Most skill checks aren't too hard to figure out but there were one or two that puzzled me. My last playthrough was the first in which I returned the exiled dwarven king to the throne. It happened more or less by accident. After a fifteen minute lesson on the nature of dwarven philosophy I was able to show the dwarven king (who's had hundreds of years to ponder these matters) the error of his ways. A bit ridiculous perhaps, but fun none the less. However, I don't quite know how I was able to ask the king-in-waiting of Stone and Shape (haven't seen the option before). Which skills/attributes are involved? I'm also wondering about the possibility to threaten Wellington with a female character. I've always been able to do it (with the disgusting little gnome caving immediately) but this time he laughed at me and raised the price. And my persuasion level was quite high. Is it perhaps a strength check or something else? Finally, I've read somewhere on this forum that one can convince Gershwin (in the conspiracy quest) to either return to skulls peacefully or to not accept them at all. Haven't been able to do either of those things myself. When I'm telling him that the skulls are dangerous he simply raises his price and after I've given them to him he says that I can't have the skulls back preventing any further dialogue. At this point I can only steal them or kill him. What have I missed?
I think an intelligence of 10 is all that's required to have the Stone/Shape chat with Loghaire and convince him to go return to the throne if you pick the right dialogue options, so long as you've talked to his son about it first. As far as I remember, you don't need any CH or Persuasion at all oddly enough As for Wellington, yes I'm pretty sure it's a strength check and I'm pretty sure it's 10 again. You can also use strength to dissuade people from attacking you in bars, as they love to do. For Gershwin I have no clue - I just killed him! No one cares with him being tucked away in that corner of the map.
Re: Thanks for such a quick reply! Okay, I had intelligence of 12 so that makes sense. Good to know. Heh, didn't know I could do that (the bar thing I mean). It should be able to check the strength of the half-ogre oaf standing behind you instead though. How dare you suggest that I kill the upstanding academic that is Professor Benjamin Gershwin - Master of Phrenology? The insolence! That is to say I don't want to hurt him for role playing purposes.
Re: Actually, there are two ways to get the invitation from Wellington for free and neither of them involves strength. The first, the polite way, requires an amiable reaction (81 or more) and 4/20 or more persuasion. The second, the aggressive way, is possible by passing a melee check. 8/20 or more required. You can convince Gerschwin to give you the skulls by passing a 4/20 persuasion check and picking the correct dialogue lines, but only if you gave them to him before learning from de Cesare that they are part of a conspiracy.
Re: Re: So I must complete the Gershwin quest before I talk to Grak and receive his quest and then proceed with the de Cesare's quest? When can I speak to Gershwin about the skulls again? Do I have to tell de Cesare that I've given them to him before the dialogue option appears? I also have a slight problem with this being meta-gaming. How on earth do I find the skulls without talking to de Cesare? Gershwin tells you to search for the skulls at the mausoleum, where you find the matches leading you to the Wellington. I know you can't get any info from de Cesare without talking to Grak first, but once you've done that he tells you that the skulls are in the warehouse. How can you figure that out on your own?
You can accept Grak's quest and even complete it. Having de Cesare mention the skulls for the first time is the trigger you want to avoid. So yes, either pause the Grak-Cesare path before mentioning Grak's name to de Cesare or after doing so but before talking with de Casare outside of the club. If you did it the way I described, you can talk to Gershwin about the skulls (which he already has) right after de Cesare asked you to get them. You have the option to tell de Cesare that you already gave them to someone, but it's of no substantial consequence. If you choose it, he'll ask you to get them anyway, if not, you'll still be able to talk to Gershwin normally. By accidentally stumbling upon them if your character enjoys breaking into random building. Such was the situation with my first Arcanum character, for example. I'd look at it from a different perspective and call it a failsafe. If you stumble upon the skulls without knowing about their significance and sell them to Gershwin before talking to de Cesare, the game gives you a chance to get them back and continue with the conspiracy quest. If you sell them to Gershwin while already knowing they're part of a conspiracy - hey, you're on your own, choices and consequences. By the way, I just recalled there is also an aggressive yet non-lethal way to get the skulls back from Gershwin (again, assuming you gave them to him before talking with de Cesare) which requires threatening and passing a 12/20 melee check.
Re: Re: OK, now tell me why my dwarven Lady's Man with CH 18 doesn't get to 'comfort' Lillian Misk. I've tried all the dialogue choices, both before and after the investigation, though not after T'sen-Ang, in case that matters. Is it a dwarf thing? (I think I managed to track down and undat three DLG-files once, but now I have forgotten how.) No kidding. I'm always at a loss when an entire group of armoured adventurers gets ignored in favour of checking a single stat like Strength or Melee. And what if the PC is a mage? There's more than one way to skin a Bedokaan!
Re: Re: As per usual, thanks for correcting my horrible misinformation. I'll really have to undat Arcanum at some point and learn more about the game from the files. Yeah I think I was playing "If someone stands in the way of true justice, you simply walk up behind them and stab them in the heart" kind of character at the time, one who was so much of an egotist that he had no problem breaking into a warehouse so he could sell what was inside to better serve the "greater good" and make him more capable at fighting the true evils of the world. I think with nearly all characters I make I just bypass Gershwin entirely, or don't give him the skulls once I know they're part of the conspiracy, so it rarely becomes a problem for me.
Re: Re: DATBuilder is my undatting tool of preference. I'm not sure. With the help of Virgil's Debug Menu I tested both pre- and post-investigation dialogue with Lillian Misk with a human who had maxed out all stats and social skills. Even with him, I couldn't make the comforting dialogue line as much as appear. I also think that in all the playthroughs I've had, I may have seen the possibility of chosing that line, hm, perhaps once or twice. From what I gather from internet research, the requirement is charisma 18 and should be available after the investigation. From what I understand from Lillian Misk's dlg file, the option should be available one way or another, just resulting in different outcomes depending on factors such as charisma, gender and alignment.
Well, the first time I played through the game with my female elf I was a bit surprised at the opportunity to 'comfort' Lillian Misk. But hey, I'm an explorer, so I, uh, 'explored'. Next time I played I was already an enemy of Caladon when I got there, so whatever didn't happen didn't surprise me. This time is my first time playing with UAP: I'm going to assume that Drog didn't mess up. Looking at lines 31 and 32, the only difference I can see is the check for Charisma. So Charisma 18+ results in some comforting, and Charisma 17 and below results in Mrs Misk calling the PC 'evil', apparently without an actual alignment check being made. (I'm not saying that's a bug though, as she's entitled to her opinion.) lf16 0 and lf16 1 seem to use local flag 16 to check that the PC hasn't already received the line before, and then sets it so that the PC won't receive the line again. That leaves lf 4 1, which I assume is a requirement that local flag 4 has been set to 1, presumably by another line in the dialogue. One line that seems like a likely culprit is the one where she can be told to "pull herself together", since that option only appears once, and is easy to skip even by a thorough investigator trying to follow up on every part of the main quest. (And probably the most likely one to be skipped by someone looking forward to some 'comforting'.) Or could it be one of the lines about Durin's Truth? (I'm saving that whole quest-line until after I've picked up Loghaire.) That would make some kind of sense, since after the PC has gotten that book, there would be no more need to speak to Lillian Misk, thus enabling the "when your quest is over, you, might return to me?" to prevent this scenario: "Hello, I'm back, but only for that book there!" She refuses to sell the book right now, but jfkoski listed some haggling requirements, so I'm going to assume that the PC needs to have been to the Place of Voices in order to get the option to pursue that line of dialogue. But that could be wrong, and I'm pretty sure my elven thief stole the book the first time I played the game. EDIT: OK, with the DATBuilder (thanks for that!) I managed to find my problem. Apparently local flag 4 is set to 1 when asking about Roseborough and its gift shop, which I suppose requires one to have read the book that was buried with her husband. I guess that's an easy step to miss, and I pretty much ignored the main quest when testing the side quest. And studying the file closer, it looks like line 181 should have a fl 189 in the last bracket, after lf 7 1: Because there's no other referral to 189, and it would fit perfectly, and the goodbye line for a male PC gets a float (fl 185). Though unless a male PC who has 'comforted' Lillian Misk isn't supposed to be able to buy Durin's Truth, the lf 8 1 in the male PC goodbye line should probably be changed to lf7 1, like it is in the female PC goodbye line. Though perhaps the space between "lf" and "8" in the male PC goodbye line is a typo that prevents the flag from being set? A typo preventing a bug? Assuming that there is a script that checks for lf7 in the first place, because it isn't mentioned anywhere else in the DLG-file. Local flag 8 needs to be 0 to offer this line: All those local flags seem related to the haggling for Durin's Truth, which makes me wonder why someone who's been acting like a scoundrel should pay 1750 coins instead of 2000 coins: Is it a slightly lower price because of the 'comforting', but without the ability to haggle it down further due to being a scoundrel? Or more likely, is it a bug? Local flag 5 is set when the PC insults Mrs Misk and gets shown the door, so that seems like a more suitable flag to set for a scoundrel: But that flag isn't checked for elsewhere in the DLG-file either, much like local flag 7. The SCR-file for Lillian Misk checks for local flag 5 (floats 161) and 9 (floats 187). So I guess that buying Durin's Book as a 'scoundrel' is actually impossible. And if the PC haggles for 1750 coins without having the coins, they'll suddenly be a scoundrel when returning with the coins. At least according to my interpretation of these files. It sure looks like changing lf9 to lf17 would be wise for all lines pertaining to Durin's Truth. Or changing the other local flag 9 to 17, but then the SCR-file would have to be changed as well. Which might be a good idea, since it could then check for local flag 7. After the 'comfort' fadeout the SCR-file also contains a call to script 1098 which seems to be Lillian Misk's number. So is the script calling itself? It's calling line 24, which doesn't exist in that script. And then it returns and skips default before line 15, which directs to "dialog 180", which is the aftermath of the 'comforting'. It looks wrong and broken to me, but what do I know? I'll keep this in mind and see what actually happens in the game when that time comes. It was a long time ago, so maybe there never was an aftermath to the fadeout with Lillian Misk, and that's why no one has noticed that local flag 9 is used for two very different things? And with no aftermath, local flag 7 is never set, and neither is local flag 8, except when pertaining to Durin's Truth. With all this stuff, I kind of wonder which lines were the broken ones that Drog Black Tooth fixed.
After looking further into the issue I too came to the conclusion that asking about Roseborough after reading the book from Victor's grave may be a required trigger. Checked it out and indeed, after both finishing the investigation quest and asking about Roseborough the comforting line becomes available. Charisma is the only factor determining whether it ends in success or not. Gender only determines the negative response and race plays no role whatsoever. You can compare the 01098Lillian_Misk.dlg files from Arcanum3.dat (vanilla game) and Arcanum5.dat (UAP). From a quick comparison I gathered that the changes consist of minor text corrections (added a missing comma here, a missing quotation mark here, things like that) and functional corrections in the lines related with haggling for the "Book of Durin's Truth".
I did compare them a bit by opening them both in different notepads. But there were a lot of lines, and none that I noticed any differences in. When I checked again, I only noticed that line 258 has been changed a bit, since the reply to a female PC contained three entire sentences that basically repeated what Lillian Misk had said in line 252 just before. Are you using a program to scan for changes in the texts, or are you just much better at it than I am? Looking closer at the haggling I now wonder why a stupid PC uses local flag 13 to keep track of 2000 coins for the book, when a smart PC uses local flag 8 for the same thing. With the IN-check to make sure that only one of the two is shown, both of them could have used local flag 8. Though it does allow for a stupid PC to come back later with higher Intelligence and haggle for the first time, because the option of asking about the book in line 210 doesn't check for local flag 13, only for the local flags set by smart PC price agreements. Formerly stupid PC was drunk the last time, and claims to have no recollection of any agreements?
I didn't used any special program, my method was rather makeshift. I opened both files in notepads, maximised them and while they were in the same position (same line at the beginning of both documents), quickly switched back and forth between them (mouse at the task bar or Alt+Tab) while concentrating on spotting differences. When I was done with a page, clicked page down in both documents and repeated the previous step, until I was done with the whole file.
O Muro, where the hell is the Virgil debug menu of which you speak? I can't find it on the download section (it's not the same as Virgil cheat dialogue is it?) Cheers.
I think whenever someone refers to "Virgil Cheat Dialogue" he actually has Drog's "Virgil's Debug Menu" in mind. It can be downloaded from the link in the first post here.
