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

[Totalbalance]

Uh oh, it’s time already? Only have a few suggestions.

Here we go:

Got two related to Vaughn if you’re a city elf who takes the bribe at the beginning - this action is so rarely used that I can’t find any info about it online since everyone just kills the bastard.

• When talking to Vaughn in his prison cell he’ll instantly switch back and forth between leaning on the bars and standing straight. Only as a city elf though.
  

• Here’s a really obscure one: If a city elf takes Vaughn’s bribe at the beginning and confronts him in the dungeon, you can let him go on the condition that he joins the chantry. When i tried this he would run and stand in another room in the estate. Clicking on him gives the correct chantry brother dialogue, but I assume he’s supposed to appear at the marketplace with a chantry outfit or something like that.
  

Other than that there were just some restorations that you’ve probably already heard of, but I wanted to mention just in case:

• The “Bye Oghren” mod had a bunch of restorations regarding the recruitment of Oghren. The conversation where he asks to join the party seems especially important, as is the option to turn him down. It really feels like it was missing from the final game, and is even listed as a choice in the Dragon Age Keep.
  

• Finally, there was a scene from Morrigan Restoration Patch that really stood out to me: Morrigan’s angry kiss. During her love confession she was supposed to (according to some comments) slap the pc before pulling him into a kiss. Would really make the scene, if possible.
  

Edited May 29, 2017 by Totalbalance

[Maeassel]

Exciting to hear that you're almost done Qwinn! Here is one thing I wondered about:

 

The allied supply crates in the camp. I know they give experience when you donate, but I could never figure out if they did anything else. The wiki says that donating should improve the troops. Other places where people discuss this, the information just conflicts. Some saying that they got more troops and better gear, others saying it made no difference. I was wondering if you noticed anything about this?

Edited May 29, 2017 by Maeassel

[Qwinn]

Argh, TotalBalance! Yer killing me! I was expecting one! Just kidding, I'm glad of anything you can report. I want this initial release to be as complete as possible (within reason). Basically you just mentioned 75% of what I was talking about when I said I could count the remaining issues on one hand...

 

When talking to Vaughn in his prison cell he’ll instantly switch back and forth between leaning on the bars and standing straight. Only as a city elf though.

This one *should* already be fixed.

 

Here’s a really obscure one: If a city elf takes Vaughn’s bribe at the beginning and confronts him in the dungeon, you can let him go on the condition that he joins the chantry. When i tried this he would run and stand in another room in the estate. Clicking on him gives the correct chantry brother dialogue, but I assume he’s supposed to appear at the marketplace with a chantry outfit or something like that.

Yeah, I'd noticed this one myself (from reading the dialogue, not actually seeing it, as I'm not playing a city elf). Scripting comments indicate that's exactly what was supposed to happen (probably didn't because they imply that the Denerim Chantry was at one point supposed to be a separate area you could actually enter). I didn't get around to it because there's no Vaughan in the Market district, and I hadn't at that time modified that area file yet and considering how problematic that area is (with all the crashes) I was loathe to do so. I have modified it now, though, so yeah, I'll work on this. Can hopefully deal with it in a couple of hours.

 

The “Bye Oghren” mod had a bunch of restorations regarding the recruitment of Oghren. The conversation where he asks to join the party seems especially important, as is the option to turn him down. It really feels like it was missing from the final game, and is even listed as a choice in the Dragon Age Keep.

I was aware of this one too (from Bye Oghren - if I do it I'll have to give the credit to that mod for making me aware), but it's a lot harden than it seems, precisely because there isn't really any code currently that allows Oghren to be dismissed and reaccepted, as exists for Wynne. I'm pretty sure I'd have to whip up all that code from scratch, which will take considerable time to implement and test thoroughly. But I'll look around and see how tough it would be.

 

Finally, there was a scene from Morrigan Restoration Patch that really stood out to me: Morrigan’s angry kiss. During her love confession she was supposed to (according to some comments) slap the pc before pulling him into a kiss. Would really make the scene, if possible.

I'm going to beg off this one. There is no scripting comment I can find that calls for a slap. What I *do* find is this scripting comment: "flagged for re-recording because it had too much anger last time -- this line leads to a kiss, so we need the line to be half angry, half seductive. Like she just can't help but be drawn to the player. Grrowl. angry kiss". I'll do this much - one of the lines she can say leading to the kiss ("If I am, tis because you make me so") doesn't even have an angry facial expression. I'll add the facial expression, but beyond that, it seems clear to me from that comment that they *didn't* want the kiss to be that angry.

 

The allied supply crates in the camp. I know they give experience when you donate, but I could never figure out if they did anything else. The wiki says that donating should improve the troops. Other places where people discuss this, the information just conflicts. Some saying that they got more troops and better gear, others saying it made no difference. I was wondering if you noticed anything about this?

I did look into this, and as far as I can tell, it makes no difference to troop strength (except possibly indirectly, if raising the player's level scales the strength of the troops up as well). But I confirmed that the script that runs when you give to the supply chests just adds experience, it doesn't set any other flags that could theoretically be checked later to affect troop scaling later on.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

133. (v3.0) Rescue the Queen: City Elves that didn't kill Vaughan in the Origin can free him on the condition that he join the Chantry, and if they did so he was supposed to appear near the Denerim chantry, but instead he'd still show on the Howe estate main floor as he would if he was freed without that condition (albeit with praying dialogue rather than his normal dialogue). He will now appear near the Denerim Chantry instead of Howe's estate in this circumstance, as was intended.

[Totalbalance]

"Argh, TotalBalance! Yer killing me!"

Gah! Not when you’re this close, man! Think of the game!

Seriously though, your commitment and thoroughness is a delight to watch. It's been fun looking for bugs, but now I guess it's time to wait for the release. Can't wait!

[Qwinn]

Right now I'm working on Oghren's asking to join the party. I realized that the main difficulty I was angsting over is making him available to recruit again if you tell him no in that conversation (as there *are* technically enough dialogue lines available to make him able to be picked up again). I realized that if I don't go to the trouble of restoring *that*, and just make it where if you refuse to let him join he's gone forever, isn't too difficult, time consuming, or likely to cause problems at all. Here's what I intend to do as of now:

 

20. (v3.0) Restored Oghren asking to stay with the party after the main Orzammar plot is completed. This conversation is initiated either by talking to him after a king is crowned, or automatically upon attempting to travel to the Frost Mountain Pass from the Hall of Heroes, whichever comes first. Note that if you refuse Oghren's request, he will no longer be available to recruit afterwards. This also restores an update to Oghren's codex entry. Credit to the sapphim and the "Bye Oghren" mod readme for making me aware of this issue.

 

There is one additional thing - there's also cut content where Oghren would refuse to go to the surface until you find Branka. So it may seem incongruous that you have conversation about going to the surface for the first time when you could have already taken him above ground. But that's already an issue in vanilla - he'll talk about how big the sky is when entering the Frost Mountain Pass after you've completed the main plot even if you'd already taken him to the surface, so I'm not making things any worse. Bye Oghren didn't restore that restriction either as far as I can tell from the readme, so, this'll have to be good enough.

 

TotalBalance, as long as I'm still working on stuff, if you find something, go ahead and tell me. As I said, I was kidding with the "yer killing me". I do want the initial v3.0 to be as complete as possible. I will post here when the fixlist is locked down, which happens when I start finalizing the readme, hopefully later tonight. Bugs submitted after that may or may not get taken care of, depending on how complicated they are - simple one line fixes that don't take a lot of testing I'll probably still squeeze in, but complicated things like this Oghren restoration, I gotta cut it off at some point.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

21. (v3.0) Oghren will now only initiate his personal quest in camp. This is because the conversation references "here on the surface" and "Girl I knew in Orzammar. Before I left, obviously.". Without this change, you can get it before Oghren ever leaves Orzammar.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Change of implementation - the Oghren may-I-join conversation has to be had before Oghren can be removed from the party after the coronation or it causes all sorts of problems, which means:

 

20. (v3.0) Restored Oghren offering to stay with the party after the main Orzammar plot is completed. This conversation is automatically triggered when leaving the palace or assembly after a king is crowned. Note that if you refuse Oghren's request, he will no longer be available to recruit afterwards, so if you plan on rejecting him, be sure to remove any equipment you wish to keep first. This also restores an update to Oghren's codex entry.

 

I was trying the previous implementation because that's what scripting comments indicated was the original intent, but waiting that long and giving a chance for Oghren to be removed from the party before leaving Orzammar without having that conversation would cause a thousand issues, and this seems to flow better anyway.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Aaaand since you forced me to whittle my handful of minor remaining issues down to almost nothing :tongue:, figured I'd clean out this one too, since it bugs me to see Mardy standing around forever:

 

108. (v3.0) "Of Noble Birth": Upon the successful completion of Of Noble Birth, Mardy will now appear in either the Palace or Harrowmont's Estate, instead of loitering in dingy clothes in the Nobles Quarter forever.

 

And I'm done for tonight. My plan is to start working the readme tomorrow night around 6pm EST. If there's anything else you can think of, please post it by then.

 

EDIT: Ack! REALLY glad I did that, or this one would have slipped by me:

 

109. (v3.0) "Of Noble Birth": A number of dialogue paths when Bhelen agrees to accept Mardy and your son into the Aeducan household did not set the necessary flag to complete the quest.

Edited May 30, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Also, taking suggestions for what I should call this mod. "Qwinn's Unofficial Fixpack" doesn't seem sufficient anymore, since it's also a Restoration pack now, and "Unofficial" doesn't confer any useful info. I'm thinking of renaming it "Qwinn's Ultimate Fix and Restoration Pack".. The "Ultimate" doing triple duty in 1) signyfing that it's compatible/developed on the Ultimate edition of the game, 2) It's really, really comprehensive, and 3) it harkens back and does homage to my Planescape fixpack, which was also called "Qwinn's Ultimate" back before they took my name off it, heh.

Edited May 30, 2017 by Qwinn