Roan's Almanac of All Things Dwarven

When I grabbed this book from Magnus' inventory he started some dialogue and I chose a line that said "You'd like to keep it then?" which I think he denied, leading to me keeping it. I thought that meant that he was all right with it, but instead the entire party immediately died from Quench Life animations. Replaying the situation a few times I eventually noticed that Magnus leaves the party right before everyone dies, so I kind of wonder if it's a bug, considering that he doesn't protest as much as I think would be warranted before killing the entire party.

The way to avoid this unfortunate turn of events seem to be to tease him with disposing of the book, and then choose the dialogue option with the "Give it back to him" within brackets. And then grab it a second time, with no reaction from him. That's how I got hold of his gauntlets one time when I felt I needed the extra Dexterity. (Though that was an earlier save which I didn't continue with.)

When I figured out who was responsible I thought I'd read something about it somewhere, but googling for it turned up no mentions of instant death curse for grabbing his almanac without his permission. So does anyone know what's up with that?

 

It's a known bug, I'm pretty sure I heard somewhere that it's somehow incorrectly linked with Falcon's Ache and the curse there but I could be way off the mark. Do you have the UAP? If you do, then I think it's just one of those things that's going to remain unfixed - if not, install it as it might be the solution.

 

Don't install it mid-game, though. Saves won't be compatible.

There's a similar instakill-quench-life bug with Magnus when choosing one of the dialogue options after killing the Schuyler's with his help, though I'm not sure in which version (as in, whether the UAP fixed it or not).

 

This did occur in the UAP. After finally finishing my second playthrough I installed a second Arcanum and patched it with 1074 and UAP so I could start my third playthrough. (You know, apart from all the false starts that never got past level 12 or so.)

So there are old, known dialogue bugs that didn't get patched? Oh well. It would be kind of neat if there was some kind of override folder where one could drop individual dialogue files, and thereby patch the game little by little. I think NWN used to have that. I remember using it to replace some new portraits with their old, copyright-violating versions. I also remember Arcanum's WorldEd using individual files in a folder at some point, but then they changed it to single DAT-files that apparently have to be taken apart and saved again every time one opens a module for editing. Or something like that it seems.

And yes, Falcon's Ache was my main suspect. One script to kill them all, and the death screen show them.

 

Yes, I should have mentioned.

 

You could say Arcanum/data/ is the override folder. You just need to know what files and in which subfolders need to be placed there for the override to work.

Dialogue files are stored in the dlg folders of Arcanum's dat files (arcanum3.dat and arcanum4.dat for the game + arcanum5.dat and arcanum6.dat for the UAP). If you'd want to tinker with them, you'd have to extract those files with an undatting program (e.g. DATBuilder), modify them (e.g. notepad) and place the changed files in the Arcanum/data/dlg/ folder.

 

Indeed. I surmised as much from a recent gravedig, in combination with a look at the various folders and files I found in an "Undatted" folder. Good to have that confirmed though, in case I ever feel a need to fix something. If I throw in an altered dlg-file, would that take effect in a current playthrough, or would I have to start a new game? I'd imagine that the saved games only contain flags and quest states (and other changes to the world), but not dialogue that grants or checks for those flags and states. But maybe I'm missing something?

 

Indeed it would.