Verbobonc Sewers / What Lies Beneath [POSSIBLE SPOILERS]

I am running this quest right now. I have to say this task is soooo buggy and completely ruin the fun of that whole "detective "thing.

My scenario was I first took the case, and consulted it to the gnome in the rabbit hole.
I did exactly what the gnome suggested me to do, bought the circlet before talk to Boroquin and Rakham, and did have the fun to see how their testimony changed before and after casting the relative spell on them.

I first talked to Boroquin , and he was the suspect. My party knocked him out and got the locket from him. He said the children were at the place near the church; then I talked to Rakham, he also said exactly the same thing, but the children still no where to be found. Even it seem completely unrelated, I figured probably I still need to find Panathaes to end this quest. Panathaes was so darn hard to find, he cannot be seen, only put the party member of highest spot point near by the ripple he created that he will show.

Anyway I managed to take Panathaes with me. I took him to captain Abiram , and told him that Boroquin was the culprit.(since I have 6 members so I have to turn him in first to make the room for the children). Yet even with both testimony of Boroquin and Rakham, note of Panathaes and child's locket from Boroquin, the dialog option still only has "farewell" "I change my mind" when the good captain Abiram ask me how do I know it was the day steward. I also unable to turn in Panathaes, so he just stay in my party. Oh, and in that time my logbook already said I found all 3 pieces of evident. (This is also another bug, since I got this on my logbook when I only talked to two of the three guys)

Not knowing what to do, I reluctantly sent one of my party member away, returned to sewer to retrieve the kids, thinking probably the good captain need to see the children alive then make a case against Boroquin. Yet as soon as I return to surface, the kids vanish, and my dialog option to captain Abiram still not changing.

Now I am completely lost. The quest still marks as unfinished, and I seriously think I did anything logical to play with the "detective" thing. Please just told me what I did wrong or what flag/cheat code I should write to finish this god damn quest.

 

I have yet to complete that quest also but if you look at the new content walk-thru/guide is has a complete list of the codes

 

I had a very similar issue. What resolved it for me was the following...

"Use" the child's locket that you find (drag its icon to the "Use" button in the bottom right corner of your inventory screen. This will enter it into evidence as well (though I believe the counter caps at 3 pieces of evidence).

Also "Use" the emerald that Panathaes has in his inventory while he is unconscious or in your party. I had to knock him out with a Sleep spell to raid his inventory. This will trigger some dialog with him where he identifies the guilty party and will count as evidence as well (again this may not increase the evidence counter past 3).

At this point Captain Abiram's dialog changed for me and I was able to turn Panathaes over to his custody and pursue further dialog options with him.

And, the children will leave your party when you exit the sewers no matter what you do; that's part of the quest's resolution.

Hopefully this will work for you as well. Good luck!

 

Thanks for your advice, unfortunately that does not work for me.

I already "use" the locket before, the only problem is that I didn't "use" the emerald "correctly" since I was able to convince him to come with me without knocked him out. I found out that if the emerald is "use" in Panathaes's inventory panel, it won't have the same effect as it is "use" in any of party member's inventory panel.

Anyway I "use" the locket, "use" the note, "use" the emerald, and initiated the new dialog with Panathaes with my circlet equipped. He gave my his part of testimony and I took him to the captain yet captain's dialog is not changing. I reloaded and try apprehend Panathaes not by talking but the Sleep spell, the good captain's dialog is not changing. Then I try different combination of founding the children first before turn him in with talk/knock/sleep spell with Panathaes, captain's dialog stilllllll not changing! Also the entry of logbook still mark as unresolved.

I am now 100% sure it is a bug and it complete ruin the fun of the detective work of this quest, I know there is a code list on walkthrough but didn't know what exactly the order or entry I should modified? could someone give me any advice? please T___T?

 

The quest was difficult. I had to lose a character, 7 PCs.

Issues:
1. The location of the mad man is not as listed in dialogue with the day watchman.
2. Sound triggers are not in the area of the hiding madman, but otherside of the map??? Not the child sounds.
3. The guide says cave like areas to search..but the madman is found in a dead-end. ‍♂️
4. Seeing ripples was more effective in searching than just high Spot skill.
5. The sound effects are awesome. Good job.
6. End story twist was also good. The kids names are....

 

Sorry for the necromancy, but i simply cant find the children

Spoiler

All three suspects said the children are near the well under archers eye

i searched the whole map, found all 3 suspecta, but no kids anywhere, i event went over the whole map with spell targeting (with show hidden targets from the configurator enabled) and while it does show the hidden subject as a target, no such luck for kids. i spent a couple of rl hourrs crawling trough this map, please can anyone tell me possible spots for the kids, or check my save to see if they have spawned/ spawned outside of the map or something?


nevermind after i went back to the captain he said

Spoiler

that the children escapoed the tunnels themselves

 

Interesting conception but for me this quest are impossible. There are some scripted dialogues which are good as ingame puzzles but they are unique so it's hardly to come up with self due to they are unique in a whole PC game and more like p'n'p stuff. Map is absurdly huge, no fun in walking around and checking every corner. And there are a softlock if you aren't meet special skill check, suddenly. Spend about a hour or so then checked a guide to finding out that this quest is impossible for me to complete. Even if I meet skill requirements, I'd never trying doing intended things to get special dialogues with a stewards. Gladly I don't care about rewards and no fun in a whole line so this quest is easy to skip.

 

This quest started really strong - possibly my favourite of the Verbomod bunch so far, what with finally being able to reasonably use spells such as Glibness & dialogue skills in conversation and all. The moment I realised that casting Fear on a whim following the hint given actually lead to a proper roleplaying result I was really impressed. The sewers atmosphere is great too. Unfortunately, it is just so counterintuitive that you have to find the madman before you are able to search for the kids despite one worker having already implicated the other and that one having confessed already. I tried active search, with Spot skill 22, at every single spot of the room with the tables until I gave up and found out about the need to find the madman first - and unfortunately spoiled myself about the outcome of the story in the process. It's a shame because this sort of quest really relies on not needing to consult a spoiler-laden walkthrough, but I just couldn't help but assume I had run into a bug.

Anyway, I'm still unable to actually locate the madman. Can't find any ripples in the water for the life of me, and can't be sure whether I'm just unlucky or he didn't get spawned properly. I get that with the nature of the children revealed here, it makes some sense that they would only appear after talking to Pan, but unfortunately in effect this means that it's near impossible to solve this quest organically without consulting a walkthrough and spoiling it in the process - it's not like ToEE is a completely smooth gaming experience after all, so it's somewhat natural to expect a bug. I would suggest the children should appear independent of the madman once the culprit & the description of their hiding spot have been revealed, since the madman is so much more difficult to find than them.

PS: I can actually turn in charmed Boroquin to the Guard Captain just fine without having found Panatheas, but this seems to be unintended since the response line claims "both Panatheas and Rakham implicated him". Boroquin does not actually end up in jail if I do so, but instead stays charmed with me.

PPS: Turns out the issue with Panatheas seems to have been that my high spot skill was with an NPC rather than a PC - maybe the script only checks PCs proper? Found him now. However, it remains impossible to actually deliver Panatheas to the Captain - the only option to respond to his question for evidence in this node of the conversation is "Goodbye". So, paradoxically, the only way to actually conclude the quest is *not* to talk to Panatheas at all. XD

 

Here's a fix for the most egregious issue at least - not being able to conclude the quest due to having collected too much evidence. The issue is Captain Abiram's dialogue script, which checks for the testimony counter (global variable 555, 556 or 557) to be exactly 2 rather than >=2. So if you get the two others to implicate the culprit and the culprit himself to confess it does not recognise successful completion of the quest anymore. I've changed all instances in the script to check for >=2.

Maybe something for Temple+ to incorporate into its Co8 Fixes section?

There is another issue with taking only one of the children into the party, because only the boy is assigned the script for running off on reaching the surface, but I'm less confident how to fix that.

 

I did a file search for any other reference to these particular variables and it seems to be safe. But yes, I can imagine how difficult it is trying to understand your own scripting jungle years after the fact. Thank you for all your amazing work - I've been really enjoying the writing in the NC section, which I understand is mostly yours? There were some memorable surprises there: the Viscount's daughter, his crooked advisor, the relationship of Pelorites and Hextorites, the witch sisters... It's so refreshing to see some ambiguity after the quite cookie-cutter-evil Temple.

 

Hi,

cant find Panathaes.
Rakham and Boroquin both (after being charmed/afraided) told me he is near the archers eye.
Ran the whole sewer system 2-3x times through, no ripples, even with my archers 24 spot-skill there aint a hunch of Panathaes anywhere?
Help please?

thx
justl

edit: i have checked var 536, it is set to 3 - spoke with rakham last, do i have to wait until day for panathaes to appear or should he be there immediatly?

536 Verbobonc Tunnels meet vars. 1 and 2 = met stewards, 3 = Panathaes activated, 4 = met Panathaes, 5 and 6 = kids activated

edit2: resting aint helping (no matter how long), switching the crown between the one who talked to rakham/boroquin and the one with the highest spot-skill didnt help either.

help, anyone?