The one year anniversary of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire recently sailed past, and to mark the big birthday Obsidian released a big patch that takes the game to version 5.0. It includes a new, "more elegant" ship interface, fleshes out the story with additional voice acting, brings the turn-based combat mode out of beta, and makes the usual array of bug fixes and gameplay adjustments.
But what's really interesting is The Ultimate, "the final God Challenge," that makes the game as difficult to play as possible. It turns on all other God Challenges, which make the game more difficult in various specific, sometimes weird ways—Magran's Challenge disables pausing or time dilation, for instance, while Hylea's Challenge requires that Vela follow the Watcher and be kept alive—and also forces Solo mode (no party members), Path of the Damned (the highest difficulty mode, cannot be switched off once selected), and Trial of Iron (only one savegame that's auto-deleted on death).
Basically, it's impossible and you're not going to finish it, which is why Obsidian is offering a couple of unique rewards for those who do. The first 50 players who can beat the mode will be mailed embroidered "I Beat the Ultimate" patches emblazoned with the smiling face of game director Josh Sawyer; the first 12 to do it will have their names, character names, class, and level engraved on a plaque that will hang in the Obsidian offices forever.
Naturally, you'll have to provide proof of your accomplishment, including "full video evidence" and the save file with the challenge completed. Console commands that don't use the "iroll20s" command are allowed, but cheating, third-party tools, save-scumming, "and/or doing anything in a manner contrary to the spirit of the challenge," is most definitely not. You should also try not to be a jerk, because that'll take you out of the running too.
The 5.0 update will be the final patch for Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, and it will also likely mark a new direction for Sawyer: He said in March that after nearly 20 years in the industry and six on the Pillars of Eternity games, he wants to take a break and "work on something else, not as a director," for awhile.
