Ark Evensong

It did already drop you to Normal speed upon entering combat when exploring in Fast Mode, though. (And back to Fast when combat is over.) Still, nice to see.

Yeah, looks like the waterwheel in the river turns the right way now. But the wheel inside the Mill still turns counter-clockwise. Also, about twice as fast. Hmmm... Maybe there're some gears outside, behind the water-facing wall?

2/3 speed, yes. It's the <| shaped button on the clock in the middle of the UI. (the |> one is the Fast Mode one, and the clock itself is Pause.) The speed modes are also hotkeyed to and [d].

Whoops. I was wrong. There's no Auto Slow Mode. What it will do, however, is drop you out of Fast Mode to normal speed when entering combat, and back up to Fast when combat is over. (If you were exploring in Fast Mode, that is.) Sorry for the confusion // dashed hopes.

Auto-Slow-Mo is in, I believe. That is, if you enable slow mode during combat, it will return to normal speed at the end of combat, and will enable slow mode itself upon entering combat. At least, I think that's how it went. I've mostly played on regular speed and paused, paused, paused. Would have to check.

If I remember correctly, that question was asked a good while ago as well, and the answer then was "No plans for that feature". There's no option in the Backer Beta for this. Doubt it will show up.

No, not the container. The mouse cursor. The pick-up hand will have a reddish hue sometimes. It's very easy to miss. Could have stated that clearer.

Somewhat related, I quite liked the music at the Dracogen Inn in previous builds, but in the current one it's pretty hard to hear. I have to turn up the volume by quite a lot and mentally block out the ambient rowdy crowd noises if I want to listen to it. For me, the crowd noise is a little too thick/loud, and I'd like the Music to be a bit louder. The fade in of the music / ambient could perhaps use some work, too - you're entering a busy place, I'd say it's okay for the sound to hit you upon entering, instead of the build up that's better suited for larger maps. Nitpicks/Personal preferences, sure.

Eh, I like the third unarmed set. Means you can walk around town without weapons drawn without messing with your inventory. Just 'LARP'ing fluff, sure. But nice.

This is not a bug new to [480], but I did not recognize with a cursory glance through the known issues lists. I'm using a 1680 * 1050 resolution - not sure if that matters. (Also appears on 1280 * 720) When (in-game) clicking on a selected portrait, there's a white border at the top and left side of the portrait inside the frame. Also, when depressed, the bottom of the portrait punches through the bottom frame. When clicking on an unselected portrait, that white border is transparent, which isn't very noticeable. Likewise, I can't really tell if the portrait bleeds through the bottom frame. The transparency is noticeable when you're dragging the portrait to another location, though. There's also some transparency on the left of the Health bar. To make it a little clearer, have another 1017 words: Expected behavior: Black or Dark Wood background instead of White or Transparent. No bleedthrough at bottom of frame when clicking on a selected portrait.

Ah, but if you want to double up the Weapon Focus Talent with a Weapon Style Talent, then yeah, there's less overlap. Weapon Focus Groups: Adventurer - Pollaxe, Estoc, Flail, Wand, War Bow. Knight - Battle Axe, Sword, Morning Star, Crossbow Noble - Dagger, Rapier, Mace, Sceptre, Rod Peasant - Hatchet, Spear, Quarterstaff, Hunting Bow, Unarmed Ruffian - Sabre, Stiletto, Club, Pistol, Blunderbuss Soldier - Great Sword, Pike, War Hammer, Arbalest, Arquebus (That's +6 accuracy for the chosen weapons.) Weapon Styles Two Weapon (Faster Attacks) One-Handed (More Hits instead of Grazes) Two-Handed (More Damage) Weapon and Shield (More Deflection and Reflex)

From what I've seen, most events at the Stronghold, including fights, only have a limited time for you to deal with. But proper quests? I doubt it. Pretty sure there aren't any in the Backer Beta, even if for some situations it would make sense.

Actually, there is visual feedback when you hover over a container - the pick-up icon has a reddish hue if the container is considered 'owned'. Or seen? Not sure - it may be buggy. Not sure if this is new to [480], or if it was in before. I didn't notice until I read a bug report that mentioned it worked a little funky. Don't think I would've noticed it by myself, either. It's quite subtle and easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for.

Hmm? The God-Favored weapon Talent gives +10 accuracy at the moment. Which is the difference between the base accuracy of the Priest (20) and a Fighter or Rogue (30) Of course, another character could've taken a regular weapon Talent by then (+6 accuracy for 4 or 5 weapons), sure.

No, I don't think that's how you're supposed to interpret that sentence. Just that you can download your goodies from both Steam (or GOG?) and the Portal once they become available. Would be nice, though!

Their Accuracy and Deflection are pretty poor, too. You can get Accuracy up to that of the more offensive classes for two weapons (based on Deity) via a Talent, though.

And again, Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin have turn based combat. That works with a controller, no problem. Can you give an example of any game with PoE / IE style combat on a console that isn't terribad? I wouldn't mind seeing Pillars of Eternity show up on consoles, I just don't see it happening with this combat system.

Any chance those few(?) poor souls who picked an option without a digital key will get preferential shipping treatment? There weren't any Kickstarter tiers that offered only a physical copy, but the $50 physical 'Slacker-Backer' tier does. Not getting your shinies on time is one thing, not getting the game at all until a couple of weeks later is another. I'd hate to be stuck on that tier.

No, it isn't. Are we just misunderstanding each other here? 'cause I just hired over a dozen Adventurers at the Inn. Yes, you run into the 8 Adventurer limit after creating 4, (BB characters count as Adventurers, too.) But kill 'em off and you can create some more. It's fine and dandy to link to a post that says you found out how to permanently dismiss party members, but it would help if it mentioned how to do so. (Is it with [P]? It's not a permanent dismissal if you can get 'em back through the same menu.) It's possibly a side effect of some difficulty options? I'm running on Normal, and haven't touched Expert mode or anything. (This run, anyway.) Or a bug, where Adventurers "don't count" if you kill 'em before they gain experience? (Have not tried this.)

It's possible there'll be a Champion -> Royal upgrade later on Steam (that would cost less than Hero -> Champion). The page doesn't look finished to me. Just my speculation, though. That said, I'm a backer at a level that gets me the digital versions of the Strategy Guide and Collector's Book, but I went ahead and ordered the physical books as well. They look pretty great, and I'm not a big fan of reading books on my computer screen. (I do have an e-reader, and it's great, but it's just black-white, and doesn't handle PDFs very well.) Note that there's two books : Collector's Book, 112 pages, published by Dark Horse contains mostly lore. a.k.a.: Pillars of Eternity Guidebook: Volume one Strategy Guide, 512 pages, published by Prima Games. a.k.a. Pillars of Eternity: Prima Official Game Guide (or Pillars of Eternity Collector's Edition Guide) Yes, the names can be confusing. Make sure you note the page count and/or publisher. There's also the Digital-Only Campaign Almanac, but that's already included in your current Champion Edition.

I really doubt there'll be a console version. I'm having a hard time thinking up an even half-arsed control scheme for combat. Certainly not in real-time. (Granted, I haven't played a lot (read: any) of Bioware's recent RPGs - not entirely sure how they fare, but smaller parties and companion AI, right?) Combat is Pillars of Eternity (and the older IE games) are kinda RTS-like, even with pause. Only console game I can think of that did that sort-of right was ... uh, Pikmin? Wasteland 2 is a lot easier by comparison - turn based combat gives a lot of leeway. Anyway, we haven't heard much of the Retail / Boxed copy editions for Non-Backers. I do believe they exist, though. Saw it was up for pre-order on some European Amazon sites. (UK & Germany). I'm sure more info will appear in the coming week or so. Steam preorder page is a bit of a mess too.

What? No it isn't. At least not in the current [480] Backer Beta. There's a hard limit of 8 'recruited'/'active' adventurers - kill one off and that slot opens right up again. (Though, I think that's the only way to free up that slot - no way to permanently dismiss a character.) PBJam, there is no resurrect spell in this game, nor any temples that offer something of the sort. There's a Health/Endurance mechanic (Long Term / Single Fight), where if you run out of Health, you're dead - no coming back. Or actually, by default - you run out of Health - you come back up after the fight with the Maimed status, and 1 point of Health and Endurance - lose that last point and you are permadead. - [EDIT:] as Namutree said.

[!] There's visual feedback for whether or not something is considered stealing !? *checks in-game* Huh. So there is. Addendum to bug report : Guys, this is what you have a Colorblind Mode for. I mean, I can see it now, once pointed out - but the difference between the two cursors (Safe Looting / Stealing) is not obvious to me, and I doubt I would have noticed it by myself later on.

Odd. in [435] that option caused a pause at the start of every combat when my Paladin character threw up his aura. I thought this was annoying enough to quickly disable the option, so I haven't tried it much. Still, it triggered on a Player Spell. So may be more bug than lack of feature?

Yes.