A Bygone Era: Behavior Clarificaton (re: Bugs, exploit, odd design)

[stcaFylnO]

Act 3's "A Bygone Era" allows players to re-spec Geralt's development tree. Save first and after a few experiments in the dialogue, the player should find the option. Wikis and faqs abound regarding pre-requisites in earlier chapter, walkthrough instructions, etc. However, there are a few odd behaviors to be aware of, that no one really talks about:

1) Geralt will immediately sit down to reset points. The player can make Geralt stand and continue playing, with all previous Mutagens still active UNTIL a load cycle, then they are zeroed out, since the associated skill/talent is no longer active. They are much like volatile memory.

2) Prior to Mutagens being zeroed out, the Impregnation bonus is still in effect on all of the "temporary/volatile" Mutagens.

3) If the player wants to keep the old Mutagnes and make them permanent instead of volatile (along with the high Impregnation bonus), spend an upgrade point on the talent/skill, prior to a save/load cycle.

4) If the player wants to delete one or more of these volatile Mutagens, so they can be replaced, then save some upgade points, perform a save/load cycle to clear the desired slot(s), spend the upgrade point(s) to unlock the skill/talent again, and then install the desired Mutagen. WARNING: The NEW Mutagen will not have the Impregnation bonus, unless Impregnation is re-unlocked first.

5) Zeroing out a Mutagen slot, does not move the old Mutagen into inventory, it is just deleted.

6) I have not found a way to double-stack a new Mutagen ontop of an old.

7) Exploit: The true benefit of the exploit, is that Geralt retains the Impregnation bonus to all the old Mutagen slots within Training, Sword, and Sign trees, while getting to recover and re-allocate the 6-7 points used to activate Impregnation level 2. This just means 6-7 more points to share among the other trees... that's not much, but every bit helps. Avoid the Alchemy tree, since interacting with it can deactivate the exploit, much like performing a save/load cycle.

8) Re-spec a character build?
Yes, Geralt can be re-built, as this mission was intended to do... but remember, that changing between opposite builds (ex: From a pure sword build to a pure sign build) might mean re-unlocking Impregnation 2 as described above and changing Mutagens for the most benefit. In addition, as also outlined above, it will require a save/load cycle to zero out those slots first; I can't believe QA or Dev did not realize the intended behavior is broken, unless a save/load is utilized... sort of odd.