Pillars of Eternity Rest System Changes Detailed

While I haven’t had enough time lately to compile a proper round-up of Pillars of Eternity’s relevant developer forum activity, this recent tidbit from project designer Josh Sawyer is worthy of a newspost, given it outlines a rather major change. While originally the game would only see resting at dedicated camps (a choice that was met with decidedly mixed reactions on the official forums), it’ll now be possible to rest nearly anywhere, though it will consume a dedicated resource:

It’s been a long time since we’ve talked about our resting system and it’s changed in the past few months. It’s largely the same overall, but key mechanics have changed in important ways.

* The Stamina/Health mechanics still work as they have previously. The one exception is how Maimed works on non-Expert settings. Maimed is now only a stop-gap before death. I.e., even on ordinary difficulty settings, any character can die if they are currently Maimed and lose their remaining Health. As before, Maimed characters have terrible penalties to their Accuracy and all defenses but move at full speed. Using a Maimed character in combat is asking for them to get killed. The reason for this change was to prevent the use of Maimed characters as immortal trap-sniffers or recipients of an enemy’s hard first volley.

* We still restrict where you can rest (as in the IE games), but resting does not have to be performed at very specific spots in the world (there are still a few camps where you can rest anytime, for free). Instead, each time the party rests in the middle of nowhere, they consume 1 unit of Camp Supplies. Based on your difficulty settings, the party can carry a maximum number of Camp Supplies (currently ranging from 6 to 2). The supplies are a single item type and can be purchased from vendors (also rarely can be found in the world). The supplies represent a party count, like wealth, and are represented by a number in the inventory and on the rest button in the main UI. To rest, all you need to do is press the rest button. The game checks to make sure it’s okay to camp in that location at that time and will give you the option to access your Stash or go directly into rest.

* You can also rest at inns and your house (once you acquire it). Based on the room you select at the inn, you will gain temporary bonuses that generally correlate to the expense of the room. I.e., more expensive rooms grant larger or more bonuses. These bonuses last for a specific number of rests following your stay at the inn. Only a single resting bonus can be active at a time, so you can’t just chain-sleep for a collection of bonuses. If you sleep at your house, you select from the bonuses you’ve unlocked from your upgrades. These tend to be less varied than those found at inns and you have to pay for the upgrades upfront, but after that it’s effectively a free bonus of one specific type that lasts for a number of rests.

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We don’t have random encounters on rest. Resting always takes 8 hours and will restore characters to full Health, remove Maimed and other long-term afflictions, and restore all per-rest abilities/item charges.