Still no news on the backer beta update (other than we know one more update with all the massive changes being discussed included is coming at some point) but this morning a new trailer dropped, and an article talking about the (subdued) romance stuff and companion interaction also arrived.
https://www.pcgamesn.com/pillars-of-eternity-2-deadfire/pillars-of-eternity-2-romance
I didn’t read the article but it sounds like romances are being handled very tastefully.
I love the screenshots of the text in this game so much. It’s such a pleasing font. So easy on the eyes when reading.
An update is coming yet this week to the project (Update 46) and it sounds like we’ll be getting a backer beta update any time now (the patch notes were accidentally posted and quickly removed last night). Stay tuned.
Someone dropped a Borg cube into the sequel?
I believe that is an Earth Blight - the “elementals” of the game.
Oops, I forgot to share this as well!
I know, that post was just a joke since it really does look like a cube in that gif.
LOL gotcha. :)
Holy crap. The Beta Update 3 dropped just now and the patch notes are crazy awesome. I’m really excited to dive in, I think after I get home this afternoon I will crack open a cold Monster and record some footage of the latest build. I’ll post a link when I have it uploaded.
Sweet, thanks for the heads up, d/l all 6gb of it now.
Still can’t decide on my build for the first pass at the game. And if I can’t decide, that means I’ll go with the paladin class. Which I’d prefer not to, because of Pellagina being a returning NPC.
Edit: And the res is now capped at 2560x1440 when previous beta builds didn’t limit the res. :(
I started a thread on the official beta forum with some of the bugs I’ve found so far, and mentioned this for you there.
Awesome! Thanks again, Scott.
I put an hour into the beta and then another hour watching with horror and amazement at myself play and how much I missed rushing through in my haste to get a video made. Enjoy the video and the annotations/corrections. :)
I can do one better - this bug only exists in the backer beta, and there is a work around!
No joy. Bummer. But thanks for letting me know, it was worth a try at least.
This is in such good shape now. Sure, there are still some strange bugs to work out, and there are still the odd missing string issues, but from what I’ve read a lot of that is due to this being a separate backer build, and some of this is already fixed in the main branch (I am confident this is the last beta update we’ll see before release, so I’m okay with them focusing completely on the main game code branch of course).
I love the new UI so much - everything is more readable, and the action is easier to follow in combat (especially when coupled with slow and extreme slow motion mode).
Top is old, bottom is new.
The first thing I like is the new ability in the menu to toggle a solid UI panel, which to me looks a lot better than floating UI elements (like portraits, log, menu items, etc.) but if you look at “1” for the top and bottom you may also notice they keep your ability bar expanded out at all times now, instead of having to first click on the resource pool (“Bond” in this case, the green paw icon) to expand your class abilities. This is really nice, though I still hope Resource Pools (like Zeal (Paladin), Guile (Rogues), and etc.) get a bit of a tweak to either increase in size over time (maybe they will?) and/or slowly regenerate in combat. It sort of sucks to be out of a resource with any given class, for sure, in a long battle.
Anyway, back to the UI. If you look at “2” you’ll see they made the Empower ability a lot more present and obvious, because it’s very fun to use and very powerful (in fact, it’s the main way to get Resource Points back for any given character, as you can use one of your 2 “per rest” uses of Empower on your portrait to get a few points back to spend on abilities, or in the case of spell casters a few spells back per level). But it can also empower a single ability to have a whopping effective use of (I think it’s) 10 effective caster level so you can really make sure a Knock Down sticks or a critical spell like Heal is extra effective. So, pretty important and the beta feedback was no one was using it, so they made it more obvious now. I like the way it looks, and it really does help me remember to use it more often.
And then finally we have “3” which is a great update to the central timer. The lower scroll bar (shaped like a smile) is the combat speed timer, you can slide this guy around to control battle speed and that’s excellent for everyone, and still pause and fast forward outside of combat speed here as well. Space bar still pauses, of course.
Weapon cards have been given an upgrade as well, they are more readable and even the tool-tips for them have improved greatly.
And lastly, the visual effects have clearly been given a bit more love because they look outstanding. They looked great before, but combat is really popping and there are some great moments in every fight, made all the more enjoyable with slow mode and how slow mode still looks fantastic (the animations still look great when slowed down). Here are a few screenshots I took recently playing with a Ghost Heart Ranger.
Care to give us a quick run down of your trialled classes so far, and thoughts thereof?
So far I’ve only played as a Wizard (very briefly, for the video above), I dabbled as a Fighter/Paladin (which was a nigh unstoppable combination - I solo’d three enemies at once successfully on Normal difficulty), and I’m playing around a bit now as a Ghost Heart Ranger (summons a spirit animal companion instead of always having one). The Ghost Heart is where the images above came from.
I have some other thoughts on a few multi-class combinations earlier in the thread as well, and have tried a few out I may have forgotten to post about but I couldn’t say which ones off the top of my head.
If you (or anyone else) has a question about a specific combination I’d be happy to throw something together and test it out a little. Maybe to start things off I can put a little video together showing off the sub-classes/skill trees for the classes? I suspect at this point they won’t change too much before release.
I had a request in the comments of my YouTube video for cosmetic options, as well as a closer look at the classes ability trees/passive abilities and multi-class names so I put a few more videos together for that stuff. Enjoy and Happy Easter!
All of them!
You mentioned a Barbarian combination a whole ago…
