Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Fane broke my heart 💀💔 (much spoilerful)

(spoilers here? Yes)

Fane has always been the most interesting Origin character to me, so I had him in my party as a companion. But yesterday, just as I was about to enter "The Academy of The Seven". Fane left me, forever. (I play as a custom character).

I'm really a lore person. Lore and story are my favorite thing in RPG's. I read everything, and go through all the dialogue options. I was always talking to Fane and doing all his quests, so how could that happen to me? 😭 After Fane left me, I started to search on the internet for what did I do wrong (was it me? 😄). And I found the answer:
Back on level 13 or 14 on Reaper's Coast... inside the Black Pits, there was an area called Ancient Temple. In the Ancient Temple Fane was supposed to participate on a conversation with the Eternal, Aetera. But he didn't. He was in party, but didn't start the conversation with her. Why? Because just before she appeared, I could sense that there was a battle ahead so I put Fane (which I used as a Rogue) and my Ranger some 20 or 30 meters away from where the battle would begin, in Sneak mode. Great idea right? 😭 Aetera appears and talks only to me, while Fane is JUST BEHIND HER! some 20 meters behind her. He never talked to her or about her once the battle is over, which I found very strange at the time.
As he didn't talk to her, I didn't gain Attitude points with him, as if I had not done his quest, so now entering The Academy, he leaves.
I consider this to be partly my fault (for putting him a bit away), and partly the developer's fault, since because of such a small mistake I had such a big loss, my favorite Origin companion. If that can even be considered a mistake on my part.
Unfortunate. Big sad.

I could probably cheat here, putting some Persuasion points on my main character and then try to persuade him into staying on the party, but I don't want to do that. Through the whole game I gave Persuasion points to another character, while I focused on Loremaster and a bit of Telekinesis. So giving a bunch of Persuasion points to my character and removing them just afterwards, it's kind of breaking the character's personality for me.

I put another bony boi in his place. But it's not the same without his annoying sense of humor.

Maybe this happened to someone else out there that is trying to figure out what happened, like I was, so here is the explanation.
Maybe a dev will see this story some day and prevent this from happening in his game.
I just wanted to share what happened.

The first time I went with a low persuasion main character, I lost three of my companions. Good thing there are master sourcerors for hire on the ship and I had a lot of gold. This time, I only lost Lohse who's ghost then complained about ME because she chose to split knowing full well she couldn't be divine while carrying the demon (well, unless she wanted a divine demon). In past games, I wondered what the point was of having mercenaries - this one, I actually use them to replace lost characters.

Now, if that stupid squirrel would quit setting off every trap located anywhere

A previous game update increased the distance Fane could be from that encounter and still be pulled in (IIRC double the usual distance, or so).

Did you try all dialogue options? If your reputation is high enough there should be an option that always works, while some of the others may be easy, hard or impossible. Just missing that one encounter may not have been enough to get him to always leave. There are choices that will block at least some companions from continuing, even if their opinion is otherwise ok (related to refusing particular points in their personal quests), but I don't know if that is also the case for Fane.

There is a back entrance into the academy, which would avoid the companions potentially leaving. Explore the areas separated by lava flows, south east of the dwarven temple.

I also lost Sebille when leaving Fort Joy, but I was okay with that because I really denied her of her quest.

Oh there are many uses for the mercenaries. Though I always try not use them, and had to use on this gameplay, but it's okay.

Sir Lora really likes his traps. I just laugh at him blowing himself there, my problem with him is when in the middle of a battle, I can't go down/up a ladder because he's right there where I need to pass and he won't move an inch. His positioning during a battle have caused me big disadvantages, but it rarely happens. I think that he should just disappear during the battles and appear again once the battle is over.

Oh they already tried to fix this issue in a previous update? okay. Well, I'm very glad to know that they are already aware of this issue.

I did try all the options at the Academy's gate. They require at least 5 Persuasion to pass and I have 0. My reputation with him was actually very low (8 Attitude), though I feel like it should be high. My reputation was very high with my other 2 companions.
As you said, I probably missed other things too. Missing only that one encounter with Aetera shouldn't be enough to lose him. But that one was probably very important to him.
Fane's Attitude towards my main character was only 8 at the gates of the Academy. But I have no idea what else could I have missed, at least the mask quest I did.

I actually stumbled upon the back entrance before trying the front gate of the Academy. But I wasn't ready to enter it yet, so when the characters started their dialogue about entering and their portraits at the top left of the screen disappeared, I just quickloaded and went to do something else. Later on, I entered by the front gate.
Today I loaded an old save file to see if I would still lose him entering by the back entrance and yeah, he still leaves. The dialogue is the same as going by the front gate. Maybe they changed this on an update? idk.

But don't worry about it Raze, I think this is really a lost case. If the developers are aware of this issue, our job here is done.
Thank you for at least trying to help. You're always very helpful.

Sir Lora should run away from combat.

The back entrance bypassing the companion event was likely changed in one of the updates; it was either the Classic release or an early Definitive Edition version when I last tried that.

Sir Lora has blocked me too on occasion - he does generally run but doesn't go too far so occasionally gets in the way. There's only been one play through where my main character had "pet" so I missed a lot of what Sir Lora was about until recently. I think it'd been cool if he had done something spectacular in the final battle, though. Also, I can verify that the questions come up at the back entrance so it must have been updated to do that at some point and, really, I'd consider it a bug if it didn't have the dialogue.

Oh, Pet Pal was the first talent that I got, still on the character creation screen. So, I've been chatting with Sir Squirrel. I actually like him, I love the voice acting on him. "Let's be off, Quercus!". I think Sir Lora is the right way to add humor to the game. Some parts have to be serious, others can be funny, and I think they (devs) have been doing it right. I just think that the devs should have made him disappear during battles instead of running, cause there's some situations where apparently he can't run.

Fun fact: on my big battle on the Lady Vengeance, Sir Lora didn't run, stayed there right in the center of the battle, but I didn't even notice during the battle. Only a few days later I found his singed "remains" on the ship. There's smoke coming out from his body to this day. So, someone killed him with fire but I didn't even notice he was there during the battle. I still talk to him normally, his spirit keeps following me. And it's even more bizarre that when his spirit is close to the ladder, I can't use the ladder (during battle), shouldn't I be able to pass through him? it's just a ghost. He's truly a curse that follows me even after death 😄.

Phew. I am glad I redid the fight when I noticed the quests didn’t get marked as done. Did the same thing as OP did.

I have been thinking about my incident with Fane a lot in the past few days. I can't even progress through the game, I just kept thinking about it. So today I made a decision, I'm going to put him back on the party through Persuasion. Normally I wouldn't do it; but after reading Raze's response, saying that the developers of the game even already launched a patch trying to fix this issue... I think I can forgive both myself and the developers for the incident with Aetera, at the Ancient Temple.
This whole thing is really an exceptional situation, so I'm going to use an exceptional fix. Just gonna make a visit to our dearest friend, Mr. MAGIC MIRROR, get some Persuasion points, put Fane on the party, and then remove the Persuasion points. Problem solved, right? I had already finished the Academy quests, but they are not too many, I can redo them with Fane in a couple hours.
I can't abandon Fane right when he is about to shine.

Speaking of Aetera, (I don't want to say a lot for background as it would be a spoiler), is she Fane's mother?

His mother?! wow, I'd be surprised. I didn't get any clues for that yet.

There's nothing explicit anywhere; that's why I asked what others think. It's just something someone says late in the game that made me wonder. Really, you'd think Fane would say something to that affect when they spoke if it were true. What was said was subtle so, depending on what ending you get, perhaps this can be revisited later.

I was already weirded out when he called the Voidwoken Delegate at the entrance of the Academy his, brother.

At the end of the game, Fane ditched me again. He decided that he should become divine, not me, so my last battle was against him. No persuasive options this time.
I'm not very disappointed with this ending, at least I managed to keep him till the end. My Attitude points with him were 60.

Would he accept me as the new divine if my Attitude with him was higher? I don't know.
Would my Attitude with him be higher if he had participated in the earlier event with Aetera? I think it would.
So, I still have this question on my mind: Would he accept me as the divine if he had participated on the conversation with Aetera?

I played as a custom character. My companions were Beast, Lohse and Fane. My Attitude points with Beast and Lohse were both 100. The ideal for me would be to keep all 3 of them till the end. The betrayal at the end adds a little spice though, so, I'm not insanely frustrated with it.

The overall ending of the game was good though, no frustration there, only the Fane betrayal was kinda bitter. And I still enjoyed the character Fane, the way his story collides with the main story is pretty interesting.

So let's say he did it twice. He broke my heart and I fixed it. He broke it again but then I went and broke his ribcage, and the rest of his skeleton. Rip, partner.

Did you speak to his ghost on the ship afterwards?

I did, I did. He sounds friendly enough. I bet we're still pals then. Even though he betrayed me, he still has god (me) on his side, so, he'll be fine. 🤣

IIRC companions support you as divine if their opinion is 80 or better, so I don't think just missing the dialogue with Aetera made the difference.

Really? I was that close?! aww... I was at 60. Thanks for the info Raze.

Raze, my man... I have bad news. I just loaded my old save file on the Ancient Temple. Before the encounter with Aetera I had only 8 Attitude. After Fane talked to her, I got 48! That one encounter increases Attitude by 40 points! Can you believe it? Exactly enough for me to get the sweet 100 with Fane at the end game.
You just hurt me even more with that info, Raze 😄. Don't worry about it though, it's not our fault.

The distance from Aetera to Fane was around 23 meters, when he missed the event, maybe a bit less.