So I'm doing my first 5.8.1NC run through. NG party, 5pc's So I finally decide it's Temple time... I clear out the side tower, and use the secret tunnel to go after Smigmal. Slay her faster than normal (I'm pleased with this party for sure). Go down to do battle with Falrinth. Normally I slay him, however he disappeared on me, bummer. After grabbing the skull out of his second chest, I went back to the tunnel to head to town... forgot burne would leave me... and I had given him some equipment I didn't want to lose. So I loaded... At this point I believe I experienced a wall glitch. I cannot find the secret door in his office anymore. It also wouldn't allow me to leave that section of the tunnel. I found a work around by fleeing combat and eventually got out. However even though now everything else is working okay, I can still not find the secret door. I don't believe there is a solution to this, other than loading a save that is far longer ago than I'd like to go. However my only real question, is am I screwed or will the skull appear at a later time?
I've encountered this in various places. Usually, going someplace else on the map, saving, quitting the game and reloading, then going back should solve it (Not sure all these steps are necessarily required, but it should work in general).
I had (almost) this exact same thing with a 5.8.0NC LG 3 character party. In my case my NG bard already had clairvoy/clairaud cast for the fight since I was unsure where all the bad guys were with the new content. My bard also had dimension door so I just took the skull that way. Interestingly, I could move inventory from one character to another even though they were separated by secret doors. Once secret doors broke here, they were also broke for my Thrommel and Temple Commander encounters. My Good party didn't have to fight Thromel for Fragratch, so they just teleported out to Hommet near Black Jay's. My bard was badass enough to take care of the Temple Commander and his Bugbear by himself. Safety tip - have 2 dimension door spells available, not just 1. The biggest PitA was not being able to use the drain passage from Farinth's to Dungeon Lvl III proper. I played multiple games on either side of this one and couldn't re-create this issue. Interesting game, it was also the first (only) time I was able to trigger the reactive temple thing for the fire and earth temples. Don't know if it was supposed to be there yet, but I had it with this game. Forgot to give any of my characters intimidate, so I was stuck with a bard disarming the temple electrical trap with no trapfinding. It worked somehow. I had my "epiphany" with the freakin invisible troll. I don't normally waste spells burning trolls, but the wiz fried him up nicely. The cleric wanted to raise him up and do it again, but the party had bigger issues at the time. I had two saves prior to the Farinth encounter, neither went back far enough to prevent the secret door glitch in this game, so I just played it through. Not that difficlult if you have clairvoy/clairaud and dim door available. I did give myself the sandalwood box once the party reached Dungeon Lvl IV.
