How do I Export or Import Premade Characters?
What is the Character Export/Import Feature?
The Character Export feature allows the player to import a pre-made character during character creation, recruit an imported pre-made character at any tavern, and export their own Watcher or Hired Adventurer character for their own local use or share to the public through the Steam Workshop. Let's go through each of these one by one.
Importing a Pre-made Character during Character Creation
Upon starting a new game and entering character creation, the player may choose to Import a Character. By default, there are 12 pre-made characters to choose from. This may be expanded upon with your own exported Watcher or Hired Adventurer characters, but we'll get to that later. From the Import Character screen, you may preview their starting attribute point spread, their class and race, and their ability tree. To start modifying a pre-made character, just click the Import button for the pre-made character template you wish to start with. From here, you will be brought to the Character Customization screen and may quickly proceed to character finalization or you may go back and make any adjustments to your character as you see fit before finalizing it.
Recruiting a Pre-made Character
Recruiting a pre-made character works almost the same as recruiting a Hired Adventurer. First of all, your Watcher character must be at least level 2 or higher. Then, simply visit any tavern and speak with the barkeeper and navigate to the Recruit Adventurers menu in their shop UI. Once there, you'll notice that you may recruit any Imported Character. You may hire them at either their Native Level (the level that the pre-made character was when they were originally exported) or at any level below your Watcher's level. Additionally, you may recruit a pre-made character with their imported equipment at an adjusted cost or without their imported equipment at normal recruitment level-adjusted cost. This option can be set on the bottom left of the Recruit Character confirmation window by using the Without Equipment toggle.
Exporting a Character
You may export your Watcher character and any Hired Adventurer characters in your party roster to be used as a pre-made character. This can be done by opening the Character Sheet and navigating to the Export tab. From there, simply click the Export button and your character will be added to the list of Exported Characters and be available as a pre-made character during character creation and adventurer recruitment. Keep in mind that you will not be able to recruit any pre-made characters that are in your party roster. So no going around with a party of 5 of your Watchers no matter how cool 5 of yourself is!
If you are playing the game from Steam, you may additionally upload your character to the Steam Workshop by clicking the "Upload to Steam Workshop" button. Your exported character file will be uploaded to the Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Steam Workshop page for anyone in the community to use. To download a contributing community member's pre-made character, click on their pre-made character mod and subscribe to their content. From there, make sure that your received character file is in the following file destination:
%USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\Pillars of Eternity II\ExportedCharacters
Now, relaunch your game and your newly added exported character from the community will be available. You may also remove a character retrieved from the Steam Workshop by Unsubscribing to the content. This can be done either from within the game at any tavern, navigating to the Recruit Adventurers screen, and clicking the Unsubscribe button or you can unsubscribe from the content directly from the Steam Workshop.
Please Be Aware
Be aware that you will be able to import characters that have unique items and that you will be at risk of unforeseen consequences to gameplay if you choose to use this feature. This, of course, also applies to characters that are imported/exported while cheats are enabled.