Any idea what is was all about, as no notes - something about caching regarding Open GL and Vulkan?

Yeah that is something they mentioned on Steam forums, nothing official yet. Bug fixes and Vulkan stuff. (More stable supposedly)

Eh, that's disappointment. I wonder how much development time they are going to lose to getting Vulkan to work, hope it isn't taking time away from expanding content.

Given how badly Vulkan worked on my machine I wish they just shelve Vulkan and focus on the system that works.

First of all Vulkan works great, it gives me about 60+ extra FPS, if it does not work on your machine, well, to bad for you. Also, other then classes and races, you won't get any new content in EA. Just bug fixes and mechanical changes. Anyway, they should not drop Vulkan because it does not work for you, you are not the only player out there.

Ok, I'm cool with that; for now

I'm all for optimization. This is great news!

@cylion We're all very lucky to be in the presence of somebody who works for the company and really has the inside track. Or perhaps you just that much smarter than the rest of us and can divine details from official announcement that mere mortals cannot?

In either case thank you so much for this valuable contribution to the discussion.

Um, the devs had said more classes and content WILL come to early access? So I don't know what this is about

Classes and races yes, no new quests or locations.

They've said that it'll only have act 1 in the EA, not that there won't be any extra content. It's not actually clear that we've reached the end of act 1 - for starters, they've said that you'd be forced to commit to a party instead of having access to everyone at the end of act 1, and there doesn't seem to be anything like that happening yet. Secondly, there's still all of the content specific to playing as an origin character that's missing from act 1.

And you know 'content' /= quests or locations, how, exactly?

I mean anyone who comes across as aggressive and cocksure must really know what they are talking about, right?

I didn't get anything... What's the newest version supposed to be?

Okay so content... isn't content. I'll see myself out. *eye roll*

No patch for me. Which version are you running?

Don't worry, The team that is responsible for tech stuff is not the same creating content. Different teams are working on totally different stuff. Just because one team is working to fix hardware/software issues or try to improve their performance, doesnt mean the content creating team is doing nothing.

And don't lose sight of the most important things. It doesn't matter how much sub classes are in the game if it doesn't run properly

sorry for my noobish question, but what is vulkan?

I'm all for more stability and hopefully all those weird issues with saved games will go away.

Vulcan is a newish alternative to DX11/12 which are drivers needed to run games - Vulcan is supposedly 30-40% faster than the other options.

Vulcan is a huge improvement in performance on my machine - DX11 runs like poo. I have an I9 7700 and a 1080ti. I think Vulcan struggles on older hardware /shrug.

Last time i tried to run Vulkan my frame rate dropped to 2 frames per 5 seconds right before you meet Lae'zel on the nautilloid. Went straight back to DirectX, which nets me over 60 fps with my card. No problem whatsoever with DX on my 2060.

Vulkan just.. I'm not seeing the performance increase. Really ain't.

Maybe because I'm not running on a complete potato.

with class and races comes spells. There are druid specific spells... there is also Chaos Bolt, would be weird if they add sorcerer withotu the sorcerer bread and butter spell. They effectively already had Green-Flame blade in Divinity in the form of Sparking Swings... would be nice if that makes it in as the Eldritch Knight/Arcane Tricksters already feel mediocre without any melee attack cantrips.


however... I imagine they are just arbitrarily reserving Xanthars/SCAG for either DLC (as they didnt monetize Divinity very well) or another game license entirely assuming this game is received well enough that they can jump right into another contract for BG4. Its unfortunate but I do feel like holding back will effect the reception of the game, Xanthars specifically added stuff to the game that addressed design issues that 5e was having in general, that is essentially what all those cantrips were doing, adding function where it was lacking (Mold Earth for instance, essentially is a magical shovel). The story aspect of the game is great but if this is all the cantrips.... man, combat is going to be nothing like D&D. The main attack cantrips were build defining.

the worst thing is, they seem to have given Lae'Zel a bonus action Thorn Whip as her Illithid super power.... I really hope they dont hold back things like Hadar's Grasp or Thorn whip to arbitrarily make it one of the Ilithid powers, if the avoid all sourcebook content, they better not avoid any PHB content

Any idea why they used DX11 rather than the latest version DX12? DX12 is supposed to be a lot more efficient than DX11 for compatible cards.

There's two development teams, technically--according to Swen. One working on revising act I during early access. These changes we'll likely actually see. Regarding save wipes, he said these would occur if a change in story/quest sequence is made. So, we could see Act I change and with changes there's the possibility of new content, if small.

The other dev team is working on finishing the game. Both teams are working with influence from player feedback.

That said, I wasn't expecting much of an update this week. I suspect they'll queue up bigger changes for major updates (maybe once a month?) to keep early access people coming back. If they rapid released updates, the community would get bored and entitled. If they pace them out month at a time it would give early access people time to test out the new content, take a break, and come back fresh for the next one. (I say, given that most of us seem to have cleared EA more than once and it's only been a couple weeks. I'm thinking of taking a break just so I don't burn myself out on it and will resume after the next major update.)

The problem I had with it was the game would literally crash every time I hit the play button on the launcher. DX11 is the only thing that works for me.

I can't quite remember the EA for DOS2, did we get anything other than Fort Joy? I don't think so. Pretty sure that it ended right after boarding the ship. Here's hoping we get some more in BG3, but it is unlikely.

I don't want more story content added for Early Access. Right now EA ends at a perfect place to setup the story without really spoiling anything. Its a great sandbox.

I hope they will focus on adding missing Classes and Races to EA. A new class/race every so often would be a great way to keep interest up. I know I'll experiment with each new one they release.

It would also be nice if they open up 5th level. I assume they are still building out spells and such and it just isn't ready yet.

Still getting 1 FPS slowdown in Vulkan mode on a 10900K, 32 Gb ram and 1080 Ti.

The people working on Vulkan or DX11 issues are not the same people expanding content. Very different skillsets. Very different jobs.

Evil be quiet lest I am forced to unleash my miniature giant space hamster on you!!

Well, it's good to have choices, right? Larian are pretty good at that I sincerely hope they never get bought out by EA or the like; Bioware, I'm looking at you.

BUT WHEN YOU PUSH A BUTTON SOMETHING AWESOME HASTA HAPPEN! SO BUTTON = AWESOME = CONNECTED NOW, IN DRAGON AGE 2.

Care to explain in English?

Vulkan works great for me, but I have a pretty new computer so I dunno if that has anything to do with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV97ozaD4vs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzkCmidjeHc

EDIT: too little, too late.

I wouldn't worry about that. Game development consists of many different teams responsible for a variety of things. they probably have a team dedicated to technical problems, while the content creators are doing their thing.

So is there a new patch or no? what's the latest version supposed to be?

Any news about this patch?