Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Backer Beta Update 3 Released

A new Backer Beta update is now live for Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. The update improves the game’s performance, adds a new camera mode, alters the UI in some ways, and introduces plenty of system tweaks and changes. The latter include weapon rebalancing, buffs to the fan-favorite Cipher class and a new revision to how the Might and Resolve attributes work. Here’s an excerpt from the patch notes:

NEW CONTENT

Please note that older saves will not work on the latest patch! Apologies for the inconvenience.

Save File location moved

• From – %USERPROFILE%/Saved Games/Pillars of Eternity 2
• To – %USERPROFILE%/Saved Games/Pillars of Eternity II

Action Bar revision – The HUD art has been revised for the action bar. We added a bit of flair to the empower portion specifically.

Optimizations – Ongoing performance optimizations for GPU and CPU.

Smart Camera – New toggle-able camera mode that has the camera follow the players movements automatically. This option can be toggled ‘on’ or ‘off’ in the options menu.

Combat Slider – New combat slider added to the center of the HUD. You can now slow/speed up combat at your leisure ranging from very slow/slow to fast/very fast. Fast mode remains the same toggle outside of combat.

New item Highlight – Items recently picked up that haven’t been inspected by the player now highlight blue in the inventory.

BB Content Changes

• BB character now begins with fine leather, fine mail, and fine plate
• All Grimoires in the BB now have 2 spells per level

SYSTEM CHANGES

Expanded Passive Abilities – To address feedback about the loss of Talents from PoE 1, we have added many more passive abilities to class trees and increased the number of abilities that single class characters receive at each power level (see below).

Turn-Based ship combat – Ship duels are now conducted turn-by-turn instead of round-by-round. Half and full-sail movement actions are no longer restricted in frequency.

Cannon re-balance – Cannon values have been re-balanced to make them strategic choices instead of upgrades

Single Class characters gain 2 abilities at PL increase – All single class characters will gain 2 abilities every time they achieve a new power level. This change was made to address concerns that single class characters felt like they didn’t have enough options at any given character level. It also allows characters to dip into passive abilities (which have been expanded considerably) more easily.

Canceling cast doesn’t take resource – Canceling an ability or item use, whether by movement, selecting another action, or simply hitting the cancel button, will not consume the resource associated with the ability. This makes changing actions much less punitive. An Interrupt will still consume the resources of an ability or item it Interrupts.

Penetration re-balance – Weapons and spells have been reorganized around two penetration categories – average and high – instead of low/average/high. “Best of” weapons and spells typically have 1 lower Penetrations compared to other weapons and spells in their penetration category.

Attribute Cap of 35 – To prevent the effects of Attributes from scaling away into infinity, they are now capped to 35. We chose this number based on both where we wanted the influence of Attributes to max out as well as what we believed was within the reach of aggressive min-maxers.

Might/Resolve Change – Strength has been reverted to Might and affects Damage, Healing, and Fortitude as it did in Pillars 1. Resolve has also been reverted to affect Deflection and Will as it did in Pillars 1. We have added an additional benefit to Resolve: reduced duration of hostile effects (3% per point) on the character (increased if it is below 10). This was done in conjunction with capping Attributes to a max of 35. This does not address the primary goal of making Resolve more appealing for casters, but we believe it does make Resolve more generally valuable for a variety of characters. It also integrates into the system using mechanics that are already well-established, which is of importance at this stage of development. Thank you to everyone for your patience as we experimented with the attribute system and for the fans for continuing to discuss and suggest ideas throughout the project.

Interrupt added to many rogue abilities – Most rogue abilities that are weapon-based attacks now Interrupt on Hit

Weapon re-balance – Across the board weapon balance

Druid Bonus Spells/Animist Subclass – Like priests, all druids now receive bonus spells at each power level. To make druids mechanically function like priests, the Animist subclass has been added and the “No Subclass” option has been removed.. Animists have no special modifiers other than access to a list of bonus spells.

Martial Tree Unlock Level Adjustments – The levels at which the martial classes access various abilities have been adjusted, both to lower the overall requirements and to make a smoother progression as the characters advance.

General Casting changes

• Shortened cast times of Very Slow and Slow
• Shortened Recovery of Slow
• Summon Weapon spells now Average cast

Food/meal pricing reworked

Cipher Buffs

• Cipher spells are all faster casts/ many were tuned up
• Cipher Focus gain rate doubled