Wulbren and others rescue quest failed without being in the tower?

[ollo71]

I just finished the Nightsong Quest and wanted to go to my next step, visiting the tower. But now my journal tells me that I have not succeded the rescue of Wulbren and others? Why? Does anyone have an idea?

[Kaiyas Slayter]

SPOILERS!!!!!

So, it comes across backwards when you get to Act 2. The game makes it sound like Moonrise Towers is the last place in the Act to go to because that's where the boss is, so a lot of people avoided going there until they finished everything else in the zone.

In reality, doing the nightsong quest/gauntlet of shar to completion is what starts the actual boss confrontation that kicks you into Act 3. Because there's 2 confrontations with the 'boss'. Meeting him at the start of Act 2 and fighting at the end of Act 2 after the nightsong resolution. But this is very poorly done and it's not communicated clearly to the players to go to Moonrise first and then go back later at the end.

To save Wulbren and the Tieflings, you need to go to moonrise towers as soon as you get protection from the shadows (or carry torches), get into the dungeons and free them. You should also clean up the rest of the quests since some will become locked out/failed as soon as you complete the nightsong quest.

[ollo71]

Wow, never expected this kind of detailed answer. Thanks a lot! Also, never expected this kind of misleading gameplay.

[Mike Garrison]

Yeah, happened to me also the first time I played Act 2. It's not so much misleading as "poorly communicated". There are lots of times where they tell you to go to the towers before finding the Nightsong, but they are all kind of ambiguous unless you already know what they are trying to tell you.

[Goilveig]

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

Yeah, happened to me also the first time I played Act 2. It's not so much misleading as "poorly communicated". There are lots of times where they tell you to go to the towers before finding the Nightsong, but they are all kind of ambiguous unless you already know what they are trying to tell you.

The worst part, though, is that if you go and meet Balthazar, it updates your existing Infiltrate Moonrise Towers quest to suggest that helping Balthazar could help get you an audience with Kethric. So when you read the quest log, it's basically: Jahiera suggests you infiltrate the towers but doesn't say how, Balthazar could help you get in. It sounds like the Nightsong path is how you get into the Moonrise Towers.

Now it's technically true, but what actually happened here was that you sequence broke the quest - you jumped from one step on the "good" infiltration path to a later step on the "evil" infiltration path. It would have been better design if there had been two sub-quests, one for the "good" and one for the "evil" path, similar to how act 3 handles some of its main quests where you have one of two options.

[Goilveig]

Also, every act has a bit where you can go peacefully into an enemy stronghold, and later come back and kill (at least some of) the people there. In Act 1, it's the Goblin Camp, and in Act 2, it's Moonrise Towers.

[Kaiyas Slayter]

Originally posted by ollo71:

Wow, never expected this kind of detailed answer. Thanks a lot! Also, never expected this kind of misleading gameplay.

Np! This happened to me my first playthrough. Avoided Moonrise like the plague but when I went to face Shar and got the "are you sure you're ready?" I was like...hmmm maybe not. Looked online and saw all kinds of stuff I didn't get. Meeting Araj, saving people, so I ran down there and got it all done, went to Shar, then immediately came back like...I meant to do that!

(Also, it was funnier to talk to Z'rell after killing Balthazaar, because one of her dialogue options is always "What if he's dead?")

[Mike Garrison]

I think it's also a case where getting spoilers hurts. I mean, *everyone* in the game tells you to go to the tower to find out why Thorm is invulnerable and to rescue the prisoners. And if you do, then you find out that the Nightsong is the reason why. And you get explicitly tasked (by Z'Rell) to go help Balt get it.

But if you read guides or spoilers or whatever, they will tell you that you need to find the Nightsong before you can make the final assault on the tower, so it's easy to just decide to save steps and do them "in order". Or if you are one of those people like me who habitually puts off the main quest stuff while trying to explore everywhere else first, you might deliberately avoid the tower.

In this case, that's a bad idea, because there is a ton of stuff to do at the tower before you finally assault it.

[Goilveig]

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

I think it's also a case where getting spoilers hurts. I mean, *everyone* in the game tells you to go to the tower to find out why Thorm is invulnerable and to rescue the prisoners. And if you do, then you find out that the Nightsong is the reason why. And you get explicitly tasked (by Z'Rell) to go help Balt get it.

But if you read guides or spoilers or whatever, they will tell you that you need to find the Nightsong before you can make the final assault on the tower, so it's easy to just decide to save steps and do them "in order". Or if you are one of those people like me who habitually puts off the main quest stuff while trying to explore everywhere else first, you might deliberately avoid the tower.

In this case, that's a bad idea, because there is a ton of stuff to do at the tower before you finally assault it.

I didn't have any spoilers and ended up in the same problem. For me, I was randomly exploring when Raphael wanted me to go into the dungeon.

And some of it was that I just wanted to be done with the dang Nightsong quest that kept sending me further and further away - like I thought I was supposed to be looking in the Goblin temple, not using the Goblin temple to get to the Underdark to get to the Shadow-cursed lands to get to the Gauntlet to get to the Shadowfell.

[Kaiyas Slayter]

It's also badly done, because if you get the "are you sure, you can't go back" warning at the gauntlet, it doesn't mean as much since you get the same warning when you go the the creche, but you can still port back to anywhere in Act 1 after you go through the mountain pass. So the game has taught us that the "warning" might mean nothing.

I usually hate railroading in a game (quickly eyes Telltale, but isn't truly upset), but it might have been better if they either forced you to end up at Moonrise at the beginning of Act 2, made it clear you HAD to go to Moonrise for intel before doing anything else, or locked out anything else until you went to Moonrise. (Also, ♥♥♥♥ you Rolan, I'm tired of saving your ass!)

On the bright side, going to Moonrise first means you can slowly Assassin Creed your way through the tower to make the 'final' battle easier. I mean, if that guard on the docks with his 2 friends are alone....in the dark....and no one comes when they get smacked by an arrow.....it's not my fault they're not at the final battle. Right? And Z'rell, you lectured me and then went to a room...all by yourself....with no one but a floating eye? I'm here for you girl.....

[Rosencrantz]

So, if you're having issues, wulbren and thieflings are bugged near the door (probably cuz you've killed everything in the prison), here's a fix: DIMENSION DOOR

If you DD all 3 of them somewhere near, they'll then walk out the door and eventually be considered as safe (instead of just stand stilli near the door).

[Beast of War]

This is why i was pretty surprised to find an entire Gnome base under Rivington 3rd playthrough as i failed to rescue them the first 2 playthroughs, that will result in just some empty grotto's in the same place. In turn that gives an entire different story to the Steelwatch foundry as well, and i already saw 2 other realities happening to that building.

[Echsrick]

it alsol seems kinda not logical, like, how they just....gone?

[Ironwu]

Originally posted by Echsrick:

it alsol seems kinda not logical, like, how they just....gone?

You get a warning before going into Shadowfell that doing so may cause content and quests to become unavailable. So, not a bug. Working as intended. Time and space move on, so things happen. Consequences.

[Flan]

Originally posted by Echsrick:

it alsol seems kinda not logical, like, how they just....gone?

They get chucked into the oubliette to be a brain snack with all the prisoners when the tower comes under attack.

[Metal Izanagi]

Oh, yeah uh. If you go deal with the Nightsong first, once that's been dealt with the plot progresses to the next stage of act 2, and any prisoners at Moonrise will die.

Protip: You don't need any actual stealth at all to save the prisoners. If you talk your way into Moonrise in some way without aggroing everyone, you can then go to the basement, head over to the prisoners and either free them yourself or help them escape if you pass a check to make the guard let you talk to them. If the guards see that the prisoners are gone or trying to escape they'll open the cell door and go after them. Once the escape has been noticed the guards/warden will aggro on you if they see you in the prison area, but at any point either before the escape attempt or before the guards notice they're escaping, you can start a fight with them of your own volition. Everyone in the basement will aggro on you either way, but nobody else in Moonrise will care.

TL;DR your cover at Moonrise is safe even if you clear the entire basement out. Apparently nobody outside of the basement thinks the sound of battle down there is out of the ordinary, and the guards never take shifts.