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Romance Help

Hello everyone,

This is my first post here, I've actually come here for relationship advice.

I've been playing through BGEE1, SOD and BGEE2. I'm up to chapter 6 Shadows of Amn. In the first game I did the Neera romance as she is definitely the funniest character in the game, got to the end of her romance in SOD and because I didn't read any spoilers wasn't aware that she was even going to be in BGEE2, as I thought the ending at the end of SOD had a real bittersweet feeling to it, with her departing to help her people. So in BGEE2 I end up taking Aerie into my party and going through the romance options with her, which all came thick and fast and the story about her wings getting cut off and all that stuff was kind of sad, so I ended up telling her she was great all the time because it seemed like the diplomatic thing to do with someone if they've been through trauma, but then like the terrible person I am I ended up stringing her along. Anyway it wasn't until somewhere towards the end of Chapter 2 that I actually encountered Neera again, as I had no reason to go to the Bridge District at that point and was actually one of the last places on the map that I actually visited, so this was very late in the day. From a RP perspective this was kind of interesting, as it's like an old flame popping up when you're actually establishing a different sort of relationship, except the Aerie relationship is more based on pity than it is any kind of real respect, so anyway I got to the end of Chapter 3... now I'm on chapter 6, and both of them have been fairly quiet for hours and hours of gameplay, whereas in Chapter 2 they wouldn't shut up, same with Jaheira and Viconia who were also in my party, I kind of snubbed out the Jaheira romance as always imagine that she's in her 40s or 50s. Anyway neither Aerie or Neera are active as romances for some reason as think some conflict happened and I'm not getting any dialogue, it's the Neera romance I'm after the most but at this stage I'd probably settle for anything.

So long story short, I've broken the immersion experience of this great set of game by downloading EEKeeper, also installed the multiple romance thing to stop them from cancelling each other, is there any chance that someone can have a look at the variables to see what's going wrong? I've tried all kinds of console commands and stuff on EEKeeper like changing settings according to what I've read elsewhere on this forum, but nothing seems to work.


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Thanks very much in advance, sorry if I've rambled on a bit, I missed these games when they first came out, and finding the experience of discovering them decades after their first release to be completely amazing as an experience, so would be nice to get all of this on track before I get to the end.

(another thing to ask is if I start Throne of Bhaal without completing either romance, do you get the chance to start the romance afresh? Or does it carry over your romance choices? Just asking as everytime I meet a character from a previous installment, I usually have to remind them that we've met, or they say "Hmm do I recognise you, or do you just have one of those faces?" I guess if the Neera romance has the chance to restart itself in Throne of Bhaal then that's probaby going to solve the issue.)
gorgonzola

Comments

  • ChairChair Member Posts: 10
    Also been travelling with Keldorn, at first I thought he was a bit of a nob what with how he treats his wife and kids, but in Chapter 3 he engaged me in a couple of random philosophical chats about morality and faith etc, which I kind of enjoyed, not had any of those since then either, I was hoping he'd become my best mate.
  • sarevok57sarevok57 Member Posts: 5,975
    one thing that could have happened was phaere in the underdark, if you slept with her, it will immediately end any romance you have because your romance partner will get mad and call it off

    also, if you dont finish a romance in SoA it will not continue in ToB ( actually don't 100% quote me on that but im pretty sure it helps )

    i do know though, that if your romance has been cancelled in SoA it will not start anew in ToB

    do you remember when specifically when the romances stopped? was it in the drow city? did you get a complaint from your romance partner with phaere?

    you also said you might have a mod installed that allows multiple romances and you have already played with some variables? this could be the culprit of messing things up

    if you attach a save game i could go dig into it and see what i can find, just make sure you are in chapter 6 still, sometimes romances check to see if you are in chapter 7 and if so, they like to "lock up" or "not start" or things like that
    Chairgorgonzola
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    Sorry i can not help you.
    I wod say that for some reason both the romances are not active as the variable should be at 2 in that case, and 3 would mean that the romance is broken ended with no chance of recoverng it.
    But i am not completely sure of it and i dont know how to modify the variables to trigger or speed up it.
    Anyway i appreciate how you are playing the games not spoiled, imo is the way to go the first time those games are played.
    I hope that someone with more knowledge then mine about the romances can help you.
    Chair
  • ElysianEchoesElysianEchoes Member Posts: 475
    I'm pretty sure a romanceactive value of 1 or 2 means the romance is still alive. They get paused while you are doing spellhold through Underdark. Have you been out of Underdark long? May just need more time for them to start triggering again
  • ChairChair Member Posts: 10
    sarevok57 wrote: »
    one thing that could have happened was phaere in the underdark, if you slept with her, it will immediately end any romance you have because your romance partner will get mad and call it off

    also, if you dont finish a romance in SoA it will not continue in ToB ( actually don't 100% quote me on that but im pretty sure it helps )

    i do know though, that if your romance has been cancelled in SoA it will not start anew in ToB

    do you remember when specifically when the romances stopped? was it in the drow city? did you get a complaint from your romance partner with phaere?

    you also said you might have a mod installed that allows multiple romances and you have already played with some variables? this could be the culprit of messing things up

    if you attach a save game i could go dig into it and see what i can find, just make sure you are in chapter 6 still, sometimes romances check to see if you are in chapter 7 and if so, they like to "lock up" or "not start" or things like that

    Thanks for the response, I didn't sleep with the Phaere because even as a choatic neutral character I found the whole idea kind of demeaning. After not sleeping with her by pretending I was a eunuch both Neera and Aerie said something. Neera said that she didn't want to know what went on, even though nothing did, whereas Aerie said I wasn't in there long enough for anything to happen so she was happy. Apart from that since chapter 2 I've not had anything from either of them. I've tried resetting the timers to get them started again, to be honest I think I've probably messed it up a bit.

    That's incredibly kind of you to offer to look at my saved game, i've just attached it. Honestly would be cool if it got fixed.
  • ChairChair Member Posts: 10
    gorgonzola wrote: »
    Sorry i can not help you.
    I wod say that for some reason both the romances are not active as the variable should be at 2 in that case, and 3 would mean that the romance is broken ended with no chance of recoverng it.
    But i am not completely sure of it and i dont know how to modify the variables to trigger or speed up it.
    Anyway i appreciate how you are playing the games not spoiled, imo is the way to go the first time those games are played.
    I hope that someone with more knowledge then mine about the romances can help you.

    At the start of Chapter 3 the Aerie romance was at 2 and the Neera one was at 3, because I'd accidentally committed to Neera, I read someone that you need them to be set at 1 in order for them both to be active... am I being dumb and should they be set at 2? I think they only reach 2 when you are actually in a committed relationship with them.

    Glad you appreicate that, I think I'm just lucky to have discovered them now so many years later, I was never interested in playing Baldur's Gate back in the 90s as it just sounded so dry and serious when compared to the Fallout games. I'm really suprised that there is such an active online community dedicated to Baldur's Gate though, I think it has been quite wonderful. It's a really hard set of games though, I didn't know anything about D and D rules going into it, and was a bit lazy and didn't read spell or item descriptions when I first started, but now I'm immersed into reading it all and wouldn't mind a second playthrough at some point just to read all the books that are lying around. Also been watching some Forgotten Realms videos on the lore, there's something quite charmingly silly but also clever about the entire setting. I'm looking forward to starting Icewind Dale as you can apparently make your own party of six characters in it, so was actually looking forward to writing some character bios more than I actually am the game itself.
    gorgonzola
  • ChairChair Member Posts: 10
    I'm pretty sure a romanceactive value of 1 or 2 means the romance is still alive. They get paused while you are doing spellhold through Underdark. Have you been out of Underdark long? May just need more time for them to start triggering again

    Not been out of there for that long no... I just got out and then went off to see how my theatre was doing as haven't been back there for ages, everyone in there acted as if I was only gone for a few days.
  • sarevok57sarevok57 Member Posts: 5,975
    edited August 2019
    okay, so i think i have solved the problem here

    first, by the looks of it, your romance is complete, and it looks like you are having it with aerie ( i warped directly to the tree of life and neera didnt have the romance speech but aerie did )

    now when i look at the globals here, when you have one romance active it automatically shuts the other ones off, making it impossible to have 2 ( i dont have any mods installed )

    so it looks like you are only going to have the one romance, unless you want to go digging into the override scripts of your romanceés lets call them, and start making it so you can have multiple romances by changing some scripting around, then it looks like you are only going to have the one

    but as i said before, i think the reason why your romance talks have stopped is because you actually completed them, aerie and neera dont have as many love talks as jaheira and viconia so they finish quite a bit earlier

    now if you want to have neera's romance activated instead of aerie's you will have to do this:

    first if you haven't already, enable the cheat console, and copy paste these lines is:

    C:SetGlobal("AerieRomanceActive","GLOBAL",3)

    - this will disable the aerie romance -

    C:SetGlobal("NeeraRomanceActive","GLOBAL",2)

    - this will enable neera's romance -

    so unfortunately i can't make it so you have both at the same time without doing some sketchy scripting sorcery which could really mess the game up more, but at least you can choose which one you want; right now the default is aerie, or if you put in the 2 codes up above you can change it over to neera

    PS: i accidently saw that your jaheira quest isn't complete yet, so i suggest hanging around in chapter 6 until it does :)

    i dont know how much you have left to do, but if you run out of quests and things to do, you might need to rest spam in the city, to get her quest line going
    ElysianEchoesChairgorgonzola
  • ChairChair Member Posts: 10
    sarevok57 wrote: »
    okay, so i think i have solved the problem here

    first, by the looks of it, your romance is complete, and it looks like you are having it with aerie ( i warped directly to the tree of life and neera didnt have the romance speech but aerie did )

    now when i look at the globals here, when you have one romance active it automatically shuts the other ones off, making it impossible to have 2 ( i dont have any mods installed )

    so it looks like you are only going to have the one romance, unless you want to go digging into the override scripts of your romanceés lets call them, and start making it so you can have multiple romances by changing some scripting around, then it looks like you are only going to have the one

    but as i said before, i think the reason why your romance talks have stopped is because you actually completed them, aerie and neera dont have as many love talks as jaheira and viconia so they finish quite a bit earlier

    now if you want to have neera's romance activated instead of aerie's you will have to do this:

    first if you haven't already, enable the cheat console, and copy paste these lines is:

    C:SetGlobal("AerieRomanceActive","GLOBAL",3)

    - this will disable the aerie romance -

    C:SetGlobal("NeeraRomanceActive","GLOBAL",2)

    - this will enable neera's romance -

    so unfortunately i can't make it so you have both at the same time without doing some sketchy scripting sorcery which could really mess the game up more, but at least you can choose which one you want; right now the default is aerie, or if you put in the 2 codes up above you can change it over to neera

    PS: i accidently saw that your jaheira quest isn't complete yet, so i suggest hanging around in chapter 6 until it does :)

    i dont know how much you have left to do, but if you run out of quests and things to do, you might need to rest spam in the city, to get her quest line going

    Firstly thank you so much for your help, think it's lovely that a complete stranger has helped me out with something that is actually quite trivial and small.


    I'll probably stick with the Neera romance and do as you suggest, I just find her more endearing and funny and look forward to her dialogue exchanges, whereas Aerie is kind of annoying really. I did actually look up the Neera exchanges, though spoilt it a bit, as noticed that there's loads of dialogue that I've missed out on because I picked her up later on, like I've not had the dog poo moment yet. Maybe if I set the options as you suggest then maybe those dialogue options will come up. I did all the side-quests with her and the wild mages, which was good, I kind of feel like that's part of the main plot anyway, or at least thematically fits in, as it continues from what happened in BG1 and Dragonspear. I honestly didn't think she was going to be in BG2, like it seemed unrealistic somehow as it's set in a different part of the Forgotten Realms. Do you think it would be better to keep the Neera Romance variable at 1? In case there are any dialogue trees that haven't been done yet?


    I've got some Jahiera quest stuff going on that's quite interesting before I left the city in Chapter 3, lots of Harpers approaching us to tell us off about what we did earlier on, will probably do as you say and carry on with it. I could probably get to the end of that if I go back to that really hard dungeon, Watchers Deep, and try and complete the third level of it, think it was some kind of maze, it was so difficult but should keep me in Chapter 6 for a while if I endevor to get it done, think I need to think of some good battle strategies though as it's really hard work, though my characters have gone up loads of levels so maybe it will work out for me this time round, also the magical items I've picked up might be helpful. (was kind of suprised when all my cool drow armour and weaponry got turned into dust though, but that's what's nice about this game is how it pulls those kinds of lore related surprises.

    gorgonzola
  • sarevok57sarevok57 Member Posts: 5,975
    no problemo :)

    you can try setting the romance variable to 1 if you want, i dont know if it will continue on your romance though, by the looks of it your romance is complete ( at least when it comes to bodhi and the tree of life the romance things work there )

    worse case if you set it to 1 and if bodhi doesnt do her thing and if you dont get the tree of life "romance talk" i would set it back to 2 so then you can continue it on in ToB

    with the jaheira quest, i want to say you are at least 3/4 of the way through it, and i think some encounters only happen when you are in town, so for example; if you accidentally finished all of watchers keep without ever returning to town, you might still not finish it
    with the jaheira quest you will eventually have to fight dermin, and i believe 5 game days afterwards elminster will appear to wrap it up, if you have enough REP ( i believe you need at least 15 or 16 ) you will succeed, get some nice XP, and jaheira will get a cewl fancy dancy harper pin
  • ChairChair Member Posts: 10
    sarevok57 wrote: »
    no problemo :)

    you can try setting the romance variable to 1 if you want, i dont know if it will continue on your romance though, by the looks of it your romance is complete ( at least when it comes to bodhi and the tree of life the romance things work there )

    worse case if you set it to 1 and if bodhi doesnt do her thing and if you dont get the tree of life "romance talk" i would set it back to 2 so then you can continue it on in ToB

    with the jaheira quest, i want to say you are at least 3/4 of the way through it, and i think some encounters only happen when you are in town, so for example; if you accidentally finished all of watchers keep without ever returning to town, you might still not finish it
    with the jaheira quest you will eventually have to fight dermin, and i believe 5 game days afterwards elminster will appear to wrap it up, if you have enough REP ( i believe you need at least 15 or 16 ) you will succeed, get some nice XP, and jaheira will get a cewl fancy dancy harper pin

    Hey, I just figured out what the problem was, the neeralovetalks variable had been set really really high up making it seem like it was completed when in fact I was only partway through them, so now I've just rewound the love talks back to 1 and am going through them, its funny as I've not actually done very many of them, I mistook the dialogue exchanged during the wild mage quests as being love talks, when they were just incidental to the quest. I must have set the lovetalks really high in chapters 4 and 5 in an attempt to try and accelerate through them, when really the number that goes next to neeralovetalks always remains quite low. It's weird though as remember in chapter 3 she did say something about how I should tell Aerie that I'm not interested in pursuing a relationship with her. Just goes to show that if you meddle with EEKeeper too much and not know what you're doing you can end up breaking the game a bit. I think the only actual lovetalk we did was the first one, as not recognising any of these others.
    sarevok57gorgonzola
  • ChairChair Member Posts: 10
    (Oh, and will definitely complete the Jaheira stuff now, just to see Elminster, I quite enjoyed it when a hologram of him appeared in front of one of the treasure chests in the imp puzzle in the underwater city)
    sarevok57
  • ZaxaresZaxares Member Posts: 1,325
    Without spoiling anything, I will just say that Aerie and Neera's romances felt like mirror images of each other when I was playing through them. Aerie's romance is kinda hard in SoA because, just like a real life partner who's dealing with trauma, they need a lot of support and understanding and it can be emotionally exhausting having to deal with that all of the time. In contrast, Neera is very much more like the "fun, exciting partner" with whom you always have a great time.

    Buuuut...
    I found this flipped when I went into ToB. By this point, Aerie has recovered from her past traumas and is now more confident and an equal partner to you. In contrast, Neera starts to show a lot of commitment issues. There's one particular dialogue I had with her ("You make me happy... some of the time.") that made me realize that what you share with Neera is not going to be the kind of "grow old happy together" kind of love. And that's fine, some people don't look for anything more in a relationship than somebody with whom they can have fun with. But that line, coupled with her epilogue and how at the end of SoD, Neera basically abandons you to your fate to pursue her goal of protecting Wild Mages, made me realize that you will never be first in Neera's heart. She doesn't mean you any real harm, and she's happy if you're happy being with her, but ultimately, Neera will put her own happiness and her own goals above that of yours. (This is, perhaps, fitting considering that she's Chaotic Neutral.)
    gorgonzolaThacoBellChair
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    Chair wrote: »
    just to see Elminster
    don't forget to have an hasted thief pickpoket him to get a shining +2 protection ring for free.
    he is a powerful mage and an adventurer since a very long time, so he surely have other ones to replace it :wink:

  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    Chair wrote: »
    [quote="gorgonzola;c-1088223"It's a really hard set of games though, I didn't know anything about D and D rules going into it, and was a bit lazy and didn't read spell or item descriptions when I first started, but now I'm immersed into reading it all and wouldn't mind a second playthrough at some point just to read all the books that are lying around.
    if you have not already found it take a look at this
    https://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/SpellsReference/Main.htm
    is old, not updated to the EE edition so some things have been changed and some tricks like the one that allows 3 proiected images at the same time are no more possible.
    but it gives a great insight on the spell system, and can be more helpful then trying to memorize all the spell descriptions to find out which spells are good for what purpose in the game.

    to beat the vanilla game a particular knowledge is not really needed, but with a modded setting and/or legacy of bhaal mode the game can become extremely complex and mechanically fun to play also for experienced players.
    and for a game to be forgiving for the beginners and challenging for the very experienced is not a frequent thing. and is one of the reason of the game longevity, the reason why some of us keep playing an old isometric game designed for 20 years ago computers and still have a lot of fun even if we are doing it since 2 decades ago.

    welcome to the club, and be careful, some of us suffer a terrible desease named restartitis, i am lucky as it seems that i am immunized for some reason, but others are not so.
    and no, the heal spell seem to don't work to get rid of it... :)

  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    " Aerie's romance is kinda hard in SoA because, just like a real life partner who's dealing with trauma, they need a lot of support and understanding and it can be emotionally exhausting having to deal with that all of the time."

    I find Aerie's romance to be remarkably realistic about this kind of thing. Especially for the time the game came out. I often joke with my wife that I married her in a video game before we ever met.
    gorgonzolailduderinoZaxares
  • sarevok57sarevok57 Member Posts: 5,975
    gorgonzola wrote: »
    Chair wrote: »
    just to see Elminster
    don't forget to have an hasted thief pickpoket him to get a shining +2 protection ring for free.
    he is a powerful mage and an adventurer since a very long time, so he surely have other ones to replace it :wink:

    not only that, but you can pick pocket an amulet of protection +1, a cloak of protection +2 and bracers of AC 6

    not too shabby
    gorgonzolaChair
  • ChairChair Member Posts: 10
    Zaxares wrote: »
    Without spoiling anything, I will just say that Aerie and Neera's romances felt like mirror images of each other when I was playing through them. Aerie's romance is kinda hard in SoA because, just like a real life partner who's dealing with trauma, they need a lot of support and understanding and it can be emotionally exhausting having to deal with that all of the time. In contrast, Neera is very much more like the "fun, exciting partner" with whom you always have a great time.

    Buuuut...
    I found this flipped when I went into ToB. By this point, Aerie has recovered from her past traumas and is now more confident and an equal partner to you. In contrast, Neera starts to show a lot of commitment issues. There's one particular dialogue I had with her ("You make me happy... some of the time.") that made me realize that what you share with Neera is not going to be the kind of "grow old happy together" kind of love. And that's fine, some people don't look for anything more in a relationship than somebody with whom they can have fun with. But that line, coupled with her epilogue and how at the end of SoD, Neera basically abandons you to your fate to pursue her goal of protecting Wild Mages, made me realize that you will never be first in Neera's heart. She doesn't mean you any real harm, and she's happy if you're happy being with her, but ultimately, Neera will put her own happiness and her own goals above that of yours. (This is, perhaps, fitting considering that she's Chaotic Neutral.)

    This is interesting as went down the Neera path in the end and reached ToB before going to bed last night. I think there's definite signs of her having commitment issues and at one point even says so about her ex boyfriend and how she just left him one day. I've had tonnes of relationships full of uncertainty from both sides and think that's just how some people operate, will be great to see how much I relate to it. On a separate note I replaced Aerie with Saravek, he just seemed to have too much story potential to pass up. I might get rid of Jaheira instead though as realised that Aerie has better spells and summons
  • ChairChair Member Posts: 10
    sarevok57 wrote: »
    gorgonzola wrote: »
    Chair wrote: »
    just to see Elminster
    don't forget to have an hasted thief pickpoket him to get a shining +2 protection ring for free.
    he is a powerful mage and an adventurer since a very long time, so he surely have other ones to replace it :wink:

    not only that, but you can pick pocket an amulet of protection +1, a cloak of protection +2 and bracers of AC 6

    not too shabby

    I did this last night, my character is a high level jester with good running boots so definitely up for that task.
    gorgonzola
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