Dorn always dies in ambush

Pingwin

I'm sure Dorn always used to be immortal in the encounter near the Nashkell mines but in my latest playthrough, the ambush scene has been changed around quite a bit and it now seems virtually impossible to keep Dorn alive.

Is this intentional or is it going to get fixed in a patch?

Annoying as I intended to recruit him. Neera who is just an annoyance who deserves to die on the other hand can't get killed anymore. Grrr.

JuliusBorisov

Please zip and attach the save at support.baldursgate.com - this is a bug.

Pingwin

Cheers, bug submitted.

Pingwin

Is there a console workaround for this at the moment, or is my best bet just to keep reloading until Dorn gets lucky and survives?

ThacoBell

CTRL-R to get around the bug. It fully heals whatever character is under the cursor. The console is ESSENTIAL for playing this series, not for cheating, but to get around bugs.

The_Cheeseman

ThacoBell said:

CTRL-R to get around the bug. It fully heals whatever character is under the cursor. The console is ESSENTIAL for playing this series, not for cheating, but to get around bugs.

This does work, and it’s the solution I use, but sometimes Dorn gets one-shot from full health. A couple times I’ve just Ctrl Y’d the MOBs to get it over with. I don’t particularly care about Dorn, but I play with EET, and I’ve run into issues with NPCs being dead when they are supposed to appear later. I killed off Neera in BG1 once and my game crashed when she was supposed to show back up in the Bridge District in BG2.

ThacoBell

EET comes with its own problems.

Noon

Could it be EET messing with dorn's invulnerability ? Like changing something so that it can track Dorn .cre through the different games ?

kjeron

It's not EET, even in the vanilla game, Dorn is given the "MinHP1" item, but never actually equips it.
With only 10 HP, he's an easy kill, especially if anyone crits.
The offending script is "CUTDN1B.bcs", which had this line removed between v2.3 and v2.5:
ActionOverride("DORN",FillSlot(SLOT_AMULET))

JuliusBorisov

This bug is submitted to the internal tracker as "Regression".

AbelianDyk

I've experienced exactly the same thing (twice in a row), anyway happy to know the truth!

sarevok57

i noticed this started happening in the 2.5 patch, i just look at it as a challenge to keep him alive, difficult but fun to do at level 1

Nerfy

Curiously this just happened to me. When I reloaded and did the encounter again, lightning strikes began weakening the enemies during the cutscene, then killed an archer and the elf woman during the battle. If I didn't know better I'd presume that was Dorn's power, controlling the weather.

_Connacht_

Happened to me too recently, but I have mods installed (not EET), could one of them be responsible? Do you know of mods that alter somehow Dorn?

Hrafnkolbrandr

I actually thought it was great that Dorn died during the ambush. It means you really have to work to save him, which I was able to do.

So no, please don't change this.

Pingwin

Hrafnkolbrandr wrote: »

I actually thought it was great that Dorn died during the ambush. It means you really have to work to save him, which I was able to do.

So no, please don't change this.

The problem is that, at the typical level most people would get to the ambush, you've got little to no chance of saving him. It's not difficult to win the fight but it is very difficult to win the fight before Dorn dies seeing as he would be lucky to survive two hits.

The Dorn and Neera encounters in my opinion need to be balanced such that they will die if you choose not to help, but if you do help then you should have a very good chance of saving them.

DreadKhan

Well, obviously if the people ambushing Dorn weren't loaded with decent defenses, it'd be easier to kill them. Give them plain leather armor, given them a generic shield (or just a staff), and the fight becomes very easy to win, and doesn't give you extra gear that can unbalance the game a tad for some.

ThacoBell

@DreadKhan I don't think it imbalances the game. You get a +1 small shield around the time a +1 medium shield is also available for free, and a +1 wakizashi (a rare weapon type) just before entering the map with Varscona. They are nice little boosts, but are also objectively worse to vanilla gear available with a similar amount of effort.

DreadKhan

Yes, but they are very, very easy to get. What other truly easy fight drops so much decent, saleable even if useless gear? Tarnesh is a harder fight than this one, especially if you don't care if Dorn dies.

As for the significance of the gear, I remember when I played BG1 as a beginner, I tended to stack up one PC, usually Khalid or Kagain (found him fairly late though, probably after I bought the game the first time on one of it's early rereleases. Anyways, they'd get loaded with the best gear, and used as both a tank and damage dealer, a job that arguably minsc was a better choice for, but I loved the good constitution scores. Anyways, I always was short until at least the Bandit Camp in terms of 2nd tier weapons, IE I'd have one great long sword, one great hammer, etc, where those two items can matter, filling out the roster's gear, possibly better equiping a rogue for backstabbing than most weapons, or protecting someone not worried about arrows.

ThacoBell

@DreadKhan I mean, vanilla had the free platemail on the flaming fist south of Beregost. The ring of wizardry at the FAI, the ankheg plate in Nashkel, I could go on. Dorn's ambush is tougher than all of these, and al you get is +1 versions of some fringe gear.

Hrafnkolbrandr

It is seriously not that difficult to save Dorn if you're actually trying to.

Pingwin

The +1 wakizashi I suppose fills a hole for characters with scimitar proficiency who can't get anything magical until Cloakwood unless they are brave enough to visit Durlag's Tower early on. Taken on their own none of these items are game breaking but when you take into account all of the EE additions of magical items that are easily obtained in the Beregost/Nashkel area (the afore mentioned wakizashi, the small shield from the same encounter, a magical club near the dryad tree, the mace of stunning),if you choose to sell them all then that's an awful lot of extra gold towards getting a suit of full plate early on.

Whether that is a problem or not I guess depends on how you like to play the game. There's always ignoring Dorn in the FAI to get rid of a substantial part of the problem if you don't like it.

ThacoBell

I mean, I get all of those except for the stunning mace (can't rp a reason to steal it), and I still can't get Full Plate until around bandit camp time. I suppose I could sell the ring of wizardry if I really wanted to pick it up early...

JuliusBorisov

I like the extra items. I'm not saying that as a company representative, but as a player. When BG:EE and then BGII:EE were announced, the thing most interesting to me was companions, and after that - items. I like additional items. I agree with @ThacoBell , though (about the fact these particular items are not OP).

DreadKhan

You're falling into the trap of assuming everyone knows where everything is/plays optimally... first timers are unlikely to find many hidden items unless they actually read a walkthrough. I know I missed tons of content my first playthrough of SoD, which was fairly recent. The game should be reasonably balanced for new players. For most inexperienced players, there is a long period when they are trying to find magic gear for everyone, and if you stick straight to the storyline (with little exploration) you don't actually find all that much gear. They'll be using either non-proficient gear or non-magic until at least the bandit camp.

For players that won't be finding a good swath of goodies, those two items are pretty handy. Do they break the game? Of course not, they just don't help it much IMHO. Keep the wakizashi +1 in the encounter, but maybe ditch the +1 shield that makes them harder to kill. I'd rather have a more reliable fight for Dorn's survival, and as noted, it's not like I desperately need a +1 small shield after a few chapters, even on a 2nd line cleric. A Buckler +1 would have been way more useful, as more classes can use it, though they don't offer much defense.

As much as I like it, EE has had some serious powercreep in BG1, some needed (IE more magic weapons of obscure types was needed), making it very easy to splurge for some of the sweet gear available in and around Beregost very early. The game is straight up way easier IMHO than the vanilla version, at least until the end I'd say, and for a skilled player vanilla was pretty easy, while tutu was generally a cakewalk.

LillyOberon

Dorn nearly die on iPad too during the encounter. As either a mage or a sorcerer, what I do is to either blind/ sleep or charm one of his attackers in order to reduce the load on Dorn and I have Jaheira healing him, while the rest of the team is busy killing the ranged attackers on the right side of the battle spot ( who will otherwise target my mage).
Édit : done with a level 1 team

Pokota

I've had to miss out on Dorn a few times due to him dying during the encounter (most recently in my Item Randomizer streams that I need to get back to since I'm about to storm the Ducal Palace and stop Sarevok's ascension...). It's annoying when it happens and I've planned around using him, but I do agree that there being some amount of risk in the endeavor makes it more fun for me.

With that said, for those of you who plan on doing the Dorn event with level 1 characters... the Sleep spell is your friend. You might not hit the Named NPCs with it, but they're not the ones who chip away at his health...