nostalchic

This appears to still be occurring in the 3.0 Beta Patch.

It looks like the Vela bug has been re-introduced with this beta patch. She's stopped appearing for me with an imported save. Edit: Actually she appears on the ship but not on the beach strangely enough.

Have made a thread for this as it's now confirmed to occur for more than just myself - it appears as though companion relationships are bugged in the beta patch. More specifically my PCs no longer get hit on automatically by either Tekehu or Maia Rua upon reaching level 1 or 2 - including Maia acknowledging any other relationships. I can however follow the Aloth track (oddly even if I just state we were only friends in his initial friendship talk). I'm not sure if the game is locking my PC into the Aloth track automatically, or the initial dialogues for others aren't firing for some reason, though it appears to be the former. I noticed when I was testing my Aloth disposition mod, but it still occurs on a clean new playthrough.

Have companion relationship triggers changed? If not, it appears as though companion relationships are bugged. More specifically my PCs no longer get's hit on automatically by either Tekehu or Maia Rua upon reaching level 1 or 2 - including Maia acknowledging any other relationships. I can however follow the Aloth track (oddly even if I just state we were just friends in his initial friendship talk). I'm not sure if the game is locking my PC into the Aloth track automatically, or the initial dialogues for others aren't firing for some reason. I noticed when I was testing my Aloth disposition mod, but it still occurs on a clean new playthrough.

I initially played a Soul Blade Inquisitor on release and found it quite boring and repetitive to be frank. Sworn enemy > Flames of Devotion > Soul annihilation > Repeat. And the lack of a move ability like Escape or Charge is a pain for a melee class. However, I’ve recently started playing a Soul Blade / Trickster Mindstalker and I find it substantially more enjoyable. You can get: - Damage abilities (Crippling Strike, Soul Annihilation, Disintegration) - Good buffs (Mirrored Image, Displaced Image, Borrowed Instinct) - Crowd control (Repulsive Visage, Whispers of Treason, Ringleader) - Utility abilities (Escape, Phantom Foes, Recall Agony) - A heap of useful passives from both classes - A large damage boost from sneak attack and soul whip It’s very quickly becoming my favourite build. And it’s quite strong out the gate (the Trickster buffs help stop you dying the second you get sneezed at).

Not sure if it helps but I can confirm that the unique recipes in my companion armor mod work with the new patch without needing any changes.

Yeah that's definitely an option but would kind of require modders to be across all existing mods - which will be much less doable as they grow in number. Having a central list would be helpful, but it's not a big deal. It could even just be a pinned thread in this forum actually seems the vast majority of modders tend to cross-post here?

Is there, or could there be, a place to flag what ID's your using in one location? Or to reserve an ID range? Would help avoid ID clashes.

This is such a great idea! I mentioned it in the other thread, but thought I'd also post it here for those who don't venture into that forum. I've already made a mod that has been requested - the increase to the Shattered Pillar wound limit. Its available here on the nexus.

This is a great idea. I've already made a mod that has been requested too - the increase to the Shattered Pillar wound limit. I have uploaded it to the nexus here if you'd like to flag it as finished on the request list!

Shattered Pillar is bad and you should never use it. Nalpazca is significantly better if you want to spend wounds.Disagree. Shattered Pillars work fine if you purely want to focus on dealing damage and neither take damage nor micro with Dance of Death / Drugs. Since the nerf SP just works similar to ciphers with needing to build resources prior to using abilities. I don’t particularly see why they are trash when Ciphers have worked similar from day one. It’s a different, and arguably safer, play style. You won’t hit the highs of the other two subclasses but you won’t hit the lows either. Drugs are cheap and plentiful...Where did I imply they weren’t? It’s an additional layer of micromanagement on top of three class resources. I don’t personally find the benefit worth it when you’re combining the two strongest classes in the game, but evidently your mileage varies.

Shattered Pillar is bad and you should never use it. Nalpazca is significantly better if you want to spend wounds. Disagree. Shattered Pillars work fine if you purely want to focus on dealing damage and neither take damage nor micro with Dance of Death / Drugs. Since the nerf SP just works similar to ciphers with needing to build resources prior to using abilities. I don’t particularly see why they are trash when Ciphers have worked similar from day one. It’s a different, and arguably safer, play style. You won’t hit the highs of the other two subclasses but you won’t hit the lows either.

I find Paladin multiclasses a bit bland personally as you mostly will just be using the defence boosts and Sworn Enemy / Flames of Devotion which you get from level 1 on the Paladin side. Rogue multiclasses I find more dynamic as you get a diverse range of abilities (especially if you take Trickster) plus a great movement ability at level 1 (Escape). Pairing a Trickster with a Monk will give you a tanky striker - either a Helwalker or Shattered Pillar would be my suggestion. The former if you mostly want to stack wounds for high reward, the latter if you want to use wound spending abilities as fast as possible. For either Shadowdancer I mostly use the Trickster buffs (Mirrored Image, Llengraths Displacement), Escape, Crippling Strike, passives (Deathblows etc) and Repulsive Visage on the rogue side. Then: - For a SP monk basically alternate between basic attacks and abilities like Swift Flurry / Force of Anguish / Raised Torment / Flagellent’s Path. - For the Helwalker use Swift Flurry / Dance of Death, staked wounds with Duality and hack away.

A Helwalker / Ascendent works very well. The power level boost from being ascended plus the bonus Int is great. Seems they build resources the same way effectively, I quite like Shattered Pillar / Soul Blade for melee. Dual wield to build wounds + focus fast, throw down a monk damager like Torment's Reach, follow up with a fully charged Soul Annihilation. Or hit with something like Borrowed Instincts to boost your accuracy (with +5 to Int from Duality for an extended duration) before you drop a monk ability. Probably my favourite melee multi-class build.

+1 Quitting to menu then reload a save works for me in the meantime.

Looks like there is an interesting build here somewhere. Crippling Strike (and/or it's upgrades) could even just be kept for a once-off early hit on a high priority target and you'd still have plenty of guile to use for the Illusion skills (mostly Visage and one of the buffs for when you need it). It seems very much like a Trickster Monk multi-class can go hard with damage from the Monk side with some really useful buffs and debuffs on the Rogue side. Add in the utility of Escape which you get out of the gate and you have a very fast and quite tanky high DPS character.

I noticed there weren't any items that boosted Cipher Power Levels. So now there are. I've made a mod which makes the following item edits after recommendations on the SA forums: Cipher's Shackle - grants +1 Deception levels instead of +1 Con Watcher's Blade - grants +2 Shred levels Animancers Energy Blade - grants +2 Echo levels The mod can be downloaded here for anyone interested. Also open to making the two weapon mods upgrade only if anyone would like.

Yeah true. The more I think about it, even without the stacking, the benefits mean Trickster is still a very good choice over a standard rogue and - if you're willing to sacrifice some dps for more hardiness - a solid choice over Assassin or Streetfighter. At this point from the rough build above I'd drop the dagger entirely and just use dual swords. The rest can pretty much remain as is. It ends up quite similar to the Transcendent multiclass but with Crippling Strike instead of Soul Annihilation, Repulsive Visage instead of Secret Horrors and Persistent Distraction instead of Phantom Foes. A bit tankier but losing out on the SA spamming. I imagine the overall damage output is very similar but with much less micromanagement.

Ah damn, had a feeling I was overlooking something simple. Hmm I guess tricksters are better left as CC with the buffs.

With Trickster rogues getting a substantial buff in with the upcoming patch, I'm now thinking switching a Transcendent Soul Blade for a Shadowdancer for a similar play-style but taking advantage of the full attacks of a rogue. Shattered Pillar for the Monk side. General build would be: Buffs: - Swift Flurry (try to keep active at all times) - Llengraths' Displacement + Mirrored Image for 3 guile total (is this enough deflection for riposte?) Debuffs: - Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage for 1 guile - Persistent Distraction Escape / Flagellants Path to target if needed Crippling Strike / Torments Reach / Thunderous Blows for DPS Force of Anguish as an emergency defensive move Clarity of Agony for afflictions when needed Devil of Caroc breastplate for the recovery + power pool boosts. Dual wielding either Swords or Sword/Dagger (as dagger modal would help with riposte). Stats would be: Per > Int > Dex / Mig > Res > Con Is there something I'm missing or would this be quite a solid and fun alternative? Do the illusion buffs provide any worthwhile benefit for a DPS monk to be worth the drop in DPS from sneak attack?

Looks good, ciphers are substantially more useful now (hello Mental Binding). Still think Mind Wave should have a drop in cast or recovery time. Flagellant's Path now deals only crush damage to enemies in the path, instead of Full Attacks. The description no longer labels it a Full Attack but it still appears to do so to the target? Might be a bug with the text as one of the upgrades still lists it as a Full Attack. Two bugs I came across: Portraits on the character page seem to be higher contrast and de-saturated. Level Up indicators (glowing yellow) seem to stay once you've leveled up even when reloading.

I've updated my mod to work with the new patch for those interested - let me know if you are still having issues as I haven't tested it thoroughly.

Hmm, I got the extra dispositions very briefly, but they seem to have disappeared after the patch downloaded. Is this a PEBKAC issue do you think, or a patch issue? I’m frustrated enough with the game that I don’t want to risk my sanity trying to get it working again if the problem is incompatibility with 1.1.0 I'd assume the new patch breaks most mods. I'll most likely update it over the weekend along with my other mod unless the patch changes make it impossible.

Here's the link for those interested: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/78/ I haven't tested it extensively so if you have any issues let me know. You shouldn't need to restart either.

I actually made a mod to add some dispositions to him - and now that the beta patch fixes the conflicting ones - I can upload it if anyone's interested? The only real difference from the one previously mentioned in this thread is it adds 'Progressive' as a positive topic to anti-leaden key versions. I was also thinking about adding a variant of 'Pious' to a pro-leaden key Aloth as well.