Yeah, that’s what I think. It shouldn’t affect the save file in My Games, but … And it doesn’t take long to back up Grim Dawn files - unlike TQ.
Okay, getting even more weird. I deleted the Grim Quest folders in both GOG and Steam, then tried installing 148a and the hotfix. Got the speartesting map. Deleted them again and installed version 147.7 from my downloads folder and got the proper map back again. I then installed 148.a without the hotfix and get the speartesting map again. It’s not just a misnamed map, I went into the game and it’s the actual testing area for the spears.
delete “maps.arc” in resources and you get the campaign map again, the testmap splipped into the upload, it happens 
in:
grim quest/resources/
should be a file “maps.arc” with about 35 kb, delete that
Yeah, that got the correct map back, but now can’t enter the mod. Every time I click Start it tries to and then just goes back to the character screen again. 
works fine when I restart the game.
only way I could reproduce it was when I got into the test map and deleted the maps.arc while being in the main menu, since the map doesn’t exist anymore it can’t load it.
But reloading Grim Dawn and selecting world001 again works for me.
YES! Thanks WareBare. Choosing the main campaign and then choosing the mod allowed me to get into it and it does now show the 2 new masteries. Now I can start playing my Inquisitor/Storm toon. 
Hello, while using v148a i noticed that there is life leech damage in Vision of dead description though it was removed by xpac. And Dream’s Astral Disturbance available at level 40 mastery despite being stand at 50 lvl mastery.
Thanks for the report
Trance of Empathy also have life leech damage on tooltip. I’m concerned about Psionic Artery/Death Ward/Protect Thy Master, because they give +% life leech damage. Does it really applies to something now?
Where is the confusion coming from? I don’t understand.
If an item or skill has X life leech damage, then of course +% life leech damage will apply to it, why wouldn’t it?
I am in the process of removing the stat simply to mirror what Crate did, and because there is very little itemization for the stat… so currently reworking skills/items that have it, but until then, yes it’s there and it does work.
It is coming from my understand that if there’s no such type of damage for player, then even if bonus will apply and numbers change - none in fact changed, at least it was from my seeing, when i used Vision of Death.
It definitely works. You can activate Trance of Empathy and check your character sheet, the damage is there. When those other auras are activated (Psionic Artery, Death Ward, Protect Thy Master) it will increase the life leech amount. You can even see these values in the character sheet while Trance of Empathy is active, and when those other auras trigger the value scales up and you can see it right on the tool tip.
I just tested it using 1.4.8a, playing on vanilla GD (no ashes of malmouth)
See here:
no buffs
Death Ward, Psionic Artery, and Protect Thy Master active
no buffs
after buffs
And it’s not just numbers showing, this test character cannot survive above 50% HP, but below 50% the life leech multipliers make him nearly invulnerable.
Anyway it’s a moot point, as I said I will be changing it.
Thats for sure :D. On the other note - should i start a new char once vision of death is changed or just respec skill points from Drain Life tree?
Is it just me, or are many of the spears pretty much broken?
Many of them do not appear when both NPCs and the player equip them.
Yep I’ve mentioned it already a few times I think, spears are completely broken since dx11 patch, at least visually
What to expect in the next GQ update:
Huge GQ weapon balance pass
Reverted spear models, backwards spears are back
Minor bug fixes
When to expect it:
Maybe a week, should be soon I think but who knows
Okay, I’ll bite - what are backwards spears? 
Before I fixed them, due to how we player characters are animated, the character appears to attack enemies with the wrong side of the spear. Hence backwards. It sucks that I have to revert it to that but the current ‘fixed’ spears don’t work anymore for some reason.
Carrying a spear with the point behind you, for overarm throws/downward stabs, as opposed to forward for upward thrusts. Backward is more common in the Greek era, but you see a lot of forward in fantasy because it’s better for stopping cavalry. No foot soldier’s big enough to strike down at a guy on a horse.
In practice, they’re completely different weapons, and the GQ spears are definitely backwards spears.
Yeah, what he said.
In TQ, the animation that played for spear attacks was one where the character held the spear above their shoulder, poised to strike.
In GD, there is no such animation and I’ve yet to figure out how to reanimate models without anyway to export the msh and animations to blender.
Unfortunately there is no simple way to flip the spear (that I know of), and my previous way of doing it resulted in all the spears just vanishing with the 1.0.2.0 GD patch.
So, backward spears.