Brighthollow is the mansion of the master of Caed Nua in Pillars of Eternity.
To access the second floor, and use it for resting, the Brighthollow Restoration upgrade must be purchased.
Description
Restoring Brighthollow will allow you to rest there. Other upgrades can unlock resting bonuses for it.
Background
Brighthollow is the luxurious villa just next to the majestic keep of Caed Nua, designed to house its master in comfort.
Points of interest
- The destroyed Brighthollow is empty of loot, useful only as eye candy if you enjoy medieval decay.
- Once restored, the Brighthollow is where your companions can be found when they are not in your party or on an adventure. You can talk to them in the upstairs bedrooms.
- The closest room to the stairs is the "master" bedroom with a view over the hedge maze. The other rooms are for each of your companions. They are as follows (from the stairs, counter-clockwise): Aloth (though he spends his time reading books nearby), Durance and Edér, Pallegina and Maneha, Grieving Mother, Kana, Zahua and Hiravias, and lastly Sagani, Itumaak and Devil of Caroc.
- You can store items from your inventory in the containers in the master bedroom (specifically named "Trinket", "Potion", and "Armory" from the left), but there is no advantage to doing so. Each of the bedrooms has an empty container where you can put your companions' gear. The rooms on the ground floor are purely decorative.
- A few new examinable objects appear upon completion of quests:
- If you completed Hard Feelings to Bricanta's satisfaction, you will find that she has broken into your room left you a thank you note by your bedside table.
- After killing Eldrid Wenfeld during The Changing of the Guard, a bottle of wine will be delivered from Gedmar Doemenel if you did so with as much collateral damage as possible, or from Abrecan Doemenel if you did so silently without alerting the rest of Crucible Keep. In either case, the bottle, along with a note, can be found on the table next to the window in your room.
- If you sided with the Dozens by completing The Bronze Beneath the Lake, Wenan will leave you a book titled Magran's Warriors, on the bookshelf at the top of the stairs.
Resting bonuses
- Once the Brighthollow Restoration upgrade has been applied, it allows selected attributes and skills to be temporarily improved by resting in the master bedroom upstairs. The improvement will remain in effect for 3 bonus-free rests, or until cancelled by a rest with another bonus. See Resting in Brighthollow.
Behind the scenes
Developer commentary, lower
Developer commentary, upper
- This area contains developer commentary.
Brighthollow, much like the stronghold exterior, incorporates our system for dynamically changing the background of a scene the player is in. What was perhaps more challenging was that the vision for the player home was a two-storey house with a fountain in the middle that could be seen from both floors. What this meant for the implementation of the scene was that we needed the floor to reflect whatever level the construction the bottom floor was currently at. If the player did not rebuild the courtyard pool, but has restored the second floor of Brighthollow, what they would see from the top floor should be a ruined courtyard. With some smoke and mirrors we were able to accomplish this.
It is small things like this we feel help the backgrounds for the scene feel less like static 2D renders, but alive and responding to players' actions. This is also one place in the entire game that does anything like this, so we were definitely proud to get it working.Map
Gallery
An early render
Lower (ruined)
Lower (unrestored)
Lower (restored)
Upper (unrestored)
Upper (restored)
