There are items, such as the bottle of water that the thirsty prisoner wants, which will trigger the quest log updated icon when they are picked up or moved in the inventory, but I have never heard of random or delayed updates.
The experience gained should be shown on screen beside both main characters.
The alchemy combine skill should allow you to combine any 2 of health, mana and stamina potions to create a restoration potion. Are you trying to combine potions in the inventory of the character who has learnt the skill? Does nothing happen at all, or do two potions disappear and you can not find the resulting restoration potion?
SPOILER: Alchemy - create/combine potionsLockpick should work on barrels, and some chests and doors. Most locked doors and chests require a key or lever to open, and can not be lockpicked.
You are correct that there are 2 level 1 BF keys in act 1. The second was meant for those who missed either the chest or the key to get the first one earlier.
You do not need to keep the BF keys with you. When you click on a BF key (or look on the 'enter BF' icon in the secondary skill menu) it will display the level of BF access you have, which determines how many dungeons will be open.
Did you look through the full trophy page? Creatures may be listed under a slightly different name than you might expect (perhaps a more generalized category); the death knight patrols are listed as 'Citadel Patrols'.
The first couple problems (at least) are strange...
Try deleting the files within the dynamic folders (not the folders themselves, though);
'
..\Beyond Divinity\Acts\Act1\Dynamic', '
..\Beyond Divinity\Acts\Act2\Dynamic', etc.
These folders are used as a cache for the game. Files are created / copied there from the save game folder when you load, and written / copied to those folders when you save a game. The files will be re-created as required the next time you start Beyond Divinity. If there was a corrupt file in those folders, deleting the files should fix the problem.
If that doesn't help, you might want to try a clean reinstall of the game and patch, or use the file verification procedure (see below) to check the game files;
To re-install, zip or otherwise backup your saved games folder to another location first, just in case. Each save is a separate subfolder in the '
..\Beyond Divinity\savegames' folder; the 5 '
bd_act#_start' folders are created/updated by the game/patch, and do not need to be backed up.
Un-install the game, re-boot, in Windows Explorer browse to the '
Beyond Divinity' folder and make sure there are no files or folders remaining, except within the '
savegames' folder (though the 5 '
bd_act#_start' folders should be gone). After that, shut down all non essential programs (especially anti-virus), re-install the game, re-boot and shut down all non essential programs again. You can start the game at this point, and possibly check if the problem reoccurs, but if you saved any games in the patched version they will not be playable in the unpatched game version. After this, install the patch again, then optionally re-boot and shut down all non essential programs before starting the game.
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The install program should report any problems, such as CRC errors, during install. However, if it fails to do so, or a file becomes corrupt after installation, the integrity of the files can still be verified using a program such as
FileCheck;
download (194KB). This is a small freeware program (no install required) to calculate the CRC-32 values (the cyclic redundancy check used in zip files) of a number of files. It can also compare a previously calculated CRC file with a set of files/folders.
After doing a clean install of BD and rebooting, I deleted the files in the '
..\Beyond Divinity\DirectX9' folder (since they are not needed if/once DirectX 9 is installed). Then I used FileCheck to create a crc file of the game folders, installed the 1.45 patch and did so again, both before starting the game (I repeated this procedure with the 1.47 patch). If you compare the appropriate CRC file to your install, it should tell you if there are any corrupt files. You do not need to worry about moving any saved games out of the
savegames folder or deleting the files in the dynamic folders, since new files will not be tested by FileCheck, just those listed in the crc file. If you have started the game and changed any options, there will be differences reported in the
config.div and
keylist.txt files. In my install the '
..\Beyond Divinity\Editor\dgen_themes.000' file was also reported to be different.
There are several files in the
Beyond Divinity folder created when the game is started or options are changed, including
init.cfg, mapids.000, persist.dat, sinfo.000, slashed-d3d6.cfg, slashed.cfg, sound.cfg and
starlog.txt. A couple other files are also added, but another crc file including these wouldn't help much, since most or all are system or option dependent, so these files would usually be reported as different regardless of being valid or corrupt.
At least the
config.div,
slashed.cfg and
slashed-d3d6.cfg files in the
Beyond Divinity folder can be deleted, and the configuration program / game will recreate them the next time it is started.
Beyond Divinity CRC files (285 KB)
[*] These crc files are based on the UK English version; the North American version should be the same, I think, but the Australian version will have differences (it uses a different copy protection).
[*] FileCheck expects the files to be in the original locations to verify, so if you installed BD to a location other than the default (
C:\Program Files\Larian Studios\Beyond Divinity), open the CRC file in Wordpad (for example), and do a search-and-replace so the file/folder paths match your install.
If your CRC values match, it is not the game itself, but likely a conflict with something else in your system or a problem in the saved game folder. When examining the list of 'errors' FileCheck produces, potential problem files would be those with an error trying to read, or with a large size difference (especially zero byte files) from the known good install.