Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) Technical Problems Completing any broken quest (Hex Editor)

Hi guys!

I just started playing DD and I'm loving it! Nevertheless the quest breaking stuff can get real frustrating. In my case, i got stuck with the "To Rivertown" quest anoying me in the quest log.

As I haven't found a fix for this quest anywhere, I figured then a way to mark the quest as completed hex editing the questlog.

So I hope this can be usefull to anyone having this kind of issues and, if this kind of problem have been issued or solve already, I apologize in advance. So, shall we go to the solution then?

In the save folder, you can find a file named quest_log.000. That's where your quests are stored. The file is actualy a list of every ques in the game and it's structure is, actually, quite simple!

First things first, you should ignore the first 6 bytes. They will always be "4D 4C 33 49 44 00" which I think is some kind of 'magic number'. So you'll wanna start in offset 06!

From there, you will find a structure of 34 bytes which repat itself until the end of file. Each 34 byte structure represent a different quests. There are, therefore, 196 quests in the game (Maybe the subquests are included in this count). The structure of the quest is quite simple:

Bytes 0-3: Quest number (It's stored as a 4 bytes long number)
Byte 4: I have no idea, but it's always 01
Byte 5: It's the status of the quest (00 for unknown, 01 for active, 02 for failesd, 03 for completed)
Bytes: 6-9: Those are always 00
Bytes: 10-21 and 22-33: Those are timestamps. They register the moment you get and finish the quest, but i'm not quite sure which is which.

Now let's do some hexing (please don't hex anybody)!

Your first problem will be figuring out which of theses structures represents your quest. I don't have a list but i found my quest using the day counting. In my case, the game stated that I have started the quest 71 days back. I couldn't find that number but i tried subtracting one (that's a thing...). So I found the number i was looking for in position 10. Positions 14 and 18 confirmed the time stated in the quest log.

Quest found! Next I changed the status from 01 to 03 and voila! Quest completed!

Thank you guys! Hope it helps somebody. I'm sorry for the typos. I did it in a hurry because a wanted to get back to playing :-D

EDIT: I have no idea what are the consequences of completing the quests like this!

Sorry for resurrecting this topic, but I'm stuck with a quest entry in my journal, basically a complete quest, but it still reads to report to Mardaneus. The quest "George's Murder". I've solved it by completing another quest, that's tied to it (exposing and killing the vampire Tutamun and reporting him to Verdistis authorities, namely Commander Kratus), I've tried to talk to Mardaneus later to complete the quest (well I should have done it before reporting to Kratus, I guess), but there's no such option to report to him, I can ask him about the Source, ask him to heal me and stuff, but can't report, that George's murder was solved.
Now what's my issue, I don't do hex edit, I don't use any hex editors, nor do I know how to use them at all. So it seems I'm really stuck with this quest's entry for good. Unless there's an easier way around, not involving the use of hex editors? I guess there's not. Someone could write an easy to use application, a noob friendly version of a hex editor, that wouldn't look like a hex editor to do such things. I know, that inventory editors, stats editors and such mostly work that way, they basically hex edit (change values), but they look a lot friendlier.

Did you confront the vampire about being George's drug dealer, and get him to admit why he killed George? That needs to be done to get the option to tell Mardaneus.
Is Mardaneus still in Aleroth? When he moves (as part of the council quest), you may be able to speak to him about this in the council hall.

Towards the end of the game, the quest log should be reset.

Yes, I interrogated the vampire in his secret lair behind the wine seller basement, I spoke with him about George. And yes, Mardaneus still in Aleroth, does he ever move out of the healer city ... eh town? He didn't want to go with the other healers, as far as I recall, that's why I was headed to Aleroth to speak with him there. But the only options are to get healed, or to speak about the Source. Btw I healed both the soldiers early on with that magic mirror duplication method of the last healer gem. Doesn't that solve/close the Source quest? Or am I mistaken? Perhaps the poor Mardaneus is still suffering from the necromancer's curse, or something.

Well I'm far from the endgame yet (still have to go to play Janus'es lackey), so I'll have to get used to the broken questlog for quite some time, I guess.

Not quite sure, but it seems this patch: "https://www.moddb.com/games/divine-divinity/downloads/divpatch-v134a" addresses most of my problems ("fixed: not being able to tell Mardaneus about George's murder being solved", "fixed: getting George's murder quest from his body rather from speaking to Mardaneus", seems to be my case, if I recall correctly, I got the quest from Mardaneus to solve the murder, "fixed: Dwarven town crier scene triggered several times", that scene triggers whenever I go near that place, even when I already saw it at least once), can't say for sure, as I haven't encountered other stuff addressed there, didn't lock up near Aleroth, or anything, also no problem with the Broken Wheel quest, no problem with the trolls on the bridge, so I don't really know.

Edit: My game installed from Steam is of version 1.0063A, is the patch mentioned above applied already? I've read the Steam version doesn't apply the latest patch, but I can't tell, which is the latest patch anyway. Some stuff seems to be fixed, some doesn't. Should I download and apply the patch, or would I better be off without it?

The 1.34 patch (game version 1.0034a) is for the disk version of the game.

Just talking about George isn't sufficient if he doesn't admit why he killed George (the quest log should mention going to tell Mardaneus if that was triggered).

Mardaneus does move eventually, but not until after the castle, and then doing some other stuff.

The vampire did admit, that he killed George, something about that George wasn't useful to him anymore and in the quest journal, there is the entry to go report to Mardaneus, it's just that I can't report it, because the option isn't there, the questlog entry is as it should be, but advancing the quest isn't possible for some reason. The quest in Verdistis is solved, I've successfully reported to Kratus, but not the one in Aleroth, can't report to Mardaneus, regardless what the questlog entry says.

The procedure in the topic FIX for broken Imp Council Member quest may help (there is a link for Mardaneus after the description of the procedure).

This method solved it. Thanks again. What are the rewards except exp? Mardaneus spoke about giving me a book from which I could learn more about healing, is it just for the RP? Did he give me a point in Restoration (level 5 already) rather than the spell book with the spell? The only spell book in my inventory is Wizard's Sight (which I have also maxed, so might just sell it, or keep it for the nostalgia XD).

IIRC Mardaneus gives a skill level directly (Free skills, and spell books you can buy), but there is no alternative if you already have the skill maxed.
You can 'fix' that with iZakaroN's SaveEditor.

Ok, I don’t know if you’ll see this as it is many years down the road. However, when I was trying to follow your steps to edit the hex, I started looking for the quest_log.000 file in my save games location but could not find this file.

Could you guide through finding this specific file and then also how to figure out the specific quest number? I know you stated you used the day the quest started, but I didn’t see that info in-game.

Thanks!