Just started playing the game. First, thanks and condolences to those who have documented the problems and tried to fix this thing. Installed Patch 2, the Co8 fix and the .dll fix. I've read about the myriad bugs trying to find the problem I've been having but haven't seen it yet. Here it is -- when i get to Hommlet and begin to pick up the little quests, my log book stops updating. It shimmers as normal when you get a quest but when I look, nothing is there. Not only would this make it difficult to remember what to do but worse, the plot lines won't advance unless the quest is actually in the book. I've started several games and this problem doesn't always happen, or rather, it doesn't always happen at the same time. I'm not sure if it's a sequence issue or what. I'm afraid of getting deeper into the game and having it reoccur, necessitating a new start. Anyone ever hear of this? thanks in advance.
AFAIK, all problems with quests not updating/completing are due to having an NPC in the leftmost (first) position in your party (in terms of the row of portraits displayed at the lower left corner of the screen). Switch a PC to the first position and your problems will go away. This is a known problem since the release of ToEE and was somehow not completely fixed as there was an easy workaround.
also, can you think of any other bugs I might run into that haven't been fixed because of easy work arounds?
Really big bug If you want to avoid a really big bug, stay out of the Fire Elemental Node. Things get painfully slow in there, especially when it comes to combat encounters. The game can not handle combat in the Fire Elemental Node where there are a lot of combatants, especially with fireballs, and flames flickering back and forth, etc (the Fire Temple can be nearly as bad). This major headache can make one combat take nearly forever to finish, and everything, including trying to move the mouse pointer, slows to a minute crawl. Troika obviously did not play test this level enough. It clearly shows this. This is my experience. Is it anybody else's too ?
I agree that the fire node is also bad. I routinely had to save the game at every interval as I would have to CTD myself to get the game forward. Not good. Why the nodes are even there are beyond me. True, you do get the Orb gems, but other than that, they are nothing more than elaborate mazes that add little to the plot or story development. You could avoid them completely and not miss them. I would of gladly forgone those nodes for more random encounters of parties, NPC's and sidequest rather than the nodes. Frankly, I think they are boring considering what you get out of them.