A6 - Can you kill the shade of Ess-Kalyn?

[PhysWiz]

I had an odd experience in the north east corner of the Eastern Gallery. I approached a hill with sliths and demons dancing around and the shade or projection of Ess-Kalyn standing off to the side. After saving, I approached and had a conversation with him. He introduced himself, said he wasn't really there, invited the rest of the sliths to attack and disappeared. I reloaded and advanced on the hill in combat mode from the east side and was able to take out the entire crew, one at a time (the ones not attacked stayed neutral until I attacked them.) After killing the last one I went up to Ess-Kalyn (still there and still neutral) and attacked him. There was no conversation and he (or his projection anyway) apparently died. I'm going out on a limb here in guessing this wasn't supposed to happen. Or, is this an alternate end to this combat and does it affect anything in the future?

 

I am playing version 1.0.2 on an Intel Mac. I started this game on version 1.0 but downloaded 1.0.2 part way through.

[Randomizer]

This is a purely scripted fight that triggers for conversation when you reach a certain point. So far the only change reported is that this fight doesn't occur if you haven't been here before doing the Aid Solberg quest.

 

As long as you get a drop of a really nice sword here it shouldn't matter how you do the fight.

[PhysWiz]

I had not yet done the Aid Solberg quest. I did get the "cool" sword. Two things bothered me:

 

1. Bypassing the scripted conversation and approaching in combat mode should not let me kill one opponent at a time while the rest stand around doing nothing. This can't be what Jeff wanted.

 

2. As an experiment, I redid the fight triggering the conversation. It was much tougher, of course, but when it was over, each of my characters had gained FEWER experience points than in my first, easier fight (one at a time). Did I get extra points for killing Ess-Kalyn's projection?

[Randomizer]

1. I did the same thing in Geneforge 5 fighting bandits in the Mera-Tev woods. It's not what Jeff planned but you can get away with it because the zone doesn't go hostile when you kill friendlies.

 

2. I don't know if there is any experience associated with the projection. There is a slight round off factor with killing things/doing quests as it adjusts per character level so doing the same thing over and over again will give a different result. This is especially irritating when you just did something that makes a character increase a level and then have to redo it because you make a mistake.

[PhysWiz]

My experience gain doing the battle the standard way ranged between 29 and 33 with an average of about 31. Doing it the odd way, including killing the projection, gave me a range between 40 and 45, averaging about 43. This seems statistically significant. This is with four characters set on torment.

 

I have other things on my table right now but if I get enthusiastic in the next couple of weeks I will try to run each battle type a few times and see if the pattern holds up. Or, I may just play the game and stop worrying about minor oddities.