Can any changes be done during "Nest of Vipers" actually?

[vkus-o4ka]

So I've spoiled food and arrows in cuman camp (nobody of them gave a peck about me doing it on a plain sight for some reason), then tried multiple times to do so in the bandit's one. Even when they all sleep (and the guy at the church was sneaky-killed), they were intentionally reacted on me poisoning their food, getting up and raising alarm. So I gave up and just ran through the camp pressing the buttons really fast :)
A-a-a-nd it made zero sense in the battle, because not only every cuman/bandit group was alive and well, but even archers were neatly packed with their thousands of arrows you can loot from them if you take them out earlier. Just the same fully-scripted battle with unkillable background minions, soldiers running into the wall and never avoiding the fire of archers charging for minutes before shot. So what did I strive for?

All that I see is that devs have scripted Pribyslavitz from A to Z to not give it out to the drastically broken AI. And it has totally degraded this game, as an RPG and in whole. That's the damn unsetteling feeling how such soulfully-developed world - with all these cities, fields, rivers, forests, characters, society, interior, entourage, whatevs - goes hand in hand with this f*ck-off-made scripted dummyfight you can mostly observe and cannot even change by previous main (!) quest. I just try my best to believe I am wrong and miss something. But am I?

[Mr.I]

According to the Fandom wiki article, doing sabotage will reduce the number of enemies.
So, I guess you are wrong, well, just guessing.

This whole quest is so messed up. Even though you single-handedly wipe out the whole camp, they'll just magically respawn again. And then, they can fight like nothing happened at all. The sabotage just makes no sense since you can always kill'em all before your army arrives.

This is a sin of a highly free open world RPG. When the game force you to be the good one or the weak one, things like this will always happen. Because these unreasonably limited options just don't fit for those who want to be themselves in such situation.

[vkus-o4ka]

Well, I didn't count them precisely, only can tell the amount of attacking groups is the same :) There are more of them during the fight than actually were in camps during setup anyway.

Yeah, it's like they made game about options and choices, but if you step aside from some planned (or maybe just tested?) route, here go half-working scripts, Witcher-style dialogues, AI bugs and an option to break some quest entirely. It's surprising this much because I see how deeply elaborated the world and its mechanics are.

One silly thing can be an illustration of everything concerning AI. I saw that Mach (the bandit from Timmy quest) near Rattay, it was just amazing to see the character actually DOES check my info about Timmy hiding in Rattay (not sure, but he can even have a dialogue with a butcher or with guards if they stop him at the town entrance), then he was returning all the way to Pribyslavitz. I tried to communicate with him, he was totally not paying attention, in fact acted like a standard civillian, even getting suspicious about my crouching before him :D
So they made a character actually do his stuff off-screen, even not teleporting, but travel by foot throughout the map, but why, if there are no further outcome for it?

[Mr.I]

Originally posted by Bloody Paul:

So they made a character actually do his stuff off-screen, even not teleporting, but travel by foot throughout the map, but why, if there are no further outcome for it?

I'm afraid that's not the case. Through my experiments, I found out that they do teleport. NPCs only walk when you are observing them. To see this, all you need is a quest marker that shows the location of the NPC.

Have a look on this thread:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/379430/discussions/0/4615641262422657673/

After that, I did something more and I found out it doesn't matter how long you wait, Zmola will always be teleported to the bottom right corner of the map. Usually, a knocked-out NPC will take about 2 hours to recover, but when they are in the need of traveling they simply skip it and teleport away. So, that glitch showed in the thread I mentioned is not a glitch but a bad implementation of the NPC activity.

[Four Little Diamonds]

Originally posted by Bloody Paul:

So they made a character actually do his stuff off-screen, even not teleporting, but travel by foot throughout the map, but why, if there are no further outcome for it?

Yea if he wasn't programmed to question you or attack you on site if he ran into you on his way back to Pribyslavits, what is the point really? He might as well just teleport or just not program Morcock to go to Rattay at all, especially if he just gives up in his search for Timmy after checking Rattay.

[vkus-o4ka]

Originally posted by Mr.I:

Originally posted by Bloody Paul:

So they made a character actually do his stuff off-screen, even not teleporting, but travel by foot throughout the map, but why, if there are no further outcome for it?

I'm afraid that's not the case. Through my experiments, I found out that they do teleport. NPCs only walk when you are observing them. To see this, all you need is a quest marker that shows the location of the NPC.

Have a look on this thread:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/379430/discussions/0/4615641262422657673/

After that, I did something more and I found out it doesn't matter how long you wait, Zmola will always be teleported to the bottom right corner of the map. Usually, a knocked-out NPC will take about 2 hours to recover, but when they are in the need of traveling they simply skip it and teleport away. So, that glitch showed in the thread I mentioned is not a glitch but a bad implementation of the NPC activity.

That's interesting. Seems like somewhere it works this way, somewhere another. I didn't follow Mach purposely by the way. After suddenly saw him coming down to Peshek's mill, I checked if the Rattay's butcher is ok, then caught up with the villain on the bridge to Ledechko. He was pretty slow walker in fact, so I investigated some graves and everything down the road to the next mill :) So he had the time to teleport when I didn't see.

I also was about to track vicar after "Waldensians" to check what will happen at the farm, but he was just sitting at Godwin's yard all the next day doing nothing.

Originally posted by Clown World HONK! HONK!:

Originally posted by Bloody Paul:

So they made a character actually do his stuff off-screen, even not teleporting, but travel by foot throughout the map, but why, if there are no further outcome for it?

Yea if he wasn't programmed to question you or attack you on site if he ran into you on his way back to Pribyslavits, what is the point really? He might as well just teleport or just not program Morcock to go to Rattay at all, especially if he just gives up in his search for Timmy after checking Rattay.

I wanted to check where does he go so I followed him until Mrhoedy (apparently, he decided to go through Rovna), thiought he was heading to Timmy's place, but when he left the village, I just stabbed him and dragged to Radzig just for lulz. Radzig wasn't impressed X)

[Friends with Benedicts]

You should kill them all then destroy all the arrows and poison their food regardless

[vkus-o4ka]

Originally posted by Friends with Benedicts:

You should kill them all then destroy all the arrows and poison their food regardless

I doubt it, since people who've been whiping out the entire place say the enemies respawn for battle no matter what. As for me - I tried of course, but it would take months of attempts to kill everyone in this camp, not worth to see for myself what happens.
Bowls and arrows - I've found 4 of these and those, according to journal and dialogue with Radzig, should be enough)) I can understand the poison part (no. If you have an option, it HAS to make some difference, no matter if they'd be "cured"), but destroying arrows - what even did I do it for if they still had archers? And those dialogue options with Radzig, about how many enemies in the camp - cmon, everything literally shouts about the idea that you could sabotage the camp, then request less warriors so something bad won't happen in the area while Radzig's forces are away. It's obvious, they just dropped the idea and these are the loose ends. And why did they dropped it - well, considering the overall development, I would doubt they didn't have budget, qualification, will, etc. to represent some various battle outcomes, so I'd bet on some AI trouble.

[Mr.I]

Originally posted by Bloody Paul:

I doubt it, since people who've been whiping out the entire place say the enemies respawn for battle no matter what.

Yeah, that's me.

Though killing the whole camp has no impact on the future battle, it does give a ton of loot. You can make a lot of money by doing so. You just need to find an efficient way to do this.

[Friends with Benedicts]

Im pretty sure there are no archers when you actually destroy all their arrows.

And yeah, there's always a ton of enemies in that fight, but I never actually counted them to check if they diminish numbers or are actually weaker when you poison them.

But I always did that quest the same way on my 3 saves: tried sneaking in without a stealth build, failed, just ran towards the darkness of the road, started killing them one by one, made like a ♥♥♥♥ load of loot, and left 90% of the loot left there because ♥♥♥♥ it, destroyed all arrows and poisoned all food, then just reported back to Radzig.

I agree with you, many sections of the game could use a little tweaking but honestly still is one of the greatest action RPGs Ive ever played either way, along with Deus Ex Human Revolution.

Actually, I never paid much mind to that quest until I read your thread.

[MF]

Originally posted by Bloody Paul:

When I got moderately good at the game, I literally killed everyone in Prybislavitz the night before the battle. Good times.

I guess they rezzed overnight or Istvan called in reinforcements, because they were all back when I returned with Radzig. Not sure burning their arrows would've helped but I did anyway so Radzig would pat me on the head and say "Good lad."