The ever elusive Shadow Hart [SoU spoilers]

[Zink Whistlefly]

Having run through SoU many, many times with a whole bunch of characters, I believed that I'd bottomed the Shadow Hart quest, knowing where pretty much all the track triggers were, as well as the spawn points for Shadow Hart itself.

My latest character, a human Cleric, is however having a complete nightmare finding the stag. I must have wandered around the map for around an hour and didn't discover any tracks, despite going to all the trigger points that I'm aware of several times. My Ranger's/Druid's/Barbarian's, even high INT fighters and Rogues always found the Shadow Hart incredibly easily.

After trawling through forums for a while, I found a simply amazing guide, which I thought might be of use to some of the members here, which confirms my thoughts about why my cleric is having trouble. I'd guessed that the Search and Spot skills were checked (less so with spot, since my high wisdom cleric with the +5 Spot helm has a respectable rank in spot), but with my human needing to make active searches and only having 10 INT (no ability bonus to search) I figured that was what was letting me down. It turns out I wasn't so far off. Have a look at this guide, made by Mason Reed, Bioware forums:

There are two sets of triggers -- one for finding tracks, and one for finding the Hart itself. Some things apply to both sets of triggers: 1. Triggers are only checked once every 60 seconds. 2. Being in search mode doesn't help. 3. Having good (or bad) Spot / Search skills doesn't help. 4. Standing still on a trigger doesn't help (the trigger only fires when you enter the trigger!) To find a set of tracks, you must enter one of the track triggers (there are a total of 9), then the following conditions are checked: 1. If the Hart has spawned somewhere, you can't find tracks anymore (you don't need them). 2. You have a base 5% chance to find tracks. 3. If you are a ranger, druid, or Barbarian, the chance increases by 50% (to a total of 55%) 4. your intelligence score is added to your chance -- but only if your intelligence is greater than 13. Your entire score is added (not just the bonus), so an intelligence of 18 gives you a +18% chance. 5. A number is generated from 1-100% -- if the number is less than you percent chance, then you discover the tracks and your chance to discover the Hart itself is increased (by 10%). To discover the Hart itself, you must cross one of 5 "spawn" triggers. Note that these triggers are NOT within line of sight of the location where the stag will spawn! For example, on of the triggers is located immediately before the ramp that leads up to the ranger who hunts the Hart -- if the Hart spawns as a result of crossing this trigger, it'll appear in the isolated area behind the ranger. Once you cross the trigger, the following are checked: 1. Base chance appears to be ZERO (the comments state that the base chance should be 10%, but that doesn't fit with my experience, nor do I see where the variable is initalized). Therefore, you must find at least one set of Hart tracks before you have any chance of spawning the Hart. 2. Generate a number from 1-100, if it is less than the spawn chance, generate the Hart, display a floating text message over the PC and disable all the spawn triggers. Once the Hart has been spawned it will not teleport until it is attacked. Once you are engaged in combat, it will teleport to a spawn point every 6 seconds (which might the same point it is at now). It will not disappear from the map, and it appears that it will only teleport once per attack, so you don't need to worry about it bouncing back and forth between two distant spawn points (making it impossible to get into range before it moves to the other side of the map). Conclusions? You only need to find one set of tracks to find the Hart - once you have the 10% chance of spawning, you shouldn't have to run around the map for long before the Hart spawns. Rangers / Druids / Barbarians should do this without even trying - Wizards should have little problem (although they may have to hunt a bit). Any other min / maxed (int < 13) class will find it very tough to find the tracks. Clerics and rogues are well advised to use "Fox's Cunning" to increase intelligence to make it easier to find tracks. Other classes should purchase the potion.

So my class and intelligence is letting me down! Spot and Search are not used in any way, so all my cleric needs to do is memorise a couple of Fox's Cunning spells and cast until I've increased my INT by 4-5 points. Then I've increased my chance to find some tracks when I pass a trigger point by 14-15%!

Hopefully this will be of some help to some of you.