Qwinn´s Ultimate DAO Fixpack v3 (no longer beta!)

[MartenX123]

Qwinn, if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. Reading through your updates is amazing. I am halfway through Orzammar, playing as a dwarven noble, and it is unbelievable how much seems to be bugged.

[Qwinn]

Hey Marten, welcome!

 

And sure, if you find a bug in an area I appear to have covered and didn't already address (I feel I'm done with everything in Orzammar proper pre-Branka quest, though Filda will get more work once I get to Ruck), please post and let me know what I missed!

 

I am playing as a human mage and so I had to force-spawn Mardy to test Of Noble Birth, but I'm sure there's other bugs only a dwarf noble would see that I may have missed. Dwarf nobles should be very happy with the fixpack though, pretty much 98% of the possible resolutions to their origin were bugged to the point of inaccessible.

Edited February 24, 2017 by Qwinn

[MartenX123]

Dwarven nobles should definitely be happy, sounds like a satisfying conclusion to the Bhelen betrayal story arch that defines their origin story is not even possible without the fixes.
If you want a beta tester for the Orzammar changes (playing as a dwarven noble) I would definitely be up to it.

[Qwinn]

I appreciate the offer, but an official beta testing would slow things down more than I'm ready to sign up for. I'll just have to ask for patience. At this point I'm more interested in new bug reports from the unmodded game.

 

Anyways. Today's update. I've had to spend a ludicrous amount of time on fixing A Mother's Hope now that I got to Ruck. For what is really at heart very simple quest, fixing this took a ridiculous amount of work (including requiring 5 new main plot flags and a defined flag, a new creature script for Ruck, and modifying pretty much every file associated with this quest. Sigh.).

 

Forget any of the updates I've posted previously regarding this quest. Here's the new complete changelog for it:

 

 

 

11. (v1.0 - REDACTED, See below) "A Mother's Hope": If you asked Ruck to trade after completing Filda's quest, it would put a permanent quest marker on Filda, but it would remain impossible to talk with her.

 

12. (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": Further investigation revealed the true bug causing the above issue (and many others): Filda was supposed to disappear after completing her quest (in any way) once you left the Commons, but instead she disappeared when a King was chosen (and she did have some post-King dialogue that could therefore never be seen, as well as making this quest uncompletable if you didn't finish it before the King was crowned). By removing her at the proper time, many reported issues including the redacted one above can never happen.

 

13. (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": Getting Ruck to tell you his name was originally intended to be a key part of this quest, but later it was just assumed you magically knew who he was even if he never said his name. This caused various issues interfacing with other code and dialogue that was written with the original intent in mind. The smoothest way to fix all this was to actually complete the implementation of the original intended design, where you have to actually hear his name to know who he is. It kinda kills the whole concept, however, when the name "Ruck" appears floating over his head the first time you see him from a distance. Ruck will now be identified as a "Dwarf Scavenger" until you find out who he is, at which point his name will change to "Ruck". Until then, the only thing you will be able to tell Filda is that you never found him.

 

14. (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": If you talked to Ruck before accepting Filda's quest (why?), you couldn't mention Filda to him, but the quest would nevertheless be activated and journal entries would be added out of order and out of context. Meeting Ruck without her quest active will no longer activate the quest. If you then talk to Filda, you will still (as before) have to go through her initial dialogue without being able to mention you already found Ruck (sorry, that would take an additional TON of work for little gain.) If you accept her quest at that point, the resulting entry describing the outcome of your previous meeting with Ruck will be immediately added to the quest journal and you can immediately turn the quest in if you wish (or you can go talk to Ruck again so you can mention Filda to him as well). It's not the perfect solution, but at least the quest journal no longer gets broken.

 

15. (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": Speaking to Ruck, you could promise him you'd tell Filda that he died heroically long ago. Due to a bug, however, you could only tell her that if you killed Ruck, whether you made the promise or not. Making that promise to Ruck is now what correctly enables that option (and will be available whether or not you kill Ruck after making that promise). The player is also no longer forced to say "Yes., but you... might not want to hear it." before having this option available to them.

 

17. (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": If you killed Ruck, you can no longer choose the options "(Lie) I'm sorry, Ruck's dead." or "Lady, your son is a dung eating lunatic", as was intended, with the same restriction implemented in other similar dialogue paths.

 

18. (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": If you promised to tell Filda that Ruck is dead, making him grateful to you, a dialogue line and its scripting indicate he was meant to give you an item - "Ruck's Sword" - but there is no such sword in game, and the way the line was disabled caused the conversation to crash abruptly and prematurely. Ruck will now give the player a regular dwarven longsword if he's grateful, and the dialogue won't crash at that point anymore.

 

19. (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": If Ruck is grateful to you when you ask to see his store, he says you don't even have to give him money for his things. Scripting comments indicate the intent was that he'd give you one item from his store for free, but that merchant functionality did not yet exist at the time that line was written, and in the end it was never implemented. Ruck will no longer offer free stuff from his store.

 

20. (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": If you have Oghren or Zevran in your party when you say "I should go." in conversation with Ruck, they will advise putting him out of his misery. The options to persuade them otherwise were bugged and inaccessible. If you had Zevran, you were forced to kill him, while with Oghren you did at least have a way out of the dialogue with Ruck alive. The options in both cases to ixnay the idea of killing Ruck are now accessible.

 

21. (v1.0) "A Mother's Hope": If Filda learns that Ruck is alive, the dialogue, graphics, quest journal and comments all indicate that she leaves immediately for the Deep Roads to look for him, but she'd actually stay where she was, still praying but facing wherever you were standing instead of the stone. She'll actually leave now. (v3.0) In v1.0 she would just vanish (and due to the bug where her leaving was conditioned on a king being crowned instead of her own quest, she would reappear if you left the Commons and returned before the King was crowned - oops). Now she will actually run to the Deep Roads exit (during which she can say her final line) and disappear forever (per script comments: "Filda runs off and eventually dies off-screen in the Deep Roads, searching for Ruck.").

 

22. (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": Several other dialogue paths with Filda also ended with her praying toward wherever you were standing instead of the Stone. This should never happen anymore.

 

23. (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": In a couple of Filda's dialogue paths, you could only ask about the Deep Roads and the Darkspawn there if you'd already been told about it.

 

24. (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": Ruck will now only end a conversation with "Then... I have done what you wished? Ruck answered your questions?" one time. If you talk to him again and end the conversation, you will now get one of several other shorter ending dialogues that were previously inaccessible.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Woohoo! These first two are awesome, particularly the second one:

 

85. (v3.0) Restored a previously inaccessible short dialogue with Oghren in Ortan Thaig. Can be seen by initiating conversation with him after leaving Ruck's Camp while in the area and before reading Branka's journal.

 

86. (v3.0) Restored a previously inaccessible long dialogue with Oghren in the Dead Trenches. Can be seen by initiating conversation with him after talking to Kardol while in the area and before meeting Branka.

 

87. (v3.0) Removed "Goodbye." option in initial dialogue with Kardol that was only supposed to show in subsequent conversations. Using it could also lead to having an "I'm leaving" option available in subsequent conversations that was only supposed to show in the initial dialogue and could elicit obsolete dialogue if chosen later.

 

88. (v3.0) "An Admirable Topsider": Fixed exploit where, by placing all party members around the warrior's grave, pausing, and then having each one spam-click the altar, you could acquire the quest reward multiple times. You cannot get more than one sword now.

 

89. (v3.0) "Anvil of the Void": Your available responses to Branka supporting Harrowmont or Bhelen were inconsistent and sometimes unavailable when they should have been. You can now ask Branka to support whoever's quest you accepted to find her (your choice, if you accepted both).

 

90. (v3.0) "Anvil of the Void": If you sided with Caridin, he offers you a boon. You can ask if Oghren wants anything for a high approval boost with him. You were supposed to have a similar option for Shale, but it was bugged. The option to ask if Shale wants anything is restored.

 

 

And, because it just didn't have ENOUGH bugs fixed already:

 

25 (v3.0) "A Mother's Hope": If you have both Oghren and Zevran in your party when leaving conversation with Ruck, Zevran is the one who advises you to kill him. If you agree, however, Oghren responds as if he were the one to raise the issue.

Edited February 27, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

91. (v3.0) After dealing with Branka/Caridin, if you don't go straight to Orzammar but instead go to the party camp and talk to Oghren there, he brings up the party map allowing you to go to Orzammar directly. If you did so, Oghren would not be in your party and a Disembodied Oghren would deliver comments during the Assembly. Oghren will now be automatically added to the party and will be present in the assembly when this route is taken. Note that this route is not recommended.

 

92. (v3.0) Talking to the Captain of the Guard in the Commons after completing the quest "Seek out Steward Bandelor" will no longer put a permanent plot marker on Steward Bandelor.

 

And now i'm going to have to finish up designing the new prizes for crowning a king. I realized I wasn't taking into account the difference between 1 handed and 2 handed weapons in my previous proposal (2 handed weapons, like Ageless, get much better stats in general), so I'll be working on it some. Will probably take me a little bit to get that done.

 

Also, apparently the "weaken darkspawn" effect is bugged and non-functioning, so that takes it off the list of what I was planning to add. (I know... if it's a bug I should just fix it... but in this particular case I don't think they ever even started to implement it so there's no way to know what the intended effect was. I think the Dragon Age Rules Fixpack just winged it... honestly giving nearby darkspawn -5 attack and -5 defense, as the Fixpack says it does, seems overpowered to me. I wonder if using multiple weapons with this ability using that Fixpack -stacks-... have 3 party members using weapons with that ability for -15 attack and -15 defense, I could see white/yellow darkspawn hardly able to hit or defend at all.) Then again, I'm just basing all that on the fact that I haven't found where the code that *would* implement that is yet... he describes it as a bug, not just unimplemented, so maybe I just haven't found it yet and it's mostly there *shrug*.

 

EDIT: Found it, and actually, I'm wrong! The -5 attack and defense *is* in the code, and apparently, no, it cannot stack. Can't actually see where it's bugged yet... I'm guessing the bug is in the .2da, cause the script looks mostly fine to me.)

Edited February 27, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Regarding the 91 fix above, I'm actually thinking it may be a better fix to just disable wide world map travel from the Deep Roads altogether. It really doesn't make any sense at all to be able to travel to anywhere in the world directly from the Deep Roads, when you can't even do so from Orzammar, unless there's all these passages up to the surface that are clear of darkspawn and that you can't actually ever see anywhere you get to go.. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

I think even if I don't eliminate it entirely, I should at least disable it from the point of meeting Branka in the Anvil until the coronation. Because Oghren's dialogue will be *completely* broken anywhere else you go from there until the coronation is done.

 

Come to think of it, Oghren may get broken if you *ever* leave Orzammar with him before completing the plot. And I did see dialogue meant to avoid that possibility, but I don't think it's functional. I'm going to see how badly I can break things by leaving with him, and if it's bad, work on restoring some of that functionality.

 

EDIT: Nah, other than the 91 fix where he doesn't appear for the coronation, leaving Orzammar with Oghren early (aside from between the anvil and coronation) doesn't do much harm. He'll always just reply "Stop wasting time, warden. I'm not here to chat." until the Orzammar plot is done. The only event in his dialogue I can see where he'd be *required* to say more - the Broken Circle Fade sequence - should work properly. There's a fair few lines in his dialogue dealing with him refusing to go to the surface until you're done finding Branka, but they appear to have been cut in favor of the option of just making him refuse to say anything until you do.

 

However, the period between the anvil and the coronation is still another story. And I just discovered, being able to get to the wide open world with Oghren between the anvil and the coronation is probably the most horrific thing that could happen in this game, heh. Oghren becomes a tool by which you can travel to ANYWHERE from ANYWHERE, at any time, whether the game needs you to be locked out or not. The amount of bugs this could create could be seriously catastrophic for a game.

 

So. Yeah. Once you're in the anvil, the only place you'll be able to travel (via Oghren's dialogue or via the Anvil exit) will be to Orzammar and the coronation. It's the only way to be sure.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Heh. So this one is being retracted:

 

90. (v3.0) "Anvil of the Void": If you sided with Caridin, he offers you a boon. You can ask if Oghren wants anything for a high approval boost with him. You were supposed to have a similar option for Shale, but it was bugged. The option to ask if Shale wants anything is restored.

 

Definitely disabled deliberately. Why? Because they had the wrong voice actor record the associated line. It's not Shale's voice that gives the response, it's Caridin's voice! Oh well.

 

As for the world map bug, I can see why this happened. The engine makes it EXTREMELY difficult to disable the wide world map completely, at least when the Underground Map is active. I got it to where the first time you click on an exit the world map is disabled, but if I leave the map and click the exit again, it turns back on. Argh. Will give this some thought.

 

EDIT: Got it. This replaces fix 91 above.

 

91. (v3.0) "A Paragon of Her Kind": It will no longer be possible to access the wide world map from the Deep Roads after the Anvil has been resolved and before the coronation. You can still travel freely in the Deep Roads at that point, but you can only exit the Deep Roads via Orzammar and the coronation. This prevents some fairly catastrophic Oghren-related bugs if he reaches the outside world at this point in the quest line.

 

 

(Note: It wouldn't be difficult to extend this fix to prevent ALL access to wide world travel from anywhere in the Deep Roads. I kinda think it's silly that you can do so from deep underground but not from most city areas, and it kinda kills the atmosphere and sense of danger to know that while you're at the bottom of the world you're just a short walk to the nearest area exit from the safety of your party camp (and free cure of all your injuries) and the rest of the world. Unfortunately it's unknowable at this point if it was intended or not . I'll keep it restricted to the REALLY problematic window for now, but would be happy to hear input from anyone who does think it's a bug that should be fixed for the entire Deep Roads. I probably wouldn't be hard to convince.)

Edited February 28, 2017 by Qwinn

[LadyHonor]

Personally I say go for it. It makes no sense as you said for you to have to use city exits to access the www map and can easily go from underground to anywhere in ferelden.

[Qwinn]

Ow! Geez! Owwww! Okay, okay, I'll do it! You didn't have to twist my arm *that* hard, you know *sobs*.

 

91. (v3.0) It will no longer be possible to access the wide world map and travel to anywhere in the world directly from the Deep Roads. Not just because it's objectively silly, immersion breaking and inconsistent with the map behavior everywhere else in the game, but it can also lead to catastrophic game breaking consequences if done at the wrong point in the Orzammar plot line.

 

92. (v3.0) When talking to Oghren after the Anvil is completed and before the coronation, he'd be wearing his helmet and then it would suddenly vanish.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Qwinn