-- Late-Game Difficulty-Fixin' Pig-Bud README --

- IMPORTANT NOTE -

For simplicity's sake, I'm going to refer only to Path of the Damned in this readme. However, everything said still applies to all the other difficulties, just without enemies having a flat bonuses of +10 Accuracy and +5 Defenses.

-INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS-

If you already have an 'override' folder in your Pillars of Eternity II\PillarsofEternityII_Data folder, just drop the Late-Game Difficulty-Fixin' Pig-Bud folder into your override folder

If you don't have an 'override' folder, go to the your "PillarsofEternityII_Data" folder (usually located under Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steamapps\common\Pillars of Eternity II), create a folder named 'override' there, and
copy the Late-Game Difficulty-Fixin' Pig-Bud folder into your override folder

-LOCATION-

Baldur is for sale at the Port Maje fishmonger for 450 copper.


-PURPOSE-

Regardless of the difficulty you play your game at, the challenge present in the second half of Deadfire is significantly less than the first. This is because your accumulation of gear, skills,
and scaling stats begins to dramatically outpace the stat growth of your enemies.

Path of the Damned tries to fix this a little bit by giving a flat +15 bonus to enemy accuracy and defense, but the result is just that the beginning of the game is a huge pain because you lack the equipment, skills and stats
to effectively make up for this hurdle, and then by the end of the game when your equipment, skills, and stats are so powerful and/or plentiful that the hurdle is absolutely negligible.

The purpose of this mod is to provide a smooth difficulty curve throughout the game, rather than having the difficulty fall off a cliff once you pass that level 12-ish statiscal hump.

Enter Baldur, the Difficulty-Fixin' Pig-Bud.


-WHAT IT DOES -

This mod introduces a pet whose party ability rebalances the relative values between your party's Accuracy/Defenses and the enemy's Accuracy/Defenses smoothly over the course of the game. Compared to unmodded Path of the Damned,
with Baldur in your pet slot and Path of the Damned rebalanced, at level 1 you'll have about +10 accuracy and +5 Defenses, and at level 20 you'll have about -30 Accuracy and -15 Defenses.

Every character in the game receives a natural +3 to Accuracy and +3 to Defenses per level from level 2 onwards. By the end of the game, they accrue 19 levels of bonuses for a total of +57 Accuracy and Defenses. Baldur's Pet Party
Ability slows this growth by applying -2 to Accuracy and -1 to all Defenses per level. Or, more specifically, for each point in Alchemy, Arcana, Athletics, Explosives, Mechanics, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth on your main character.
It also provides a flat +10 Accuracy and +5 all defenses to compensate for the 4-6 points in these abilities most characters usually receive through class and background bonuses in character creation. This does mean that putting points
into those top-of-the-page skills on your main character beyond what you acquire naturally from leveling will hit you with -2 Accuracy and -1 to Defenses, but dumping into one stat naturally - 15 points into arcana for Spearcaster,
for instance - won't have any adverse effects beyond the regular intended rebalancing of this mod.

It also means you're stuck with Baldur instead of any other pets, but c'mon now, look at how cute he is.

But if you really want to, you can take him off at any time and things'll revert back to normal without a hitch.