Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga probs: troll-cup, luxurious chest + forcefield

still haven't found the troll's cup to return to its place;

also 2 blocks in luxurious's area -- chest is locked and no idea how to get through the forcefield in his main rooms.


In madame's house (house of pleasure) -- I got the formula to expose pixie dust, and poured it and nothing happened, cept I got a quest reward -- but nothing was revealed -- there's blood all around the floor -- but it's every where -- not just there -- and was there before I poured it -- and now the head madam keeps asking me not to leave until I find the demon that killed everybody -- but the place is empty -- she won't engage in conversation -- just keeps spouting not to leave when I press 'e'.

Beginning to wonder if SHE is the demon, since there's nobody in the place. Feel bad, since if I leave, and come back later and she's dead, that would be sad, but there's nothing else to do.

Other stuck areas...no idea how to get the flower -- I found the room where it seems to be in with ladders at the bottom of some crypt, but after pulling the first lever I don't know how to proceed -- next ladder is out of reach as are other levers. Tried walking backwards down halls and into the transport that's there (hint from a stand before the room was when forward doesn't work, go backwards)....

Also don't know how to get into engineer's chamber/w/o killing the monk.

So answers on any/all of these would be appreciated. I don't care to be bumping around blindly -- not really my idea of fun.




I know its too late for this game, but maybe you can listen to things like this for future games:

I wish the game would have let me do common sense things --- like jump off the rope bridge overpass over lanier's lane -- big whole, yet I'm not allowed to jump down.

Same at my dragon castle -- there I am on a balcony overlooking the ocean, and I can jump off and turn to dragon form. Or how about the inconsistency between runners who can go off and find things running out of my castle, but I can't.

While I was aware I had to finish the broken valley quests before becoming a dragon, I didn't know I had to finish all the island quests as well -- why not let me fly out over the island that is THERE for me...it was meant for the dragon -- and in fact, under new rule -- should have become green and alive again -- as island went dead under previous non-dragon owner, but had been green and lush before. Even if you couldn't turn it lush immediately (or at all, out of budget), you could have let me out to fly over it and finish any island quests --- I was told I had to be in dragon form to finish one, but never got a chance, since it was a ship up in a tree. But it was off limits after that.

Why not allow me to fly from island to mainland? So many reasons that make this game much less fun and more annoying than it could have been -- mainly all the artificial limitations everywhere. GRRR....

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Anyway still would like to solve those quests...have no idea about what the 5th question/answer might be -- (am assuming, perhaps incorrectly that luxurious is one of the answers that I may find behind that forcefield -- if not, still need 2 more riddles to solve).

So pointers there would be appreciated as well.
Thanks.

Luxurious' Mansion:


Rue Lanilor:


Perfume flower:


Monk:


5th clue:
[/spoiler]

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I cannot speak for Larian, but I can answer questions based on how most games are coded. You cannot jump for certain environments such as your balcony because game treats the interior throne room and other platforms as separate maps. Its the same reason you have loading screens when entering dungeons. The game does not have a transparent loading system that would allow you do bridge different zones.

Awesome Awesome Awesome...

But one thing left out -- is there anything behind the forcefield in luxurious's room? or is that the chest you are taking about -- since there was another chest in his pleasure chamber.

Just thought behind the forcefield was the 5 clue...but it's those darn sigels all over kingdom come.

Where's the dragon for the 5th clue?

Many many thanks.


Oddly...don't know how it was done -- but while there are different maps, in obvlivion, there was a mode called 'open cities' that got rid of the city doors all over the place -- so more transition places. But there, I think they could load multiple maps into a cache. The game was resource intensive.

Still, jumping off the balcony -- could do a instant cut screen to during the dragon change.

Part of the trick is to load maps in background in anticipation of what will be needed and have room for more than one. So if you are on balcony, load adjacent air...set up to allow partial-on-demand, paged-in map loading with caching the way OS's do. Thinking through game design, a complex game that's well built, I could see all the structures and features in an OS being put to use in a game: demand paging, caching, threading, multi-tasking -- each AI in the game can have it's own 'routine' of what it does -- and it's updated in background all the time or at timed intervals. Complex AI's can follow paths from one city to another -- in Oblivion, they had schedules by the day of the week of where some chars would be. I've studied game writing and oblivion was by far the most complex, well filled out example of many features. I just wish they'd done a graphics update with Divinity's graphics, but they had expansive panorama's -- that took ALOT of memory to run well. Including alot of video RAM. Card of today can run it fairly easily, but it was released years ago, and only the fastest cards could run it with full enhancements. I had a good machine back then for the day, and it struggled at 1600x1200.

The game engine in Divinity is pretty good, but if games start being able to use x64 memory, with multi-gig's of RAM, should be able to fit ALOT of maps in memory. Even if they page off disk, if they go through the system's read/write, it can make use of most of that space as cache.
My 24G, system usually has at least half of that or more used for caching (except when I'm doing photoshop work -- that swallows the whole thing and often wants more...(large images)...

There's only one chest in Luxurious' room that cannot be opened based on choices.

The dragon statue is at the bottom to the right; down the path from the runes. You should reach it before the Prancing Seahorse.

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Its not that map loading cannot be done. AFAIK its only that it is not implemented. The focus for this game is obvious: game content over fit and finish. There is no unique tech going on here. There are no complex AI; hostile NPCs can certainly attest to that. This game is being developed by a small team. In comparison a game like Dragon Age is developed by a company with 20 times Larian's employees. Personally I don't think they should trade-off extraneous features for content.

Games that support transparent loading usually break up maps into tiles that are loaded based on the player's current position. The world's #1 MMO does this. There will still be loading screens if a player transitions to a zone that is more than a couple adjacent tiles away. However, in many cases the transition is fluid.

If you want to comment on a true lack of tech, you only need to highlight that this game does not have an indoor outdoor system. It neither uses portals to do this, nor enormous textures and geom cache. In fact it does nothing. When you reach an in-out transition you must load. But again, these features are more polish and finish than actual game. I would have liked to see a more polished release from Larian, and I have also be personally vocal in picking apart these lack of features. But at the end of the day, these missing details are trivial and do not detract from the overall game experience.

Can a game like Divinity get features like this? Certainly, but they will likely do so through licensing. By the time the next release is ready, I'm confident many of the features you claim as faults will be non-issues.

I know you commented on the creation of Oblivion and to be honest there no comparison with the approach. Bethesda is a company cut from the same cloth as id software: a company devoted to pioneering game tech. In fact the development styles were so similar there was a recent merger by their parent company with id. The tech overlap will definitely be put to good use. Licensing is a strength of both companies and an option for an outfit looking for a good base for their project.

BTW, 24Gb RAM is not common. In fact only recently has the average system specs moved to 4GB. System memory is cheap but fast video memory is not. Until we see more card with more than 1GB video ram and GPUs being able to efficiently address this memory, it is unlikely that a large push towards mega caching. Its more likely that extra memory would be used to push prettier pixel to the screen. The loading issue is mostly decoupled from system memory and does not require an extreme amount of memory to implement. Like most game tech, the fluid environment is an illusion designed to fool players. It can best be compared with movie magic: CGI, facades, and 1-D props. Features that look like they should require mass memory really do not. Every feature adds requires a mix of resources, not just memory. Cumulatively it adds up and it is up to the developer to optimize these features in a way that balances gameplay with eye-candy and mechanics. Until processing power scales up as well, it is not necessary to utilize excessive memory caches. This isn't to say that a developer cannot utilize 24GB, but there would need to be a killer feature to persuade gamers to purchase additional hardware.