Stein the Tomb Robber (in Athkatla)

Dharius

Does anyone know the conditions under which he appears? He's only turned up in a small minority of games I've played, which leads me to believe his appearance is either bugged or very event-sensitive (or both?).

Thanks

Arunsun

I believe he is there only at night which is 9PM to 6AM (though at 6AM the sun is still high above the Faerun, it's still night as far as encounters and events are concerned.

JLE

Four years after the original post... no further answer...

I've been there at night, several times, and Stein is not there.

In fact this is a thing that's been happening since I first ever played the game, back when it first came out, it's not EE-specific.

In my very first playthrough of the game, Stein was there... the first time I entered the graveyard, which was after dark.

I haven't seen him since, no matter whether it is day or night, unless I spawned him manually.

I wonder if there is something weird with either the script or location that is supposed to spawn him? Like, if you go there for the first time during the day, he's supposed to be disabled, and it fails to re-enable him at night or something? Perhaps he can only turn up if the FIRST time you go to the Graveyard is at night because the re-enabling script fails to work, or something, because as soon as he's turned "off" for the day, something fails to turn him back "on" again at night"?

Is anybody in a position to check on this?

jmerry

My experience? He shows up partially in a wall, flickering between visible and invisible too fast to interact. I'd say his location is the problem.

Looking him up in NI... position (1735, 1051). Present from 5:30 PM to 4:30 AM. And since I can change things, why not test it?

First, I can confirm that his original location is not a legal location to stand in. It's right on the border, but the cursor shows up as the "can't go there" variant. I've tweaked the area file to move him south by 20 - new location (1735, 1071). And... worked on the first try. He showed up fully visible at the appropriate hour, and could be talked to.
I didn't mess with his timing, only his location.

Tweaked file attached below.

JLE

Ooh, interesting. I wonder if the reason I saw him first time, and never since, was because somehow he got mis-positioned in between the original release and the subsequent patches when the game first came out?

And how do we tell Beamdog so that they can fix this in their next patched version (and make sure to put the fix onto GOG or Steam).

SirBatince

Sometimes characters that are scripted to show at a certain time of the day simply aren't there even when it's the right time in BG2. I've seen it alot from about 30 runs, including the graveyard paladin quest or miss cragmoon at the bridge.

When that happens, you just gotta travel to another area and come back later. Seems to fix it.

Also yeah Stein is kind of inside the crypt door so you can't see him from far.

Dharius

Well, thread necromancy...nice

From the recent posts it sounds like we may have some sort of bug on our hands, which explains Stein’s rarity? As I’ve said I’ve not seen Stein since about 2008, the poor sap.

If this is so, And If it is a programming flaw, can someone raise it with the support desk, with suspected details? Thanks

Please do a search on the forums with the keywords “Support Desk” and it will lead you to a post with instructions on how to do this. Cheers!

ThacoBell

I saw Stein on my last runthrough, but I don't see him every time. He only shows up at night, but not every night. It might not be universal, since he does appear sometimes for me, but there probably is a bug there.

Dharius

Very likely, he occurs far too infrequently for it to NOT be a bug...

I mean I’ve been trying to find the doofus for twelve years, and failed, and I’m quite persistent...

Dharius

So we’ve established Stein’s absence is probably a bug owing to an incorrect starting position…

…can anyone please earmark this as a bug to be fixed in a future version (as I don’t know how to do this)? That’s assuming we ever get a new version update of course!

It’s not a big thing but it’s a shame to keep him and his pals out of the campaign where they belong

shevy123456

Which mod is Stein?

> That’s assuming we ever get a new version update of course!

I was not even aware of that mod until just now.

Would be great if all those mods could be hosted in one repository
at github, where multiple people could co-maintain stuff.

jmerry

Stein is not a mod character. He's in the base game. And he's been stuck in that wall for a very long time.

The fix for this bug is in the EE Fixpack, and has been reported to Beamdog along with all the other fixes in that collection. Expect the fix to make it into 2.7, if and when that comes out.