Adregans Heart quest

[Stoncld]

Why is the queens structure blocked by thorns? I can stealth in without being seen , yet the thorns block entry. I can get into the room by jumping in from the side but the queen is hostile and attacks me.

[Kodiak412]

The way that I have been able to reliabily do this is to get to the fast travel point by the bridge and activate it. Then leave and do not fight anything. Try not to fight anything going to that point. Then from somewhere far away fast travel back to the bridge point. Then activate shadow to walk to the queen. Do not unactivate shadow and chug an essence bottle or two if need be. Once you get close to the queen it will go into a cutscene with her and from there you can get the heart in peace and go anywhere in the area without issue. Just do not fight them or any of them leading up to the place. Good luck.

[Stoncld]

Thanks for the reply, I tried your suggestion but even when i get into the structure where the queen is the thorns block the stairway so I cant get close to her to trigger the cut scene. Are there thorns when you get in there?

[Xeirus]

No thorns for me

[Kodiak412]

The queen cut scene starts as soon as I enter the area before the other ones that as sitting on the floor. I never even get close to the queen before that cut scene starts. I have done this on 3 runs and each one has been the same. No thorns anywhere for me.

Make sure you are in the right area as the quest markers can be funky sometimes.

[Stoncld]

Hmm very curious, all the steps leading up to getting the heart show complete, not sure why there are thorns....

[zpc]

Originally posted by Stoncld:

Hmm very curious, all the steps leading up to getting the heart show complete, not sure why there are thorns....

I'd say the game does this because at some point you triggered the condition "in combat" and "enters the queens area". It takes this to get the thorns up - otherwise you'd have a conversation with the queen - no matter if you slaughtered everyone of her folks or sneaked your way through. Only during the dialogue she might get hostile IF you killed too many of here "named" guys. ("Queens XXX" guys). Once you killed enough of her honor guard she lowers the thorns and joins the fight.

I'd recommend those two approaches (either kill only the first squad on the "left" path for the "peaceful" option or kill everyone out there and walk up to the queen afterwards. Don't get too creative with other approaches. If one must sneak I'd say use the "left" path and make sure no one is in combat (includes the companions....).

[Stoncld]

Thanks for that, that would make sense. Even when I go in from the beacon before the bridge all the way in without any combat aggro the locals are hostile and the thorns in place.
Looks like I may have to wait till I can defeat them all on the way in.

[Xeirus]

Originally posted by Stoncld:

Why is the queens structure blocked by thorns? I can stealth in without being seen , yet the thorns block entry. I can get into the room by jumping in from the side but the queen is hostile and attacks me.

Just did this quest on my evil playthrough and the vines came up when I talked to her.
Seems like if you kill too many of his friends she fights you, which causes the vines.

[Halcyform]

Originally posted by Kodiak412:

The way that I have been able to reliabily do this is to get to the fast travel point by the bridge and activate it. Then leave and do not fight anything. Try not to fight anything going to that point. Then from somewhere far away fast travel back to the bridge point. Then activate shadow to walk to the queen. Do not unactivate shadow and chug an essence bottle or two if need be. Once you get close to the queen it will go into a cutscene with her and from there you can get the heart in peace and go anywhere in the area without issue. Just do not fight them or any of them leading up to the place. Good luck.

This. You can't have any aggro when approaching the queen's area. If you have any aggro (whether you are aware of it or not), the cut scene with the queen will be forced on you.

As to whether she's hostile or not, that depends on if you've killed any of her guards. If you do, she'll turn hostile. If you did not, she won't be hostile. If she's non hostile, there are branching dialogue paths you can take based on whether or not you have the quest that pertains to the heart and whether or not you can make certain speech checks.

The speech checks with the queen are a bit different than usual. There's an option in settings that lets you turn off speech check options you don't meet the stat requirements for. Even if you have that turned 'off', there will be speech checks that are still hidden if you don't meet the exact stat requirement. There's more than one and the required stat needs to be pretty high - somewhere around 9(ish),

[Terminal Desolation]

Would like to add that you CAN commit some murder and she'll still give you the heart. She got mad at me, but I had some dialogue with her along the lines of "They attacked me first so it was self defense" (there was a skill check involved, don't remember what) and she went "yeah ok that's fair, here ya go"

[Halcyform]

Originally posted by Terminal Desolation:

Would like to add that you CAN commit some murder and she'll still give you the heart. She got mad at me, but I had some dialogue with her along the lines of "They attacked me first so it was self defense" (there was a skill check involved, don't remember what) and she went "yeah ok that's fair, here ya go"

Yep. That's one of the hidden speech checks. You won't see it unless you have a resolve stat of something like 9 or 10 (or higher). If you have under that, that choice won't even be offered and won't be seen regardless of game settings.

The speech check offered in that case tries to explain to the queen that you had to defend yourself because the Dreamscourge infected some of her denizens.

[Terminal Desolation]

Originally posted by Halcyform:

Originally posted by Terminal Desolation:

Would like to add that you CAN commit some murder and she'll still give you the heart. She got mad at me, but I had some dialogue with her along the lines of "They attacked me first so it was self defense" (there was a skill check involved, don't remember what) and she went "yeah ok that's fair, here ya go"

Yep. That's one of the hidden speech checks. You won't see it unless you have a resolve stat of something like 9 or 10 (or higher). If you have under that, that choice won't even be offered and won't be seen regardless of game settings.

The speech check offered in that case tries to explain to the queen that you had to defend yourself because the Dreamscourge infected some of her denizens.

If there's a Resolve check for that, there's some other check as well, as my last character never had more than 2 points of Resolve and even that came from the totem instead of actually investing. Probably Intelligence, since I was playing a high Int mage. This happened some time ago so unfortunately I don't remember the specifics...

[Halcyform]

Originally posted by Terminal Desolation:

Originally posted by Halcyform:

Yep. That's one of the hidden speech checks. You won't see it unless you have a resolve stat of something like 9 or 10 (or higher). If you have under that, that choice won't even be offered and won't be seen regardless of game settings.

The speech check offered in that case tries to explain to the queen that you had to defend yourself because the Dreamscourge infected some of her denizens.

If there's a Resolve check for that, there's some other check as well, as my last character never had more than 2 points of Resolve and even that came from the totem instead of actually investing. Probably Intelligence, since I was playing a high Int mage. This happened some time ago so unfortunately I don't remember the specifics...

Intelligence is one of the speech checks besides resolve. Resolve provides a short dialogue path to "resolve" things with the queen and intelligence (as well as perception, I believe), take longer dialogue paths to reach the end of the discussion.