Keeping Dante...

So, I've looked up Dante in various places and everywhere says that, when delivering the gold back to King Praetor, if I don't give Dante credit, I can keep him. Unfortunately, I don't have any dialog options where I don't take credit.

First, the king threatens to arrest Dante and I can either beg the kings mercy and continue, or threaten the king and fight everyone.

Next, after I give the king the gold, I can either give Dante credit or ask for more money. If I ask for more money, I am offered more, but now the only option I have is to give Dante credit.

Is this a bug?

 

I think you have to ask Dante to wait somewhere where Praetor can't see him before you return the taxes.

I don't know how it works with Drog Black Tooth's patch, but that has worked for me before in vanilla Arcanum.

I had Dante wait in a hallway before I entered the throne room and it turned out okay.

 

Why does everybody insist on keeping that sad alcoholic of a priest in their party? There are so many other interesting followers to be had, and still people go stampeding for this boring old sod.

What's so good about him anyway?

 

I tried having him wait, but he wouldn't rejoin.

I was unaware that this was a bug. I don't really see how. I got around everything by making Dante wear hexed leather armor, talking to the king, then reviving Dante.

Well, most label him as being "free", so he doesn't correctly impact your party count. Indeed, I have 6 followers with a follower limit of 4 (Virgil, Jayna Styles, Magnus, Gar, Dog and Dante). Since he's free AND he has very nice heals (does he have the same levelling scheme as Virgil?) I figured, "why not keep him?"

 

The reason he's free is because he was meant to accompany the Living One for the tax quest only. The tax quest is in turn the only reason he joins the Living One in the first place, so he would have no interest to stay with him after fisnishing the said quest, no matter if he would be given the credit ("Yay, I will be the head of the church again!") or not ("Ugh, I've got to get out of here and get drunk somewhere").

Of course he does, that's why we can see Virgil casting Shield of Protection every now and then.

 

I don't play with the UAP.

Yeah... It's mostly about cheating and taking advantage of the free follower thing.

However...

Dante gets to be pretty decent as a follower if you keep him in your party long enough. He starts casting Jolt on the tougher enemies once in a while. His heal spells are potent enough to work on people with fairly high technological aptitudes (making him more useful than Virgil, when it gets right down to it). And he does a decent amount of damage in melee combat (when he actually attacks somebody).

And the best part is that, unlike Raven or Perriman, you can ask him to heal you. I abuse this privilege like crazy to take care of minor injuries.

Perriman should be a better follower. But in vanilla Arcanum, he doesn't do much beside casting Illuminate a lot, summoning Fire Elementals that don't kill anybody and casting Necromantic White spells about half as often as Dante would in similar circumstances.

Raven is great for story reasons, but she spends more time running away from some of the monsters or casting Body of Water on herself than she does healing people.

By contrast, Dante is far more useful as a healer and fighter. Even if it doesn't make any sense to take him with you into the Black Mountain Mine instead of going back to Dernholm.

He's also a decent pack mule. So you can carry a lot more junk around than you could with Perriman as your new cleric-type guy. And you don't want Raven encumbered for those times when she actually uses her bow.

In some of my games, Dante was the only one who would benefit from some of the magic armor I found. So there's that too. If you're feeling obsessive compulsive about that extra set of Mystic Chainmail, you can give it to him so you don't feel like you're wasting your cool loot.