The game is definitely screwed up in a big way on the Freedom islands. I've already mentioned in a previous post the strange occurences involving the quests "Ay Vaz's Materpiece" and "Feasts of Spirits". More bizarre incidents occured:
- It seems every fight won on the Western island now sends me to the dungeon of Castle Sha Hong. So far this has occured on a random fight, on every pirate associated with Ay Vaz and after defeating Hagyr. The latter introduced a welcome change (yes, it's sarcasm): when starting the fight, the castle was empty, so I won, got some XP and was back at the gate; giving it a go for a second time, the battle went on as normal and then I was back to the dungeon (a place very familiar by now).
- The already mentioned Hagyr gives a quest called "Dead Men can't be Pirates". It involves the necromancer Sirius Black (I think...), located on Eastern island. Problem was that I already killed him, because I first explored Eastern Island. My mistake (although I don't ever remember being forced in the other KB games to follow a certain path while exploring), but in this particular case the quest is in the journal and can't be completed. Now I know you may kill in advance or by mistake heroes that can show up as bounty quests; no problem, those quests simply won't activate or show up as such. In this case, either make it a bounty or, if it's another type of quest, put in a dialogue option that takes into consideration the possibility that one may kill the target before meeting the quest giver.
- I had still to complete another quest, "The Wanderings of Odis Or". If completed before tackling Hagyr, there are two options with two different outcomes, like leaving the Odis inside his cave or delivering him to his wife; if completed after Hagyr, there are two options but with the same outcome, deliver Odis to the hell of matrimony. Not sure if it's by design (makes no sense, since the two quests are unrelated and, aside from the number and nature of bugs, there's nothing in common between
KBWotN and
Skyrim) or if it's a bug, but I thought it might be worth including here.
Saves for all this is still available, enemies less so (ran out of them during all these experiments).
Anyway, fed up with all this, I decided to ignore the pesky bugged Freedom Islands and move on to the rest of the continent. Did quite a bit of exploring and at one point decided to replenish my Elf archers, from the Titan Museum on Easter Freedom island. Imagine my surprise when upon fast traveling there, I was promptly thrown into a battle with a pirate I had so far avoided (Gonzo, labeled as invincible - btw, most enemy labels in this KB are a joke, totally misleading and plain wrong). Thrown as in instant travel, instant battle loading screen: this situation occured from then on at all times, no matter where I was traveling from or what time of the day it was, efectively shutting down the island until I could defeat Gonzo (after some leveling).
OK, moving on to Verlon Wasteland: there's a dragon castle only accessible by flight, with an assorted army of dragons, including an Ice Dragon. I'm pretty sure that it can't be killed in any way, because no matter how you deliver the killing blow, the game will instanly crash to desktop. Maybe there's a way to avoid this, but after the 20th try, I decided to just ignore it.
Save available if anyone's interested (and sorry if this bug was already mentioned somewhere else in the forum).
Verlon is also the location of Regina the Stone, one of the Valkyries. After getting her to follow me, I started a dialogue with her. Choosing the option "I wanted to ask you about something" opens up three more options, one about the Ice Giants and two other which go as follows: "
I've changed my mind" and "
I changed my mind". Huh? Selecting the latter works normal, you're back to the main dialogue page. However, selecting the former prompts a detailed answer about the Ice Giants, an obvious follow-up to the first question about them. Double huh?!? Really, this is no slip up or unedited typo, this is downright sloppy.
As a final note, congrats to whoever came up with the names for the Valkyries. So far, two of them, Regina the Stone and Christa the Stunning might well be porn stars, so maybe naming the main character Titus the Steel instead of Olaf the Whatever might be more appropriate - just a thought
.