The Harpers quest should be triggered later

_Connacht_

The first time you go outside Athkatla (usually for Nalia) you trigger the Harpers quest.
You then have either to go for your quest, bringing with you a corpse in the bag (which is silly); or to get to the docks which means to leave back the quest you were going to do (and which also can trigger Yoshimo to tell you to go to Renal, but you can ignore him).
Besides, when you start the chapter 2 in BG2 you are already literally bombed by new quests all at once.

IMHO the Harpers should come in AFTER you complete your first major quest and return to Athkatla, not before.

deltago

First off, can @bengoshi or another mod move this thread to the BG2:EE forum.

One of these reasons why this quest triggers early is due to it be attached to Jaheria quest to get her Harper pin. There is already a lot of thumb twiddling waiting for the respective players to show up and talk to Jaheria already that delaying it might not allow players to finish it in time before the game ends.

It is also one of the easier (I'd say easiest) quest to complete only having two battles to fight before an RP element takes over.

It can also be delayed. Just drop off the body talk to Xzar, and then head you off to what ever adventure you were going to do first and do it when you return to the docks in chapter 3.

JuliusBorisov

Done;)

Althouth I understand @deltago 's view I still think that there're a lot of encounters when you move between areas in Athkatla after finishing the starting dungeon. I always seem to get 3 of them in first 5 moves between areas, and the encounter mentioned in the OP included. After that I can freely move between areas. It may be good to spread those encounters more evenly. Because for a low-level party they can be dangerous.

Durenas

Taking Renfield's body to the Harper Hold has always triggered at or near the first time you leave the city or go to another zone within the city.

_Connacht_

deltago said:

One of these reasons why this quest triggers early is due to it be attached to Jaheria quest to get her Harper pin. There is already a lot of thumb twiddling waiting for the respective players to show up and talk to Jaheria already that delaying it might not allow players to finish it in time before the game ends.

Easy: then the characters should also show up a little earlier.

Nihilus

Yeah, this bugged me for ages, probably because I almost always play with a fighter and thus take Nalia and head to the de'Arnise Hold first thing in Chapter 2. I suppose it's a good thing though, that Renfield dies if you take too long to bring him to the Harper Hold and Rylock there actually acknowledges this (even if he is being kind of nonchalant about it).

semiticgoddess

The first Harper quest always struck me as odd.

The Harpers have the resources to spy on Xzar enough to know he was a Zhent, kidnap Xzar's friend, turn Colette into a bird and give her a poisoned weapon, trick Charname into retrieving Colette while letting Charname steal hundreds of gold's worth of loot from their headquarters, and do all of this without alerting either Xzar, his apprentices, or the authorities. And they might have even had the resources to stage Renfeld's kidnapping, and the multiple deaths that went along with it. Obviously they've got lots of highly skilled spies and are willing to spend hundreds if not thousands of gold on a single mission. But they don't have the resources to just kill Xzar without Charname's help?

The local ruffians proudly state they'd break an arm or a leg for a copper or two. How much would it really cost to hire some goons to kill Xzar?

Nihilus

Could be gameplay and story segregation. Sure, Xzar was just standing there, thirty meters away from the Harper Hold; but it could be that he was very successfully hiding from them storywise. Since he had always been extremely paranoid, I think he could have eluded the Harpers till that point.

Yelocessej

I've always felt uncomfortable with the Harper related quests. They seem "rough around the edges". And yes, it is super annoying to be making a Bee Line for Nalia's Keep or the Umar Hills and then get delayed by Harper meddling.

_Connacht_

semiticgod said:

The local ruffians proudly state they'd break an arm or a leg for a copper or two. How much would it really cost to hire some goons to kill Xzar?

Well, Xzar was a powerful necromancer, so it wasn't that a simple thug could kill him, neither the Harpers with a direct assault. So they arranged all that deception in order to stealthly and suddenly kill him.