avaunt

I voted for 5. In Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series, I've always gone with a party of 5. Did the same in PoE 1. On my hard playthrough, the difficulty seemed to skyrocket in the White March. When going to recruit Caroc, the scientist's golem dungeon took an abhorrent amount of time. I had to kite single enemies if I wanted to have any hope of surviving. After that I had to bring in a sixth member for the rest of the game. Since those older games, I've felt that six is a bit too much managing. No complaints from me about the new amount.

Just had an intense battle with the Alpine. Hard, Level 15. I've been using a party of five ever since BG2. Having six feels way too much. PC Orlan blunderbuss Cipher Zahua - DPS Tank Kana - Tank Devil Aloth Zahua distracts the dragon, the main party starts on the right and deals with the blights and spectres. I kept summoning everything I could. The iridescent beetle, wood beetles, shades, Aloth's substantial phantom twice. Kana summoned ogres thrice during this war of attrition. By the time the minions were dead, the dragon had lost only one blip from his health. Zahua is still tanking. Devil has been firing with lead spitter, Kana with Aedrin's Wrecker arbalest. I run out of healing scrolls and I can't keep Zahua alive. Kana managed to summon ogres twice before the dragon could engage my weaker characters. After that, it's Kana's turn to melee the dragon. He succumbs to his injuries in short order. I haven't been doing any damage to the dragon. My PC cipher has been firing Mica's Roar the whole time - doing only negligible damage. Aloth has been throwing the kitchen sink at the beast, with no success. Aloth then revived Kana and Zahua in a desperate last gasp effort to maintain the front line. The dragon does a breath attack and both of them go back down immediately. Now I had no choice but send Devil to duke it out with the dragon. Her first attack, she does 65 damage! She decimates the rime dragon single-handedly. I wanted to keep her alive so I had her doing ranged attacks, but without her efforts there was no way I was going to prevail. She's wielding Purgatory sabre and Blesca's Labour club.

In my first playthrough, Azzurro arrived once. The second playthrough - never. On this third run, he has arrived twice and both times I missed him due to the long travel times.

Can't Run The Exe File This topic applies in my case. I downloaded the 1.05 patch from GOG. In the early part of downloading, I got a pop-up in the lower left part of my screen pertaining to the patch file. My machine questioned whether this file is safe. I clicked "keep" the file instead of discarding it. Then the 1.05 patch won't run. The exe file won't start. No error message and event viewer is of no help. I've never had this issue before with Pillars patches from GOG. I don't remember having this issue with any game earlier. My virus scan is turned off. I ran malware cleanup. I can run other downloaded exe files: I get the typical pop-up asking if I trust this exe. Am I the only one facing this problem at this point? I've downloaded the 1.05 patch from GOG now thrice to avoid the download being corrupted. Still not able to run the 1.05 patch.

So far I have played on normal. On my first playthrough with a wizard, I missed this quest. On the second with a rogue at level 10, I walked my entire group of five to initiate the talk. Grimo was able to cast mental binding and summon wood beetles until she became charmed - and slain almost immediately after reverting to normal. The only ones who didn't get charmed during the fight were Eder and Hiravias. Hiravias summoned the iridescent adra beetle to ward off any incoming enemies. My odds were looking very dire at some point. Eder is down to 5% health, my main rogue and Aloth are charmed. I had stocked Hiravias with healing scrolls and those kept Eder alive. When Aloth became normal, he summoned widow spiders to fend off the fampyrs. For the first time in the fight, Aloth had some leeway to cast spells and healing scrolls also. Then the turning point was casting expose vulnerabilities, miasma of dull-mindedness and a couple of other debuffs from Hiravias for good measure. After that the fampyrs went down quickly. My roguess kept critting them for 60-80 dmg regularly. Raedric was still a tough bugger - he disposed of all my five summons and it took a lot of spells to decimate him. His slashing DR was high and my main char didn't have any alternate weapons to change to.

I had this same bug in the boss fight against Thaos. I have the most recent version, 1.0.3.0524. No mods. I had this happen twice. The first time, Pallegina becomes totally unresponsive. She won't attack, won't drink potions, nothing. That time, I wasn't paying attention to her - I just left her to engage one of the headsmen. I take out the headsmen with my four remaining characters. Then, my main wizard guy suddenly becomes stuck also. I order him to launch a necrotic lance on Thaos. The next time I check up on him, he is stuck. At this point I reloaded to try the battle again. On the second attempt, Pallegina becomes stuck after killing one of the headsmen. Afterwards, when only Thaos is left, my main wizard guy again gets stuck. This time I moved him closer to Thaos so he could cast Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst. Before my char had reached the intended waypoint, I decided I was close enough and I activated the sixth-level Minoletta spell. My char started twitching and flickering, as if he was still trying to reach the waypoint. Then he became totally inert. No problem - I was able to slay Thaos with Kana, Sagani and Durance. I'm glad this bug didn't manifest any more during the game, just at the end. I'm quite sure you can replicate this bug during the final fight. So far the characters to become stuck were Pallegina and my main guy on both times. Here's the link to the Save Game.