Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Tarquin, Gareth Permanently Killing Red Prince

Hi there, my friend and I seem to be having quite the problem, --- By the way, TLDR version below

We're playing on Iron Man mode, but its our first/likely only run through of the game, and we're doing it blind. What I'm trying to say is, please be kind about spoilers. We're fairly dedicated to a 'what happens, is what happens' mentality, but this problem seems more like a bug than any kind of intentional outcome.



So, I brought a mercenary back to the Lady Vengeance. We hire them occasionally to rob vendors blind--it may not be very wholesome, but Iron Man has a way of sorting out priorities.

Anyway, so we're on the Driftwood map, and I strip this mercenary down on the Lady Vengeance before dismissing her. But I don't GET to dismiss her, because Tarquin is there now, waiting for us to finish his sword, and decides to flip out because--Oh No!!--she's undead. Now, you'd think a Necromancer who knows everything that's going on wouldn't fly into a murderous rage against me and my companions because one of them is an undead mercenary rented out by the lady 20ft away who runs that business... But I suppose its beyond me to understand the man's motivations.

So a teleport to get out of combat later and... Tarquin follows--eventhough combat is over--and gets us all in combat again. And hey! Here comes Gareth! Fane ultimately escapes while the Merc is beaten to death. So here I go, waypoint back to LV, and merc is being resurrected spontaneously by.. Something.

Weird... I think to myself. And then, now Tarquin and Gareth are fighting the Red Prince... Okay, because this makes sense. Mercenary dies yet again--so the game is saved--and now us players are friendly with Gareth and Tarquin, and the Red Prince is the bad guy. And when I resurrect the merc again, Tarquin and Gareth seem to have no problem with her, as we all get to be friends with one another to take out the real threat: The Red Prince.



So I leave the Lady Vengeance... and the Red Prince's questline is updated with his death--at the hands of Tarquin and Gareth. Go to reload the save file, and stuck with them hostile to one another. Because the Red Prince isn't in our party, it doesn't save upon his death!

We left the game with Red Prince at one end of the Lady Vengeance, held back by a line of pots and pans, Gareth and Tarquin at the other end, same deal.

So, finally... How in Nemisis (as if I just...) do we fix this? Is this a huge bug? They just stay perpetually in combat with one another. And I'll be honest, I really don't want to have to sacrifice either Gareth and Tarquin, or Red Prince. Also, none of them can be spoken to as they are perpetually fighting.



So, is there a way to reset them? One option is to just wait it out until the next Act or... something... and hope they reset...? Maybe...

I'll kill Gareth and Tarquin if we have to, but I have lots of trepidation. And poor Han, he loves Gareth, and he's going to come back from a supply run to find him very dead... And probably burned, or electrified, or both.

We play once weekly and cloud &/or USB save incase the game has a major bug like this (I know my Divinity games by now!). We've never used it though, and it feels like it kind of defeats Iron Man by using it at all, even with good cause. But beyond that, my friend lets me know that PS4 cloud save corruption is a thing with DOS2, and that we risk losing the entire game. Not to mention, and this is very big for me too, redoing everything we did in the last 12 hours will Really ruin our immersion and the 'take it as it comes' concept, given that I'm not going to botch brain surgery--or listen to that 'doctor'--a second time. But it feels just so disingenuous. I don't even like reloading after the Red Prince bit it, but that honestly makes no sense from a story perspective at all, and feels like a significant bug.


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TLDR: Iron man mode (first playthrough, so minimal spoilers pls), Red Prince in perpetual fight with Gareth and Tarquin aboard Lady Vengeance per save file. They kill Red Prince permanently, quest updated and everything, and no amount of separating them, leaving Lady vengeance, or trying to talk to them in vain stops their combat with one another.

How do I fix it without losing either RP or Gareth / Tarquin?

Not that I might have a solution to your problem, but just out of an urge to understand the situation better: you didn't mention the Red Prince at all before he became the bad guy. Was he in your party before that point or did you leave him on the top deck or...? (Because I've never kicked party members after Act 1 so I don't even know where they'd go exactly if you do.) Were you there when Tarquin and Gareth started fighting the Red Prince, or did you come back to them already fighting? Were Tarquin and Gareth not hostile to you when this started?

This definitely doesn't make sense from a story point of view, but I wonder if we could at least understand it from a mechanics point of view.

As for killing Tarquin and Gareth, as you must've guessed, they do have a role in the story, and both of them are also merchants. So having to kill them in Act 2 in a first playthrough kinda sucks, yeah.

I don't think using a save backup would defeat the point of Iron Man mode when things go out of control in a bizarre way like this. In this case, Tarquin becoming hostile when seeing an undead companion (if that is really what happened in your case) is arguably an oversight from devs. He is not some random NPC who doesn't know who you are. He is essentially a follower; he just doesn't accompany you in your party. Also as you pointed out, he himself is a necromancer, to boot. It certainly makes sense that he doesn't suffer from the "undead allergy" that NPC's share.

So other than using a save backup, I think the option "leaving them be until Act 2 is completed" might be worth a try. The downside is that, there are a couple things you have to do for the Red Prince's story in Act 2. I don't know what exactly would happen if you finish Act 2 without doing these things, but at the least, some bits and pieces will be missing from his story. Not having access to Tarquin and Gareth's inventories is a bummer, but not a major issue.

Can't you backup your current save first, then revert to your USB backup, so you can revert back to the current save if the other backup doesn't work?

Please email supportdos2@larian.com with your save (or a Dropbox or Google drive link, etc).
In the Saved Data in System Storage section of the Settings menu, click Copy to USB Storage Device, select the relevant save(s) and Copy. From there you can optionally zip the files, then copy to email or upload somewhere.

Try2Handing

Thanks for reading all that!... And then basically asking for more!... Happy to explain

So yeah, because of the 4pl limit, someone has to go. And Fane is my main-main character, and Red Prince is basically my other guy, with my friend having Lohse and Beast--who's name, as an aside, has ever endearingly been 'dilly-eye day,' or simply 'dilly-eye,' as far as any of our ragtag group are concerned. So Red Prince was, yes, up on the upper deck of the Lady Vengeance, minding his business.

When you waypoint in, you're not near the Red Prince at all, as you know. But when Tarquin got all antsy, if I recall correctly, we got someone to climb up onto one of the lookout platforms with all the rigging... Or whatever you call it [insert ship words]... and teleport the mercenary to the other side of the ship from Tarquin, to the base of the stairs which head to the upper deck area with the steering wheel.

This was a far enough distance to take the merc out of combat, and we somehow both managed to get out of combat (so I'm guaranteed mis-remembering something in this story, probably the climbing of the rigging, but the point is, we all end up on the opposite side of the ship from where you load in, out of combat, at the base of the stairs that lead to the steering area.

For whatever reason, Tarquin just wanders on over there after combat like an NPC looking for stolen goods.... And to be fair to the man, it's not like we haven't robbed him before, but this just wasn't one of those times! Fane is literally hitting the "I want to dismiss you" option when Tarquin whips out his weapons again, thrusting us into combat. And now Gareth is into it too! ... Yay....

So, Fane and the Merc get their asses summarily kicked. Fane, as all of our regular characters do, has the Escapist talent, and manages to make it out alive. I'm pretty sure the merc was locked down and then dead before she even got a turn.



This is where it gets a bit foggier, so keep that in mind. I pop back to the Lady Vengeance with Fane to resurect the merc... Only to my surprise, she is--as expected-- on the far staircase, but is already being resurrected... But not by my co-op friend, so one of the NPCs had to have done it...? Or I thought, maybe its automatic if you die on the Lady Vengeance? Anyway, no sooner was she alive than she seemed to die again.

And through some forgotten series of events she ended up no longer on the stairs, but actually up on that upper part of the deck with the steering wheel--I think I may have actually resurected her again further up. I had my friend, who was fully out of combat, send the merc some clothes to equip. And, If I recall, she was able to feign death, or maybe was out of combat with this most recent resurrection, and we both ended up waypointing/fleeing/dropping combat. I waited a few seconds to ensure everything reset, then loaded back in; and what do you know!..

Tarquin and Gareth were still running about! Lo and behold, they were fighting with the Red Prince! And when we get close, we get pulled into combat again, but Tarquin and Gareth are green buddies now (and not at all trying to kill us), and the Red Prince is a hostile combatant.

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Yeah, I guess that's fair about Iron Man reloading. Thank you, your thoughts on the topic are reassuring.

I've been thinking of just doing that... I worry somehow that the Red Prince will still get himself killed while we're off adventuring. But it could be a lot of fun to use a mercenary more regularly, or experiment with Lone Wolf. As for the Prince's story, we just recently had a hawk... or an owl... come deliver a message to go meet some--likely not very nice--person on an island which may be the next area. We may have actually lucked out and gotten his stuff at least mostly done.

That's very true about the saves. But I guess if corruption is an issue in some types of out of game save, then it could always strike twice! But I admit, that's starting to push it, and my friend has only mentioned the cloud saves being a problem. So, in short, yes!

Cheers,

Raze

I may not know what that will do, and realize that it is probably some sort of completely standard procedure, but I can't help but feel the reassurance of being in good hands now that your attentive gaze has at least briefly pointed this way. Thank you! -- not least for just reading and responding to my problem

I'll begin the process of securing our save file... From my friend's PS4. So it may take a bit longer than one would expect, but it's-a-comin!

The "point" of the whole Iron Man mode idea is to prove your mastery of the game. Since this is your first / blind playthrough, that point is not much of a point anymore. You might be good at this kind of games in general, but no one expects you to be a master at the game in the first playthrough. So the real value of your playing in Iron Man mode is simply in your willingness to "live with your choices". Deciding to kill someone when you could've spared them, deciding to choose one evil over the other, and so on. There's really no shame in using a save backup in your situation.

As for Red Prince's quest, if you have got the message about the meeting on the Nameless Isle, then I believe you're essentially done with his quest for this act.

Thanks for your adicve and perspective Try2Handing, I really appreciate it

I think that if Raze's idea doesn't work out, we'll be between just leaving them until the next act or reloading. And with your subtle nod to how far along we are, I think we may just end up risking pushing it to the next act and letting the chips fall where they may!

Hahaha, lets hope it doesn't go as disastrously as a lot of our well-intentioned decisions seem to in the game.

Thanks!