Loren Tyr

As an update, I used some more dummy Rotghasts for target practice and it turns out the Might doesn't get applied twice, it seems that Stone Joint (and perhaps other poisons) just got a buff (+4 damage per point of alchemy, rather than +3). It just so happened in my earlier test that this coincided exactly (after rounding anyway) with the amount that would have gotten with applying Might twice. The 0 damage tooltip and the lack of scaling shown in the description are still an issue though. @Takkik: at least for the poisons, I know those don't stack (of the same type anyway). Then again, Bleeding Cut on the battle axe does (it doesn't show as separate effects, but the damage definitely increases) and I think Deep Wounds as well, so it varies.

Or, just maybe, Obsidian (like most devs) realises that people who sit hours running number checks and spending days testing aren't necessarily representative of their entire player base. And their choices when designing and (re)balancing the game are probably going to reflect that.

I encountered two bugs with poisons: when hitting an enemy with the poison, the tool tip in the combat log now says "0 Crush/Burn/whatever damage per 3 seconds" rather than the proper amount (I tried with Stone Joint and Scorching Venom, but presumably it applies to all). The might bonus is also applied twice now, first when setting the DoT and again when applying it (essentially squaring the might bonus). Not that I mind exactly given my character's propensity for filling everything in sight with poison, but this didn't happen before (the might bonus was then applied only when the DoT hit, as I recall). A third issue, though this was present already: the description of the poison effect when you click on it only shows the base damage and other effects, and doesn't account for Alchemy skill (or might) bonus.

As an update, for me doing the Steam file verification thing does seem to have worked; I have not encountered it again after I did that at least, and at the rate it was happening before it would have if still present. Not sure whether it would fix the issue 'in progress', ie. loading a save that was made when the problem was occurring, I didn't try that here (but as noted above, with some finagling you can resolve that).

I'm having this problem as well, quite regularly, with the mouse cursor turning into the red dashed circle over areas where it definitely shouldn't be (and the character not being able to walk there, ie. it's not just a visual glitch). I get the feeling it has something to do with the vertical axis, that for some reason the game thinks that the character is at a different level someone. Not sure why that would cause a bug with the cursor, but it does seem to tend to be that the character is kind of boxed in in an area, which often somewhat corresponds visually to specific terrain. Not always though, so maybe that's just coincidence. Some further observations on the issue: - It's character-specific, with one (or more) affected but others not. It's persistent though, selecting an unaffected character and then another one doesn't fix it. - Multiple affected characters may be affected differently. In at least one instance, one character was boxed in a small area he could not leave, with the other unable to enter it. - Sometimes all characters are affected, but if not then when selecting multiple characters the cursor works properly. When commanding the group to walk somewhere, the affected characters still stop at their invisible boundary though. - It seems to occur almost always after a dialogue (either regular dialogue or scripted interaction type dialogue), though not always. Just now, I traveled to Satahuzi and before talking to anyone (except clicking on one NPC with no dialogue window, just a single on-screen comment) the problem already occurred (Xoti was unable to walk up the ramp northwest, up to the chieftain's hut, though the rest of the party did fine; she seemed to kind of walk under the ramp and raised platform instead). I've also had this in the Kraken's Eye, after vacating the room, the problem occurred when going back downstairs. - Often the problem can be fixed by doing select all and just moving around a bit, at some point the affected character(s) find a way out (though sometimes another then gets stuck in the same area). In other cases, having an unaffected character bump into an effected one seems to have helped. Also in one case, the problem occurred after an ambush type scenario from the world map (the Xaurips on the way to the dig site), with Eder stuck in place at the beginning of combat; in this case, after I clicked with him to attack a Xaurip the problem was suddenly gone though, and I had a normal walking cursor for him again (I tried force attacking one of my own characters in a later instance to no avail though). Leaving an area also always seems to fix it when I re-enter (so far anyway; also not sure it did in Kraken's Eye going back upstairs then down (I don't recall), though going up, out and throught the other exit did). - With the above, there haven't been any instances where I was unable to get out of it eventually. Usually it's fairly quick, though on the other hand I did spend about five minutes just now cajoling my party out of Satahuzi. - Reloading doesn't necessarily help. The first time I encountered this was at the shipwreck beach at the start. Walking right and up a bit my character got stuck in an area about level with the path out, more or less below the bit where the rightmost boar is wandering around (Eder got locked out of that same area). I reloaded the autosave made just before, walked the same way and got stuck at precisely the same spot. However, reloading again and walking left first and looping around (and talking to all the characters along the way, etc.), once I got back to the problem spot there was no issue. - As far as I recall this only started happening this Thursday (when patch 1.02 was also released, I believe), after I restarted with a new character (I assume it's the patch rather than the restart though). I started playing the game Wednesday and don't recall having run into this at any stage then (if it happened it must have been so minor that I did not notice). Anyway, this is all I can report on it, hopefully there is some meaningful fix for it.

It targets Deflection. Either way, no reason to nerf it, it's fine the way it is. Sabre was a special case, really.

Yeah, first load takes longer, presumably indeed because of (lack of) caching. I just timed an 8MB save game: straight from startup it was about 50 sec., after that it was in the order of 20-25 sec. This is on a fairly standard desktop PC, couple of years old, no SSD. Could be a lot better obviously, but it's hardly prohibitive either.

One thing you'll have to decide on is whether to put more focus on Chanting or Invocations. One strategy is to go for the higher level phrases, which of course have stronger effects in themselves but take longer as well so it can take quite a while to build up to an invocation. The opposite strategy would be to stick primarily to level 1 phrases (maybe throw in an occasional higher level one) to build up phrases much more quickly to get to your invocations. The latter strategy does benefit more from not getting too slow, since you only start chanting again once the recovery of your invocation has ended.

Yeah, I hope so too. They should keep the code much more structured and relational I think. If the code more closely matches the developer's conceptual intuition of what it is representing, it is much less likely to result in errors. The whole StatusEffects thing in particular is just not very intuitive (pretty much any effect is immediately translated into a StatusEffect on the characted; eg. Knock Down effect = OneHit StatusEffect on attacker, weapon enchantment = StatusEffect on wielder, etc.)

I have a small balancing request: would it be possible to change the item AOE bonus effects (both the general one as well as those to Chant area / Zealous aura area) to be to the radius rather than the AOE? They're to the full area now, ie. the square root of them is taken before apply them to the radius (eg. +10% to AOE becomes +4.9% to radius). By contrast, the Intellect bonus is applied directly to radius, making the item bonuses quite underwhelming by comparison. It's also not very intuitive, because both are still described as a bonus to Area of Effect.

That's right actually, those triggered passive abilities always stack. Works for Wellspring of Life, but also eg. Defiant Resolve or Bloodlust; it's because they count as passive. So in this case it doesn't matter what stat they actually affect. Though as it turns out for some reason Defiant Resolve is four individual bonuses rather than a single one to AllDefense. Similarly, Crucible actually also is three individual bonuses rather than one to AllDefensesExceptDeflection. I suspect those were implemented fairly early in development, whereas those composite ModifiedStat's are much more recent. Scroll of Defense and Circle of Protection do both affect AllDefense, so those don't stack with each other, though they will with Crucible. As for the ones Boeroer mentioned: Inspiring Triumph stacks for the same reason as Wellspring et al., the ability it originates from is passive. The other three all modify activate abilities, and stack because they have AbilityType.Talent which as it turns out makes them inherently stackable. Given the amount of digging through the code you need to do to find that out, I think we can safely designate that "not very intuitive".

Crucible is everything except Deflection, right? In that case they almost certainly stack, because there are separate AllDefences and AllDefencesExceptDeflection ModifiedStats (naming might be a bit different, but same idea). Scroll of Defence and Defiant Resolve would affect the first, Crucible the second. I'll check to be sure tonight, but I have no doubt that they will stack (Scroll and Defiant Resolve shouldn't with each other, though). They will also all stack with active/modal bonuses to individual defences, by the way.

Ila does indeed affect a different stat (RateOfFireMult) than most other effects (AttackSpeedMult), so it stacks with everything.

Actually, the game *is* quite well-balanced in many respects. But that aside, balance and pure equality (or equivalence, more to the point) are hardly the same thing anyway. Taking this case in particular, the various one-handed weapons still have different properties, and as such which one works best in a particular scenario is still an open question. For example, whether a battle axe or a sabre is better will depend on your chance to score Crits, and thus among other things your accuracy. More generally, if a game is very unbalanced there isn't much for you to find in terms of optimal combinations. If one weapon or weapon type is inherently, significantly better than the rest, then if you want to optimize that must be your pick. Which certainly to some extent is precisely what happens with the current, pre-nerfed version of the Sabre. Better balance in a game doesn't decrease the number of real decisions you have to make, it increases them.

Except that ZE gives +3 DR and gives additional hit to graze conversion, and doesn't require you to continuously keep pouring alcohol into all your characters. It doesn't last *that* long, and it's tedious at best even if you can find enough ale to keep that up (which seems unlikely). So I'd say alcohol is certainly useful, but it doesn't even remotely undermine the value of ZE.

Agreed, good nerf. For all the other one-handers as well I'd say. To some extent the most for axes; because they had the Slashing-only disadvantage the gap with Sabre felt biggest for those. Now that it is (well, will be) the same base with +20% flat bonus vs +50% on Crit, it feels much more like an actual choice.

Hmm, Firebug is definitely not actually doing anything. Even with NoDamage off and plenty of enemies around, it shows up once in the log but does nothing (Soulbound Scepter Dominate proc still works fine though, even though it uses the same kind of mechanism). Am also not seeing the "Ability found activated" error in the log, but I am seeing an "ERROR: Charged_Spellbind_Biting_Winds_Ability(Clone) doesn't have an associated prefab, but a prefab was found matching the object name." No idea what that's supposed to be attached to, though it might be unrelated to the Unlabored Blade issue.

Each type of weapon have an advantage. Its not a "big priority" problem. Its a question of some residual damage. With a high DR resistance "slash", some others weapons can do more damage than sabers (old version). Yes, and the advantage of the Sabre was too big. Or so, clearly, thought the devs, and I think there are plenty of people who would agree. The high base damage put it closer to two-handed weapons than the other one-handed weapons in terms of damage, now it is more nicely balanced. All have the same base, and each its own unique perk. This is a bad thing how, exactly?

Actually, that's probably a fairly accurate guess. GenericAbility's like these do indeed toggle an 'activated' state on and back off again, among other things to prevent them from going off multiple times simultaneously. If for whatever reason it never actually deactivates again you'd get exactly the pattern you demonstrate; other scenario's could give the same pattern of course, but with that line from your output_log.txt this seems far and away the most probable. Raising the question of why it isn't deactivating, obviously, but it's a step. I was toying around a little bit with this yesterday as well, and also noticed that it didn't seem to be doing anything except log 'xxx activates Firebug' (and also only a single proc, at most). Wasn't at it too long and I wasn't sure it was a genuine issue (in one case the target died from that hit, in another it was an ally), but given your experience with it it does seem to be. There is a small possibility that the NoDamage option could be interfering with that somehow (I had that on part of the time as well), though it's not very likely. This bug is actually reminiscent of one from (I think) the 3.03 beta, where Spellchance procs in general were not working anymore (eg. the Soulbound Scepter and Jolting Touch stilletto as well), only showing the proc in the log. That was since fixed, though; at least for those two, but it must have been a general issue with Spellchance handling.

Actually, fixed boost/higher base damage range is better than 'equivalent' +X% damage, because the fixed damage boost/higher base damage gets multiplied by any +X% damage bonuses. So without other damage bonuses, the new Sabre will do 13.2 - 19.2 against the original 13 -19, but if we add in for example +50% from a Crit it becomes 18.7 - 27.2 for the new vs 19.5 - 28.5 originally. And that gap quickly increases as the total +X% damage bonus gets larger, one of the key reasons it has been such a popular weapon for Rogues, with their endless accumulation of damage bonuses. One assumes the reason for the change is to make the Sabre a bit more balanced compared to other weapon types, bringing it closer to other one-handers and further away from two-handers. Not sure how maces and battle axes becoming more interesting now is a problem though.

It's not as good as 13-19 base, but it's hardly insignificant. In any case, I like the change, for rogues and in general. This way, you aren't 'forced' nearly as much to go for Sabres, and they're better balanced against their inherent disadvantage of being Slashing damage only. The Axe-wielding rogue might get a bit more chance to shine now as well, stepping out of the Sabre's shadow.

The nature of those machines isn't exactly clear, though. Regardless, sure those souls are fairly observable and manipulable, but as opposed to what. Magic? Both in PoE and other fantasy worlds, that's quite observable and manipulable as well. How else would mages be able to reliably control it and produce intended effects, teach this skill onto other people, refine existing spells and enchantments and devise new ones, create magically infused artifacts and constructs, etc. And for the same reason, there is nothing obstacle in the nature of magic in for example the Forgotten Realms setting that prohibits scientific study of magic. Magic there generally behaves in a fairly structured and predictable way. It can therefore be studies systematically and rigorously, observed and manipulated. Knowledge gained from this can be subsumed under models and theories, data collected and analysed. Results and conclusions can then be disseminated through a community of peers, feeding back into itself. It just doesn't happen in this world, to any substantial degree. This is chiefly a cultural thing; after all, it's not as if there is a booming scientific community investigating all other aspects of reality (ie. the stuff real-world science studies), that magic is somehow exempted from. It's just that there isn't really any science going on in the first place.

Ryona's Breastplate has it (that's what causing it in AncientFire's game). And of course you can just go with a Fighter. By the way, do you mean building around the Pain Link bug specifically, or the instant healing? Should be a fairly short-lived build though, can't imagine they won't fix it in 3.04. They probably inadvertently fixed it already, actually.

I agree, it's about how the work portrays things. But it follows that it doesn't matter much what the underlying of metaphysics of the fiction reality is, except when it explicitly figures into the story (and even there the perception vs (fictional) reality remains). Maybe magic in Forgotten Realms really is magic all the way down, or maybe those gods it originates from (or however FG magic is claimed to be sourced) are actually entirely bound by natural laws themselves. And conversely, it's not like the metaphysical status of souls and such in PoE is so very well characterised. Sure, the animancers are taking a fairly proto-scientific approach to it, trying to study and manipulate them systematically. But it doesn't follow that the nature and behaviour of souls in PoE would ever be fully explicable (or failing that, at least predictable; and frankly, it's not like real scientists in our reality do have any such guarantee). And mages do very similar things in any number of fantasy settings. Magic is generally not some completely unfathomable manifestation of the mage's will. It is also studied, experimented with; powerful mages often develop new and better spells and enchantments that get named after them; they create golems, constructs, et cetera. And these are often studied in turn, spells and magical skills are taught to new magelings, and so on. In other words, magic is generally quite well-behaved and bound by definite rules: if it wasn't, it wouldn't be repeatable, reproducable. teachable. In that regard I would say the main difference between the animancers are simply more rigorous, systematic and organised in their study of souls, than mages in other settings are in their study of magic. Forgotten Realms mages probably could take a far more scientific approach to magic as well, they just don't. So I would argue that the crucial difference isn't one of metaphysics, it's just one of mentality, of having a more analytic mindset. And probably far more important difference, a cultural and sociological difference: fundamental to anything approaching science is organisation, collaboration, communication. That's what allows a body of systematic knowledge to accumulate, rather than everyone having to start basically from scratch every time. And certainly, this difference in mentality could certainly be considered a good demarcation of (sub)genres, eg. mapping different works of fantasy onto the most closely corresponding era in (European) history. PoE (Renaissance, maybe early Enlightenment) unquestionably differs from the standard sword and sorcery type fantasy (Late Medieval for the most part, probably), and those different styles and outlooks will appeal to different people. Also, some people (particularly on the internet, as usual) probably should just tone down their taxonomical zeal a touch . It can be interesting to discuss what differentiates styles and genres, but why people sometimes get so excessively worked up about which exact label gets attached to something I'll never really understand.

That, I certainly can agree with. It's the perception and experience of the world (and through them, the reader/player) that matters, that then creates the psychology and tone of the setting in a more general sense. Irrespective of whatever metaphysics may lurk behind them, insofar as those really have been defined at all. As in general, it's not about what *is* but about what is perceived to be. And it being a work of fiction, also in how that is in turn conveyed, of course.