The Guildmaster

Should look nicer now if you hit Quote. There was some missing CSS from the upgrade and that's been fixed. If you don't see it, hit Ctrl-F5 on your browser (do a hard refresh of the page.) Also the ugly gold box around the 'edited' messages has been nuked too. Thanks!

Hey folks, We did a forum update today. If you see weird stuff, before submitting a new post, please hit Ctrl-F5 to do a full refresh of your browser for this page (or whatever command does a hard refresh for your browser). If you still see strangeness going on, please either PM me or Fionavar, or leave a note here. Thanks! -TG

Hate to be the grammar nazi, but it's "ado"; adieu is goodbye. You're right! Fixed.

Hello World and Happy 2013! Looks like we all survived (hopefully) the Mayan Apocalypse. That was a close one. Woooohooo! We hope you enjoyed your holiday and wish everyone the best for 2013. The team has returned from our cozy elfhomes, and we are re-energized and excited to get back to work on Project Eternity. Without further ado, we had promised backer details in this update, so let's start off with those. Thanks to all of your extremely generous donations, our final backer numbers for our crowdfunding phase are: $3,986,929 from 73,986 Kickstarter backers and $324,650 from roughly 5,698 unique PayPal backers (not including the almost 500 slacker backers who have contributed since the crowdfunding phase ended!) For the phase, we earned about $4,311,600 before any fees from Kickstarter and the payment services. (This does include some losses from failed charges, returns, etc.) We are continuing to work on fulfillment and are slowly getting in contact with our backers about specifics. The last of the $350 tier loot bags are being sent out this week, and Chris Avellone is starting to draw Troll Avatars for the $750 tier backers. As we continue forward in pre-production, we will have more information for the higher tier design and art related rewards and how backers will be able to participate in designing your items, NPCs, adventuring parties, etc. The backer site is coming together and the plan is to have it up and running by the end of the month. Thank you for your patience and for those of you who will be designing goodies for the game, we’ll be in touch once we’re ready with your templates to fill out. For the PayPal backers out there, we should have updates coming to you via e-mail shortly as well. In the meantime, updates will come out on Tuesday evenings Pacific Time, so make sure and check eternity.obsidian.net weekly for the latest news and updates. Obsidian's Facebook and @Obsidian on Twitter are good places for the latest on Project Eternity news as well. Before we left for our homes, the office had a treat exchange at the office. Obsidian The team signed Obsidian games for the Loot Bag $350 tier backers. The plague struck and some of us are sick at home with colds. Even developers get sick: We’ll be continuing with our weekly updates from the art, design, programming, and production crew. If you have things you’d like to see or learn more about, swing on by the Project Eternity forums and let us know! Update by Adam Brennecke

Hello, friends. The elves have been hard at work on Project Eternity, and we would like to show you our fine goods. This is a long update, but we wanted to give you more information than usual since it's the end of the year and we will be in our elfhomes for the next few weeks. First, I'd like to talk about what we've been doing with the engine and second, I'd like to talk about some of the design work we've been doing. Resolution and Scaling - We want to run the game at various resolutions and scale properly. We've been talking about our target resolutions and looking at the best way to implement scaling. If you've played any of the Infinity Engine games lately, you may have noticed that running at high resolutions can make the game look like an RTS. Though it's nice to be able to scale up and see more of the environment, at a certain point dungeons start looking like ant farms. That's what happens when you take a game designed for 640x480 and run it at more than double the resolution. It is now the year 2012, so we're looking at supporting a range of resolutions that runs from modest laptops to Macs with crazy Retina displays. To do this, we're going to render the game out at a target high resolution and a target low resolution. Currently, we're looking at a base resolution of 1280x720. A large number of laptops run at this resolution or its slightly bigger brother, 1366x768. It's not quite twice the resolution of the original games (640x480) due to the 16:9 aspect ratio, but pretty close. We believe that this base resolution will scale well up to 1920x1080, which would be roughly equivalent to going from 640x480 to 1024x768. In the old IE games, this gave you a slightly larger view of the world, but didn't get too crazy. For our higher resolution, we are likely going to render out to a ~2560x1440 screen size, as we did with our environment during the Kickstarter campaign. We will likely downsample these to run at 1920x1080. With resolutions above "mere" Retina displays, we will zoom out, which should allow the backgrounds to scale into outer space (close enough, anyway). Movement and Combat Feel - We've been working on implementing all of the basics of party selection, movement, and combat. This includes working on personal space, ally and enemy pathing, friendly "bumping" during movement, ranges of melee attacks, attack timing and delays, target selection, and response time. A lot of work goes into making these elements feel good and feel "IE-ish" (while excluding the IE-ish things we didn't like). We’ve also been building block-in weapon meshes and putting them in the game to see how they look in terms of scale. This has gone well, but we're still working on proportions. Some thin weapons, like stilettos, rapiers, and estocs, can be very difficult to discern, especially at lower resolutions. Their thicker cousins, daggers, swords, and greatswords, need to be "beefed up" a small amount to help distinguish them. Even though we need to make a few slight adjustments, our overall approach of making weapons with realistic... ish proportions is working well and feels similar to the characters and weapons found in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Along with implementing the visuals of the weapons, we're experimenting with weapon statistics and mechanics. Weapons are currently classified as slashing, piercing, or crushing, which is a pretty common division of types. We're not currently using damage types vs. armor types in Project Eternity, but the damage types all have properties that suggest a certain type of usage. Slashing weapons do the most damage when compared to their counterparts from other categories. E.g., if you compare a greatsword to an estoc to a maul, the greatsword does the most damage. When targets have little to no armor, slashing weapons are the ideal choice. Piercing weapons negate a fixed amount of Damage Threshold, which is the primary way in which armor reduces damage. Though they don't do as much damage as slashing or crushing weapons, their ability to ignore even moderately heavy armor means that it is superior to other weapons in those circumstances. While armor can negate a large amount of damage, there's always a small amount that gets through. Crushing weapons do much more through armor, which makes them the best choice when dealing with very heavily armored targets. So far, this works well on paper, scales well, and seems to hold up in the game, but it is very "mathy" and not necessarily intuitive because you can't always guess a target's Damage Threshold simply by looking at them (as opposed to armor types, which are usually visually apparent). We will continue to experiment with this to see how it feels in the long run. Our goals are to provide tactical challenges to the player and give them to feedback and tools to adapt and overcome when they're in a difficult spot. UI Design - Tim and I have been talking about our user interfaces recently. We want to make sure that we improve the functionality of the original designs without completely losing the feeling of those interfaces. One thing we want to avoid is making the UI too "minimalist". We don't want it to feel bloated, of course, but we also recognize that the IE games had "solid" interfaces. They looked like they were made of materials -- wood, stone, and metal -- and had substance to them. When you look at the interfaces for the IE games, they help immerse you in each setting. We'd like to do the same for Project Eternity. Functionally, we're using Icewind Dale II as our starting point. We've been looking at inventory recently. Tim and I have designed a system that uses three types of gear storage: equipment, top of pack (this name may change!), and stash. Equipment is what your characters are currently using and have ready to use. This includes weapon sets that you can swap between during combat. "Top of pack" is a finite amount of gear that you can access outside of combat for a variety of purposes: replenishing consumables, checking out a shiny new sword you picked up a while back, etc. The top of pack cannot be accessed during combat, but is present as a strategic pool of items that you can access while exploring. The stash is where all of the "other stuff" goes: things you aren't using, items you want to sell, and various doo-dads you'll be looking at later. When you find gear, you have the option of placing it wherever you'd like as long as there's room for it. You can use it immediately, put it in your top of pack, or just chuck it in the stash. Once an object is in the stash, you can access it at camps, your home, and similar locations. We've created this division of inventory space to add strategy to your gear loadout decisions instead of having a weight limit, while also allowing flexibility for backup equipment. Most importantly, it doesn't prevent you from doing what adventurers love to do most: loot everything they find that isn't bolted down. Core Four Class Design and Advancement - We want our classes to feel familiar but flexible, so we've designed our "core four" (fighter, priest, rogue, wizard) to reflect traditional D&D roles and allow you to build outside of them. In our current design, each of the classes starts with two active use or modal abilities and one passive bonus. Fighter Defender (Mode) - In the Defender mode, fighters' melee attack rates decrease while their melee defenses increase. This is a particularly useful mode to enter when a fighter is blocking a route of attack to protect other party members. Surge - This active ability allows fighters to rapidly regenerate Stamina for a short period of time. Melee Accuracy - Fighters have inherent skill with melee weapons that is reflected by a small accuracy bonus. Priest 1st Level Priest Spells - Priests gain access to all 1st level priest spells. Priests can cast a fixed number of 1st level spells before they must rest to recover their uses. They can cast any combination of different spells up to the per-rest limit. As priests gain levels, their 1st level spells will eventually become per-encounter resources. Recovery - The Recovery ability regenerates a modest amount of Stamina for allies (including the priest, if in range) in a Medium-sized area at Short range. Sacred Circle - All allies standing within a Small area around the priest gain Accuracy bonus. This bonus does not include the priest unless there are no conscious allies in range, in which case it applies to the priest. Rogue Escape - The rogue may hop a short distance away and all hostiles lose him or her as a direct target for 3 seconds. After the 3 seconds are up, enemies can target the rogue normally. Reversal - Reversal prepares the rogue for the next melee attack against him or her. When it hits, the rogue takes reduced damage and instantly rolls to the opposite side of the target and executes a powerful melee attack. This will even allow rogues to move past enemies that are fully blocking a path. Sneak Attack - This damage bonus applies whenever the rogue "flanks" an enemy or when the rogue is hidden from an enemy. Flanking means that the rogue is within a short distance of the target and on the "opposite" side of that enemy from an adjacent ally. Wizard 1st Level Wizard Spells - Wizards can access all 1st level wizard spells immediately. Unlike other wizard spell levels, the wizard does not need to find scrolls or grimoires to use any 1st level spells. Wizards can cast a fixed number of 1st level spells before they must rest to recover their uses. They can cast any combination of different spells up to the per-rest limit. As wizards gain levels, their 1st level spells will eventually become per-encounter resources. Blast - When wizards use any implement (i.e. a wand, rod, or scepter), they generate a Blast on the target. The Blast does a modest amount of damage to all enemies in a Small area around the target (excluding the target). Familiar - All wizards can summon and dismiss familiars. Familiars are mobile "totems" for the wizard, providing defensive bonuses to allies near them and inflicting defensive penalties to enemies near them. Players can also access the master's spell list through the familiar, though casting a spell through the familiar still requires the master to physically cast it; it's simply targeted from the familiar. Familiars are weak and fragile. If a familiar is killed, the wizard takes damage and is unable to summon his or her familiar until he or she rests again. As players advance their characters, they have the ability to choose class-specific abilities and more class-neutral talents (more like perks or feats) to customize their character capabilities. If you want to keep your fighters very low maintenance, there are a large number of passive fighter abilities and combat-oriented talents that you can buy. If you'd like to make a fighter that's much more "active-use" (more like a 4E fighter), you can choose to buy more modal and active abilities. Similarly, while all wizards gain additional spells, you can use talents to boost a wizard's damage with implement weapons and Blasts, making them more useful when you're not having them chain-cast a series of limited-use spells. The same also applies to skills, which are used for a variety of non-combat purposes. All classes start out with bonuses in the skills that their classes most commonly use, but players can choose to reinforce or play against that top. If you want to make a paladin who delights in picking locks, you can do that and get a lot of utility out of the skill -- though the character will never be quite as good as a rogue who specializes in it. We hope that these approaches use the strengths of a "role-ready" class system while allowing players a large amount of helpful flexibility in how they develop characters over a (hopefully) long and fruitful adventuring career. That's all for this week, and this year! We'll be back in January with more details on what we're up to and where we're going in the months to come. Thanks for reading! Update from Josh Sawyer

Armor Design Design update from Josh Sawyer Let's talk about armor design. Taken on its own, armor design isn't of eminent importance. It's just one of many subsystems that make up Project Eternity. However, looking at it in detail can expose problems that can be found across our various subsystems: by making something work well in a new system and setting, we can often put it at odds with the nostalgia of the old games (and "realism"). Back in the days of 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, we had all sorts of quasi- or non-historical armor types like banded mail, ring mail, and studded leather. You wore the heaviest armor you could because it typically had the best Armor Class. If plate mail was available, there weren't many reasons to wear splint mail or (horror of horrors) chain.The default rules limited the viability of certain character concepts because most characters of a given class were funneled down a specific equipment path. 3E sort of solved this problem by implementing Maximum Dexterity Bonus, which meant that characters with high Dexterity scores would generally equip whatever armor gave them the maximum bonus to Armor Class without capping the Armor Class bonus they received from Dexterity. There were a few problems with this. First, while it did help make previously "bad" character concepts (e.g., the lightly armored fighter) more viable, generally there were one or two choices per character build. If you had a high dexterity, you were not going to wear heavy armor. If you had a low Dexterity, you might wear light armor, but only for the higher movement rate it allowed. Second, there was an equipment dead zone in medium armor -- the Maximum Dexterity Bonus caps and movement penalties of heavy armor without the nice Armor Class bonus. Also, if you were a ranger or barbarian, technically you could wear medium armor, but in practice you would never wear it because it disabled several class abilities. The third issue is a common one with armor design: the ability to wear heavy armor has value (classes receive it as a benefit and it costs feats to purchase in 3E), but it's presented as something with trade-offs. This in itself is not bad, but as previously mentioned, typically the decision of what type of armor to wear can more-or-less be made at the end of character creation. If your character wears a chain shirt at 1st level, there's a good chance he or she will be wearing a +5 version toward the end of the campaign. This is sort of nice because it means that you can have a consistently viable character concept, but there's not a ton of decision making about armor types after your adventuring career starts. Finally, there's a way of naming and progressing things in A/D&D. Once you get your "base" armors introduced (for our purposes, we will include plate armor and its 2nd Edition kin, field plate and full plate), upgrades are expressed as +1 versions. It becomes pretty easy to understand once the hierarchical relationship and spread of armor types are established. What does this mean for Project Eternity? It means designing a new armor system that rectifies deficiencies of older systems while maintaining a familiar feel is tricky. Additionally, the more dissimilar the armor relationships are to those found in A/D&D, the more they will be re-evaluated for verisimilitude (i.e. "realism"). We would like our armor system to accomplish the following goals: Make wearing different types of armor a real choice for the player based on both character build and circumstance. E.g. a swashbuckling lightly-armored fighter will tend to wear one of a variety of light armor types (maybe a gambeson or leather cuirass), but in a circumstance where protection is of utmost importance, the player may still choose to wear heavy armor with a loss in build optimization. Disassociate armor value from class type in favor of different build types. E.g. a wizard can wear heavy armor and be a different type of wizard instead of just "a wizard who is bad". Allow a character to maintain a character concept throughout the game without suffering extreme mechanical penalties. E.g. a character who starts the game in some form of light armor can complete the game in some form of light armor with appropriate gameplay trade-offs compared to wearing heavy armor. Introduce new or upgraded armor types throughout the game instead of using ++ versions (which in itself would pose problems unless we directly duplicated A/D&D's d20-based attack mechanics). Even with these three goals, there are a number of problems to solve. One of the biggest questions is how to break up and "advance" armor by type. In AD&D, you had something that looked like this: Padded Leather Studded Leather Hide Scale Chain Splint Plate (Tier 2) Field Plate (Tier 3) Full Plate (Tier 4) Players typically couldn't afford plate, field plate, or full plate at character creation, but everything else was often within reach. It's not uncommon to see a hierarchy of armor types like this in many fantasy games, despite some of the questionable elements (did studded leather exist? Is raw hide armor actually better than cuirbolli leather?). You can get plate/field plate/full plate later in the game, but otherwise, you're getting +x versions of the base types at higher "tiers" of character advancement. We could (as an example) structure some of Project Eternity's armor advancement like this. Tier 1 Doublet Hide Armor Scale Vest Tier 2 Gambeson (from Doublet) Leather Cuirass (from Hide Armor) Scale Armor (from Scale Vest) Mail Shirt Tier 3 Armored Jack (from Gambeson) Leather Armor (from Leather Cuirass) Lamellar Armor (from Scale Armor) Mail Armor (from Mail Shirt) Half-Plate This could probably accomplish our stated goals (we can assign them whatever stats we'd like, after all), but it does raise some questions for us: Should something like hide armor be supplanted/made obsolete by leather as an "improved version" or does that effectively kill the visual concept of the rough-hewn rawhide-wearing ranger or barbarian? If armor types like hide (or scale, or mail) should remain viable on their own, how should that "upgrade" be expressed to the player? Functional descriptors like "fine scale", "superior hide", etc.? Cultural or material descriptors like "Vailian doublet", "iron feather scale"? Olde tyme numerical descriptors like "scale armor +1", "half-plate +2"? Is it okay for an upgrade from a visual type of armor to maintain its relative position to other armor types even if "realistically" that upgraded armor is now probably superior in protection to other armor types? E.g. an armored jack or brigandine armor is probably more protective than even nice suit of leather armor... but mechanically, we're presenting it as an upgrade of a padded (doublet) armor type. These are the sort of things we have been discussing and I have been thinking about. And while it is just one subsystem in Project Eternity, we will likely face many similar considerations as we approach the design of weapons, classes, spells, and other aspects of gameplay. I'm sure a lot of you have opinions on what you'd like to see, so please let us know on our forums! Our next design update will be in two weeks and will focus on lore and story elements. Thanks for reading! Fulfillment System Fulfillment update from Darren Monahan We’ve received a number of questions via our Support e-mail address and social networks about fulfillment, and I wanted to talk a little bit about what we’re currently working on! First off, I wanted to announce that we’re developing a fulfillment site, which we’re hoping to have online in the next month or two (I was hoping to have it up sooner, but my first baby is coming into the world in the next few days, eeep!). Everyone who backed the project on Kickstarter and/or PayPal will be e-mailed details that will give you credit on that site. After logging in, you will be able to: Confirm the tier of choice that you wanted. A few of you donated on Kickstarter, and then topped up via PayPal, so you’ll be able to select the exact tier you wanted. Confirm any add-ons you wanted that weren’t easy to specify on Kickstarter or via PayPal. Upgrade your pledge to another tier, or add on for, ummm, add-ons. Update your e-mail address at any time. Update your shipping address at any time. (Shipping address only needed for physical goods – we don’t need that info for digital orders.) Indicate any specific details associated with your tier (T-shirt sizes, name in the credits, etc.) If you live outside of the USA, it will also verify that you’ve added enough shipping. We’ll keep you guys updated in future, ummm, updates, on how progress is coming along! Here’s an update to our FAQ on some of the questions we’ve been receiving recently: Q: I donated on PayPal and besides a receipt from PayPal I haven’t gotten confirmation from Obsidian directly. A: Not a problem. When the fulfillment site goes live, we’ll be merging the Kickstarter and PayPal data together into our own system, and from there we’ll be sending out project updates. For now, as long as you received a PayPal receipt, we’ll have you on file. Q: I need to change my e-mail address before you send out details on the Fulfillment site. What do I do? A: Send us an e-mail at support@obsidian.net with your old and new addresses (please e-mail from your old address if you can) and we’ll update our records before the fulfillment site e-mails go out. Q: How do I add shipping? I missed being able to during the Kickstarter phase! A: You can handle that in one of several ways: You can hang tight for now and wait until our fulfillment system is online, or, If you’d prefer to get it out of the way, you can visit our Shipping page and add it now (Amazon Payments and PayPal supported.) Q: When will I get my backer badge on the forums? A: That’ll come online with the fulfillment system. If you have any other questions, feel free to visit our forums or drop us a line at support@obsidian.net! For more news about Project Eternity and Obsidian, follow us on: Twitter, Facebook, and our YouTube channel

Hopefully this is fixed now - apologies. -TG

This. Oh yeah. We promised the folks who donated $10k we'd get that beard off and we're going to get that beard off! (It might not happen for awhile though - he's entering another beard contest and we want to give him a shot at winning something, because...) ...the only thing better than shaving a beard on camera is shaving a PRIZE-WINNING beard!

Yep, per digital key that comes with your tier, you get a choice. So if you got a physical tier with an extra digital key, you'll get the physical copy to install, plus the choice of Steam or GOG for your digital key. As for the physical option, we're not quite sure yet. We'll have to work that out still unfortunately (but we'll try to provide the same flexibility if we can.)

...and sorted. FIFTEEN LEVELS!!! YEAH!

Maybe those few beers affected me worse than I thought... I'll have to look into the number of levels! Stay tuned - we'll get that all sorted!

There will be at minimum be a survey for ya to fill out. (But I am looking into seeing if I can set up a fulfillment site too where folks can log in and keep things updated. )

Hi Piccolo, I'll echo that around to the internal folks - I like the idea (but can't promise anything, but I do like it!)

I'm the (mostly) sober buzzkill around here. I only had a few beers. Wanted to keep you guys updated today. -Darren

Well hello everyone! It’s the day after our Kickstarter here at Obsidian, and while a few of us are a little rough around the edges right now, we’re already busy working on Project Eternity! In this update, we’ll go through a number of frequently asked questions we’ve received in the last day or so. If you have any problems with anything, please always feel free to head over to our forums, or reach us on Facebook, Twitter, or via support@obsidian.net. So… onward! Kickstarter and PayPal Stats So as of about 1:30 PM PDT, here’s where we stand funding-wise: Kickstarter Backers: 73,986 Pledged: $3,986,929 PayPal Backers: 3,681 Pledged: $176,279 Totals Backers: 77,667 Pledged: $4,163,208 Stretch Goals So that means we hit the 4M stretch goal, right? Yes! How do PayPal backers affect the Mega Dungeon size? It counts toward the Mega Dungeon! We hit fifteen (15!!!!) levels! Will Facebook Likes still count to a larger dungeon? Yes, for now they do! Come like us quickly and maybe we can hit the 40,000 likes for one last dungeon level. But it’s for a limited time, so… like us! Please note: If you clicked Like on our Eternity home page, that doesn’t qualify – we need likes on Obsidian’s Facebook page! Kickstarter / Amazon Payments / PayPal OK, so now what happens? If you backed us on Kickstarter, Amazon will begin processing payments and will contact you. This process takes place over a period of 14 days. If you encounter any problems with this process, never fear about losing your pledge. We’ll work with you to work out any payment issues so you don’t lose out as long as you were a part of the crowdfunding phase. Once payments are taken care of, we’ll start collecting information from you guys, and we’ll do that a few times. More info on that below. If you backed us on PayPal, and everything went through OK, sit back and relax and we’ll be in touch soon! Speaking of PayPal, I noticed PayPal tiers are still up. Will I get the same rewards for the tiers if I donate now? Yes! For as long as we have the listed options available on http://eternity.obsidian.net, you’ll get the same rewards. This is for a very limited time though, so don’t delay if you’re going to get in on Project Eternity! Oh no, I don’t think I added shipping! How do I add international shipping? There’s two ways to handle international shipping. You can: Go to http://eternity.obsidian.net: Along the right side, choose the Donate button under the “Donate Your Own Amount” section. It’s at the bottom of the Tiers just before Addons. On PayPal in the Donation Amount field, enter the desired amount and click Update Total. Log in to PayPal using your email and password. On the “please review your donation” screen, click the Add special instructions for Obsidian link. Describe what your donation is for (international shipping, top up, etc.) Change any other relevant details and then click the Donate USD Now button. [*]Hang tight for now. Once we get all of the information from PayPal and Kickstarter and then get it organized, we’ll be reviewing each and every order to make sure we know how you want your funds allocated. We’ll handle that directly with you via e-mail (please make sure the e-mail you used on Kickstarter or PayPal is accessible to you! If you have any concerns about that, e-mail us at support@obsidian.net) I would actually like to upgrade to another tier – can/how do I do that? For a very limited time, you can use the process described above in “How do I add international shipping” and specify to us what you would like to do. You can do this even if you first contributed to Kickstarter. Just include the difference. (Disclaimer: This does not apply to tiers that were sold out.) Video Streams Where can I see Adam’s Icewind Dale II playthough? Unfortunately it’s not available. Where can I see the D&D game? Here it is! Where can I see the last few hours of the party stream? Swing by Twitch TV at http://www.twitch.tv...ian/b/335806140 When is Chris Avellone going to stream playing Arcanum? We’ll be in touch soon with details on that. It might be a Holiday Special stream. Rest assured he’s going to do it - you guys hit the $4M marker! What’s the next step? OK so now what? First, come sign up on our Forums if you haven’t already. That’s going to be the best place to connect with us throughout the development of the game. We’ll also be up on Facebook and Twitter too. Backer badges will start rolling out in the next few weeks. If you have any problems signing up on our forums (our anti-spam can be rather aggressive sometimes, we apologize!), e-mail us over at support@obsidian.net and we’ll get you all set up. A survey will be coming in the next few weeks to ask you how you want to allocate funds. For those of you who are getting physical goods, before we ship anything, we will notify you and reconfirm at that time to make sure we have the latest physical address on file. If you have any other questions, feel free to swing by the forums or e-mail us! Fulfillment Some of you have been wondering how we will be offering keys for the game. You will be able to select one of the choices below for each key. Steam: Steam currently supports Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. We will be offering you a SteamPlay key. This means with one key, you can play the game on any supported platform of your choice! The Steam version will also offer in-game achievements and we are going to look at adding Steam cloud support for an even better multi-platform experience. Please note that Steam uses DRM (digital rights management) however. DRM comes with this platform and is not something we can disable. If you want a DRM-free option, please see GOG.com below. GOG.com: We will be offering DRM-free options based on the platforms that GOG supports at the time of us shipping the game. Currently, this means you only have a Windows DRM-free option, but apparently some big news for Mac users is coming… tonight, and hopefully good news for Linux users too down the road. You may have noticed that there isn’t a DRM-free Linux version listed; that’s true today, but by the time we launch, we’ll have one available. Thanks again everyone, and we’ll be in touch! Update from Darren Monahan

Visit http://eternity.obsidian.net if you missed out on our Kickstarter and still want to get in on a last minute tier. This is for an extremely limited time however (but you have at least until EOB Wednesday for us, so hurry!) We'll have an announcement with where PayPal was at - but quick spoiler: Thanks again to everyone who backed us on Kickstarter - we made some history today, and now it's time for us to make an old-school BG-like game that takes us back to those good ol' games. Have a great night, -Darren

My apologies on them being stated here as companions - that should have read "key characters'. Editing now!

We’ve hit the $3M mark now on Project Eternity and it’s on to add another Big, Big City to the game! We have less than 50 hours to go before the Kickstarter ends! Before we announce some new stuff, some quick housekeeping is in order. If you are looking to add anything on to your pledge, check out our Project Eternity Add-On List page. This includes instructions on how to add on other options, as well as what our current offerings are. Also to reduce some confusion in finding what each tier contains (we’re no longer able to update some of our posts on the Kickstarter site), we have a comprehensive list of the Project Eternity Reward Tiers up as well over on our Tumblr site. Two last items, we’re hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) tomorrow on reddit. A number of Project Eternity staffers will be on hand at 10 AM PDT / 1 PM ET to answer your questions about the game! Then at 5 PM PDT / 8 ET, watch us on Ustream play some D&D in the studio! Project Eternity the Documentary The big news for the day is that we are adding a documentary covering the development of Project Eternity. After getting a lot of requests to do a documentary, like the Double Fine Adventure, we started looking into it a couple of weeks ago. We talked about it more last week and decided that we don’t have a visual history of one of our games, even after almost ten years as a company. We felt it was something we should just do and do it without it being a new stretch goal. So, we are happy to announce that we are going to include a stream, download, or physical copy of the documentary in all of our Kickstarter reward tiers. At the $20/$25 level you will be able to stream it, at the $35 level you will be able to download it, and at the $140 level (and physical tiers above) we will include a DVD / Blu-ray. We are not going to use the Kickstarter funding to do this however, since this is something we decided to do anyway. To us, it is a thank you to all of you for supporting us over the last month in making Project Eternity a reality and a historical record for everyone at Obsidian as well. Project Eternity Playing Cards Add-On As a fun new add-on for Sunday, we are now offering Project Eternity playing cards for $10. Designed by Scott Everts, one of our longtime technical artists who worked on Black Isle’s Infinity Engine games, and does a lot of work on board games, he designed this beautiful set which will feature characters and maybe critters (Kerfluffleupogus, Devourer of the Faithful anyone?) from Project Eternity. Check out the Project Eternity Add-On List on how to add-on items to your pledge. (Please note: Playing Cards only available to tiers including physical items. For digital tier folks, we’ll hopefully sell these as a future store offering.) New Wallpaper Last, but not least, we’ve received a lot of great feedback on the concept art for some of our first key characters. So here is a new wallpaper with each of the characters that we have released so far. Might we be releasing more art soon? Stay tuned… 1920x1080 | 1920x1200 Tomorrow, we will be updating everyone with a schedule for Tuesday and another fun add-on. Oh and we have some plans for a crazy new reward tier for Tuesday morning. Thanks everyone! Update by Feargus Urquhart Like us on Facebook! Next goal is 40,000 likes for another Mega Dungeon level. We're also on Twitter: @Obsidian. We announce ongoing PayPal figures there too.

Everyone here at Obsidian is thrilled that the feedback to the first look at Project Eternity was so overwhelmingly positive. Thank you for all the encouragement - It really means a lot to our artists and the rest of the team. The outpouring of support and donations over the last day has been amazing. Thank you! Over the next five days we have a lot of fun things planned to wrap up the Kickstarter campaign. First, crowdfunding and Kickstarter has allowed us to open up our doors to you, literally. Today you can spend a few hours with me at the Obsidian Office, and you will get an inside look into a development studio. Check out what an atypical day is for me at the office (running the Kickstarter is pretty atypical for a game developer). I promise to wear pants! We plan on doing more of these live events at the office during production. Tomorrow I plan on playing Icewind Dale II by Interplay and Black Isle Studios. Icewind Dale II was the last Infinity Engine game to be released a decade ago in 2002. Before production starts on Project Eternity, I want to revisit some of the magic that Project Eternity aims to bring back. Join the stream and have some fun! Special Obsidian guest developers will join in on the fun, and you can heckle me while I try to make my way out of Targos and through the Dale to Kuldahar. How long will I play? 8 Hours? 12 Hours? 20 Hours? Longer? Watch and find out. Be sure to check out tomorrow's update with Tim Cain. He is going to answer more of your questions in a special video update. Here's the rest of the scheduled events for the next 5 days: Friday, October 12 11:00am PDT - Inside look at a not so typical day with Adam Brennecke - UStream. 3:00pm PDT - PC Gamer Live Chat with the Project Eternity Team - PC Gamer. Saturday, October 13 10:00am PDT - Adam plays Icewind Dale II all day - UStream. Monday, October 15 10:00am PDT - Reddit AMA with the Project Eternity Team - Reddit. 5:00pm PDT - Game night at Obsidian. Watch us play D&D at the studio! - UStream. Tuesday, October 16 12:00pm PDT - The final countdown starts at the Obsidian Office - UStream. 6:00pm PDT - The Project Eternity Kickstarter ends! Updates to the schedule will be sent via Twitter, Facebook, and posted to our forums. New Novella Audio Book Reward and Add-on We have a new digital add-on for everyone. For an add-on of $20 you will receive the digital Audio Book of the Project Eternity Novella by Chris Avellone narrated by a professional voice actor. If you already pledged at the $165 tier and above you will receive it for free! Two Stretch Goals Hit and The Endless Paths is Larger We've hit the $2.7M stretch goal, which means Paladins and Chanters are added to the game, and I'm happy to say we just hit the $2.8M stretch goal in record time! George Ziets will be joining the team! The team is very excited to have the opportunity to work with George again. One more level has been added to The Endless Paths because of your help. The depths grow deeper by the day, and we are getting very close to 20,000 likes and 60,000 backers. 2 more levels incoming! Our next Facebook goal is to hit 40,000 likes - if we can reach that milestone it means we will add one more level to the dungeon! How low can we go? And last but not least, I leave you with a new concept art piece of Forton the monk. Thanks, and see you on the live stream! Update by Adam Brennecke Like Obsidian On Facebook - Help grow the Mega Dungeon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LtpG02bZDw The campaign is winding down folks, so it's time to bring out the proverbial big guns. In today's update, I'm going to be talking about a bunch of lore tidbits, a Campaign Almanac we'll be offering as an add-on, new BIG OL' stretch goals, and finally, a work-in-progress screenshot of an environment we're developing. As a quick reminder, we are getting close to 20,000 likes on Obsidian's Facebook page, which unlocks another level of the Mega Dungeon the Endless Paths – if you get the chance, please head on over there. That's a lot of stuff, so let's start with the... Lore After thinking about a variety of topics for today's lore update, I decided to describe some of the major (and a few minor) people, places, and things in the world of Project Eternity. I hope these elements help frame the landscape of the Dyrwood and Eír Glanfath. Though this corner of the world is not particularly large, the struggles of its residents will surround the heart of Project Eternity. Aedyr - People from the expansive Aedyr Empire and its former colonies, Dyrwood and Readceras. Aedyr literally translates as "Many Deer", but means "People of the Deer", referring to a 2,500 year-old tribe that became a kingdom 600 years ago. It merged with the elven kingdom of Kulklin in 2399 AI. Among the Aedyr, there is no significant cultural divide between humans and elves. Because of their close contact and integration in spite of physiological differences (such as longer elven lifespans), their culture and legal system have developed a variety of unique concepts such as the haemneg, or ceremonial marriage. Ethnic Aedyr (mostly humans and elves) have fair skin and a variety of hair and eye colors, with blue and green being common. Among other cultures, Aedyr clothing is known for being relatively simple in construction and often using large, colorful striped or checkered patterns for accents. Anni Iroccio - Year of Iroccio. This is the commonly-used calendar in and around the Dyrwood. It is only 150 years old and Vailian in origin, but has been adopted by the residents of Dyrwood and much of the surrounding area due to the hopeless inaccuracy of the Aedyre calendar. Though the Iroccian calendar replaced earlier Vailian calendars, the inventor, Iroccio, started from the same time as his predecessors. It is currently 2823 AI. biamhac - The most feared phenomenon of Eír Glanfath, biamhacs are "spirit winds" that rise up in cursed ruins, shearing souls away from the bodies of their owners. They appear suddenly and without warning, leaving victims little hope of escape. Strong-souled people are not harmed by biamhacs, but affected individuals are instantly reduced to a catatonic state. The discovery of numerous biamhacs in Eír Glanfath during its early exploration resulted in thousands of Aedyr deaths. Dyrwood - Strictly speaking, the forest northwest of the Bael River. Dyrwood, Free Palatinate of - The independent nation that was formerly a colony and later a large, remote duchy of the Aedyr Empire. Led by their duke, Admeth Hadret, the people successfully fought for their independence over an excessively burdensome campaign to colonize the dangerous ruins of Eír Glanfath. Despite the fact that they are no longer, properly speaking, a palatinate (nor a duchy), the people of Dyrwood continue to refer to their home as a "Free Palatinate" out of pride. Most residents of the Dyrwood are Aedyr humans, elves, and dwarves, but many are also culturally integrated orlans or children of Glanfathan elves. Despite having fought a war with the Aedyr Empire in the past, they are now trading partners and have maintained few grudges. Their one continued point of contention is exploration and colonization of Eír Glanfath, which Aedyr continues to push through official and unofficial means. Eír Glanfath - The name natives give to an indeterminately old elven kingdom that covered the entire forest southeast of the Bael River. Though they were not technologically advanced compared to contemporary civilizations, they had accomplished a number of architectural and astronomical feats that explorers and scholars are still trying to understand. Whatever the extent of Eír Glanfath's kingdom was, its ruins had been abandoned for centuries, possibly even millennia, before Vailians or Aedyr arrived in the area. The so-called "Glanfathan" elves in the forest seemed to have no cultural connection to the kingdom and were living in nomadic communities instead of the old structures. Eír Glanfath's ruins are not understood by anyone, and early misinterpretations over their significance resulted in two small-scale conflicts: The Broken Stone War and The War of Black Trees, the latter of which ended with a fire that consumed a vast section of the Dyrwood. Eothas - The Aedyran name for a god of light and redemption. While worship of Eothas is still popular in the Aedyr Empire and Readceras, the faith is outlawed in most cities of the Dyrwood due to events of the Saint's War that culminated at Godhammer Citadel. Though Eothas once communicated regularly with his faithful, he has not done so since the destruction of St. Waidwen at the Battle of Godhammer over 200 years ago. Hylspeak - An old dialect of Aedyran only spoken by rural communities and older elves in the Aedyre heartlands. It is grammatically almost identical to Aedyran, but contains a large number of archaic words that have either disappeared from contemporary use or taken new forms over time. Speakers of contemporary Aedyran can understand Hylspeak, but it can sometimes be confusing. Hylspeak is only commonly heard in folk songs and poems that have survived over the centuries. Some people associate the spontaneous speaking of Hylspeak with an awakened soul. As a result, superstitious folk are easily angered when they hear it spoken, believing it may cause their soul to remember a past life. Magran - The Aedyran name for a goddess of war and fire. Her priests commonly employ firearms and some helped construct the "Godhammer" bomb used to destroy St. Waidwen. Following the Saint's War, she became the most popular faith in Dyrwood. In Aedyr, her symbol is a flame, but in Dyrwood, it is a flaming bomb. Worship of Magran is extensively persecuted in Readceras. orlan - A race of people found mostly in northern, temperate climates but also as far south as the Dyrwood. Physically, they are notable for their small stature, two-toned skin, and exceptionally large, hair-covered ears. Due to their size, orlans have been victimized and marginalized by most of the cultures with whom they have come into contact. As a result, it is rare to find large communities of them and they have progressively retreated into heavily wooded environments over the last few centuries. Many orlan communities have also adopted brutal guerilla tactics including heavy use of traps and poison in the surrounding environment. As a result, even orlans raised in urban cultures often share their rural kin's nasty reputation. Readceras, The Penitential Regency of - The ecclesiastic nation that was formerly an Aedyre colony and later an independent theocratic dictatorship (the Divine Kingdom of Readceras). Two centuries ago, a popular religious movement took hold in the countryside, in part sparked by the collapse of the nation's vorlas (purple dye-producing plant) market, its resultant poverty, and general civil unrest. The leader of the movement was a farmer named Waidwen who claimed that the Aedyre god of light, Eothas, had appeared to him in the night and told him to punish the colonial governor for leading the people to ruin. Waidwen's success led to his apparent transformation into a living vessel for Eothas, after which he became the first and only "divine king" of the country. His rule produced a subsequent purge of heretics and followers of other faiths across the nation. Events related to this purge led to the Saint's War with Dyrwood, which informally ended in 2618 AI when Waidwen was apparently destroyed by a massive bomb north of Halgot Citadel (popularly renamed Godhammer Citadel). svef - Svef is the Aedyran name for a potent narcotic produced from the berries of small shrub that grows in the dry, distant mountains of Tal Kness. Svef produces hallucinations and, according to some, allows users to actually see their own soul. The narcotic was introduced to the Aedyr long ago, but it is used more frequently in the Dyrwood due to its heavy trafficking by Vailian merchants. Vailians - Most Vailians come from the Vailian Republics, a federation of independent city-states made up of former colonies from the Grand Empire of Vailia. They are a powerful mercantile force in the southern hemisphere, trading with more partners than any other nation or empire. Five cities are considered "grand" republics and have greater voting power in their electoral council: Spirento, Ancenze, Selona, Ozia, and Revua. The federation is widely known for its access to most major commodities in the world, including slaves, and for its habit of impressing (abducting) foreigners into service on their naval vessels. Ethnic Vailians (humans and a small number of dwarves) have dark brown skin and tightly spiraled, dark brown hair. They most commonly have brown or black eyes, but occasionally have green, hazel, or grey eyes. Vailians pride themselves on their well-made and intricately-decorated clothing, often made with rare materials and dyes to which they have easy access. That's a lotta lore! There's more lore where that came from, but to encapsulate all of the things going on in the world at this time, you'd probably need more space, like a book. Maybe a... Campaign Almanac Was that an awkward transition? A little. Is this actually an almanac? If you look at a "dictionary" to get "definitions", probably not, but that's what we're calling it. It's a PDF (and other formats) compendium of facts, figures, maps, lore and more about the world of Project Eternity. Looking to run a PnP campaign in the world of Project Eternity or just want even more detail on the world? This will be your first, of what we hope is many, "go-to" sources. And it will be a real (digital) thing that you can add to any pledge for $15. Also, if you've already pledged at the $50 tier or more, you get it for free! Big Ol' Stretch Goals You've asked for big stretch goals, and we're finally ready to give you some. These are mighty stretch goals, ones we're confident that a lot of people will enjoy but we know require serious funding to do well. $3.0 Million - Stronghold At $2.0 Million, your support funded a player house. Inspired by features like The Sink found in Fallout: New Vegas Old World Blues, the house is a convenient place to store gear, interact with companions, craft items (thanks to the $2.4 Million stretch goal), rest, and buy and sell from special merchants. Some of you wanted something that went beyond the standard player house, allowing you to take control of a full stronghold and its surrounding lands. Well-done strongholds provide players with the ability to make large scale changes, undertake special quests, customize the contents of the stronghold and the surrounding environment, and engage in light strategic gameplay between adventures. If we hit $3.0 Million, we will build a stronghold worthy of the title! $3.5 Million - Big City #2 Baldur's Gate and Athkatla are big cities. Spanning multiple large maps with a ton of interiors, characters and quests, big cities are a lot of fun. Like strongholds, they also take a lot of work to do well. We're going to have one big city in Project Eternity. Would you like two? If you take us on an exciting adventure to $3.5 Million, we will take you on an exciting adventure to another big city. Environment Screenshot Project Eternity's team of crazed environment artists have been working hard on developing our first environment for the game. Early on in the Kickstarter campaign, we told you that we wanted to make maps the Infinity Engine way. That is, we wanted to build 3D levels, render them out as 2D images, and then have our artists paint in beautiful details, highlights, and color-tweaks before they went into the game. Looking back at the levels some of us worked on for Icewind Dale, we were still thrilled with the quality that we could achieve with this approach. For Project Eternity, we're using 10 years of improvements in rendering technology and hardware to get the job done, but we still love what we can do the "old-fashioned" way. We hope you share our enthusiasm. 1920x1080 | 2560x1440 That's all for today's update! Thanks for reading. Update from Josh Sawyer

With only seven days left on the Project Eternity Kickstarter, we want to start the last week off with some pretty incredible things to announce. You might not know that Brian Fargo is the guy who gave many of us our start in the games industry – myself (Feargus), Josh Sawyer, Chris Avellone, Scott Everts, Brian Menze, Chris Jones, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan – and the list keeps on going from there. He also gave the guys who started a little company called Silicon & Synapse their first few projects – pretty crazy to think that little company is now Blizzard Entertainment. Personally, we are incredibly thankful to him and for the second wave of Kickstarter attention he brought with Wasteland 2. But, Brian hasn’t stopped being the great guy that he is, and so, he’s helping us out by letting us add Wasteland 2 as a reward at our higher tiers. So, what tiers will that be? A lot of you have asked for a digital tier after $110, so we are adding a $165 Digital Only Tier. That means Wasteland 2 will get added to this new $165 tier and all the tiers above. What we are also doing is adding the first expansion pack for the game to the $165 Tier (and above). The expansion will come out approximately six months after Project Eternity is released. That’s right, it’s not DLC, but a real honest to God RPG expansion pack. We don’t have the details on the Expansion yet, but you can bet it will be what you’d expect from an Infinity Engine game expansion. With all that Brian has done for us in the past and his incredibly generous offer, we also want to kick something in. To do that we are now supporting Brian's Kicking It Forward initiative. The Kickstarter community is pretty amazing and we want to help whomever we can be as successful as we have been. For those of you that missed the announcement over the weekend, we will be adding another level to the Mega Dungeon if we hit 20,000 Likes on Obsidian's Facebook page. We are getting close to halfway there! That’s a lot for today, and we have so much more coming up tomorrow. Maybe some new stretch goals, maybe some new add-ons, or heck maybe all of that! Stay tuned all of this week as we ramp up to the Project Eternity Kickstarter finish next Tuesday, October 16th with an all-day live video stream from Obsidian. We are trying to get Tim to do the cooking! Oh, and we also owe everyone an update that goes through everything you get at each of the tiers listed out with a bit more detail than we can squeeze in on the front page of our Kickstarter site. We will get that update out in the next few days, but to tide everyone over – we’ve attached the full concept for Aloth below. Have a great week everyone! Update by Feargus Urquhart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpBqLbyR7o8&feature=player_embedded This week we announced our Mega Dungeon, our base classes, the cipher and barbarian classes as stretch goals, and the Adventurer's Hall as another stretch goal. We are coming up on our final week of the Kickstarter, and we have exciting stuff planned for you in the coming week including new rewards, a special inside peek into Obsidian, and a first look at Project Eternity. Exclusive Backer Pet, Hardcover Books for $250 and Name in the Game for $500! At the $50 tier and up we have an exclusive in-game pet for you! The pet is optional and will not have any in-game function besides being a quiet companion that will never leave your side. We are looking for ideas on what the pet could be, so let us know what you would like to see in our forums. We have great news for $250 and up backers! We are upgrading the Collector's Book at the $250 level to a hardcover at no extra charge. The Collector's Book is a full-color book that includes concept art, our monster manual, information about the campaign setting, and a special behind the scenes look at the making of Project Eternity. Additionally for our $500 backers and above, we will let you put your name and a personalized message on a memorial stone in game. Your unique message will be encoded into Glanfathan runes, and can be decoded using a unique in-game ring. It's a way for all of us to remember your large contribution to Project Eternity. Tim Answers Your Combat Questions from Reddit Kaboom asks: Hi Tim! I'm curious how the close combat in P:E will turn out. Will the melee of P:E encompass stuff like reach weapons, opportunity attacks, flanking, grappling, charging, prone/standing-modes and so forth? Tim: Yes, we are looking to include many of these features into our close combat system. Specifically, opportunity attacks and flanking are definitely in, as well as charging. We're not sure about reach weapons yet (we need to figure out if that attribute on a weapon will be worthwhile enough in combat and will supportable with the appropriate UI), and while we will support prone positions, you won't be able to attack while prone because the animations involved are too different from attacks while standing that we would have to make every animation twice, once for standing and once for prone. This limitation also means that grappling abilities will not be included. There are too many new animations needed and special case limitations that apply, e.g. how does a human grapple a centaur or a dragon or an ooze?). Tim answers more of your questions in the video and the text version is on our forums. Also check out the Project Eternity reddit group. Mod Support From Neverwinter Nights 2 to Fallout: New Vegas, we've enjoyed supporting the mod community, and we are continuing that with Project Eternity. It is awesome to see how you extend the worlds we make. To make getting mods easy, we are excited to announce that our friends at the Nexus will be the official spot to download Project Eternity mods once the game is released. They have been a great host for mods for our past games, and we want to continue the trend with the Project Eternity Nexus. Check out the Nexus Network at www.nexusmods.com. Our plan is to release our file-format information and expose as much of the data in the game as possible for you to extend and edit. We traditionally do not "hard-code" numbers so that our designers, and you, have the power to easily change and iterate on RPG data. We also plan on releasing localization tools to let communities around the world create localized versions for languages we are not translating Project Eternity into. As we get more familiar with Unity during production, we will be extending Project Eternity even more for mod makers. Look forward to announcements in the months ahead as we make further progress and can provide you with more information about tools and mod support. The Endless Paths Grows! We've passed 52,500 backers! The Endless Paths of Od Nua Mega Dungeon continues to grow larger! The next level will be added at 55,000 backers. Thank you for helping us to spread the word about Project Eternity! Kickstarter Comments and Kerfluffles! Lastly, if you haven’t been attending all of the fun in the Comments section of our Kickstarter, you’re really missing out on some fun conversations. From the Obsidian Order of Eternity representing in full force, to one of our favorites, the Kerfluffle Marshmallow lady, Spring Barnickle, who asks: Hmmm... how many marshmallows indeed. Beware paladin-types... beware! Until next time... Update by Tim Cain and Adam Brennecke (You can also discuss the entire Reddit Q&A part 2 in this thread.)

For our weekend update this week (update 16!), we have another Q&A from our reddit readers in the Project Eternity Q&A Subgroup, with all of the questions having to do with the combat system of Project Eternity. Tim answers the top five questions below (as voted up by the community) as well as picking an additional question at random from all of those asked. Also check out the main Project Eternity group if you stop over to reddit. And now, on to the questions! Kaaaboom asks... Hi Tim! I'm curious how the close combat in P:E will turn out. Will the melee of P:E encompass stuff like reach weapons, opportunity attacks, flanking, grappling, charging, prone/standing-modes and so forth? Yes, we are looking to include many of these features into our close combat system. Specifically, opportunity attacks and flanking are definitely in, as well as charging. We're not sure about reach weapons yet (we need to figure out if that attribute on a weapon will be worthwhile enough in combat and will supportable with the appropriate UI), and while we will support prone positions, you won't be able to attack while prone because the animations involved are too different from attacks while standing that we would have to make every animation twice, once for standing and once for prone. This limitation also means that grappling abilities will not be included. There are too many new animations needed and special case limitations that apply, e.g. how does a human grapple a centaur or a dragon or an ooze?). DTKT asks... Are you guys designing some of the abilities/spells to be used in synergy with other spells? AKA, a grease spell and a fireball? Yes! We love abilities (including spells) that leave side effects on the target that subsequent abilities can take advantage of. So we may give you an attack that has a chance to stun a target, and another attack that does extra damage on stunned targets. Or you have a spell that catches targets on fire, and another that causes explosions on burning targets. These abilities work fine on their own, but when you learn the combinations, you will be much more effective. Karel_evzen asks... On KickStarter you mention positioning will be an important aspect of combat. How important will this (and tactics in general) be? Will we see similar combat mechanics as in NWN2 (backstabbing, friendly fire) or something completely different? We plan to make positioning very important, since we will support flanking attacks and backstabbing. We want you to be thinking about where your characters are standing and facing, not only relative to the monsters but also to each other, because we will have friendly fire in the game. Some abilities will affect their target and other targets around the main one, so you will need to use these abilities carefully. You can always avoid using these abilities at all, as they are never required, or you can choose to use them around your other characters that have a good chance to evade such damage. And if you don't like it, friendly fire will be an option you can turn off in most modes, but not in expert mode. In expert mode, you will always have to be careful when using area of effect abilities or abilities that cause splash damage, because you won't be able to turn off friendly fire. DoubtfulGuest asks... A question about combat magic: I really enjoyed the complexity of the system in the Baldurs Gate series where a wizard's repertoire included contingency spells, spell triggers, spell shields of different magnitudes, "prep spells" like Malison, and so forth. It added an interesting amount of strategy to a wizard duel. Will the system in Project Eternity have similar elements? Yes, we will have spells that are useful to counter other spells, and we will certainly have buffs and shields that you can cast on yourself and other party members. However, we are not going to make encounters that require the use of a particular spell or that involve a creature with extreme immunities (such as a creature only harmed by silver weapons). We don't want to make encounters that only have one solution, and if you cannot use that solution, you are out of luck. Instead, our encounters will have creatures with various strengths and weaknesses, and you can pick several different ways to take them down, and some of those ways will be more efficacious than others. Few choices will be outright unusable, though. Wormix asks... In certain CRPGs you will regenerate all your health and mana after every fight, ensuring that you have your full power for every fight. In the IE games you didn't regenerate spells or health after each battle, making spell management a strategic concern.While this allows individual fights to be balanced for difficulty easier and is less punishing in general, it removes an aspect of strategy from the game that a lot of players enjoy. What is Project Eternity's aim in terms of strategic resource management? In the old IE games, wizards and priests had resources that got drained and did not regenerate before the next battle, unlike fighters and rogues that few or no such resources. We are looking for a middle ground solution, either one where the wizards aren't the only ones to make a hard choice of whether to "use up" a resource, or one where no class has to make such a choice. For example, we are looking into the idea that wizards are only limited in the number of times they can cast their higher-level combat spells in a fight, and other spell are castable as many times as you want. As the wizard levels up, spells that previously had a limit can now be cast an unlimited number of times, and the newly acquired spells are the ones with a limit. And we could make similar abilities for fighters, priests and rogues too. In general, we always want to the player to have a choice of what to do with a particular character, and we want those choices to change as the character becomes more powerful. Now for a bonus question! Diablo169 asks... Could you please provide a bit more detail on how skill/spell cooldowns are going to factor into the games combat system? Sure, let me give some specifics on how we are planning to incorporate cooldowns into the wizard class. First off, cooldowns are NOT on individual spells. For any particular spell, you cast it, and when you are done, you can cast it again right away. But one limitation is on spells of a particular level. When you cast a certain number of those spells, in any combination, then the whole spell level group goes into a cooldown, and you can't use any of them until that cooldown has passed. That cooldown is long enough that for short battles, you are limited to casting a certain number of spells for each spell level. For long battles, that cooldown might expire and you can start casting those spells again. The other cooldown has to do with your grimoire. A wizard may know a lot of spells, but he can only cast a few basic spells plus the ones that are in the grimoire that he is holding. Grimoires vary in size, holding various numbers of spells of different spell levels, and the player is free to load up his different grimoires with spell combinations of his choice. But once combat begins, switching grimoires causes a cooldown for all of those spells, leaving the caster only able to cast his basic spells until the grimoire cooldown passes. This means the player will have to think carefully about which spells he adds to a grimoire and under what situations he would want to switch one for another. And that's everything for this week, folks. Thank you very much for your support of Obsidian and Project Eternity. Tim.

Hi guys, great questions! There are two ways to handle international shipping: 1) Hang tight and once the Kickstarter ends and we start sending out surveys, we'll be contacting people who we need shipping from and we can handle that at that time. 2) If you prefer to just take care of it now, you can do a second donation to pay for the shipping. At the bottom of the PayPal section on the Eternity home page there's an option to donate any amount. In there, just leave us a note saying you're paying for shipping. PayPal does directly yield us more of your contributions, but there are some nice conveniences for us through the Kickstarter site that help us save time, so either is great for us. Thanks! -TG

Hi folks, PayPal is now available! Please visit the Project Eternity web page for more details. If you have any problems or questions, feel free to respond here or e-mail us at info@obsidian.net. Thanks! -TG