Okay, I have to say I'm genuinely very annoyed for... maybe the second time in my 250 hours playing, and this time for an actually major reason.
I'm mid-act 3 of my second playthrough. I originally wanted to romance Karlach this time, found out in... late act 2 I think? that you absolutely
need to have started that at the tiefling party. I decided to try and romance Shadowheart instead then, thought that should be doable much later, seeing how secretive she is for the first half of the game and how hard it is to get approval with her. Well, I just found out that you also need to start at the famous tiefling party, or at least in act 1.
The thing is, both times I did theoretically EVERYTHING that should trigger the tiefling party, but I am 90% sure it never happened for me. Both times I killed all the goblin leaders (knocked out Minthara the second time, killed her the first not knowing anything), saved Halsin and I believe talked to Zevlor which is required to mark the quest as complete.
I just went through my Act 1 saves and I cannot find that exact moment (I quicksave absurdly often but typically do manual saves in major moments or when quitting the game), but I am 90% sure I specifically long rested in the druid grove to try and trigger the party, but nothing happened. What I did find is that in all my saves up until the end of Act 1, the journal entry says "refugees are safe now, tonight we celebrate". And I actually tried going back to the druid grove and long resting, guess what? No party.
This is the second time something screwed up my immersion and this time really badly (the first time was
when I did not know you could convince Shadowheart not to kill the Nightsong via a poorly described dialogue option and knocked her out instead of killing her, and the game had a general aneurysm and all the companions talked about her like if she turned against Shar
but that took going back half an hour to fix, not be essentially impossible without replaying 2/3 of the game), plus the "you have to start romance in act 1 when you barely know them rather than, you know, when you've actually been through a ton together already" mechanic is just terrible, and besides not being even subtly hinted at in the game itself, seems to rely heavily on a buggy event.
So yeah, besides being a sort of vent/constructive criticism (as you can tell by being late into a second playthrough, I love the game to bits but god this sucks), question: what
actually triggers the tiefling party so I can hopefully manage the third time around?
[EDIT: I forgot, only been using some cosmetic mods, mostly a megaton of extra hair and dice, the only "significant" mod I added very recently is the level 12+ unlock mod]
(on a side note, I wonder if this is the reason why I have no idea why some people complain about companions being too horny when the only "unexpected" romance moments I've had both times is the very very gentle first evening with Gale and Halsin
basically proposing to you
in Act 3)
