I finished the mission "The Collar" I took off the collar, and I escaped from the prison, but it is normal that now every guards attack me on sight? I can only choose whether to return to prison or attack them ...

Well you ARE an escaped prisoner on what is extensively a order run by a militaristic religious order that is pledged to either cure you or exterminate you.

Assuming the game didn't just default to them killing you... Your options are fairly limited to cowing them or donning some sort of disguise.

All prisoners are supposed to have the collar on. That's the point. So yes, if the guards see you, your only choices are to go to prison or to fight them. That's normal.

All inmates who leaving the prison, on the other hand, are flagged as kill-on-sight even if you used the teleport statues to literally only leave the prison for 3 seconds and came back in. That's intentional, but a pretty stupid design decision and should be changed.

Also because the guards are really REALLY hard to kill! I tried to defeat them with cheats (only offline don't worry) for this reason i doubt whether it is a normal thing ...

If you leave the prison or the collar comes off they will attack you on sight..It is normal, it is part of the game.

You are probably leaving the prison or finishing the collar quest too soon and are underleveled and undergeared.

So am I understanding this correctly, you can't really escape because that would be another game level that's still being developed ? Also, I have progressed far enough to have the collar removed from my character, but I'm still only 3rd level and can't find anything else to do to level up more. All of the guard fights are extremely difficult because they are so much more powerful than my party. I loved Original Sin, and I'm sure this one is going to be a great game, but I'm sad to think that I've played all that I can at this time.

Odd given level 3 is a good level to start defeating guards.

Heck that was the level I was at when I fought a guard boss.

and thus we get another conversation of "The game is too hard!" where I have no idea what someone is doing wrong. This isn't like the time someone said their armor ratings got to 400 naturally (which I still doubt)...

It's not that the game is too hard, in fact I think it's just right and challenging, I'm just having a hard time when there's 4 or 5 of them coming at me at one time. I have already killed a few of the guards and mages, but only when I get them in pairs and spaced out.I haven't been able to defeat the HoundMaster and guards in the dungeon, or the mages and guards on the top floor of the
fort. I was just hoping I'm missing some quests that will help me level up a bit more.

For the hound master you HAVE to take away his advantages...

A lot of the enemies ambush you and if you fight them on their terms you will lose outright (and sometimes this is annoyingly unfair... It isn't so bad later when you can teleport everyone, but until then... it is basically an instant lose condition)...

For the Hound Master you want to remove his archer support and lock down as many as you can.

I'll try it thanks. From reading thru all of the forums, it appears that I've missed a lot of things and quests. I talk to every NPC, maybe I need to give them different responses to get quests.

You can escape the prison, but not the island. You will be about Level 7 or 8 if everything is finished.

Also there are ways to escape the prison without any fighting and some with less difficult fights, you just need to sneak in or take the way through the caves.

I've got it figured out, thanks. I managed to beat everything in the prison, just had to change my tactics, and escaped thru the pipe into the swamp. I hit 4th lvl just before getting out.
Now is there someone I can see who will take the collars off of the rest of my party ?

Yeah there is.

As well, though we don't get there, there are people in the next act who can take them off as well...

I honestly wonder how the next act will work due to how early you can actually escape the island.

Probably the same as D:OS, where it was certainly possible to get to Luculla at a low level (and likewise from there to the Dark Forest with a bit of creativity), just not very advisable.

Yes but there is a difference.

Sneaking to Luculla early is an exploit.

Leaving the Island early is intended gameplay.

I didn't really see it as an exploit: using stealth to get there felt like a legit expression of Larian's "several ways of doing the same thing" philosophy, even if I did later feel a bit off using the pyramids to cross an inconvenient river in Luculla a bit later.

Are there? In this bit you can fight the guys in the cellar and the woman will take ONE of your players collars off, you can be human and persuade Leya to take all your collars off or you can help Gareth and then she will take all your collars off even if you are a foreigner.

What makes you think there is another way later? Perhaps there is but I don't have any inside information.

And how is it easy to leave the island early? If you leave the prison immediately (at level 1) you get enough experience from hitting the swaps to go to level 2. That is unavoidable.

You can steal the purging wand to free Slane and start the final fight at level 2 with 4000XP but there is no way on earth you'll beat them. Or to be more exact there is no way I can and I've tried.

Mind you I just watched a YT video made by @FireCake who is a member of these forums and he completed the original DOS in 20 minutes. See here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_MHYe0hMsM

It is really quite fascinating what some people can do.

If you know a way of beating the guys at the end I'd love to hear about it as at level 2 even hiding and sniping (which normally works) I just can't do it. I've tried making invisibility potions and dragging barrels up but one hit and I'm dead. I'm certain there is a way though so thanks for giving me a new goal but I don't think it is easy

I agree - it isn't an exploit. If you spend hundreds of hours you find different ways of doing things. I would always sneak over to pick up the Trenebrium book from that weird village and then spend hours save scumming whichcraft to get unlock scrolls for the armoury chests until I realized it was pointless. That *is* an exploit but if I want to rearrange my inventory so I can spend 2 hours mixing pixie dust with a bit of paper more efficiently I'm not hurting anyone else.

I miss crafting and hope it makes an appearance soon.

In this game though I'm stuck on 2 blocking areas at the moment - you can't really move until you get to level 4 and the purging wand doesn't work unless you've removed your collar. Both force you into doing tasks you'd rather skip or playing an origin you'd rather not just for the dialogue options.

The key difference is that if you go to Luculla too early, you could go back to Cyseal and scoop up the XP you missed. You can't go back to the Island of Appropriately-Levelled-Enemies in this game.

No idea, why anyone should want to leave the island before that.

Do we know this is definitely the case? It seems that the Magisters' handy death camp has been mortally wounded and will likely be exposed for what it is once our party escapes; but even without a logical explanation, it's possible we can still travel back and forth.

Unless I've missed the point and it'll be like slaying the seemingly endless goblin imp things in Orobas for 1XP each...

The biggest problem I have is that the death camp doesn't feel like a death camp, Magisters have no living quarters or barracks or storage areas, and there are way too few of them & they're way too weak. In 1 hour you can sweep Fort Joy if you have just Snipe & Tactical Retreat on your ranger.

Well remember that it isn't meant to SEEM like a death camp and can probably stand up to scrutiny.

I dunno, it seems that the regular magisters get to sleep in tents. Seems to parallel real life that what funding is provided to run the place is misappropriated by the most senior people for their own opulence while the rest of the place is left to rot. And who cares, the sourcerers are sent there for processing by a staff largely comprising the sort of people the military also sends there to be forgotten about. At least that's the way I see it, anyway.

Your comment does not make sense.

Magisters do not have any living quarters, kitchens, mess halls, or storage areas. Those are things which are needed if the fort is intended as a place for magisters to stay at for more than a few hours - whether or not it's a prison or a death camp. It would not be suspicious if those things existed.

Secondly, if it's not meant to seem like a death camp, then the gigantic fucking torture dungeon in the main hall, which is completely open and unguarded should probably be better hidden, if only by such things as "doors with locks" and "guards to stop nosy people poking their heads in". Oh, and there are all those silent monks standing about including a bunch outside on the docks. Those are also a bit of a tip-off.

Fort Joy needs another floor.


vometia, there is NO excuse for the lack of facilities for magisters except "the game developers forgot to do sensible set design". There's no in-game logic which can rationalize it.

I suppose I've got used to game worlds giving us the "abridged version" of what would actually constitute the reality such a world. Which isn't to say I disagree with you, just that I've become used to saying a resigned "meh" and moving on.

Except for Oblivion's lack of toilets. I complained about that quite a lot, and eventually added quite a lot of toilets to my expanded castles mod.

you all only partially answered my question. Where can I find someone to remove the collars from my party ? I have killed all of the magisters in the fort and prison and I'm at lvl 6 with some really great equipment and weapons. I saved Gareth, but he hasn't offered to remove them in our many conversations. Do I have to use the wand and destroy all of the shriekers first ? That's the last bit of the island that I have to open up.

As soon as Gareth is back at the seeker camp, the girl there (I forget her name offhand, but sitting with a dwarf near the beach entrance) will remove everyone's collar. You don't need to deal with the shriekers first.

Leya is her name. She will also ..

Two things
1) Fort Joy is relatively recent.
and
2) Not only did they not create the torture dungeon themselves (they are working out of the old fortress), BUT that isn't anything special.

I'll try her. Thanks

1) But that's the thing: apparently, it isn't. In the seeker camp by the vines to the bell is the lizard Bahara who says that she "was like you once, a lost soul driven by instinct from the bowels of Fort Joy." and that she has been at the Sanctuary of Amadia for "several years".

I could ignore the debris in the prison and maybe even some of the makeshift nature of the Magister's non-living-arrangements if Fort Joy was only very recently taken over and repurposed, but I can't ignore that if another part of the game says it's been several years.


Anyway, it's still a problem if Fort Joy has been open for only one week. Guards would still need places to eat and sleep. I realize that game worlds are an abstraction and they can't show every house in the village needed to house the 50-100 NPC's who roam the streets, but it's hard to ignore the facts that the prisoners have tents and bedrolls, and a kitchen and storeroom, and the guards do not, despite the fact that the prisoners are supposed to be the poorly treated ones.


2) I'm not talking about the rest of the island and Braccus's old ruins. I'm talking about "The Flenser's Playground", which is in Fort Joy's basement without even a locked door in front of it. You can't credibly tell me that has nothing to do with the Magisters.

What I mean is "Ohh no... a torture chamber in a non-modern day prison... ohh the humanity"

The wardens are probably expected to torture the prisoners, even to death, from time to time.

Reminder that the official story is that all the Sourcerors are not being rounded up because they are all evil criminals, but because Voidwoken are drawn to Sourcerors, so the point is to keep them away from the general public.

Additional reminder that Paladin Cork of the Divine Paladins exists as an NPC in the prison, here to inspect the prison, and he and the Paladins do not like the existence of this place. Paladin Cork also threatens that "if any prisoners are being harmed..." (The unspoken implication is that the existence of Fort Joy is only grudgingly tolerated, and the Paladins will come in and shut the Magisters down by force.) So yeah, a torture chamber would definitely fall under the "severe no-no" category.

It's seems to be less a torture chamber and more a butcher chamber, regarding all the death bodies and rotting meat. It also kind of a lab for creating the meat golems.

It is not locked away, because no other than Magister is expected to see it. Prisoner who enter the fort, won't leave it again, except as monstrosity, as monk or a corpse. Cork wants to get in an inspect, but they would never allow it.

The fact, how less they care about hiding, just proves their madness even more.

Personally I bet Cork did an impromptu inspection.

They will likely delay Cork endlessly until they hide the more incriminating parts.

You could argue that as the sun never sets and it is always daytime (thank Gods for that) that they don't need to sleep