Exile of the West (The Bastard of Kosigan) question

[Legacy_Lilura]

               

How does one open the locked, unbashable door on the second level of the kobold-devil caves; I have found no key?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lilura]

               

Nevermind, I worked it out. I've decided to start again and recount the four translated episodes in full, like I did for the Aielund Saga.

 

EDIT - Full seven-part walkthrough/guide completed for Episode One: Exile of the West, starting here: 

(Note: Link contains spoilers.)

 

Exile of the West - Part I

 

I hope to find experts on the series who can help me with my Unsolved Mysteries section at the end of the above post.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lilura]

               

Does anyone know of a workaround for the frequent crashes that occur in Episode Two: The Bastard of Kosigan, mainly when just trying to load a save game? It is unplayable in this state.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_tobtor]

               

It has been a while since I played it, but I had issues.

 

Some areas worked better than others (or at least so I imagined(?)). I cannot remember which though. Perhaps areas without too many conversations/scripts?

 

But most saves would actually load if I tried 4-5 times (it crashed, tried again, crashed, tried again etc). Some save would also load if the module was already open (that is if I used an earlier good save, I could usually get to the bad save to load, but not always). 

 

It would be great if someone more computer apt could figure out what the underlying problem was,

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lilura]

               

It seems the issue has been well-documented over the years, and yet no solutions were forthcoming.


Even the introduction/oasis area is affected.. just trying to get to the first area after that, I also had a crash.


I restarted NWN a few times, then just shelved it. Bastard of Kosigan is good, but it's not that good that I'm prepared to put up with such nonsense.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_werelynx]

               

Sometimes it's about lowering graphics, shiny water being most often the culprit. Sometimes it's the override (if you messed with that)

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_tobtor]

               

I agree with werelynx. Try adjusting graphics (shiny water and perhaps shadows?).

 

I had nowhere near the issues you are describing. I had 6-8 saves "corrupted" in one play-through (perhaps 4 would start if I tried several times, and a few irredeemably lost). It never happened between areas, only when loaded saved games, so in theory I could have played it through without loading without issues (but I didn't have that long to play consistently, and there was some areas I wanted to redo- due to missing out on options etc).

 

Waht you are describing is a problem sometimes occurring in many modules with the graphics.

 

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[Legacy_icywind1980]

               

Two of us had this problem as well when we played it. We thought it was a character issue so we deleted the character save portrait and save game portrait from the save folder. That worked about half the time. The rest of the time, loading and reloading eventually worked.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lilura]

               

Shiny water is always set to off in my games due to the framerate hit it causes. I've also minimized visuals, but to no avail.

 

I'm surprised so many ppl just put up with the problem; it's maybe one reason the author/caretaker never bothered their asses to fix it.

 

A module that doesn't load half the time isn't worth a damn, imo.

 

I had nowhere near the issues you are describing. I had 6-8 saves "corrupted" in one play-through (perhaps 4 would start if I tried several times, and a few irredeemably lost). It never happened between areas, only when loaded saved games, so in theory I could have played it through without loading without issues (but I didn't have that long to play consistently, and there was some areas I wanted to redo- due to missing out on options etc).

 

It sounds like you had more problems than me, actually... because I refused to play on. '>

 

6-8 corrupted saves, trying to reload several times, some saves lost? Please... that's inexcusably bad. And then a suggestion to play the module through in one sitting in order to avoid the problem (presumably with god mode turned on)? >_>

 

Waht you are describing is a problem sometimes occurring in many modules with the graphics.

 

 

What other modules, so I can avoid them like the plague?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_tobtor]

               

I have experienced corrupted saves in many modules, even the official ones. Therefore I always have two (or more) separate saves that I save in alternatively (in addition to quicksaves). In the II module of Kosignan (the only one of the series with major problems) I just expanded to three saved games. I never lost more than 10 minutes of game time.

 

"Even the introduction/oasis area is affected.. just trying to get to the first area after that, I also had a crash."

 

I never had a problem with crashes in area transitions, and there is nothing to kill you in the first area... Most of my problems was in Kosignan itself, mostly indoors areas (only? I didn't keep track). Anyway for me it was enough to have a working "save"  before I went into a new mission/instance, doing the mission in one go.

 

"6-8 corrupted saves, trying to reload several times, some saves lost? Please... that's inexcusably bad."

 

I agree it is bad. But as no-one have an idea about the reason (as far as I can see, the portrait thin mentioned by icywind dosnt seem to be the entire problem, as it didnt work everytime) it is difficult to fix.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lilura]

               

I have experienced corrupted saves in many modules, even the official ones. Therefore I always have two (or more) separate saves that I save in alternatively (in addition to quicksaves). In the II module of Kosignan (the only one of the series with major problems) I just expanded to three saved games. I never lost more than 10 minutes of game time.

 

I have never had a corrupted save in any module - official or not - because I don't save over the same savefile, ever. That's elementary stuff I learned two decades ago...

 

I have played many modules, on and off, for years... no crashes - not like this. I have been playing NWN almost exclusively on my blog for the last year... no crashes.

 

This is a BoK problem, a major one. It isn't common to "many" modules and it's not a user error problem (i.e, overrides, graphics settings, overwriting the savefile).

 

It is well-documented that people are saving their game, then trying to load it, and it's crashing to desktop: here, GoG, my blog - people agree.

 

But yeah, it would probably take an expert to fault-find... and, unlike some other famous modules, the author is no longer active in the NWN scene, and there seems to be no caretaker with the expertise. So that's where we're at, I guess.

 

Exile of the West was fun, though. It has quite a few bugs and the module can hang depending on your choices (two of the three endings are bugged: one may puzzle a normal player to the point of giving up; the other is 100% game-breaking, even for veterans). I've listed the bugs, stupid things, oddities and unsolved mysteries on my blog, at the end of this post.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_tobtor]

               

I agree BoK (only the second module) suffers problems loading saved games. But it sounds like you also had crashes going from area to area (?) - I never did.

 

"I have never had a corrupted save in any module - official or not - because I don't save over the same savefile, ever. That's elementary stuff I learned two decades ago..."

 

Well the auto save and quick saves is overriding per default.

 

But then I don't see the problem as huge. Make a couple of saves before starting a major fight (preferably in the area before the fight), and the chances of issues should be minimal and only relate to a few minutes of play-time (unless you make multiple saves during a long fight?).

 

But of course it is your choice, suffer through a few bad save-files in episode II or abandon the entire series.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_werelynx]

               

It's not always solvable, I recently had problems with Kale rangers, but it was only in one or two forest areas.

I'm thinking this is an issue with 1.69 patch not agreeing with older modules. Maybe corruption during building.

 

If the bugs and crashes are too often I tend to drop the module. Maybe try sending QA/bug report to the author's email?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lilura]

               

I agree BoK (only the second module) suffers problems loading saved games. But it sounds like you also had crashes going from area to area (?) - I never did.

 

"I have never had a corrupted save in any module - official or not - because I don't save over the same savefile, ever. That's elementary stuff I learned two decades ago..."

 

Well the auto save and quick saves is overriding per default.

 

But then I don't see the problem as huge. Make a couple of saves before starting a major fight (preferably in the area before the fight), and the chances of issues should be minimal and only relate to a few minutes of play-time (unless you make multiple saves during a long fight?).

 

But of course it is your choice, suffer through a few bad save-files in episode II or abandon the entire series.

 

Yeah, I had one crash on area transition (I also had one crash on area transition in Exile of the West, btw, but that was it for the whole Episode). The rest are simply trying to load a save in BoK.

 

Yes, autosave and quicksave overwrite, but I don't rely on them, as they can become fragmented/corrupted. Again, I learned this the hard way, years ago.

 

The choice is lump it or leave it! Indeed, I'm doing the latter. I just thought I'd make some noise on my way out.

 

It's not always solvable, I recently had problems with Kale rangers, but it was only in one or two forest areas.

I'm thinking this is an issue with 1.69 patch not agreeing with older modules. Maybe corruption during building.

 

If the bugs and crashes are too often I tend to drop the module. Maybe try sending QA/bug report to the author's email?

 

Fabien has moved on and his memory is (understandably) fuzzy of even the quests... and yeah, I suspect, along with another, that it's a deep-seated problem in the module's building, but I lack the expertise to check it out.

 

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Update - I finished recounting Exile of the West, but I have abandoned the series due to its bugginess. The bugs are all listed on my blog in case anyone wants to fix them in the future.