Pillars of Eternity Game-Breaking Bug Alert

[NoShoes]

Pillars of Eternity Game-Breaking Bug Alert

Details on the bug and steps you can take to avoid it.

A game-breaking bug has reared its ugly head in the recently launched Pillars of Eternity, available for Linux, Windows, and Mac systems. The bug is triggered by double-clicking an item to equip it to your character, which in turn removes all passive, racial, and permanent buffs forever. The short answer to keeping all your buffs safe and sound would be to not double-click the item to equip, but instead drag and drop the item into a slot on the inventory screen.

So what are you to do if you've encountered the bug? You can load up an old save of the game and head about your merry way, but without any of the progress made between the time of that save and the triggering of the bug. That's obviously not ideal, but an Obsidian developer has stated that they "have a fix for [the bug] and [are] trying to make it retroactive, so it will fix any save games that have this problem."

If a member of your party has come in contact with the bug, you can remove them from the party and then add them back again, which seems to work as a solution.

Meanwhile, there is some good news to revel in. According to Polygon, "others report that though passive buffs do not show up, they appear to still be present and working."

Source: Obsidian [http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/30/8312005/pillars-of-eternity-bug-patch-fix]


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[Soviet Heavy]

Nice to know that an Obsidian bug is still considered newsworthy.

 

[Thorn14]

Well, it IS an Obsidian game...

Nice to know that an Obsidian bug is still considered newsworthy.

It is a hell of a bug though. Nothing wrong with a PSA about it for players.

 

[Demagogue]

Yup, definitely appreciate the heads up.. I wonder if I have any gear I've done that with... *ponders*

captchas: 6 feet of snow - Yes... thank you for the reminder... /GLARE

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Alright who had Monday 30th in the Obsidian new release game breaking bug discovery sweepstake? Come on and claim your prize

Still have yet to even get pass the title screen as I am having to reinstall everything on my pc and my laptop sadly cannot run the game above 10 fps. Setime this week I will get play it and hopefully a patch is released by then.

 

[Fappy]

It's weird that the game includes a console but no commands to fix this sort of thing. You could usually fix even the most oppressive bugs in TES games using console commands if you knew what to do.

 

[And Man]

Wouldn't be an Obsidian game without the bugs!

 

[snekadid]

My question is thus, even considering obsidians shit tier level of bug checking, HOW THE FUCK did they miss something like this? It's the most basic command in a RPG.If someone played for more that 10 minutes they would have equipt a new piece of gear and found this bug. Did they manage to get it to launch without crashing or instantly frying your hard drive and label it a success?

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Oh, that's got to suck for those whose buffs completely disappeared, and aren't just invisible.

The last really game breaking bug for me was at the last few missions of Oblivion's Thieves' Guild questline. It was the bug where the quest givers disappears yet the arrow points to the chair he should be in. (I'm sure some readers are now getting flashbacks to hard work lost.) Unfortunately, I was playing the 360 version and clearing the system cache didn't help. I think I did get a save from way back to work, though. I'm glad I go with PC versions of Bethesda games now.

 

[SupahEwok]

My question is thus, even considering obsidians shit tier level of bug checking, HOW THE FUCK did they miss something like this? It's the most basic command in a RPG.If someone played for more that 10 minutes they would have equipt a new piece of gear and found this bug. Did they manage to get it to launch without crashing or instantly frying your hard drive and label it a success?

My guess is that the Day One patch caused the bug. It wasn't an issue in the backer beta, from what I hear, and also the rest of the game is really well polished. Aside from some scrolling issues when you have multiple item description popups and one time when half of a certain character's voice acting got eaten somehow, I haven't encountered any bugs in 20+ hours of game time. Shit is downright stable compared to KOTOR 2, NWN 2, Alpha Protocol, or any Bethesda game. Better than a lot of AAA releases last year, let me tell you.

 

[Callate]

That's a nasty bug, no question. But my understanding of the term "game-breaking" is that it, well, breaks the game- i.e., after the bug is tripped, it is no longer possible to progress. An NPC who needs to do something to advance the plot won't do that thing. A door that must be passed to advance fails to open. An item necessary to complete a plot-central quest won't spawn. Etc.

This bug is a pain in the ass, and sure, I can see why players might not want to proceed after that bug was tripped, if they couldn't find a way around it, and Obsie should definitely fix it tout suite. But it isn't "game-breaking".

(Sorry to be "that guy", but it's true.)

 

[Aiberg]

a great game nonetheless

 

[Vigormortis]

Nice to know that an Obsidian bug is still considered newsworthy.

At this point I assumed people knew bugs were just par for the course with Obsidian games. But given the nature of this one, a PSA (of sorts) might not be a bad idea.

 

[The Madman]

My question is thus, even considering obsidians shit tier level of bug checking, HOW THE FUCK did they miss something like this? It's the most basic command in a RPG.If someone played for more that 10 minutes they would have equipt a new piece of gear and found this bug. Did they manage to get it to launch without crashing or instantly frying your hard drive and label it a success?

The game is actually surprisingly bug-free save for this one and a few other minor glitches. Personally I've yet to have run into a single problem playing in over 15 hours of gameplay.

Meanwhile since this wasn't actually a problem in the earlier beta releases the safe bet is that this glitch was introduced in the day 1 patch, so it's not like it's something that's been hanging out for a while now. Should be fixed soon as well.

 

[RicoADF]

Wouldn't be an Obsidian game without the bugs!

There's bugs and then there's broken, this issue falls in the latter. If a basic ability of the game doesn't work it's faulty and if I had of bought this I would have returned it for a full refund. Fuck developers who can't be bothered to finish a game before release.

That's a nasty bug, no question. But my understanding of the term "game-breaking" is that it, well, breaks the game- i.e., after the bug is tripped, it is no longer possible to progress. An NPC who needs to do something to advance the plot won't do that thing. A door that must be passed to advance fails to open. An item necessary to complete a plot-central quest won't spawn. Etc.

It breaks a core function/feature in the game, it's game breaking. A bug doesn't have to stop you from advancing to break something important. That would be like saying a GTA bug that stops you from getting into a car outside of missions isn't game breaking. Sure you can get around but since driving is a core feature most would agree it's game breaking.

 

[Rawbeard]

That's Obsidian quality for you. I read a lot about items that when equip permanently bork your character. I guess they still don't do QA, but on the other hand the game at least seems to have all it's content included, so there is that. I will not be surprised to find out they had to cut the ending and several locations, though.

 

[oldtaku]

Wait, wait, wait. It's definitely annoying but it hardly breaks the game. I played like 20 hours without noticing. It makes combat a little harder than it should have been, but doesn't stop any progression and the racials aren't super powerful anyhow.

Also, any Obsidian game has to have at least one major bug lurking, let's hope this was it.

 

[Rituro]

Fingers crossed I get that hotfix sooner than later. I'd really like to know for sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all my passives still exist as a thing. I'm pretty sure I lost a level 1 spell per rest from my wizard and priest because of this bug; would like to know if I was just dreaming of a magical five casts per rest (swoon) or if it actually used to be a thing. Oh, and all my elf passives.

For all the "OMG BUGZ LOL OBSIDIAN" hate, the game has been very enjoyable with only one other major hiccup: the can't-load-Raedric's-Hold-after-exiting bug, which is thankfully fixable client-side by (I kid you not) viewing the .savegame file via 7Zip, WinRAR, etc. and deleting the Raedric's interior content. A hassle, sure, but all my progress was saved and I could get back to good ol' fashioned Infinity Engine-style beatdowns of sellswords.

 

[Scow2]

My question is thus, even considering obsidians shit tier level of bug checking, HOW THE FUCK did they miss something like this? It's the most basic command in a RPG.If someone played for more that 10 minutes they would have equipt a new piece of gear and found this bug. Did they manage to get it to launch without crashing or instantly frying your hard drive and label it a success?

It might not have shown up on their systems.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Just a heads up: if you aren't already affected by the bug, this mod [http://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity/mods/11/?] will disable double-clicking while in inventory so that you don't accidentally trigger it. It's not a fix, but it should do as a workaround until the game gets patched.