Where art thou Priestess Daiytha?

[CerebroDragon]

Well foks, my party has been making some smooth progress of late. Admittedly I'm slightly disappointed that the gameplay is so dominated by bloodthirsty battles so far at the expense of roleplay/parlay, but generally, they're often that well set out and challenging that I don't mind. Plus I think that the prophecy seems to naturally goad you towards killing things anyway, or is that my subconscious opinion?

Currently, I've just finished wading knee deep through myconid slime and are dispatching drow like infinite random encounters in Hap on Curse of the Azure Bonds. Spoilerish details follow in this overly long, yet sometimes amusing missive. Thankfully the lich also fell to my will and so that very Orko-like butler Cespenar, shall have his skull. [img]graemlins/knightsmile.gif[/img]

When I got to the choice between the north and south corridors of 'slaves' and 'pets', I chose 'slaves' first, fought for about 15 minutes, and after being humbly beaten to a pulp by halbard +3 wielding slavely duergers, (With this weaponry, they could almost win their freedom!) I decided instead to try the 'pet' route. Killing spiders was indeed easier and a more logical battle flow ensued with Korgan and at least one summoned creature doing the main mashing.

After that, I tried the 'south' corrdor' from the other side of the spider area and was left in wry wonderment as to why the Slavermaster wasn't there like he was when they humiliated my party. Not seeing him around, I simply shrugged and in a mindless haze, slew foul vengeance upon the slaves to punish them for being +3 halbard wielding slaves. Because the slavemaster was was missing, I thought he might have an item I needed...hoping not, I continued on.

Which brings us to my problem. Priestess Daiytha was on the way. Knowing that she was coming spoilt some of the anticipation a little, but when we finally got to her - she taunts us and teleports away, leaving us to battle Ogremoch. I thought to myself "hmmmm, if I'm allowed to have all of this pre-encoutner knowledge about Daiytha, let's push it to the next level by trying to kill her before she can teleport away".

A mistake do you think? A fatal error of bloodlust? A potential show-stopper?
Perhaps! But I digress...

Thus, I got missile weapons ready and charged with Korgan. He managed to get in a critical hit for 65 damage when she got away. Arggh! Oh well. Resignedly, I fought the rest of the creatures including Ogremoch who dropped to another deathbringer assault. However, all was quiet again, I realised that I didn't have a way to get through to the next door where I'm expecting Daiyatha to be waiting for me.

I may have stumbled into:
(A) A dastardly bug (where art thou my lovely Priestess?)
(B) Reload time (This time, I won't hurt her, honest)
(C) A missing key or item (I'll assign Edwin on corpse looting duties)

Anyone know what might have happened here?
I might just save now and come back later and follow the natural flow of things.

[shamrock_uk]

The door opens automatically, so it's definitely not C. I would tentatively suggest A because i seem to remember having similar trouble getting the damn thing open. However course B would seem to solve all the problems in this case [img]smile.gif[/img]

[teardropmina]

one advice, play the game properly. IIRC, when Daiytha taunts you, she's blue-circled (from she speaks to her teleporting away); it means that you're not supposed to fight her at that point. your force-attacking her while she's not red-ciricled might be the reason for the "bug."

reload the game, try not to force attack her, and proceed to fight Ogremoch. Then you should be fine.

[CerebroDragon]

Originally posted by teardropmina: one advice, play the game properly.

Hmmm, the sheer irony of it all. I write a very self-aware post, attempting to inject humour into the situation, but still manage to get accused of 'improper play'.
If my understanding of the game is right, 'blue' circles refers to a neutral character and I've attacked many of them in past before without problems. (One who comes to mind immediately, is Saemon Havarian...oh the antics that his presence caused!)
Furthermore, I was going for a 'tactical advantage' by the quick attack and as described, I knew that she was an enemy already due to the game being too liberal with its cut scenes, so why not attempt use this knowledge? [img]tongue.gif[/img]
Ok, so my action was far from 'chivalrous', I'll acknowledge that, but improper for a neutral evil alignment? Nah.

The solution to my problem will be to redo the entire Sendai enclave, as I'd used the autosave to re-explore the other regions for theory (C).
It'll be a joy to do again. Hopefully it'll fix the drama.

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

You know what? You go right ahead and attack blue-circles. Far too often an enemy turns red and attacks YOU before you have a chance to react... That's like them attacking you when you're a blue-circle.

So you go ahead and force-attack blue circles. Keep them on their toes and balance the game out!

[CerebroDragon]

@Illumina: Starkly sarcastic criticism noted and pondered upon.

What you say is logical and true providing one's character and meta-game thinking is interested in keeping the game mechanics 'in balance'. And since you are the resident high harper, I'd expect such a view from you and understand and respect where you are coming from.

However my roleplaying often vacillates between idealistic avatarhood and downright selfish oppurtunistic villainy, so I don't see it so much as a problem with roleplaying, (because that's a personal decision regardless of morality) but rather with the mechanics and programming which decide the net result of a choice of action. (which is an old debate, I know....)

Like I said, I've killed blue circles on a whim of irritability or bloodlust (Silke and the fellow who threatens to poison you in BG1 are other examples) and never had problems with it (apart from the ocassional nagging voice of conscience of course!)

The lesson learnt from this case though, is to be more selective in which blue circle I jump.

[teardropmina]

well, CerebroDragon,
How you roleplay the game (such as force-attcking blue-circled NPCs)is nobody's business but yours, and you can do whatever you want with it. My *play the game properly* adivce simply means that in some occasions in the game you HAVE TO play the game in certain way according to the designers' plan. The Daiytha sequence is as simple as this: she taunts you and immediagtely teleports away; you fight some monsters first; then you go fight her together with her own goons; when done, you proceed to the next area. If you don't want to follow such "proper" sequence, you just have to live with the consequence (in this case it might cause the bug you encountered).

btw, did you force-attack Lassal in Bodhi's Lair in SoA? you should if you stick to your own logic.

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

Originally posted by CerebroDragon: @Illumina: Starkly sarcastic criticism noted and pondered upon. What you say is logical and true providing one's character and meta-game thinking is interested in keeping the game mechanics 'in balance'. And since you are the resident high harper, I'd expect such a view from you and understand and respect where you are coming from. ... Like I said, I've killed blue circles on a whim of irritability or bloodlust (Silke and the fellow who threatens to poison you in BG1 are other examples) and never had problems with it (apart from the ocassional nagging voice of conscience of course!)

That's exactly what I'm talking about... I was sort of serious when I condoned attacking blue-circles. Sometimes people are obviously evil or hostile towards you. Why should you let them strike first?
The assasin in Candlekeep who approaches you saying "I've a blade with your name on it." is a case in point. Who would stand there like an idiot while someone approached you, muttering threats?

[CerebroDragon]

Well folks, I got back into the flow of it last night and pushed like a rabid madman once again through the swathes of forces in Sendai's Enclave.
Didn't take too long to repeat the battles I'd done and as anticipated, the problem I had with a disappearing Daiyatha has been proven to be caused by my bloodlustful attack.
Her carcass was thus quite divine to behold upon its death... [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

@Teardropmina
What you say is true, but it is 'meta-game' thinking, done outside the game world.
There's no way I or my character could have possibly known that Daiyatha would disappear and not be found again when I first attacked her. This is learnt by experience. Discovering the logic of the game and the thresholds of the game mechanics takes experience and I for one, enjoy trying to push the boundaries of what is possible in the game. [img]smile.gif[/img]
I'm sure many others do as well.

As to Lassal, I can't quite recall how I reacted, but it would have been with a relatively similar hostility.

@Illumina
I think I may have misinterpretted the tone of your first post, as initially I thought you were chastisting me with sarcasm. Nice to know someone somewhat agrees with me, as it does seem logical to choose our tactical moments carefully and look to maximise our advantages where combat is inevitable...

My party is now on its third attempt at the dreaded battle with Sendai and her various forms. Everything about this fight is so epic, it just seems to last forever. If I get down to the final form again only to lose my PC again, I'll scream to heaven's a-Bhaal!
Lots of unexplored strategies yet, so I'll post again on it if I continue to struggle!

[Mirror Image]

I can't figure out the problem in all this. When I encountered her I didn't have any trouble. She disapeared, I fought three big elemental meanies. the second door opened. I approached inviso, triggered her its time to kill you speech, backed up and had Viconia send in a fire storm. Other area spells followed and then after the effects ended we charged with one of those avitars. All we had to really fight was the hive mother which we had earlier damaged with the area spells.

We actually never had to enter the room because when the drow priestess died in the fire storm the door automatically opened. But the spoils was worth the risk.