Verbobonc Sewers / What Lies Beneath [POSSIBLE SPOILERS]

zackchill, when you go up to the surface with the 2 kids, the kids are supposed to run away, so your game is working correctly. All you have to do now is return to and talk to Captain Abiram to see if you have done enough sleuthing to be able to complete the quest. If you are still stuck and want a walkthrough for solving this quest, then see the following section in the game guide sticky thread:

25. How to initiate all of the quests in Verbobonc and the War of the Golden Skull

Verbobonc quests:

What Lies Beneath

 

i've saved the 2 kids.. arrest the culprit... abiram wont take him.. i got furious... i kill abiram....captured by the watch....go to jail..doesnt have enough money to bail myself... got executed in front public... what a silly great ending...

 

Ok, after reading this thread I think I know what happenend, was probably this multiple talking to steward issue. But honestly, even assuming the bugfree version, I think there are two issues with this quest.
Firstly, it takes too long to find the fricking stewards in the first place. They are city workers, not hiding out. You say that they have fixed routes, but nothing tells you what those routes are and the place is a giant maze. And then you have to find them two or three times if you play this properly. It would be nice if you could do something logical, like following the lit torches (it doesn't make much sense that torches are also lit off their routes, does it?).
Secondly, this quest requires relatively insanely high skill values in two skills where you get by very well with much lower values everywhere else - and no real hint that this will be much different in this quest. But even if one arrives at your conclusion that a rogue with maxed out Spot and Gather Info should conduct the investigation, it is hardly possible to build such a character when you discover that you need such a guy only at level 12. Which means you basically have to buy the cheat items for 35000 gp to get a stab at the 1000 gp reward, hardly a sensible decision.
In the end, this makes this quest rather frustrating. There could at least be regular spot checks where you can see the DC and have a chance to roll a 20 when you run in circles long enough, and similarly in the dialogues. If you make an auto spot check at every dead end, it wouldn't even give away the location in the rolls window.

 

In my opinion these things are what makes "What Lies Beneath" stand out in the game.

We, (myself included) have gotten our heads into a DnD mind set and so, we go about attempting this quest in a DnD manner.

What we need to do is stow our swords and armor and don a detective's cap, then things start to come together.

In all fairness, we have been warned that this particular quest is not like the usual "Go there and kill that" type of task, but a "How, why and whom" type instead.

When I take these things into consideration, I start to think more in line with what that devious ...... Person who put the quest together had in mind when he chose to challenge my ability to deduce.

 

Could somebody list the coordinates or describe the places where Panathaes can spawn? Gazras guide says cave-like areas, Gaear says ends of hallways, i searched all of these places with PC that has 19 spot skill with robe of eyes, stopping in each of them looking for anything suspicious to no avail. I don't care about spoilers, just want to get this extremely frustrating quest out of the way, Don't get me wrong ... I like elaborate quests as much as the next person but I need to know that they are progressing correctly and I'm not just wasting my time, which isn't the case here. I don't even know if he did spawn at all... I got the advanced proof finder rep after I got the night steward to confess (after that i KOd him to find a locket but no further updates occured which makes me wonder if this was even necessary). Do I need to leave and re-enter (I did btw.) to get Panathaes and later on the children to spawn?

EDIT: After about 4 hours I finally found him. He was in top left passage, his entire body except for head covered by tunnel wall which means no waves visible, in short, worst placement ever. After that finding the children was matter of 5 minutes.

http://oi62.tinypic.com/72vh90.jpg

 

If that is the intention, it sure does. Nothing says "replay me" quite like running around in circles in an empty boring sewer for hours of real time.

 

I believe there are quite a few threads on this forum that discus this quest and they all advise the player to try and think like an investigator and not a cRPGer. I agree, I found this quest rather tough until I did what was advised.

 

Made me chuckle.

 

The way I think is influenced by stimulus from the world and the stimulus that is represented here is dull boring and a complete waste of time. The story comes in no way anything close to something like Baldurs Gate. The Concept of this quest appears especially poor because anything else contributed to the game by thee team of circle of eight was so well done that I was always inspired by the content to leave this world and dive into the fantastic world of the game. The sewers never worked for me that way. But since the team made this only a side quest it never had to to. For that: Thank you. It's only an option. But not for me.

 

So you did. What clever deduction did you then make about the fact that torches are burning off the stewards' paths, when it is their task to light them? What did you learn from the fact that a ranger can track "Cabbage NPCs" around every other corner? Did you find it reasonable that the good captain wouldn't take Panatheas off your hands, when he had asked you to bring him in in the first place? Did it add to the sense of mystery that a locket, a confession, and a testimony by a third party count as two pieces of evidence? Where did you continue your search after charmed Boroquin wouldn't tell you anything anymore, but still hadn't given up any info on guilty Rakham? (Answers to some of those are in the walkthrough and this very thread, of course, but we want to pretend we are investigatig this for the first time, do we not?)

 

I thought I'd revive this thread since I've noticed a few things in the implementation of this quest that seem to produce the opposite of the design intent -- at least, as I understand the design intent.

First, the people you have to Spot appear under specific conditions that don't seem to have anything to do with why they appear. Even if you've been told in-game where to look, and have enough Spot, looking won't get you anywhere if you haven't jumped through all the hoops yet. This is pretty much the epitome of the "rote operation" that we aren't supposed to be performing.

Second, I've caught the two stewards walking outside the area geometry. (One of those ToEE things; I've seen this on some of the Temple levels too.) This can make them undetectable by any kind of rational search. I get that finding them is supposed to be something of a PITA -- hence all the one-way exits and so forth -- but surely getting screwed up by the engine isn't intended. Not sure if there's any way to stop this short of making them completely stationary, though.

Third, making the locket only become evidence if you Use it sent me running to the walkthrough. Strictly speaking, we're not using the locket in the game-world, we're mentally reclassifying it as "evidence," which hasn't been a thing with any other item interaction in the game. Couldn't the item description say something? I'm presuming that I'm not supposed to be approaching this like an Infocom game.