Emptiness

Monks don't need to be hit at all to work. If the enemy isn't wounding you then you can't use your abilities, but then also the enemy isn't going to win the fight. If the enemy does wound you, then you get to punish them for that mistake. The only way it will turn out bad for the monk is if the enemy is damaging them too fast, which is where having a high deflection is to the monk's advantage. Slowing down the rate that the monk takes damage gives the monk time to use wounds to good effect.

I'll admit, this confuses me. I don't see putting your starting stat points in Perception and Resolve as min-maxing. You don't even have to dump any stats to do that. If you object to putting points into Perception and Resolve then that's fine, put them elsewhere...but you will have to adjust your tactics, playstyle, ability selections, and talent selections accordingly - or your character won't be pulling its weight. That's true of any class, not just Monks. It sound to me like you are saying that you want to be able to make any available choice in terms of character creation and advancement and have all possible sets of choices be equally functional with any playstyle you might choose to adopt. I'm not sure it's even possible to design a game system that will allow that to happen. You'll have to either build your character to match your playstyle, or adjust your playstyle to work with the way you build your character. The only possible alternative to that I can see would be to lower the difficulty to easy; maybe the game will be sufficiently forgiving at that setting such that your build and your playstyle won't need to be in harmony.

I think they implemented rest very well; certainly better than how it has been implemented in other games I've played, including the IE games. The resting mechanic is what allows there to be powerful per-rest spells and abilities without the game turning into a tedious cycle of burning your party's entire power during each fight and then resting afterwards. Limiting powerful abilities allows for more interesting choices in combat, where you need to decide when to reserve a powerful ability and when to use it. The alternative is to remove rest and allow every ability to be used per-encounter - but then every fight would have to be equally epic or the power level of abilities would have to be lowered and every fight would be equally un-epic. Additionally, you'd be wasting a larger portion of your play time resting. As it is now they are free to vary the difficulty level of encounters while still maintaining an overall level of difficulty based on requiring you to ration how you use your power. I think that the end result is that the game is more fun.

They just increased the amount of xp that solo and small-party groups earn. I don't think that it is fair to say that they are trying to punish or deter solo play. My guess would be that they looked at the item and determined that the benefit it gives is significantly better than the original cost, and changed the cost to be more in line with the power level of the item. I don't think that's unfair. Also, with all the coin around in this game, 6000 coppers is not such a huge sum. All they did was push back how soon you can afford it.

That happens if you alt-tab while the map is open. If you close the map and reopen it, the map will display correctly.

Here's the link to the official announcement about the 500 MB patch: 1.03: Hotfix for Problem with Adventurer Hall Companions

I'm seeing this problem in v1.0.3.0526 -steam. I don't know if it existed in previous versions. The first two companions die, and drop gear. That gear can be looted and used. However, if you happen to later return to the zone in which the character that originally had the item(s) died, then the items they dropped will disappear. This happens whether the items are equipped on your character, in your inventory proper, or in your stash. Here's a saved game in which this problem can be seen. Steps to replicate: 1) Load the saved game provided. 2) Open the inventory and notice the Scale Armor on the protagonist and the Dagger in her weapon slot #2. 3) Open the stash and notice the Battle Axe in the last slot of the weapons tab, the Leather Armor in the last slot of the armor tab, and the Torch in the last slot of the other tab. 4) Travel to Cilant Lis. This is the location where Heodan died in my game. 5) Open the inventory and notice that the Dagger in the protagonist's weapon slot #2 has disappeared. The other Daggers the character had are still there. Open the stash and notice that the Leather Armor in the last slot of the armor tab has disappeared. Also note that the other items mentioned (which were Calisca's) have not disappeared. 6) Travel into the Cilant Lis cave. This is the location where Calisca died in my game. 7) Open the inventory and notice that the Scale Armor the protagonist was wearing has disappeared. Open the stash and notice that the Battle Axe in the last slot of the weapons tab and the Torch in the last slot of the other tab have both disappeared. The other Torch is still in the stash, and the Torch in the protagonist's inventory is likewise untouched. (It is interesting to note that the protagonist is still shown as wearing Scale Armor until the inventory screen is opened, but it is in fact gone as soon as she enters the Cilant Lis cave. You can see this by loading the save, traveling to the Cilant Lis cave, then traveling to the Valewood cave and allowing the bear to hit you. Assuming you haven't opened the inventory, the protagonist will still be shown as wearing Scale Armor but the combat log detail will indicate 0.0 damage reduction on the Bear's hit. Also, if you try to switch to the second weapon set you will see that it is empty. So the item disappearance isn't connected to or dependent upon opening the inventory.)

[bug][1.03] Hearth Harvest inventory display issue

If you are buying and playing games to get little icons to light up on your Steam profile... Well, I have to stop that sentence there or I'll risk a ban.

Is this on an old save? I started a new game entirely (to be honest I avoided playing all week to save myself the trouble) and I've found it and all other modal abilities to be functioning perfectly as intended. To further clarify, I was experiencing this bug on my previous game in version 1.02. Yes, their attempt to fix Reckless Assault failed to do so for everyone who was experiencing the problem in an already existing save.

I don't see any official patch notes for this patch. Also, the link earlier with the 1.03 patch notes is to a thread that then links in the unofficial patch notes. This is the link to the official patch notes for 1.03: Update 93: Patch 1.03 - Important Community Fixes

I suspect that there are players out there building monks with maxed Might and Dex, no damage reduction, and having them lead the charge to the enemy line to try to max their damage output. That combination doesn't work too well, but it doesn't mean monks are a fail. It's possible to have a functional no-armor monk. You'll want to max Perception and Resolve, enchant your clothing as soon as possible for a little bit of damage reduction, and keep your eyes out for gear that will boost your damage reduction or defenses. Send your tank(s) into combat first to take the enemies' first attacks, with your monk close behind, and try to swing around the line and get into combat with a high-value target, like an enemy caster. Low damage reduction will mean that you'll be taking damage (and thus have wounds to use), but high defenses will mean that you won't be crit much and many attacks will only be grazes - which will mean that the damage you take will be less bursty, which should give your healer(s) a chance to throw some more endurance your way. Ideally you want to get your monk into a series of 1-on-1 confrontations; avoid getting mobbed if at all possible. Success is as much a matter of how well you play as it is how well you CharGen.

I think players look at the wounds system and then want come up with a way to have tons of wounds so that they can spam the monk's abilities. There's nothing wrong with that approach, but it rightly comes at a cost. If you want to be a bottomless font of destruction then you're going to have to take a lot of damage, and that means you're going to fall unconscious or one or more other characters are going to be tied up constantly healing you. If you build and gear your monk to have a better chance of survival then you're going to take less damage, and that means less wounds to spend. This tradeoff is critical to the balance of the wounds mechanic. If there was a way to get and spend tons of wounds with relatively little chance of defeat then the mechanic would be broken.

If anyone did want to be unarmed, Monk or not, then they should have to have one of their weapon sets empty. Also, it effectively amounts to giving Monks an extra weapon set for free.

Yeah, this is matching what I'm seeing. The -25 in my example above was because it was a graze. So it seems to be d100 + interrupt, with a +25 bonus for crits and a -25 penalty for grazes. That makes me feel a little bit better, because on a normal hit you still have a chance to interrupt your target unless their concentration is 25 points higher than your interrupt.

Here is a saved game started pre-patch in which the error being described in this thread can be seen. With RA toggled off, the protagonist has the RA effect. With RA toggled on, the protagonist has the RA effect twice, with the second one suppressed. Saved Game output_log.txt

[bug][1.03] Hearth Harvest inventory display issue

I think they might need an actual saved game for that one.

This bug sounds like a good excuse to request the option to edit character features (appearance, voice set, portrait, maybe also name) after character creation.

Definitely one or bugs at work there. It's a shame that they haven't set the upload limit to be high enough to allow people to upload their saved games, but yet they need those saved games to be able to investigate the bugs. Maybe you could upload the saved game to a file sharing site and then link to it?

You might be stuck in combat. That could be because there's an enemy nearby that can't figure out how to get to you, or it could be a bug. Try looking for another enemy; also try leaving the map and returning.

[bug][1.03] Hearth Harvest inventory display issue

I don't have my party at an odd level-up, so I'm not in a position to test this myself, but I wanted to look at the normal interrupt calculations. This is what I'm seeing: I was surprised by the -7 and the 84. Looking at Pallegina's character sheet, it lists her interrupt as 18; Eder's concentration is listed as 9. The best explanations I can come up with are 18 - 25 = -7 and 75 + 9 = 84. That would make the default calculation [ (Attacker's Interrupt based on Perception) - 25 + d100 ] compared to [ (Defender's Concentration based on Resolve) + 75 ]. That's a little bit different than your formula (the 25 isn't added to interrupt chance, but subtracted). Also, it seems unnecessarily obtuse. Why not [interrupt + d100] compared to [Concentration + 100]? Even if the formula isn't adjusted, it would be helpful to have the popup show the characters' interrupt and concentration values from the character sheet and how they factor into the calculation, to avoid confusion. Also, that formula doesn't seem to leave a lot of room for interrupts to occur, and if your concentration is higher than your attacker's interrupt then they will never interrupt you. Is that intended? Or did I miss some subtlety of the formula that means that there is still a small chance to interrupt a high-concentration foe? Anyway, I will test this more extensively when I get a chance to do before-and-after with Interrupting Blows.

Camping is working correctly for me. You might want to provide some more information about the problem, the computer you are playing on, and the version of the game you are playing, and it might also be good to provide some saved games in which you are experiencing the problem.

I don't know exactly why they changed it, but I would imagine that it was determined to be a balance problem. Monks are very good as they are now, so I don't see any need to also give them special damage reduction. If you are finding your Monk to be too fragile then adjust your tactics to encourage enemies to attack your tougher characters (ie send in the tanks first). Another possibility is to wear armor for DR. My Monk is running around in (enchanted) clothes, and she takes a lot of damage. Some fights she drops, but the important thing is that the party wins. She does more than her share of damage in the time that she is standing.