We have hotfixed the problem with adventurer hall-created companions not being able to unlock doors or chests. This should work correctly now. Without getting into too much detail, it looks like adding and removing a companion in the Stronghold can cause its voice set to be stripped. This was causing a null reference exception when they tried to unlock items.

Hey, everyone. We just put out another hotfix on Steam for an issue where some people were running into doors that wouldn't open after they had been manually closed. It didn't affect many areas in the game, but we wanted to make sure we fixed this in case some people got trapped.

The problem had to do with a bug in the hotfix calculations. It was causing some areas to think they were still under the Fog of War when they weren't.

Please let us know if you see any other problems like this.

This hotfix has been submitted to GOG and Origin, so we hope they will be up in the next day or two.
 

Thanks!

Brandon

Patch Beta Testing

From now on, we will be allowing folks to play our beta patches on Steam. This has a two-fold benefit:

• Players get new fixes a bit faster and can check out the new changes that will drop in the next patch.
• Developers get access to information about new bugs that may have slipped into the patch. This will reduce the number of hotfixes for future patches.

We will make a formal announcement to the community when we are going to put the latest patch up for beta testing. We are starting this process with the 1.04 patch.

Limitations

• Right now we are only running this beta on Steam. The reason is that Steam provides a simple way to get folks into the beta. If any players know of any games that ran betas on GOG, please let me know so I can investigate.
• These patches may be unstable. We will be doing work on the patches and they haven't gone through a full QA cycle so unexpected things can happen. To be safe, I would avoid using any saved games that you do not want to get corrupted. If you do want to use those saved games, it is at your own risk.
• These patches may stay the same over the entire testing period, but that is unlikely. There might be frequent build changes, so expect to have to download multiple builds over a testing period.

Bug Reports

More than likely you are going to find bugs in these patches and you will need a place to report them. You can report these bugs by going to our new forum for patch beta bugs and support. One thing I ask is that you only report bugs that are specific to the patch beta. If the bug happens in the currently patched base game you should report it in our regular tech support forum.

For information on how to report bugs, please look at this post.

So, how do I get started?

It's actually pretty easy.

1. Completely quit out of the Steam client.
2. Restart the Steam client and navigate to the Library tab.
3. Right-click on the Pillars of Eternity entry and click on Properties.
    
4. Navigate to the Betas tab in the Properties menu.
5. Enter in the code "BETAPASSWORD" (remove quotes) and click on the Check Code button. 
    
6. Click on the dropdown list and select the "beta" branch. Once selected, close out of the Properties menu.
    
7. You should notice that your Pillars of Eternity game will now have "[beta]" after it. This means that your game is in the beta branch. Steam should queue an update for this branch.
8. You can now play the new beta branch of the game.
9. If you would like to switch your branch back to normal follow steps 3 and 4 to get back to the Beta tab in the Properties menu, then choose "NONE" as your branch. This should revert you back to the release version of the game.

Thank you to all of the folks that decide to play the patch beta and help report issues. Your help is invaluable and we really appreciate your dedication.

Update by Brandon Adler, Patch Wrangler
 

 
Hey, everyone. The Pillars of Eternity team is still hard at work in stomping out bugs, balancing gameplay, and adding in some additional polish where needed. Patch 1.04, our latest patch that dropped earlier today, has a good amount of these fixes. You can find the patch notes at the end of this update.
 
For patch 1.05, which we are targeting for a May release, will continue adding these fixes along with some additional new features. For example, we are adding in the ability to change your player's portrait and voice set any time during the game and adding new shaders for Afflictions (like Petrified).
 
Patch Betas
After consulting with the community the Pillars of Eternity team has decided to start making patch betas available. This will give players the opportunity to get new fixes faster and it will allow developers the chance to see potential problems in a patch sooner.
 
Due to technical limitations, the patches are only being offered on Steam. We are investigating getting the patch beta process on GOG, but it may not be possible.
 
When we make new patches available for beta we will let the community know on our Announcement and News forum.
 
If you would like to join in the beta fun, please take a look at this post that describes the exact process for getting into the betas on Steam.
 
Patch 1.04 Notes
Here are the patch notes for 1.04:
 
Items, Spells, and Abilities

• AOE indicators should now properly resize if the caster has a sub 10 Intellect score.
• Fixed an issue with over-time aura spells not applying the correct value on the final tick. 
• Knock Down will now correctly be applied for the full duration of the effect. 
• Mantle of The Dying Boar will now trigger at 33% Endurance with the effect of 5 Endurance a tick. 
• Talisman of the Unconquerable will now give a 1.25 Focus multiplier instead of .25. 
• Blooded should trigger properly in all cases now.
• Boar Animal Companion bonus damage should now work as intended.
• Prone Reduction mod should now work correctly.

Quests and Companions

• Fixed Aloth and Kana speaking when they weren't in the party in one of the last levels.
• Sagani's fox-specific banters now require the appropriate items in the player inventory.
• Falanroed's dialogue no longer displays a script node.
• Durance will now properly discuss your dream with you if you've already discussed his staff.
• Relaxed some constraints on Durance's quest conversation. This allows all characters, regardless of background or stats, to finish his quest.
• Players can now loot the nest in Oldsong.
• Fixed an invalid conditional check in one of Pallegina's conversations.
• Heritage Hill tower will be fully revealed when exploring the map.
• Fixed spawn issue in a scripted interaction near the end of the game.
• Fixed an invalid creature spawn in the Ogre Lair in Od Nua.
• Sagani no longer references the antagonist by name before you know it.
• A container in the Catacombs of Od Nua will now remember if it was looted.
• The "Master's Tools" quest will now work if you have the required items before starting the quest.
• The "A Two Story Job" scripted interaction will not require a second grappling hook to climb down from the window if one was already used to climb up. 

General Fixes

• Fix for camera movement problems when the game is paused or in a cutscene.
• Fix to retroactively restore party movement in saves that display movement speed problems.
• Made some fixes to movement speed problems that were being reported with some items.
• Optimized Save/Load game system for better performance. 
• Optimized how scene transitions are handled for better memory usage on 32-bit machines. This may allow players to transition to new areas without running out of memory. 
• Sound Sets from hired companions will now be properly restored when adding them to the party from the stronghold.
• "All Stronghold Upgrades" achievement now checks 25 upgrades instead of 26. This will properly reward the achievement if you already have fully upgraded your stronghold. 
• The "Kill All Dragons" achievement will now properly fire if they are killed indirectly (like by a trap). This is a retroactive fix and will be rewarded if the dragons are already dead. 
• Fixed issue where store prices were getting exceptionally large after receiving a discount. 
• Fixed issues with gaining infinite XP from bad Stronghold data. 
• World time will not get very large in some cases after Save/Load. 
• Modelling offset with Durance's head has been adjusted.
• Icon scale is now correct on Hearth Harvest and Reghar Konnek.
• All shaders will now compile properly under DirectX 11.
• Restored all the missing effects in the intro cutscene. 
• Removed Blunderbuss item from an early game loot table. 
• Changed the cursor type on the blood pool in the Temple of Skaen to conversation. 
• Fixed a few save game issues with dead summoned creatures.
• Fixed issue where occasionally a crash would occur when initializing the Steam API. 
• Draggable windows are now handled properly when running at very high resolutions. 
• Swamp Lurker's animation wont spaz anymore when the game is paused. 
• Fixed an issue to prevent binding mouse buttons to window controls. 
• Game will now pause if you alt-tab during a cutscene in full screen mode. 
• Audio will now resume properly if the game loses focus. 
• Fixed an issue with infinite load screen if you transition while hovering over a container. 
• Characters will now wait for their idle animation before trying to reload which fixes an animation sync issue. 
• Damaged characters performing AoE attacks will not overload their AI state stacks anymore.

Hey all! While the documentary is coming (very) soon, we have another sneek peek for you!

You can check it out here!

Hello, everyone. We are currently planning on releasing 1.05 tomorrow. As part of the 1.05 patch I am going to be making some (somewhat) significant changes to the Pillars of Eternity depot structure in Steam.

A depot is a collection of files that we can assign to different packages. When you purchase a game off of Steam you are actually purchasing a specific package that is a collection of depots. The depots contain information about where to place the files from the Steam servers to your local machine.

The reason for this change is because we originally set up our depots so that there was a base depot, and a depot for each OS. Depending on your OS, you would receive the base depot and the depot for your OS. We thought this would work out, but due to differences in the Mac build it is difficult to maintain and will become more difficult with more content being added. The solution is to move the files that were in the base depot to the OS-specific depots. This should be a one time thing as this new structure will scale well in the future.

We have done testing on our new depot structures, but due to how Steam works, we won't know if everything is perfect until we push the changes live (which we are coinciding with 1.05).

The practical effect is that you shouldn't notice much of anything change. The depots just tell Steam what to download and where to put it. Since the new depots aren't changing any of that, you shouldn't have additional data to download (past the normal patch data). It is possible that Mac may try to download additional data for a 30 - 40 minute period in the morning (until the full changeover is complete), but we will try to minimize that.

Thanks for your (future) patience.

Hey, everyone. the 1.05 patch (Build 567) is now live on Steam. We are packaging everything up for GOG and Origin, so those builds should be updated in a day or two.

Some highlights from 1.05 include:

• You can now rename save games.
• You can now change the portrait and sound set of characters from the character sheet. Click on the gear icon to open the customization window. You can only use this feature on player characters and hired (non-companion) characters.
• New Stash sorting. You can now sort stash by item type, enchant score, and sell value.
• Added a News Feed on the main menu to keep you informed on patches and Kickstarter updates.
• Added a new color for unique items in the inventory.
• Added a new hotkey for switching weapon sets on selected characters.
• You can now bind extra mouse buttons to Ability hotkeys.
• There's a new option in the Difficulty settings to reset newly recruited companions to level 1 (without losing the experience) when they get added to the party for the first time. This will allow you to level up companions to your liking.

For the full patch notes on 1.05, please go here.

During this patch we needed to change around our Steam depot structure. Most of you should be unaffected by these changes, but if you have problems please report them in this thread. You can also go to that thread for an explanation of the Steam depots and why we needed to change them.

Enjoy!

Hi all! If you backed Pillars of Eternity and your tier came with the documentary, you can now access it from the Products Tab of your Account Profile! Enjoy the magic of The Road to Eternity now!

Update by Brandon Adler, Lead Producer

The long wait is over! We have officially released our documentary, The Road to Eternity. The documentary covers everything - from before the Kickstarter to after the game's release. It was an incredible journey, so take a look if you have the time.

Our next update will come when we release our next patch in a couple of weeks.

We are shipping out game DVDs to tiers that get physical disc rewards very shorty. To ensure that your DVD will go to the correct location, please make sure your address is updated on our site. Next Tuesday, May 26th is the final cutoff to make sure that you have your address entered correctly.

To access your documentary reward head over to your Products page on the Backer Portal. From the "Making Of Documentary" entry you can click the "Watch Video" button. If you prefer to download the documentary directly you can do so on Steam, GOG or Origin. In the future we will allow direct downloads from the Backer Portal. Steam and Origin currently have the documentary live and GOG should have the documentary live in the next day or so.

If you would like more information about redeeming rewards on the Backer Portal please check out our previous updates.

Two of our fellow Obsidianites have released novels recently. They are really good and we wanted to share them with you.

Andrew Rowe's (Game Designer) novel, Forging Divinity is the first novel in the War of Broken Mirrors series. It features a well-developed magic system, powerful characters, and epic combat scenes.

Check out this plot synopsis from Andrew: Some say that in the city of Orlyn, godhood is on sale to the highest bidder. Thousands flock to the city each year, hoping for a chance at immortality.

Lydia Hastings is a knowledge sorcerer, capable of extracting information from anything she touches. When she travels to Orlyn to validate the claims of the local faith, she discovers a conspiracy that could lead to a war between the world's three greatest powers. At the focal point is a prisoner who bears a striking resemblance to the long-missing leader of the pantheon she worships.

Rescuing the prisoner would require risking her carefully cultivated cover - but his execution could mean the end of everything Lydia holds dear.

Head over to Amazon and pick it up.

Carrie Patel's (Narrative Designer) novel, The Buried Life, follows an inspector and a laundress as they investigate a series of murders in the underground city of Recoletta. It's a fantastical mystery about secret histories and dirty politics, perfect for fans of China Miéville and Cherie Priest.

The sequel, Cities and Thrones, comes out July 7. Make sure to be on the lookout for it.

Head to Amazon and grab yourself a copy of The Buried Life.

Update by Brandon Adler, Lead Producer

Hello, backers. Obsidian has some very exciting news! Today marks the first day of a brand new Kickstarter for the Pillars of Eternity card game, Lords of the Eastern Reach.

Lords of the Eastern Reach is a strategic card game of adventure and empire building based on Pillars of Eternity. You must protect and build a city. Hire heroes and troops for defense or to delve into dangerous dungeons for loot and glory. Build towers, blacksmiths and other buildings to gain the advantage and go for the win.

The game is designed for 2-4 players and takes about 20-30 minutes per player. This gives the game a substantial feel while still being able to fit a game in on a work night.

Turns are very interactive, with players being able to perform actions like building and hiring on other players' turns. No more sitting around waiting for your turn to come up!

The original video game development team was actively involved in its development.

The design of the card game was done by game industry veteran Chris Taylor (Lead Designer, Fallout) while much of the game's development was done by Obsidian's own Scott Everts and John Lewis.

Lords of the Eastern Reach also features artwork created by Pillars of Eternity artists such as John Lewis, Kaz Aruga, Polina Hristova and more.

If you are interested check out the video above where Feargus Urquhart and Chris Taylor go into the basics of the card game and talk about the Lords of the Eastern Reach Kickstarter in more detail.

If you would like to back and get your hands on your own copy, head over to the game's Kickstarter page and donate.

Hey, everyone. 1.06 is now live on Steam. The build is being sent over to GOG and Origin shortly so they should have the update ready in a couple of days.

If you would like to read through the update notes check them out here.

Update by Brandon Adler, Lead Producer

Hello, everyone. I have two exciting bits of news for you today. Our new update is now live and our friends at inXile just released a Kickstarter for a new Bard's Tale!

So we don't leave you all in the cold on the Pillars of Eternity expansion, we just might (wink, wink... nudge, nudge) have some stuff to talk about after E3 (week of June 22nd) and we'll also have some really cool news to talk about with Update 1.07.

Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter

If you are like us, you probably spent an unhealthy amount of your childhood playing The Bard's Tale. It was a seminal title in the dungeon crawler, cRPG genre and shaped many games that came later.

Well, inXile is helping to bring the party-based dungeon crawler back to the forefront. In their new The Bard's Tale Kickstarter, inXile is creating a mix of that old dungeon crawler feel with newer innovations in the genre.

Their phase-based combat allows players to constantly react to each action's result, leading to very dynamic gameplay. Players can also input commands as quickly as they like, while not having to wait on character animations to finish. This allows players to play the game at their own pace.

If you have a single-player, party-based, dungeon crawling, cRPG itch that needs to be scratched, join inXile by backing the project's Kickstarter now.

Update 1.06

Update 1.06 is up on Steam and will be released on GOG and Origin shortly. This update contains lots of great fixes and some cool paladin balance changes. It also contains two major fixes that Unity just released:

• Fixed a crash that some people were experiencing on startup. This had to do with Unity attempting to load a corrupted font.
• Fixed severe slowdowns when streaming in assets if the user had specific network adaptors or was running programs like Hamachi.

Take a look below for all the details:

Balance

• Blacsonn was modified to have a focus gain multiplier (+20%) instead of a flat gain.
• Added the Flanking and Engagement entries to the Glossary. Also updated the Flanked entry to link to Flanking and Engagement.
• Minoletta's Concussive Missiles AoE is now set to foe only.
• Lay on Hands increased from 1/Encounter to 2/Encounter. Base healing value was increased from 20 per tick to 25 per tick and Greater Lay on Hands increased from +7 to +12.
• Flames of Devotion was given a +20 Accuracy bonus.
• Spell Holding: Blessing Accuracy bonus reduced from +10 to +5.
• All Zealous auras set to the same size. This decreased the size of Charge, but increased the sized of Focus and Endurance.
• Bonus Graze to Hit rate added to Zealous Focus.
• Bonus Hit to Graze rate added to Zealous Endurance.
• Sworn Enemy will no longer call a hit reaction when applied.
• Endurance reduction on the end of Reviving Exhortation was reduced.
• Suppress Affliction base duration lowered from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.
• All Exhortations are now set to recover immediately.
• Reinforcing Exhortation now grants +25 deflection instead of +15.
• Hastening Exhortation lowered to 9th level (was 11th).

Items, Spells, Abilities

• Arcane Assault and Flagellant's Path have received animation polish.

Quests and Companions

• Fixed an issue where a door in the Stronghold's Great Hall could become locked after the Steward unlocked it. This is a retroactive fix that should fix a saved game on load.
• Fix for Against the Grain where you were able to convince Trumbel after convincing Sweynur. Players in broken states can speak with Trumbel to complete the quest.
• Entering Lle a Rhemen will now force an update to The Bronze Beneath the Lake to the proper step if it's somehow been reverted to an earlier stage, allowing the Engwithan weapon container to appear.
• Fix for cases where hurting a Crucible Knight during the Forge Knight attack on Crucible Keep would cause Lady Webb to assume you had burned the bridges with the knights' faction, thus forcing the invite to the hearings to come from Dunryd Row. This fix is also retroactive for cases where Lady Webb still waits to hear your word about getting an invite - head over Hadret House and speak with Webb to continue with the Crucible Knight's support as intended in your playthrough.
• Attacking any main faction after acquiring their invite will now properly result in a quest update that asks you to talk to Webb about getting an invite in some other fashion (Dunryd Row support).

UI

• Added the correct icons for items that were displaying an incorrect icon.
• Fixed a minor issue with Scripted Interaction images not animating correctly at times.
• When dragging items in the inventory, you can now see their stack counts.
• UI fix made for some localizations that were seeing text flow over their button's bounds.
• Highlight shader will now properly render behind objects in the scene.
• Added notifications on skill level up that lets users know that skill points may be saved for subsequent levels.
• Spell bars now clear out correctly when users switch party members with hotkeys.
• Fixed a bug where the second line of an object could get covered by newly gained objectives.
• Fixed a UI issue where icons on an expanded spell bar could show blue or gold glows behind them.
• Added notification when a player attempts to target a spell or attack when Paralyzed or Stunned.
• Reordered spells and abilities on the character sheet UI. This was a fix to abilities being displayed under the spells category.
• Fixed a bug where placeholder icons might appear in combat tooltips.
• Suppressed effects on the party portrait icons now show their effects with a "suppressed" qualifier on tooltip.
• Added a "per X sec" clause to beam spell descriptions to indicate how often they hit.
• Transition icons will now revert to their non-glowing state if you attempt to transition, but click away before completing the transition.
• Stronghold upgrade "purchase" buttons are now greyed out when another upgrade is already in progress.

General Fixes

• Fixed a crash that some people were experiencing on startup. This had to do with Unity attempting to load a corrupted font.
• Fixed slowdowns that could be caused by certain network adaptors or programs like Hamachi.
• Fixed a problem where interacting with the ability bar in certain ways could disable mouse input.
• Fixed an issue where SFX were not playing properly on containers.
• Fixed a bug where Deceptive disposition was gaining ranks too quickly.
• Wolves now have an ambient animation for knocked-down state.
• Fixed an issue where grimoires were getting corrupted when sending a wizard to the Stronghold.
• Fixed Commander Clyver's barkstrings to be hostile if the Keep is hostile.

Hey, everyone. We added in a hotfix for a problem with ambient audio pausing at incorrect times. Please let us know if you see anything due to this fix.

Update by Justin Britch, Associate Producer

Hey, everyone. We have updates live for the DVD version of the game. You can find the updates here. In the future this page will always have the latest updates available and should update any DVD version of the game to the latest version when run.

On Windows and OSX you can start the update by running the files. For Linux, installation instructions are available inside the tarball.

Hey everyone!

We've put up a couple of new wallpapers from The White March!

First up, the new companions have joined your party!

https://eternity.obsidian.net/media/wallpapers/new-companions

And a new location! Welcome to Stalwart Village:

https://eternity.obsidian.net/media/wallpapers/stalwart

Enjoy!

Update by Brandon Adler, Lead Producer

Hey, everyone. We have two bits of news for you today. One is about Zero Radius Games' Pillars of Eternity card game and the other is about updates for the DVD copies of the game.

A quick note to let everyone know the Pillars of Eternity card game is in its last 24 hours. They've opened up 13 Stretch goals adding 82 more cards, solo rules, a wooden Pigeeple of the Spectral Pig, better cards, bigger dice, and are coming up on adding the Chanter troop type to the game. Plus, they just added a Campaign Book for people to be able to play through a whole series of scenarios that tell a story.

Yeah... they've been busy.

Check it out, and if it looks cool the guys at ZRG would be very appreciative of your backing.

We have good news for everyone that has a DVD backer copy of the game, but would like the latest 1.06 update. You can now head over to our Backer Portal to download an update to the latest version of the game.

Updates and installation instructions for all three OSes are on the page.

When a new update is released in the future, we will add the new patches in this location.

Hey all! We've put up a new wallpaper for you all to have! It's an awesome piece of artwork that will make any desktop all the more fantastic for having it!

You can find the new wallpaper with various resolutions here!