CrookedKnight

My problem with it is that I play a Chanter and just got access to the Rime chant that triggers the bloated save file bug, so I've been leaving the game alone entirely until the patch lands.

I've never purchased a new game through GOG before, so I guess this is my own fault for not doing due diligence, but I kind of figured that the DRM-free nature of it meant there was no reason I'd depend on the storefront for patches.

"Raised the bonus for having fewer than six party members from 5% per character under the limit to 10% per character under the limit." Bonus...experience?

Yeah, I like them as an idea and I think the backstory flashes we get are neat, I just wish it was possible to interact with them in ways other than murder, especially if those little stories came back in conversations or factored into quests somehow.

Been there, done that.

If I were in charge of everything, along with POTD there'd be three other selectable modes you could pick from when starting out: Path of the Scholar (PS:T mode): Removes all battles that aren't somehow tied to a quest, reduces enemy health and damage, increases EXP gains from quests to compensate for the lost combat rewards. Path of Balance: The game as it exists now. Path of the Warrior (IWD mode): Adds additional battles in dungeons and field areas, as well as raising the number of foes in each battle and sharply increasing enemy stats beyond POTD. Raises the level cap. Adds an option to turn on quest markers in the field map for a pure dungeon-crawling experience.

For my part, I'm not a “casual” player, I just don't like Infinity Engine-style combat. Don't think it's fun, don't want to put in the time to master it when that will just reduce the enjoyment I get out of the game. I bought POE because of the pedigree of the writing team, and that's what I'm playing for. And Obsidian games in particular have always let you sidestep the fighting pretty seamlessly if it's not your thing – either by taking other quest routes, letting your AI allies do the heavy lifting, or just making it so easy that you can faceroll the entire game. That's why I was surprised that the easiest mode in Pillars still requires the player to put a decent amount of effort into the combat.

Or, less charitably, hard mode is too easy for min-maxers while easy mode is still too combat-intensive for the people who don't want to bother with combat at all.

Wish I'd seen this before fixing it so I could see what was in that folder. Something was up because when I tried to play the game the "Continue" and "Load Game" options were greyed out and unselectable in the main menu, exactly as if there were no accessible saves. I solved it by extracting the contents of LoadedSave.zip into the temp/ save folder. That restored all my saves.

I was in early Act 2, and after picking up the key from the street thugs in the Gift I found the house it's supposed to unlock and went in. The game froze up on loading the interior of the house, and after leaving it for five minutes I finally took the option to force quit. When I started it up again, all my saved games were deleted! By chance I actually had my save folder (user/appdata/local/temp/obsidian entertainment/pillars of eternity/) open on the desktop after the crash, so I know they were there after the game locked up and closed -- but now, after opening the game again, that folder is empty except for a 1.7MB file called LoadedSave.zip. There goes 12 hours of progress....