Lone Wolf Respec With Cheat Engine, Want Companions

[Gibson]

My friend and I have been playing through with lone wolf although we really want to remove it to get companions instead. You can turn off lone wolf with cheat engine easily, however even without its perks the game still limites the party size so you cant get any more than 2 total on the party still. So whatever data locks your party size is seperate from the actual perk being enabled or not sadly.

Anyone know a solution to this? Its really stupid you cant respec until nearly the end of the game. I tried some of the mods that increase party size but that changes nothing. Its hard to google anything without 1000 results from the second game as well. I imagin a solution would be to find a way to enable more party members even if they all had lone wolf. Not that we want that but it would solve the problem and we could still disable the perk.

[FrauBlake]

The only thing the talent really does is to manipulate the amount of ability points you get per level and the increased health you get.
The companion limitation is not directly tied to the talent but is done with the ingame compiled scripting language (called Osiris), it's a flag that is set and queried by the the companions' dialogs that prevents them from joining.
Turning off the talent with cheat engine only removes the talent and removes the increased vitality, it does not remove the additional ability points you have gotten so far (I believe, although I've never tested it) nor does it unset the ingame flag that controls the companion dialogs.

Installing a mod that has it's own compiled code and activating it afterwards does not change anything for exiting saves because the compiled code is saved inside the savegame files the first time you save and from then on it's always taken from the savegame on load and no longer from the mod or even the unmodded game files.
So the code from the newly activated mod is simply ignored.

Since, as far as I know, only Larian knows enough about the internal compiled script format and about how the engine prepares that into the form that get stored inside the saves, and where to find that part inside the saves (it's all unreadably binary stuff encoded in text form), you're pretty much lost and have no other chance than starting again from the beginning.
(It might work to edit all the dialog files and remove the query for the flag inside them, but I guess a restart from the beginning is probably faster than doing this and testing if it works at all.)

You might want to try playing with the respecc mod here in the Workshop that makes a respecc npc available very early in the game. Or you restart with any other of the mods in the Workshop. (If I remember correctly, Epic Encounters has respecc potions, but it's probably a whole different game with that mod)
But be aware that the 'compiled code thing' is also the main reason why no two mods can be active at the same time, don't even try that or you might run into game crashes.

As a general rule for the future:
Don't mess with the Lone Wolf talent in Cheat Engine, because it does not really know how to fully handle the talent.
It's probably the other way around too, if you'd enable it on characters with Cheat Engine, you could still hire companions and get the additional ability points on level up and the increased vitality.
Lone Wolf is controlled by the engine *and* scripts and Cheat Engine does not do the script stuff. No other talent comes to my mind that works like this, all others are controlled by the engine only.

[Gibson]

Originally posted by FrauBlake:

The only thing the talent really does is to manipulate the amount of ability points you get per level and the increased health you get.
The companion limitation is not directly tied to the talent but is done with the ingame compiled scripting language (called Osiris), it's a flag that is set and queried by the the companions' dialogs that prevents them from joining.
Turning off the talent with cheat engine only removes the talent and removes the increased vitality, it does not remove the additional ability points you have gotten so far (I believe, although I've never tested it) nor does it unset the ingame flag that controls the companion dialogs.

Installing a mod that has it's own compiled code and activating it afterwards does not change anything for exiting saves because the compiled code is saved inside the savegame files the first time you save and from then on it's always taken from the savegame on load and no longer from the mod or even the unmodded game files.
So the code from the newly activated mod is simply ignored.

Since, as far as I know, only Larian knows enough about the internal compiled script format and about how the engine prepares that into the form that get stored inside the saves, and where to find that part inside the saves (it's all unreadably binary stuff encoded in text form), you're pretty much lost and have no other chance than starting again from the beginning.
(It might work to edit all the dialog files and remove the query for the flag inside them, but I guess a restart from the beginning is probably faster than doing this and testing if it works at all.)

You might want to try playing with the respecc mod here in the Workshop that makes a respecc npc available very early in the game. Or you restart with any other of the mods in the Workshop. (If I remember correctly, Epic Encounters has respecc potions, but it's probably a whole different game with that mod)
But be aware that the 'compiled code thing' is also the main reason why no two mods can be active at the same time, don't even try that or you might run into game crashes.

As a general rule for the future:
Don't mess with the Lone Wolf talent in Cheat Engine, because it does not really know how to fully handle the talent.
It's probably the other way around too, if you'd enable it on characters with Cheat Engine, you could still hire companions and get the additional ability points on level up and the increased vitality.
Lone Wolf is controlled by the engine *and* scripts and Cheat Engine does not do the script stuff. No other talent comes to my mind that works like this, all others are controlled by the engine only.

Wow I was not expecting anyone to know this much about it and happen to see my post. I figured it was something along those lines. That is extremely helpful and I guess I will try and check out the respecc mod if I can find it. Worst case we have to do the rest of the game with 2 characters. Thanks a ton!

[Gibson]

Also if you or anyone else knows of the respecc mod you mentioned do you know what its called/where it is? There seems to be only 20 mods in the workshop and I dont see it there. Im looking on the nexus or other websites.

[FrauBlake]

The mod can be found here on Steam in the Workshop and the name is 'StatRebalance/2' or very similar.

Remember that the mod cannot help you with your current savegames for the reasons I mentioned above.

Since you cannot influence your current savegame, you might want to wait until you unlock Moloch in the homestead.

Should you decide to replay the game, you can choose any of the other mods too, Epic Encounters does have respecc potions ingame (I only read it, never tried it myself). And there are a couple of other mods there too.
And since you only need respecc now to get rid of Lone Wolf, you might not even need an early respecc at all because you will most likely not choose Lone Wolf again in the beginning.