but arent most RPG builds that way? You have to complete them for them to be really effective?

That’s exactly the crux of the matter: I want a game where you grow more efficient. Start out doing the gameplay loop that I like, but badly, slowly and then get better at that gameplay loop.

This change made my favourite gameplay loop no longer viable at all at lower levels. You don’t start out a bad sneaker and then become a good sneaker, they completely removed the ability to effectively solve areas with sneaking altogether at the start.

I wanted to improve my viable but still flawed hacking skills, not play a different game altogether until stealth-hacking suddenly becomes available mid-game.

Okay, this is starting to sound like they turned my build into one of those “slog through it, I promise it gets good after a few dozen hours” things. Maybe I wouldn’t even mind if they hadn’t already had exactly my playstyle in the game that I really enjoyed from the get-go and then they took it away for whatever reason. Well, BG3 still has rogues that work at lower levels, I guess.

All my hacks are detectable now. What would be the first opportunity to find that deafening hack? Preferably in the starting area?