DocDoomII

It would be more useful if when you select an item category, only those items get shown, not just highlighted.

Refer to this topic: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/73449-stat-bonus-modifiers-can-erroneously-be-applied-multiple-times-allowing-stats-to-grow-beyond-intended-values/

Ah that's why. Thanks. Didn't really understand the melee engagement slot fully untill now. Try this. When someone is surrounded in melee combat (be it one of your characters or an enemy), pause. Then pass your cursor over them. The strings you'll see going out of their circle represent the "engagement slot" being used to "engage" someone. Up until now I've never seen seen anyone with more than 3 engagement at the same time. But I stopped at the end of chapter one, to wait for bugs to be fixed.

Because characters/creatures have more than 1 melee engagement slot. And I suppose the range depends on the weapon/creature.

As someone who is just getting into the game, why do you feel that Mechanics is so important? Without mechanics you can hardly pick locks, can't absolutely spot and disarm traps and find hidden stuff.

Looks like the vertex get stretched to infinity

Well, I'm playing a ranger and it has various options to get additional precision if the enemy is far away. Going in melee would reduce precision quite a LOT. That means less criticals hits, possibly less normal hits and more grazing hits. Dunno for other classes though.

Which allowed for a VERY varied party, depending on the player, and that is a good thing. 25 is a lot, but 8 seems to be a tad bit little. and so far I can't say I've met anyone that I can consider as good as Edwin, Imoen, Viconia, Sarevok, Jaheira and Khalid or Minsc yet. And those characters managed to seem stronger and deeper even with their extremely limited dialog. Hm, I'm not entirely sure. In Baldur's Gate 1 they were seriously flat. The only good thing was that they had some quirk, or trait that made their personality likeable. And they all had their catchphrase: Yes oh omnipresent authority figure? We are all doomed! Back kicking for goodness! And so on. In PoE I feel they are more like normal people with interesting pasts. Just 2 conversations with Durance and I'm swept away with his backstory.

If I'm not mistaken in the option menu there's an option that allows characters to pass by even if the enemy triggers meele engagement. The characters will still be subjected to a free hit from the enemy because they are trying to break the engagement situation.

Honestly 8 NPCs feel quite adequate. Baldur's Gate 1 had a ton of them. Some accessible only much later in the game. And I ended up never using them because by the time I had developed a certain amount of fondness for the ones I already had. My roster varied based on my main character, but usually I always ended up with a mix of: Imoen Jaheira (glitch kicking Khalid most of the times) Branwen Viconia Xan Minsc (glitch kicking Dynaheir most of the times) Ajantis Kivan But there were 25 possible companions in total.

Checkpoint based games are kinda crappy for RPGs. They feel super cheap and arcade-y.

Quickly, someone go ask Tolkien's ghost to rewrite the Moria chapters! Gandalf and co. rested in the dungeon a few times before getting out! Need to scrap that part!

Now, I have nothing in particular against Obsidian. But after being burned with some games bought on day 1 I entirely stopped getting games as soon as they come out. Give them time, and hope they'll fix most of the problems. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. This is an exception because I'm a Kickstarter backer, so I technically paid 2 years ago.

Well, technically you can recruit companions in the very first map too, so the stats bug could affect even lvl 1 characters. Maybe.

The permanent stats bonuses bug should be retroactively fixed with the next patch. At least, that's what they are saying on their twitter accounts. I've seen a link in here somewhere.

While I do agree that nowaday games are released with too many bugs, you can't really believe that patches can be produced in so little time.

Yes it's an effect of the stats bug that makes the bonus permanents and stackable.

It's possible that it works the same way as item bonuses, where only the highest bonus is taken into account. But that would be silly because those are character traits and abilities, and they should, imo, be additive.

Well, I get no meat from them either, but I don't think it's a bug.

Player Character

To prevent it you need to NOT save and then reload the save in any area where you can recruit companions. To see if you have abnormal stats you can check your values and see if you have overly high bonuses for your level. Like 90 deflection at level 3, for example. The magnitude depends on how many cycles of save/load you did in those locations.

Is it possible that you incurred in the stats bug and you have gained additional radius?

It's caused by some weird stuff that can bloat the save files excessively.

One thing that I really want is the ability to compare a weapon stats in the merchant shop, to the weapon I have equipped on my characters.

Well ok, I didn't feel the need to point that out, because if you have a +1 item and a +2 item and you know that they don't stack, you'd normally remove the +1.