Paladin Stronghold - The Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart (loongest name ever!)

zunami

Hey everyone,

I encountered a bug during play as a paladin where I was unable to join the order, because I accidentally skipped a step in the very delicate quest line, and killed Firekraag before I saved Garren Windspear's daughter. At least, this is my theory as to why it did not work.

Some research uncovered that this was a problem in the original Baldur's Gate II game, that most people thought had been patched, but was still possible to encounter, and several suggestions as to how I could fix it were presented, all of which included use of the cluaconsole.

using the command to (excuse me, but I can't remember the proper console commands) "setglobalvariable - hasstronghold 0" was a necessary step, despite not having a stronghold, it was apparently enabled, but I also needed to "setglobalvariable - helpedgarren 60" and further more, I needed to be a paladin without a kit, meaning I had to use the EEkeeper to edit my kit to true class.

I would understand it if the blackguard was unable to join the order, and perhaps could get the fighter keep instead, but my character is a cavalier, and I find it odd that a cavalier can't join.

The true nature of this bug is hard for me to discern... But here is what happened:

Immediately after leaving the starting dungeon, I recruited Aerie from the circus and went to the slums where I was promted to recruit Nalia. Anomen also joined my party, and I booted Yoshimo because I know from a previous playthrough that he's gonna stab me in the back anyway (I realize he still will, but eff that, ain't wasting a party slot on him).

While at the copper coronet, I was recruited by Lord Firekraag to take care of some trouble for him, and seeing as I promised the dryads from the the starting dungeon to take their acorns to the Windspear hills anyway, I immediately left for that location.

Much to my sadness, the first thing that happened was that I killed my previous companion Ajantis, while under the influence of a spell.

Garren Windspear approached me, and invited me to join him at his cabin. I started exploring instead, and made it to the dungeon entrance where he spawned right in front of me, and asked me to rescue his daughter, and so I ventured into the dungeon and after many an attempt, killed firekraag and left with my awesome new sword..

I rescued the daughter last, though, and it seems I skipped quite a few steps of this quest, and that must have broken it.

It's worth mentioning that I use an imported character from BG 1.

Emptiness

You should probably mention *SPOILERS* in the title, since you do quite a bit of that.

Are you reporting a bug? If so, what bug? I see that you missed out on getting the Paladin stronghold, but that isn't a bug. It is possible to fail any quest if you make the wrong choices. In this case, I'd say your mistake was that you didn't follow up on Garren's offer to help clear your name with the Radiant Heart (by going to his cabin when he offers you that choice). A Paladin that doesn't care enough about whether other Paladins think he is a cold-blooded murderer to try to clear his name probably shouldn't be surprised when the other Paladins don't invite him into their club.

zunami

You'll probably notice that this entire forum has a spoiler warning, so no need to include any spoiler tags.

It's not so much that I made a decision as that Garren simply spawned and the decision was removed, because I triggered something.

I would definitely call it a bug, because I was simply detouring to his cabin, and that messed up the entire quest line.

I'm not so much reporting a bug as I'm posing my found solution to a bug I mention in this post.

BTW, your post is less than helpful and your tone is undesirable, you should probably not offer your opinion if you don't have anything constructive to say.

Emptiness

When Garren first approaches you, at the site of the massacre, he invites you in dialog to come to his cabin. If you accept (the "correct" choice), you and he reappear outside his cabin. The only way to run into him at the dungeon entrance is to choose in dialog not to accept his assistance, or to accept his assistance and then ignore the not-even-slightly-subtle suggestion that you should go into his cabin.

The decision was removed, but not by a bug. It was removed by the choices you made.

The constructive thing I have to say is that, without a bug to report, this thread belongs in another section of the forum.

I apologize for my undesirable tone. My intent is to clarify the situation, not to offend.

zunami

As I tried to explain, I chose the correct options, but before I had a chance to speak with Garren at his cabin, he spawned in the wilderness surrounding the cabin, in front of the cave entrance in which Firekraag is living inside, which I happened upon while searching for the "Fairy Queen" for the Dryad quest.

I'm not sure here, but it could be that I didn't even find Garren's Cabin before I happened upon him once more in the wild.

I'm fairly sure a man like Garren would be more than inclined to help the character out if his daughter has been saved and the dragon slain, so it appears odd to me, that just because I decide to spend 5 minutes looking for something before going to see him, that the offer would drop.

I can inform you that on other sites that also feature BG communities, this has been regarded as a bug, and several mods have claimed to fix this *issue*, including an official patch if I am to believe what I read, but apparently, the *issue* persists. I find it kind of strange that you would even consider this anything but a bug.

Also, I should mention that I did go to his cabin after he approached me in front of the dungeon entrance, and found him lacking anything interesting to say, so I left him there thinking that I probably just triggered some dialogue that was supposed to happen when I was *in* the cabin.

Illydth

First I don't believe either of you is trying to be a Jerk here, so lets keep the tone as civil as it is now. Thanks to both of you for not "blowing up" at each other!

@zunami: The question I think @Emptiness is trying to bring up may be able to be cleared up by a detailed set of reproduction steps. I think he is assuming you skipped the entire cabin conversation and / or told Garren to buzz off when you first encountered him.

Can you give me a detailed set of steps from when you entered the zone (starting just after the fight that ends as a massacre and up to the point where you found Garren in front of the cave).

Also, you mention you were doing the Fairy Queen / Dryad quest, I assume you got the massacre battle the moment you entered the zone and Garren's encounter was the first thing you were presented with. Please make sure you identify the order in which you tackled the dryads in the grand scheme of the steps.

I ask because if there's a timer or something in the order, we need to know what happened when to cause the issue.

@Emptiness: Given that the entire forum is tagged for Spoilers, it is not necessary to include that fact in the thread. I agree putting the spoiler tag in the message header *is* typically done as a courtesy as not EVERY bug report has spoilers in them and as a reminder to those who happen upon it that they might read something they don't want to read...however it is not required. I would call it "good practice".

Emptiness

I have not yet encountered a situation in which accepting his hospitality failed to move me to the entrance of his cabin. If zunami did, and the game didn't move him there, then that would certainly be a bug. If zunami is able to provide the reprodution steps Illydth requested then that should clarify the situation.

zunami

First of all, I already found a way to get the stronghold, and part of my reason for posting here was simply to make sure that the work-around would be posted on this site, in case this bug happens again to someone else.

Second; The Windspear Hills were my very first destination after arriving at the copper coronet and recruiting Nalia and Anomen, because I wanted to give back those acorns from the Dryads in the dungoen. I also picked up the quest by Lord Firekraag at the inn.

Arriving there, I got in the mandatory fight with the paladins, and Garren arrived.
After briefly speaking, I accepted his invitation to meet him at his cabin. While searching the area, I happened upon the entrance to the dungeon with Firekraag in it, causing Garren to spawn infront of me and ask for my help. At this point, I didn't realize that he didn't want me to come visit him anymore, and continued my search for the dryad queen. After finding her, I visited Garren and spoke with him. He had no interesting dialogue, and so I slew the dragon and THEN I saved the daughter.

Following this, I had to use the Cluaconsole to join the paladin order, because in this process, I managed to skip over a few globalvariables.

As mentioned, though my searches for a solution in other Baldur's gate communities (most of which are now shut down) this bug was discussed and debated over and over again, and people kept coming up with new possible solutions, I even found references to some outdated mods that claimed to fix this, and several people claiming this should have been fixed by a patch a while back.

I finally found the solution that worked for me, but can regrettably not reproduce it entirely here, due to a lapse in memory and a general unwillingness to search for it again, as it took me quite a while.

Claiming this isn't a bug is baffling to me. If it's not a bug, then it's certainly an oversight by the developers, and that's generally the same thing in my eyes, because I made no conscious decision to ignore Garren's invitation, I just wanted to hand in a quest before starting a new one.

Emptiness

zunami said:

After briefly speaking, I accepted his invitation to meet him at his cabin. While searching the area, I happened upon the entrance to the dungeon with Firekraag in it, causing Garren to spawn infront of me and ask for my help.

The problem is between these two sentences. When you accept his invitation the game is supposed to relocate you to stand directly outside his cabin. Your description isn't clear about whether you are being repositioned to the cabin and then choosing to walk away without going inside, or not being repositioned to the cabin. We would need to know definitively which of those two events occurred in order to say whether your situation involved a bug.

zunami

In all events, if the man wanted to speak with me inside his cabin, the game should simply relocate me inside his cabin instead of outside it? But I don't recall being relocated anywhere, as far as I remember, Garren walked away. Regardless of that, like I said, this is something people have encountered before, and my purpose was not to troubleshoot but rather to provide the work around.

Emptiness

This section of the forums is for reporting bugs, so hopefully you can understand why we might think that you were posting here to report a bug. Any thread in this section of the forum that mentions a bug (which should be all of them) is going to draw many people looking to confirm and then fix that bug. General discussion of bugs and bug workarounds, without making an effort to fix them, is probably better located in the General Discussion (Spoiler Warning!) section of the forum.

I've never encountered the bug you are talking about, nor heard any mention of it before your post. Of course, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist - but without a saved game and the steps necessary to reproduce the bug, there's not much anyone is going to be able to do to fix it until someone else stumbles across it (and can provide the necessary information). That's unfortunate, because Garren walking away after you accept his hospitality without moving you to his cabin would indeed be a serious bug.

zunami

And when that happens, maybe that unfortunate someone will read this post and find my work around helpful.