Character emanating purple smoke/silhouette glitching out like lightning flashes

[citric-acid1]

Alright y'all, here's the problem: my elf rogue character is shrouded in a purple smoke, like a fog, and her silhouette glitches around and flashes like a lightning strike. There's an annoying buzzing sound that accompanies the effect, sort of like the buzzing you hear in the 'Ring of Pain' active ability in the warrior class's 'Reaver' specialisation. I've looked this up online and haven't found many results except for a thread in which some people suggest it may originate from the 'Elusive' stacking effect from the 'Lost in the Mist' upgrade from the 'Sabotage' ability tree and that the existence of the Trespasser DLC somehow has made it glitch out.

I tried using the Tactician's Renewal to remove that ability but it didn't work, even after restarting the game. I unequipped and checked every piece of armour, weaponry and party members' active effects to ensure it wasn't coming from that - no result. The weird thing is, above the interface bar at the bottom of the screen, there's the icon for the 'Avenger' ability, which apparently is an ability for Isabela in the DAI Multiplayer and has listed on the wiki the ability description "When a party member dies, you gain your maximum stacks in Elusive and a bonus to damage." I've never played the multiplayer and have no idea how that would have anything to do with my Campaign playthrough. I don't use mods beyond a cosmetic facial mod that's never caused me any trouble; have been using that once non-stop since I first played the game so I'm fairly certain it's got no impact on what's going on.

This is driving me nuts. I've put about 200 hours of gameplay into DAI thus far and have not encountered this annoyance in any other playthrough. I noticed it far too late when I went beyond the point it likely originated and overwrote any old save files I could go back to. Is this just a game bug that needs to be patched or am I doing something wrong?

(I've attached some pictures - sorry for the lousy quality )

[Leora85 · Accepted solution]

@citric-acid1 That is, in fact, the Elusive effect you talk about in your first paragraph. The bug/glitch is that the effect becomes permanent, even in areas such as Skyhold, and even after you've removed the offending upgrade from all of your characters. Some people have found that the affected character dying fixes it. So you could try going out with no armour and getting yourself killed, save beforehand just in case, and see if that helps. 

Sorry I don't have a nicer fix to suggest, this is the only one I've heard that works. Good luck

[Leora85 · Accepted solution]

@citric-acid1 That is, in fact, the Elusive effect you talk about in your first paragraph. The bug/glitch is that the effect becomes permanent, even in areas such as Skyhold, and even after you've removed the offending upgrade from all of your characters. Some people have found that the affected character dying fixes it. So you could try going out with no armour and getting yourself killed, save beforehand just in case, and see if that helps. 

Sorry I don't have a nicer fix to suggest, this is the only one I've heard that works. Good luck

[citric-acid1]

Hey @Leora85, thanks for your speedy response!

Okay, I don't know what happened but I just logged into the game again yesterday and the smoke effects were gone. As soon as I got into combat it appeared again so I reloaded my initial save, used the Tactician's Renewal to re-do my entire skillset (while staying clear of any Toxic Cloud upgrade) and saved again - haven't had any trouble since.

If it happens again I'll give the unarmored fight to the death a try if you say others have had success with that. In the meantime, I'm going to mark this matter as solved in case any other people have issues with it. 

Thanks so much and happy gaming!

[theheroheart]

I had this same problem, though I had three status effects ending up permanent. (Including the purple haze, which is the one that bothered me and caused me to google this.)

Going out and getting myself killed solved it. 

[dfrog3]

So the characters with the effect have three stacks of elesusive. To fix them they need to be hit three times. If the whole party dies it will go back to a save where they have the stacks of elusive. To completely fix the problem all affected characters need to be hit three times, all rouges need to take tacticians renewal to clear the ability, and the whole party can’t die. After all this is done just save. After being hit three times you should see the animation stop.

[Aeragon-41]

Well I get this issue as well even after dying it remains.

But even getting hit three times per character after that the problem returns as you attack other targets you come across at a later time in the game, a Bug fix would be utmost of need to fix this for good.

[DecafKingRat]

Dying 1/2 a dozen times didn't clear it, but getting hit by 2 fireballs from the western approach dragon...both Solas & my rogue were cleared.

[dwharper34]

You have a perfect description of the effect. I knew I had the problem when I got back to Haven and purple smoke and lightning appeared to be hitting the Inquisitor. I had plenty of saves so I went back until I found a save that hadn't been affected yet. I didn't know what the problem was, so I started disabling mods. I have about 120 of them. By the time I had disabled them all, I realized it wasn't a mod after all. I searched for a solution, but I was about ready to quit when I found this page. Since I knew which save to start on, I used Tactician's Renewal to remove the cloud effect from my 2 mages. After that, I had no more problem. Thanks to everyone that contributed here!

[Ramtaku1]

@citric-acid1 It is elusive.
Tactician's renewal your rogue, go to a low level area and control each character while holding the rest of the party, allowing each character to be hit until the buff pops, then save.
Level 26 solution to avoid death.

[legendshonor]

@Ramtaku1 The purple vapors and flashing recurs. It'll vanish from main character and Solas then reappear on them a short time later.