StrangeMortim

Don't worry about the time, I find your commitment already quite remarkable, I think I would've already given up and just accepted the current state. Very nice, it definetely wasn't me so I guess someone else is actually reading all or some of it. Good luck on your further testing.

Ah sorry I missed your christmas post, hope you had a nice holiday. What stuff exactly? You mean the loaded files and data during runtime? For that you would need probably some kind of runtime debugger or memory analyzer/profiler. However most of them would operate on assembler level which would probably be overwhelming and very tiresome (and I'm not familiar enough with that stuff to help you there). However a little bit of googling says that process explorer (https://docs.microsoft.com/de-de/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer ) and Process Hacker ( https://processhacker.sourceforge.io/ ) apparently can show you which dlls are loaded by a process, however I'm not sure if they can tell you which parts of the dll are loaded, but these two options seem the most reasonable. Ah forget that then, the only reason I mentioned that was because I didn't know who nedyn was and I think it was just the only other flag that I couldn't rule out for sure if it was connected to the sky dragon or not. Sounds actually the most reasonable. I had the digital version from the start, so it can't just be only the cd version. But I think it's actually quite likely that they intended it at some point but were for some reason not satisfied with it and therefore removed it. However if it can still be triggered on an unpatched CD version than the cd was simply printed before they removed it. And at some point someone probably patched it back in by accident, maybe the accident was in the patch itself, maybe someone just played around with it and accidentally pushed it back on the Git master branch (happens every now and then), and then they removed it again. Would also match with my playtime, as that only covers 1.05 I think, or at least the part with the dragon does. Also RPGs like this tend to often have quite a lot of cut content (just check all the unfinished business mods for BG, IWD and Planescape) and I think I once heard that the gods quests were actually planned to be bigger or just more gods (like Wael probably? He has no blessing but still an ending associated with him). I never had mods installed, so can rule that out.

My guess is that the referenced files are packed in other existing files in some compressed form and only get decompressed and loaded during runtime. That would mean they do exist, however to access them one would need to identify the files they are in and hope that they can be just unpacked or analyze them during runtime in the memory. Another possibility would be that the references are either never really used and just old remains from some time during development or that they are used, but since they can't be found the game has some way to adress this missing information. But that is just pure speculation. It's interesting that it's such an early version. I checked my achievement history and I completed the game the first time on 11.May.2015, that's v1.05 and just ~1.5 Months after release. The achievements also say that on 10.May.2015 I killed both Adra and Sky dragon, however in these games I have the habit to at least kill every dragon once in a single playthrough, achievement or not, so either I killed it after it surrendered, or also very likely I just made an extra save, killed it and then loaded again. But it supports the idea that initially it was possible. I wouldn't be so sure if maybe it was actually both. I know that the game had some issues in the beginning (for example I remember that for some weird reason and active WiFi connection would cause the inventory to be super slow, had that issue on my laptop as well and never understood the reason why). So maybe the intention was to have that as a normal option and in the beginning it was totally possible, even if maybe you needed to choose some specific dialogue options over the whole quest. But then they started to fix some stuff, maybe not even directly related this specific quest, but maybe to the dialogue system or something else, maybe even just performance stuff and that's when it started to go downhill. Some of these changes might have caused the quest to be a bit buggy and maybe there were some attempts to fix it, but failed and the result was a mess that would just be deactivated for the time being and in the end it got lost. So why would it then be included in POE2? Well my best guess is that they had a small team of people given the task of collecting the information for importing the save file. And while some of those people would be involved more in the writing of bigger events, some of them may have just been involved with the smaller gimmicks and these people might have just checked what savegame flags they can use and therefore stumbled upon the wurmling flag, without knowing that it was removed.

Good questions, I was actually very certain, but I slightly start to question my memory as well. And it was so long ago, that I might be falsely remembering it. However if actually nobody got it, then I wonder how it did end up in the Wiki? To my knowledge the Wiki is filled by fans, not the developer, so how would anyone know about it if, it didn't trigger for anybody? Regarding the new lines, yes those seem to be related to general new functionality or maybe even changes to the game system. Of course they could have an impact but I think are too general to be helpful. So the question is, lies the issue somewhere else? And if yes, somewhere we can reach?

Ah those strings are hashes, I already guessed as much. Don't try to figure anything out with them, you can't. A hash is basically a one-way encryption with a few specific properties. First they are unique for each input, secondly they are deterministic (same input = exact same output) and thirdly they are irreversibel. And while these properties only hold up depending on the quality of the hash-algorithm, they hold up well enough. In most cases hashes are used as IDs, since during runtime they are numerical hexadecimal values, and comparing numerical values is a lot faster than strings or whole objects. They are hexadecimal just because it's easier to fullfil the properties I would guess, simply because hexadecimal provides a much larger number space, for the same amount of digits, than decimal. The reason they are stored as strings is simply because most default parser support only pure integer values (without letters, so only decimal) and string, but not hexadecimal, so it's easier to just read it as a string and convert it internally. Also the various parts may relate to specific attributes of the hashed object or just be result of the specific algorithm used, in any way nothing we can really use. Other than that I would agree, the stats don't seem to be related. In regards of getting an older version of the game, I guess the easiest way would be the morally not so nice, but free sources, if you understand what I mean.

Uff, you got very far, actually I don't have much more I can say to that. I think this part, hits the nail on the spot: It just makes sense all the way. The fact that the bug went in place after WM I and that the wurmling's life is connected to both the bug as well as the mercy option, makes it very likely that fixing one thing messed with the other. And as you said, they intentionally added a unique pet into deafire, which makes only sense if they think it's still possible to let the dragon leave. While it's theoretically is still possible that the trigger is just very convoluted, I find it rather unlikely that after all these years, with all this digging it wasn't found. Also a string is this context is basically just text (a list of characters to be precise). As for why it's strings even though they all seem to be numbers, I can't say, simply because there are a lot of possibilities. It could be connected to how the strings are processed in the code or simply because they got converted to strings when stored in text files or something completely different. However it's not necessarily uncommon to have big numbers in string format, so it's not really strange. And yes it's quite likely possible that obsidian could easily fix it, since most likely is just a single piece in a chain of elements that accidentally got cut off. Good luck on your further investigation, I will still follow this thread and if I can add anything, I will do so.

Again interesting stuff you found there. Regarding not ruining your playthrough: copy the save files to another location as backup. With getting to the limits of the assets I agree, I guess it would be very hard to find anymore information without crawling through the memory, which is a whole new level of difficult and annoying (and I don't really recommend it). Regarding your questions: 1) There is a slight chance that some other conversation accidentally moves the quest tree forward into another state and that the dragon fleeing can't be triggered from that state, but that's mostly speculation. 2) Probably the easiest to test, so maybe worth a try. 3) The background or character trait aspect is one of the more likely missing pieces, maybe you could set your characters traits through the console and see if that changes anything. If someone wants to do that, be sure to test each trait seperately as I don't know which traits take priority over others (i.e. what happens when you have both benevolent and cruel at level 3). I would start with benevolent as it would make the most sense. 4.1) I think in none of my playthroughs I even recruited the mother, or maybe in the latest one I recruited and then ignored her, so she can't be the trigger (even though it would actually be a nice addition if she was an alternative trigger). The conversation with hylea is in regards to the mothers companion quest I would guess, after all hylea is also the goddess of motherhood. 4.2) Nice. 5) Maybe but generally difficult, we just don't know what parts have been compiled into machine code and what informations are actually accessible. And if even a modder stumbled upon the same issues, it seems really hard. 6) The comparison would mostly help to reduce the potential triggers. Was the paladin video you found from a youtube channel called Victor Creed? If yes, the first video in that playthrough was actually uploaded in October 2015 and it includes the White March I which released about 2 months earlier, so the theory that it was one of the patches (potentially the white march I patch) still holds. Also can't you manually change the patch version in GoG? I though they had a feature for that... At this point I think the only points to be worth for further checking would be the character traits, getting the dragon to exactly 25% and if someone has the time, comparing the versions. Also fyi computer science offers a lot more that just searching through files and trying to figure out what they're doing, that is in most fields only relevant it some bad situations:D

Oh very interesting stuff! And yeah I get an email when someone replies, so I usually still check the thread. The colliderbox is probably not worth considering it will either be something like you mentioned, to ignore other characters, or alternatively it might be a trigger volume to trigger the initial conversation, but that would not make much sense for the trigger we're looking for. The skydragon has an attack where it jumps in the sky and lands somewhere else and the three waypoints are probably the three positions it can land in. The values will be specific for the sky dragon but even if the other dragons don't actually use that attack they theoretically would probably be able to, even though it's questionable where on the map they would end up if they don't have values of their own. If you really wanted to see what the dll snippets are doing you could use a memory software while POE is running, however that might require you to decipher some assembler code which would be quite annoying I guess and I'm not sure if that is worth the effort. The timer might be a red herring, of course it would be possible that the trigger is tied to a timer but I think I tried that using the console. (I got the dragon to 1hp and then made my party invincible and waited a few minutes) However while I checked the patch notes, one stated that dragons now wait 3 seconds after combat starts before using their breath attack, so while I can't say for sure I think that will be most likely the timer. The two dragon support files are quite interesting, usually something like that is the result of something being implented either "ugly" or a bit buggy/unreliable and then someone wants to re-do it but right (for_real), but quite often the old version will be left behind either because the new one didn't get finished or couldn't be tested enough anymore and even if the new version is used, there is always the possibility of something else not working correctly which just hasn't shown up. The most interesting part there might be to see if the files contain any information on when they were written. Theoretically if someone is so mad to take the time and has the version from GOG, one could also check each game version and see if they both existed from the beginning or only after a certain patch. Other than that we could only check what the differences between the two versions are. And yes it's quite possible that some of the flags were just old leftovers. That's all I have for now, as I said I currently don't have the time to check things myself, but if you find something new or have any questions I'll be glad to help. Also for someone with minimal technical knowledge, you're getting quite deep, maybe you should consider becoming a computer scientist.

Very interesting. Regarding the post from Breckmoney, it was posted 2 years ago, but he never said when he actually did it so it might be older than that. I'm not surprised that you didn't found the dlls very helpful. DLL stands for dynamically linked library, it's basically already existing functionality that will be loaded into memory during runtime, so if anything it will tell you more about the technical realization of certain aspects, than the ingame structure. If the driving trigger is actually some global script hidden somewhere then more conditions could apply, like maybe you're character needs to be benevolent or lawful, however I find that rather unlikely as such a script would be quite inefficient. It might be that the trigger is exactly 25% health, that would be quite possible if someone just mistyped a "<" and wrote the check as "==" instead of "<=". However the prone aspect is a bit more interesting, especially that "for now" in the dev comment is suspicious. I checked all the patch notes and in v2.0 (White March Part I) immunities were introduced, and dragons apparently became immune to being prone. In v3.0 (White march part II) however this prone immunity was then removed and instead replaced by prone resistance and immunity to unconscious. My guess is that either of these changes messed with the script and caused some bugs, as a result one of the devs temporarily deactivated the trigger entirely, but probably with the intention on fixing it, but instead they forgot and nobody remembered it. I think that might also be the reason why it's still considered in POEII, the devs may just not be aware that the trigger is either buggy or deactivated. The other part why these patch changes are particularly interesting is because they fit very well with my experience that I only managed to trigger the dragon on my first playthrough which was before the expansions. Also when you restrict google to the range from initial release to the release of white march I, then I actually couldn't find anyone trying to make the dragon actually leave and having issues with it. I found some post that mentioned you can get her to leave, even though it didn't trigger for them, however they also didn't seem to try and it's quite possible that during that time nobody had to much issues, because even though the trigger might be a bit finicky it might have still worked well at that time. And for the people that didn't get it, they might have accidentally killed the baby or maybe just critted the dragon into nothingness before it could trigger. Sadly I currently don't have the time to check all that stuff, but I guess I'll try to reach obsidian on twitter, maybe they'll answer.

Hi, even though this thread is already two years old, I want to add a little bit, since I stumbled on it again, myself. TL;DR: it's 100% possible, couldn't figure out the required conditions, if you don't care about achievements you can use console commands. Please see edit for information regarding POE2 save import. I can tell you that it's definetely possible, but sadly I don't know what the exact triggers are. According to the Quest Description one part includes getting the Dragon to a certain health threshold, but that alone is not sufficient as I played around with the console and set its Health to 1, once directly and once by applying enough instant damage, but nothing triggered, even after making it invulnerable and attacking it a bit more. So either the trigger for the event is broken or there is some other condition (maybe benevolent to a certain level?) that must be met. It's also possible that the trigger just takes way too long after reaching the health threshold and you simply would have to wait forever(also tried that before fiddling with the console but didn't seem to work either). I also believe that I actually managed to trigger the event on my very first playthrough, but that was years ago and also on normal(this time is on hard) with a way weaker party, even before the expansions, so either it was just easier to trigger the needed event or maybe some patches or the expansions really, broke the trigger. I also don't remember any other conditions that I might have met, except that time I already killed the Adra Dragon(would be a pretty weird relation, but maybe it makes the Sky Dragon more afraid of you?). Ironically at that time I actually didn't care and wanted to kill all dragons, so I killed it anyway... That all being said, if you are like me and want to make the Dragon retreat no matter what, because you want to use the savegame in POE2 and the Pet you get for this outcome, you can use the console. Note: just activating console commands prevents you from getting any achievement further in that playthrough, you can however load a previous savegame and continue with that if you care about the achievements. Even though it might be possible to change that with a savegame editor. First you need to activate console commands with the Command: iRoll20s After that you can use: TriggerQuestEndState 12_qst_nest_above_the_clouds 2 this will finish the quest with the Dragon fled. If you just want to skip to the next step in the quest you can probably use TriggerQuestAddendum 12_qst_nest_above_the_clouds 3 this should move the quest to the state "Dealt with the Dragon", however I don't know what how Hylea's dialogue will look afterwards, even though it seems that the state "dealt with the dragon", refers to having fought the dragon, but that is still alive, so it should work. The fact that the dragon is still alive also provides you with the option to actually kill him without any issues, since the quest state will not change, once the quest is finished. Edit: I just checked with the Eternity Keeper. For once, yes there is simply a Cheat Enabled flag that you can set to false. And the other thing is that I compared a savegame before and after killing the dragon, both after finishing the quest through commands. I found the following variables: n_Nedyn_Quest_Stage n_Nest_Dragon_Combat n_Nest_Dragon_Dead n_Nest_dragon_State n_Nest_Dragon_Support_Dead n_Nest_priests_State n_Nest_quest_main n_Nest_quest_start n_Nest_Reputation n_Nest_Wurmling_State Some of them are pretty obvious, such as n_Nest_Reputation, as killing the Dragon gives you positive reputation with Twin Elms. Now aside from Reputation, these flags were (newly) set after killing the Dragon: n_Nest_Dragon_Combat n_Nest_Dragon_Dead n_Nest_dragon_State n_Nest_Wurmling_State Now, Dragon_Combat seems to be obviously if combat was initiated or not and Dragon_Dead, should be obvious too. Unclear are dragon_State and Wurmling_State. It could simply be wether or not the two are hostile or not, which would be the most plausible. Btw all of these are int values not booleans so, they are not limited to just two values, for example n_Nedyn_Quest_Stage is set to 5. The reason why this is important is, that I don't know which of these values is used in the POE2 import. I guess that n_Nedyn_Quest_Stage simply determines how far the quest progressed and 5 is just "finished". Considering that the EndState is 2, the value for n_Nest_quest_main might just reflect this EndState, if this is correct it would most likely be the value used in the POE2 import, as it is just a single value with all the information. However it could also be possible that Dragon_combat and Dragon_Dead are evaluated in conjunction and while this is rather unlikely I will in my case set the Dragon_Dead flag to 0 (and for consistency the Repuation flag as well). Of these are just speculations and if anyone wants to do the same(you could also skip the commands and just modify your savegame right before importing), do it on your own risk. Side Note: the n_Nest_Dragon_Support_Dead value is in both cases 0, implying that the Blights spawned during the fight should be alive, which they are definetely not after the Dragon was killed, I'm wondering if I managed to do that with my console commands or if maybe someone flipped the interpretation of that value during development, either consciously or by accident.