Sendai won't die - anyone seen this bug?

xzar_monty

So, I've fought all the pseudo-Sendais and the real, final one has shown up. I've ditched several thousand hit-points' worth of damage, but she just won't die. She remains at "near death", is no danger to my party at all, but there's no way to kill her. I suppose there is no way around this bug now, is there?

I have the game on pause in another window.

Amazing how this kind of stuff can happen. Never saw anything like it in vanilla BG2.

WebShaman

Have you tried using your upgraded Flail of Ages?

I know, I know, it was a jest in poor taste! I just couldn't resist!

Just use the console and kill her.

xzar_monty

Ha ha! I know! I just said nothing can beat me. Well, bugs can. They're the evillest monsters in the game!

I've never, ever used the console. I don't even know how.

WebShaman

There are some instructions kicking around here, somewhere..pretty sure a swift jog through Google (enable console BGII:EE) should turn up something. There is a command that you can use to kill stuff.

Here you go : http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/23801/so-to-enable-the-cluaconsole-for-bg2ee

And besides Bugs, the Lag Monster is considered one of the most unkillable, deadly beasts known to gaming!

How I used to grind enamel in NWN Online because of Lag induced death! Don't even get me started with Tekken&Co...

xzar_monty

I think I'll respond to the bug problem with the "uninstall and forget about it" workaround... :-D

Troodon80

The problem is with a script that isn't firing for some reason. The same thing used to happen in the original vanilla as well. I got it all the time with fights that were scripted to end after a certain amount of damage was done; I would spend about an hour loading and reloading just so I could beat Bodhi back in the day. It wouldn't happen with every play through, nor every reload, and there was really no way to tell when it would happen or what causes it.

Your best bet is to load a previous saved game (you should probably have an auto-save) and try again.

xzar_monty

@Troodon80: Yep, that's what I thought as well. I've give it another go, and this time I'll only have my planetar attack the drow duo coming in from the door. Perhaps the vorpal hits mess up with Sendai's script?

bbear

This happens to me on a frequent basis. I save often between fights (save every 2 clones). The whole battle can take 30+ minutes.

xzar_monty

@bbear: I tried it for a second time, and the same thing is happening. This is, frankly, awful scripting, I have to say.

I wonder what the real trigger is. Some of Sendai's scripts (contingencies and stuff) trigger when you move your party as far away from her as possible (first instance of awful scripting right there), but the final script, her actual death, doesn't seem to trigger no matter what.

I played vanilla BG2 many times and never had this happen.

Troodon80

@xzar_monty, I find that excess damage or death magic (primarily Disintegrate) messes up the scripting in the original. It would routinely occur when I went back to the original BG2 to test something, where I would typically use CTRL+Y to speed things up. In the case of most scripted battles, the opponent has a MINHP1 belt, and cannot be killed until they have said their end-of-battle speech, which also meant that the only choice was to reload. The script for the final speech hasn't actually changed in the Enhanced Edition from what it was in the original game.

xzar_monty

@Troodon80: It seems the final Sendai has at least three triggers. You will have to get away from her for any of them to actually occur. In the first once, her contingency triggers a number of spells, the most notable being Shield of the Archons. In the second, she gets Stoneskin and some other stuff. In the third, she gets Shadow door.

After that, I haven't had anything notable happen. I can bang away for as long as I want, but nothing ever happens. (Well, I haven't banged on for, like, hours, so obviously I cannot be certain, but surely you'd expect about 1000 hit points to be enough.)

I have now tried this three times, and it's always the same thing. I never had this happen in vanilla BG2, and for the moment, at least, I think my approach is: to hell with BG2:EE, if it's this badly bugged.

For the third battle, I avoided using anything but regular damage. Didn't make a difference.

Troodon80

@xzar_monty, can you upload a saved game prior to the actual fight?

Skaffen

There were some discussions on that a while ago, from what I remember mind flayer int drain will still kill her if you have shapechange or an unscribed shapechange scroll.

xzar_monty

@Troodon80: Where are the save games? Not in \data or \override.

@Skaffen: I don't.

WebShaman

Save games (if you are playing on Win Vista or Win7) under USER/Documents/Balder's Gate II Enhanced Edition/Save

xzar_monty

@WebShaman: Thank you.

@Troodon80: There's the file for you.

Troodon80

@xzar_monty, you need to Zip/RAR/7-Zip up the entire folder where you found that SAV file. I also need the GAM file. :-)

xzar_monty

@Troodon80: Oh, sorry. Better now?

Troodon80

@xzar_monty, that's perfect. Initially, I would have said your problem was related to an already known issue, but I think there might be more to it now.

I walked straight into the room with Sendai and she doesn't even initiate dialogue. I was required to force-talk...

I'll investigate. :-)

If you can provide clear steps as to what you did throughout Sendai's Enclave, then I can move this to the bugs section.

xzar_monty

@Troodon80: Yes, I also noticed that Sendai doesn't initiate dialogue. That seemed like a bad sign to me as well, although I only really noticed it after she refused to, you know, die.

As for what I did in Sendai's Enclave... I killed everyone. There's not much more that you can do. When it comes to choosing the north or the south road, I took the north road, the one that leads to the derro, not the spiders.

I do recall that prior to entering the enclave itself, the encounter with the wood-cutter was different from what it had been earlier. There were no ambushes: after the initial dialogue, I went through the map and then returned to ask him about the graves. This led to a discussion about his wife, which in turn led into a battle. I recall there used to be some umber hulks and perhaps even beholders around last time, but this time it was only drow, and only one encounter, after which the concealed door opened.

xzar_monty

@Troodon80: I read some of the thread you linked above. Damn. I wonder if this is all SCS-induced stuff.

Prior to this, SCS has been excellent, with only one exception.

xzar_monty

For the record, I uninstalled SCS. No change.

bbear

Skaffen said:

There were some discussions on that a while ago, from what I remember mind flayer int drain will still kill her if you have shapechange or an unscribed shapechange scroll.

Does this trigger the scene with the solar and allow you to enter the pocket plane challenge?

Troodon80

@bbear, as far as I am aware it completely that messes up, but can be 'bypassed' by using certain console commands. Finding out a reliable fix for this would be better. I'm still in the process of trying to reproduce this. :-)

Worst case scenario, I can give you a character script (you'll have to assign it as you would any other script, via Character Record -> Customise -> Script) that forces the dialogue.

xzar_monty

@Troodon80: Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

It's not really that important, actually. I mean, my game has only five things left: Sendai, pocket plane challenge, Balthazar, pocket plane challenge, throne of Bhaal. But obviously it would be nice to be able to finish the whole thing in style, as opposed to quitting due to a bug.

bbear

A similar situation once happened to me in an ironman game. I was debating whether I can reload due to a bug in the game. I justified that I could, but obviously it left a bad taste in my mouth.

xzar_monty

The reload question doesn't even exist for me, I never thought about that.

ARKdeEREH

I haven't encountered that kind of problem in the EE yet, but in original BG2 I solved it by using the console to spawn new copies of the character I needed to interact with. In this case, you could spawn a new copy of Sendai (the character codes for all versions of Sendai are in Shadowkeeper for the original game and should be in EE Keeper for this one) and then kill the copy. I know the Sendai copies will initiate the correct dialogue that you need, assuming you spawn the correct kind, because a long time ago I used the console to spawn about 20 of them in the Umar Hills so that I could fight them, and that dialogue (at the time unexpectedly) came up after each of them died.

You could also use the MoveToArea cheat to get to Balthazar's palace, the pocket plane, the Throne of Bhaal, and anywhere else you want to go, but if you visit them in the wrong order it could cause further glitches.

Also, it might too complicated and not work, but the version of Sendai that you fight can't go below one health (at least in the non EE game), because she is wearing an item (I forget exactly, but I think it's a ring) that is similar to Imoen's belt that she wears in the Irenicus dungeon, which prevents her from dying there. If you can't get any of the other ideas mentioned on here to work, you could use the ctrl q cheat to force Sendai to join your party, use EE Keeper to swap out the ring that prevents her from dying for something else (it can't be removed in game, even if she is in your party) and then reform her out of your party and kill her before she can leave the game.

xzar_monty

@ARKdeEREH: I have no interest at all in any of that. I am only interested in playing the game, not jumping from one place to the other via console commands or cheats. I have never used any cheats and have no interest in using one now.

So, either a workaround is developed or discovered (probably by @Troodon80), or I'll forget about the game completely. I'm perfectly fine with either option.

ARKdeEREH

Well, my intent was so you could use cheats as a workaround so that you could skip past the problem part and continue the game, not so that you could use them to make it easier for you or do things out of order or do anything else associated with cheating or not just playing the game. If you jump to Amkethran via the console or you jump there via the Pocket Plane, the end result is exactly the same, and you could most likely continue the game from there as you normally would without issue.

In one game, which I played a long time ago, my Pocket Plane ability never showed up, so I used the console to get around (but of course only in the order and time that would have happened normally had that glitch not existed). If I hadn't used the console, I would had to completely uninstall my game and all its mods and add them back on again and hope for the best, which if it worked on the first try would have taken several hours instead of a few seconds. It was annoying to have to use the console, but in my opinion it was infinitely preferable to the alternative.

If you don't want to use any form of cheats at all, than I would recommend doing something to Sendai that will cause the game to think of her as dead, but without your needing to damage her. I can think of three ways to do that.

1.) Use the shapeshift spell, turn into a mindflayer and use the intelligence drain to instantly kill her. This works even against characters with hundreds of life and can kill characters that the game doesn't intend to have die, such as the incarnation of Bhaal that you fight in one of the dreams in Shadows of Amn. Bhaal actually has the same kind of item in his inventory as Sendai that prevents them from going below one life while they fight you, so what works against one should work against the other.

2.) Use the flesh to stone spell to turn her to stone. You won't get any of her items that way, but she would be dead and you would get the XP for killing her and the game would probably move on to the next part of the plot.

3.) Use the imprisonment spell. This would give you the XP for killing, her presumably allow you to continue with your game, and would also leave all quest items behind, but you would not get her other items.

If you cast either flesh to stone or imprisonment and the game allows you to continue, you could potentially go back later and cast either stone to flesh or freedom to get her back out and try to kill her again in order to try for her items again. You can theoretically cast imprisonment and freedom on a character an infinite number of times if you had the inclination and had them in your spellbook.

xzar_monty

I take your point and understand that you mean well. However, with the game being essentially finished already (only Sendai, pocket plane challenge, Balthazar, pocket plane challenge and throne of Bhaal left), it doesn't really matter that much.

I know full well how everything will go and I'm almost certain I've already seen everything there is to the new characters (except their epilogues of course).

I find it astonishing that a bug like this is still there, but what the heck. I'll see if @Troodon80 comes up with something.

I don't have shapeshift, flesh to stone or imprisonment. I never find use for them in the regular game. Flesh to stone would be nice otherwise, except that it destroys the items.