sarah

I encountered a potential bug, though it's possible that it's a design choice that I just don't fully understand. Behavior: Convincing Delem he doesn't need to eat birds leads to reputation loss. Expected: I don't believe this path should cause you to lose reputation—at least using the Survival-based chat option. I would expect it to give a reputation gain, or at least be reputation neutral. Details: In Oldsong (Twin Elms), Delem offers you a quest to collect three birds, which he'll eat to gain greater powers of song. If you go ask people about his request, they will all tell you that this is a superstition. I found two different ways to talk him out of his quest: The first is to tell him that it's just a superstition and that all previous singers were just looking for an easy way out. It makes sense that this dialog option might lead to a reputation loss, as it indicates a misalignment with the traditions of the local culture. The second is to make an argument based on a minimum level of survival, that leads Delem to conclude on his own that it's not a practice that makes sense. I think this should give a reputation gain, or at least be reputation neutral. With the survival approach, Delem is happy, nobody's bird was stolen, and we haven't disparaged any local traditions. This seems to me like it should be the maximum reputation gain, or at least a reputation-neutral solution. If we're role playing, it seems this would be at least as good for your local reputation as if you stole somebody's pet bird so a singer could eat it. I'm happy to accept it if this was an intentional design—either to reward the more difficult task of gathering all the birds, or based on some theory of Orlan culture that overrides my interpretations. In the former case, I would suggest that maybe an additional quest reward other than reputation would make more sense as a reward rather than taking away reputation for the harmless, survival-based solution.

This bug is a nontrivial spoiler, so it's worse than most conversation bugs. PROBLEM: Travel to Pearlwood Bluff with Sagani prior to meeting with Lady Webb and Sagani will still ask you about Thaos. EXPECTED: Sagani should not ask you about Thaos unless you've completed the first sequence with Lady Webb. DETAILS: It's not very unlikely that someone will end up going through Pearlwood Bluff before they have completed the introduction to Lady Webb and learned about Thaos. In my first playthrough, I was still several hours away from hearing the name "Thaos," and there seem to be quite a few other people who were confused by this conversation as well (based on a Google search). Besides just having a conversation that makes no sense, this can easily become a major spoiler, because it's natural then to Google "Thaos" in case you just forgot someone's name. It's hard to do this without seeing some pretty big spoilers for what's coming. I've encountered so many dialog issues with Sagani that I kinda wish I had just sent her to live at Caed Nua. Fortunately, Pillars of Eternity is so good that it's virtually impossible to truly spoil the game or the story. Nonetheless, this bug is a really bad one in my opinion—even though a dialog bug seems like it shouldn't really be a big deal. This one reveals such important information that I think it's worth prioritizing.

PROBLEM: Sagani's Adra Arch conversation (Elmshore) triggers while in combat SOLUTION: Disable the conversation if the criteria are met while in combat, or defer the conversation until combat ends. DETAILS: In Elmshore, I found the Adra arch that's part of Sagani's questline. Surrounding it there was a large pack of mixed mobs. Near the end of the fight, I happened to have one of my characters step on the wrong spot, and got sucked into a long, thoughtful conversation with Sagani—while in the middle of combat! It's obviously a bug that the game will trigger this conversation sequence while in combat. It halfway ruined that bit of the story for me, because it was so profoundly inappropriate to have that conversation at that time. ( It's hard to believe that Sagani would be thoughtfully glancing into the distance while her tank was dominated and attempting to kill her.) It may be that you never really want to trigger any quest conversation while in combat, except perhaps a "please don't kill me," but certainly it's not desirable in this situation. If, for some reason, it's not possible to fix this bug, it would be nice if it would at least pause the combat when the conversation's over. (Although I suppose it's realistic that someone might get knocked out if they had a wistful conversation about their tribe's history during the middle of a fight with multiple wizards.)

I created a top-level post for this, but by suggestion I'm also reporting it here. There is a minor text error in the soul history of Oleg Shimanovsky in the Copperlane distict of Defiance Bay (just west of the Scrivener's Dormitory). The third paragraph reads "The outer door is bursts open with […]." I believe the "is" should be removed, as it's ungrammatical & seems to be an editing error. (There are other ways to fix that sentence, but dropping the "is" is almost certainly what was intended and it's the fix that's most consistent with the tone, tense and flow of the rest of the text.)

I've just encountered a minor text error in the soul history of Oleg Shimanovsky in the Copperlane distict of Defiance Bay (just west of the Scrivener's Dormitory). I'm on v2.02.0749. The third paragraph reads "The outer door is bursts open with […]." I believe the "is" should be removed, as it's ungrammatical & seems to be an editing error. (There are other ways to fix the grammar of that sentence, but dropping the "is" is almost certainly what was intended and it's the fix that's most consistent with the tone, tense and flow of the rest of the text.) I'm not attaching screenshots or a save file, because it's a simple textual error. (It will be clear if you open the game's dialog database or just click on the character.) Thanks for the great game! I'm loving it!