Aerie Romance: Interesting Find (Spoiler, maybe?)

RoLYroLLs

Hey all,

If any of this is a spoiler, please let me know and let me know what I should do so others are aware.

I haven't played BG1/2 in years, and when I did I prolly only played a handful of times! And even then I didn't know about romancing characters!

Anyways, I've been playing again recently, and I've been playing a gnome and found that I can romance Aerie. I'm on Chapter 2 27 Days 8 Hours and Aerie and Minsc had a chat where Aerie is now Minsc's witch! I feared that they were romancing on each other which would probably ruin my chances so I started Googling!

The Wiki had no info on her romance, but through many other posts, I found out about EEKeeper (and another). Looking at global variables I found this:

AerieMatch = 1
AerieRomance = 389344
AerieRomanceActive = 3
AerieRomanceOut = 1

I learned that these values for AerieRomanceActive and AerieRomanceOut mean I lost my chances. I then started looking through all my save files (45 of them) to see when did this value changed and found something interesting.

I found 4 interesting saves:
- Save $1 - Chapter 2 Day 7 Hour 7: right after I got Nalia

AerieMatch = 1
AerieRomance = 389344
AerieRomanceActive = 1
AerieRomanceOut = (not present)

- Save $2 - Chapter 2 Day 7 Hour 7: right after I dropped Aerie for Korgan

AerieMatch = 1
AerieRomance = 389344
AerieRomanceActive = 1
AerieRomanceOut = 1

- Save $3 - Chapter 2 Day 10 Hour 3: right after I killed the 5 golems at De'Arnise Keep

AerieMatch = 1
AerieRomance = 389344
AerieRomanceActive = 1
AerieRomanceOut = 1

- Save $4 - Chapter 2 Day 10 Hour 10: right when I killed TorGal

AerieMatch = 1
AerieRomance = 389344
AerieRomanceActive = 3
AerieRomanceOut = 1

I realize now, that dropping her created the variable AerieRomanceOut = 1. I did a test and reloaded that Save #2, and dropped Korgan for Aerie. Immediately the variables changed to:

AerieMatch = 1
AerieRomance = 429331 (changed)
AerieRomanceActive = 1
AerieRomanceOut = 0 (changed)

From what I gather, if you drop Aerie, you have 3 days to pick her back up before you lose the chance to romance her, hence Save #4 and AerieRomanceActive = 3. Since I dropped her on Day 7 hour 7, looks like it happened 3 days later, Day 10 between the hours of 3 and 10 (probably 7). Can anyone else confirm?

Also, I believe the variable AerieRomance = 429331 means how long before she will initiate the romance? Does anyone know how to relate that to human seconds/minutes?

Thanks!

jmerry

The romance timers are based on real time rather than in-game time; you progress toward expiring them by simply being in the game, even if you're paused. I think they're denoted in "ticks" of 1/15 of a second, so that jump of ~40000 is about 45 minutes of real time. And the absolute number of ~400K indicates about eight hours in the game since starting the run.

Timer variables don't tick down; instead, elapsed time ticks up until it passes the threshold and the timer counts as expired so its event (the next talk) can happen.

RoLYroLLs

Got it! thanks! I also just learned, in case any noobs like me else reads this, the {CHARNAME}ROMANCE timer is an expiration timer. It does not actually tick as "real" time passes while the game is loaded.

Timer info source: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/84055/romance-timers