what are the mysterious potions at the guarded house (temple area)

glados

there is a mansion at the temple area, which can be looted. you need to fight some monsters at the 1st floor and the guards at the 2nd floor. there are a minotaur and an orog among the guards and both of them have some strange potion, which they immediately drink as soon as the battle starts, and you can loot just the empty bottles.
nowhere else there are bottles like that, usually you drink potion and the bottle just disappears.
i was wondering what where these potions. there is no way to tell by the empty bottles.


i never succeeded with killing any of them before they drink the potion. i suspect they may already have just the empties, but so far have no proof for this either.
i tried to use a cheat to kill them instantly and look at the drop, but the only kill cheat i knew didn't work there no matter how many times i tried (i did this way: enable cheats; run the game, put a cursor on a target and press ctrl+y together)
i was wondering what these are supposed to be

jmerry

Checking the creature files ... they have the empties to start with. Maferan (HLMAFER) and Olaf Rasmussen (HLOLAF) have empty potion bottles in inventory slots.

The whole "Guarded Compound" was presumably intended to be quest content, but that never made it out of development. They're probably connected to the slavers, but that's just speculation with no hard evidence. The empty potion bottles might be remnants of whatever quest was planned.

As it is now, those empty potion bottles are just useless space-fillers.

atcDave

I remember this being brought up years ago, I believe they were a part of some quest element that was never completed. Sort of like the whole guarded compound story itself.

glados

thanks you guys!
way back i played bg2 with a mode that tried to restore some abandoned quests. i remember a couple of quests that mode restored: minsc loosing boo and continuation for the aerie starting quest - kalah did his illusion in the circus because of the genie lamp, and we should get rid of it. but even there guarded compound was still like it is, without any additional content. interesting, what that quest could be, all the other slave stuff was in the slums, but who knows!

glados

did some digging and found that that quest was supposed to be a part of isaia roenall's quest when he kidnapped nalia
the forum is dead, so the link is to the webarchive

jmerry

There's a reference to a compound in the Temple District in Isaea's documents, yes. Was that meant to be the entry point to the never-implemented quest? I don't think so; there are other paths that makes sense to get at the slaver leaders, like continuing from Hendak's quest. Gating it all behind a potential companion you might never take into your party is a bit strange.

The mod you spoke of is "Unfinished Business", which is still around. It generally works with scraps of stuff that's already in the game files, repairing and expanding it to function as quest content or interesting encounters. There just isn't enough to work off of for the Guarded Compound, so that doesn't get a component.

ineth

jmerry wrote: »

Gating it all behind a potential companion you might never take into your party is a bit strange.

Maybe that's why that content was cut? Some quest developers had big plans, but the narrative director or whatever stepped in and said "Stop, that's enough Nalia-specific content"?

jastey

I toyed with a mod idea of expanding Hendak's quest line so the higher ups behind the slave tradings in town could be brought to justice, but I failed with designing a quest that includes the guarded compound without either spoiling Nalia's quest line or making it dependent on her quest being played. I might return to this but at a first try I didn't find an obvious solution to using the compound for slave doings without handing out Nalia's quest note too early.

glados

i think if you want to make the guarded compound accessible only after nalia's kidnapping, you need to make the location locked while it's not the right time. like it was with korgan quest and pimlico's mansion. that being said i would love to play a mode like that!

jastey

Thanks! But making locations locked by a mod that aren't normally is usually not well received by players. Also, my problem was more the thought whether a player will take Nalia along at all - and when. It would be easy if the answer to that would be yes/no, then my mod idea would put the other evidence in there when the group is looking for Nalias, but I can't restrict it to "Nalia's quest or after" because I don't know if people even want to take her along, and I can't just place evidence in the compound because then it wouldn't make sense that the player finds Nalia's at a later time at the exact same house they already searched through (and probably killed all the guards etc.). A dilemma!
Only thing I could think of is moving Nalia's elsewhere in that situation if the player already searched the compound. This way, the mod wouldn't take anything "away". Hmm...

glados

well, if someone chose to miss the quest that's on them right?
if the korgan approach feels unsutable, there is also anomen approach. we can loot the mansion at the bridge at any time, but if we are doing anomen's quest, necessary npcs will spawn there even if you already looted the place.
both of these ways are good imo and both of these ways are already introduced even in pre-ee version. so it's not out of place to try any.

jmerry

glados wrote: »

... we can loot the mansion at the bridge at any time...

An excerpt from the area script:

IF
	InParty("Anomen")  // Anomen
	Global("SaerkDoor","AR0500",0)  // Bridge District
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetGlobal("SaerkDoor","AR0500",1)  // Bridge District
		Unlock("DOOR0504")
		Unlock("DOOR0505b")
END

IF
	!InParty("Anomen")  // Anomen
	Global("SaerkDoor","AR0500",1)  // Bridge District
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetGlobal("SaerkDoor","AR0500",0)  // Bridge District
		CloseDoor("DOOR0504")
		CloseDoor("DOOR0505b")
		Lock("DOOR0504")
		Lock("DOOR0505b")
END

You're not meant to get in there without Anomen. The front door even has lock difficulty 100 and starts locked, so you can't enter it without an act of plot. But ... Anomen leaves the party when he goes to confront Saerk on his own (in the romance/knight path), so you have to be able to get in. And so the second-floor door has lock difficulty zero, so you can get in there no matter what. Even if you never recruited Anomen at all. Oops.

The ability to enter Saerk's place when you're not confronting him as part of Anomen's quest is an oversight; it's the result of a poorly implemented solution to a scripting mistake. It's not something you should pull out when talking about how things should be.

glados

jmerry wrote: »

You're not meant to get in there without Anomen. The front door even has lock difficulty 100 and starts locked

but i never said i used a front door. you can go there by the door on top of the ladder any time you want. it was like that pre ee and it is like that now) it works even without anomen in the party

jmerry wrote: »

The ability to enter Saerk's place when you're not confronting him as part of Anomen's quest is an oversight; it's the result of a poorly implemented solution to a scripting mistake. It's not something you should pull out when talking about how things should be

idk, if true, well... maybe. but it works like that for ~20 years. it always worked like that. all the gamers who played bg saw that place like that and probably looted it with or without anomen. so if @jastey is going to make a mode with a similar mechanic it will not become a surprise to anyone.

jastey

To the guarded compound: I'd have no problem with the player looting the place without a quest; then putting my quest evidence into it, having the PC find it after receiving the quest, and later have him search it again and find Nalia's quest notes when her quest is up.
But how much sense would it make storywise? Not much in my eyes unless I'd come up with a good reason why whatshisname would leave his compromising notes in there after the compound was already identified as a slave trader hideout. That's my main problem with connecting the two quests in the compound. And having the player find Nalia's quest note too early would not be a good idea, either.

glados

i see your point. i for one wouldn't nitpick on that tbh, because of getting used to this in anomen's quest and generally tending to kinda abuse the game, so things usually tend to be out of place here and there.
anyway, if you will do the mode, let me know!