Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) General Bug fix patch?

So I'm under the impression the bow skill passives are still bugged? The game is almost 20 years old.

I saw that there was a bug fix patch but it only worked on the retail physical copy of the game. Is there an equivalent that works with the GOG install?

Yes, True Shot is broken, as is the damage portion of Crossbow Expertise, including in the retail version of the game.

With the original GOG version, there was a fix for this, but unfortunately that also introduced a serious new bug, and in fixing that, the skill fixes were reverted. When it came time for the Steam release, the code for the GOG update was lost (missing/damaged backups) and higher resolution support and Win7 compatibility fixes were added again based on the latest available retail version code (code for some of the changes in the retail patches was lost, as well; notably in the updated retail version Finnigan is a decent merchant for survivor type stuff, and after completing his quest you can buy back the magic lockpicks; in the GOG/Steam version, it is better to leave the quest unfinished and keep the lockpicks).

Thanks for the response. Is there any kind of timetable to get those fixed? It seems like it's already been fixed multiple times either in fan patches or elsewhere, shouldn't be this hard to stamp out 20 year old bugs.

Unfortunately another update at this point is very unlikely. Even if time and resources were not a consideration, the known issues with the game are generally fixable/avoidable if they are encountered. Updating the code and compiling it on a different compiler would have the potential to cause more problems than it fixed.

Why not update the fan patch from a few versions ago then? And how do you fix the broken feats? By not playing characters that take them? That's lame asf dude. Games like Sacred, Arcanum, Diablo II, etc don't have these problems because at least there's fan patches to make up for them.

If you're not going to release a complete game why even fucking sell it? IT'S BEEN 20 YEARS.

Furthermore, I should not be compelled to research what bugs were left onsquashed in a 20 year old game before considering purchasing. It's not somehow negligent of me to expect a priori a bug free game 20 years after the fact.

The only 'fan patch' I know of for the game was the disk version patch contents repackaged, or the digital release differences zipped to be applied to the disk version.

Archery is very effective in the game, even without True Shot and the damage portion of Crossbow Expertise.

Diablo 2 stayed in the top 10 PC sales charts for more than a decade IIRC. If Divine Divinity had anything close to that, the game could have continued to be updated longer than it was, but even so, the fact that Diablo 2 requires any fan patches rather underscores that there are no bug free games (or other complex software), and even if it is mostly bug free, a couple of decades can introduce compatibility issues on newer systems.
Between the publisher not providing post-release support and eventually going out of business, Larian itself almost went out of business after the release of Divine Divinity. The first 2 game updates for the retail release were called hotfixes, because the publisher initially didn't want any patches released for the game.

Sounds kinda like how THQ dealt with Iron Lore Entertainment/Titan Quest before they decided to compete with their own team. Very foul. I appreciate your responses and I'm sorry for getting a little heated, I'm bad at venting frustration.

No problem. Ideally it would certainly be better to fix known issues.