Well, I hinted at it in the comments for the previous entry a moment ago, but I was on the path to becoming the Nerevarine, something I can actually spell properly now having seen that word so many times, when I started a quest that demanded three things from a local dungeon. It turns out I had already looted it many months ago, which made me a bit nervous. When I got there, I found the big shield was still there (because it was a heavy piece of junk), but when I looked for item three... nothing. Not wanting to turn on the computer to ask a wiki, yet again, for some sort of idea what I could do to fix things, I searched other dungeons of a similar theme to see if THEY had such an item. Nothing.
Today I checked the wiki, finding that there is just 1 of these items in the whole of the game. I think I looted it, I think I sold it, and I think I sold it to the one NPC in the game who irregularly purges his entire inventory. In other words, I am screwed, and cannot complete the main quest at all. Despite having gotten further in the game than I have ever been, reputation 15, top of the Fighter's Guild (via bloody coup), nearing top of the Mage's Guild through grinding and finding trainers, buddy to Ashlander tribes and all-around badass, I cannot complete the game normally because I'm missing a stupid cup.
I write this after having, for the most part, a lot of very cool moments in the game, and a lot of surprises. But I realize that the open-world feel is, finally, a ruse. May Skyrim be different. I'm not as critical of the idea that one NPC will replace the other if you kill one now, since an equivalent problem, missing a proper quest item, is a huge bummer. If they fixed that in Oblivion so be it, but I've seen broken quests in that game too. If it's supposed to be a simulation game, where you really can screw yourself, great, but they need to work on that angle a lot more then, because playing that game one can be under the impression that you can run around randomly AND complete the game's finicky missions, rather than choose between them.
I will play the game now to see if I can't find where I put the cup, since if I put it in one place where I've been stashing stuff, or sold it to a few of the few stores in various towns I dumped loot on, I can resurrect this game. Since I can't create the item (this is the XBox version), this is my only route. I may very well have lost the ability to finish the main quest.
Now I know how King Arthur felt: "Hey, Galahad! Come back from heaven and give me the damned cup back, I need it for this stupid quest!"
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Game » consists of 13 releases. Released May 01, 2002
The third entry in Bethesda's series of expansive first-person role-playing games. Arriving on the island of Vvardenfell as a prisoner, the player character is caught up in an ancient prophecy, as well as a power struggle between factions, races, and gods incarnate.
Morrowind: Precisely How My Game Is F***ed
Well, I hinted at it in the comments for the previous entry a moment ago, but I was on the path to becoming the Nerevarine, something I can actually spell properly now having seen that word so many times, when I started a quest that demanded three things from a local dungeon. It turns out I had already looted it many months ago, which made me a bit nervous. When I got there, I found the big shield was still there (because it was a heavy piece of junk), but when I looked for item three... nothing. Not wanting to turn on the computer to ask a wiki, yet again, for some sort of idea what I could do to fix things, I searched other dungeons of a similar theme to see if THEY had such an item. Nothing.
Today I checked the wiki, finding that there is just 1 of these items in the whole of the game. I think I looted it, I think I sold it, and I think I sold it to the one NPC in the game who irregularly purges his entire inventory. In other words, I am screwed, and cannot complete the main quest at all. Despite having gotten further in the game than I have ever been, reputation 15, top of the Fighter's Guild (via bloody coup), nearing top of the Mage's Guild through grinding and finding trainers, buddy to Ashlander tribes and all-around badass, I cannot complete the game normally because I'm missing a stupid cup.
I write this after having, for the most part, a lot of very cool moments in the game, and a lot of surprises. But I realize that the open-world feel is, finally, a ruse. May Skyrim be different. I'm not as critical of the idea that one NPC will replace the other if you kill one now, since an equivalent problem, missing a proper quest item, is a huge bummer. If they fixed that in Oblivion so be it, but I've seen broken quests in that game too. If it's supposed to be a simulation game, where you really can screw yourself, great, but they need to work on that angle a lot more then, because playing that game one can be under the impression that you can run around randomly AND complete the game's finicky missions, rather than choose between them.
I will play the game now to see if I can't find where I put the cup, since if I put it in one place where I've been stashing stuff, or sold it to a few of the few stores in various towns I dumped loot on, I can resurrect this game. Since I can't create the item (this is the XBox version), this is my only route. I may very well have lost the ability to finish the main quest.
Now I know how King Arthur felt: "Hey, Galahad! Come back from heaven and give me the damned cup back, I need it for this stupid quest!"
" Now I know how King Arthur felt: "Hey, Galahad! Come back from heaven and give me the damned cup back, I need it for this stupid quest!" "Hehe,that was funny.
I'm a wizard, and this is fucked up.
Would it be possible to spawn yourself that specific cup, via nefarious means? If you're that far in, might as well break the game if it's so poorly designed.
EDIT: Reading is a wonderful thing, as is reading a post to completion. So you can't spawn one. FUCK.
This is why I love Morrowind. This is a consequence of being too careless with loot, something I learned very early on. When something has a unique name, I ALWAYS saved it in my house in Balmora. I actually had this sweet little shrine set up - I removed all the old junk that came with my house and through meticulous placing of items I managed to make an awesome looking room full of rare, unique and expensive treasures. Bookshelves were full of gems and trinkets, the table was used for weapons, there was a shelf above the table which I put a rare staff I found on, baskets were full of raw materials, etc. That room was stacked.
If you plan on playing the game I suggest you do the same thing. Make an abandoned house your own, or get one legitimately, and use it to keep all your unique items you ever find. I can't tell you how many times someone asked me for an item and I'd go back to my stash and lo and behold, it was right there.
If only all items were persistent, as Bethesda had always told us about their "persistent world", it would be pretty cool if you'd have to hunt down the item through the black market, playing detective, and finally found it ending up in Fargoth's stash.
@Gonmog: Yeah. That's what really happened, if I look at it that way. Technically I could still hunt the cup down anywhere in the world and still find it. I have no problem AT ALL with running through all the stores and treasure chests again to see where it is, since the item still exists in the game world somehow. But unless I was unusually careful with that seemingly unremarkable cup, the Creeper purged it to Oblivion and the main quest with it.
@themangalist: That's a really cool idea. Like, you would actually have a more centralized way to track down loot, since anything that was important would be important to other people, so you could talk to people who had connections and find things again, maybe through a side quest. Would feel a bit more like a living world then, even if it's a bit contrived, and would be a recognition of the game's own passive-aggressive encouragement to loot.
" This is why I love Morrowind. This is a consequence of being too careless with loot, something I learned very early on. "And this is why sane people LOVE Oblivion. You were never able to lose or discard quest items, thereby unknowingly breaking your game.
My main problem, though, is what amounts to a bug. At least this isn't on the level of Daggerfall, where my save games might be regularly corrupted :P
This exact thing happened to my cousin when we played the game years ago, also on the xbox version. He also was never able to finish the main quest (although he watched me do so in my game). In regards to the name not being very notable, I think you learn pretty early on that Dagoth-Ur is the main baddie so House Dagoth Cup should be a big red-flag.
@ahoodedfigure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlcYw3Pg4jY#t=0m32s
As someone who has pretty much the same thing happen to him, I understand on a fundamental level what you are experiencing. I share a treasured song from my childhood to help salve the pain.
@Ututu222: I've experienced plenty of real-world hurt that this feels like a stupid betrayal rather than anything serious, but yeah, sucks to be me right now :)
Yeah I understand, and bottom line that sucks. In any case you can still have a lot of fun doing all the other factions and guilds, or, like me, just wandering around aimlessly, exploring wherever your fancy takes you. I think that is the game's strongest suit. Crafting crazy jumping spells that let you span the entire island in a single bound is great too. Also, the expansions are ok.
Sorry to hear this. I experienced something similar on my recent playthrough of Oblivion. I managed to glitch the Thieves' Guild quest line during the penultimate quest, simply by choosing the wrong dialogue option. Imagine that - just because Bethesda hadn't counted on me picking a specific dialogue choice at a specific point, I'll probably never uncowl the Gray Fox. Thankfully, Oblivion managed to circumvent any problems of your description by making Main Quest Items undiscardable (not a real word, but hey). It sounds like the touted Radiant Quest system of Skyrim might be a step in the right direction towards avoiding problems like this even further. If Bethesda really have succeeded in developing a system that will relocate quests to unexplored locations, then there's no risk of having already looted important Quest Items. I guess we'll find out whether it works or not when Skyrim releases.
Lesson to be learned - always play an Elder Scrolls game on the PC. Always. The console will fix any potential problem that might break the game. Also when you get enough experience in these games, you can tend to predict what item is important or not and who should remain alive or not.
For me, playing up to the point where I was in that place to see the House Dagoth Cup, I recalled it as the first time I ever saw such a cup with that name. I never sell or lose track of any unique item unless I find more of them to the point where I bet that it isn't an item to worry about losing too much. Treat all items as unique until you can find duplicates. There really aren't that many items in the game that are unique compared to non-unique items.
EDIT: Oh yea dude, no swearing in the titles. Mods have repeatedly stated this before but reminding you for the future.
Similar thing happened to me on my first play through, went looting in a seemingly useless cave and found a cool bow. Sold it. Never found it again when it was needed for the main quest. But by angrily searching for a fix, I found another way to finish the main quest. But it wouldn't be easy and it would take some time. I was relatively low in level and to defeat this foe, I spent a week leveling up, doing research, until eventually I was strong enough to hold my own in the fight and actually know what to do after I won. Before confronting my enemy, I needed to first do some buffing up on high level defensive spells to even survive one hit. But I won, got the required item, went spelunking for the other item and then made my way to the last dungeon. And through prior research knew what to do, and successfully completed the main quest in such an unconventional way AND IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME.
Morrowind is the best game ever.
I've stopped pretending that I'm ever going to play that game and have come to the acceptance that it really isn't for me and that internet people can espouse the virtues of Vvardenfell over Cyrodil and I will be totally fine with it, knowing in my heart of hearts that they are crazy and like walking everywhere at a snail's pace, getting lost, running into enemies more powerful than they are, and then dying and having to reload a save made 2 hours prior.
However, what happened to you... fuck. In some way I find that kind of foot shooting game design to be amusing, such as in older adventure games where a player could very well ruin any chance of progression through misuse of an item (for example, if you eat the onion in Zork then you can't ward away the bat and get past that part), but as something that is in modern games... no. Oblivion dealt with that problem by putting anything quest sensitive behind some sort of locked door or event based spawn. Certainly, it's artificial, but at least you can't make that 30 hours you just sunk in irrelevant. I wonder how Skyrim will deal with this, considering its purported dynamicism.
@Nasar7: Jumping spells are the bomb. Once I found out the virtue of imbuing my character's glass cuirass with a jump boost (lasts one second, crazy powerful), not only have I been able to zip from one place to another like golden age Superman with his single bounds, but I also have managed to crash the game on numerous occasions, jump through the roof in many buildings, and I think single-handedly cause the creeper to purge his store every time I cross a major part of the island (seems to have something to do with memory allocation on the XBox or something).
From what I've seen of the ruins in Oblivion, many of them look like sweaty stone innards. I forget what the culture was whose ruins those were, the white stone stuff, but they seem a bit monotonous. Not Daggerfall monotonous, but I wonder if I like Morrowind's variance and length. SOME dungeons in Morrowind felt crazy long the first time I went through them, but they still felt a lot smaller and more varied if I had to go through them a second time (and not find a cup).
@xyzygy: I sold it pretty early, but I knew they were the big bad guys. Even if they were little bad guys, though, it was the principle of it, that they needed to make it, at the very least, look a bit more important I think. Glowing, whispering, "Cup of the House of Dagoth," worth more than 500. You have many cups in the game, you have dwarven cups that are scattered all over the place, so without doing a survey of every House Dagoth stronghold it's not easy to know that it's a unique item, especially since its value was relatively low (but still high enough on the weight/gold ratio that I felt it was a nice addition to the loot bag). There's only one in the entire game, and my character had an armful of loot. I got rid of it, and I could have gotten rid of it just about anywhere in the game by the looks of things. This wouldn't be a huge problem, but the Creeper bug may very well have disintegrated it. If it was just in some random shop somewhere, waiting to be bought back, I wouldn't have been so disappointed. I solved the problem, indirectly, because I'm good at saving a lot :)
@dankempster: Yeah, the relocation mechanic might very well help solve that, although again there's a bit of a surreal moment where you go meta on the game and KNOW that it will pick a random place to stash things, so if you explore you might try to pick stuff that's far away so you can increase the chance that you will at least know the region if you're sent a long distance, or it will pick something close to the quest-giver's location. Depends on the level of toughness of the enemies, I guess, since if they increase the more you level you can always be really aggressive and try your best not to level, so you can see some locations far away. The real test is if these different dungeons still have an individual feel to them. I began to respect some of the boring dungeons in Morrowind because they managed to make the expansive dungeons you sometimes find to be all that more amazing (like the Ashlander tomb was a late-game awe moment for me because it added some interesting elements).
You know, your Gray Fox problem reminds me of something I mentioned earlier. In Mournhold I burst into the home of a guy who was looking for an artifact from a lady in the same part of town (actually, she shares the duplex with him. Small town.) If you refuse, he will permanently force a good-bye option, making it impossible to talk to him. Fine, except that means that a later quest for the temple is impossible, since he's sick and needs a cure disease potion, but won't bother to talk to you to give the option to give it to him. For all the open world stuff that Morrowind manages to do, even if I don't think it fulfills that promise completely, one thing they're still working on in a very fundamental way seems to be dialog options. I hope at least that the dialog options were more sensible in Oblivion. From what I've seen so far they're at least more manageable, if less informative.
@ShiftyMagician: "Treat all items as unique until you can find duplicates. " Good rule. Also, thanks for the swearing thing, I had no idea.
Yeah, welcome to Elder Scrolls. Fun games, well made in a lot of ways, but buggy as fuck and too big for their own good
This is why you should always play Bethesda games on the PC.
@NTM: Maybe the Creeper ate it.
@melcene: THAT has been how I've played basically all Elder Scrolls games, except Arena. I love just wandering and sorta creating my own story (mostly of looting and party-crashing on cultists, I guess). I decided, though, that since my XBox seems to be making weird sounds that it might be a good idea to get things done and actually see what this game had to offer. It seems that after a lot of screwing around, it's a HUGE shift in gears to be stuck in a quest line to completion, with plot events constricting things further. The plot, though, has been very interesting to me, so I'm glad I did it. And it's weird how much the plot gets enhanced by actually sitting down and reading a few of the important books. You even see the seeds for Skyrim's story way back in the Morrowind books that mention the Nords.
@ArbitraryWater: I feel a bit like I'm in an abusive relationship, because I still love the game when it does me right. There are some faults here that are unforgivable, but I still get rewarded for curiosity (when I'm not being punished), way after I would have expected to have seen everything. When I first played it, actually, I was pretty disappointed because I thought all the Daedric temples were the same (just an antechamber and a main statue room), but the more I delved the more I found that there were tons of exceptions, tons of little plot-ish moments where the Dwarves dug too deep and all that. Made it a lot of fun to explore, find stuff, try to imagine what might have happened.
THAT playstyle, though, is at odds with the plot playstyle, as I found. You talk about reloading a save from 2 hours ago, my save where I still had the cup of the House of Dagoth (THE cup, apparently) cost me four days of solid playing, and 12 character levels. Yet there are things that I've noticed now as I make up for lost ground that I didn't before (like propylon thingies) that feel like a bit of a consolation. I can't say I hate it or love it completely, it's more that I want to love it but it keeps exploding in my face, like a cute little Warner Bros. baby with dynamite sticks for arms.
Like you, I definitely get a cynical chuckle out of FUBAR situations in games, despite all the yelling I did when I figured out what might be wrong (my SO was very amused by my nonsensical ranting).
Zork is funny because it's that level of experimentation that makes it endearing if you have the time to spend on it, but not so hot if you want to just play the game and enjoy the experience in a reasonable amount of time. That's why this issue annoys me. It's not so much that it happened, it's that it's such a deep game that when a thing like that happens it's much worse, much more catastrophic that restarting Zork, I think. For all the folks that tell me that that's the design of the game, I feel like it's easy to say that in hindsight. I was pretty cautious most of the game, often stowing way too much junk in dead people's houses just to be on the safe side. There was one point where I sold an artifact to the Mournhold museum and found out later that I would have to steal it again to complete a quest for the Imperial Cult (I didn't bother, but I noted this should I make a new character who's into the cult). Yet that was a big choice I made, one that I was willing to live with, and it wasn't like the artifact disappeared. I could still steal it back and live with the consequences if I wanted to.
I'm wondering about Skyrim, too. The locked door idea is a bit ham-fisted, though I found myself wishing for something similar once I realized my situation. I think if things had been slightly different it wouldn't have been a problem, since I can imagine all sorts of things that could have been different. Most items in the game that are important sort of shout it out to you in one way or another. For me at least, the House Dagoth cup didn't. BUT, I also realized after all this that the two playing styles I was doing were often in direct conflict. What I want, ultimately, is a game where you can do both and not nuke the game, since the quest system is very rigid but full of character, and the loot-whatever-and-have-fun system is very free but a bit flat.
Why not have it to where if the game notices you've messed with a quest item, it dynamically makes a harder, less valuable thing the objective? That's a bit less metagamy to me, since it feels a bit more hidden. I guess what I'm building toward is some idea where there needs to be an RPG that tries its best to replicate what game masters do in pen-and-paper, where they can adapt to a weird situation that the player creates and make the game better, or at least salvage it.
@JumpingRetards: I get you, but it wasn't really an option for me at the time. It was like "oh cool, I want to play that, and I already have an XBox" sort of thing. But yeah, it's pretty clear this game was straight out of the PC tradition. The bugginess only hammers that home more, since PC games are easier to salvage and mod. It was the modding thing that gave me pause, but I figured we didn't really have decent PCs when the thing came out, so this was the most realistic option for me. Ah well, I'm pretty sure I'll get the PC version some time in the future, since the modding community still seems crazy-vibrant right now.
@frankfartmouth: I cut my teeth on Daggerfall, so yeah, I keep telling myself I should have seen this coming. It's sort of like when I enjoy a cool thing I find in the game, I have to expect a diametric opposite of a FUBAR situation lurking nearby.
But yeah. Basically, having to replay what I just went through for the past few hours is incredibly demoralizing, which is why I'm a sucker for autosave. If I had to go back 4 days? I would give up entirely.
I've decided if I'm going to ever play all the other quests in the game (I'm discovering that there are actually tons of unique ones that I've been entirely passing by) I'll just do it when I pick this game up again, whenever that will be.
I think I'm doing this because I'm a bit more masochistic than you. You seem to have an instinct that lets you get out of it before it becomes too much of a chore. I sometimes do, but with this damned thing it's given me enough that I want to prove I can beat it.
This can be a spoiler but then dont read it!!!
You don't need to do all those quests to complete the main quest, really I never do :)
Read notes at bottom before actually doing this.
1) Be powerfull enough to defeat Lord Vivec in his Palace. ( very difficult ) ( 100 level locked door, trapped ) Ordinaters MIGHT attack you on sight after doing this.
2) Kill him and take the artifact he is carryng. save before doing this
3) You'll get a notice the prophecy is ruined and you'll need to load a save game , Dont load a saved game and just continue.
4)There are also 4 pieces of paper in his room, only two are needed(dont know which ones) but just take all four of em.
5) Find the Hammer Sunder, Carried by Dagoth Vemyn is the citadel of Vemynal. DONT EQUIP IT !!! (49)
6) Find the Short Blade Keening. it is in the Citadel Odrosal. I beleave it's in a tower. DONT EQUIP IT !!! (51) ( high level lock, Dagoth Odros has the key )
7) Find Kagrenac's Journal (book) in Endusal, kagrenac's study. ( not listed on map!!! )
8) Find Kagrenac's Planbook in Tureynulal, Kagrenac's library. (52)
9) Find Yagrum-Bagarm in the corprusarium of Tel Fyr. Beware of corprus disease! (29)
10) Let Yagrum reactivate the artifact found on Vivec's body.
If I'm correct, He needs these things in order to do this:
* 2 out of the 4 papers found in vivecs palace. Take em all with you
* kagrenac's journal and planbook
11) Equip WraithGuard BUT Doing this will make you lose about 225 HP PERMANENTLY. it only happens the FIRST TIME you equip it.
12) you can now use Sunder and Keening without losing health.
13. Go to Dagoth Ur, open the door using the hard-to-see crank on the left of the entrance
14. Work your way to Dagoth Ur himself,
Dagoth ur is found just inside the Facility Cavern, though he will not attack you right away (in fact, he says its up to you to take the first blow, though he may still attack you before you do anything). Talk with Dagoth Ur for a bit until you've learned all you want. Buff up with enchantments as desired and then start the fight. There's no secret tactic to killing him the first time, just hit/cast hard and he should fall shortly. Well, you don't actually kill him, he just disappears, leaving theHeart Ringb efore the doors to Akulakhan.
Before you enter Akulakhan you should heal up and equip Wraithguard and Sunder (equip Wraithguard first). You will be attacked by Dagoth Ur and his minions once you enter. Instead of fighting them, your goal is to destroy the Heart of Lorkhan in the center of the great Dwemer robot Akulakhan.. You must strike the Heart once with Sunder, and five times with Keening to destroy it, and Dagoth Ur as well. Note that Dagoth Ur will teleport behind you after you strike the heart with Keening. Once you do this, run back across the bridge and watch the destruction of Akulakhan, thus ending Dagoth Ur's reign of terror.
Main Quest Completed !!! :):):)
***NOTES***
***The Numbers behind some of the lines above (49,51,52 for example) represent the number of THAT location on THIS map:
http://www.google.nl/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ulujain.org/images/annotatedmwmap.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.ulujain.org/morrowind.shtml&usg=__WnZL4FkIrmYDsm2vA3dNDzjwRDo=&h=757&w=1009&sz=141&hl=nl&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=QcRnic6hRjCv3M:&tbnh=147&tbnw=196&ei=uw7oTY3ACY2cOvHnvb4J&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmorrowind%2Bmap%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dnl%26sa%3DN%26rlz%3D1W1RNRZ_nl%26biw%3D1296%26bih%3D613%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=275&vpy=244&dur=343&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=182&ty=106&page=1&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:0&biw=1296&bih=613
wow, long link, it isnt a virus, its a google image.
*** If you have killed ANY of the residents of Tel Fyr or the Corprusarium, Yagrum will refuse to help you, and you will be basically stuck with no way of completing the Main Quest, short of a suicidal attack caused by using Keening and Sunder without a working Wraithguard.
*** He will recommend that you use a Fortify Health however, this is not practical. Once the spell or potion wears off, your health will then be reduced by however much you fortified it, and if this brings you below 0 you will die. Likewise for wearing Constant Effect enchanted items. If you remove them, or if they are damaged to the point of breaking, you may find yourself dead rather quickly. The safest thing is to have more than 230 health to begin with, and probably a lot more, as wandering around Red Mountain with only 20 maximum health is likely to be somewhat hazardous. Fortunately, this loss of health is one-time only, and if you survive, you may equip and unequip the Wraithguard as many times as you wish without worry.
***Equiping Sunder OR Keening without Wraithguard equiped will make you lose life, so just don't do that.
If you're still having trouble, mail me at GamingAddict15[at]hotmail[dot]com
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