Duchess of Kvetch

I keep hearing about these dialogues between, for example, Eder and Aloth, but so far I haven't heard zip. However, I did witness some snark between Hiravias and other party members. But it seemed to happen when exiting the inn in Dyrford Village, not when just walking around. I'm curious whether others have discovered banter triggers in specific areas, or after certain quests have been completed, XP accrual, or time. For example I know there's some barks when you cross major milestones, such as after meeting Maerwald (which also triggers some "one on one" conversational requests), but I am more interested in the meant-to-seem-random inter party banter.

It shouldn't matter how someone chooses to play their game, regardless. As long as nothing is changed in the rest of the game, it doesn't affect anyone else's personal experience... that's why we -have- difficulty modes to begin with in single player games. It's not a communal shared-experience crucible like Demon Souls. And if you're disabled, injured, or a member of a generation that didn't grow up with video games, it can feel insulting to have people constantly tell you variants of "L2P".

I think any decent party should absolutely have a cipher. And as others have recommended, a few tanks. I haven't found priests that useful for healing, since you rest for actual health recuperation - it seems either fights are outright slaughters, where you'd need to rest anyway afterwards, or easy enough that you won't need to restore your endurance mid fight. So, a few fighter types, a cipher or 2, and the rest doing ranged attacks should keep it simple enough. Heck, if I wanted to just use a custom party, I'd have TWO Ciphers and charm/dominate in pairs. >_> The game doesn't really tell you where to go outside of the main quest chain - but basically, the game "gates" you in terms of the difficulty of fights. And even on a single map, fights can vary widely in difficulty. It's meant to teach tactics by throwing different scenarios at you. So you may find yourself challenged regardless, and hiring adventurers to fill certain gaps as needed (sometimes you just do a lot better with a fireball slinger... othertimes, he's taking up a useful slot where someone else would be better!). I don't believe the game is very "casual friendly", though - despite what some people say here... one person's definition of "Easy" is quite different from another's.

It hasn't gotten onerous enough to be an issue on my end - have a fairly recent gaming laptop, but it's NOT installed on an SSD either. However, the larger my save file, the longer the loads and saves - and since they're zipped files, that makes some sense. I suspect that due to the archiving, having a heavily fragmented drive will just exacerbate things for some people. As for the why's of the file bloat - it looks mostly like that mobile objects file. The same one that got "fixed" earlier due to storing unneeded data.

Wish you could just close off those subterranean entrances, but they're like the Deep Roads. >_>

Indeed. Don't forget that toggle-able "godmode" settings are frequently used by devs, modders, content creators, QA/QC testers, and simply folks who've already beaten the game but want to test out various scenarios easily w/o slogging through long combat sequences. Not that any of this should matter, we shouldn't be competing with each other over whose e-peen is longer. Still, devs often have a "vision" in mind, and it's ultimately their choice. There's always a god-mode anyway in every game, you just might never know about it. >_>

Heaven forbid you get into a fight behind a bunch of trees.

Was wondering about this myself. I got downstairs just fine via another set of stairs, but I was rather confused by the blocked door, since it has something highlighted behind it - some kinda interractible object or panel on the floor. Assumed I needed a better Mechanics still and it was a secret door.

Has anyone just skipped the stronghold entirely? Other than just "passing through" when heading back and forth to the Endless Paths?

I'd love to see either Arcanum or Vampire:Masquerade rebooted. But I suspect dealing with current license holders is a serious stumbling block.

I sat Sagani in my SH for all of Act 2 and when I pulled her out in Act III, she automatically leveled up to my parties level. Oh really? That's amazing. So companions autolevel to your party while in the stronghold? Awesome. Sure, it's not the most realistic thing ever (though you can explain it via them doing their own questing/training if you choose to do so, which I do), but it's absolutely wonderful from a quality of life perspective. Are you sure this is a thing, though? I could've sworn I'd seen other people talk about having to level up companions that had been sitting in the SH for a while. I know for a fact that this happened to me, because I was so surprised. I was expecting to have to go get XP to level her up, but I didn't; I just had to click the +. I can't speak for anybody elses gameplay experience. I read that characters in the Stronghold don't level up automatically, but you can send them out on quests for XP - is that maybe the case instead?

Yea, I occasionally get the wrong NPC's talking too, especially in regard to the barks they make when moving and in stealth. I can't seem to cause it to happen on purpose, though. But the game loses focus of who is talking on occasion. Another minor bug that may be known to the devs, but low priority.

Seems to entirely be a matter of personal taste. I'm just adding my own voice to the mix as someone who appreciates as much VO as possible, provided it is of decent quality. And I have 0 problems with it in the current state of the game (just wish there was a bit more, actually! Especially in taverns... I miss the random ****ney chatter from clicking on patrons in Baldur's Gate.

Since this got buried so quickly, I am re-reporting it. The freezes happened again - each time for 5-10 seconds - during yet another drawn out fight. This time I wasn't in the woods behind trees, but inside a building. Only consistency is that this is during near TPK fights where everyone is dying and I am using every damn spell I can sling. So it's really testing out the fx and animations. I am not seeing a way to attach files at the moment, however. BUt I have backed up the output.txt for reference. In AR_0604_Stronghold_Great_Hall, I was seeing such errors as: NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object at Usable.get_IsRevealed () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at SceneTransition.RefreshIcon () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at SceneTransition.OnDisable () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 (LOTS of these null bugs) ============================================================ Shroud: Could not find bone defined in "F_HUM_Cape01": Export_Skeleton (a few) Paperdoll Character doesn't have the specified bone (primaryWeapon) for Weapon Attachment. (a few) .... And LOTS more of the following 3 variants: Anim Event Warning on attack variation 71! Missing Show Slot events! Anim Event Warning on attack variation 50! Show Slot with no corresponding Hide Slot for slot: PrimaryWeapon Anim Event Warning on attack variation 52! Show Slot with no corresponding Hide Slot for slot: PrimaryWeapon ... In other areas, there have also been a lot of missing textures for: Asset not found at path: Art/Character/Male/Textures/Body/CL/CL08/m_Belt_Wide01_V02 ... but I am at least not getting the File Corruption warnings, since I ain't running IE Mod now. If I can upload later (I am still under moderator approval), I will try.

The problem seems rather specific to combat though, the file corruption errors are likely checksums (since I am using a modded exe). These normally seem to do no harm, the debugger just bitches. I suspected it was the actual missing images, but who knows? When I do get the hangs, Windows will popup one of those dialogs that say it has "stopped responding" - but if I wait, it comes back. Then again, I also am seeing a bunch of "HandleD3DDeviceLost - Skipped frame because GfxDevice is in invalid state (device lost)" messages too now. This followed by "HandleD3DDeviceLost HandleD3DDeviceLost: needs reset, doing it FullResetD3DDevice ResetD3DDevice dev->Reset D3Dwindow device not lost anymore" Also lots of Null Reference exceptions, but Unity is .... fussy. The devs will know what is important. The one time I was able to catch more info, it said something like "AppHangB" was the culprit. Appropriately named, lol.

Here is my debug file anyway, in case a dev looks this way. My last snafu was in Magran's Folly, during the big Wolf fight in the north. Once the fight was over, the freezing cleared up, but I wasn't taking any chances and quit so as to clear memory. output_log.txt

Same, and I also have an Asus ROG Laptop of a similar generation. I plan on posting more details later but I am still behind the "wait for moderator" wall, which is taking me a while to get through since I'm not that damn chatty. >_> Mine seem to only happen during combat BEHIND trees - you know, when you can't see a damned thing but the circles and there's a lot of death. Seems to happen in woods where I get swarmed by a lot of enemies and things go south - IE, long fights with knockouts. When I look at output.txt, there's a -lot- of corrupted file warnings and missing graphics, so I am wondering if it really is connected to the shadow outlines I think that are supposed to be displayed for when you're behind foliage? As for the corrupted files, I suspect those warnings come from using IE Mod since I get those warnings regularly when the game is playing fine.

Did you ever kill that infernal bear?

Playing a priest and noticing erratic dispositions as well, but I've also restarted a few times due to the patch. Guess I'll see if anything changes as I play further on. I'm hoping that someone figures out where these values are "hiding" in save games or memory; would be useful to see what is going on, especially in light of all the changes going on and potential instability of early release character data.

Own the game on Gog.com, but am actually contemplating buying it on Steam today just to get the damned 1.03 patch a few days early. So much for patience.