To answer your question, yes and no. If you are talking about patches as in the Atari Patch 1 and, or Atari Patch 2 followed by the Co8 5 MOD, that's a different story and requires a complete uninstall, delete remaining folders, reboot, new install and apply patches and mod with updates. If you have Co8 5.0.0 MOD installed and want to do a complete uninstall and new install, you can use previous game saves and characters. As long as you do NOT have the Co8 5.0.1 MOD Updates and Fixes installed over the Co8 5.0.0 MOD, you can install Co8 5.0.0 MOD over top of an existing Co8 5.0.0 MOD installation without uninstalling anything, but your game session from a previous game save may be buggy [no promises, maybe yes or maybe no] unless you select the same checkbox options in the list window during the reinstall of the Co8 5.0.0 MOD. Plus, you can use previous game saves and characters. If you upgrade from Co8 4 MOD to Co8 5 MOD, no - you cannot use previous game saves, but you can use the new characters you made previously. [EDIT] Basically, the above is why we recommend reinstalling the game and applying patches, mods and updates from scratch when suggested.
I cant zip up my saves from that game since I already started a new game sry. I had: 2 fighters a monk a cleric, a sorcerer, and a rogue/ranger in that party plus had elmo with me. like I said i was able to work around it by havin the rogue sneak in and escape combat. I'll let you know if it happens again in this game though. You guys are doing a great job on this game btw have really made replaying it over and over a lot of fun always seems like I'm findin new stuff each game. Keep up the good work.
Osaka, 5.0.1 can be installed at any time without the need for starting a new game at this time. This may well change with future updates of 5.0.1, though at that time we will probably start calling it 5.1.0. Installing 5.0.1 after you've killed Belsornig will not help though. The original error in 5.0.0 kept his script from executing, and once he is dead it will never execute. If you have a save from before you killed him and install 5.0.1 and delete all the .pyc files in your scr folder, then you should be able to talk to him and have things work as they were meant to.
I've installed the 5.0.1 updates but when the front end starts it shows 5.0.0 as the current version installed. Did I do the upgrade incorrectly or is that the proper behavior?
That is the proper behavior. The version number in the load screen won't be changed until a major release. 5.0.1 is just a patch, and it is evolving constantly. Keep checking back in that thread for new updates to it. Though 5.1.0 may be coming out soon.