A3: Chief Hilliar oops

[Soundra]

I arrive in Four Circles, meet Chief Hilliar, feel unhappy with my dialogue choices. I let him walk away and go to reload my Autosave from when I entered the region.

...oh. The game had just Autosaved my decision to let him walk away. Lesson learned there. Now I have to decide whether to load a save from four hours of gameplay ago (wince), or accept this development.

I can see from Randomizer's list what he would have dropped if I killed him, of course. But... can anyone give an idea what the consequences would be like of letting him live? Not looking for full spoilers, just something to help me decide if this was a mistake that would be worth replaying a bunch of stuff to put right.

Edited January 1, 2019 by Soundra

[Randomizer]

It doesn't make a difference in the ending. The little bit of experience is cancelled out because the game caps you at level 30 which most players reach long before the end.

 

Pretty much the only difference is the loot and the money for selling the items.

[Slawbug]

Variants of this situation seem to be showing up a lot, that is, "I have been relying solely on autosave and now doing so has backed me into a corner."

 

I know it's probably not what Jeff intended autosave to be used for.  But if that's how it's being used by this many people, maybe it makes sense to design around it, and have two different autosaves, one that is solely zone-based and one that triggers more frequently.

[Randomizer]

I think Geneforge autosave was based upon entering another zone and all the others are timer based.

 

This is why you are encouraged to make several saved game files.