Skjefull

I would like to see more of a challenge on the harder difficulty levels... If PoE2 was anything to go by, they will probably up the difficulty at some point. PoE2 they completely reworked a lot of the Path of the Damned fights from when it was first released.

This is not completely true. A skill has to reach 50 before you can specialize in it, but since each skill is affected by different attributes they each start at a different level of competency. Once one skill in the group hits 50 then you can immediately start specializing that skill. It almost sounds like you did not pick your attributes that favor the skills you want to specialize in. Like picking dexterity instead of intelligence, which would make you sneak start higher than your hacking skills.

I have run into problems with companion's clipping through the Unreliable and falling to their deaths causing their quests to botch. Doesn't happen often, once to Pavarti and now to Ellie. Luckily I noticed when it happened to Pavarti and was able to reload. Ellie is not so lucky. While Ellie is alive and well, the quest still autofails as soon as I accept it. Ugh. Still despite the few bugs I have run across, the game is in a pretty good state. I can wait until they patch it again to correct the handful of bugs. As complicated as games are now days I think its a little unreasonable to expect no flaws whatsoever on launch. I appreciate all the hard work that went into this game and the fact it wasn't monetized to hell.

I just came across this bug too. As soon as I accept the quest, it fails. The only other time I had this happen was when I was talking to a companion in the Unreliable's kitchen. While talking I noticed Pavarti performing the ladder "climbing" animation clipping through the ship. Shortly after her quest failed as if she had died despite being very much alive. I reloaded and proceeded to talk to the companion again and the same thing happened. I reloaded one more time, waited for the companion not be in the kitchen and was able to complete the conversation without Pavarti dying through clipping. Perhaps Ellie also clipped through the ship at some point and died? If it somehow marked her character as "dead" permanently.