Yria

For your first link, the uniforms were not white for me, but there was still clearly some problem with the textures. And tnat problem is still there: It looks like this on all the male characters regardless of what color I choose for them. I hope it gets fixed, small as this issue is, it's still an bit annoying. On a unrelated note, the new female orlan portrait rocks (just like the previous one, thank you orlan-favoring lady backers).

So there will be more portraits patched into the first game in the future? Is it (hopefully) near future?

I hope it's okay to post them here? Sorry about the white frames, I just took quick screenshots. Female ones: I was kinda hoping for a new pale elf, but these three look good too (that pendant on the orlan, elephants in Eora confirmed?) Males, 7 of them: (is it just me or the last human looks a biiiit like Josh)

Feels a bit wrong to vote before we learn anything about the aumaua godlike companion, but so far Xoti is my favorite. I like how chill she looks in that art, and her common everywoman concept can actually be a good thing. I mean, look at Edér, he could be roughly described in a very similar manner, and he ended up being (almost) everyone's favorite.

She is, she straight out admits it when Kana tries to hit on her. I think her exact words were, "And I always preferred women".

You can't convince him if you choose him specifically. However, he will stay if you draw lots and he gets the white pebble.

I just realised that I had a save right before choosing who is to stay and die heroically with the divine hammer in their hands, and I had released the dwarves. So I just went and checked since my Eder had Con 20. And apparently yes, the souls have the highest priority here, they came to save him. Will have to bind them next time, I guess. By the way, discovered a funny bug while doing this. When the party was escaping the cave and had to clear their way through some rubble I chose to use Frenzy on Maneha. Aloth went frenzy instead of her and cleared the path. Idk maybe it was Iselmyr inside him? He doesn't even have Frenzy ability to begin with. Also, I love it how on your way out, you can try to use a spell from a companion you left at the crystal to get trough an obstacle, and the game will tell you 'Oopsie, you just realised that X was the only person able to cast that!'. Ran into that with Kana and his freezing chant.

So buffed Con is enough, it doesn't have to be your own real Con? You can just go have a good sleep in an inn, chew on some dragon meat or whatever, and all will be fine? Good to know, I really want to show middle finger to Ondra on the next playthrough, and swimming out all on your own seems like the most badass way to do it. Another question I have, though: if you release the souls in WM I, will they come to your aid no matter what? Does it overwrite all other ways of saving yourself? I.e., if I have a diving helmet, or con 19, will the game allow me to use it, or will the dwarves just come and help anyway?

Survival is actually quite usefull in some quests. Sometimes it allows you to get much better outcomes.

Not really. I still have a problem with her talking overly cryptic for no reason whatsoever (memory loss isn't a convincing reason), so I can't really call it fantastic design. Though I agree that her story is pretty good, and it's nice that she can provoke strong reactions, unlike, yeah, Pallegina. But. Least liked companion is not necesserily the worst written one. You can like a companion as a character and still dislike them as a person. So I'm not surprised GM or Durance scored so high in this poll.

My disappointment with the Grieving Mother was caused mostly by the end of her quest. At first, when you meet her, she seems to be a very intriguing character that is probably linked to the main storyline somehow. She keeps talking about how you will cure the Legacy together, how she will guide you if needed, she sort of looks like... I don't know, Kreia to your Exile? Overall, she appears to be someone very improtant, she seems to share a bond with the PC. And then you finish her quest, and you find out that she is just a deluded midwife who happened to possess some mental powers. All her talks about the world's fate, about curing the Hollowborn and such were just dreams of a woman eaten by her own guilt. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice twist character-wise, and I liked that. But after this revelation I see absolutely no need for her to talk so freaking allegorically in absolutely every dialogue(and I mean actual dialogue, not visions, those were all right). She is no prophet, she is no madman, she is just a simple woman with a self-forced amnesia. So... why? To simply make her look mysterious and super important, to trick the player? It also didn't help that I was utterly put off by her actions at the Birthing Bell when the Legacy started. And I don't like that other companions don't react to her being in the party. I mean, I understand why they don't give her any thought, but technically it's minus one person for possible party banter.

You can headcanon that he found his animal companion and became a ranger after he left his kitchen. Or the lord he was serving wanted to cook his companion, and that was the reason of the spit...

Thank you for your great work. By the way, hunter backround seems to be bugged: in your Biography, everything under the "I spent a lot of time living on my own in the wilderness" option gets the "No background selected" line. Anyone else had the same problem?

Not necessarily. I mean, we definetely did terrible things (burned people alive, for one), but what bothers the PC is not that those actions were unjustified. It is not obvious if you had only played the game once, since you have nothing to compare with, but there is actually a whole variaty of final questions that can bother our character. We choose the exact question in that vision where we decide why we wanted to leave the inquisition. "I did terrible things - Don't worry, the gods will forgive you" is only one of the possible dialogue options. In my first playtrough the Watcher actually wanted to quit because she saw some horrible things committed by other people and it nearly broke her. So the question she wanted to ask Thaos was whether the gods could really end all the people's sufferings. I guess she had a very sensitive soul, that Watcher of mine. However, I'm not sure either how killing Thaos resolved that issue. It is implied that the character can see the answer they are seeking in Thaos' soul when he is defeated, but I don't recall ever seeing that answer.

I might be okay with cutting down a bunch of NPC whose behaviour I find repulsive. Some of my characters... not so much.

Of eight companions we can get, five are not humans, and that is in the region that is mostly populated by folk. Those five represent every other race there is. What more diversity do you need?

^This. Also, unless you're playing in expert mode, try turning on the option that shows "requirement not met" attribute checks. I might be wrong but I think there are other ways to convince her, not only resolve 15. Even if there aren't, 15 isn't that high, you can get it through sleeping in some inn and puting on an enchanted piece of armor. The real problem with this quest starts when you try to get the dwarf killed. Has anyone found a way to kill him without slaughtering the entire cave? I understand that he won't let us talk him into suicide, ok, but perhaps there is an option to kill him quietly, poison him, etc.

Wanted to ask exactly the same thing. Amazing portraits, I fell in love with the female wild orlan.

This is entirely possible, but if biawacs can happen all on their on, then it's a bit strange they only happen in Eir Glanfath.

I have the same problem with mystics, actually, because they aren't nessecerily shamanistic types with visions, there is also a theologist option. I don't see why theologist is restricted to being a mystic from the White that Wends, just as highwayman and burglar are restricted to Deadfire. Wouldn't this background make more sence within scholar branch?

I can see why philosopher and scientist are restricted, but the rest are rather confusing.

First of all, biawacs only became an issue about 15 years ago, when Thaos began using those machines to cause the hollowbirths. So there can't be many Watchers created by biawacs. As for why the wind couldn't lift your soul, I'm fine with the dwarf lady's theory that the soul was too strong and heavy, however weird it sounds. She states that some souls do not lose bits of themselves in the Wheel "through some force of defiance". The way I understand this, the unresolved question from that missionary life troubled PC's soul so greatly that it kept it from falling apart through different reincarnations.

Thaos is somewhat a special case, He's not just awakened, he retained the same personality through all those lives. It's not like Aloth and Iselmyr, who are absolutely different people and are obviously annoyed by each other's ways. In Thaos' case it looks more like recovering from amnesia than being awakened. Btw, Aloth might be okay because he didn't regain any of Iselmyr's memories. Who knows what could happen if he had actually remembered his life as that woman, seen some of her choices that he might disapprove of, etc.

The dwarf lady on the tree explain this whole becoming a Watcher thing as our character "having seen past the Shroud", in other words - seeing the world in a way that only the souls that have already left the body can see it. And after that, he simply remembered how to look to see all this hidden stuff. My guess is that when the biawac tried to lift his soul, it left the body for a moment, so he "saw past the Shroud", in Caldara's words. But Maerwald didn't Awaken the same moment he became a Watcher, it took him quite a while to remember his past lifes. Perhaps for many Watchers that moment of Awakening never comes at all? For all we know, the PC's Awakening might not be even connected to becoming a Watcher: could be, he saw Thaos and the Engwithan machine, that brought back the memories, and then the biawac tried to rip his soul off making him a Watcher.

Sorry then, I misunderstood. But I think we both know this line isn't supposed to be read so literally. The meaning is that one should seek the answer to any question himself and not expect that it will be given to him, that the process of learning and thinking, the process of questioning something, is more important than the actual knowledge, blah-blah-blah. Funnily, as it is stated in that letter from one priest of Wael to another, those guys aren't etirely sure what the line means themselves... which kinda makes sence in the light of their doctrine.