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

[Qwinn]

Oooh, I noticed this when running through Paragon of Her Kind and almost forgot about it:

 

Orzammar:

 

102. (v3.0) Due to a bug, pieces of Hespith's rhyme when approaching down the hallway would not be heard when they were supposed to trigger.

 

 

And I've finished making my decisions on the remaining unobtainable items and quests with no rewards:

 

Broken Circle:

 

19. Similar to "Nugbane", the previously unobtainable item "Greagoir's Shield" was marked to be stealable, but because it was equipped to him it couldn't actually be stolen (and just like Nugbane, there's no purpose to it being equipped because it does not appear graphically on his character anyway). Greagoir's Shield is now unequipped and stealable.

 

IT009. (v3.0) The previously unobtainable item "Gateway Amulet" can now be obtained by killing the Gangue Shade, summoned in a mini-quest which previously had no other reward.

 

IT010. (v3.0) The previously unobtainable item "Dead Metal Bucket" can now be obtained by completing the quest "The Lost Nug", as scripting comments indicate the quest was supposed to award a "special bonus item" upon turning in the last nug as a prize but did not do so.

 

Oh, not sure if I mentioned this already, but - way way WAY back in this thread I mentioned that Party Barks could sometimes randomly fail to fire altogether, and that for my testing purposes I had changed it so at least one bark would always fire so I wouldn't miss a trigger anywhere. Well, played through the whole game with it and it has worked flawlessly. At the time I said I would probably retract it for release, but I've changed my mind. I am in fact dubbing it a fix and it will be released with v3.0. (I know some people like having *ALL* party barks for everyone in the party trigger. I can't call that a bugfix. But I can call them sometimes not firing at all a bug, and that will be fixed.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Thandal

[Enkida]

re: non restored Frostback Mountain store: From what I had read, his inventory may have been the kaddis cut from the game? Theskymoves' blog has that kaddis listed under the mod "mystery of the missing kaddis" with two options for getting it in game - restoring that merchant, or putting it in the inventory of the store of... I think the merchant outside ofOrzammar that Sten threatens for asala. In case you didn't see it before :) Edited May 11, 2017 by Enkida

[Qwinn]

Yup, I recently saw that, and yep, I was aware that there are a few kaddis that may not be in game. I didn't check to see if they were available elsewhere, but I suspect they're not - I wonder why they're not listed on the Unobtainable Items wiki page.

 

Still, I do believe they were deliberately cut. As such, it's out of the scope of my fixpack (my rule is, I can go hog wild restoring whatever non-functional content I can find - and I have found and restored a whole hell of a lot - UNLESS I find something indicating it was cut deliberately, and in the case of those two merchants, the evidence is there. Ditto the Ornamental Sword and Magic Greatsword - I think those two were cut deliberately, so they're the only other unobtainable items I'm aware of that I'm not restoring to the game. Well, and a few gifts too, which I'm leaving out because gifts/approval seems fairly balanced as is and I have no grounds to think Bioware didn't make the same determination and cut them on purpose.

 

The good news is, I don't expect there to be any compatibility issues with it, so feel free to keep using theskymoves' mod to put him in game. I'll probably make mention of it somewhere in my readme, if theskymoves wishes me to.

 

 

(Oh - btw - IA restores Slim Couldry's store. That was definitely deliberately cut as well, and his merchant inventory is empty and so would have to be completely arbitrary.)

Edited May 11, 2017 by Qwinn

[theskymoves]

The kaddis patterns 'restored' in my crappy mod were not implemented in the game by Bioware. (They did not have item variations assigned, no actual items - UTIs - to be unobtainable, and so nothing to be listed on the wiki Unobtainable Items page... there was nothing in the game files but the unused designs.)

 

And the same for the helmet I 'restored'... the model was in the toolset but did not have an Item Variation or UTI.

 

Ditto my 'restored' Kaddis merchant mod; that's cut content that I clumsily added in, to vend the cut-content kaddis I'd added in earlier. There's nothing in the game files linking him to the omitted kaddis designs, or indicating that it was Bioware's intent was for him to sell them.

 

~tsm/kinlochhold

Edited May 11, 2017 by theskymoves

[mckatsims]

Oh, not sure if I mentioned this already, but - way way WAY back in this thread I mentioned that Party Barks could sometimes randomly fail to fire altogether, and that for my testing purposes I had changed it so at least one bark would always fire so I wouldn't miss a trigger anywhere. Well, played through the whole game with it and it has worked flawlessly. At the time I said I would probably retract it for release, but I've changed my mind. I am in fact dubbing it a fix and it will be released with v3.0.

 

Can't tell you how happy this makes me! Party Barks fail more often than they succeed in my playthroughs. It'll be nice to hear the companions voice their opinions. :thumbsup:

[Qwinn]

44. (v3.0) During the Dark Ritual conversation with Morrigan, the male romance line "Is this why you've been so... friendly to me?" could become inaccessible depending on the arbitrary order that the player selected his responses. Credit to TerraEx and the readme of his Morrigan Restoration Patch for making me aware of this one.

[Totalbalance]

Wow. The scope of this mod is incredible! I love the idea of not having to play pick-and-mix with all the various dialogue mods.

 

 

Anyway, I figured I should pitch in and post some stuff I’ve discovered in the toolset / seen fixes of elsewhere. Some of these are restorations, so it’s up to you whether they are worth fixing. I only picked the ones I figured would actually make sense to put back.

 

• Tamlen refers to a male Warden as Lethallan and a female Warden as "Lethallin”. It apparently got switched around. (Fixed in “Bi Tamlen Mod”)

 

• According to developer comments, when Cullen screams “Now begone!” he’s supposed to use some anti-magic-dispel-thing that causes the illusion to break and bring him back to his senses. It probably needs a sound effect and maybe a better camera angle, but it definitely seems like it should have been there. (Sort of fixed in “Bi Cullen Mod”)

 

• Speaking of Cullen, in that same conversation the option to back down when Wynne tries to stop you from killing the mages never actually appeared (not sure if you’ve already caught this one). Also, many mods adds an option to agree with Zevran and not kill the mages when he objects, since the other companions has that option. Would that be appropriate for this mod?

 

• A minor thing I noticed… Brother Genitivi has ambient dialogue in the temple, and there are lines that suggests he is supposed to walk around and comment on the architecture (makes sense, considering he goes “Hmm, what?” when you talk to him.)

 

• Another restoration: All the major factions have random encounters where they will confront you if you’ve been caught stealing. The one with dwarves does not appear in the game (not sure if this was ever completed, but there is complete dialogue file)

 

• The chevalier armor set causes a drop in willpower, the opposite of the items’ descriptions (the wiki suggest it’s intentional, but I really don’t think that’s true).

 

• At Ostagar there are a bunch of approval changes with Alistair and Morrigan that don’t actually work, as they appear in conversations when they are not in your party yet.

There. That’s all I can can come up with. And again, thank you! I’m amazed by the amount of work you’ve done for this game, and I can’t wait to see the fix pack in action.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Totalbalance

[Qwinn]

Great stuff, thanks TotalBalance. Will review it tonight after work.

[Qwinn]

"Tamlen refers to a male Warden as Lethallan and a female Warden as "Lethallin”. It apparently got switched around. (Fixed in “Bi Tamlen Mod”)"

 

Heh, the Wiki shows it's accuracy once again. This is how the wiki defines the terms: "Lethallin; Lethallan: Casual reference used for someone with whom one is familiar. Generally, Lethallin is used for males, while lethallan is used for females, but this is not always the case".... and the "not always the case" leads to a footnote: "During the Dalish Elf Origin, Tamlen refers to the Warden as "lethallin" if male, and as "lethallan" if female." - which would be correct, if it were true! Actually, it is also true. Tamlen contradicts his own usage, as he uses the terms twice, once correctly, once incorrectly. Anyway, Zathrian, Sarel, Lanaya and Fenarel all agree that males are Lethallin, so:

 

8. (v3.0) "Dalish Elf": In the opening cutscene, Tamlen refers to female elves as "Lethallin" and male elves as "Lethallan". This is the reverse of every other elvish dialogue in Dragon Age Origins, including a different section of Tamlen's own dialogue. Corrected. Credit to TotalBalance on the Nexus forums for making me aware of this one.

 

"Speaking of Cullen, in that same conversation the option to back down when Wynne tries to stop you from killing the mages never actually appeared (not sure if you’ve already caught this one). Also, many mods adds an option to agree with Zevran and not kill the mages when he objects, since the other companions has that option. Would that be appropriate for this mod?""

 

It might be, but. I'm seeing a contradiction here. First sentence says you don't have the option to back down with Wynne. Second sentence justifies being able to back down with Zevran because you can back down with "the other companions". Since Zevran is the only one who objects unless Wynne is present (Alistair and Leliana say little to nothing if she's not there), it doesn't seem to me that both of those can be correct.

 

What I'm seeing is that you can say you want to save the mages, then let Shale or Sten convince you to kill them, but you can't go back the other way with anyone - you can't say you will kill them and then back off, not with Zevran, Alistair, Leliana or Wynne. It seems to me this is done because the evil follower objections to saving the mages come *before* the good follower objections to killing them, so if you change your mind in the middle, you can wind up getting approval from everybody, which is obviously not right. And it's not so simple to reverse the approval hits/boosts if you change your mind, because what you got can vary depending on passed or failed persuasion checks and there's no easy way to keep track.

 

Now, COULD I, with a whole bunch of work, make it so you can change your mind and make the approval hits work as they should in such a circumstance? Sure. But it wasn't intentionally written that way. If I were to do it, it would have to be as a "restoration" of the line Wynne says when you change your mind, rather than a "fix", and even that would be a rather shaky justification, wandering dangerously close to the "tweak" category. I will think about it for a bit, and also see if there's an easier way to make it work (like allow the option to change your mind ONLY if no approval changes occurred as a result of your initially saying you would kill them, but even that might be tricky). If you want to make arguments for why it should all be done anyway, feel free.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

"A minor thing I noticed… Brother Genitivi has ambient dialogue in the temple, and there are lines that suggests he is supposed to walk around and comment on the architecture (makes sense, considering he goes “Hmm, what?” when you talk to him.)"

I saw this myself when working the Urn quest, and spent a couple hours seeing if I could restore it, but in the end I decided against it. Why? Cause that ambient dialogue says things like "Ah, look, these pillars tell of Andraste's life", or "Ah, yes... the decorative carvings are less intricate". Problem is, there's no pillars with any discernable markings or any decorative carvings around the area he wanders that he could possibly be referring to. If such artwork existed in that area, I'd definitely do it, but as it stands, if he were to utter those lines anywhere in that area, I'd have to stop him from doing so just because it would seem a bug that he's talking about things that aren't there!

 

"Another restoration: All the major factions have random encounters where they will confront you if you’ve been caught stealing. The one with dwarves does not appear in the game (not sure if this was ever completed, but there is complete dialogue file)"

 

Not sure if that first sentence is true, unless by "major factions" you just mean the 3 races, in which case, ok, yeah, Dalish elves and humans in Denerim do attack. There's supposed to be a "Narrow Road" attack by Templars if you steal from the Circle, but the talk page for that encounter lists a whole bunch of people who can't get it to work at all. It also says you can't get it once Broken Circle is complete, which means you have a ridiculously small window in which to even try to activate it - upon arriving at the Tower, steal, then leave, before going into the tower and Greagoir closes the door behind you, at which point you're locked into finishing Broken Circle before you can leave to try to trigger it.

 

As for the dialogue you mentioned - found it. The name of the dialogue file is "zz_r_steal_orzammar_guard". Usually, files marked "zz_" indicate a deliberate cut - at least, I've only found one exception (one Denerim core area file that is very much used and very important that has zz_ in the name). The dialogue also talks about a corrupt Captain who despises you, which isn't really part of the plot anywhere. At first I also thought the idea was nixed because there's no random encounter area for it, but then I saw the comments in the dialogue file that state the encounter was supposed to happen "any place in the Deep Roads". So I looked at every deep roads area (including a couple marked "zz_" themselves) but none of them have any dwarves in the creature section that could represent this guard attack. So, even if I were to decide that dialogue wasn't a deliberate cut (and I do think it is, at this point), it would still have to fall in the "not enough there to restore properly" category, unfortunately.

 

Unfortunately, the whole stealing infamy code that IS there in Orzammar does look very unfinished. If you fail a steal, a guard materializes next to you and tells you to stop it. If you fail 3 times, then initiate conversation with a guard in the Commons, they'll utter a line chastising you that implies you're in Dust Town and nothing else happens as far as I can tell. Since there *are* no guards in Dust Town, I can't really move that functionality there. Similar if you talk to a guard in the Diamond district, though at least there's no Dust Town reference there. And short of having every guard in the Commons or Diamond Quarter just go hostile - while everyone else act normal towards you - I'm leaning toward "too broken to fix" at this point. Not going to delay v3.0 for a week just to make it happen, anyway. Sorry. Wish it weren't so.

 

More to come...