Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) Help/Tips/Tricks Help! I can't get into Malcolm's house!

Please help! My lockpicking skill is full at 5, and I cannot, altho I try over and over, to enter Malcolm's house in Verdistis to get the book I need. I do not know why this fails, as I have played this game in years past and never had a problem. I'm getting desperate here because I'm so far into the game.
Anyway, I'm glad to have finally joined this forum. Hello to everybody!


On a similar note, for the first time ever, I got 5 in Pickpocketing and ALWAYS fail to have it work. Did the new version fail to fix this?

Do you have the quest from Maria to clear her name?

Are you sure you are at the right house? (the northern house just west of the healer's house)
Both doors (on the east and north sides of the house) should be unlocked until you expose Malcolm, at which point they are locked and require a key to open (which in turn requires Maria's recommendation to buy the house, after clearing her name).


AFAIK there shouldn't be a problem in the disk or download version with Pickpocket, if you have the necessary skill level for the NPC's level. Did you try a farmer, etc? The drunk Sweeny in the Ducal inn in Verdistis only requires level 1 Pickpocket (for the first test to join the thieves' guild), while the NPCs in the quarantine area require level 2). IIRC you need to right click on the ground to activate the skill, and then left click on the NPC.


Welcome to the forum.

*facepalm!*

Darn it! I don't have the quest! I was in the sewers and got to Verdistis that way and was sure (because I've always done the Poor Area first...) that I had Maria's quest. I didn't.

My fault! I'm so sorry to have posted this. I can't believe I'm so brain-dead tonight!

Thank you so much, Raze! It's been ages since I played, and I slipped up this time. Oops! I'll go and talk to Maria.

Also, since this is the first time in years I'm playing again, I have to say that I did not know how to pickpocket correctly. I always got Sweeney's amulet and then just upped my XP in Lockpicking. This is the first time I wanted to try a bit of fun with Pickpocketing. I never knew you had to tap the ground. >_< I keep trying, and it either says, "failed!* or else I get caught EVERY time! Argh! Well, I'll try again. I'm so glad my game isn't all screwed up.

Thank you again and thanks for the welcome! I hope my own experiences will help other people.

If you do not have the quest the book will not be in the house, but the house itself should be unlocked. I never tried entering through the sewers, though...

My game is screwed up. I found out that I DID have Maria's quest and it did not show up in my "Filter Quests." Besides that, I went to the teleporter in the park and...Penumbra was standing there! She won't talk to me, but she's there and she never has been before!

So...I'm...*sigh* starting all over. Well, the upside is that I LOVE this game, but I don't know what went wrong. But I'm seeing all sorts of wonky things, so I think something got corrupted.

Thank you for your help, tho. I'll still try Pickpocketing.

Maybe a corrupt file in the dynamic folder got carried over from a previous game? That happened to a couple people (one person restarted with a different character, and found quest items missing if they had gotten them with their first character, for example).
To be safe you could delete all of the files in the dynamic folder ('..\Divine Divinity\Run\Dynamic' in the disk version '..\Divine Divinity\Dynamic' in the download versions) before beginning a new game.
This folder is used as a cache for the game. Files are created / copied there from the save game folder when you load, and written / copied from that folder when you save a game. The files will be re-created as required the next time you start Divinity.

Under Vista/7, depending on how the user accounts are set up, if you install the game to the default Program Files path, Windows can create separate savegame and dynamic folders for each user, and then map those folders to the game's folder (so it will just see the saves for the relevant user).
C:\Users\ %account name% \AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Divine Divinity\[Run\]dynamic

Oy...thank you! I'll be sure to do just that. I have just begun, but it's no biggie to do what you suggest first before I get to far just to find out that things are all hosed up.

I really, really appreciate your help, Raze. Thank you! I'll get past this and finally have at one of my all-time favourite games again.