I've had this problem happen twice in a row now...maybe someone can explain it to me. The last two times I've played TOEE, some of the secret doors have been missing. First, the secret door that leads down to sprial staircase from the upper level isn't there. I figured that maybe my search skills weren't high enough to detect it. But...I've tried with many different characters - most of whom are now level 10...and I can't find it. I also cast a "detect secret doors" spell on it. But...nothing. I have the same problem with the secret door that leads from area near Simigal's room to the rest of the third level. In this current game I am playing, the door appears not to be there at all. Again, I've used "detect secret doors"...and nothing shows up. (This has made life really inconvenient, becuase I have to go back to the fourth level each time via the main entrance to the Temple.) The last time I played, the door was there on one end..but NOT on the other. In other words, I could get TO the third level from Simigal's place via the door...but I couldn't get back. I did find and move a covering over a hole in the floor. But no door icon appeared so that I could use it. Most of the other secret doors are there: but not these two. ANy thoughts on what might be happening? I am still using the Atari 3 patch, if that matters.
Missing secret doors is due to save corruption. It's been discussed here numerous times in the past, which a quick use of the search function would have revealed. The only fix is to remove all your old save files and start over. Don't use quick saves or auto saves, as they are the primary cause of corruption.
Have you been using quicksaves at all? They are usually responsible for that bug, other than that, try casting buff spells to increase your search skill in whichever character has the highest score in search to begin with (Elf rogues are REALLY usefull for this) to see if that helps, or try casting detect secret door before entering the maps the door are on - divination "detect" spells work (more often that not) only after map changes.
Also, all original secret doors are saved incorrectly in the sector files (it seems like the original worlded had a bug that stored the secret door DC incorrectly), which causes invalidation of the secret door structure. This may partially explain the saved game corruption (at least the secret door part of it). This bug was there because all original secret doors had DC around 20, and that's why it was probably never found before the game release. ToEEWB, by the way, also stored secret doors incorrectly in sectors (following the way original secret doors were saved), but after a long research and some help I was able to come up with a correct way to store secret doors and their DCs. - Agetian
