hamskii

Does anyone know if the heroes from this update all have a known class? I'm guessing that there's at least two of every class, as there are 11 classes and 24 heroes. Here's what I have so far: Aloth - Wizard Devil of Caroc - Rogue Durance - Priest Grieving Mother - Cipher Hiravias - Druid Kana Rua - Chanter Edér - Figter Sagani - Ranger Zahua - Monk Pallegina - Paladin Mystery hero - Unknown (probably Meneha, a barbarian) Mafis - Unknown Marceno - Ranger Ystala - Cipher Zacmar - Unknown Laudira - Unknown Enfws - Unknown Dehengen - Unknown Mordus - Unknown Lenk - Unknown Verzano - Unknown Ŵula - Unknown Leyska - Unknown Yngfey - Unknown

It's just a ligature.

Thanks, I've updated the OP.

Looking at (1) and (2), it seems there are a number of issues with the automatic levelling of companions that have persisted since launch. I have gone into the game to quickly verify a number of these on a new save (so I've looked at Aloth, Edér, and Durance). The main issues are: Edér has Confident Aim twice (which is impossible when levelled up normally), and they stack. Kana has no level 1 phrases, which is impossible when levelled up normally. Neither Zahua or the Devil of Caroc's attribute scores add up to 78, the standard number. Zahua's attribute scores are actually exactly the same as when the character was called Forton, and was only partially implemented. Kana does not auto-level past level 10. None of the base game companions level up past level 12. This is probably an oversight as the progression tables were not updated with the increased level cap. The Devil of Caroc does not auto-level past level 12.

One of her new (Patch 3.0) talents, Vielo Vidório, is based on Flames of Devotion and is widely liked by QA. It gives nearby allies an attack speed boost whenever FoD is used. Will these be added to Pallegina's list of auto-level abilites/talents? Also, will story companions' abilities and talents be automatically assigned in Story Time mode?

Well, remember there's plenty of places in the Dyrwood that we've yet to visit!

Hopefully the poll says it all

There is at least one unique spell in there that isn't prefixed by Ninagauth - Tayn's Chaotic Orb. However, adding the grimoire via the additem command did work.

I just found Ninagauth's Black Pages in Durgan's Battery, opened it up, saw all the spells it contained, and took it back to the Gréf's Rest to give to Aloth. I started teaching him some spells but accidentally deleted one, so reloaded to do it again. However, now that I have reloaded, when I open the grimoire only spells up to 4th level appear, and I think there is a 3rd level spell missing as well. This persists when I reload, restart the game, or even load a save from before I found the grimoire and pick it up again. I'm worried that I'm now missing out on some of the unique spells in the grimoire. Is there a list of the spells that *should* be in there somewhere so I can add them with AddAbility?

You have to complete the Temple of Woedica (the first main story quest in Act II) to start the expansion. Thank you for your quick response

This is not intended behaviour. Have you tried opting out of the beta?

I had already opted out of the beta and I was still having the problem :/ opting back in reverted me to an earlier version and broke the game (obviously), but I'm opting out of the beta again and we'll see if that does anything.

I am having the same issue. Expansion and patch are both installed, I've tried changing zones, resting at the inn in Dyrford, and even starting Act II, but have not received any kind of letter. In my quest log underneath "The White March" it just says something like, "You have no leads". I am using a beta 2.0 save. EDIT: Just tried opting back into the beta to see if it fixes the problem, and am now apparently running v1.0.5.0582 PX1 -steam. Wtf. Post-1.6 saves have disappeared, obviously. I'll opt back out of the beta and upload my save here.

I have just experienced the same bug. Feels like the same issue as the mill bug in Gilded Vale. Here is my save, and I have attached my DxDiag.txt and output_log.txt. DxDiag.txt output_log.txt

I'm not sure I follow. The story is definitely finished - PoE isn't planned to be first in a trilogy or anything like that - it seems to be a self-contained story with the potential to lead into future, new stories. The ending slides weren't written as "the ending - unless we feel like changing them", they were to show how the player's choices affected the world. Changing the impact of the player's choices down the line because it helps you tell a better story is not only a retcon, but it's a little cheap imo. The writers have chosen to tie off the story in such a way that means Edér, for example, is unlikely to appear again (unless we get a prequel set during the Saint's War, or something). So we probably won't see Edér again. As for which companions I'd like to see...I avoided the question a little because I like all the companions, and it's always nice seeing an old friend. I have enough faith in the writing that I don't think any would be an unwelcome sight in future games. But in terms of potential, I think Aloth and Durance have the most for impact on future storylines.

I'd like to see them all return in some capacity in future games, if not as companions. It very much depends on how Obsidian wants to approach sequels. JES has said the following: Let's have a look at the sequel potential for all the companions, in light of the game's multiple endings. We'll assume that future installments take place outside the Dyrwood (MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW)

From the email sent out to backers, some more information on the (very cool) new companions: N.B. "vision quest" is Obsidian's internal name for a companion's personal storyline. It was also used for companions for Fallout: New Vegas, and is probably a reference to Native American vision quests, underscoring the requirement that companion quests contain some sort of character development. We've seen Zahua/Forton's affinity for mind-altering substances hinted at in all four of his remaining lines in the game files. Since he was to be introduced in Gilded Vale, I'd assumed that this meant he was supposed to introduce players to consumables and possibly crafting. The fact that this all fits with what we already knew about him, and that his name was changed for lore reasons, suggests that the lore surrounding Nalpazca was more well-developed than we have been led to believe. I'd be interested in what other lore outside of the Dyrwood has been written, but it has been said that it's generally been intentionally left vague to give future developers more freedom. One notable absence from this character's new iteration is the lack of Wael's symbol tattooed on his stomach. Gameplay of both characters can be seen in this video. As for the Devil of Caroc, I did wonder why we never got to see Cold Morn in-game. The fact that they kept dropping hints about it made me think it'd be explored in sequels, but I'd have thought that they'd want to go to places other than the Eastern Reach for those (then again, from this map, there's plenty we've yet to explore in the Eastern Reach). I'm glad we're finally getting some more information. The only question left now is: who is the mystery character? Is it left a mystery for now because it's a character we have already heard of (and is therefore a spoiler), or just someone that Obsidian haven't got around to speaking about yet. Is it a companion, or just some other NPC? The only area in the Eastern Reach we've yet to have a companion from is Readceras, and of course we've yet to have a barbarian character. The races who are yet to be represented as companions are pale elves (which makes sense), coastal aumaua (although having Kana be from Rauatai allows them to get around this as much as possible), wild orlans (again, having Hiravias be Glanfathan mitigates this somewhat), all playable godlikes, and mountain dwarf. Since mountain dwarves are the biggest local racial group left unrepresented, my bet for the last character would be a Readceran mountain dwarf barbarian companion, introduced in the White March: Part II.

Couple of new portraits from Jason Seow that I haven't seen posted here yet, female ocean folk with death guard armour, and male human with the Pilgrim's Lasting Vigil helm:

EDIT: Posted in wrong thread

Update: Devil of Caroc confirmed for the White March: Part 1 (far right, in the above image). She is a rogue construct, but there don't seem to be any more details. From her card, it seems she might be some sort of assassin? The card has an updated version of the old portrait, with a much more intricate, floral (Vailian?) design. It's clearer here that the plating is made up of separate components, and there is a hinge at the top of the face. The other companion we're getting is a monk, Zahua: Potentially we have a rework of Forton - another shirtless old dude, but no word on whether he's from Ixamitl or not. I hope we get a companion from there; it's a location in the Eastern Reach we don't know much about. Can we infer anything from their cards? The Devil of Caroc's effect: to destroy an enemy exhausted card at the expense of exhausting the Devil of Caroc, suggests that she might be an assassin, or could be a reference to the "reckless killing machines" bit about animats in the collector's edition book. As for Zahua, what does being the only card able to be assigned more than one soul gem suggest? Another Awakened companion? This also means that the only class that doesn't have a companion is barbarian - could this be the hero yet to be revealed, or should we expect one to come in the White March: Part 2? If we don't see a barbarian companion, it'd make an ideal class for the PC in future playthroughs. Finally, JES on Cadegund and Forton being scrapped: and @adam_brennecke on what Cadegund is up to these days:

Managed to get the texture for the Devil of Caroc's portrait out of the BB v257 files in PillarsOfEternity_Data/sharedassets9.assets, same as the one you posted in the RPG codex thread: No large version that I could see, unfortunately. Tried the same procedure with a version of the game with patch 1.05 installed but I ran into quite a few errors with disunity. Here are the Devil of Caroc's texture/mesh files from v257 if anyone's interested. It might be possible to view them in-game with IEmod's ModelViewer or something, but I don't know exactly you'd go about doing that. So, does anyone have any ideas about who/what this character might have been? I think someone in the RPG codex thread suggested an Eothas godlike, but to my eye it looks more like a animat or construct of some sort. Maybe a Vhailor/One of Many/HK-47/ED-E-type character? From the name alone, I'd have maybe expected the character to have a role similar to the Hanged Man in Van Buren - a powerful, early-game companion whose bad reputation causes problems for the party and forces the player to make a value judgement as to whether they are worth keeping around. It doesn't look like it's Engwithan, since it doesn't resemble the animats you find in their ruins, but it could be Dyrwoodan in origin. I opened up the collector's edition book, to the section on immortality studies: It's a pretty creepy story, that'd fit well with the one creepy portrait we have for the Devil of Caroc. Maybe the character was supposed to give some insight into animancy, and possibly some exposition on Abydon? It'd be interesting to explore how a Watcher could interact with such a construct, imo. EDIT: another possibility

Durance is in the game files as companion_ggp.unity3d (in PillarsOfEternity_Data/assetbundles/prefabs/objectbundle), so I think the god-gnawed priest has been Durance at least since Cadegund was scrapped (although it's possible that she was the GGP at one point, but I doubt it). Hmm, there's nothing in the objectbundle folder about this character, nor is there any files with "devil" or "caroc" in the names. How were you opening model files? I haven't been able to do that. I obtained a copy of backer beta 257, there's nothing in any filenames (or anything openable in Notepad) about the Devil of Caroc either. There isn't anything for Forton, Aloth etc. either, which suggests that most of the files for BB v257 pertain only to the backer beta (actually, I kind of suspect that Cadegund was adapted to be BB Priest). We know Thaos was a thing at this point in development, because there are files like thaos_shields_for_the_faithful.unity3d in the objectbundle and there's plenty about Iovara and Thaos in PillarsOfEternity_data/data/design/global/game.globalvariables. Also, the global variables file show Pallegia, Hiravias, Sagani, Kana, Eder, and Aloth were companions as of August 2014. From Googling about this stuff I found this post of yours on RPG codex, that would have been during 257 right? How did you manage to get these portraits for Aloth and Caroc? It sort of makes sense that the concept for Caroc would evolve into Thaos, in a way. "Caroc" doesn't sound like any modern location in Eora, but it does remind me of, say, Creitum, or any of the other civilisations that Thaos mentions existing inbetween Engwith and the Dyrwood:

Previously: Cut content: Durance and Grieving Mother For anyone who is generally as fascinated with cut content in video games as I am, or as interested specifically in "what could've been" for PoE, I've managed to get copies of the NPC's Cadegund and Forton (two companions who were present in early promotional material) that were left in the game files, into the game. It wasn't actually that difficult in the end, I'm just not very technically-minded so it took me a while the procedure was to load up the game with IEmod installed, and use the command "BSC companion_barbarian 0" (for example), then "FindCharacter Barbarian" to find the character's name, and then when that returned "Companion_Barbarian(Clone)", use "AddToParty Companion_Barbarian(Clone)" (for example). The companions spawn without portraits (although Cadegund had a temporary portrait, which was just cropped from the first link above, in glimpses of the game you see in the documentary on steam). This leads me to believe that no art in the style of the other companions was ever produced for these characters, in the end (here's hoping Jason Seow or someone decides to produce some, although it's unlikely as fantasy human portraits aren't exactly hard to come by). The characters don't particularly resemble their concept art, probably because indices for skin/hair/face kept changing throughout development as more were added/removed and the numbers that determine the NPC's appearance no longer point to the hair styles and skin tones that they originally did. Both characters, as well as the Test Barbarian character, are incredibly pale-skinned, so I think this is the most likely explanation. Here are some details from their character sheets: There are no filenames that mention Cadegund in the game files (that I could find), but there's still a couple of excerpts of conversations with or involving Forton: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <StringTableFile xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <Name>conversations\07_gilded_vale\07_bs_forton_bystanders</Name> <NextEntryID>1</NextEntryID> <EntryCount>2</EntryCount> <Entries> <Entry> <ID>1</ID> <DefaultText>"There goes another one..." </DefaultText> <FemaleText /> </Entry> <Entry> <ID>2</ID> <DefaultText>"Right, pay up. The other foreigner won." </DefaultText> <FemaleText /> </Entry> </Entries> </StringTableFile> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <StringTableFile xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <Name>conversations\07_gilded_vale\07_cv_forton</Name> <NextEntryID>1</NextEntryID> <EntryCount>4</EntryCount> <Entries> <Entry> <ID>1</ID> <DefaultText>"These young dogs can't hold their blacsonn." </DefaultText> <FemaleText /> </Entry> <Entry> <ID>2</ID> <DefaultText>"A smoke ought to clear up that sickly look about you." </DefaultText> <FemaleText /> </Entry> <Entry> <ID>3</ID> <DefaultText>"One philosophical question and nobody wants to drink with you." </DefaultText> <FemaleText /> </Entry> <Entry> <ID>4</ID> <DefaultText>"Move along, lad. I have no wisdom to bestow before I've had a pipe or two." </DefaultText> <FemaleText>"Move along, lass. I have no wisdom to bestow before I've had a pipe or two." </FemaleText> </Entry> </Entries> </StringTableFile> There may be other files that mention Cadegund and Forton, but I only searched through filenames rather than file contents, and I can only open the XML files. Someone more skilled than me will have to open the unity3d files, if they can! What else do we know about these characters? We know that the GGP (God-Gnawed Priest) companion was at one point supposed to be more Falstaff-like, but I still see that as more likely to be an early incarnation of Durance than Cadegund. Other than that, I don't know anything else about these characters? Why were these characters dropped? Cadegund was probably cut because it was decided that it wasn't worth the hassle after the boobplate controversy, and my guess is that Forton was cut after negative feedback on the forums (which is a shame imo, because we now have no monk companion, nor do we have an "ambassador" from the nearby Ixamitl Plains among the companions - nor do we have one from Readceras, incidentally). So it seems that Cadegund was replaced with Durance, another priest of Magran (maybe Cadegund also had a connection to the Godhammer - one of the Dozen maybe?), and I think it's probable that Forton was replaced with Hiravias, who took his position as the Wael-aligned companion. We also know of two other companions: a hearth orlan cipher detective, seen in a couple of the early builds of the game in the documentary (no name unfortunately, just "Player2" and the like). This character used a crop of this concept art as a portrait, and was scrapped in favour of developing the faction Dunryd Row. We also know of "The Devil of Caroc", shown on a list of companions in the documentary as well as a early UI mock-up. In the documentary, the list is Eder (not the final spelling Edér, or the original spelling Edair) God-Gnawed Priest (so before Durance's name was finalised, unless Cadegund had a similar story) Devil of Caroc Aloth Kana Rua (surname dropped in final version) Sagani Pallegina mes Rei (surname missing accent, and also dropped in final version) Grieving Mother This suggests that the Devil of Caroc was actually dropped quite late in development, lasting longer than Cadegund or Forton, despite the lack of publicity (spoiler companion maybe? But then why were they in the party the longest in the mock-up?). It seems that Hiravias is the only final companion missing from the list, so it is possible that Hiravias actually replaces the Devil of Caroc. It was speculated in this thread that the Devil of Caroc was a Death Godlike fighter companion (if you remember, Edér kept changing between fighter and rogue during development, as he was more of a guerilla-warfare-type soldier during the Saint's War), but I think it's possible that the Devil of Caroc was at some point the name for the hearth orlan cipher detective character. Without Hiravias, there would be no orlan companion, nor would there be a Glanfathan character. When the concept was dropped, their story became that of the Dunryd Demon. Points counting against this theory include the fact that the Dunryd Demon is actually a female orlan named Casŵen, and the fact that this would mean that from the list above, there were two cipher companions, the Devil of Caroc and the Grieving Mother, while there was not even a druid, monk, or rogue/fighter companion. At some point, I might try and write backstories for these characters in the CNPC concepts thread, although it might turn out that their stories/themes have too much overlap with existing companions (being as they have been literally replaced with them). Otherwise, does anyone know anything else about these characters that I haven't covered here?

Great news! Any word on when it'll be available for Steam users?

I played as a cipher main, so I undid the ritual and killed the Skaenite priests. I feel like this was justified as despite their persuasive logic, there is some evidence in a nearby chest that shows that the Skaenites' animancer was exploiting and violating the girl just as much as her uncle. I told her to hit the road, and trust no one. When I got back to the inn, I killed the uncle. He died quickly, which was a little unsatisfying, but I suppose that was the point.