Obsidian has launched a ”patch beta testing” program for Pillars of Eternity, which will allow willing players to test out updates early before they’re released to the public.
Obviously this carries a certain amount of risk; beta players might find that their saved game progress is affected by bugs and other problems.
“These patches may be unstable. We will be doing work on the patches and they haven’t gone through a full QA cycle so unexpected things can happen,” writes producer Brandon Adler. “To be safe, I would avoid using any saved games that you do not want to get corrupted. If you do want to use those saved games, it is at your own risk.”
There is an in-depth guide on how to activate the beta versions on Steam over on the Obsidian forums. Adler says the team is willing to bring beta testing to GOG versions, but the platform lacks the simple setup that Steam has.
The developer also warns that beta patches will change over time, so testers might have to download multiple versions of the same update. The process has started with Pillars’ 1.04 patch, which is available to all owners on Steam now.
