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

[Qwinn]

"You gave the Lothering merchant a 10% discount. 10% seems small to me... this guy is willing to pay 100 silvers just to run off some people. 100 silvers is a LOT of money at that point. I don't really appreciate a discount unless it's sizable, so I vote for 25%."

 

I wouldn't worry about it - his initial markup is so much higher than most merchants that even with a 25% discount he'd still be more expensive than the guy in the tavern. And yes, he did give you 100 silver to begin with which is already a lot, and the guy is established as a greedy miser, that makes me think he's less likely to give you an additional bigger discount, not more likely. I'm okay with 10%, Does 10% fix the bug that he said he was giving a discount but didn't? Yes. Bug fixed. Moving on.

 

"You asked for a suitable reward for catching all the nugs in Orzammar. Wouldn't Nugbane be that prize?"

 

Theoretically yes, except Nugbane is actually in the inventory of the Mines commander, it had the stealable flag checked, but couldn't be stolen because it was equipped. I can unequip it as a fix, but I can't move it off him because I want the item to be somewhere else and consider that a fix. I was contemplating the Dead Metal Bucket. I know there's a mod out there that puts the Dead Metal Bucket in the inventory of the gangue shade, who drops nothing decent, and that's not a bad decision either. I think I will wait until I've gone through all areas and see all possible bugged quest rewards before deciding where to reimplement ungettable items.

 

But I'm glad you mentioned this - it just occurred to me that you could steal a second Nugbane off the Mines Commander in the Assembly after the coronation. I'll have to fix that too. I might as well fix Hardy's Belt being stealable twice from the Quartermaster in Ostagar while I'm at it.

 

"Or if you want a subtle Pokemon reference (gotta catch em all), give the painted skyball as a reward."

 

Heh. Painted skyball is already in game though. If I add anything, I want it to be something that is inaccessible otherwise, as I said above.

 

"If as you say the toolset is pulling unpatched scripts, it would explain why my modded script in the override doesn't have the 104 patch fix for "stealing success but nothing gained". That suggests I need a script that includes that fix. Do you have such a script, would be willing to upload one, would be willing to tell me how to fix my script, or look at question #4?"

 

I'll address the stealing stuff in the other thread you created about it, except for the following:.

 

"4) I've never used any of your mods. Can I install your old mod on a current game? (Would it include that stealing fix as a script that I could edit? would it allow stealing in tactics menu?)"

 

You can probably install my mods in a current game, but a lot of fixes won't work if you've already been to an area where the fix is supposed to work, and I can't guarantee that won't make some things go flaky. I don't think the toolset will pull up my version of the stealing script just by installing my mods.

 

"5) Oh, one of my mods may add more banter triggers to areas, and also seems to make all members speak out when triggered. I think having all members have a 100% chance to comment is better than a 33% for each."

 

I rarely touch area files. Only one so far is the first level of the Mage tower, and I'm actually thinking I will probably retract that fix, the poorly placed trigger I moved isn't THAT badly placed. I do think I will have to eventually touch the Korkari Wilds and Jowan's intentions area to fix a couple of undisarmable traps, I don't have a thief in Ostagar yet so I haven't got around to reimplementing that one yet.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Oh, and, I'm half convinced I was wrong about the toolset pulling up pre-patch scripts. I haven't found a script yet that isn't behaving the way it looks in the toolset before I mess with it, which I should have by now if there were invisible patches at work. Dialogues may be another story. The patch notes claim to fix the Leliana dialogues becoming inaccessible at higher approval levels, but that was still very much bugged in the version of leliana.dlg that comes up in my toolset.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Since I haven't officially posted this one in this thread yet...

 

 

96. (v3.0) "A Paragon of Her Kind": The implementation of the rewards given by the Kings at the end of this plot is gobsmackingly bad. It is supposed to be based on the amount of support you were able to get while working the quests. Note that Harrowmont's reward for high support, Endrin's Mace, was inaccessible in game due to several of the bugs previously listed regarding his support (you simply couldn't get his support anywhere close to high enough). But the stats on all of these rewards are incredibly low level quality, with Bhelen's low support reward being MUCH better than his high support reward. Here are the four possible rewards:

• Harrowmont High Support: Endrin's Mace. Tier 6 Silverite. +10 cold resistance, +15 mental resistance. That's it. No +damage to darkspawn, despite dialogue scripting comments indicating it should have that property.
  
• Harrowmont Low Support: Harrowmont's Staff: Steel (seriously - Tier 3 Steel. Dog can fetch a better staff than this! You can steal a better staff than this in the Mage Origin!) +1 Magic, + 2 Constitution. Possibly the worst staff obtainable after Lothering.
  
• Bhelen High Support: Aeducan's Mace: Tier 2 GREY IRON!!!! Even worse than Harrowmont's Staff. (The description says it's "made finely"). +2 damage vs. darkspawn and Messy Kills. Duncan actually gives this mace to a noob Dwarf Commoner at the end of that origin.
  
• Bhelen Low Support: Trian's Maul: Silverite. 4 tiers better than the high support reward, lol. +4 damage vs. darkspawn - double the bonus of the high support reward. Probably the best of the 4 rewards, and still terrible compared to even random drops at this point in the game, unless maybe you go straight from Lothering to Orzammar, which would be kind of suicidal to begin with, and you DESERVE better rewards if you manage to finish!

All of these are terrible, and it's completely implausible that any King would have ever used the two high support rewards as a weapon, unless they had a serious death wish. I have endeavored to create 4 new balanced rewards matching the difficulty of the Orzammar plot. Note that I have balanced these in the context of equipment available in the base game, not DLC's. You will probably find better DLC equipment, but the new high support rewards should be competitive with the best weapons available in the base game, at least pre-Landsmeet. It is no longer utterly maddeningly insultingly implausible that a King would use the maces in question, and fixing that is the reason behind this fix. The new low support rewards aren't top of the line, but they are no longer insultingly bad either, and may still be (slightly) preferable to similar weapon types you have attained at the point you can reasonably get through Orzammar.

 

 

97. (v3.0) A few fixes to the Steward's dialogue when asking him how the election is going. As an example, he will no longer say that Bhelen takes credit for Jarvia's death if you are working for Bhelen covertly in "Betrayed from Within".

 

 

And appending a line to a prior fix:

 

12. (v1.0) The unique crossbow Nugbane can now be stolen from the Mines Commander in Orzammar. He has it in the vanilla game, and the "Stealable" flag is clearly checked, but it could not be stolen due to being equipped. As there is no other reasonable explanation for his having it in his inventory (his graphics displays his battleaxe, not the crossbow), it being equipped is almost certainly a bug. Note that if you steal it from him in the Commons, you will not be able to steal a second copy when he appears later in the Assembly.

[Qwinn]

So I needed a rogue in Ostagar to test the new double-steal fix on the quartermaster (and to reimplement the undisarmable trap fix from my first fixpack), so I went through the Dalish elf origin. Only bug I found in it was:

 

6. (v3.0) "Dalish Elf": The statues in the Dalish camp do not give the customary 50 xp reward for their codex entries.

 

Just to be thorough, I checked the amount of xp my dalish elf had upon entering Ostagar as compared to my mage, just in case dalish elves were somehow getting more xp than other origins and maybe the disabling of the codex xp was deliberate to even them up, but nah, doesn't seem that way. My mage had about a bar more xp than my dalish elf upon arriving at Ostagar, even with the codex xp fixed.

 

One thing I've discovered is that all the pieces to make Alistair's "darkspawn sense" actually work in the korkari wilds is there, except for the placing of the triggers in the korkari wilds area file. If those triggers were there, it would trigger (in sequence) 4 different stringhead lines by Alistair alerting you that darkspawn are nearby. It's going to take a whole lot of trial and error testing to make sure I lay down those triggers properly (they won't fire if you're already in combat when you enter the trigger),. I'm going to focus on having them activate near the several ambushes by genlock rogues that are stealthed and you can't actually see initially. I suspect this will be a very cool restoration though, considering how huge a point they make in the dialogue after the dying soldier about how key Alistair's darkspawn-sense is going to be to their survival in the Wilds - and then he never warns you and you never hear about it again, heh.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Qwinn

[LadyHonor]

There seems to be a lot of those dialog bugs, Qwinn. A lot of it is set in the soundset files to be triggered when certain creatures are "perceived". The problem seems to be with that is if you aren't in control of the character the lines never fire. I know there are some soundset barks Alistair won't say unless I have switched to his character. I've never heard the darkspawn warnings you mentioned, but I know my little elf says her lines about sensing them when they are near. Plus, there are a truckload of ambients who use the "perception" flag for ambient lines that never fire either. The only time I hear any lines from ambient creatures is when a trigger is used.

[Qwinn]

This one will definitely make my top 5 most time consuming fixes to implement. Getting all the triggers to line up well with the rogues' perception areas, especially when I had to restart the area from scratch every time I made the slightest change in order to get them to take... let's just say many many hours.

 

8. (v3.0) After you speak to the Dying Soldier in the Korcari Wilds, and Jory gets all skeered, Alistair comfortingly reassures all of you: "Know this: All Grey Wardens can sense darkspawn. Whatever their cunning, I guarantee they won't take us by surprise. That's why I'm here." Phew! That's good to know! Alistair then spectacularly fails to warn you, even once, about the 5 potentially very surprising ambushes by stealthed genlock rogues in the area. You had ONE JOB, Alistair! All of the code, triggers and dialogue meant for him to give you his warnings was in game, the only thing missing was those triggers actually being placed in the Korcari Wilds area. Alistair should now give you a warning whenever a genlock rogue ambush is imminent. Note that there will be no warning if you are already in combat when the rogues join the attack.

 

BTW LadyHonor, if your last post was a request for me to take a look and see if I can fix what you're talking about, can you give me more specifics? A file name to look at, or a specific instance where a line should be said but isn't?

Edited March 4, 2017 by Qwinn

[LadyHonor]

Nah. It was just an observation. Setting conditions in the dialog to fire when something is perceived just doesn't seem to work without a trigger....Which makes setting the perception flag kinda pointless.

[Qwinn]

Gotcha. I think I found what you're talking about. Most of the minor character dialogues around the Ostagar Camp have an initial dialog state with the condition gen00pt_ambient_ai:DIALOG_BARK_MEETS_PC. It's a defined flag and since its definition has been commented out, it can never return true. I'd consider playing with it to be a once only first-talk line, but they're mainly really boring, just variations on "Greetings.". If I were to try to reactivate them as something that gets triggered when you walk near them... ugh, I can see walking close to the Ash Warriors and having all of them say "Greetings" simultaneously. Sounds awful. Yeah, I think I'll leave it be.

 

I haven't found any dialogues with that condition outside of Ostagar yet.

 

What I'm investigating now is that I've found at least 3 dialogue branches around Ostagar with a condition of INT_HIGH, which is a very very hard check against Cunning. I'm going to test this but I believe it requires having a cunning of 30, which I think makes it completely impossible to pass so early in the game, even with a human rogue that starts with the highest possible base cunning (15) and who has pumped every available point into it. A check of INT_MED, which I believe requires 15 cunning, would be WAY more reasonable (and possible but not guaranteed to anyone but a human rogue to pass) that early in the game. The dialogues I've found so far with these INT_HIGH checks are Flemeth, the Elven Messenger and the Tranquil Mage. Looking to see if I can find any more.

 

(For the record, if you ever see a LOW attribute check in a dialogue, it might as well not exist. All attribute LOW checks always pass, even if your attribute is 10, no exceptions that I can see.)

Edited March 5, 2017 by Qwinn

[LadyHonor]

there's a dialog line such as that with the extremely high cunning checks with flemeth as well. unless you cheat, it's pretty much impossible to hear it.

[LadyHonor]

well, duh....you mentioned the flemeth one...i must have skipped that part. lol