"Strange Collector" not appearing

Ridcully

I completed Neera's quest and received the mechanical bird, however the strange collector doesn't appear.

jmerry

Where are you? The "strange collector" doesn't show up until well into ToB - the inn in Amkethran.

Ridcully

In the Zephir. Tavern in Amkethran.

jmerry

All right, you're in the right place. And this one's a pretty simple script:

IF
	Global("OHN_SCOLL_SPWN","AR5501",0)  // Amkethran Inn
	PartyHasItem("OHNMBIRD")  // Mechanical Bird
	IfValidForPartyDialog("Neera")  // Neera
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetGlobal("OHN_SCOLL_SPWN","AR5501",1)  // Amkethran Inn
		CreateCreature("OHNSCOLL",[566.340],SW)  // Strange Collector
END

Not easy for that one to go wrong. If Neera's in the party and able to talk (not silenced, polymorphed, or in any other condition that prevents it) and you have the bird, the collector shows up. Even unrecognized DLC shenanigans won't break this one. Neera does have to be present, though.

Some other possibilities:
- You have some other mod that's breaking the area script by adding something to the front of it, which runs repeatedly and prevents the script from getting to this block.
- The script block ran once and glitched, setting the variable but not properly spawning the creature.

You can at least force-spawn the collector if you have the cheat/debug console enabled, and get past this that way.

Ridcully

Do you have to have the bird and Neera in the party the first time you go into the tavern? I'd been in and then went to get the bird and Neera

jmerry

First time? No, you're good if you come back later. If this were a script that only runs once like a "trap" script, that would be a problem. But this is the area script, and that runs repeatedly as long as you're there. As soon as the conditions are true, this script block will be executed.