Help Reactivating Huestess Quest to Slay Goettsch?

[Firewyrm]

Hey guys, I have an issue and need some help. I'm not sure if there's a perfect solution but essentially I'm trying to get a quest and I screwed up and made myself ineligible.

 

Basically I want to get the quest from Huestess to kill Goettsch, but I messed up by clearing the zone before talking to him. I was saving the talk for later since I hadn't spoken to Goettsch yet, and accepting his quest makes him "mark" you such that Goettsch and his creations will become hostile on sight and not parley with you or give you the false shaping gloves, which I intend to use as I have high leadership. I wanted to pick up the fake gloves from him, then get the quest from Huestess to kill Goettsch as it awards 1 endurance and I'm playing on Torment difficulty.

 

However, if you clear the zone (turning it green so it can be "crossed freely," Huestess does not need to "feed" on you, and lets you pass without any toll, since you've already cleared the way (through the heavily mined/crystaled area); this makes it so he will not give you the quest to slay Goettsch and mark you as hostile, which I now want to happen.

 

Do you think you could help me reset the event in such a way that I could recover that conversation and pick up the quest from Huestess to kill Goettsch?

The zone is Sentinels (from Geneforge 1) and it has two .txt files pertaining to it in the "Scripts" folder you mentioned earlier in this thread. I can't attach image files of the script here, but if you have access to the Geneforge 1 scripts folder, then the two relevant text files are "z72sentinl.txt" and "z72sentinldlg.txt"; I think the second file is the one with the script we're looking for, because I see the right conversation options from the quest written out. Scroll to "begintalknode 50", as well as "begintalknode 51, 55, 56, and 67. Those are the complete list of script headings for the correct conversation options, from approaching Huestess for the first time to accepting the quest to completing it and being rewarded with the endurance point.

 

Could you assist me with this? It would save me hours of replay time since I unfortunately don't have a recent save. Thank you so much! ❤️

[Ess-Eschas]

Hello Firewyrm,

 

Welcome to Spiderweb Software! I hope you’ve been using a Fyora or two to match your username!

 

First off, I’m really sorry for missing your first post about this. I usually try to deal with queries like this immediately – however, I’m afraid you happened to write during a particularly busy spell on my end, and your issue slipped under my radar. Thanks for being so patient, and for posting this reminder!

 

I remember coming across a similar problem myself. Thankfully, there’s a fairly easy way to deal with this issue. You’ve actually come quite close to the solution already in what you posted!

 

Here’s a solution I believe should work for you. I can’t test this myself just now, but I don’t want you to wait any longer. So, just to be on the safe side, be sure to create a backup save of your game before trying this out. That way, if anything unforeseen happens, it won’t affect your progress!

 

1. Check to see if you have Leadership of 8 or more. This quest line will not active if this condition is not met. I could fix that for you too, but that would require manual editing of the script files. It might be easier to increase the stat yourself if you’re close enough!

 

2. Go into a zone that is *not* Sentinels. Any other zone will do.

 

3. Hold down shift and press ‘d’. This should bring up a little text-input box.

 

4. In this box, type the following command exactly as written below, and press enter:

 

sdf 72 14 0

 

5. Leave the zone you’re in, and enter Sentinels from the *right* side. I believe entering from the left might damage the triggers. You can do this by explicitly clicking on the right side of the zone.

 

6. Talk to Heustess. He should now mention a toll. After selecting the conversation option ‘What price do I have to pay?’, you should see the option ‘Is there nothing I can do? Is there no way I can get you to let me pass without eating my life?’. Select that option. You should then receive the quest.

 

If this doesn’t work for whatever reason, let me know, and I’ll see if I can come up with another workaround.

 

For your interest, since you’ve come quite close to a solution on your own, here’s a picture of how this interaction works in the game’s code:

 

Spoiler

In Geneforge 1, the detailed behaviour of each zone is mostly covered by two script files. The first governs the general behaviour of the zone, such as defining creatures, what you need to do to make the zone hostile, etc.. The second script, which appends ‘dlg’ to the end of the name, contains all the ‘dialogue’ script for that zone. ‘Dialogue’ is actually a pretty loose term here, since it contains all the text that appears whenever you talk to someone, or when a text box appears, and all the associated code. Generally speaking, if you want to look into some aspect of the code, you’ll want to look at the ‘dlg’ file.

 

So, in this case, z72sentinldlg.txt is the file you want to look at here. Scroll down to (or search for) the line which begins ‘begintalknode 55’. This is the critical part of the conversation with Heustess that introduces the quest. Do you see the line that begins ‘condition’? This is the line that determines whether or not this part of the conversation appears. If the little statement to the right of the equals sign is met, this part of the conversation will appear. If not, it won’t. Here’s the condition in this case:

 

get_flag(72,14) == 0 && get_stat(20) >= 8 && get_flag(72,17) == 0

 

Those ‘&&’s basically just mean ‘and’. So there are three conditions here. Two are ‘get_flag’ commands: the first one and the last one. These check the value of a little block of memory, known as a ‘flag’. In this case, flag (72,14) needs to have a value of 0, and so does flag (72,17). The middle condition is checking a stat. I don’t believe the numbers of the stats are conveniently listed in the code, but I can tell you that stat 20 is Leadership. The ‘>=’ means ‘greater than or equal to’. So ‘get_stat(20) >= 8’ basically reads ‘is the player’s Leadership stat 8 or higher?’.

 

It’s possible to figure out what those two flags do by looking at where they appear in the talking chain. Flag (72,14) deals with whether the zone has been sufficiently ‘passed’ to avoid Heustess’s toll. Note that this is not the same thing as turning the zone green: that’s a slightly different check. Flag (72,17) deals with the Goettsch quest itself.

 

Your problem is that you’ve already avoided the toll. So flag (72,14) has already advanced too far, the conversation check has failed, and this part of the conversation doesn’t appear for you. So all you need to do (assuming you have high enough Leadership) is to reset this particular flag. That’s what the little command I gave you above does. The debug code ‘sdf XX YY NN’ sets the value of flag (XX,YY) to NN. We want to set flag (72,14) back to zero, so we use ‘sdf 72 14 0’.

 

And that’s how to solve this problem yourself!

 

[Nim]

On 10/28/2022 at 8:31 AM, Firewyrm said:

accepting his quest makes him "mark" you such that Goettsch and his creations will become hostile on sight

This is wrong. Goettsch will talk to you even if you're marked. If you have 12 leadership you can then convince him that you are no threat.

 

begintalknode 15;
    state = 11;
    personality = 0;
    nextstate = 10;
    condition = get_flag(73,16) == 0 && get_stat(20) >= 12;
    question = "I am marked with hatred of you, and I said I would kill you. But I will not. Speak with me, and my words and actions will convince you.";
    text1 = "It takes all of the sincerity you can muster, but you manage to convince Goettsch that you mean him no harm. _All right. I will give you a chance. But I do not trust you. Give me reason to fear, and I will slay you in an instant._";
    action = SET_SDF 73 16 1;

[Firewyrm]

Thank you so much, both of you! I appreciate the help more than I can say. I love how friendly and helpful the Spiderweb forum/staff are. I'm going to try it out now and I'll post again to report whether or not it worked! Brb.

Edited November 8, 2022 by Firewyrm
Issue was resolved by a moderator already but I hadn't realized it. Thank you for all your help!