Bug with Helm of Balduran quest

Boradordin

I found a bug, and a way around it.

I got the above quest and went and stone to flesh scrolled the adventurers. I forced the main adventurer to give up the helmet. I then fought the party of adventurers, killing them all. Reading the scroll I went where I was supposed to go. Taking to the female courtesan, she kept wanting to call the guards, breaking the quest.

Now for the solution to repairing the bug. Open your saved game using Shadowkeeper. Scroll all the way over to the variables. Change the variable for the one named BALDURAN from 1 to 2.

Cordially,
'Ol Bearded Menace

kamuizin

you're suposed to get one or another, if you want both, why don't you just pickpocket the courtesan?

Aedan

I may be wrong, but I think that this is the way the quest works. @Tresset?

Tresset

@Aedan I know that if you talk to the courtesan before you talk to the leader of the stoned adventurers then she will no longer talk to you about the helm or cloak if you go back to her. I remember when my mom was doing her recent playthrough of VBG1 I had to create a fresh courtesan with the console as a workaround for this problem. I doubt that it was the original intent to have this quest break simply by talking to the courtesan before you learn about the helm and cloak and her involvement with them. I will make a report of this one so we can add it to the thousands of enhancements we made to the game.

sarevok57

whooooooooooooooooa @Tresset your mom plays Baldur's gate? Your mom must be incredibly badass because I would have never expected a mom to play this great series, my imaginary/proverbial hat is off to your momsies

Tresset

Wait a minute... I think my above statement was in error... I ran a quick test before reporting and I did not have any problems. I went over the Vail's and Quenash's dialogs too and I found no errors. I remember having an issue similar to this at one point but now I don't know how to get it to happen again...

Tresset

@sarevok57 Yes she does. She plays very few games but she does seem to like strategy, puzzle, and fantasy type games. She plays Heroes 3 of Might and Magic most often and is very good at it. She usually prefers to play BG with other people though I think (like with me there to back seat game) and just recently got through VBG1. I started her on VBG2 but she hasn't gotten very far yet because we haven't had many opportunities to play together recently.

Come to think of it, I think she and my dad bought my first copy of BG about 14 years ago when I was about 10. The intent was that we would play it as a family on Saturdays but my dad didn't seem all that interested and I found it so interesting that I took it for myself and played it all the time. I tried many times since then to get her through the game but she never was able to complete it until now.

Boradordin

I appear to be a little older than Tresset and can only say, Your Momma-n-Dadda Rock. Or at least I think that's how the younger gen says it. Shortly after BG1 and TotSC came out me and my daughter would hot swap the CDs and play together on two LanTastic setup computers.

I would play on the laptop in the living room where I had it hooked up to the big screen and the audio hooked up to the house-wide stereo. My other half would literally beg us to play so she could watch. Then along came game consoles and it got worse. She eventually got into BG Dark Alliance and learned how to play it. Now she begs me to play with her.

This go-around with BG1:EE was started because she wants to play it. I wanted to start her on VBG but I'm having trouble getting it to run on my Win 7 64 Pro with dual video and three monitors. And yeah, I'm braggin' about the computer as it's built by myself and has all the goodies.

Cordially,
'Ol Bearded Menace

Mathsorcerer

Boradordin said:

Now for the solution to repairing the bug. Open your saved game using Shadowkeeper. Scroll all the way over to the variables. Change the variable for the one named BALDURAN from 1 to 2.

Cordially,
'Ol Bearded Menace

Are you certain the variable name is BALDURAN? The dialog file I have says "Baldurian", which appears to be a misspelling and would cause Quenash's dialog to trigger only the "leave me alone or I'll call the guards" option.

Boradordin

Mathsorcerer said:

Are you certain the variable name is BALDURAN? The dialog file I have says "Baldurian", which appears to be a misspelling and would cause Quenash's dialog to trigger only the "leave me alone or I'll call the guards" option.

Yeah, I'm human and typed it in before I checked. My posting should read "BALDURIAN". Nice pick up on the misspell.

Someone in this thread commented that I had likely already talked to the courtesan. That is true. Why me talking to her before getting into the Helm of Balduran quest, and causing it to be broken, is beyond me. 'Tis a bug anyway you look at it IMO. I'd have to look at Quenash's files to see about the misspelling being the cause.

It makes one wonder if the same thing occurs in VBG1. If I can ever get that to run on this computer hopefully I can remember to talk to her first then start the quest. If it the bug occurs therein the answer would be that it came over with the port.

Cordially,
'Ol Bearded Menace

Deathproof

The cloak can be obtained without any variable change whatsoever, u need to speak to Vial and tell him u dont need the helmet after all and then hell let u on a secret that his cloak he left it with his quenash.

U need to go after her, tell her that Vial promised u this cloak for rescuing him, she will doubt that and ull get to choose from quite a lot of options, pick the one where it says elf blue eyes blond hair, and ull get the cloak, u can afterwards ask her that where the helmet could be and shell tell u what she knows.

Ull get to helm and cloak, second floor, painting, get the helm, go to dregorian or whatever, and speak to him, hell not walk away as he should hell just disappear.
U cant kill him after u gave him the helmet & the helmets lost.
So in my case either i give him the helm (which i wont do) or keep the helmet kill him for the feel and get on with the game
btw boradorin why did u kill the guys whom you just unstoned (if play evil party i get that), second, why did u force him to give the helmets location, u can pickpocket him, ull get the scroll where he describes where the helm is and who got the cloak, and u can speak to him afterwards, can let him believe that u dont want the helmet
My problem is only that i cant kill the mage who give u the quest after u give him the helmet. I played through BG1 like 10 or more times when it came out. And never had a problem with that guy, he always tried to walk away. Now he just disappears with the helmet (the best in game).