Ragg

When a companion is dismissed, all the items in their inventory are gone when you bring them back. The items are not in the stash or anywhere else that I can see. All equipped items are still there. Also, Hiravias has 10 level 4 spells, which I'm pretty sure he's not supposed to have. How to reproduce: Load the save in the Dropbox folder Dismiss Eder and click accept Recruit Eder and click accept All the items in Eder's inventory is now gone. This happens to the other companions as well. Savegame, output log and screenshots: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8y1gmrqdbs3ac3f/AADuZOIjyO3zygGPJiTlk5yKa?dl=0

So what we've learned is that some people are too stupid/lazy to just shop the pictures themselves, or really spoiling to get into an ideological argument.

Supposedly the idea is to have a range of skill check thresholds for all areas so that a generalist can succeed at a lot of easier skill checks, or a specialist can succeed at all skill checks but only for 1 or 2 skills. I hope the balancing works out and all skills will be useful, and generalists and specialists will be useful as well. Based on the beta I'd pick up Lore and Survival for my PC and a bunch of points in Might, Intellect, Perception & Resolve for the conversation options. Hopefully the rest of the game is more balanced in this regard.

I'm so happy to hear there's somebody else who found this to be a problem in F:NV. Although I suspect you still didn't mind it quite as much as I did, since it was one of the (numerous) factors in my deeming the game unplayably frustrating within a couple of hours and uninstalling it. (Seriously, that game was mechanically so awful that I can't understand how so many people were willing to suffer through it long enough to get to the 'good content' that I'm told exists somewhere. I feel sorry for anyone contractually obligated to attempt to develop an enjoyable game in such an unspeakably bad engine.) Well, it was that and the awfulness of Old World Blues that killed it for me. I'm fairly happy with this games looting & inventory system, although it really needs highlights for everything you can interact with, like loot dropped from corpses.

I'm not sure this is going to happen in practice. I mean, if you're well into the game and suddenly decide you want to pick up a new skill, are you even going to be able to catch up to the skill levels required? Not to mention that the already invested points are somewhat wasted if you don't keep leveling the skill.

But going back and forth ferrying loot sounds like it could be made into an interesting gameplay part. Add dangers on the way back: like random encounters between zones or other interesting features. Also, ferrying loot back and forth doesn't sound so bad. The environments are amazing and I'd love to feel like an adventurer going back to town to sell off my loot when my backpack is filled. Personally I really dislike having to sort thru every bit of junk lying around to evaluate whether to keep it or not. There's far too much loot in these games to deal with that. Fallout New Vegas was particularly annoying on this front. I prefer either for there to be a lot less loot that's more valuable, or loot as much as you want and sort it out when you get back to town. Why do you feel like you have to look through all loot? I feel like that is a leftover from bad game design. Sounds more like a job to me than a game. Because it's there.

But going back and forth ferrying loot sounds like it could be made into an interesting gameplay part. Add dangers on the way back: like random encounters between zones or other interesting features. Also, ferrying loot back and forth doesn't sound so bad. The environments are amazing and I'd love to feel like an adventurer going back to town to sell off my loot when my backpack is filled. Personally I really dislike having to sort thru every bit of junk lying around to evaluate whether to keep it or not. There's far too much loot in these games to deal with that. Fallout New Vegas was particularly annoying on this front. I prefer either for there to be a lot less loot that's more valuable, or loot as much as you want and sort it out when you get back to town.

Carrying capacity isn't actually strategic because you can just go back and forth ferrying loot out. Unless you also have another system that restricts that such as needing supplies to travel back and forth, or respawns.

The files for conversations and scripted interactions are actually XML, so you can just open em and check it out. You need 5 athletics to climb up to the egg and 20 CON to carry it down. You can also climb up with a grappling hook in which case I believe you need 16 CON to carry it down. Also, it looks like if you have another hook you can use that to lower it down without any other requirement.

I'm wondering if damage over time effects are ticking too fast or something. The level 3 Cipher DoT does insane damage and also doesn't aggro enemies so you can use it to just pick enemies off one by one.

Yeah fatigue is an actual mechanic. I've seen characters get light fatigue for no particular reason. I guess maybe from fighting a lot? And then the characters with low Athletics got critical fatigue from crossing the chasm. I do agree that the optimal thing is to make sure each party member has a high enough skill to beat the scripted interactions. Probably pumping Lore on my PC since it seems to come up a lot in convos.

Weird. Shows up in the combat log for me.

True. I kinda wish they'd just remove the skill bonuses from the classes entirely. An interesting option, in my mind, would be to tie it to your starting background.

There are a couple downsides to this, for example you have to cross a chasm with a grappling hook and everyone with low athletics becomes critically fatigued (huge accuracy penalties), also conversation skill checks can only be unlocked by your PC.

I got a Mechanics Required: 7 or whatever message when I failed to pick a lock.