Is the Circlet of Lost Souls for the Shaman bugged?

lego_pirate

Hey,

Not sure how active the forum is these days but worth a shot!

I'm trying a no-reload run and finally got over my restartitis. I'm currently a Shaman in Chapter 2 of SoA. I've been having fun trying to get the most out of the Shaman's summoned spirits, and it's been going great.

But I noticed that the Circlet of Lost Souls isn't giving the bless bonus to my spirit animals, and I'm about 80% sure that it's not boosting my caster level, although this is harder to verify.

It worked fine in Siege of Dragonspear: when I summoned spirits, they'd get an instant bless animation.

What made me realise is that one bless animation fired off in the Harper stronghold, for just one spirit among four. And it dawned on me that it hadn't happened before in BG2.

Does anyone know a fix for this? I'm not using any mods, and I've tried reinstalling the game. I'm kinda bummed because even though it's *just* a bless spell, the Shaman is already the biggest underdog in the class roster, and it gets under my skin that this is yet another disadvantage stacked against him. (It's also kinda triggering my restartitis again!)

Thanks all

Humanoid_Taifun

These Shaman items are a bit unusual in terms of their effects on your spirits, because these effects are not directly caused by the items.
Rather, it's the spirits whose scripts check if their summoner has the items equipped. If so, they generate the effects onto themselves. (and you can then unequip the item without consequence)
As far as I can tell, this should be working. Do you have a mod installed that alters the summoned spirits or their scripts? Do you perhaps have multiple Shamans?

(also, the bonus to priest spell caster level is implemented too)

Edit: Ah, I see that you say that you're not using any mods. In that case, huh.
Does it work if you summon your spirits out of combat, when there is nothing going on?

lego_pirate

Thanks for the quick reply

No mods and just one shaman. In fact, as a sanity check, I just manually deleted and reinstalled BG2 - and made a new ToB character. I used EEKeeper to give them the Circlet, and the spirits still won't receive the Bless bonus.

I then went back to my last save in Siege of Dragonspear, and the spirits instantly get the Bless spell. So it seems BG2 specific.

The only mention of the bug I've seen online is this old website here: http://dsogaming.com/news/baldurs-gate-ii-enhanced-edition-patch-2-5-comes-with-more-than-500-fixes-and-features/

"The headpiece “Circlet of Lost Souls” should affect summoned spirits of the shaman as per item description (24021)"

So was this a bug before patch 2.5? I'm running the latest version, so it's very odd...

lego_pirate

Ah, you helped me work it out with your combat question!!

So I was playing around with my fresh ToB character. Tried summoning spirits. No bless effect.

*Then* I tried starting the fight with Illasera. I summoned spirits after the fight. They all got the bless effect.

So it seems that the Bless effect only applies to spirits who are actively engaged in combat, or summoned after combat has begun.

Pretty bizarre! I've never heard anyone mention this before! Makes me wonder what other Shaman items behave similarly.

Thanks for the help in figuring this out!

EDIT: Confirmed that SoD does *not* require spirits to be in combat to receive bonuses; but BG2 does. If I weren't computer illiterate I might try to design a mod to fix this lol, but oh well.

jmerry

The circlet's bonuses are activated by a script "bdshunsu" attached to the summons, which is also responsible for unsummoning the spirits if the shaman stops dancing or moves away. There are several issues.
- In older versions of BG2EE, the script doesn't contain the blocks for the shaman items, so they don't do anything.
- In current BG2EE and current non-SoD BGEE, there's a block that sends the spirits back to the summoner if you're not in combat. Which, unfortunately, is higher than the blocks for the shaman items so the bonuses don't activate until the fight starts.
- In current BGEE with SoD, that same "go back to the summoner" block is outright bugged; its trigger condition is "can't find a shaman" instead of "can find a shaman" so it never does anything. Except preempt the block that's supposed to unsummon the spirits if the shaman leaves.

The latter two issues are covered in the EE Fixpack mod, currently in beta.

lego_pirate

jmerry wrote: »

The circlet's bonuses are activated by a script "bdshunsu" attached to the summons, which is also responsible for unsummoning the spirits if the shaman stops dancing or moves away. There are several issues.
- In older versions of BG2EE, the script doesn't contain the blocks for the shaman items, so they don't do anything.
- In current BG2EE and current non-SoD BGEE, there's a block that sends the spirits back to the summoner if you're not in combat. Which, unfortunately, is higher than the blocks for the shaman items so the bonuses don't activate until the fight starts.
- In current BGEE with SoD, that same "go back to the summoner" block is outright bugged; its trigger condition is "can't find a shaman" instead of "can find a shaman" so it never does anything. Except preempt the block that's supposed to unsummon the spirits if the shaman leaves.

The latter two issues are covered in the EE Fixpack mod, currently in beta.

Interesting!

The Improved Shamanic Dance mod (https://github.com/Argent77/A7-ImprovedShamanicDance) claims to improve the spirit scripts. Do you think this would help the item to work properly?

(I'm trying to do a "pure" experience for my no-reload. I think the Improved Shamanic Dance mod, from what I understand, mainly allows you to move while summoning -- which is actually possible anyways, if you're careful with your round timings. So doesn't seem like too much of a buff...)

Humanoid_Taifun

With that mod, I haven’t encountered the bug you described. However, I did notice two potential exploits you might want to decide ahead of time whether to avoid or take advantage of:

1. When passing through a door into a different area, your summoned spirits may follow you—but the summoning count resets. This means you can enter and exit buildings repeatedly to gradually amass a large army, depending on the environment.
2. Equipping Edventar’s Gift (the Ring of Free Action) completely removes the movement penalty.

Also, do note that the mod does a few more things, such as raising the upper limit of strength that your summoned Spirits can have.
I think this is justified since in the standard game the Shaman's strength reaches its peak at around level 20 when other characters enter a power growth spurt through HLAs.
You may disagree though.

jmerry

The mod linked (well, almost linked - there's an extra parenthesis in there) does replace the block I mentioned as problematic/bugged. The replacement ... doesn't appear to address the issue of preempting item bonuses when out of combat, though it does fix the bug with the SoD version being inverted. I'd have to take a look at the changed version of bdshunsu to be sure, though.