Author Topic: Qwinn's Beta Test  (Read 19294 times)

Qwinn

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Qwinn's Beta Test
« on: January 17, 2005, 10:25:06 PM »
Simding0 -

As far as I can tell, I can no longer contact you (or you can no longer contact me) through Gamebanshee forums, so I'm posting here what I attempted to report to you through private messages there.  If you -did- get my reports but could not/did not answer for whatever reason, note that there is information in this post that I have not submitted to you previously.

1)  As you know, in my game I was not able to get Moiya to spawn.  I am now convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that this was solely a result of the third line in the IF statement for the first Moiya spawn in the AR0400.BAF file - specifically "!OnCreation()".  I did a dozen tests, removing/adding that line from the conditional and then reinstalling the mod.  All 6 times that I left that line in the .BAF file, Moiya did not spawn.  All 6 times with the line removed, she appeared properly and all spawns that followed worked properly as well.  (The subsequent spawns that didn't work during my earlier reports to you did turn out to be solely a result of the d0Spawn variable not being set to 1).  I had no other problems with the quest - it worked great and is well written.

2)  I reported to you earlier that I couldn't get the Bons mod that is supposed to begin south of Nalia's keep to actually begin.  I found out that this was a result of not having the dryad's acorns in my possession when doing Nalia's keep.  Note that bringing the acorns there will initiate the quest -until- you take Nalia's keep as your stronghold, after which bringing the acorns there will do nothing.  Given the conversation with the dryad as written, however (e.g. "Shhhh, there are trolls about"), it's probably best to leave it that way.  I'd resolve this issue just by injecting a note into the QP's readme advising the player that it might be a good idea to keep the acorns on their person as they play the game rather than stow them away in a chest somewhere, as I did.

3)  The Potion Quest - to be totally honest, I preferred the original writing of this quest, hands down (I CLUA'd in the potions so I could see the whole thing and compare the original and the QP versions).  There were serious inconsistencies in Jadarath's new dialogue, like his almost casual admission that he's obviously insane near the beginning, totally out of context with his later rants about how he'll prove to everyone that he isn't.  IMHO the original character and writing weren't broken and didn't need fixing (this definetly includes the changes made to his relationship with his wife and child, which I thought was clever and potentially uplifting in the original and just depressing and ethically confusing in the latter).  The scroll list definetly needs to be made droppable again and the journal entries confirming each delivered potion should be put back in.  One change made in the QP that I thought was for the better was toning down the progressive xp/gold awards as each potion was delivered.  I actually think incrementing them was a good idea in the original version, it made it progressively more exciting turning them each in, but in the original they incremented by way too much and it got unbalanced, I'd keep the incrementing but just by a more reasonable amount.  At any rate, even without further alteration the awards in the QP version are much more balanced than in the original.

4)  Xzar/Montaron quest - the conversation with the assassin after knowingly delivering her (in bird form) to Xzar is, well, lousy.  You're forced to act and be treated like an ignorant dupe even if you were honest with the Harpers and delivered the assassin willingly.  Since you also get an extra 20k xp by doing it the original way (by getting the bird from the 2nd floor), there's therefore no reason for a player to want to do the "good" quest your way, neither as a roleplayer or powergamer.  Additiona:  If you betray the assassin to Xzar, there's a typo in one of the dialogue options you are given - "prefer" is misspelled as "perfer".  One good thing is that, unlike version 1, I was not able to get -both- assassin/birds - that works great now.

5)  The Icelus quest in the graveyard tomb works great.  No problems with it at all.

6)  "Convincing Gracen you genuinely want to join Bohdi" - bleah.  For one, I had a tough time talking to Gracen with the character I wished to - several times Gracen picked who in my party to talk to no matter how hard I tried to initiate the conversation with my character.  Since there's apparently a stat check involved (I'm guessing charisma), that makes being able to do this quest random.  Also, the journal entry you get after Gracen is "convinced" still says that she attacked you.  If you then go to Aran instead of to the graveyard, you have only one option - to tell Aran that she attacked and is dead and that you found a note on her corpse (even though neither of those things had happened), and after which you'll never see Gracen again because she's replaced by the mage/golem that break you into Bodhi's lair.   If you DO go to the graveyard after "convincing" Gracen, it doesn't earn you anything more than a wasted trip where you are confronted with the exact same fight with Gracen alone that you would have had if you didn't "convince" her - no additional roleplay or challenge in the fight at all.  I recommend either adding a whole lot more to this component to make it worth the while or just yanking it altogether, cause fixing the bugs in order to leave the content as is doesn't seem worthwhile to me.

7)  I was able to get Surly to leave the Copper Coronet with no problems.  I was also able to get him to agree to cough up a percentage of his proceeds (to varying amounts), but did not pursue this for a great length of time mainly because I was playing a "good" character.  I still haven't tested how getting Surly to leave altogether will affect the Gorf the Squisher/Mazzy quest - I'll add my report on that to this thread when I get there.

8)  I liked the Reynalt quest a lot, and everything worked properly.  I have a couple of writing suggestions for alternate endings, if you're interested.

I'll report more when I finish the Underdark so I can test the Chapter 6 stuff.

Qwinn
« Last Edit: January 17, 2005, 10:36:13 PM by Qwinn »

Offline SimDing0™

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2005, 09:39:45 AM »
As far as I can tell, I can no longer contact you (or you can no longer contact me) through Gamebanshee forums, so I'm posting here what I attempted to report to you through private messages there.  If you -did- get my reports but could not/did not answer for whatever reason, note that there is information in this post that I have not submitted to you previously.
I did get your messages, and I replied, so I'm not sure what's going on there. Thanks for persevering and coming over here.

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1)  As you know, in my game I was not able to get Moiya to spawn.  I am now convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that this was solely a result of the third line in the IF statement for the first Moiya spawn in the AR0400.BAF file - specifically "!OnCreation()".  I did a dozen tests, removing/adding that line from the conditional and then reinstalling the mod.  All 6 times that I left that line in the .BAF file, Moiya did not spawn.  All 6 times with the line removed, she appeared properly and all spawns that followed worked properly as well.  (The subsequent spawns that didn't work during my earlier reports to you did turn out to be solely a result of the d0Spawn variable not being set to 1).  I had no other problems with the quest - it worked great and is well written.
Your assessment of how OnCreation() works was correct; it returns true for the first time the script is parsed when you enter an area. However, I've really got no clue why !OnCreation wouldn't work. I'm no longer using it, anyway, so this should really be fixed this time.

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2)  I reported to you earlier that I couldn't get the Bons mod that is supposed to begin south of Nalia's keep to actually begin.  I found out that this was a result of not having the dryad's acorns in my possession when doing Nalia's keep.  Note that bringing the acorns there will initiate the quest -until- you take Nalia's keep as your stronghold, after which bringing the acorns there will do nothing.  Given the conversation with the dryad as written, however (e.g. "Shhhh, there are trolls about"), it's probably best to leave it that way.  I'd resolve this issue just by injecting a note into the QP's readme advising the player that it might be a good idea to keep the acorns on their person as they play the game rather than stow them away in a chest somewhere, as I did.
I've modified it so that the quest can initiate when you have the stronghold, and added alternative dialogue to reflect. I'll add a note about the acorns.

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3)  The Potion Quest - to be totally honest, I preferred the original writing of this quest, hands down (I CLUA'd in the potions so I could see the whole thing and compare the original and the QP versions).  There were serious inconsistencies in Jadarath's new dialogue, like his almost casual admission that he's obviously insane near the beginning, totally out of context with his later rants about how he'll prove to everyone that he isn't.  IMHO the original character and writing weren't broken and didn't need fixing (this definetly includes the changes made to his relationship with his wife and child, which I thought was clever and potentially uplifting in the original and just depressing and ethically confusing in the latter).  The scroll list definetly needs to be made droppable again and the journal entries confirming each delivered potion should be put back in.  One change made in the QP that I thought was for the better was toning down the progressive xp/gold awards as each potion was delivered.  I actually think incrementing them was a good idea in the original version, it made it progressively more exciting turning them each in, but in the original they incremented by way too much and it got unbalanced, I'd keep the incrementing but just by a more reasonable amount.  At any rate, even without further alteration the awards in the QP version are much more balanced than in the original.
The use of Miranda and Lanie WAS something that I felt needed changing. The original version mischaracterised Miranda severely in my view, since it portrayed her as someone who had been reluctantly driven to extreme measures to support her child, while the Miranda we see in the vanilla game is nothing but conniving.
The change of ending means that it isn't totally obvious to the player which is the good path and which the bad. This moral dilemma makes the quest stand out as rather more interesting than the bulk of BG2's quests where the optimal solution is obvious.
Either way, the dialogue needed alterations, because the original mod was a draft and hadn't been edited to fit properly ingame. The use of "breeds insanity" vs "no madman" is, uh, part of the wackiness of the character, setting aside the distinction between "observing that you're not exactly living a sensible life" and "not being taken seriously because everyone thinks you're a nut".

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4)  Xzar/Montaron quest - the conversation with the assassin after knowingly delivering her (in bird form) to Xzar is, well, lousy.  You're forced to act and be treated like an ignorant dupe even if you were honest with the Harpers and delivered the assassin willingly.  Since you also get an extra 20k xp by doing it the original way (by getting the bird from the 2nd floor), there's therefore no reason for a player to want to do the "good" quest your way, neither as a roleplayer or powergamer.  Additiona:  If you betray the assassin to Xzar, there's a typo in one of the dialogue options you are given - "prefer" is misspelled as "perfer".  One good thing is that, unlike version 1, I was not able to get -both- assassin/birds - that works great now.
I'll be doing some major dialogue revision on this quest in light of the suggestions I've received, because yes, it's currently not very good.

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6)  "Convincing Gracen you genuinely want to join Bohdi" - bleah.  For one, I had a tough time talking to Gracen with the character I wished to - several times Gracen picked who in my party to talk to no matter how hard I tried to initiate the conversation with my character.  Since there's apparently a stat check involved (I'm guessing charisma), that makes being able to do this quest random.  Also, the journal entry you get after Gracen is "convinced" still says that she attacked you.  If you then go to Aran instead of to the graveyard, you have only one option - to tell Aran that she attacked and is dead and that you found a note on her corpse (even though neither of those things had happened), and after which you'll never see Gracen again because she's replaced by the mage/golem that break you into Bodhi's lair.   If you DO go to the graveyard after "convincing" Gracen, it doesn't earn you anything more than a wasted trip where you are confronted with the exact same fight with Gracen alone that you would have had if you didn't "convince" her - no additional roleplay or challenge in the fight at all.  I recommend either adding a whole lot more to this component to make it worth the while or just yanking it altogether, cause fixing the bugs in order to leave the content as is doesn't seem worthwhile to me.
You're right. I'll remove this. It may make a return later on, but for v2, it's not worth the effort to make worthwhile.

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7)  I was able to get Surly to leave the Copper Coronet with no problems.  I was also able to get him to agree to cough up a percentage of his proceeds (to varying amounts), but did not pursue this for a great length of time mainly because I was playing a "good" character.  I still haven't tested how getting Surly to leave altogether will affect the Gorf the Squisher/Mazzy quest - I'll add my report on that to this thread when I get there.
I haven't accounted for the Gorf the Squisher quest, so it's probably not worth testing that. I'll have Surly pop up somewhere else in Athkatla.

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8)  I liked the Reynalt quest a lot, and everything worked properly.  I have a couple of writing suggestions for alternate endings, if you're interested.
I got your suggestions, and yes, I do like them. Note that the ending in the Graveyard only occurs if you don't set him up with the guard, so it can coexist with your ideas.

Thanks for all the thoughts. :)

Qwinn

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2005, 11:32:36 PM »
Thanks for the thorough reply Sim :)  Glad to hear it was just Gamebanshee causing problems :/

I'm working my way through Spellhold atm... taking notes as I go, will add another bulk report later.  For now, I'll just add what I've further discovered about the Moiya quest:

Would you freaking believe it?   Way later on, long after I'd finished the entire Moiya quest, she finally spawned all by herself based on that !OnCreation() code?!  I know it was based on that code cause D0Spawn was finally set to 1.  I never touched that variable in the game I'm currently playing, I just repeatedly created her when needed.  Boy does that trigger act flaky.  She just stands around and asks for her daughter to be returned to her.  Oh well, with that trigger gone this shouldn't be a problem, just thought you'd be amused to hear that it finally fired, heh.

Oh, dunno if it's related to the way I had to manually create her and the thugs throughout the quest, but I spent a looong time after finishing that quest in Chapter 3 and before leaving for Spellhold, and no gang of thugs ever came to me to try to get the cash back.  I'll let you know if they ever show up in Chapter 6.  Like I said, this could just be a function of the variables not getting set properly during all those spawns - you'd certainly know better than I if they'd be involved.

The bit with Celile in Brynnlaw worked great for me, by the way.  The thugs and Celile attacked, the innkeeper didn't go red, no problems at all.

Will check in again after I've tried out all the Chapter 6 stuff.  (I left the Renal/Mae'var quest till Chapter 6 in order to test if the problem I had in version 1 where Edwin wouldn't advance the quest properly was fixed)

Qwinn
« Last Edit: January 19, 2005, 11:34:49 PM by Qwinn »

Qwinn

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2005, 11:10:51 AM »
Need a hint... what am I supposed to be looking for in relation to this?

"* Blue Iron Modder, which can be experienced in the Umar Hills tavern (after returning from the Underdark)."

I'm in Chapter 6, I'm at the UH tavern, but nothing special is going on.  There's a woman named Indigo there that I don't remember from any previous games, but she basically just tells me to get lost (just as she did back in chapter 3).

A hint as to what to look for would be helpful :)

Qwinn

Offline SimDing0™

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2005, 11:28:23 AM »
Gah. Dialog typo, sorry. :( Try setting "chapter","GLOBAL" to 7 when you talk to her, but make sure you set it back to 6 afterwards.

Qwinn

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #5 on: January 25, 2005, 04:09:47 PM »
Gotcha, thanks :)

Qwinn

Qwinn

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #6 on: January 25, 2005, 10:58:23 PM »
Okay, not -totally- done yet, but I have enough notes that I think an interim report is due:

Underdark:  The Lich Nazariel

1)  I went into the Underdark knowing that there was a new area somewhere, but I purposefully didn't look up the AR reference you mentioned in the testing guidelines to see what area it was accessed from.  I finished everything in the Underdark without finding it.  I had to look up the AR reference in IESDP to find out where it was accessed from, and then scoured that specific area to find the cave.  So I guess I would say that, yeah, it's pretty hard to find (though once I knew which area it was accessed from, I found it fairly easily - at the least, you should note the area explicitly in the readme).  If you'd rather have it be an area that a player can easily find without having to be led there, I might suggest the NE area of the beholder cave... there's a passage there that doesn't lead anywhere that would be very hard to miss for anyone clearing that area.

2)  The fight was -fun-!  And quite challenging.  Very well done.

3)  Two grammatical/spelling errors in the conversation with the lich.

     A)  "Only by the warring of the infernal elves halted my resolve, and I was driven back into the depths".  Illegal grammatical structure in the first half of that sentence.  Either remove the word "by" after "only", or change it to something like:  "Only by the warring of the infernal elves was my resolve halted".

     B)  At some point in the conversation, the word "centuries" is misspelled as "centuaries".

4)  Upon exiting to the surface, I received the message that Nazariel was freed, and the xp reward, twice.  Not all that bad though, since nothing but a 5,000 xp reward for such a tough fight was pretty disappointing - at least I got 10,000 xp from the bug, heh.  Since it was easily the toughest fight I had in the Underdark (about equivalent to Kangaxx, I'd say), I'd suggest the reward should be scaled up to something more appropriate.  It doesn't have to be quite as nice as a Ring of Gaxx, but just 5,000 or even 10,000 xp is kinda... well... I hate to use the word "insulting", but it fits.



Indigo in the Umar Hills, Chapter 6:

1)  A very moving tale, very well written.  I haven't gone back to the Underdark yet to see if there's anything more to it, but in either case I did note two spelling errors in her tale:  "alltogether" should only have one "L", and the same is true of "dispell".  If there's no more to it than a good tavern tale, well, I'll say that I liked it, adds some nice depth.



Rahul Kanukia's Potion Quest:

Okay, I have a small confession to make.  I fibbed earlier when I said that I evaluated the quest by creating the potions - I intended to, but was too lazy to look up the item codes so I actually reviewed it and made my earlier comments as a result of peeking through the dialog files.  The reason I'm mentioning this now is because I actually went further doing the quest normally, and discovered a whole bunch of issues:

1)  It turned out that I was able to finish the quest in-game without creating the missing potions... because you can repeatedly turn in Invisibility potions and he'll accept those in lieu of the other potions on the list, all the way up to completing his work.

2)  There's a broken dialogue path that lets you skip way ahead to triggering the "family" encounter long before you're supposed to, and in a way that doesn't make sense:

Me:  "Well, your work's progressing, but I'm sure you're getting crazier every time I speak to you."

Jadarath:  "On the contrary, I grow happier (yadda yadda)"

Me:  "How long have you been down here?"

Jadarath:  "I can so clearly remember the day the miracle struck me.  (yadda yadda)  I'll actually be sad to leave the place.  Much happens down here.  Much that is not seen above.  Here we have both adventure and serenity.  Truly a marvelous world!"

Me:  "I... suppose.  Let's get back to business."

Jadarath:  "Fine, if it will quiet your badgering, go scour the world for the faithless woman and my blasted offspring.  Sidhe was the woman and Janie the girl..."


Something tells me this was, erm, not as intended  ;)


3)  If you test the potion for him and then he drinks it, the "lightning" special effect doesn't work properly, you just get a still frame of it overlaying Jadarath while the conversation continues.  Also, after he's gone, the "sprinkles" animation continues long long after he's gone, and it seemed to prevent me from resting in the area afterwards.  Really, all the little special effects that should go off when you start actually drinking the potions should be gone over again, needs work.

4)  As for your response to my critique of the writing, let me take this opportunity to address it now:

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The original version mischaracterised Miranda severely in my view, since it portrayed her as someone who had been reluctantly driven to extreme measures to support her child, while the Miranda we see in the vanilla game is nothing but conniving.

I don't see these as mutually exclusive.  If you mean that the vanilla game portrayed Miranda as -enjoying- what she was doing, I didn't see that (though it doesn't say she -doesn't- like it either... but who would?  I guess I just defaulted the other way than you did).  In the new context I saw her "conniving" as a result of extreme measures, and didn't really see it as a "mischaracterization" but more of an added depth, an explanation of why she turned bitter and conniving (and pretty much man-hating) as a result of having been abandoned... but hey, that's up to you.  If you really don't like the way the original did it, well, you shouldn't have to deal with anything you don't like, so I'm not going to agitate for you to put it back just as it was. 

HOWEVER... I gotta be straight with you, I really really hate the new ending.

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The change of ending means that it isn't totally obvious to the player which is the good path and which the bad. This moral dilemma makes the quest stand out as rather more interesting than the bulk of BG2's quests where the optimal solution is obvious.

There is indeed a certain kind of dilemma that BG2 is lacking and needs more of, but this isn't it.  The reason that the bulk of the BG2 quests have an obvious "optimal" solution is because, generally, the "good" way is also almost always the most profitable for the character, so be a goody two shoes and you'll prosper.  I liked the quest originally because it seemed to be filling -that- hole... the player actually had to face the rare choice in this game between real "temptation of power" versus "doing the right thing" (I think killing Vithal or not is really the only other place where such a choice between significant in-game power and roleplaying has to be made, and you can even evade that issue with pickpocketing.  Oh yeah, and the silver pantaloons too, which doesn't do anything for you till the end of TOB.  That's about it).  What you replaced it with is making the player have to choose between "temptation of power" and "sending a freaking madman chasing after a wife and daughter who are absolutely and justifiably terrified of him and running for their lives".  I doubt she'll be thanking the character from the bottom of her heart for your "help" in putting him back in their destroyed lives! 

Quite frankly, you completely -removed- the "moral dilemma".  I'd actually say the new option of sending him after his family is -more- evil than having him make the potions, and when I got to the point after you find out there were never any bandits and his being a loon had -nothing- to do with the potions in the first place (he was apparently just chugging one potion after another for no apparent reason!), and his wife and daughter run off screaming, I wasn't exactly conflicted about sending him back into the sewer to finish the potion just to keep him away from them!

My advice:  If you don't like the bit with Miranda and her child trying to find new "daddys" being involved, fine, but put everything else back, including the fact that bandits really -did- break into his home and that's why he chugged all the potions, trying to save his family, and put back the "happy" ending if you decide to give up power and do the right thing.  (I do think the original ending was cute and funny, but again, your call if you don't like it).  Cause as it stands now, I pretty much wanted to slit my wrists after taking the painful step of giving up whatever great reward would come out of the quest just to do the right thing, only to wind up terrifying a poor woman and child half to death and send them running in unadulterated terror.  The ultimate goal is to have fun... and that wasn't fun, not even a little.

Sorry if any of that comes across as overly harsh... and if you decide that it's going to remain the way it is, I won't say another word.  I just felt it important to give you the straight scoop from my perspective.

I'll add more reports later.

Qwinn
« Last Edit: January 26, 2005, 01:43:21 AM by Qwinn »

Qwinn

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #7 on: January 26, 2005, 01:22:35 AM »
One last note:

I can't test the Renal/Mae'var quest any further, because (as with version 1) Edwin fails to advance the quest properly if you do it in Chapter 6.  The first time you talk to him after being sent to him by Mae'var, he goes on about "dropping pretenses" and mentions the Night Knives and then asks to join your group.  He never sends you to kill Gethras.  This is after getting the messenger from Brega but before going to talk to him.

Sim, if you know of a variable to reset that will let me continue on from this point (and that won't then break the Brega quest), let me know.  In the meantime I'll bop around and do other stuff till I see a response from you.  Thanks in advance.

Qwinn
« Last Edit: January 26, 2005, 01:35:24 AM by Qwinn »

Offline SimDing0™

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #8 on: January 26, 2005, 08:46:02 AM »
Hmm.  I don't immediately see what'd cause it, or what you can set to fix it. Did you receive the message from Brega before you went to speak to Edwin?

And gimme a bit before I get to your longer post. :)

Qwinn

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #9 on: January 26, 2005, 04:26:14 PM »
On the first part, yes.  Actually, to give you the exact sequence of events, I got the "letter of transfer" from Renal in Chapter 3 but didn't give it to Gorch, just went on to Brynnlaw before doing any of it.  In Chapter 6, the messenger asked me to talk to Brega, I said I would but I haven't yet.  Instead I went and gave the letter to Gorch and started doing the quest normally from there.  Works fine until Edwin.

This isn't the first time I reported that one, btw.  Check a couple of the very first emails you and I sent back to each other on Gamebanshee titled "Possible bug in earlier version of Quest Pack", assuming you haven't nuked 'em all already :)  It was basically me pointing you to this thread:

http://www.gamebanshee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54803


To which you responded:

"Hey. Instinct tells me that it probably IS Quest Pack. I've recoded the entire component somewhat for v2 (although it's still pretty pants in places), so the issue might be resolved in the beta; I'll take a look in a bit."

And okay, no worries on the last part :)

Qwinn

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #10 on: January 26, 2005, 07:11:57 PM »
I'm with SimDingo on the Potion Quest (yes, I tested it too).  I found it refreshing to come away from a quest not being sure whether or not you did the right thing, because real life is like that too (you aren't always sure if you did the right thing).  Yes, it's a fantasy game, but since most of the quests have clear-cut good vs. evil paths, it's good to have a quest that isn't so clear.  And remember, you don't know Jadarath was the real bad guy until you actually join him in confronting the wife and child. 

But yeah, apparently he was searching for power even before he killed his child--why else would he be chugging potions if there were never any bandits to begin with?

PS: You can't pickpocket the really great scrolls from Vithal--I've tried.

Qwinn

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #11 on: January 26, 2005, 08:24:36 PM »
Well, I didn't leave the quest "not sure" if I'd done the right thing or not because every single option felt like the wrong thing - no matter what you do, you make things worse.  But like I said, I spoke my piece on the potion quest and I'm not going to bring it up again unless directly asked about something specific.  Sim's been very cool on how he's received most of my criticisms and I'm not about to continually beat him over the head with the only one he's seriously disagreed with me on so far.  It's his call.  I'm just saying that as is it's not a component I'd want to reinstall.  I would actually continue to install the original version and then everyone could be happy, if it weren't broken due to most of the potions not being in game :/

"PS: You can't pickpocket the really great scrolls from Vithal--I've tried."

I've tried too, and you definetly can.  You just have to do it -after- he warps back in after his last planar jump - he won't have the stuff until then.  You only have two short periods when you can do it - a few seconds after he gates back in but before he initiates the final conversation, and a few seconds after the conversation but before he warps out.  If your pickpocket is high enough and you make good use of the spacebar key to pause after each attempt, you can get everything he has with a little bit of time to spare (in fact I've managed to get everything -before- he starts the conversation).  The easiest way, though, is to let him give you what he's willing to, and then pickpocket the last few things just as he's gating out.  It's cheesy, but it's certainly doable.

Qwinn
« Last Edit: January 26, 2005, 08:43:16 PM by Qwinn »

Offline Caedwyr

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #12 on: January 26, 2005, 08:29:42 PM »
You can actually clear Vithal out after each jump.  Each time he comes back through the portal he has a few more items on him.  Using the pause, before he speaks method you can clean him out with a nice and high pickpocket skill.
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Qwinn

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #13 on: January 26, 2005, 09:25:48 PM »
Shadow thief component report:

As I mentioned earlier, I was holding off on progressing along the Mae'var quest till I heard something from you, so I was finishing off everything else.  Having run out of anything else to do, I figured I'd clear out Bohdi's tomb.  I dropped by to talk to Aran and see if he still offered to send help for that, and rather surprisingly I was given the option to tell him that Mae'var and Larell had a plot on his life.  This was rather surprising since at this point I knew no such thing, and I'm not even entirely sure who Larell is.  Anyways, just for curiosity's sake, I saved and then I took that option, and he told me to go wipe out Mae'var.  Well, what the heck, I can't continue his quest atm anyway, let me go try it.

So I go to Mae'var's guild.  Everyone turns red.  And then Arkanis Gath begins slicing through my pretty pumped up characters faster than anything I've ever seen.  I was actually pretty surprised at that, since I didn't think Arkanis Gath ever showed up in Chapter 6.

Qwinn

Offline Murdane

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #14 on: January 27, 2005, 12:10:27 AM »
Thanks for the info about pickpocketing Vithal (I guess I did it before he went into the portals, silly me). :)

As for the Potion Quest--the ending didn't bother me too much (Jadarath did after all seem sincere about reforming), but I can see why some wouldn't like it.  To each their own...and yes, I noticed that a goodly number of potions on the list aren't even in BG2. :-\

Offline SixOfSpades

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #15 on: January 27, 2005, 02:14:34 AM »
Arkanis Gath probably appeared because Mae'Var turned Hostile to you before Renal specifically told you to kill him. Makes no sense at all, considering your current orders from Aran, but unfortunately being nonsensical is no deterrent whatever from a computer's point of view.

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #16 on: January 27, 2005, 04:30:48 AM »
Heh, actually, if I did ever wind up using the original mod, I could probably wind up using the "pause" cheese tactic of getting all your BG1 gear into BG2, but just for the potions needed for that quest.  I know the red and violet potions are available in BG1, and I think the rest are too.  The only one I can think of that I might not be able to get that way would be that "Rogue Potion of Frost Giant Strength"... I still have no idea what the "Rogue" part means.

As for Arkanis Gath, yeah.  After I'm done clearing out Bohdi's lair, I think I'll go try talking to Brega and seeing what happens if I attack them then.  I'm still going to keep saved games at all critical points, though, so I can test out any potential fixes to the original problem of Edwin not advancing the Renal/Mae'var quest properly. 

Qwinn
« Last Edit: January 27, 2005, 04:44:45 AM by Qwinn »

Qwinn

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #17 on: January 27, 2005, 06:48:48 AM »
Actually, I decided to go do Brega straight away, cause I'd already asked Aran to send me help in Bohdi's lair, and I was curious if they'd still be there and helpful after I wiped Aran out (not that there's any reason they should be -aware- of it if Aran sent them out immediately, but hey, it's worth knowing if anything happens like they go hostile in the lair or anything).

Anyways, Brega tells me to go wipe out Aran.  Okey doke.  I hope by the end of this you've all had as much fun reading this report as I had playing through this and writing this report out (I was alt-tabbing back and forth as I played it and wrote this out).

1)  The first fight after walking in to the guildhall I did three times.  The first two times, the bulk of guards in the front room didn't seem aware of the fact that there was still fighting going on in the back room - they broke into the "you have a key to get into the basement where Aran is, go there now" spiel before the thieves in the back room were dead.  Then, they all ran into the room with the secret door and COMPLETELY blocked access to it.  I couldn't get past them.  Had to reload both times. 

The third time I tried it I wasn't expecting anything different, I just figured this time I'll have to beat them to the door before they cut off access.  But the third time, it went differently.  After the thieves in the front room were killed, the guards didn't give the "go get Aran" spiel, instead they bunched in a group around the door leading to the back room (thankfully not blocking it, just in a group kinda close to it).  So I opened it and went in and all the guards helped me finish off the thieves back there.  THEN they gave me the spiel ("go get Aran"), but only one of the guards went running to block the secret door room, the rest of 'em stayed in the back room.

2)  It seemed odd that all those thieves on the top floor were also mages with big contingency spells set up, but at least the same wasn't true down below.  Seemed a little odd, but not beyond the realm of probability, and I can understand doing it in the interest of keeping the fights challenging.

3)  One of the prisoners, named Tazzik, seems convinced that I was sent by Bohdi.  I have no conversation options except to indeed agree that Bohdi sent me or to threaten his life to tell me where to find Aran, as if I didn't already know.  If I tell him that yes, I'm from Bohdi, he talkes about magical locked doors and that I'll need to push a button and get a key, etc.  This seems left over from the Chapter 3 quest if you take Bohdi's path (although I can't confirm that as I've never sided with Bohdi).

4)  Behind him, in the prison room where the tortured people are supposed to be, is an infinitely spawning Renal Bloodscalp.  Seriously.  I'm literally watching another one spawn every few seconds.  I've got about 76 Renals to face right now.  They're all blue, and when I approach them they says they've fallen far due to Mae'var's treachery.   I then get the following four options:

1.  No reason.  Goodbye.
2.  Renal?  What are you doing here?  (seems odd since he just explained what happened to him, and him being a prisoner isn't that tough to figure out)
3.  I wanted to let you know I'm responsible for incriminating you.  (very odd since I did no such thing - I'm not even gonna -try- this one and wind up fighting 80 Renals, heheh)
4.  I'm here to kill Aran Linvail.  (this gets a good luck)

It was actually kinda hard to get out of this, as each and every Renal wanted to start up the same conversation with me, heh.


5)  Anyways, moving on... I went on and found the locked door, so worked my way back over the other way in order to hunt down this Haz guy and the button I need to push.  Other than Haz being convinced Bohdi sent me (and maybe you left this in on purpose, no idea) everything on that side worked great.  Lotsa traps, and even got another ring of lockpicks off Dedral, a nice fun little prize I'm glad you left in, it'd be silly to not get any thief-specific loot in this place.

6)  Pushed the button, got the key, tried to work my way back to the locked door, and am now absolutely stuck because the infinitely spawning Renals have now completely filled the prison room and spilled up the stairs and have almost completely filled the main room that you come into when you go through the secret door from above.  And, of course, each and every one of them wants to have a chat with me, sigh.  My character (named Bleys, by the way) despairs for a moment, but then yells "Eureka!", pauses the game and pulls out his handy wand of death (Control-Y) and zaps about 60 of the Renals, enough to let me get past 'em in the main room.  SEE with shock and amazement as the two-month old Dell computer slows to a crawl as dozens of Renal Bloodscalps simultaneously yell ARGH! and fall to the ground.  Get past them into the long hallway... and wouldn't ya know it, right at the entrance of it, still surrounded by Renals (about 30 or 40 of 'em managed to spawn themselves into the passageway, eh, I'll deal with those in a sec), here's four red shadow thieves who want to pick a fight in this oh-so-convenient place - sigh.  The fight proceeds at a rather understandably slow pace (can smell the smoke issuing from my video card handling all that's going on), when hilariously one of the mages throws a fireball, which sends about 30 of the Renals -leaping- to my rescue.  Aerie:  "This is so much more exciting than any circus!"  Oh, you betcha, honey - mind if I get a backrub after this?  So, finish the fight, zap another 30 or 40 Renals so I can get down past the passageway, and finally make it past the Clone War (Renal and Boba Fett gotta get together and have a few beers and swap stories sometime). 

7)  Qwinn (not Bleys) needs a cigarette after this, so he parks the party just outside Aran's room and heads out to the garage... only to come back and hear Minsc griping about hamsters in hard to reach places - UGH!  Forgot to pause!  Thankfully, the clones have yet to work their way up to Aran's room and completely surround my party... thank GOD I'm not going to bother trying to actually leave this place when I'm done (or so I think - bwahahahahah - Sim's not letting me go -that- easy).

8)  I fight Aran.  This fight is indeed quite fun.  It does seem odd, though, that Aran still has an amulet of power and ring of protection +2 on him, even though he gave them to me back at the end of chapter 3.  Hey, if he had spares, no complaints from me (snicker).  Might make more sense to replace them with something different and roughly as nice (hey, after all, if Bioware thought that all this effort merited prizes that nice, who are we to object?  grin).  Hey, gloves of backstabbing too - sheesh - between this and all the short swords of backstabbing I'm pretty bummed I installed SwashImoen now, heh.  Ooooh, wait, I got Valygar!  He can backstab!  Wait.  He can't use 'em.  But Imoen -can-, and her backstab goes up to x3 despite being a Swashbuckler... oh whatever.  Not like she's ever going to swap out the Gloves of the Master Thief for 'em.

9)  So here I think I'm done.  But no!  Guess who should show up?  Someone I'd never actually met before - Larell!  He congratulates me on doing the job well, etc. - little did I know I was doing his bidding - Brega must be working for him!  Boy, I'm gonna have to have words with him after this.  Anyways, he then decides to give me "more" work, which is to go kill Mae'var.  Okay.  Of course, I know this is all going to end badly, because during this entire conversation with me he's been "red" and hostile.  I agree to go do "more" work for him, end dialogue, and sure enough he tries to kill me anyway.  Okies - dead Larell.

10)  I'm so full of curiosity now (and quite frankly having so much fun) that I decide, okay, I -gotta- go try and kill Mae'var now and see what happens, not to mention finding out what Brega's gonna give me for this.  So, back down the hall I go, expecting to have to use my insta-death phazer on what are now seventeen quintillion Renals, but joy of joys, somewhere during my Control-Y's I must've zapped the most recent clone and they're no longer reproducing.  But, there's still a bazillion of 'em blocking the door back out onto the street, so I go up the stairs, cursing up a storm at the fact that Aran took Renal's boots of speed (can you imagine?  I would've had like 8 million of 'em!  I could give 'em away!  Set up every single person in Athlatka with them!  Imagine the productivity increase!  Cromwell could smith twice as fast, the beggars could beg at double speed, the nobles could be twice as snotty in half the time...)  Okay, seriously, for the record?  I'm hoping that if the player -doesn't- betray Renal (as I didn't) then Renal will fight me on Aran's behalf and will still have his boots of speed on him - getting those without having Arkanis Gath wiping me out was the primary thing loot-wise that had me really looking forward to this component.  Come to think of it, even if you did betray Renal, I'd think then that Aran would be wearing the boots.

11)  Up the stairs, and the guards up there realize that they were derelict in their duty of completely blocking access between the secret door and the front door, so they all rush out to get in my way.  Thank God I manage to squeeze all my characters around them before they get into their highly obnoxious positions, but not due to a tremendous and damn near successful effort on their part to wall me in and -force- me to zap another 800 Renals to get out...

12)  Okay, let's just go see Brega first (still got the Fear of Arkanis in me from earlier).  I'm thinking he's better got some nice phat reward for all this.  Approach him with the great news that Aran and almost every Shadow Thief in the city is dead (he doesn't need to know about the 800 Renal Bloodscalps stil lthere), and he... pretends he's never even met me!  And all I can do is ask "Who are you?"!  I swear to God, I have never had my lawful goodedness tested as deeply as it was at precisely that moment... cause if anyone ever deserved to get cut down for sheer audacity, it's good ol' Inspector Brega.

13)  Alright, let's go kill Mae'var.  Hiya, Gorch!  Gorch dies.  Then Valygar.  Then Minsc.  Then Aerie (sob - no backrub now I guess).  Damn you, Arkanis, damn you to hell!  Larell must be thinking this is pretty funny from whatever layer of the Abyss he's hanging out at...

I gotta beta test more often.  That had to be the single most hilarious gaming experience of my life.  That was just way too much fun, not just playing it but writing up this report too.

Qiwnn
« Last Edit: January 27, 2005, 10:13:22 AM by Qwinn »

Offline jcompton

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #18 on: January 27, 2005, 11:06:24 AM »
I suspect the men in white coats will be taking Sim away soon...
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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #19 on: January 27, 2005, 11:34:36 PM »
I hope not :(  Twasn't my intent.

Those reading this should recall that as a tester it's my job to actually try to break it, and in this case I did, by specifically doing unnecessary things most people probably wouldn't do, like accepting Renal's quest in Chapter 3 but not proceeding in it until Chapter 6, stuff like that.  I'd be rather surprised if anyone thought to test that -prior- to the beta-testing phase, so IMHO (and as a programmer myself) it should not reflect badly on the programmer for something like that getting through alpha testing.  This is precisely what beta testing is for.

To be honest I suspect a lot of the issues listed above are related to that.  The problem I have with Edwin not advancing the Renal/Mae'var quest, for example, doesn't happen if I do it in Chapter 3, and I suspect if I'd been able to finish the Mae'var quest successfully at any point, a lot of the weird things that happened (like Renal being "betrayed" by Mae'var and Larell showing up at the end) wouldn't happen.

If these problems do indeed arise from the Renal/Mae'var quest being in an "open" state, I'd suggest having Brega do a check on all the possible thieves' quests and, if he finds the player is in mid quest, require the player to finish off whatever commitments he may have made one way or the other before he'll give him the quest to finish Aran.  I'd do the same if Aran has sent help to the player in Bohdi's lair.  That alone could potentially solve a lot of problems.

EDIT:  Checking the readme, it contains the following:  "To assist Brega, ensure that Aran has not already been killed in Chapter 2, and
that the player is not in control of the thief stronghold or working with Mae'Var."   Now, I didn't interpret that as meaning that the player was "working with Mae'var" in the sense of the first stages of Renal's quest, where you're not strictly working with him but rather infiltrating.  I thought it applied to actually betraying Renal and siding with Mae'var.  However, if it was intended to apply to both (and it fairly could), well, there you go, and the fault lies in me for not properly following directions.  Either way, due to Renal's and Larell's appearance, it's clear the game -thinks- that I am working with Mae'var, so the fact that there's an unprepared-for conflict with Brega's quest isn't surprising.

I realized that it's possible my report came across as mocking Sim's exceedingly generous efforts, and if it came across like that, nothing is further from the truth.  There were good chunks of it (like the pursuit of Haz, etc.) that worked great and were a lot of fun, and the bits of the "siding with Mae'var" quest that I got hints of looked to be fun (at least for people who enjoy being evil :pirate).   When this thing is finished I expect it to be a must-install for most players.  The reason I considered it hilarious is simply because the whole bit with trying to deal with 1001 Renal Bloodscalp's, and especially when the mage threw a fireball that got 30 of them attacking the mage, was just innately very funny (maybe you had to be there).  Not to mention that I made myself chuckle for hours at the thought of giving every single citizen in Athlatka a pair of boots of speed.  That would be a pretty fun mod, actually.  Call it "Athlatka on Crack".

Qwinn
« Last Edit: January 28, 2005, 12:06:07 AM by Qwinn »

Offline jcompton

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #20 on: January 28, 2005, 08:51:15 AM »
Oh, I wasn't blaming you or anything. It's better to know about bugs than not to know about them. It just... hurts, inside. :)
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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #21 on: January 29, 2005, 07:05:06 AM »
Wow, I hadn't caught SixOfSpade's "thief related stuff" thread before.  His experience was similar in a lot of ways to mine.

By comparing, I draw the following conclusions:

1)  I was quite wrong about my belief that the problem was dependent on splitting the quest between chapters or indeed having anything to do with not finishing Renal's quest.  Actually, that sounds like a good thing - the problem seems to be far less subtle than I thought.  If the game can still think that you sided with Mae'var even if you complete the quest on Renal's behalf and kill Mae'var, and can be repeatedly reproduced, I'd think (from my distant perspective) it won't be as hard to find and nuke the problem as I thought.

2)  Six's citing the possibility that the bug went away because he uninstalled a few Tactics components is problematic, because I have no Tactics components installed whatsoever.  Which leads one to ask the followup question - why the heck -did- his problem partially go away?  I don't envy anyone who has to try to figure -that- one out.

3)  My super-duplicating Renal seems to be unique to my install.  Weird, given that we shared so many other issues.

I have a habit of archive-saving continuously.  If it would be helpful at all for me to report on the value of any local/global variables at any point during my experience, just ask.

Qwinn
« Last Edit: January 29, 2005, 07:10:02 AM by Qwinn »

Offline Opalescence

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #22 on: January 29, 2005, 10:30:57 AM »
Umm, I've got one other thing that seemed really, really irritating: I was helping good old Brega finish off Aran, except that after I managed to wipe out Aran's guild, Arkanis came over and murdered me!  Is this supposed to happen?  If it is, well, :'(.

Offline Murdane

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #23 on: February 01, 2005, 06:22:09 PM »
The Rogue's Potion of Frost Giant Strength is what a Thief or Bard creates with the Alchemy high level ability.  So in other words, you can't get it at all if there are no bards or thieves who still gain thief levels in your party, and even then not until near the end of the game.  ::)

The Brega quest--I played through some of this, but ran into many of the problems you did, and finally quit in frustration when the legion of Renal Bloodscalps came into the hall at one point and kept trying to talk to me.  I reported the problems to Sim; I found the quest almost unplayable.

Notice that Haz is there even though he was the same mage who DIED when he and the golem opened up Bodhi's stronghold in Chp 3.

Offline Murdane

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Re: Qwinn's Beta Test
« Reply #24 on: February 01, 2005, 06:27:30 PM »

3)  My super-duplicating Renal seems to be unique to my install.


Trust me--it wasn't.  It sure as hell wasn't...

 

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