This is a compilation of a couple nice tricks, not-so-obvious mechanics and advices on how to take those mechanics one step further.

Some are for min/maxing, some are for having fun, some are for optimizing sloppy habits.
all of them are useful for making your challenge runs easier.

Will probably update over time as I discover/remember things.

The aim is to have a general advices part, a section about not-so-obvious class-specific stuff and a section about encounter-specific advice (aka "boss battles"). All of the following is tested by me on 3.x builds of the game.

Work in progress. Comments and ideas are welcome, I'll always give credit.

In no particular order.

Easymode
If you hare having any trouble with the game at all, just stack as much accuracy as you can, even on your spellcasters. You can get to 55-60 base ACC in the first dungeon and clear 100 by the midgame. If you want long spell effects on your enemies, stacking accuracy is better than INT.

- Brigthollow. IMHO the best bonuses are:
1) Dexterity. Whatever you do in combat, this makes everything a bit better.
2) Mechanics. Situational, but sometimes you need that boost to get super OP items ahead of the curve. (Djinni lamp @ Valian Embassy)
3) Perception. Similar to dexterity, it makes everything you do a littlie bit better.
4) For some very specific fights you will want the extra Lore if you don't have a good Priest in your party. The prime example is the Radiant Spore in the WM Pt2. Prayer Against Treachery makes this an easy fight, but you might not want 12 base Lore on your chars since that takes about 12 full levels' worth of skillpoints to get. Instead, you can stop at 9 or 10, and supplement with items and Brighthollow bonus.

- Inn resting bonuses.
Generally, don't make a big fuss out of this. If you want to min/max this, the best one is probably the Golden Whale in Stalwart, but mostly I just used whichever is the best where I'm at. In a general sense, they are all great, well worth the money so use them.
When slaying dragons, consider one from the Dracogen Inn.


- Courtesans.
If you didnt know this already: You can have a good time with the courtesans in the Salty Mast, and get various temporary bonuses from them. Experiment with these if you feel like you need them. I never really bothered. The best is Serel's boon, but it's damn expensive.


- About gun swapping.
Quick Switch & Arms Bearer & playing Island Amanua will give you 4 super fast shots without the need for reloading. If you play a competent shooter like ranger, cipher or fighter, that pretty much finishes any non-boss enemy in the game.
Works with any ranged weapon but you can make the most of it by using guns or arbalests since they have a long reload time.
The biggest hurdle to this tactic is finding 4 OP guns of the same type and pimping them out.


- Rules of dealing with traps.
1) Always move fast mode sneaking in a dungeon. That's rougly equal to normal mode walking.
2) If you cannot disarm a trap and you know its attack type: trigger it with whoever has the best defense for it.
If you dont know its type: Trigger it with a paladin (they have the best overall defenses).
Or trigger it with a rogue/ranger if you are feeling lucky (or whoever has teh best Reflex, since most traps are Reflex types).

Stay the heck away with the rest of your party. A lot of dangerous traps are AoE.


- Caed Nua easy prestige tip:
You might think the best for prestige is some +4 building, but in reality it is the Barracks, more specifically the recruits that come with it.
Right when you build it, it gives you anywhere in between 6-10 prestige.
Later on you can recruit some unique guards for even more boost (if you get them). In theory you can get as much as +20 prestige from this building alone.
And the recruits pay for themselves (with bigger prestige come bigger taxes) and the money they cost is chump change anyways.
You need various prestige levels for various stroghold quests to appear, but in general you wanna crank that prestige up as soon as possible since you can only do a limited amount of stronghold quests in the game. (tied to how many quests/tasks you do, and those are limited)
Security does not matter. You can always go home for the fights and the tax income is in the pocket money range anyways.


- Money.
Just so you know what to expect in the game in terms of disposable money:
You can easily make 150k, spend it on useless stuff/crafting materials, then make another 150k and have nothing to spend it on.
Don't be stingy with your gold.


- About potions
The best potion in the game is Warpaint DAoM (Deleterious Alacrity of Motion), especially since you can craft it.
The second best is DAoM.
The third best is DAoM on everyone except on wizard (on that note, the best wizard spell is DAoM).
The fourth best varies by style.
- Warpaint is pretty good on frontliners, but the supply is limited. There are 25-ish flasks of Warpaint in the game, if you collect from every location. There are also about 7-8 "bossfights" so ration them accordingly.
- Bulwark Against the Elements or Wizard's Double are great on your casters but I'd honestly just gulp a DAoM and never stop casting.
- For wizard, Merciless Gaze is great, but as above, you'd rather just cast a DAoM and never have the time to drink a potion until everyone around you is dead.


- About food.
Feel free to play around with them. The only one that really matters, even on PoTD, is Dragon Meat Dish, and that's only if you really wanna min/max (in which case buy up all the dragon meat).
If you want extra irony points, use dragon food to kil dragons (you won't *need* them anywhere else)
Some other fun ones (good, cheap and readily available everywhere): Rauatai cookies, Stew, Casserole.


- About drugs
IMO Svef and Carow Golan are okay but the crash makes them not worth the high.
D'amarr from Darshiva says: "Various drugs, such as blacsonn can do wonders and are well worth the negative effects."


- About summons
Prefer the ones that summon multiple creatures. You can get free flanks super easily with them.
Loot the djinni lamp as early as LVL4 from the Valian Embassy in Defiance Bay. (needs 7 mechanics)
It goes without saying but lategame Concelhaut is the best pet.


- About scrolls.
Things like Protection and Valor are fun to fool around with, but the only 2 that really matter are Maelstrom and Paralyze.
If you don't have a priest in the party then Prayer against Fear is the No.1 priority (luckily thats a LVL1 scroll and also craftable).
For dragon fights, paralyze is a must. Having as much as 10+ of them in the quickbar is sometimes not considered overkill. (Except vs Alpine who is immune to paralyze but goes down to petrify)
- On Rites: You can cheat a couple points of Survival if you use a rite before resting before a fight, to get that ACC bonus or whatever. Same goes for Mechanics and chests.
Sadly rites are uncraftable.

- About damage.
The most common damage immunity in the game is Piercing.
The least common damage resistance is Corrode.
Plan your damage types accordingly. It is not fun to have an all-piercing lineup and come up against a swarm of Rain Blights.
There are about 5 unique weapons in the game that deal additional types of damage, beyond what their base type provides. These are excellent choices all around.

In no particular order


- Skillpoint allocation.
It is pretty easy to waste a lot of skillpoints all over the place and since you get diminishing returns on most you don't wanna do that. Here is a compilation of how you should allocate those points.

1) Sneak: Don't bother. Sneaking is good for 2 things: Scouting ahead and getting in position before fights. Basic stealth (like the one that comes with rangers or you get from items) should be enough to find mobs before they find you and you should use more reliable methods (like mobility abilities and the ranger) to deal with the annoying enemy backlines.
2) Athletics: put EVERY excess point on EVERY character here. It boosts Second Wind which is a free heal available on every character.
3) Lore: Have 1 lore guy and pump this on them. The only 2 relevant spell types where Durance cannot help you out are Paralysis and Maelstrom. Consider if you need them and set your lore accordingly. Best candidate is the Chanter if you have one (since chanter can chant while casting from scrolls). The ebst thing to do is check the crafting menu as soon as you can in the game. The scrolls section will tell you the exact Lore you need for each scroll. Decide if you want to use them at all and spend your points accordingly.
4) Mechanics: Have one mechanics guy and dump EVERY point here. Getting to 13 MEC is a chore and that is what you need to safely disarm every trap in the game (there ARE traps that one shot your guys).
5) Survival: This is the trickiest. Survival is only good at certain values and there's a lot of filler inbetween.
- 2: Get this on EVERYONE except the mechanics guy. Get this on the mechanics guy if you *know* where in the game the sick traps are. 2 Survival will pay dividends all game with the amount of healing in a normal party. This also boosts Second Wind so in a sense this gives you free Athletics points.
- 4: Consider getting this on your DPS chars, especially the ranger or cipher. Sometimes there are a couple fights where dealing with a crucial enemy wins the (otherwise hard) fights (Pwigra, Adragan). This will help with just that. Pity there is no 'kith' in here, otherwise this would be the must-go on every character ever.
- 8: Notice the huge gap here? You need to sink a lot of skillpoints into survival to get here so only consider this on your frontliners, but boy does the extra healing add up. In longer fights this easily amounts to an extra 100+ healing. Especially on characters with Frenzy (Barbarian and whoever has the Sanguine Plate) this will make the difference between dying and not dying. Similar to the first tier, this also gives you a couple free Athletics points.
- 12: Grab this on a ranger or rouge if you want a sick dragon-killer build. Don't bother anyway.


- Heodan Pt.1
Out of all the merchants in the game he works with the best prices. You can sell him your stuff for great profits, including preorder items, Calisca's stuff and anything you find on the first area. You can make 500 money in the starting area withz this. If you pick the watershed up he disappears.


- Heodan Pt.2
You can disarm all the traps with him in the trap room in the ruins. Tons of free XP. DO NOT light the beacons until you do, that will make a lot of traps disappear.


Free xaurip spear
When you meet the xaurip in the first ruins, it will give you a xaurip spear if you feed skuldr meat to it (if you don't have it yet, just back away). After the interaction, you can kill it and loot another spear. Since xaurip spears are the best weapons this early, this is a neat littlie trick.

Barbarian
- Even if you are in Frenzy mode, if you set the auto-pause for dropping below 25% endurance - it will tell you. In most cases that's just enough time to pop an insta-heal like Second Wind.
- There's actually a very nice Crowd Control build with Barbs, centered around the Tall Grass pike which you can pick up in Dyrford (and you can sneak there very early in the game). This weapon will prone on crit, and it has built in crit conversion. Works with the Barb AoE attack. For this build you don't need high MIG, just DEX PER and INT for the AoE. This is especially useful if you play on Expert mode, since the AoE of spells is invisible.
- Premade Companion: Manena. Find her in Stalwart (White March) after you fend off the initial attack. Her stats are geared more towards DPS than AoE or control. I like twin battleaxes or the Resolution/Purgatory pair on her. If you want a CC build use Tall Grass.

Chanter
- The "+% area of effect" items are actually +radius, which is even bigger since +10% radius gives you about +21% AoE if my math is correct. Same for every AoE in the game but this is the class with the biggest impact IMO.
- The chant "The Dragon Trashed, The Dragon Wailed" actually deals serious damage, but it is not included in your character's damage record, so it looks deceptively weak. It is actually a very viable build to have the tankiest of tanks as a chanter stand in the middle of the fight, doing nothing but chanting this and killing most of the enemies. This works particularly well on PoTD since the game pads out most encounters with tons of small enemies. This build does not rely at all on DEX so you can dump it.
- Premade Companion: Kana Rua. Find him as soon as you get to Caed Nua. He can be part of your ranged backline, chanting the reload chant all the time, or tank him up extremely and have him chant "The Dragon Trashed, The Dragon Wailed"

Cipher
- I play ciphers for the bonus damage on Soul Whip not really for the spells. It provides a 20% unconditional damage boost, best on ranged DPS build who you just "set and forget". In any case, the only two spells you will ever need are Mental Binding and Silent Scream. There are other fun ones but for powergaming these are the only ones that matter. Amplified Wave is cool but it is hard to cast early in the fight.
- Premade Companion: Grieving Mother, you can find her in Dyrford village (you can sneak there at LVL 4, as soon as you do Caed Nua). She's pretty average, built for control rather than damage. With Ciphers you wanna front-load your damage, so they can cast their good spells early, so give her an arbalest, arquebus or blunderbuss.

Druid
I don't really like this class in this game. Unlike Deadfire, Spiritshift is not particularly good in this. Your best spells are Returning/Relentless Storm (And you will die a lot to enemies casting these against you), but you can have a ranger build that is an even better version of a stormcaster druid, so why bother.
- Premade Companion: Hiravias. You can sneak to him in Stormwall Gorge as soon as you are done with Caed Nua. I usually place him in the second row, then cast Returning Storm, spiritshift and go to town.

Fighter
Wizards and druids can stand aside, let me present the best AoE nuker in the game. That's right, there's a Fighter ability in the game called Charge, and with this, a well-built fighter does enormous AoE damage. It is huge base damage, can crit and scales with MIG, so a DPS fighter with a good 2-hander, huge MIG and a good crit ratio will easily do 100+ damage in an AoE (biggest I've seen was 178). Oh and did I mention that this ability is is 2 per encounter. Oh did I mention that this is also a mobility talent, so you can reposition with it.
- Premade Companion: Edér. He is the second regular companion you can recruit, right in the first settlement you get to. Pretty good tank. Early game I usually run him as aggro holder, with defensive abilities, Larder Door and Shatterstar. Later, when your party gets stronger and you finish fights faster, I swap to a greatsword (Tidefall/Redeemer are my faviourites) and the Goadshuntyr hammer (since WH and Greatsowrd are the same weapon cllass).

Monk
Got nothing. I never play them, I don't like the archetype but I ended a couple Iron Man playthroughs at the Monastery so they must be good.
On the topic on the Monastery: Never, ever, ever go through with the complete ritual and then go back to the head monk with the good news. Doing so will make the final fight here play out in an incredibly confined area, with some very angry (and powerful) monks against you. You can say goodbye to your backline in an instant, and then it's half of your party VS the army of monks and a boss.
- Premade Companion: Zauha. You find him in Stalwart, just look around and check suspicious items. I never actually used him. People say he has a gerat companion quest.

Paladin
Kind Wayfayer is the best healer build in the game for prolonged fights, which PoTD are all about. Play Moon Godlike if you just want to stand in the middle of the fight and make your party not die. On that note, the "Herald" aura shields are the best thing for this class. You can pick up a great one in Gilded Vale very early, and an insane one much later in the game.
- Premade Companion: Pallegina. You can find her in Defiance Bay if you look around, but you cannot recruit her until you finish the Trading Company quest you get. She tanks okay, her Faith & Conviction will not go as high as a PC's can, but her defenses are still high. Forget her breastplate, put something heavy on her. Zealous Assault is her best aura, you don't need anything else.

Priest
All the seal spells are considered as traps so Mechanics will affect their Accuracy. Repulsing seal for AoE 10+ sec prones? Yes plealse
- Never mind this has been fixed, so let me give you another Priest tip, and that is, sadly, that you don't really need a priest. The most important Priest spells are the Prayers, most importantly against Fear, but you can craft those and cast them off scrolls with any other character. Otherwise, you will just be busy casting one buff after the other and by the time you are about done with the suite of your usual buffs, the fight will be over. I have done several PoTD playthroughs without a Priest.
- The best spell is Dire Blessing. Was gutted pretty hard in Deadfire but it is godly in this.
- Premade Companion: Durance, you can fing him in Magran's fork if you follow the road. I don't like him as a characer, but having a priest is nice if you prefer more comfortable fights instead of brutal min/maxing.

Ranger
- You can do insane DPS with Rangers with pretty much any build centered around a ranged weapon type, but my favourite build (both for Rangers and in the game overall) is the Stormcaller Ranger. You pick up Stormcaller (you can sneak/cheese your way to WM and pick the pieces up as early as LVL 7-8), and Swift Aim, Driving Flight, Stunning Shots and Twinned Arrows, stack accuracy and attack speed, and BOOM you have a character that stuns, zaps and heavily damages 3-4 enemies every attack, for as long as the fight lasts. It is like the Returning Storm spell but on steroids and with infinite duration. In every party where I use this build, it is a contender for the highest damage and it is also insane CC.
- On PoTD the best companion is Boar for the early game tank.
- Premade Companion: Sagani. Find her at Woodened Plains, the first area you can get to after doing Caed Nua. Her statline is not the best but rangers are so good at DPS that she still shines. I love doing a Stormcaller build on her, but any kind of ranged build will do. Her companion, Sagani is not good at tanking but can hit surprisingly hard lategame.

Rogue
- Not very interesting but pretty consistent single player damage. Out of all the conditions that make a target eligible for Sneak Attack, Flanked is the easiest to achieve, especially if you use trinkets or spells that summon multiple allies.
- If you play a Hearth Orlan, pick up Dirty Fighting, stack accuraty and use an one-handed weapon and nothing else, you can have around 80% of your attacks crit. If you use a weapon that stuns on crit, you can have one enemy perma stunned for the whole fight. The best weapon for this kind of build is a purpose-built Cladhalíath, but there are others, just look ffor any form of hard CC on crit. Suprisingly, the Devil is not bad for this build.
- On PoTD I could never make a melee Rogue work, but they are nice for ranged.
- Premade Companion: Devil of Caroc. She is probably the one you will find the latest, since she is extremely hard to get to on a low level. She is chilling with Galvino, at the far end of a very annoying dungeon. Her statline is probably the worst out of all the premade companions. She was intended as a melee rogue but she still dies to everything. Only approach enemies once your frontilne has taken the aggro.

Wizard
In Deadfire you can scale their damage to insane levels, but in this one they are more like dedicated CC. The most useful spells are Curse of the Blackened Sight, Expose Vulnerabilities, DAOM (best spell in the game), Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment, CTS (Call to Slumber), Gaze of Adragan (must have in most bossfights, a lot of bosses are immune but not their minions), and then Thayn's Cahotic Orb. The best single-target control in the game, bar none, is Concelhaut's Crushing Hammer. The best DPS spells are Kalakoth's Minor Blight early and Cadebald's Blackbow late.
- Premade Companion: Aloth. He is the first regular companion you can recruit, in Gilded Vale. His statline is built for CC not damage, but that's all right for a wizard in this game. If you keep him in your party he will be useful all game.

Sky Dragon
Not really a superboss, but still it's a dragon so a certain kind of risk and pride is attached to slaying it. If you are having trouble, go sleep at the Dracogen Inn in Dyrford. This one is immune to Shock so if you are using Stormcaller, switch to Persistence instead (this is a good idea for any boss fight for that matter, since a bunch of them are immune or highly resistant to shock). If you plan on killing dragons at all in your playthrough (all of them are optional fights), then give your ranged DPS character 10 survival and hoard dragon food and Warpaint for these fights.

Adra Dragon
This is more a fight of attrition than a DPS rush. The annoying part is the small enemies that join the fight. Use your wizard to cast some form of CC like Arkemyr's Capricous HEX, which has HUGE AoE and will most likely take most of the smaller enemies out of the fight for a good while. If you use things like Tidefall and Persistence, it will go down eventually.

Alpine Dragon
Most dragons you can (and you should) hit with a Scroll of Paralysis, but this one is the odd one out - it is immune to Paralysis but goes down to Pertify (so Gaze of Adragan). This fight is pretty painful especially on PoTD due to the Ice Blights in the room with the dragon. About 60% of the damage in this fight is cold so buff against that.

Bog Dragons
Concelhaut's Crushing Doom will totally hit any of the three main enemies here. It pretty much one- shots Lengrath (aka - you cast one on her at the start of the fight and you can forget about her, she goes down and eventually dies) and even the dragons go down eventually for a very long time (even the flying one, it is prone resistant but not immune). If you have a wizard you can cast 2 at the start of the battle for a really easy fight. Combine this with Wall of Many Colors and the fight is pretty much over.

Concelhaut
Probably the hardest bossfight in the game. What I usually do is thank him with my best defensive character and mop the rest of the enemies up, then finish him. But there's a lot of annoying stuff going on all the while. Summons, especially chanter ones do help a lot.
He's a Vessel btw so the Redeemer sword can one-shot him if fully upgraded.

Radiant Spore
Prayer Against Treachery.
/fight

Thaos
Not really a hard fight. The fight is balanced around LVL13 which is a joke if you do side content. If you almost kill Thaos, and the golems are alive, his essence will be transferred into them, so kill the golems first.

Brynlod
The single most powerful entity in the game is a chap named Brynlod. He is a LVL21 human cipher - that's right, 5 levels higher than your maximum allowed level. He is the last and most difficult bounty mission in the game, offred by Asca in WM Pt2. Otherwise, the fight looks like an ordinary party VS party action, only mega tough. IMHO the most problems come from the wizards in the back. If you give them any breathing room they will barrage you with Cadebald's Blackbow spells. Needless to say, come here fully decked out.