BUG - Can't recruit Pishella after killing *spoilers*

I just completed the Retribution quest by killing one of the traders, letting one escape. After completing the quest by speaking with Burne I checked the Co8 companion list to find out Pishella is recruitable as a companion, yet no matter how much I talked to her the recruit option wasn't available.

Luckily I always have a dozen or so saves I cycle every time, and I could test the option does appear normally until you kill the trader/s. The last save where I could recruit her was the one in front of the trader, pre-buffing, just before confronting them with the assassin's letter and starting the fight. As soon as the battle is over, even without reporting to Burne, she won't be recruitable anymore.

Is it safe to just load that save, recruit her, and then kill the traders? What I'm afraid of is that killing them will change whatever flag that doesn't make her recruitable again, and that in the future, if I ever decide to temporarily dismiss her, I won't be able to get her in my party again.

 

Well, fuck. I've seen, in older threads, other small issues were fixed by the devs releasing a quick hotfix that could just be dropped in the game folder to work. Any chance for something like that? Or even instructions to fix this myself?

Thanks for the confirmation either way, I'll try to test if killing the traders right away keeps the option available, and if recruiting her beforehand will in fact make her dismissal permanent, just in case.

 

Are you using temple+? You could post on "https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/temple-support.98897/page-2"

 

I am, and good call, will do.

 

Yep, can confirm that dismissing Pishella after killing the traders makes her unrecruitable too. There's no way around it unless I never dismiss her again. Asked on the T+ thread too, hope there's a fix

 

It makes sense that she won't join after you've reported it. I guess the buggy part is that it's triggered before you do.

However, in the grander scheme of things, it would make sense if Burne investigated the incident regardless of you reporting it by yourself, so the outcome of him and Pishella shunning you would be the same. I suppose that's one of those cases where you don't explicitly implement it due to the effort involved but treat it as an abstracted given.

 

Wha? What salty language?
Thanks for the instructions, will definitely do this and see what happens.

Wait, is it normal that absolutely no new dialogue about the traders issue appear for both Pishella and Burne? Because you are making it sound like there's a in-universe explanation given for why she wouldn't join after the quest, but her dialogue is the exact same sans the "hey why don't you join instead of rotting between these books", she doesn't refer to any quest event or anything like that. Burne doesn't either, after getting the reward, and joins me no problem. Am I reading too much into this or did I fall into a bigger bug hole than I expected?

Either way, thank you both for the help. Do you think are there gonna be consequences like breaking the rest of the quest or something if I do that change?

 

I see, I'll refrain from that from now on.

By "triggering the ambush" you mean showing the letter to R&G and then choosing the [Attack] option? If yes, Burne isn't congratulatory at all, he says the taking to the council line. Either way I wouldn't say they are shunning me, they act exactly like normal towards my NG party, the only difference is literally just lacking the recruitment option for Pishellla.

I think it makes more sense to discuss this issue for what it is (a flag in the code telling me I can't do a thing, whether it was put on purpose or not) instead of pretending, for the lack of a less accusatory word, that it's part of the NPCs's reactivity to my actions. Again, love the help and not hating at all, but it's only making things more confusing to me lol, my last post I even wondered if there were a bunch of new dialogues I wasn't seeing meaning I actually fell in a rabbit hole of bugs in the quest chain I wasn't aware of

EDIT for clarity: if Sitra straight up tells me this was intended I'm fine with this, but I genuinely don't understand yet if it's indeed intended or just rationalizing why an unintended consequence of the code is justified in retrospect. If it's actually intended for Pishella to not join after making justice with my own hands that's okay, and knowing that I wouldn't even have asked in the first place because it would kinda be cheating, but the lack of new dialogue about them hating me for my actions made me think it was just a bug

 

I misremembered, Burne only shuns you if you give a cheeky answer about the affair. I guess Pishella should do the same.

 

I usually show the Assassin letter to Burne before confronting the Traders with it. Burne seems to reluctantly accept the fact that you may end up killing the Traders. Once you kill them in Nulb, and then report to Burne, he becomes overjoyed with the news. Have you tried that sequence and then tried to recruit Pishella? I wouldn't know, as I have never tried to recruit her.

 

Ah I see. I showed him the letter and told him to consider I might bring vengeance with my own hands, and he was kinda neutral about it. Definitely didn't shun him, not before nor after, and his and Pishella's dialogues are still friendly like they have always been. Definitely no reason they wouldn't want to work with me.

Huh, you say at the end of the questline she might be free for companionship again? Could be, can't really try right now though because I'm still low level. Something I may consider testing someday, but for the purpose of having Pishella in my party right now it doesn't really work.
Maybe Sitra can confirm this?

 

No.
What I meant earlier is that Pishella should be modified such that she will only shun you under the same condition that Burne does.