Marek and Lothander (spoilers)

Cloutier

If I'm not mistaken, Lothander doesn't chase you around after you've been poisoned.

He waits for you at the BG carnival in the center until you happen to walk by to tell you about the antidote.

It's very easy though to skip Lothander altogether and go straight for a poison death at Candlekeep. Which I almost did in my last playthrough. I was about to get the book from Eltan when I remembered I should find the antidote first.

So what's up with this?

Gallowglass

Erm ... good question. But I suspect that the poison timer doesn't actually start until you meet Lothander in the market.

dunbar

If you're quick off the mark you can kill him with ranged weapons before he's able to talk to you, loot his body for all the goodies, and never get poisoned. I still do this every time out of habit, from when the quest (in vanilla) was horribly bugged.

sarevok57

dunbar said:

If you're quick off the mark you can kill him with ranged weapons before he's able to talk to you, loot his body for all the goodies, and never get poisoned. I still do this every time out of habit, from when the quest (in vanilla) was horribly bugged.

but if you kill marek prematurely you will miss out on the whooping 10 000 XP quest finish ( which is a nice little boost when you get to bg the city, even if it easy to hit the level cap in bg1, 10000xp still looks pretty cool in bg1 )

dunbar

Yeah I know, but it still gives me some childish satisfaction to 'beat the system' (albeit in a very tiny way). Besides, it was the first time I found my own way to work around a bug - which was fairly gamebreaking at the time as people were having to avoid that encounter altogether or spend the rest of the game chugging healing potions. There were three possible outcomes: 1) He showed up with the antidote and everything was OK, 2) He showed up but the antidote didn't work, or 3) He didn't show up at all.
"Old habits die hard".