hamskii

Great find! So is this an intentional hint that this game takes place at the same time as a Lovers' Tide? If so, that could put it at c. 2508 AI (315 before PoE), or 2672 AI (end of the War of Defiance). It could of course also take place at some other previously unknown point in history when there's a Lovers' Tide, or at some point in the future. But I do think it kind of strengthens the War of Defiance setting theory.

Hadn't thought about the origins of the Aeydran races' names at all. Good catch!

I think it could still be Eastern Reach. "Sensible" Galawain, Woedican imagery and everything looking quite jungle-y suggests Aedyr. However the presence of adra is more indicative of the Eastern Reach, and others have said the stuff about Aedyr could be because it's set prior to or during the War of Defiance. Aedyr a setting is like, imperial Britain except in a jungle and is very "out there" compared to player expectations (magic fantasy setting with medieval technology set in a generic temperate forest) – so is the cusp-of-renaissance level of technology. Avowed is a break from the Pillars of Eternity brand, so they're trying to bring new players in, and if those players are expecting a Skyrim clone then the setting that would most closely match their expectations without breaking the lore would be to set it in the Eastern Reach at some point in the past. I guess that solves the problem of having to continue the story of Pillars of Eternity while still bringing new players in – that might stay a cliffhanger for the foreseeable future. And yes, if it's set in the past it also prevents the player from having world-changing impacts, since the events can't deviate too much from what we know about from Pillars of Eternity.

By the way, as I'm sure you've all seen by now, a new version of the PnP guide is available at https://eternity.obsidian.net.

Erm. In a TT RPG one can be whatever one wants to be, and can literally do whatever one wants to do, imagination the only limitation. Railroading is like vampires. It sucks. Depends on the story that they're playing, surely? If there's a god rampaging around the game setting and the player doesn't intervene, then it makes sense that bad stuff would happen. Imo Eothas' Challenge isn't so much railroading as it is another resource management challenge.

With Magran's Fires and the advent of turn-based combat, it is now possible to customise the gameplay to create a much more simulative experience. This thread is about discussing the combination of NG+ options that come closest to providing a tabletop RPG-like gameplay experience. Things I'm pretty certain about are: Turn-based mode: of course. Eothas' Challenge: creates a sense of urgency implied by the narrative but not previously reflected in gameplay, and forces players to plan and prioritise rather than swanning about every corner of the map, much like they would in a tabletop RPG. Abydon's Challenge: equipment maintenance is a part of many tabletop RPGs, but can be tedious for the GM to track. One of the advantage of video games is that this complexity and tedium can be handled by the game engine. Skaen's Challenge: makes light sources a necessary part of adventuring, as they are in many tabletop RPGs. Rymyrgand's Challenge: for much the same reasons as Abydon's Challenge. Woedica's Challenge: combined with Eothas' Challenge and Rymyrgand's Challenge, it turns resting into a careful game of resource management. And of course, resource management, particularly with spells (not so much abilities) is an important part of most TT RPGs. Trial of Iron: no do-overs on the tabletop, I'm afraid. Classic Difficulty: enemies' stats are enemies' stats, and enemy composition is designed around a balanced gameplay experience. I think Relaxed or Veteran also probably fall into the range of difficulties allowable by this, as although they artificially change enemy composition they don't give them stat buffs or debuffs. No Level Scaling Things I'm not so certain about (would be interested to hear peoples' opinions on these): Expert Mode: I guess it's a question of how tough your GM typically is. Do they let players sit and calculate effect radius so that they can avoid friendly fire? If not, then Expert Mode probably needs to be on as well. But given that tabletop is new, it's much more frustrating having it on. Berath's Challenge: This simulates the "bleeding out" mechanic of a lot of tabletop RPGs, but given that there is no way to mitigate this, it might be overly punishing, particularly when combined with Woedica's Challenge. Magran's Challenge: A common houserule is for players to have only a few seconds to decide their action. In practice, Magran's Challenge gives you less time than that, because you have to wait for your move action to complete before you can take another action. Also, you have to decide what to do for a whole party of characters instead of just your own, so the pace is much more frantic than it would be on the tabletop. Has anybody else tried a playthrough in "tabletop mode"? What settings did you use? What did you think?

With Magran's Fires and the advent of turn-based combat, it is now possible to customise the gameplay to create a much more simulative experience. This thread is about discussing the combination of NG+ options that come closest to providing a tabletop RPG-like gameplay experience. Things I'm pretty certain about are: Turn-based mode: of course. Eothas' Challenge: creates a sense of urgency implied by the narrative but not previously reflected in gameplay, and forces players to plan and prioritise rather than swanning about every corner of the map, much like they would in a tabletop RPG. Abydon's Challenge: equipment maintenance is a part of many tabletop RPGs, but can be tedious for the GM to track. One of the advantage of video games is that this complexity and tedium can be handled by the game engine. Skaen's Challenge: makes light sources a necessary part of adventuring, as they are in many tabletop RPGs. Rymyrgand's Challenge: for much the same reasons as Abydon's Challenge. Woedica's Challenge: of course. Combined with Eothas' Challenge and Rymyrgand's Challenge, it turns resting into a careful game of resource management. Trial of Iron: no do-overs on the tabletop, I'm afraid. Classic Difficulty: enemies' stats are enemies' stats, and enemy composition is designed around a balanced gameplay experience. I think Relaxed or Veteran also probably fall into the range of difficulties allowable by this, as although they artificially change enemy composition they don't give them stat buffs or debuffs. No Level Scaling Things I'm not so certain about (would be interested to hear peoples' opinions on these): Expert Mode: I guess it's a question of how tough your GM typically is. Do they let players sit and calculate effect radius so that they can avoid friendly fire? If not, then Expert Mode probably needs to be on as well. But given that tabletop is new, it's much more frustrating having it on. Berath's Challenge: This simulates the "bleeding out" mechanic of a lot of tabletop RPGs, but given that there is no way to mitigate this, it might be overly punishing, particularly when combined with Woedica's Challenge. Magran's Challenge: A common houserule is for players to have only a few seconds to decide their action. In practice, Magran's Challenge gives you less time than that, because you have to wait for your move action to complete before you can take another action. Also, you have to decide what to do for a whole party of characters instead of just your own, so the pace is much more frantic than it would be on the tabletop. Has anybody else tried a playthrough in "tabletop mode"? What settings did you use? What did you think? EDIT: I had meant to post this in General Discussion rather than Technical Support

Is there any way of extracting the gorgeous concept art from the bestiary (ideally in a transparent format!), other than laboriously going through, screenshotting it and then Photoshopping out the background? Or does anybody know if this has already been done elsewhere?

Yes - including Mirke and Vatnir.

Digging through the game files, it seems that there are a few new morsels of interactivity in the base game when the DLC is installed. The biggest one, which seemingly doesn't even relate to the DLC, is added reactivity for sidekicks when you take them to Ukaizo. I'd post them here, but unless someone really wants to see them here I think it's best for them to be discovered in game. In particular,

This quest never triggered for me, either!

I was running 4.0, but it seems that I didn't have the problem after all - I just didn't spot the new staircase in the Hall of the Unseen. Went right to the centre and totally missed it

Sorry, I was looking in the wrong save game folder!! Here's one that I'm pretty sure is from yesterday: http://www.filedropper.com/wulfrun3edbc526-1aa6-4f05-9ea3-64b42f8dc292lax-12abcdefquicksave

I'm having the same problem. The scripted interaction with isn't triggering, which is stopping me from starting the DLC. I have reported it as a bug here.

So I installed the DLC as soon as it arrived yesterday, sailed around a bit (I'm at 20th level), got a scripted interaction about a giant earthquake, received a letter about the Critter Crusher (or whatever it's called!), and then...nothing. Sailed around some more, sailed to The Black Isles (which is now covered in tentacles that yield kith meat when harvested), entered the Hall of the Unseen, found my way to the centre, and everything is the same as it was. I tried restarting Steam, and that didn't work. Then I tried unticking The Forgotten Sanctum box, restarting Steam, ticking the box, waiting for it to download, and opening the game. The DLC buttons in the bottom left corner of the main menu said The Forgotten Sanctum was installed, I loaded my save and...nothing. Then I tried loading an earlier save and had exactly the same problem as earlier. This morning, I tried again - unticked *all* DLC boxes, waited for them to turn grey, ticked them all again, restarted Steam, waited for them to all turn white, launched the game, and...same experience again. The fact that I appear to be getting some but not of the DLC content has led me to believe that my problem is not the same as this one, where the DLC isn't installing for Season Pass users. I think mine is a different bug where the scripted interaction with Llengrath never triggers. I have attached my savegame in case it's useful for debugging. Wulfrun (8ebba82c-325c-493a-856a-ced1f38c4444) autosave_2.savegame.zip

No staircase that I can see. Just went to talk to Arkemyr as well, and he didn't have anything new to say,

So I installed the DLC as soon as it arrived yesterday, sailed around a bit (I'm at 20th level), got a scripted interaction about a giant earthquake, received a letter about the Critter Crusher (or whatever it's called!), and then...nothing. Sailed around some more, sailed to The Black Isles (which is now covered in tentacles that yield kith meat when harvested), entered the Hall of the Unseen, found my way to the centre, and everything is the same as it was. I tried restarting Steam, and that didn't work. Then I tried unticking The Forgotten Sanctum box, restarting Steam, ticking the box, waiting for it to download, and opening the game. The DLC buttons in the bottom left corner of the main menu said The Forgotten Sanctum was installed, I loaded my save and...nothing. Then I tried loading an earlier save and had exactly the same problem as earlier. This morning, I tried again - unticked *all* DLC boxes, waited for them to turn grey, ticked them all again, restarted Steam, waited for them to all turn white, launched the game, and...same experience again. The fact that I appear to be getting some but not of the DLC content has led me to believe that my problem is not the same as this one, where the DLC isn't installing for Season Pass users. I think mine is a different bug where the scripted interaction with Llengrath never triggers. I have attached my savegame in case it's useful for debugging. Wulfrun (8ebba82c-325c-493a-856a-ced1f38c4444) autosave_2.savegame.zip

Yes! Josh has responded to some constructive criticism of the TTRPG which some people might find interesting. Internal playtesting is underway and Josh hopes to have a new revision out by the end of the year. Finally, here's a preview of the enchantment rules.

Personally, I went for the Huana. I found it an unexpectedly tough choice, actually. From the get go I'd decided that the Vailians were essentially looters who would cheat the native Huana and then leave, but I'd also grown to quite dislike the gods and the Huana's religiosity was not only irritating, but it seemed unwise to leave that kind of power in their hands when they'd probably be on the wrong side of any conflict with the gods. The Vailians (under Castol's leadership, at least) had a very cool utopian vision for the Deadfire and kith in general (reminded me of Mr House a bit), and with the advances in animancy they'd been making I believed they could achieve it. However the idea of grinding up peoples' souls to do so made me very uneasy, and even as animancy looked to become more important with the reveal of Eothas' plan, I wasn't prepared to accept the destruction of the Huana culture.

Started with The Defiant; chose not to change it since that's just the name of that ship. For the next one, I chose The Pallid Hand, which I thought was appropriate as I was Berath's Herald. As I started to close in on Eothas, I bought a new ship, which was called The Dyrwoodan Hello (think my intentions speak for themselves there...). And after speaking with him and learning of his purpose, I found myself well and truly on board and my next ship was called Hope Eternal. What did you call your ship?

I assume "Abet" is what ended up becoming Neketaka?

One I spotted last night: I was pleasantly surprised to find Tama Watua from Lavender and Lye in-game. Again, that quest mentions "mainland rulers of Abet", but we never see such a location in Deadfire...

I'm just wondering what happened to Abet or the polpovir. Were there any other Deadfire-related things that were hinted to exist in Pillars one that never seemed to crop up in Pillars 2?

^ see the poll.

^ as the title says