Well first off, not really the tower, but what the hey. I got Otis twice and Screng and Hruda, and after clearing all the high priests and Hedrack and some other minions, went by Nulb. I knew Otis would take a hike, but why does Screng and Hruda? And it's not like they tend shop again like Otis either. Oh well, guess they run off to Verbobonc to do a report or something. But just running off without saying anything was weird. Also Hruda's death message seems bugged. Her portrait shows but doesn't show any text or speech. Anyway the tower. After talking to Brune about the skull, no matter how long you wait, he will still be researching it. I rested for 40+ days at the inn, went by the temple and killed off some stragglers, did some left over quests, and he's still researching? What gives? Rufus seems buggy now too. After clearing most of the temple and having Otis run off, I figured I'd take Rufus along. Ok so, he gives me some line about only being able to run around for a short while because he has some business in Verbobonc. But eh, him leaving immediately after leaving the tower is a little odd. I asked him again, walk to the door, and as soon as we're outside, he runs back in. Dude? Priscilla or whatever the assistants name is in the tower. I don't remember being able to recruit her in 5.0.0 so nice addition. But I remember her doing all the skull breaking, so how does that work out? I couldn't test it out as Rufus kept being stupid. It's good to see water temple working right. No more garbage about Belsornig running off in the ending, when you've killed him. Juggernaut is mighty beefy, if I hadn't had lots of jacked up weapons this could have turned into a fire temple style fubar.
I'll throw in more possible bugs since I'm trying a different party. Well this one affected the previous good party too - killing Falrinth doesn't actually kill Falrinth according to the ending dialogue. It's the old Belsornig thing. Wonnilon is a whiny guy ok. You take his crossbow and he turns invis until you return his kit he says. You do that but he runs off as soon as you switch areas. I guess you could return the kit and then talk to him, but you can't talk to something that just shows its blue thingie thingie. I just want to enhance your sucky gear you stupid gnome!
Another bug is that after solving his puzzle, you can ask burne whjat you can do now you've cleared out the moathouse... even if you haven't (I'd only killed the frogs and courtyard bandits at this point, not even the bandit leader et al)
Will check into these, thanks. Re: Burne and the skull, I can see why that would be frustrating for people who try to exploit the sytem by doing unreasonable things like waiting around for 100 days or whatever. That scenario is actually not on a timer; it's dependant upon how much you've learned about the temple, and you only learn more by progressing further. So you could wait around for 100 years and Burne still wouldn't have finished his research if you hadn't gotten off the pot yourself. Waiting to get desired results - whether rewards or other specific outcomes - is never a good idea. If you just play your game, it won't seem like Burne is taking an inordinately long time. Incidentally, this was done primarily to overcome the goofyness of the previous condition, in which Burne could complete his research instantly. You didn't even have to leave the castle.
Well, just a thought, but maybe the old way wasn't that bad an idea? Or maybe add some new conditions to the script, as by the time i showed him the skull, I had killed every high priest, Hedrack and so on. And had only Zuggy to go. I'm not sure how much more completed it gets. Of course it just shaves off 100 hp from her, but still. I could show Burne the skull right after encountering Falrinth, but.. What if I don't take the hidden tower route to him, chances are on the way I will have killed most, if not all of the high priests. Or if I take the tower route, I might just kill them off anyway because they're not that hard to take on in one go.
Ok I did a quick playthrough with an evil party and noticed some stuff. This time Falrinth isn't even mentioned in the ending credits, which is fine, as long as he doesn't end up 'fleeing' when he's supposed to be dead. Not sure why the goodie party got other results. Anyhow, seems like the Deklo drow - Lareth thing is working now, didn't test it out but saw a note. His repeating crossbow has the desc of a falchion. As for an actual possible bug; repeatedly intimidating Oolgrist used to give you a useless pendant and a nice acid resist belt. In 5.0.5 you get neither despite the dialogue saying otherwise. Was an interesting party. Two half-orc fighters were the stars, I made a half-orc thief with cleavers too, but didn't impress me that much. Fighter dudes were doing 80 hp criticals pretty often, so cleaver sneak attacks fell short. I'd imagine 5 half-orc fighters with periapts of wound closure and an NPC mage for weapon upgrades could go through the entire game without resting once.
Slave driver. It's a good thing for you that the game doesn't support fatigue and exhaustion. Al the Deklo Drow: Perhaps his inane fighting strategy has something to do with the falchion description and also the fact that he never uses the sleep bolts.
Rufus and Burne are reacting to the game's Story State Variable (game.story_state). It's a simple method to approximate how far along you are in the game. Since there isn't a live DM to react to things, it's the best you can do without investing crazy amounts of time figuring out every possible decision a party could make, like resting for a while, running around killing things, etc. Or maybe it's not the best thing - feel free to offer an alternative. Just bear in mind that game scripts will never be as intelligent as a human with an actual perception of what's going on - they're just a chain of if/then/else receipes to approximate the above. The same principle applies for most of the other things you mention. The only thing that could be considered a real bug, as I see it, is the Falrinth business. But it seems like you can't reproduce the bug, and in his 'dying' script a flag is set to indicate he is dead, so it seems like maybe you didn't kill him after all. IIRC, he used to be able to regenerate like a troll, or maybe he still does, so maybe you defeated him but not killed him in the past?
Well for the skull, maybe have it revert to the old 'instant skull revelation' when you've done all of the temple. Because well, there's nothing else to do other than go settle your score with Zuggtmoy. As for Falrinth, I don't know. I know about the regen, but he was as dead as a doorknob that's been recycled into something else not resembling a doorknob. I'll have to make another goodie party and test it out again. And just for good measure, I'll throw in a complaint. Darley's pendant is now cursed, aka noremove. I don't know why. It used to do an instant CTD when you tried to right click another neck piece to replace it with, so you had to manually remove it and then replace it with the other one. Now the crash is still there, just that the (useless) pendant is cursed. For no reason? It's not like the CTD isn't still there. I'll throw in a request also. Replace any of Darley's spells with something useful? I've done some proto editor editing, but didn't bother replacing the spells because I don't see myself hiring the largely uninteresting char any time soon again anyway. But hey.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the skull research is resolved as soon as you learn about Zuggtmoy (i.e. when the game.story_state variable equals 6). You can learn about her from talking to Hedrack, or from the prisoners on Temple level 3 (it used to be very hard to find that particular node which revealed the information, but that's no longer the case in 5.0.5). Possibly from some of the node NPCs too, not sure. Either way, I suppose making it contingent on either learning of Zuggtmoy or Killing Hedrack is possible for cases like this. As for Falrinth, it has absolutely nothing to do with your party's alignment. The script that prepares the endgame slides just checks whether the 'Falrinth is dead' flag is set or not. If it's not set, it means Falrinth isn't dead, and the slide describing his escape plays. If it is set, the the slide doesn't play. It's as simple as that. In your case, either Falrinth didn't really die, or somehow the script that sets the flag upon his death failed to run for some reason.
Darley starts out with the following: charm person, magic missile, mage armor, blur, cat's grace, vampiric touch, blink, summon monster III, dimension door, stoneskin and mind fog. For starters, that's about half as many spells any other mage will have at level 10. But I guess as an alu-demon she has other stuff to do than read scrolls. Charm person is not terribly useful as by the time you get her, there are mostly monsters left. Magic missile, her only evocation spell, again, not terribly useful at that point in the game. Mage armor, hooey. I'd rather have her use magic circle against align from a wand or scroll. Blur, again, better alternatives out there. Cat's grace, dunno. By this time I will have my dex chars set up with all the dexterity gear their armor can handle. Vampiric touch, ya no. Not too big on damage and I like Ghoul touch effects better. Blink, never tried it, but it 'sounds' useful. Summon Monster III, useful as one round distractions as the enemy kills them. Dimension door, why? What's she going to do once she teleports? Stoneskin, ooh, something useful. Mind fog. Well, by this time, the stuff remaining will probably be either a. immune, or b. not bothered by lowered wisdom and will saves, or c. have saves so high this will never land in the first place. Where's your haste Darley? Did you study clairvoyange, no? At this point I notice I've overwritten my mage exclusive party with a silly neutral party experiment. Guh. Anyway. Glitterdust? Can you turn peeps invisible? Maybe throw a fireball to clear out 30 annoying goblins in a room in one round? No, none of that. You're an enchantment specialist, that's not really very good at it, at all. Which is funny when her stats rival your PC mages. Also, Ashrem has no domains, oversight, or is it because he's maaad?
