CJQ

Thanks all for the valuable responses. Each play-through by all players is unique and may throw up something inexplicable that few others have met. Like many I start a new game with a gung-ho approach and rush around trying to get the feel of the game and its controls. I then settle down and start properly. I save before any encounter, repeating different options to see which one works best before moving on. Pillars is very cunning because the consequences of most encounters is complex and often not immediately apparent. Games where the entry of “A” will get a reward & “B” gets zilch are gone. I know it is not sensible to keep tweaking a game forever. However since Pillars was released in 2015, players of the game have been reporting issues with the Stronghold and its management. Some of these have been corrected in bug releases, others possibly left unfixed. In addition new issues may have been created (or have reappeared) with the White Marsh code addition While these are not in the category of catastrophic game stoppers, being so much in your face, detract significantly from the game play. My reason for posting comments in this part of the forum is because it is rather unclear where Pillars of Eternity #1 bugs should be placed – indeed whether there will be a response to such a post if you do fubd somewhere to make a comment. Anyway thanks again, I’ll persevere and hope for the best.

I have a huge respect and admiration for the amazing Obsidian Entertainment team. Sadly I have concerns that in a rush to get Deadfire on the market they could be leaving Pillars of Eternity with the tag of a rather buggy game. Back in early 2016, following a successful installation from CD, I attempted to master this completely immersive game. But before long I started to notice a perceptible slowing in the load times. By Chapter 2, it was unplayable at those speeds. After weeks attempting to discover the cause, I learned that it may not be directly attributable to Obsidian but more likely to be cause by Steam which at that point was handling bug-fix releases. In 2017 with a better understanding of the game world, I started afresh. Skilled players on the forum had assisted with ideas about managing load times and also game play. But in the middle of Chapter 2 I hit a show-stopper caused by a bug in the party management area. A number of weeks later the duplication problem was sorted by a bug fix. In the resolution, I lost equipment and much of my enthusiasm. At the end of last year I purchased and installed the Marsh 1 & 2 expansions areas reasoning that any problems by now would have been resolved. Sadly not!! Caed Nua is now rebuilt and the first 6 levels of the Endless Paths completed. I am well on course for completing Chapter 2. There have been a few question marks in my mind about discrepancies noticed in quests (e.g. why did the archivists not turn hostile when I broke into the Elder Archives in The Hall of Revealed Mysteries in The Theorems of Pandgram quest for Nedyn ?). However these were not significant. However errors in the Stronghold processes are now giving me concerns. Three times I have been told of a visitor that is invisible when I return to the keep - examples are Nyry the Deft Hand, Lord Byrnwigar and Azzuro. After Azzuro failed to show I scrapped 3 weeks of save files because Azzuro carries valuable items. Nyry lost me the Cape of the Cheat. But the last straw was after I discovered the Storekeeper in the Treasury had disappeared. It begs the question “Is this to get worse the further I proceed? I hate being negative after the huge effort in developing the game. From my own career, I am completely aware of the difficulty of incorporating new software or changes into existing code. For a quality company such as Obsidian, this is extremely counter-productive particularly if they intend to leave such bugs without offering players a correction. I have read lots of forum comments about the same issues mentioned above. If a fault in a car was left uncorrected, why would anyone make a further purchase from its manufacturer?

Following good pointers given by JerekKruger, Kdubya and Gromnir, I started PoE from the beginning again. I now realise why I was having such a problem with Pillars and why the game appeared to be hard to manage. I didn’t understand the full significance of the Auto-Pause Options and how they could be used to control player interaction. I deliberately had left the options on the default settings and this was the root of many problems experienced in my game play. Another issue was the struggle caused by a Party Management bug - corrected by the v3.04 update I also changed the auto-levelling of NPCs before they join the party. This has allowed me to distribute skill points more effectively. Lastly I’m now playing the game off-line and an absence of the Steam connection appears to have improved Load /Save times. One thing PoE did not have was a pre-built rogue character. It is one of my favourite character roles - but the experience of my first attempt, made me uneasy that with Eder as the sole grunt, I could struggle. Once again I chose a fighter main character but determined to buy an Adventurer and create the missing thief character as soon as I could raise the money. From Cilant Lis, I headed for Gilded Vale without encounter. Following the main quest information (and having assembled the party), the next objective was to find Maerwald. With the thief operating in sneak mode leading, the party reached the Stronghold without hostile encounters. The combination of Fighter (player character), Elven Thief (npc), with Eder, Aloth, Durant & Kana is proving completely formidable!! All hostile encounters are stormed through with hardly a scratch. No character has been knocked out (or seriously damaged) even when dealing with Maerwald. The only sleep required is when spellcasters have run out of spells. Each of the 6 characters (with the thief being one level below the rest) is playing a full role in the party - achieving similar amounts of hits, crits and kills. In my first painful attempt, the imbalance was so bad, it felt many npc were a hindrance only. Now in possession of the Stronghold, the party is back in Gilded Vale carrying on with quests and tasks. I’ll shut up and go kill a few more Skuldr in the temple. Thanks again for the pointers - invaluable Chris

I’d like to say how impressed I‘ve been with the contributors on this topic. In my case, your efforts have paid dividends. It has cleared up misunderstandings I’ve had while battling through the game and the consequent frustration it generated. I am now more determined than ever to replay Pillars again (and again) until I feel I have mastered the party management system and no longer have the issues a general lack of game understanding had generated. It drove me close to abandoning the game altogether. Just a thought: Obviously thousands bought this game. Many are likely to have tackled it, as I did, with a gung-ho attitude trying to blast their way across. But that was not the designers’ intention. The game has really been created for people like yourselves that are prepared to invest time to understand what it is all about. All necessary information is there but trying to find, understand and process it properly has been my problem. For example, the “wotzit” is immune to XYZ attacks and so I need to switch the weapon of NPC3 and change the tactics of NPC5 to make each effective. The game needs micro-management rather than the old “sock-it-and-see” approach. Players need patience and determination. I certainly have the latter but have suffered from insufficient patience – a desire to gallop onwards to see what’s in the next map area. I can try putting blame on the new set-up of my PC. Microsoft has forced me off Windows XP which, in my humble opinion, was the best and most stable operating system they ever produced. I chose to go to Windows 7 which appeared to be my only option both for games and my life outside of RPGs. Needless to say the necessary reinstallation of Pillars, Steam and lots of other software was anything but smooth. I am fighting constantly with Windows 7 which seems to specialise in doing things in the manner MS thinks I might like - rather than the way I need it to operate. I hadn’t realised until yesterday that the game’s AssetBundles were installed on my hard drive until I spent ages looking for them on the Steam & Obsidian websites. I also discovered that the link with Steam can be disconnected completely because I bought the Pillars game on DVD. (I will reconnect when I purchase the expansions or there is another bug release). In the last posting, I tried to write about the player’s inability to apply buffs before a battle. I must have been the only person not to notice a few words were missing and effectively I’d said the opposite. Everyone however did the gist. GROMNIR - Thanks for your info. It did paint a somewhat amusing picture of a spy creeping up to an enemy position. He then would either have to rely on which bed he slept in the previous night, or he might have to whip up a banoffee pie & some chocolate cookies to binge on before tackling a tough fight. The only element of surprise would come if he could still lift his sword afterwards. As I did not really go into this area sufficiently, I will certainly do so the next time around. KDUBYA – These are good tips. I actually entered some battles on “fast time” in the vain hope I could kill them all before they could get at me – another completely useless idea!! I seemed to manage traps rather well using Aloth as my “trapfinder” and “dismanteler”. He had the arsenal ready if an enemy tried to jump him. During his secondment for escort duties, I was forced to temporarily abandon the Dyrford Ruins because the party couldn’t manage the traps. Your point about team synergy is absolutely key to this game and to my cost, I did not achieve it this time around. Probably I would have had fewer problems, if in this first game I had used a smaller team of Eorn, Aloth and Durant - together with my character of a 2-H swordmaster. JerekKruger - Your advice on codes pushed me to explore more areas of Steam and my own PC. Once I discovered the AssetBundles were located on my own PC and not Steam, I used a bit of PC experience to turn the list of files into a directory of item names which were then added into my PoE database. The Bundles also revealed a bit about the mechanisms of the game which I found very useful. Three new helms had been added which match armor suits in my inventory. I suspect these actually don’t appear in PoE but probably are ready for the White March expansions. JFUTRAL’s contribution also makes similar points to those I’m stumbling to make. PoE is in a league of its own when it comes to the necessity of mastering the game mechanics. Many RPGs – especially those written in recent years - are little more than “slash and hack”. That is definitely not the winning formula for playing this game. Most of you guys have invested months of effort working out how to balance the logistics of PoE. Have you thought of setting up an on-line tutorial course – naturally with examinations and diplomas at the finale to pass on your knowledge to the unwashed hordes? Only joking – you have more battles to fight. Many thanks Chris

This post is directed at JerekKruger after his help with my gameplay. Having re-read other posts, I may not be alone having issues coordinating battles successfully I really appreciate the time you took to reply to my post and doing it in such a succinct manner. I’m sure you appreciated that parts of my text contained a fair amount of “tongue in cheek” but I am truly fascinated by this game and am seriously trying to take it apart to see what makes it tick. Firstly it was marvellous that you were able to supply the 4 missing code names of items that I had failed to decrypt. The name used for the Coals was evident. I’m surprised I failed to try that specific combination. The other 3 however I’d never have guessed, no matter how many attempts I made. Diving Bell ? Nautlius ?? and Item_Pet ??? You must be a world-class cryptographer. Leaving aside the issues caused by excessively slow Save / Load times, I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I thought the game tough. I found PoE a pretty difficult game with which to get to grips - both in how to understand its rationale and how to control the NPCs in every confrontation. It was a month after Pillar’s launch that I heard about it (too late to become a backer then!!). Information available was meagre but I’d a feeling it could prove to be a very interesting game. My posting reflected uneasy misgivings that I’d been agonising too much about the stats. There was so little to guide a new player on how best to develop their party. Obviously wearing something that gave a +1 boost to intelligence might be helpful but as I didn’t know the intelligence scale, it was unclear how useful it actually would be. If there were a scale of 20 it would be a +5% increase etc An earlier posting in this thread mentioned a very high Mechanics value needed to open a chest. But long before reaching that area there are numerous other places where an increasingly high skill level in Mechanics was required to avoid detonation of traps. Having chosen a fighter as my avatar (no skill given to mechanics), with misgivings I started to build Aloth into a Wizard-Thief. In Chapter 3 I began to apply upgrades to unique items. It was obvious that “Superb” was better that “Exceptional” but just how much better would that make the item? Perhaps an upgrade such as “Of Freezing” or “Slaying Beasts” might be preferable. With little comprehension of the nuances involved (and being unaware of what lay ahead), I found this area a bewildering bit of guesswork. I’m struggling with angst that “its all wrong” and earlier decisions will make it impossible (or extremely difficult) to finish the game. No! I absolutely don’t require someone to hold my hand and give me an exact template of how to win. Pillars unlike many similar is much more complicated in the character development area. I note your comment about reputation not affecting shop prices. Maintaining a good reputation would probably lower shop prices – Wrong! (Only after fulfilling a quest for a Copperlane shopkeeper, do you recive any lowered prices). Even in an upgraded stronghold, I was expected by my employees to pay a 750% mark-up price on their stock. Shopkeepers are a weak area. Their stock didn’t varied nor was it replenished and in most cases wasn’t upgraded. I strongly suspect that the sheer volume of spears, shields and armour I had sold to the stronghold shopkeeper (which he then retained) was a probable cause of the game becoming slower. Surely “junk level” items could be withdrawn from play once the party leaves the area. While I am certainly not skilled enough to play on the Path of the Damned, I am very interested in the mechanics of the game. In theory I know I should have been switching weapons types throughout. In practice, that seldom occurred (apart from the occasional change from range to melee). Many battles seemed to be little more than a blur of its “us” against the horde. Dragonage was a game I really admired – (the original RPG not all the rubbish that followed). In that game I was able to position party members at the start of the battle in a more orderly manner – allowing grunts to protect the weaker characters. Inevitably I chose to play a thief assassin that set about infiltrating the enemy camp. In PoE, it seemed inevitable that I needed to react to whatever the enemy threw at the party rather than to plan an offensive campaign. I did monitor the scrolled record of the battle and began to understand what was or wasn’t working. But in the inevitable mayhem of battle, it was hard to enough to identify a character’s position once they had been surrounded by multiple enemies. I did attempt to stack sequential actions for characters but nearly always needed to break out of the planned order due to something else that took precedence. The game refuses to allow characters to receive buffs after the battle starts?? Talk about being unprepared. Surely you should permit some buffs before a character takes an enormous hit? Your comment about the Paladin reflects my own understanding of the class but I found Pallegina to be a poor auxiliary fighter. As mentioned, I did not get to grips with Sagani and in battle spent much of the time trying to apply buffs to her or reviving both her and her mutt. Grieving Mother was interesting but after she had expended her Focus Level, it frequently did not recharge itself quickly enough before she was downed. (i.e. she failed to damage the enemy) My next attempt will involve playing PoE in a less frenetic manner and trying to get every member of the party to fulfil their basic roles – not sure I will succeed but I can try. I purchased a DVD copy of PoE in 2015 but thought that having a Steam link to the game would provide me with bug-fixes and updates. After monitoring the way Steam has continually been manipulating my game save files – thus causing an additional drag on game play - I intend to delete the Steam Account and to reinstall PoE on my PC with updates coming down from the web. Any pointers to useful (but not overly technical) discussion of game play would be much appreciated. Thanks once again for your help Chris

Finally I’ve discovered an active discussion on PoE which I’ve struggled with since August. Having just arrived at the final confrontation with Thaos – where my team apparently need a nuclear arsenal to blast the b****r to bits, I’ve realised I must have missed this optional purchase when last in Hearthsong Market. Now stuck down a hole with no access to shops, I’m wondering whether I should buy and install the expansion packs at this stage. But knowing my luck, Thaos will have called in more of his mates and I still would be stuck down there. I cut my RPG teeth on Crowther and Wood’s Adventure. Since then, excellent RPGs have never failed to entertain. PoE is up there with the best – BG1, BG2, IWD etc. With any game, players will spot bugs and weaknesses. That’s inevitable but it been great to see active support taking place. I’ve found Pillars a tough game even at “Normal” level. In various threads I’ve read fatuous boasts of people finishing Pillars in 3 hours playing solo on Nightmare level. Sorry! Doesn’t interest me! I want to open every chest and explore every option. (I was a Test Manager before retirement). As mentioned by others, I’ve also encountered ever-increasing load times after the first few hours of play. After a few abortive attempts, it caused me to abandon the game in 2015. I reinstalled the game last autumn assuming that these issues would have been fixed. They weren’t. Just as bad! After posted for forum help, I followed good advice. Steam appeared to be causing much of my problem because of continual syncing of save files. That wretched system never allows the player to remove redundant save files from the cloud. Not only does it upload temporary PC saves before I can delete them from the PC but downloads masses of saves I made in 2015. If anyone knows of an obvious way to delete save files from the Steam cloud permanently I would love to hear of it. To make matters worse, a bug surfaced at the point I recruited my 6th NPC. This Party Management issue caused major headaches. Apart from not being able to design the team I wanted, I kept ending up with two copies of the same companion. By the time this problem was corrected by the last PoE bug-fix It would have had to go back and repeat over one third of the game. The correction to the Savefile wiped out the duplicate but in the process a large amount of Unique items went as well. After the game fix was implemented, I followed advice and attempted to prevent all Steam interference. The load/save timings improved a bit (still a pain at 150 seconds plus) but it has at least allowed me to get to the end point (even if never manage to kill the b****r). Because of the time it takes to rerun different options on a quest I resorted to using the Official Pillars website to obtain some idea of what different options might do. Yup I cheated!! In the process I discovered AddItem and used it to patch back into the game all items lost as a result of the Obsidian party management fix. For good measure, I examined the items that the game had failed to spawn for me I expect to make another full run through without resorting to cheating (BTW is it cheating to wait beside each cache for 30 days to obtain the best item it can spawn?). The link to the game’s object list was dated early 2015. It listed about 3000 objects / properties used by Pillars. Unfortunately code writers didn’t always follow formal naming standards. With later additions, it’s difficult to guess the name used by PoE to recognise newer items. I’ve managed to deduce codes for 37 items missing from the 2015 list. I suspect the Companion adventures were not included as part of the original release because they make up the bulk of missing codes. There are 4 codes, I cannot deduce: Blighted Coals, Iverra's Diving Helmet, Amaia's Codex and The Nautilus of Or-Grammon My play-through didn’t generate some of these. It would be helpful to me if anyone knew the game names for these 4 items - or where I can find an up-to-date list (including both expansion games). A few other comments. PoE is massive, complex and can be played in numerous ways. I am not totally convinced about some of the dozens of refinements and their effect on the game play. For example “Reputation”, I dutifully tried to get approval from all factions. Apart from additional dialog options, it is difficult to see how relevant this actually is (I do understand mass slaughter will drastically reduce a player’s chance of getting cooperation). Weapon and Armor choices – the player is overwhelmed with possibilities but again it is not easy to see the merits of an Estoc over a Greatsword (apart from a minor uplift when an appropriate perk is selected on Levelling Up. I just get the feeling that many players will bang away with a flail throughout the game because they are unsure if any other weapons would be more effective. New “Magic” Users; the Chanter, Cipher, Paladin, Druid, Monk etc. It’ll take many play-through before I get the hang of the spells/power these classes can wield. It was only with the Chanter, I started to feel comfortable. The Paladin – the Holy Knight baffled me. It seemed she was only there to provide back-up to the cleric. In the main, I found the NPCs were fun. They had terrible base stats for the professions they professed to follow. I had a fighter that had mediocre strength, a mage with indifferent intellect etc. They also carried a weird selection of armor and weapons, which mistakenly I believed should be upgraded rather than replaced. I still haven’t a clue what to do with Sagini and gave up on her. Final Moan: I find the design of the Obsidian website particularly hard to use realistically. I wanted to go to forums to find help from other players, to report bugs to developers, to look at future bug release info, to check for expansions etc. Frequently I seemed to end up in areas way outside of PoE where forum members were discussing American Politics, talking about their fave NPC or in discussions on totally different games. Trying to discover if a bug had already been raised / and was being dealt with seemed impossible. I did eventually raise the slow loadings of Save games as a New posting and got help. However large numbers of PoE posting are completely out-of-date and confusing. They are referring to the initial launch version. Can I suggest that an archive and redesign of the Obsidian website is long overdue? Apart from my request for help above. PoE is a brilliant game and I look forward to trying out a different approach to playing it.

Date 7 Majauton 2823 Hour 1 nothing new to report Turn 80: Liminal Spaces added. The quest expires in 1 day (Grieving Mother was sent on this quest) Date 15 Majauton 2823: Hour 3 Azzuro has arrived offering to sell Husk of the Great Western Stag for 3200 cp (This was purchased remotely) Turn 84: Nothing new to report (About then, I returned to Stronghold did a bit of selling and empted Treasury Box including the Husk of GW Stag) Turn 85: Taxes Collected Turn 85: Liminal Spaces completed. G Mother returns with Etherial Helm, money, items etc When I next returned - The major item in the Treasury Box was another copy of The Husk - so I now have 2 identical unique items plus the Etherial Helm

Thanks for all the help guys. Your advice was much appreciated. I’ve a number of commitments which prevented me getting back earlier. By mid-November I will have more time to consider your suggestions properly. Although I am an old hand at RPG, I managed to miss the launch and only heard about Pillars last April. Frankly I have found it a difficult game to understand and difficult to play even on Normal level – I suppose partly due to lack of information on how best to develop the complex companions. Don’t misunderstand me – I think the game is superb in many ways but equally frustrating when determining how to proceed. There are so many interactions where my PC encounters an NPC leading to dialogue with a many possible outcomes. The only way to find out a more is to replay an encounter several times over. That’s where it started to unravel. Replay times are now insane. Initially it took seconds. As the game progressed it became so long to do this that I could visit the bathroom, make a cup of coffee and return to my computer before a reload had completed. From a standing start to find and load the previous save can take over 4 minutes !! Of course my initial save file was only 116 kb. I am close to finishing Act 2 and my last save was 3500 kb. Fenixp has said his final save was 10MB. Good grief! I will be able to go away for the weekend in between loads. I cannot believe most of Pillar’s many players are playing on industrial-size computers – and from what you have written your higher spec machines are still experiencing slowness. Obsidian must be aware of the possibility that many bought the game then give up as a result of its slowness. Surely the company should be considering a “work-around”. (For instance, the save files must contain the positions of all game objects – so why not remove the every-day objects that players are selling to shopkeepers – the hundreds of spears, robes caps and daggers for instance)? A great game like this should be played to the end. I am just worried that I a going to grind to a complete halt. I will try to upgrade my base machine when in a couple of week’s time. However ….. Thanks to all again Chris

I've just returned to my 2016 attempt at playing Pillars. Like April /May 2015 attempt I had nearly given it up due to the immense struggle with encountered errors After I installed the Beta patch which displayed as v3.04.1158 -steam, I was very happy to see that the Party Management screen issue had been fixed by this patch. That was a complete Show-Stopper. Not only did it prevent characters like Hiravias being used, it also corrupted save games. Previous to the patch, and after a huge struggle, I managed to get a party of 6 to include Hiravias. Eventually came a point where I needed to swap him out again. Doing this led to the game losing 5 unique items and two magical items that Hiravias had in his inventory. These were completely "lost" to the game. Once the new patch was being used, I managed to fix this with the use of AddItem. Thankfully the missing weapons, armor and magical items are now back in the game. Coincidentally only a week ago I had stopped playing the game in complete disgust. I had returned to the Stronghold at the point a certain Nyry the Deft Hand was visiting it. Having paid him/her 1000 gold, in return I received a Potion of Power only? Pillars Wikipedia (which continually provides information that contradicts things I experience in game play) - stated that in addition, I should have received the Cloak of the Cheat. In the Beta Patch this item has now returned - Hoorah!!! The third (and potentially the most serious) issue for me is the massive bloating of all game save files. These are now more than 30 times the size of my initial save. The problem I htink it is causeing is that from the opening screen until the selected save file is loaded, is now taking nearly 4 minutes !!!! It is impossible to "play-test" any computer process under these circumstances - and equally impossible to get much enjoyment from normal game play. This problem surely cannot be affecting everybody or there would have been a major outcry about the game. But browsing the forum - it would appear it does (or perhaps did) affect a large number of people. This was why my first attempt at the game was abandoned 18 months ago. I have tried to raise the problem before - but have had no success. I've a pretty reasonable spec PC (running Windows 7). All other like games Dragonage, The Witcher etc. have no issue with my PC - but Pillars is grinding to a halt!!! . Is it something to do with the way I am tacking the game play - or a program bug for certain PC set-ups - or is a Steam setting at fault? No matter what I have tried, I has not improved it. Surely Obsidian must be aware of this issue and can offer a solution. From my background, the only realistic explanation appears to be that thee game is attempting to keep track of every item that is generated. Why do shop keepers keep multiple copies of cheap items being sold to them by the player? e.g. 24 sets of robes. Surely multiple copies of armor, weaponry and clothing items are completely unnecessary. Pillars has the potential of surpassing Baldur's Gate in it concept - but generating Game-Breaking show-stoppers (such as the Party Management issue) after a new patch has been applied - and then taking months before a beta patch is released to re-correct the mistake - neither enhances the game nor the companies' reputation. I would very much appreciate a statement on this file bloating / load time issue Chris

I bought Pillars in April 2015 and initially was delighted with it. By late May, I was forced to stop playing the game. The Save Fiile sizes had become so bloated (40 times the inital save file) which may be reason why the corresponding Load time were now a joke (taking more than 3 mintes to load). I tried every suggestion I saw on the forums with no improvement. Playing the game was unbearable and I gave up in despair. 18 months later with a newly built PC I reinstalled the game. Unbelievable the same situation is still occurring. With less than 80 hours of play , saves are taking over 2 minutes. I have checked all the settings I can find on Steam and other things on the PC but am unable to get an improvement. Is this a bug in the game - a problem with Steam - an inherent setting in Windows 7 or what? My PC can manage all other recent RPG without a problem I am now stuck a second fatl error. I have been landed with a Party Management Bug screwing up the game as well. According to postings this situation was reported months ago but everyone who triggers it are completely stuffed as a result. There is little point for any company to release a brilliant "Game of the Year "when many players are reporting they are unable to progress much more than a third of the way through the game before it falls over. Failing to resolve these unsolved issues are spoiling Obsidian's reputation

I have attempted the work-around but it has not solved the issue for me. I've verified the Steam Files and disabled just about everything - but to no avail. This is a bug which must be corrected by Obsidian programmers In my case I became aware of an issue when my party of 6 met Hiravias. I tried to dismiss Durance and recruit the druid. Whatever the underlying cause - (the automatically levelling process has been mentioned as a possibility) - the Party Management system operating in my game has been damaged. (Possibly fatally) I thought I had managed to get over my problem by using an earlier save where I had a party of 4 when I met Hiravias . Now after too many more hours of game play, my next visit to Caed Nua caused choas. Possibly dozens of recent save games are now corrupt. I am totally gutted I am waiting for a reply from Obsidian

Loren - the game may not be unplayable to you but it will be to many - such as myself I bought this game 18 months ago and had to stop playing because as the game progressed the load times became so excessive (more than 3 minutes ), it became tedious. I have been unable to discover what is causing this I started again last month. Not only are load times starting to lengthen again but I been hit by the bug described in this thread. You may never experience either. However it is very frustrating trying to play what is clearly an excellent game and being forced to stop play because of internal bugs. Party Management started to become odd when I tried to dismiss Durance and recruit Hiravias. The management screen showed that Durance was still there but Hiravias wasn't. There were only 5 characters in the game area (the 2 mentioned were not in that game area). Back at Caed Nua it was weird but with extreme difficulty and lengthy reloads I managed to get the party back to 6. The next return to the Stronghold came game hours later. I ended up with a party of 5 and two of these were identical copies of Rana. Entering Brightthollow, caused the game to crash repeatedly. Your order of play may not have seen that happen. The comments made and exasperation shown were very fair.

PoE is a brilliant, complex and absorbing RPG and a most worthy successor to Baldur Gate etc. Unlike BG, (and despite the PoE inbuilt information system), its sheer complexity make it rather tricky for players to become familiar with all the various ways to play the game – particularly in something like character development. I bought and began playing the game in April 2015. Before I got close to the end of Chapter One, at the end of May 2015, I reluctantly had to gave up playing the game. After spending a couple of days getting the feel of the game controls, I started again from the beginning. Some 20 hours into the game, I began to notice load / reload times were getting longer and longer. Eventually I was spending too much time looking at a screen and it became obvious this situation was making the game unplayable. I checked the Obsidian website (and others) to see if this was a general experience. Apparently numerous people were experiencing screen handling issues but others stated they had noticed no problem apparently. A few weeks ago my PC was rebuilt with a clean instalment of Windows 7. Pillars now had 2 expansion modules to consider buying. I started a new game (which is connected through Steam). I anticipated that screen loading times would by now have been fixed – but the same problem is again occurring. I am now about 60% of the way through Chapter One and the game is slowing down appreciably. Because I am still trying to get to grips with the game’s AI, I would have liked to play the same battle a number of times over to see what a change to a character’s AI might do. However at this speed, it would take forever. The first save file created in the Encampment Area was 116 kb. The latest is 20 times that size. In last year’s attempt I stopped playing when the save files were 35 times larger than that. Is this to be expected? If so, the final saves are going be an extraordinary size. Could you please tell me if the situation I am experiencing can be corrected? Is it absolutely necessary for Save files to grow at this kind of rate? It seems possible that juggling this amount of data might cause the PC screen handling to be slow. Many thanks

I also ran into a problem with Hiravias. At the point when I tried to recruit him there were 6 in the party. I swapped out Durance and sent him back to Caed Nua then recruited Hiravias. However according to the party management screen Durance was still there and it was Hiravias had apparently gone to Caed Nua - except the physical party showed me only 5 (neither were there). I went to Caed Nua and found Hiravias walking on the water beside the bridge. He was in a world of his own and ignored me. I could not stablise the party at Caed Nua either. Who was in the party was consitently more than the characters on the screen, Eventually I reloaded and reduced the party to 4 before recruiting him. I think (but am not totally confident) that all the issues caused by this bug have rectified themselves.