Ark Evensong

He just said not to quote him on that, and then you went and ... and ... Augh!

As far as I know, we haven't heard anything about a feature like this, so I highly doubt anything of the sort will be in the game. Lobby enough and it might make it into the expansion (or even a patch). Not that I really care for the option - I'd rather replay with another character, with different stats and other dialog options. What I would like to see is the ability to export a character, and being able to hire 'em through the Adventurer's Hall. Same restrictions would apply to normal hires. (Level of Main Character -1) They'd be stripped from any plot powers (if an exported Main Character), and probably have their gear replaced by generic level-appropriate versions. Still, the ability to hire pre-made Adventurers by others (or yourself) would be really cool. Have it in a package that includes the portrait, too.

Not quite right. The wiki is horribly outdated. (Or, well, it was - haven't checked for a while.) Because I'm lazy, I'm just going to quote myself from an older thread - this is how it works in Backer Beta v435, and probably the final game, too.

Well, I was wrong. Just gave it a try. Yes, you can assign groupings to the number keys. 1 through 6 are pre-assigned to the characters, but can be overwritten. Note that the grouping work of the location of the portraits, not the characters themselves. If you re-order your party, you'll have to adjust your groupings as well. Say you have a party, with their portraits on the screen as follows: Alice - Bob - Clarice - Dave [1] Will map to Alice, [2] to Bob, etc. Say you set [7] to a grouping of Alice and Bob. Now move Dave's portrait to the front. (So now, [1] will map to Dave, [2] To Alice, [3] to Bob and [4] to Clarice) Also, [7] is now mapped to Dave and Alice. (the two leftmost portraits)

That's memory usage - RAM. Not the amount of storage it takes on your HD.

Are you sure the Polish retail is non-Steam? It was my understanding that all retail boxes were Steam versions. The only non-Steam boxes go to the Backers who pledged for a boxed copy. For other Non-Steam copies, there's GOG, but no box. But haven't paid any attention to the Polish market, so I could be wrong. In the Backer Beta, you can select from all the supported languages in the options menu.I'm not sure why they'd rip out the other langue files in Poland, but perhaps if it really is a non-Steam version, perhaps it's done to avoid that version being imported by other countries?

[1]-[6] map to the characters in your party, [backspace] is Select All. There's also a Select All button on the interface. Don't think you can make groups, though I haven't looked for that functionality.

The key for your game should show up in the Backer Portal closer to release. (With choice for Steam or GOG.)

A digital version, yes. Edit:(Whoops, ninja'd. Phone posting is slow.)

's almost as if Luckmann is prescient ... I'll just quote from a post in the Backer Beta subforum

Weapon Focus Talents give +6 accuracy these days, down from +10 in earlier Backer Beta versions. Priest specializations are still +10. That talent brings their accuracy with those two weapons up to Fighter/Rogue levels.

Yeah, no way they could port everything over and have it work properly in 2-4 weeks. For the expansion however? Yes please.

I'm going to be contrary and say no, no Long Hair - nothing past the shoulders. There are, I think, two ponytail variants that would be longer, but they're tied up pretty high. As far as respawns are concerned - as already said, no respawns, but considering about 2/3 to 3/4 of the game's content is optional, I don't see how you'd ever be in a mad rush to the finish line.

None to all three. I guess there's the Marksman Talent, which gives +5 Accuracy to distant targets when attacking with a ranged weapon. Dunno how far you have to be for it to count as 'distant', though. There's Gunner, which improves the reload speed for the Crossbow, Arbalest and Firearms. For Weapon Focus styles, maybe Adventurer? It includes the Wand and Warbow. Actually, let me just list all the 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

There kind of are, though. Weapons and Armor have a Quality rating, from 'Normal' -> Fine -> Exceptional -> Superb. For weapons, this means an increase in damage and accuracy, and is kinda comparable to the +1, +2, +3 enchantments from D&D. For Armor, it's a bonus to Damage Reduction. I don't believe Quality is considered 'magic', but you can upgrade your gear like this in the Enchantment menu. Aside from Quality, gear can have up to three enchantments giving extra bonuses. IIRC the +Attribute enchantments can only go on gear, not weapons, at least from the Enchantment upgrades available to the player. I have not seen anything to indicate you could craft regular weapons or gear yourself, but this may be available through quests.

I don't believe the delay had much, if any, influence on the price of the game. I brought it up to say that it did cost them something. Whether that's their own money, or reduced income per game sold, I can only guess. EA pricing their game higher in their own store than in retail, is probably just keeping up good relations with their distributors. (Retail stores, other webshops, etc.) You don't generally want to piss off your distributors by selling directly to customers for a lower price, even if it'd net you more per game sold. Stores will stop selling your stuff, and you'll have less sales in total. Is it a little messed up? Sure, but there are reasons beyond "Muahaha, bleeding our customers dry!". As far as Paradox is involved, from what we can tell, they've been fairly hands-off regarding development, and Obsidian keeps their IP. That's all fine by me. To avoid confusion, for the backer prices we'll stick to USD, okay? $20 for the "Early Backer" tier, and $25 for the regular-backer-but-still-discounted price. Currently priced for $45. Yeah, that's a significant increase. Note, however, that the $20 and $25 price points were set when they expected the game to be rather smaller in scope. (Counting on 1, maybe 2 million instead of 4.) I'll say again that selling for less than $30 or so at launch would be a slap in the face of a lot of Backers. Most of all, though, I simply disagree that their own monetary investment should significantly influence the price at which they're willing to sell the game. I think it's fine to agree to disagree on that point. But to call that immoral or unethical ... I strongly object. This was brought up before, and maybe it's a case of language barrier, but those are pretty strong words, and don't lend themselves very well to hyperbole.

Yeah, I'm not buying the "They invested 0 of their own money" argument. Opportunity cost was already mentioned/explained. The game was delayed for three months. Either they're digging into their own coffers, or they got Paradox to pay for it. Or who knows what else. In any case, the money for those extra months of development has to come from somewhere, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Backers. Even without that delay, I suspect they'd have invested some of their own money. But that's just a guess / expectation on my part. But to boldly proclaim as fact that they invested absolutely $0,- themselves just rubs me wrong. And some other points: At no point would a $20 sale result in a $20 profit for Obsidian. First, there's taxes. The distributor takes a cut, which I understand to be around 30% for Steam and GOG. I'm fairly certain Paradox takes a slice as well, but there's no way I could put a number to that. Probably a bunch of other things, too. (Like, higher tiers/editions include digital copies of the collector's Guidebook and Strategy Guide, and their publishers would want to be compensated, too.) Then what's left over goes to Obsidian. Part of that is spent on patches, customer support, keeping these Forums running ... whatever. After all that, there's profit. This is, of course, still a lot more than what they'd get for game that was funded completely by a publisher. It's already cheaper than the "Big Titles". Those tend to go for €50-€60. Pillars of Eternity is €42. Is it a little higher than I expected? Sure. My guess would have been the €35-€40 range. Paradox is publishing and in charge of distribution, and so I'm pretty sure they get to set the pricing. This while in communication with Obsidian, of course. But they probably have final say. You can be angry/annoyed with Obsidian for 'selling out' to Paradox, but I think that's part of another discussion. What about the 46 000(+?) backers who thought they were getting the game cheaper by backing? If I'd backed at those lower levels, you can bet that I'd be annoyed if the regular price would be less than €30. (In fact, I was a little annoyed after backing FTL for $10, and seeing it for half off on Steam not long after release. Just a little, but annoyed nonetheless.)

Can't say a whole lot about the frequency of skill checks, but Lore does seem to be the one most often used in conversations. Cost of skills goes up per rank. and every rank cost it's rank in points. So 0 - 0 pts. 1 - 1 pts. 2 - 2 pts. (3 total) 3 - 3 pts. (6 total) 4 - 4 pts. (10 total) etc. You get 6 points per level. Starting bonuses (From Class and Background) add up after this. So getting to rank 6 with a +2 bonus costs 10 skill points, but without it would cost 21, and this gap gets larger the higher you go. So it's pretty cheap to dabble in a couple of skills, but real specialization is expensive, and you'd want all the starting bonuses to that skill you can get. Your Barbarian Explorer would get +2 to Athletics and Survival, and +1 to Lore. Now I think specializing with only a +1 is doable, but your secondary skills will suffer quite a bit. Game mechanics wise, I believe Lore lets you cast spells from scrolls. Survival makes consumables last longer. Athletics helps with Fatigue. Fatigue is a (currently) hidden stat for exhaustion - after a number of fights, or after physical scenes, you get Fatigued and suffer a bunch of penalties. Rest to recover. It can be annoying if you leave Athletics at rank 0, but just 2 or 3 ranks stave off the worst of it, and the returns after that are rather diminished. All can (and will be) checked for in dialogues and scenes. Lore more often in dialogues, and Athletics in the storybook scenes. Survival will pop up every now and then too.

Not that I could find. Yes, there is an option for backers to buy the Strategy guide as an add-on. I'm not sure how that will work, though - I expect it'll just be a download link, but maybe it will be a code to download it somewhere else? The latter would be easy to share/gift. The former .. eh, iffy. I expect the digital version to go up for sale/pre-order sometime in the coming weeks, though. The e-version exists, would be weird for Prima not to monetize it. They're probably waiting until (near?) release, in order not to cannibalize the sales of the Dead Tree edition.

I haven't seen a mail of that kind yet. But hey, it's still 'around' the end of February. If they want to get the goods to the international backers around the time of release, they can't postpone much longer, though. Are they even done with the ... uh, ~3000+ signatures? Still, calm your nerves for a week or so.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's not as simple as an even split. If you're heading out alone, you don't get six times the XP you would with a full party. Instead, you get something like double? Each extra party member lowers the XP value by 10% or so - so a quest that would give you 100 XP on your own, would give you 50 XP with a full party, but to everyone. Or maybe it was the other way around, and you get 10% bonus XP for each empty party slot? (In that case, you'd get 150% of the 'full party' XP reward if you're on your own. So, full party 50 XP - just self, 75 XP.) ... I could use a refresher.

You may rejoice, for this is already an option. In the current Beta, you can just uncheck [ ] Show Unqualified Interactions under Options > Game. There's also [ ] Show Qualifiers (For when you do meet the requirements.) and [ ] Show Personality/Reputation (Listed in brackets after a choice) ... Pretty sure these will stay in.

Considering that's the only place that lists it as 512 pages, (at least as far as I could find.) I'm gonna go with an error on their part. It's the same ISBN as the one listed on Amazon, so it's not another edition of some kind. Still, 512 pages? Sounds like they added the 112 pages from the Guidebook: Volume One. But no, you won't get a 512 p. tome.

"Fix the loot lists" as in "Make everything hand-placed" or "Decrease variation"? I have no problem with the latter, and probably should get done. The former? Eh. Ambivalent. I think I'd like not knowing exactly what's where on a second play-through. I also wouldn't mind, so ... Eh. Static vs. Randomized loot is more of a design decision than a bug, though.

Not sure exactly where my preference lies on the 'everything hand-placed'//'complete random' scale. Probably closer to hand-placed, though I can see the value in somewhat randomized loot for re-plays 'n such. Variation in cp value bothers me less than variation in 'useful' loot. "I could have used a Bow, but not a Quarterstaff!" seems more annoying to me than "But I wanted 900 cp worth of stuff, not 200!". But yeah, save scumming for loot needs to go. Maybe base the RNG for loot on a seed generated during character creation?