MVP Guide: Extreme Difficulty! You/Companions Never Die!

[Millhouse Manastorm]

Intro:

I cover many sub topics on this. I cover character building, economy, ability/item/attack usage, and companions. If it is useful, then read it. If it is not, you can skip ahead to a more applicable sub topic. My goal is to be thoroughly informative on the subject.
Please do enjoy. My hope is that this adds to your experience.

I did my own game testing 100 percent on this of 50 plus hours with different companions. The reason for this is I was kind of frustrated with the lack of information, and people complaining about their companions dying in 10-15 seconds of every fight.

If you follow this, your companions will Never Die, or die very rarely only if you are sleep deprived and you cant be bothered to hit game paused to hit all your endless I WIN buttons that fix any situation.

I did a lot of looking online in this game for material on companion effectiveness, and all I could find is people drooling over "Romancing", and how, "Companions Make me FEELz", with their dialogue options.

The 3 Main reasons your companions should be very much a Huge factor, and never die for you can be broken up as follows:
1. Damage output
2.Gear
3.Your crafting decisions, and talents that you pick, and your ability to game pause, and/ or use them in a timely manner when they matter to support any situation you come across.
; This game basically gives you infinite resource pools with the use of good crafting potions, and endless money, so you shouldn't have issues with this if you take the time and right advice from non-dingbats to figure it out.

All Late Game boss fights and high-health/armor fights were done with 90-100 armor on all companions/character, and 90-100 weapons from the vendors(with exception of the legendary from the bridge quest "asili arquebus" for Aphra. Companions were Aphra and Kurt, and both companions and character were using high armor damage and stun Flintlock, Arquebus, 2 handed hammer. dmg upgrades all 60 dmg. 1 Tank is needed for most of the fight, and Kurt does it best, and dishes out comparable dmg hits to the low to mid 90s rifles with his 2 handed hammer. The last on this note... 1 Arquebus and 1 Flintlock in addition, Penetrates armor with magic damage and does a great combined armor break with Kurt. All of the normal attack crowd control is very high in addition to the spell abilities and phial options I cover later in this thread.

Here is How:

I am going to talk about the character points you put in to first economy wise.
If you dont have good Coin, then you wont have good gear, potions, gear upgrades,

The 3 professions that matter most for coin to improve your own effectiveness and companions are first Blacksmithing, Science, Intuition

They are the best for making coin, and supplying ammo, and having enough mats/ Picking gold off the ground.

Level 3 Intuition is a Gathering profession that Supports the other 2 money making professions of Blacksmithing and Science. You wont have the serious money coming out your ears unless you balance them out.

Kurt gives 1 crafting level for BS, and you can get blacksmithing gloves anywhere, so you only need 1 point in that.

Science, you need 1 Science level, plus Aphra for 1 Level, and 1 Science on your chest. PS... you can do the same thing with the chest piece for charisma, and Vigor.

2nd after Crafting/Economy is Gear... even though gear can be gotten by wandering through the woods, caves or finishing a reputation questline.

The Most Important thing about gear, besides upgrades, is Balance to the level of stuff you are fighting. You dont need to always get the most updated thing, for armor, but everything helps. Having a Good weapon is the real foundation here because it reduces time and resources u need for fights.

One more thing before i Conclude on gear... Having decent resistances helps, and dont overlook it. You can pick up 10-20 resistance of one type or 10+ to all-20+ to all resistance just with a decent neck piece. The last thing on resistances...if its between 5-10 armor and 5-10 resistances... resistances can be good. It doesnt hurt to change things up and to keep things on hand in the Chest/Your Person to try out stuff or play with fights for the fun of it. Just try not to have zero on stuff in mid-late game on resistances. This goes for companions and your Character.

Now that we have our ways to make our Upgrades and Potions for more stats, endless magic, and Health Pot, Armor Pot, Stasis Pot, and any other pots you want to explode on the enemy....oh and always having over 2k Coin no matter what( Especially if you make and sell Greater Armor Regen Pots from all the Bile and Beast Essence)...

We can get to Charisma.... Charisma Increases your Companions Damage output in-combat with Every Level.

Ok thats done... now we recap as Bank is good to buy stuff, get upg, get potions, make ammo, and Companions hit harder with Charisma Levels...

"But what If A Big Monster Is hitting my Companions and Wants to Keel them?!"

I have multiple I win buttons I can Push....

Here is how.

We get a high stun main attack

We get Stasis = Most overpowered ability in the game to stun ANY target as long as you have infinite mana pool from any willpower or mana pots u spam.

Did I MENTION? It increases damage by 50 percent on the next hit, that is if you, and you should point to "Crystalization".


Max out Heal till you get group heal, and armor heal...
and you dont need that crappy Siora who has no life pool. Its ok ... you can "romance" her later because she is a girl.... This games community can say all they want that she heals, but if she gets Staggered every 5 seconds, because she has little ways to bring up her balance and a low life pool she is dead weight.

Which segways to my next point.

Pick your companions with 4 endurance, and a non-crap life pool and you will thank me for saving you the headache later.

This game and many other games has a thing called "Effective Hit Points"
Effective hit points are your "Actual" Hit points total based off your Current hit points added to the Mitigated numbers your armor makes in to a "time it takes to kill you total"

Simplified... armor points and hit points work together to make a bigger total hit point pool.

If you have a companion who can use only Endurance 2 or so as a pose to Endurance 4 armor... you are gimping yourself out of 100-300 armor based on what you are using.
Also theres the 500-700 hit points difference between companions that you are not having.

For example sake, a Companion of 20 percent dmg reduction of 1800 hit points is gonna have 2160 hit points effective as a pose to a 2500 hit point companion with 30 percent from armor is at 3250 hit points effective till lethal...

These numbers go up more, as well, for the larger health pool because it is a percentage of a larger number till-lethal, and a bigger percentage at that. This gives you more time to either kill what you need to, and/or time to get a support ability off for the group to crowd control, or heal armor and health.

You are missing out on the extra armor applied to the bigger total life pool until lethal, and the hit points.

Lets talk about abilities and gameplay...

Get Guns up to Good pistols or Rifles to max out Roll Points, and go Stasis Crystalization first for good damage and all day Crowd Control, Go through Phial Throw to get Bomb as it is the best opener with enemies at full armor if you are ranged. You can max out Heal to heal yourself and companions. Any Extra points from Skill Shrines can be put into Shield of the Enlightened and getting Storm for a good aoe Stasis+Extra damage "Oh ♥♥♥♥" button. Any after this you can put in anything like shadow burst but you wont ever use it because everything else synergizes better.

This build works best as Accuracy accordingly to keep up with upgrades till 5
Endurance till 4 or 5 your choice
Willpower to 4 or 5 your choice.

I found that having mana means i dont need hit points, unless i dont hit my buttons..., but it is very nice to have good armor and gear so that you dont have to hit your self/team supporting abilities/pots/phials, so as more damage can be done until you get the kills needed. This is called Damage Stalling.

Early fight spam stasis, main attack while preferable get hits to land behind the target for 20 percent extra fury and 20 percent extra damage.( I find this negates the damage penalty of being on Extreme to a damage level you will do on a Normal Difficulty)

Mid fight you will be using more phials to buffer Crowd control/damage with stasis ultimate and reg stasis spell,( this is so that you can sustain your actions with Major mana pot, Maj armor, Maj Health, and Group Heal. (You want to weave phials in for cc to not have to use as much mana for single target stasis to be using supporting potions, as this spell is best used with your damage follow up for the crystalize talent 50 percent xtra dmg). ( Also it is better many times to wait a second inbetween crowd control so your companions can weave in damage with you.)

Mid-Late Fight you will be wanting to be topped off on mana and burning as much damage after every stasis crystalize, and if you need a finisher with Crowd control or want to conserve the mana on the way to the kill, then continue to weave in all 3 phials with the magic and stasis phial being first or last of the CC and elemental in the middle of the sandwich.( Note that you can also get an attack instead of the elemental phial inbetween the magic phial stun and the stasis stun, or mix it up how you feel best suits you)

Use Stasis, Attack, rinse repeat until no mana or you need to heal a companion. Any time you need to use any pot, you make sure you have mana to stasis your opponent, or stasis potion or area stun to buffer any emergency actions needed.

Good openers to use are Bomb, Elemental Phial as they reduce armor, and do damage from the get-go, feel free to stasis or stasis phial the area or areas to group enemies or to get everything spoken for so you can engage... Easy mode of destroying everything!

There you go, and that is how you win every encounter on Any Difficulty-Mode!

Further Summary Conclusion Recap!

Companions
Spells, Abilities
Crafting
Doing things in the right order.

If you use all this information, then you will have so many get out of jail free cards you wont know what to do with, and your companions will never die, and they will be almost one shotting mobs(the ones with little or no armor). Also you will never die on any difficulty if you hit your game pause if needed to hit your buttons.

In conclusion... Face roll the entire games I WIN buttons after building up good companions and your character:)

Have Fun!