ucraina and bombing hospitals and so on...i just uninstalled the legally purchased game from my steam library, and downloaded a 1.7 version not-so-legal copy

This thanks to the amazing work steam does preventing you from downgrading the game to a previous stable/working version

This also means i will have to play with all the bugs 1.2 actually fixed, and judging by the size of that patch...they are quite a lot but.......what can you do when devs screw up and a nazi-psycho decides to bomb children hospital and invade a democratic country?

[Dave]

New patch....any1 with the game still installed can tell me if they fixed it with this last patch?