Permanently borrowed spells fix?

[Raven Darkholme]

22 minutes ago, Chagdoo said:

So, I've managed to glitch out my game playing around with this. Short version, stealing spells from your own party outside of battle permanently gives the victim a hostile effect named after whichever grimoire imprint you used. 

After you complete a battle with the victim in your party, the game crashes while trying to remove the effect. I've tried manually removing it via console commands and that forces a crash. Kicking the victim from the party and adding them back (via console) also doesnt help. 

 

Anybody got any ideas? Is there a way to make a new version of the character? Or perhaps revive her after Perma killing her? In this case it's fassina (who for some reason In the games code is named fEssina) 

Did you try respec? In case that's even possible with companions.

[Chagdoo]

20 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Did you try respec? In case that's even possible with companions.

Sadly Respec does not fix it either

[dgray62]

1 hour ago, Chagdoo said:

So, I've managed to glitch out my game playing around with this. Short version, stealing spells from your own party outside of battle permanently gives the victim a hostile effect named after whichever grimoire imprint you used. 

After you complete a battle with the victim in your party, the game crashes while trying to remove the effect. I've tried manually removing it via console commands and that forces a crash. Kicking the victim from the party and adding them back (via console) also doesnt help. 

 

Anybody got any ideas? Is there a way to make a new version of the character? Or perhaps revive her after Perma killing her? In this case it's fassina (who for some reason In the games code is named fEssina) 

This being the case, it might be a good idea to do this only with custom hirelings, who you can remove from the party permanently  after stealing the spells you want.

[thelee]

7 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

This being the case, it might be a good idea to do this only with custom hirelings, who you can remove from the party permanently  after stealing the spells you want.

would it still cause a crash if they end up being pulled into a ship boarding fight randomly?

 

or do you mean permakilling them?

[Chagdoo]

14 minutes ago, thelee said:

would it still cause a crash if they end up being pulled into a ship boarding fight randomly?

 

or do you mean permakilling them?

Best to kill them. I'm still trying to remove the effect, and it doesn't matter if fassina is in my party or not when I try. I even killed her and tried to remove it. 

So I'm strongly inclined to believe even a ship battle will crash your game if an infected hireling tales part. Best to kill them when you're done. 

 

Oh and when you do kill them don't gib their body with disintegration. That's also giving me crashes.

Edited June 9, 2021 by Chagdoo

[dgray62]

12 minutes ago, thelee said:

would it still cause a crash if they end up being pulled into a ship boarding fight randomly?

Hopefully not, since they're technically not in your party at that point. Sounds like that's worth a try.

[Not So Clever Hound]

2 hours ago, Chagdoo said:

fEssina

In French this is borderline indecent  now I can't erase it from my mind! It's like calling a Bettina a Buttina.

The glitch you experience sucks - my only advice would be to steal every spell in the Deadifre to become a powergod that just runs solo and makes every enemy pay dearly for this glitch.

EDIT: @Elric Galad any thoughts on Fessina   ?

Edited June 9, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound

[Elric Galad]

6 minutes ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

In French this is borderline indecent  now I can't erase it from my mind! It's like calling a Bettina a Buttina.

The glitch you experience sucks - my only advice would be to steal every spell in the Deadifre to become a powergod that just runs solo and makes every enemy pay dearly for this glitch.

EDIT: @Elric Galad any thoughts on Fessina   ?

Still sounds better than Fiona in French

[Raven Darkholme]

Buttina lmao

[dgray62]

I was playing around with this grimoire imprint trick, and managed to steal spells permanently from slaver wizards. However, while fighting lagufeth (spelling?), I repeatedly landed minor grimoire imprint against lagufeth mages, but never actually stole a single spell from them despite multiple attempts. Are there certain classes of spell users from whom spells cannot be stolen?

[Boeroer]

Lagufaeth Mages are not "real" wizards, priests or druids. I guess they just have some copied wizard abilities but are not actually of the wizard class. 

The Imprint spells only work on proper wizards, druids or priests. Unfortunately it's not always easy to determine who is what. 

I also guess enemies like Rathûn Flamecallers won't work. Xaurip Priests do. 

[dgray62]

That makes sense, Boeroer. Thanks. Fortunately, there's no shortage of real spell casters from whom spells can be stolen.

[Elric Galad]

On 6/9/2021 at 8:54 PM, Not So Clever Hound said:

In French this is borderline indecent  now I can't erase it from my mind! It's like calling a Bettina a Buttina.

The glitch you experience sucks - my only advice would be to steal every spell in the Deadifre to become a powergod that just runs solo and makes every enemy pay dearly for this glitch.

EDIT: @Elric Galad any thoughts on Fessina   ?

Fun story : in the Gamedata files, she is actually called Fessina.

Maybe it was the initial intended name.

Maybe some correction occured after the translation.

But from now on, we might call her this way.

{

            "$type": "Game.GameData.CharacterStatsGameData, Assembly-CSharp",

            "DebugName": "Companion_Fessina",

            "ID": "7828ab9f-eaa9-4ccc-9623-f6fc56b72b70",

            "Components": [

[Not So Clever Hound]

So... I'm not necessarily trying to resurrect this (retrospectively very funny) thread.

But, I wanted to say that I've just spent more time than I would want to admit playing with a SC Blood Mage with infinite casts of Skaen Priest's Shadowing Beyond and infinite Concelhaut's Crushing Doom.

Zapping around the battlefield under near-constant invisibility to make every enemy being permacrushed by giant flying hammers is a very satisfying way to end an otherwise annoying workday.

Infinite Shadowing Beyond is arguably a contender for strongest single spell that you can get with this trick, maybe before SoT/BDD... because it casts instantly without recovery - with a toon that already has low (or no) Recovery, it is close to permanent invisibility. I also have infinite Brilliant Departure for good measure.

[dgray62]

Yes, wizards with the grimoire imprint trick are beyond OP. You can also steal Escape from the Skaen priests in Fort Deadlight as soon as you hit level 7, which gives you the mobility, without the invisibility, plus a brief but major DEF boost.

[MaxQuest]

Oh, that's a pretty game-breaking exploit xD

And unfortunately easy way fixes like setting duration (infinite -> x seconds), or clearing via keyword immunity don't work.

Atm I see only 3 non-elegant ways to address it:

• v1. remove Imprint spells from all grimoires (and substitute with some other spells of corresponding rank)
• v2. make all wizards auto-learn Imprint spells when they reach respective rank (like bonus spells from priest/druid subclasses)
• v3. check if it's possible to auto-learn Imprint spells when equipping respective grimoires (not sure if possible; and if it is - it is very tedious)

Does anyone see another (hopefully implementable) solution?

[thelee]

V1 seems like the best solution IMO. Works around the bug without really changing balance issues.

 

a possible alternate idea; tweak enchantment subclass so they get these imprint spells as bonus spells for free (and remove it for everyone else) since bonus PL on enchantment is a bit less good than bonus PL on some other schools. This is if one is fine introducing balance changes as part of the fix.

Edited October 28, 2021 by thelee

[Not So Clever Hound]

So, just a hypothesis from someone without any technical grasp of what's really going on under the hood of Deadfire:

In my experience this exploit is purely related to casting Imprint from a grimoire without knowing the spell. It is actually not related to doing that plus grimoire switching. I keep spells forever when I cast Imprint from a grimoire and keep using that same grimoire.

So if it's not about the switching, maybe the Imprint spells that exist in grimoires don't have the component required to clear stolen spells at the end of an encounter, unlike the learnt spells? Is that possible at all that 2 instances of the spell exist in the game?

EDIT: could it be then related to the fact that when you cast Imprint from a grimoire on hirelings, they keep forever a buggy "Imprint" debuff in their character sheet?

Edited October 28, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound

[dgray62]

Another odd feature of the spell is that if you cast it successfully on a foe and the foe is gibbed, you lose the imprinted spell. This can be avoided of course by turning off the gibs feature in the game. It thus seems to work like cipher powers such as borrowed instinct that are linked to the body of a particular enemy. Perhaps you could add a timer to the imprinted spell, like the cipher powers all have? The lack of a timer may be the root of the problem. Of course, if you added a timer, it could potentially be extended indefinitely with SoF.....

I like the idea of making grimoire imprint a special ability of the enchanter subclass. Perhaps it could be a special ability useable once per encounter? On the other hand, this really should be IMO a cipher ability. The idea of psychic theft seems very cipher-like.

[MaxQuest]

17 hours ago, thelee said:

V1 seems like the best solution IMO. Works around the bug without really changing balance issues.

Pretty much it)

Atm there are 21 entries that need to be edited: https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Pillars_of_Eternity_II:_Deadfire_grimoires

If you feel that there is needed a specific substitute feel free to post here; otherwise I will put what I see fit.

17 hours ago, thelee said:

a possible alternate idea; tweak enchantment subclass so they get these imprint spells as bonus spells for free (and remove it for everyone else) since bonus PL on enchantment is a bit less good than bonus PL on some other schools. This is if one is fine introducing balance changes as part of the fix.

That's an interesting idea)

But I think this is out of scope for CP.Basic or CP.Extra.

I have a lot of ideas for a new package, where I could go more wild; but it all comes to time, effort and desire needed to implement.

---

Btw, what if enchanters would just auto-learn grimoire slam and imprint spells, like priest subclasses do?

17 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

In my experience this exploit is purely related to casting Imprint from a grimoire without knowing the spell. It is actually not related to doing that plus grimoire switching. I keep spells forever when I cast Imprint from a grimoire and keep using that same grimoire.

Hmm, I had to actively switch the grimoire to another one, otherwise the stolen spells would disappear on combat end.

17 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

maybe the Imprint spells that exist in grimoires don't have the component required to clear stolen spells at the end of an encounter, unlike the learnt spells? Is that possible at all that 2 instances of the spell exist in the game?

Afaik it's the same spell, be in in grimoire or learnt by a character.

It goes like that:

Imprint Ability -> Imprint Attack -> places a hostile SpellSteal statusEffect on the enemy and grants the character a copy of their spell.

On combat end or when the enemy is gibbed you lose that copy, but only if you still have the initial Imprint Ability. Even through that ability is kind of no longer needed, I suppose it is used in code to find the owner of effect.

11 hours ago, dgray62 said:

Perhaps you could add a timer to the imprinted spell, like the cipher powers all have? The lack of a timer may be the root of the problem. 

It is possible to set a timer on SpellSteal effect. Let's say 20s, and after 20s you lose the stolen spell (without waiting for combat end; or enemy gibbing)

But if you didn't have Imprint spell learnt, and switched the grimoire, you will keep the stolen spell. I have tested it. The spell becomes greyed out, but still castable.

11 hours ago, dgray62 said:

On the other hand, this really should be IMO a cipher ability. The idea of psychic theft seems very cipher-like.

Feels thematic)

It could be part of "Borrowed Instinct". Or a separate power, some kind of "Mind Attunement", to complement the "Body Attunement".

Edited October 29, 2021 by MaxQuest

[Not So Clever Hound]

23 minutes ago, MaxQuest said:

It goes like that:

Imprint Ability -> Imprint Attack -> places a hostile SpellSteal statusEffect on the enemy and grants the character a copy of their spell.

On combat end or when the enemy is gibbed you lose that copy, but only if you still have the initial Imprint Ability. Even through that ability is kind of no longer needed, I suppose it is used in code to find the owner of effect.

Thanks @MaxQuest for the explanation! Then I think I understand what's going on in my case:

When you have a Confused character casting an Imprint spell out of combat on a hireling, combat never starts or ends. So the SpellSteal statusEffect on your hireling is never checked and never clears, and you keep the stolen spell without having to switch grimoires.

[Noqn]

28 minutes ago, MaxQuest said:

If you feel that there is needed a specific substitute feel free to post here; otherwise I will put what I see fit.

imo

LAX03_Grimoire_Bekarna & LAX03_Grimoire_Bekarna_Copy

-Minor Grimoire Imprint
+Minor Arcane Reflection
-Major Grimoire Imprint
+Wall of Many Colors

Grimoire_Teachings_Of_Ninagauth

-Major Grimoire Imprint
+Kalakoth's Freezing Rake

Jernaughs_Careful_Calamities

-Major Grimoire Imprint
+Wall of Many Colors

Zahndethus_Dragonscale_Grimoire

-Major Grimoire Imprint
+Wilting Wind

 

I think these are the most important grimoires in terms of retaining their identity.

• Bekarna has zero directly damage-dealing spells in her grimoire, Minor Arcane Reflection and especially WoMC are the spells at those levels most in line with with her grimoire/character. 
• Ninnagauth with Freezing Rake is self-explanitory.
• Wall of Many Colors fits the color scheme of Jernaugh's Equalizing Burst - very important!
• Wilting Wind is the most dragonish spell at that level.

[Testlum]

No idea if this works, but you can add ItemMods to Grimoires (like the Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry). ItemMods have a field called AbilitiesOnEquipIDs, which may be able to perform something like what you want with option V3.

[MaxQuest]

39 minutes ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

When you have a Confused character casting an Imprint spell out of combat on a hireling, combat never starts or ends. So the SpellSteal statusEffect on your hireling is never checked and never clears, and you keep the stolen spell without having to switch grimoires.

It must be it)

I think setting the Imprint spells to be castable from 'combat only' will fix it.

Edited October 29, 2021 by MaxQuest

[thelee]

14 hours ago, Noqn said:

Grimoire_Teachings_Of_Ninagauth

-Major Grimoire Imprint
+Kalakoth's Freezing Rake

Jernaughs_Careful_Calamities

-Major Grimoire Imprint
+Wall of Many Colors

Zahndethus_Dragonscale_Grimoire

-Major Grimoire Imprint
+Wilting Wind

careful, the imprint spells are enchantment spells and in most of the cases you've replaced them with an excluded school. i think we should try to find something that's still something that enchanters could use. spells are a little tight at the higher tiers, but i would mostly suggest caedebald's, with minoletta's where wilting wind won't work.

 

if it's possible to do an out-of-spell-level choice for balancing tweaks, i might suggest adding call to slumber or capricious hex as 8th level spells in the unique grimoires as appropriate. it would be a bit like how xoti and wael subclss get a few bonus priest spells outside of their normal level, except in these cases it'd give enchantment an extra boost in casting at the higher levels.

Edited October 30, 2021 by thelee