PSA: Some dialogue flags might be messed up and can mislead you (Massive Spoilers!)

[Rookie0879]

So, if you play with Toy box and choose option to show dialogue flags you can find out that a lot of dialogue flags are messed up and the end result is not what you expect. For example, you want to move your companion to stay loyal, but instead they might end up being a heretic, even though you had chosen the correct response. Proof:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RogueTraderCRPG/comments/18j2bdc/wrong_flags_at_heinrix_companion_quest_kiava_gamma/

The loyalist option leads to a chaos outcome, and the chaos option leads to a loyalist outcome, despite the bad heretic points.

So don't worry if your ending sliders or the end game might end up being illogical. Sadly, I have no idea how to fix it; I guess I'll have my own version of a bad ending.

[Kselian]

how to enable flags?

[May XD]

my mind is blown, how many more inverted flags are there Q_Q

[Balekai]

I know this is a semi necrod thread (which doesn't matter since it had no replies and wasn't resolved), but I missed this topic and want to clear the air on some etude/flag previews in Toy Box in general:

The Heinrix flag is not actually broken. I believe when I played through Kiava Gamma during Beta and Release, I noticed/checked the issue both times. It does indeed show during previews that it's going to shift him towards heretic or whatever for the good option ans reverse for the evil option, but the correct flag/etudes actually go up/start regardless.

This confusion is usually seen only on skill check dialogues (because it gives you previews for the fail and success side of things and not always both sides of the coin). However again, there are situations where the previews are just wrong and the correct flags are adjusted properly. This occurred in Kingmaker and Wotr in some instances as well (usually with companion quests).

If you go to search and pick and search "firstquest" you will see that "firstquestharsh" has not been started even though the dialogue preview said it was going to be. Instead if you picked only mercystuff it will show firstquestmercy flags increased by 1 compared to a save before the shift and harsh never started as a flag/etude.

If you search "Interrogatorquest" the same way, you will see that regardless of the dialogue preview, the interrogatorquestgoodoutcome is started and the evil one is not.

So when in doubt it's always a good idea to search things in previews in the "search and pick" menu and see if they actually correctly adjusted or not.

As I write this I believe the issue with dialogue previews and companion quests being wrong, comes from "variable outcome" dialogue in general that changes based on past decisions. So in this game and in Kingmaker/Wotr if you consistently push someone towards a certain flag they sometimes just ignore your advice later if it's "inconsistent" all of a sudden. So the dialogue has a variable outcome like skill check success/fail outcomes and thus a unreliable dialogue preview. What we're possibly seeing in the Heinrix case above is the preview listing what he does if your advice "fails" while not showing the "success" preview. The same goes for the Heretical choice but in reverse. Or the previews themselves are what were switched (somehow) but not the actual nuts and bolts. There's something I and many of us don't understand about dialogue previews in Toy Box and how they work.

Another erroneous etude preview that pops up throughout Act 3 is Master of Secrets/Whispers is alive etude. It shows up in many previews as being started or advanced, but its actually doing none of that unless you killed/banished Yrliet in chapter 2 and he becomes the main betrayer character in chapter 3 in the Dark City).

The most broken (and actually broken) companion quest is Marazhai's where I believe Owlcat devs just got confused on the first few Dominant/Submissive shifts and who they were referring to (Him or the RT). That still needs ot be fixed.

Originally posted by MistveiL:

how to enable flags?

To see the dialogue previews in Toy Box go to the main menu (Bag of Tricks bar). Then scroll down just a tiny bit until you see the "Preview submenu/section." Now just checkmark all 3 previews and you should be good to go. :) :)