Can't get past some quests.

Discussion in 'The Temple of Elemental Evil' started by arerwar, Aug 27, 2019.

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  1. arerwar

    arerwar Member

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    Hi I have a problem with two quests. "Wanted: Kendrew Commonworth" and "What lies beneath". The first one, I found a walkthrough that says he is at the brothel in Nulb, but he isn't there for me.

    The other one is to find some kidnapped kids in the sewer. I can talk to the 2 guys, while wearing Circlet of Discernment. Then I cast fear on one and charm person on the other, but I can't pass the skill check on any of the dialogue options. I am level 14, have a character with max diplomacy and another with max intimidation, but none of the options with none of my characters will succeed. The charmed/feared character just mutters something and walks away.

    Hoping someone can tell me how to solve this or at least skip the quests? I worked out how to flag the quests as completed with a console command but the quest NPC didnt consider it complete, I suspect because it requires an item.

    Thanks.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2019
  2. arerwar

    arerwar Member

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    I just want to get back to playing the game and killing things, please help.
     
  3. WinstonShnozwick

    WinstonShnozwick Established Member

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  4. arerwar

    arerwar Member

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    I read that already... it doesn't help.
     
  5. WinstonShnozwick

    WinstonShnozwick Established Member

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    I haven't played through in a while tbh so maybe one of the people more involved in Verbobonc would know.
    What I can tell you though is that I picked up on where you said you use console commands in your save. Console commands are not supposed to be for normal gameplay and using them in a normal playthrough could have unknown cascading effects on the code running behind the scenes that might end up breaking something somewhere else, which is a possibility of being the case here. Console commands are best left for modding usage to test things.
     
  6. arerwar

    arerwar Member

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    I only tried console commands after I had this problem. I still have my save without the console ever being opened.
     
  7. sigofmugmort

    sigofmugmort Established Member Supporter

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    Kendrew is in the brothel, ground floor, in the kitchen area
     
  8. arerwar

    arerwar Member

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    Thanks, I killed someone there a while back, can't remember who it was. It might have been him. But the quest is not updated. When I look there now the entire ground floor is empty apart from the lady that greets you.

    I think my bigger issue is the quest to save the children which has a problem with the dialogue skill checks not working.
     
    Last edited: Aug 28, 2019
  9. arerwar

    arerwar Member

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    Fuck it, I just uninstalled this. I enjoyed the mod to this point but this seems buggy and/or stupidly designed. Also making me wait 4 days to post on this forum and then no good replies makes me think nobody really cares about the mod and it isn't worth me trying to persevere when there are other things I can play.

    I'll tell you what I found though in case someone somewhere wants to fix it. I tried every possible method to get the dialogue skill checks to work, it wasn't working. I was level 13. So I tried console cheats, gave myself 3 levels. Got Indimidation/Diplo up to about 23 ish. Still didn't work. Gave myself another level, and used a feat to give improved skill and used that on diplomacy. Finally it worked. But at this point I am 4 levels higher which I didn't earn myself which makes me not care about the game anymore, and loading a savegame to grind 4 levels of random low level encounters is a terrible idea.

    It may be a bug, or it may be that it is designed to not work unless you have an absurdly high dialogue skill. But if that is true it seems bad to have a game about so many choices, yet force the player to max a certain skill (and pick a feat to make it even higher). And there is no way to just skip the quest, and you can't get any other quests without getting past this one. So you hit a brick wall at level 13 and the only solution is to cheat or grind about 4 levels of random encounters without even knowing that you should. Only then can you get past this and get more quests.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2019
  10. Allyx

    Allyx Master Crafter Global Moderator Supporter

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    Considering you paid nothing for the thousands of freely given man hours making the mod, you certainly got your money's worth. The mod has worked for other players without using the console to cheat the system, but I suspect some of the DC's are set incredibly high (especially the search DC for finding the children - who couldn't possibly have a hide skill high enough to evade detection), but it is a mod specifically for high level players as the whole Verbobonc City map is inaccesible until after the Temple has been cleared.

    I would have replied sooner, if I had something to add that would prove useful to you. This mod hasn't been updated for a few years and activity on these forums has slowed to a handful of new posts per week. ToEE is after all a 16 year old game now, it's understandable that support for it, even from a fan site dedicated to it has warned somewhat.
     
  11. arerwar

    arerwar Member

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    I didn't get close to thousands of hours, I got about 5 hours and they were bad. A straight line dungeon with a mini dragon at the end. I don't care about cost, I care about quality and wasted time.

    The high level players thing is a bad excuse too. I completed TOEE at level 10 as you are supposed to. I had barely done anything in co8 before it gives this quest. If this quest is supposed to be done by higher level characters then don't give it at level 13, and at least provide 4 levels worth of quests or at least a higher level area to grind in before giving the quest. All I got from co8 was a straight line dungeon full of spiders and then a mini dragon at the end of it, and then a few "go kill this guy" quests. It got me from 10 to 12, and then I got another level from goofing around. Then hit a brick wall with this quest.

    Co8 should be taken offline if it doesn't work reliably.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2019
  12. sigofmugmort

    sigofmugmort Established Member Supporter

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    I have played NC around 30 times and on the few occasions I have tried the "What lies below" quest I usually wait till later since there are several quests you can get and finish as the New Content quests are mostly NON-LINEAR

    I get around 15-20 hrs of enjoyable and reliable game-play
     
  13. Allyx

    Allyx Master Crafter Global Moderator Supporter

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    I said it took thousands of man hours to make the mod, not to play it. It seems the straight line dungeon I made with a dragon at the end worked well... so that's cool.

    If you only hit level 10 by the time you finished the Temple of Elemental Evil, I guess you had a large party of PC's? So the XP you gained up until that point was split in more ways than it was designed to be, is that a fair assumption?

    I usually play with 5 PC's in the party and hit 13th level by the end of the Temple of Elemental Evil, and naturally have attained enough ranks in the skills required by the quest you are having issues with.
     
  14. arerwar

    arerwar Member

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    The lvl 10 is because I left the xp limit on in the original game, so I could beat the TOEE bosses in a legit way like the original game and not get an easy ride from outleveling them. I turned it off once the final boss died and I unlock Verbobonc. But that meant by the time I reached this quest I was about 12/13.

    I am still not sure if that quest is bugged or just requires a very high level of diplomacy. Everything about it is weird.

    1) First off, if you attempt it and then fail the dialogue check, the character wont talk to you again. So you have to reload or the quest is probably now broken.

    1.5) Also when you use Charm Person, sometimes the character walks away and you have to chase after him and try the dialogue. But sometimes Charm Person makes him become controllable by the player. Both ways still said "Charmed" and had no resist, it just seemed to behave in a different way yet for no reason. Not sure if this affects the dialogue checks or not.

    2) The game gives no indication that you should be a certain level for that quest or it is unwinnable.

    3) Even regardless of level, if you don't have at least one max conversation skill at every level (and maybe a feat too), then it also seems unwinnable. This seems like a bad idea, especially in TOEE which has no requirement for diplomacy in the base game. It wouldn't matter if the quest was optional.

    4) If a higher level is required, it should provide some repeatable quests or at least some higher level areas to grind in to get those extra levels. If I go to the temple or world map, I just get low level bugbears etc. At 13 it is like rest, 1 or 2 fireballs, and repeat 1000000 times. Not good.

    5) I don't think it is just a generally high requirement, and more of a massively end game type requirement. I needed to add about 4 levels and a feat to pass it. That is a big discrepancy. I see now if you turn the xp cap off from the start, you could probably close that gap just from the temple, but wouldn't that trivialize the base game?

    6) If someone can't do the quest or doesn't want to, it should let you carry on playing the game. But the few quest NPCs I could find wouldn't talk to me while the Kendrew and Lies Beneath quests were still uncompleted. Yet I had no way to complete them.

    I am sure this mod is good if you can reach the later content which I read includes some great combat focused areas, but I couldn't get it to work and I didn't want to cheat or grind bugbears for weeks. On another forum someone said it could be Win 10 that messes it up but I doubt that. Either way it is a shame such a big and respected mod ended up with barely anything for me to do and used up a lot of time trying to figure out why.

    ps. The straight line dungeon with dragon at the end was pretty cool. I liked how there were some enemies that had a magic immunity shield so I couldn't just win each battle with a fireball like usual. Also the white dragon was a fun challenge because it kept trying to melee my characters. Sadly this was one of only about 3 quests before I hit the brick wall.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2019
  15. WinstonShnozwick

    WinstonShnozwick Established Member

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    I agree that the requirements for this quest are obscured from the player in a bad way. It's one of those solutions that is typically only known by looking it up as a wiki/developer knowledge. Having specific spells required for something is an interesting idea, but I've never been a fan of the enchantment/illusion spell schools so this sort of quest makes you go out of your way to complete it. Definitely could have been implemented better.

    It's been ages since I've played through the game, so I don't recall if at this point you can just go talk to Brother Smyth and he will unlock more stuff for you, or if everything is through the Verbobonc city official at this point.

    I wish we could get new models/animations in game so the white dragon could actually be a white dragon, that would pretty much make that quest perfect IMO.
     
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