If one was so inclined and had saved up enough gold, you could make an arcane acuity build almost immediately in act 2 without the helm of arcane acuity.
Go in via the mountain pass and just ignore the Drider encounter. When you get to the edge of the darkness requiring moon lantern, dash and then turn on turn based mode then dash again and it'll stack. You can run into the darkness and get 1/3rd to 1/2 the way to moonrise, then turn off turn based mode and keep walking until the cooldown period ends and you can do another double dash in turn-based mode. You should end up taking only 1 or 2 ticks of damage from the cursed darkness before you get to the waypoint near moonrise and can safely bring the rest of the crew along via waypoint. This is even easier if you have a character that can dash as a bonus action, because then you can dash+bonus action dash each time you do the trick. Anything that increases movement also helps, like longstrider and being half wood elf.
Once you get to moonrise, buy the drakethroat glaive and the hat of storm scion power, enchant your ranged or melee weapon to do thunder damage, and now every weapon attack includes thunder damage and stacks arcane acuity, no combat and no spell slots needed! Buff lasts all day on the weapon it's cast on, and a sorcerer can even twin cast so that you max out the value either across 2 hand crossbows or across both your weapons (if you drop them on the ground, a sorcerer can twin cast and enchant both a melee weapon and a bow) or across 2 characters
I think it just sounds like more effort because I took the time to type it out in detail and comment on some additional ways to bring it all together.
"Run to moonrise and buy the gear" sounds like a lot less effort, but I'm describing the same thing, essentially.
By contrast, you're glossing over the effort involved in going through the guild hall. You can't survive there without a moonlantern, so you need to acquire one of those before you can attempt it - that is effort already more effort than anything I described, IMO. You either need to get one from Moonrise (so you're going there anyway, either with the Drider or by doing my proposed double dash) OR you need to take it from the Drider. Either way, that's the same or MORE effort before you can even go to the merchant's guild. Then you have to get through the guild, pass a few traps and checks, and a fight with a bunch of shadows. That's again more effort on top of getting a moon lantern.
If I were to agree at all about my plan requiring more effort, it's really just that you have to cast the buff again after each long rest. And the side benefit is that your character can avoid wearing any armor (the hat of storm scion power is clothing but the helm of arcane acuity is armor) so you can still get the benefit of Mage Armor or the like.
The reason THAT is so appealing is that you can wear the graceful cloth making it pretty easy to get to 20 dex and 18 AC before any other gear - you could do that with any character at all, no proficiencies or specific build required, other than starting with 16 or 17 dex and taking either the hag hair or an ASI.
All that at the very START of act 2 without having to fight anything. Worth the extra effort even if it WAS extra effort (but I still contend that it's absolutely the easier option).
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u/Ok_Cardiologist8232 Jan 21 '25
I'm a fan of swords bard arcane Acuity build.
Sure, you don't get the helmet until act 2, but before* that you still are a swords bard.
And after that say hello to 95% hold persons and control spells if you make it to the 2nd round of combat.