JerekKruger

Interesting. I will admit that, since I have fairly fast internet and no download limits, I don't really mind how big the patch is, but I can understand how annoying it must be for those without one of those two things.

Rogue is perhaps the least Might dependent damage dealer. This is because the % damage increase from Might is additive with other % damage increases (which the Rogue gets lots of), not multiplicative. For example, suppose your Rogue has Might 15 (+15% damage) and is sneak attacking (+50% damage), and let's suppose he hits for a base damage of 10, then he will actually do 16.5 (10*(1+0.15+0.15)) damage before DR reduction is applied, and not 17.25 (10*1.15*1.5). As such the bonus damage from Might will quickly get dwarfed by other damage bonuses, and it might be better to keep Might at around 10 and raise other stats instead. The counterpoint to this is Fortitude is probably the most important defence, so if you have average Might and low Constitution you're going to have terrible Fortitude. If you're planning to use a ranged weapon then this is less of a problem, but if you're planning on a melee Rogue then I'd suggest at least keeping Constitution at 8 (preferably 10) and perhaps not lowering Might to 10. Rogue's are also not particularly Intellect dependent. Yes, they have some attacks that cause afflictions which will last longer with higher Intellect, but they have no AoE abilities and there are other classes better suited to debuffing. I'd tend to focus more on increasing your crit chance (high Perception and, I think, some Rogue abilities do this) since if you crit, as well as doing an extra 50% damage (additive again) any affliction you cause lasts 1.5 times as long. I'd probably go with Intellect of 8, but I don't like dumping stats all the way, you could probably go all the way down if you don't mind doing so. If you're planning on fighting in melee then having a few points of Resolve can help make you a less appealing target for the AI's target selection algorithm, so I would say 14 is a nice sweet spot. If you're planning on going ranged then you're right that Resolve is much less important. Here's what I might go with: Melee Rogue Mig 10 Con 10 Dex 18 Per 16 Int 8 Res 14 Ranged Rogue Mig 14 Con 8 Dex 18 Per 18 Int 8 Res 10 Now, I realise this doesn't tick all the dialogue attributes boxes so you might want to tweak things. I'd suggest that it's better to pick one of two dialogue attributes to focus on and not to worry about the others. In general the special dialogue options unlocked by attributes won't give you anything more than different responses: don't expect super powerful item rewards gated behind them. You might sometimes be able to save some money, but honestly money is a non-issue by the mid game. If, however, you are set on keeping more dialogue attributes high then you certainly can. If you're planning on playing with a party then, on hard, the game is fairly forgiving and you definitely don't need to min-max at all. Honestly the only place where min-maxing is (arguably) mandatory is solo PotD. If I were modifying your attribute spread I'd probably go with Mig 10 Con 8 Dex 16 Per 16 Int 14 Res 14 Especially since you've said you don't plan on using Might dialogue options very often. This will work fine for both ranged and melee.

Huh, you know I've never really thought about it that carefully. I had heard mixed things when I first played about whether the secret was available without siphoning his knowledge, and given how minor the bonuses to prestige and security were in the long run I always went with that. Now I know that it is available regardless I really ought to choose a more in character reason. In fact the main reason I hadn't before is because of the ambiguity about what was the kindest option for him. Maerwald's spirit had done some pretty nasty things in the past, but it's clear that Maerwald himself regrets them and I don't see any reason to punish him.

Min Int on a Barbarian? That's a strange choice. Any particular reason you are going for a mono-class party?

Whilst I'm still a bit confused and annoyed about the UB nerf, I've learnt how to change it back manually and, at the same time, learnt the very basics of modding PoE, so it's not all bad.

Excellent! It sounds like it shouldn't be too hard to modify Unlabored Blade in the same way. I'll leave my far too detailed explanation of what I did up for anyone else who might want to know how to do this. EDIT: also thanks for mentioning this in the other thread. I've enjoyed playing with the UABE and I suspect I'll do so a lot more.

Here is what I did step-by-step, just in case there's some minor difference that explains why it worked for me: Open UABE. Select File then Open Navigate to "\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles\prefabs\objectbundle" and double clicked px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d. Select File then Save, and save the file as "Export.assets" (I did this in a different folder to the PoE one). Select File then Open and open Export.assets. Click the Info button. Scroll down to MonoBehaviour ID 209 and click the "Export Dump" button, and save it as Dump.txt. Open Dump.txt, scroll to the bottom of the file and change "AbilityTriggerChance = 0.100000" to "AbilityTriggerChance = 1.000000" (or whatever other value you want). Save and close it. Go back to the "Info" window for Export.assets and make sure MonoBehaviour ID 209 is still selected. Click the "Import Dump" button and double click Dump.txt. Select File and Save. Close the Info window Select File and Save in the main UABE window and save the file as "Import.assets". Select File and Open and once again navigate to "\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles\prefabs\objectbundle" and double clicked px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d. Click the Import button and double click your Import.assets files. Select File and Save and save the file as px1_battle_axe_wodewys2.unity3d Backup the original px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d file somewhere safe, then rename "px1_battle_axe_wodewys2.unity3d" to "px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d" and move it to the "\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles\prefabs\objectbundle" folder. That's all. Hopefully if it works the same as it did for me then the change should be in game.

Unless someone here is a GOG employee, I doubt they can say for certain, but probably a lot smaller than the Steam patch.

Huh, how odd. I did exactly what you did but for some reason it worked with me. To be more precise, I changed "AbilityTriggerChance = 0.100000" to "AbilityTriggerChance = 1.000000" in the MonoBehaviour ID 209 file of px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d, then properly imported it back into the game. I loaded up Pillars, started a new game, used the console to give me Wodewys and beat up Calisca with it. It procced on six hits in a row (though not on grazes, which is correct), which is fairly unlikely if it was still operating at 10%, but perhaps more convincingly the item description had also changed. Instead of saying "10% chance to cast Nature's Mark on hit or crit" is said "casts Nature's Mark on hit or crit". Now before I did this I had a theory as to why it wasn't working, which was that perhaps Steam was automatically checking some sort of checksum, noticing that it was wrong, and reverting the files to previous ones. I'll admit that this theory seemed unlikely as you would expect a rather long delay loading the game if this were happening, but it was the only possibility I could think of. However now that I've got the change to Wodewys I have no idea what's going on. Colour me very confused.

I probably won't, I just wanted to reproduce your results as a means of getting used to using UABE. Thanks for the explanation of my missing step.

Yeah, I figured you were probably already pretty knowledgeable about this stuff, but I thought better safe than sorry. So I'm trying to catch up to where you are right now. You mentioned there being three relevant asset bundles: just so I understand did you start with – px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d and see that in the monobehaviour files it references – px1_spellchance_natures_mark.unity3d and – px1_spellchance_natures_mark_ability.unity3d or is there some other way you knew it was these three bundles that were relevant? Looking through those three bundles I've come up against the same problem you seem to have. The obvious parameter that needs changing is AbilityTriggerChance, I can't even spot any other variables that indicate that they might represent 10%. Anyway, I just tried changing AbilityTriggerChance to 0.9 in the MonoBehaviour file of px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d with ID 209 (it's the 116 bytes one) but every time I think I've saved the changes, if I reload the px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d bundle it is at 0.1. Here's what I am doing – I open px1_battle_axe_wodewys.unity3d – I click the "Info" button – I select MonoBehavior ID 209 and click the "Export Dump" button and save the file as "Dump.txt" – I open Dump.txt and change "AbilityTriggerChance = 0.100000" to "AbilityTriggerChance = 0.900000" and save it – I go back into UABE and, with MonoBehavior ID 209 still selected I click the "Import Dump" button and select "Dump.txt" – I save then close the "Asset Bundle Info" window and close UABE Am I doing something wrong? Sorry if this is obvious, this is my first time messing around with this stuff.

Is this at Madhmr Bridge by any chance? That skirmisher is well known as being a tough one. Best advice would be to avoid that map till you reach a higher level and/or get items that increase your Defences, or even avoid the map altogether since it's not required at all. I assume Stun is defended by Fortitude, but you'd need to check your combat logs to be sure. As for your comments about balancing the game for solo: there were always achievements for soloing the game. Obsidian included them, if I recall correctly, because the players wanted them included, but Obsidian made it clear that the game would not be balanced for them. Just because an achievement exists doesn't mean you should be able to achieve it. In particular, there's no reason to assume the game should be soloable by every class. If you're keen to solo the game to get the achievements then you'd be better off running with a Paladin. Barbarians simply aren't that great at soloing at lower levels due to their low Defences. Even at higher levels, when they get some of their more powerful abilities, they still struggle with certain types of fights. Meanwhile, a Paladin has the best Defences in the game, and as a bonus you can even solo all the Dragon fights: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJd1wuIwY2H9sk8qM2FJC9A

I just read this post, and I wonder if it might be useful: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/86034-tutorial-making-potions-usable-outside-of-combat/ Once again apologies if you're already aware of it.

The Steam patcher simply downloads the entire modified game file and overwrites the existing one, rather than modifying it.

Did your test modified Wodewys in game (hitting a companion 100 times and counting the number of procs or similar)? The reason I ask is it's possible that changing the values doesn't update the item description, instead only changing the performance in game, so your change might have worked. Apologies if you've already thought of this, I just thought I'd check.

I'll try fiddling with this when I get time.

That's absolutely great, thanks!

@Fenixp: I don't disagree that some balancing is desirable: as you say, it strongly detracts from a game when a class is essentially mandatory. However I don't think perfect balance is desirable either, since it can both be fun to put together the most powerful party combo you can imagine and also to take a weaker party combo for the challenge. For class balance I'd say that, by and large, PoE hits the sweet spot here. The only class I think could do with work in the Rogue, and that's more because their abilities are just not very interesting (to my mind at least) than that they are underpowered (though they are probably the weakest class). However I feel the tweaking that has led to the nerf of the Unlabored Blade isn't a good thing. The UB was a powerful weapon once fully unlocked (no small feat) but not overpoweringly so, and given it was one of two mythic quality weapons in the game I feel it should be powerful. After this nerf I think it will under perform (outside of Barbarian use) compared to a White March Dagger enchanted with a flaming lash, legendary and durgan steel reinforcement. The latter however can be picked up (albeit without enchantments) at the end of Act I, and doesn't require a painful unlock process. Sure, you can't make the WM Dagger legendary straight away, but you can start get it to exceptional very soon, durganise it long before you get the UB, and make probably it legendary before you unlock the UB. Thanks, I've downloaded the extractor and will start playing around with it. However it's not so much the particular change as what it indicates that bothers me.

As mentioned in that Reddit thread, Steam's patcher simply rewrites the entire game file that contains the change. I predict GOG's patch will be a few MB.

Indeed, I was holding out hope that the delay in release was a result of Obsidian rethinking the change, but if it was it seems that they have stuck to their guns.

I feel the same. I'm actually really disappointed Obsidian implemented this change: not so much because of the change itself (although it has dashed my plans for building around the Unlabored Blade, and reduce the pool of good* soulbound weapons to three) but rather what it suggests I can expect from soulbound weapons in PoE2 i.e. not much. @Sking: is there any chance you could explain the rationale for this nerf and at least pass on the fact that it doesn't seem to have been wanted (see your announcement thread). I don't particularly expect it to be rolled back (though I would be happy if it were) but at the least it would be good if the dev team for PoE2 would realise this multiplayer style balancing is neither wanted nor desirable in a single player CRPG and leads to unexciting items. Don't get me wrong I appreciate how much work Obsidian have put into PoE after release compared to many (most?) developers. But this sort of change is not wanted (as far as I can tell at least). *Not great, good.

No, you should get exactly the same update. Think about it like this: suppose that PoE has a game file that is 1.3GB big and Obsidian change it in the patch. There are two ways to update your game file: (i) you can completely download the new, updated game file and replace the old one or (ii) you can run a script which modifies your existing game file with the changes. As I understand it, GOG tries to do (ii) when they can, which is part of the reason their patches are usually a few days later than Steam ones.

It probably means GOG wrote a patcher which edited the game files, whereas Steam simply downloaded replacement modified game files. However unless I am mistaked, this refers to patch 3.04 and not the hotfix, which is still not released.

I can't guarantee that it doesn't, but I don't believe it has been observed anywhere else. As for a permanent effect, well the ogres in Stalwart itself (not on other WM maps) will permanently have their stats lowered, but I'm guessing you've killed them all already so that's no problem

Yeah I am confused as to why Obsidian decided to change this. It's powerful for sure, but there are plenty of weapons that are more powerful, available earlier and don't require a lengthy unlock process. In fact, without a fair amount of pre-planning, chances are it won't be fully unlocked until very near the end of the game. Also a quick scan of the builds database on the Strategies subforum reveals that, outside of Barbarians, the Unlabored Blade is used fairly rarely. My suspicion is that Obsidian overestimate the power of Soulbound weapons. Particularly they overestimate the power of the various bound spells and on hit abilities, whilst drastically underestimating the power of durganisation. This is a huge shame, because it results in most Soulbound weapons being fairly weak.