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

[Qwinn]

Brief sidetrack... this goes in the "Side Quest" section, for the Chanter Board quest "Unintended Consequences":

4) (v3.0) "Unintended Consequences": This Chanter Board sidequest was awarding its experience reward at the point of killing the Trickster, rather than when turning in and completing the quest.

 

EDIT: Oooh, just made a nice find. These aren't complete yet so I'm not officially adding them to the list, but I'm working on them:

 

 

One commonly known bug is that when you turn in multiple quests at once at one of the side quest boards, you get all the rewards but the messages displayed on screen would only be for one of them. I intend to make it so that, when you click on a representative, only one quest at a time is completed. This allows you to see each individual reward accurately, and get a link to the closed journal or codex entries associated with it. You'll know you've turned in everything you can when the plot marker over the representative disappears.

 

But speaking of unintended consequences...

 

When you complete *all* of the Chanter board quests, you were supposed to get an additional reward (500 xp, if you're curious). But in the base game, you couldn't get this grand prize because the side quest Jowan's Intentions could not be completed. My earlier fixpack versions fixed that quest, which made the grand prize possible to obtain - BUT. There's a big bug related to this. If you clicked on the chanter representative with all 10 quests either already rewarded OR complete but NOT yet rewarded meaning that by the end of that conversation he *should* have rewarded you for all 10 of them, the representative would give you your big reward - *and was supposed to also make sure to give you the smaller rewards for each individual quest you hadn't cashed in yet too*. That last part only worked for 3 of the 10 quests though! If you had the other 7 quests all completed but still unrewarded when you clicked on the rep, you would get the 500 xp grand prize but *not* the individual rewards for the other 7 quests, which (at 175xp each) amounted to 1225 xp you could potentially miss out on! (Oh, and for the 3 "working" ones that you would at least get the prizes for, it wouldn't update the "Percent of Game Complete" tracking for those.)

 

At least that's what I foretell happening by reading the code. It'll be a while before I can see if I'm right. Needless to say, if I am, this will be fixed in version 3.0.

Edited March 11, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Back to Redcliffe:

 

23. (v3.0) If you convinced the Doomsayer that appears in the village after "Attack at Nightfall" to leave Redcliffe, he would do so but then reappear every time you reentered the area. He was meant to leave for good. Now he will.

[aeroldoth]

I was going to tell you about Berwick and his three letters.

 

Also, in lothering, you can give some elves 50s and you'll get 100xp. For all Kaitlyn's money options (50s/ 1g/ 5g) I never saw any xp award given. Did you notice anything in Kaitlyn's code about xp for giving her coin to go to denerim, or even paying for her sword? As an angry elf, I see no reason to give those filthy humans anything unless I get something in return. What about giving Jetta her husband's amulet even though you opened the box? It's not like you need a worthless chain in your plot items the whole game.

 

Also, did you check out the wiki page for Kaitlyn and the sword, including the talk section? It seems there were a few bugs there revolving around returning the sword/ paying for the sword/ keeping the sword and/or giving her various amounts of money.

 

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/A_Missing_Child

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Talk:A_Missing_Child

 

Lastly, you said if we sabotage Owen we'll have basically nude militia. Having a nude mod installed, I enthusiastically vote for having nude militia fighting undead. Nothing like fighting stiffs with stiffies. : P

[Qwinn]

"For all Kaitlyn's money options (50s/ 1g/ 5g) I never saw any xp award given."

 

There isn't any additional xp beyond returning Bevin to her, but if you give her 5g, she'll show up in the epilogue. If you give her the sword back, Bevin will show up in the epilogue. They are generally happy endings for them, so if you hate them, give them nothing. I won't be adding xp (giving Bella money doesn't award xp either, just an epilogue scene for her as well - although Bella's epilogue doesn't always appear, oddly depending on what options you took with the completely unrelated Kaitlyn, and I'll be fixing that too).

 

"What about giving Jetta her husband's amulet even though you opened the box? It's not like you need a worthless chain in your plot items the whole game."

 

Thank you, I forgot about that thing. Although there won't be a dialogue option to actually give it to her, I can remove it when you talk to her about her husband or son. (Alternatively, I may decide to just make it not a plot item so you can sell it. Not going to make it worth much, I've already made that option pretty lucrative by restoring the rewards. Will think about it.)

 

As for the wiki page, yep, I read it. The one post claiming you can pickpocket Bevin for the key is simply wrong and I have no idea where they got that from, he doesn't have it in his starting inventory and it wasn't added when I sent him back to the Chantry. The fact that the sword isn't removed, I fixed (see above). I don't see any other bug report on the page (other than the "gimme xp!" post you just made :wink: Can you be specific about which one you're talking about?

 

I do check the wiki and talk pages for every quest I work on, btw. Three times out of five it wastes my time sending me chasing non-existent bugs (or existing only on PS3/Xbox), but it's worth looking at for the other 2 times. The vast majority - seriously, at least 75% - of the bugs I'm fixing and content I'm restoring in this version I found simply by testing in game or reading the dialogue/scripts looking for issues and stuff that looks cool but I didn't see in game. I haven't researched the readmes of any existing mods to find out about bugs in this version, because of the headaches and false accusations and grousing and complaining I got for lightly skimming some of them the last time. I think I've proved by this point that all it would do is save me a little time, but if the bug is there, I'm as capable as anyone else of finding it on my own, so that's what I'm doing.

Edited March 12, 2017 by Qwinn

[aeroldoth]

"The one post claiming you can pickpocket Bevin for the key is simply wrong and I have no idea where they got that from"

 

I can confirm the key, as I stole it in the chantry not a few hours ago. Just to be extra certain, I'll reload and check again.

EDIT Yup, stole Bevin's Key. Maybe a mod adds it?

 

"Can you be specific about which one you're talking about?"

 

Not a specific one, just a general sharing of the page claiming bugs.

 

"Three times out of five it wastes my time"

 

Apologies. I only mentioned the pages in case you weren't aware of them and thought it might be helpful. Many complaints you find around the net are not only just for console as you say, but also predate patches. So it's entirely possible some bug report from 2010 may be fixed today.

 

Again, I apologize if I'm making worthless suggestions, but would it be helpful to have some code somewhere that double checks that plot items from earlier on are really and truly gone? I still have my rod of fire request form and two copies of prisoner food/water, and I know you've already fixed those things to disappear now... just wondering if there may be unseen conditions where they're not removed. For example, I think you can steal food/water from the prisoner's corpse in return to ostagar. Just a suggestion.

 

Don't let my prattling distract you from your awesome work!

 

EDIT also another minor note. When I sort my inventory by newest, new items appear at the top for most categories, but plot items appear at the bottom. Don't know if that's just me.

Edited March 12, 2017 by aeroldoth

[Qwinn]

"EDIT Yup, stole Bevin's Key. Maybe a mod adds it?"

 

Bizarre. *Why* would a mod add that? Maybe I'm missing something, but I've checked all the plot scripts and the area file, still not seeing where that could happen, and when I tried to steal from him I got nothing. Did you talk to Bevin about the sword and not get the key? What was your conversation path with him that led to him having a key in the Chantry? I will do a few more tests.

 

"Apologies."

 

What? No need, as I said, the Wiki is often wrong (and yeah, I bet a lot of the false reports are written up by people who are playing with mods that didn't consider the behavior they're seeing was from a mod and not the base game) but I consult it regularly anyway. It only gets me 3 or 4 accurate bug reports in an area, but that's 3 or 4 I don't have to hunt down on my own, and I often find *other* bugs while researching those reports, even the fake ones.

 

"So it's entirely possible some bug report from 2010 may be fixed today."

 

Yeah, I have found a few reports that have too many sources to believe it wasn't true at one point, but which appear to be fixed in what I pull up in the toolset now, so it makes me believe that at least scripts are current to the latest patches. Not sure about dialogues though. I have two hard examples where what I pull up in the toolset is NOT what actually plays in game or matches the patch notes. The first is Greagoir's dialogue, where originally you could actually break the game in your first conversation with him at the start of Broken Circle. It worked fine, no bugs, until I loaded it up in the toolset , made an unrelated change and exported it. Then the game breaking bug was back. The second example,, a patch claimed to fix Leliana's personal quest being unavailable at too high approval, but what I got in the toolset also had that bug (and I have fixed it). So it appears that I will need to replicate all Bioware patches that occurred in dialogues, which will be tough, but I'm just gonna go over every inch of it the way I have been and hopefully I catch them all.

 

"Again, I apologize if I'm making worthless suggestions"

 

Dude, not at all! I'm sorry if I made it sound like you were bothering me, or that your suggestions weren't worth the hearing. You've already mentioned a couple of things that I agreed with and are being addressed in v3.0 of the Fixpack. Just cause I don't implement everything you've mentioned doesn't mean I appreciate being alerted to the ones I *do* address any less.

 

"For example, I think you can steal food/water from the prisoner's corpse in return to ostagar. Just a suggestion."

 

I'm not sure I could do anything about that. Return to Ostagar is DLC, and I can't pull up most DLC stuff in the toolset. I can't even see Shale's main dialogue file. And I'd be astonished if Return to Ostagar actually used the same area file as the original Ostagar (I mean, hell, they use two different area files just for daytime and nighttime), so it's unlikely anything I did to the original Ostagars would have any effect on the DLC. Changes to plot flags, maybe. I'll find out soon if my closing the Hungry Deserter quest will affect being able to loot the chest in RTO.

 

No idea about the sort order of the inventory. Unfortunately that sounds to me like a core engine function that I couldn't really do anything about.

Edited March 12, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Tested some more, and no, I simply can't duplicate stealing a key off Bevin, or find anything in the toolset indicating it should be possible. I've never touched his creature file, so if it was patched in, the patch should still be operative. Are you running the Ultimate Edition of the game?

 

Hmmm... it occurs, the only thing I haven't tested is trying to get the key from him and failing the persuade check. To do that I'd have to increase the difficulty of the check, because I could pass it easily. Is that what you did? I'll wait for your answer to that before testing this further. Moving on. I actually think I'm close to finishing all the changes I wanted to make to the way side quest / board rewards are doled out, and I think it's working great. You'll always know you have more quests to turn in because the guy will have a plot marker on him, and so far that aspect of my fix is working perfectly.

 

One interesting hitch I had in doing the side quest reward change was that, every once in a while, randomly, the mage collective guys will throw in a 95s extra reward when you cash in one of their quests. My changes will actually probably give you more chances to get those (unless you immediately cashed in every one of their quests upon completing it), because if you turned in 2 or more quests at a time, you only got one chance at the bonus reward for turning them in. Now you'll get one chance at it for every quest. After I made my changes, I noticed that the reward that will show in your screen is the quest reward, not the 95s. There's no way I can combine the two rewards into one message (or I would just fix all the bugs that way),, so you'll never see the 95s being rewarded, you'll just get it. Nothing I can do about it other than removing the bonus rewards, and I'm not going to do that. EDIT: Hmmmm... actually, maybe there *is* something I can do about it... if I were to just make the 95s bonus rewards require a separate conversation that doesn't actually cash in a quest, it *just* gives you the 95s. That might work. I'll think on it.

Edited March 12, 2017 by Qwinn

[aeroldoth]

To be clear, I'm not stealing a second key, I'm stealing a first. I didn't get the key at the house, which is why I stole it at the chantry.

 

(open dresser)

First tell me what you were doing in there

(intimidate) I'm a mage, I can make you tell me

Don't make me laugh

- boy runs off without giving key -

 

As for the mages, my suggestion would again be to make Coercion useful for increasing rewards, by giving the 95s for a persuasion check, as opposed to randomly. "Hey it's tuesday, take a sovereign. You're wearing green, take a sovereign. I just got laid! Take a sovereign."

[Qwinn]

Are you playing with a mod called "Improved Atmosphere"? Because if so, it looks like that one adds the key. Found it via a quick google search. You did mention the possibility of it being a mod, which is why I decided to check, so yeah, looks like you were right.

 

As for the mages - nah, sorry. Is it plausible that they intended it to be random? Yes - in fact, scripting notes confirm it was intended. Does it defy logic in some serious way, or is it so silly as to break immersion? No, not really. That means it's not a bug, and outside the purview of this fixpack. Those are the questions to ask yourself if you're wondering if I'll implement a suggestion. Don't worry though, ask away and I'm happy to explain why I agree or don't. I'm gabby that way.

Edited March 12, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

I discussed these three before, but they're actually done, tested and working now, so posting them officially:

 

4. (v3.0) When you turn in multiple quests at once at one of the side quest boards, you get all the rewards but the reward messages and updated journal links displayed on screen would only be for one of them. I have changed this behavior so that, when you click on a representative, only one quest at a time is completed. This allows you to see each individual reward accurately, and get a link to the closed journal or codex entries associated with it. A plot marker will remain on the representative as long as you have another reward available.

 

5. (v3.0) "Unintended Consequences": This Chanter Board sidequest was awarding its experience reward at the point of killing the Trickster, rather than when turning in and completing the quest.

 

6. (v3.0) Speaking of unintended consequences: When you complete *all* of the Chanter board quests, you were supposed to get an additional reward (500 xp, if you're curious), but in the base game you couldn't get this grand prize because the side quest Jowan's Intentions could not be completed. My earlier fixpack versions fixed that quest, which made the grand prize possible to obtain - BUT. There's a big bug related to this. If you clicked on the chanter representative with all 10 quests either already rewarded OR complete but NOT yet rewarded meaning that by the end of that conversation he *should* have rewarded you for all 10 of them, the representative would give you your big reward - *and was supposed to also make sure to give you the smaller rewards for each individual quest you hadn't cashed in yet too*. That last part only worked for 3 of the 10 quests though. If you had the other 7 quests all completed but still unrewarded when you clicked on the rep, you would get the 500 xp grand prize but *not* the individual rewards for the other 7 quests, which (at 175xp each) amounted to 1225 xp you could potentially miss out on. This has been fixed so that you will not get the bonus until all rewards for all 10 quests have been received (one at a time, per the previous fix mentioned just above).

Edited March 12, 2017 by Qwinn