Coldstate

Had similar thing happen, but with the Cowl of the Piercing Gaze. Suddenly all bonuses disappeared but the story text is still there.

Really like the challenges, they definitely add much needed extra difficulty to my PotD runs. Did one run ( main + BoW + SSS ) in PotD with these enabled: - Beraths - Abydon - Skaen - Ondra - Woedica - Rymngard + some Blessings like 5k gold at start, + 2 all attributes, and some other ones. + deadly deadfire 30 % experience point penalty mod. By the end of SSS MC was lvl 18 Also self imposed iron man. Beraths challenge adds to difficulty mostly in the early game when resurrection options during combat are low. Ship fights are also tough since non-party companions seem to have a death wish and healing them can be pain, keeping them well equipped helped a lot (don't think they use healing potions though). Made me play more safe. Abydons challenge was probably the most difficult one ( and the best ), pure monk MC had it easy since fists don't break. Repair bill on high end equipment kept me from using those items for more than 1-2 fights ( tried to save em for the most difficult fights I could find ), other than that all those fine + exceptional items were all used until they were too damaged. Was nice that the damage didn't impact the sell value. Lost several key items during fights and had to change build few times because of it. Skaen was taken mostly to make crawling in a dark dungeon with torches feel more spooky. Though it did affect some fights since I had to position my characters in a way I could see all enemies. Ondra's challenge was bit meh. Sure you have to avoid the storms but unless time is an issue this doesn't really matter. The extra difficulty to ship combat felt a bit off, there were like no novice sailors in the seas except for my crew. Omitted this challenge from future runs. Woedica's challenge is really good, really liked the scarcity of class resources, can't go all out in every fight. Was really tough though with Rymngards challenge. I have mixed opinion of Rymngards challenge ( mostly because of how it affects Woedica's challenge). In general I like it, but found myself constantly running to taverns to rest since most of the food (and many of the components they need ) expire in few days minus some drinks like forgetful night which lasts for 14 days. Its components (grog + arrack ?) also last 14 days so you could wait until the last expiration hour of the components to make the drink, essentially giving that food around 28 days until expiration ( assuming you get the components at the same time which didn't really happen ). Never tried to store food in the captain's quarters cabinet ( the one where you find the blade shards ) , but I guess putting stuff there might halt the decay process? because animancy tech or something. Tried and would use Galawain's challenge, but invisible boars or wurms are a bit too much for me immersion Hylea's challenge seems interesting, another suicidal companion to babysit. Might try it some day.

Thank you for the reply, Looking at the older patch notes again, yea they do contain balances on the drug scaling. I recall still having the scaling in place when playing 1.2 but prob just didn't install the following 1.2.0.... patches and mistakenly attributed the issue to 2.0 case closed

Previously alchemy affected drug effects like the accuracy bonus from deadeye drug or the attributes gained from using ripple sponge, but now it only seems to affect durations, and the health regenaration from whiteleaf. Was this intentional ? I went trough the patch notes but didin't see any alchemy changes related to drugs.

I always have time to kill some xaurips. and take their spears I like spears

Couldn't pledge during Pillars I, but now I pledged immediately when I got the news in steam (happy backer n.171 :D) Still haven't finished the original game (Triple crown only.Died.Alot), guess its time to try again.