When can you, at earliest

[Melusina]

Create your own party?

How many money do I need for that?

I played this a while ago, but I only tried to play with predefined companions.

[omgFIREBALLS]

Pretty much as soon as you get to Port Maje, with whatever gold you have, if memory serves. Especially if you use the gold blessing.

[thelee]

On 8/24/2019 at 8:54 AM, omgFIREBALLS said:

Pretty much as soon as you get to Port Maje, with whatever gold you have, if memory serves. Especially if you use the gold blessing.

typically I only have money for two custom companions at the moment I arrive i Port Maje, and that's with hiring level 1 adventurers (only 250g). You can probably scrounge up a bit after some questing on the main island (though level 1 adventurers would be falling further behind at that point).

 

with the gold blessing you can obviously get a whole lot more/higher level.

[Wotcha]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

typically I only have money for two custom companions at the moment I arrive i Port Maje, and that's with hiring level 1 adventurers (only 250g). You can probably scrounge up a bit after some questing on the main island (though level 1 adventurers would be falling further behind at that point).

 

with the gold blessing you can obviously get a whole lot more/higher level.

Just doing the quest to clear out the room upstairs gets you more than enough money to hire a full party. I wonder if they did that on purpose.

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Wotcha said:

Just doing the quest to clear out the room upstairs gets you more than enough money to hire a full party. I wonder if they did that on purpose.

oh yeah, i forgot about that - i think 1000g reward. i'm so obsessive about not letting my hired companions fall behind that i never even consider doing that first.

probably originally intentional - obs was a lot more deliberate with the game economy this time around (at least up until the lewt-bomb of doing e.g. FS kinda wipes that out)

[Wotcha]

It should also be noted that you don’t have to rescue any of your crew before going over to Port Maje. You can come back after getting your hirelings, which makes it all much easier of course. 

[Ophiuchus]

Mind that your hirelings will always be one level beneath your Watcher and start at zero percent exp towards the next so it's important to make them right after earning a level. It's also helpful to do the Port Maje side quests solo so the exp is concentrated on your MC.

[Boeroer]

They will start one level below your Watcher. They will not stay there though. If you get them early the XP difference is not much since low level thresholds (for level-ups) are much smaller than higher levels'. So after a few levels they will catch up on you and when you reach higher levels the difference in XP is barely noticable. 

Just clarifying so that "always one level beneath your watcher" isn't misunderstood. If we are talking about the moment you hire them it's correct of course.

[Wotcha]

3 hours ago, Boeroer said:

They will start one level below your Watcher. They will not stay there though. If you get them early the XP difference is not much since low level thresholds (for level-ups) are much smaller than higher levels'. So after a few levels they will catch up on you and when you reach higher levels the difference in XP is barely noticable. 

Just clarifying so that "always one level beneath your watcher" isn't misunderstood. If we are talking about the moment you hire them it's correct of course.

I wonder if it's possible to mod the "one level less than the Watcher" maximum to allow hirelings of equal level.  I started working on a mod last weekend to address some of my pet peeves, and hirelings starting so far behind is one of them.  You'd still want to be as close to the beginning of your own level when hiring them to minimize how far behind they would still be, but at worst it would only be about as bad as it currently is at BEST.

[Ophiuchus]

Yeah, they always start off one level beneath your MC, I should say. I generally play with Deadly Deadfire (reduced exp) and it takes forever and a day for them to reach the Watcher's level - unless using Unity Console, of course.

3 hours ago, Wotcha said:

I wonder if it's possible to mod the "one level less than the Watcher" maximum to allow hirelings of equal level.  I started working on a mod last weekend to address some of my pet peeves, and hirelings starting so far behind is one of them.  You'd still want to be as close to the beginning of your own level when hiring them to minimize how far behind they would still be, but at worst it would only be about as bad as it currently is at BEST.

That restriction on hirelings has always been ropey. Would've been cool to have a BB that sets it right.

[Wotcha]

7 hours ago, Ophiuchus said:

Yeah, they always start off one level beneath your MC, I should say. I generally play with Deadly Deadfire (reduced exp) and it takes forever and a day for them to reach the Watcher's level - unless using Unity Console, of course.

That restriction on hirelings has always been ropey. Would've been cool to have a BB that sets it right.

Turns out it's pretty trivial to modify Assembly-CSharp.dll to do this, if you're up for that kind of thing.  It took me all of like 15 minutes to figure out how to do it, including finding and downloading dnspy to decompile it, but not including the 20 years I've spent as a professional software developer.  For those brave enough to try:

1) download and extract dnspy (just search google for the github and go to the download section)

2) Make a safe backup copy of PillarsOfEternityII_Data/Managed/Assembly-CSharp.dll

3) No, really, make a safe backup copy before you do anything!

4) Open it up in dnspy, and search assemblies for UIRecruitAdventurersPopulator.

5) In that module, change the loop that goes "for (int i = 1; i < num; i++), changing "i < num" to "i < num + 1".  Also change the line "base.Populate(num-1)" to "base.Populate(num)"

6) Save the change to the module.

7) Restart and verify you can now recruit adventurers equal to your level.

Honestly, having broken the seal here, I'm excited to poke around and see what other kinds of interesting changes can be made.