Quest/Journal Bugs

gugulug5000

Just reporting some of the quest/journal related bugs that I noticed in my latest playthrough:

Some Quests Remain in the Journal Even After Completion – In my final save I still have a bunch of supposedly unfinished quests in my journal. If you need a save file or any more info on them, let me know. The quests that I still had at the end of my 100% playthrough (I used a guide to ensure I didn’t miss anything) were the following:
-The Prisoner of the Gnolls (would be better as part of “Edwin and Dynaheir” or “Minsc and Dynaheir”)
-Vai’s Bounty on the Bandits
-A Tour of Durlag’s Tower
-Balduran’s Final Voyage
-A Seer’s Vision (this shouldn’t even be a quest)
-Ankheg Culling (it tells me to find Gerde, but I talked to her before talking to Fenten in BG)
-Tremain’s Son (I took too long so his son couldn’t be resurrected)
-A Hidden Base in the Cloakwood
-The Firewine Ruins
-Investigating Nashkel Mines
-Madness Most Fowl
-Xvart Raids
-Dorn Il-Khan
-Tandem in Extremis (I don’t think this should be a quest either. Journal entry would be fine.)
-The Rise of Sarevok
-Rising Tensions in Amn
-Duke Eltan’s Illness
-On the Trail of Sarevok
-Troubles in the Region

Some Quests Appear in both Active and Finished Quest Tabs – The quests Dorn Il-Khan, Tremain’s Son, Ankheg Culling, Duke Eltan’s Illness, and Troubles in the Region, all appear in both my active quest list and my done quests list. It seems that something is wrong here, but oddly enough all of these quests also show up in my above list of quests that should have cleared, but didn’t.

Killing Quest Givers may Break Quests - “Ankheg Culling” and “Officer Vai’s Bounty on the Bandits” both appeared to be glitched in my game. This appears to be because I killed them after receiving their quests. I’m sure it’s entirely possible to break other quests by killing the quest giver as well, so I just thought I’d suggest that if a quest giver dies the quest should have an updated entry ending the quest and stating that the person is dead.

“Troubles in the Region” Glitched – This quest didn’t clear for me until Chapter 7, where it finally put in an entry saying Berun Ghastkill paid me for clearing the mine.

Gallowglass

It's true that there are some quest log entries which never clear properly, and also some which can clear to the completed-quest log but can then spuriously re-appear in the (active) quest log if you again speak to certain NPCs after completion. It's also true that there are some (such as "A Seer's Vision" and "Xvart Raids") which ought to be logged as journal entries rather than "quests".

However, your list includes several entries which do permanently clear to done quests if you actually complete them properly.

If you screw up a quest so that it can't be completed, then it's reasonable that this remains permanently logged as an uncompleted quest, because this is the game's way of telling you that you've failed the quest. Tremain's Son, for example - if you return with the corpse in time, then it clears, but if you don't return in time, then you've failed so it correctly stays uncompleted. Similarly, I see no glitch in "Ankheg Culling" and "Officer Vai's Bounty on the Bandits" - if you kill the quest-giver before completing the quest, then that's obviously a fail (and therefore stays showing as not done), but both of those quests clear properly if you actually complete them.

We've only got "Quests" and "Done Quests", we don't also have a separate tab for "Wrecked Quests Which Now Can't Be Done", so the latter correctly stay marked as not done. It'd be quite wrong for the game to mark a quest as "done" when in fact you haven't done it.

gugulug5000

Yes, I understand what you're saying, however "Done Quests" doesn't necessarily mean it was successful. To me it means it's finished, done, no further action to take, and in the case of a person dying, that quest is effectively done. That's why I suggested adding another entry if the quest giver dies just stating basically "I screwed this quest up, nothing else can be done." Moving it to done quests is basically a way of saying "there's nothing else that can be done with this." They could even put "failed" next to it (for example Tremain's Son - Failed) to specify that the quest wasn't completed properly, but also recognizing that the quest is effectively over.

Gallowglass

I understand you, but that's not the interpretation of "done" as used in the game. The game uses "done" to mean "things you have actually done", not "done" in the sense of "no longer active".

gugulug5000

That's where I disagree. Like I said, my game shows both Tremain's Son and Ankheg Culling in both Done Quests and Active Quests. Tremain's Son's Done Quest entry says basically "I was too late to save Tremain's Son" in the Done Quests section, meaning the game is counting the quest as done even though I failed it, so it looks like the game is indeed defining "done" as "no longer active," not "successfully completed." It is however still showing an entry for Tremain's Son in Active Quests basically saying "Tenya is in charge at the Temple of Umberlee." That is the issue that I'm trying to report with this quest.

With Ankheg Culling, the Done Quests section basically says "Fenten paid me for the Ankheg shells I brought him, and Gerde paid me for killing some Ankhegs too" (ie, mission success). That's because I did the quest, then killed Fenten afterwards. The active entry says "I need to find and talk to Gerde," which I already did, long before talking to Fenten. So the issue with this one isn't so much that I failed it (sorry for the confusion), but more because it should be cleared, but still appears in both Active and Done Quests. Me killing him was merely speculation to a cause of this error.

On a side note, Duke Eltan's Sickness may be in both tabs too because I killed the Harbor Master right after finishing the quest.

Alonso

@gugulug5000 pinpointed some pretty annoying bugs here (even though it's unclear whether some of them are bugs or not). I completed the game recently and this problem was arguably the weakest and most annoying part of it. I spent the whole game thinking that later, at some poing, I would manage to complete sidequest X and ended up disappointed. Any plans to fix all these bugs?

Doubledimas

Some of these will be fixed with v2.0 (for example the Xvart Raids) but I'm not sure if all of them will be done. I haven't seen many reports from the beta related to journal entries remaining open so it could be that they are fixed now.