Shoal the Nereid and the Leave No Friend Behind achievement

Nildar

Shoal the infamous sirine automatically kills the character whom you speak to her with. Now, the Leave no Friend Behind achievement requires you to complete the game without any party members dying. This seems to be in direct conflict with doing Shoal her quest.

Normally I could just kill her before she gets the chance to talk to me, but the half-ogre mage she spawns after talking/dying to her drops an awesome helmet that stays good for the rest of the game (and probably SoD as well?).

I was wondering if anyone has already tried and found out if getting killed by Shoal ruins the achievement? If so, does anyone know if there is a mod out there that gives you at least a chance to not die a horrible death? I am using BG1NPC and I was hoping that would help, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Even talking to her in story mode ends with you dying, since it is a scripted event.

Quartz

I guarantee it ruins the achievement. This game is pretty archaic, there isn't going to be any clever coding in place to work around such things.

You're going to have to face the fact that the Helmet of Defense won't be yours' this play through. *Shrug* A good item, yes, but it's not a catastrophic loss.

I know of no such mods, but I also don't have great knowledge of the mod-base.

CaptRory

You can cheat the helm in if it really bothers you.

Durenas

That's odd. I have the achievement, and I'm reasonably sure I don't skip Shoal, ever.

Tresset

Not 100% sure here but I think this achievement is only referring to the final battle. So if you finish the game and everyone in your party is still alive then you get the achievement. Pretty sure it is the opposite of the "Sacrifices Must Be Made" achievement.

Tresset

Tresset said:

Not 100% sure here but I think this achievement is only referring to the final battle. So if you finish the game and everyone in your party is still alive then you get the achievement. Pretty sure it is the opposite of the "Sacrifices Must Be Made" achievement.

I checked the game script and I can confirm that this is the case. This achievement only cares about whether the people in your party are dead or not when you kill Sarevok. It doesn't take deaths before the final battle into account.

Nildar

@Tresset Thanks a bunch for looking that up! I guess I can safely send my least favorite party member in to talk to Shoal (although I like them all in my canon party ).

It still stings and is a pretty lame way to die though, since normally I use my PC to talk to NPCs and this is the only forced exception.

JuliusBorisov

The same rule applies to getting the Story Mode achievement - you don't need to run through all the game on this difficulty, just change it for the end after loading a pre-Sarevok save.

One_True_Nobody

I realize this is a necro, but regarding the "automatic" death Shoal inflicts on you, it actually automatically hits you with an instant-kill attack that you can survive if the character makes a successful Save vs. Breath roll with a -2 penalty. She also revives the party member if you help her out afterward.

She can also be convinced to revive the party member she killed in this way if you help her out afterward.

I managed to survive this by blind luck my first time she tried to kill my protagonist, but you can absolutely save-scum the initial encounter if you don't want anyone to die.

I am glad to hear that you only need to survive the Sarevok battle though, because Neera got killed by the final boss of the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion while it was "Near Death" and I decided to just eat the loss and finish the boss off. I'm glad I'm still in the running for the achievement after all.

On that note I have a question regarding the achievement: If it only checks to see whether your party members are alive or dead, does it also check to see if a party member has been disintegrated or "chunked" by a critical hit? I ask because this removes the party member from your party entirely (and from the game, permanently) and it would be kind of funny if the achievement triggered anyway.

jmerry

Also, it's not an automatic kill on a failed save, at least in the current game. There are two versions of the kiss; one kills on a failed save, while the other reduces to 1 HP and causes a round of sleep on a failed save. Both versions are completely negated by a successful save (vs breath, at -2). Shoal always applies the nonlethal kiss if player 1 is being targeted, and rolls 50/50 between the two options otherwise. There's no visible indicator of the difference; the only way to tell which spell was applied is to see the result of a failed save.

This has been true at least since version 2.5; I don't know when the second version of the spell was implemented.