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Unconfirmed Bug Maltese Knights Bug

Tingyun

Corsair
Storm Modder
Maltese knights in the crypt are prone to the following bugged chain of events (experienced this twice):

Setup: Kill monks. Examine body. Get one of the thieves. Thief takes money and starts to run away. Kill thief.

Then examine thief skeleton's body. Sometimes, he rolls becoming one of those stubborn killer resurrection (the grunting, let's fight again dialogue), kill him again, now examine the body. Three bugs result from this chain of events:

1) (unsure if this part a bug) You don't recover your money.

2) he becomes some kind of a standing dead body you can't interact with. The body also doesn't have the money, even if you care to lose the rep by murdering a defenseless corpse.

3) All future bodies resurrected until you leave the area just stand there in the same way. I lined up 8 standing corpses in a row this way.

Now if you save and reload the game at this point, then there appears a single walking corpses, in my game he was named Edward Seth, and he just walks around without doing anything.

Not sure how I am supposed to counter thief monks--maybe I will try a thief knife rather than killing them. Or maybe burying gold in a grandmaster chest, and then digging up periodically. Or leave the crypt and hand money to a companion now and then.

Or are you supposed to lose the gold, keeping you from profiting too much from the monks? Given they give around 7k a kill when they decide to be friendly, that would make sense I guess.
 
Also just got the same bug without the thief setup, just directly from the kind of resurrecting knight that grunts and keeps wanting to fight.

Here's a saved game, you can see 8 standing dead bodies I've raised in the saved game picture (though they disappear upon load). Also, aside from observing the after effects, if you like the exit to the crypt is right behind and to the right of you, you can leave, come back, slaughter knights to reproduce the bug.
 

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One more note, sometimes the aggressive grunting skeleton doesn't trigger the bug. And I just had it occur by knocking a thief out with a cobblestone, and then as soon as he came concious, the bug was there. EDIT: And then a few minutes later once again got it with the "You...me...no....kill" aggressive dialogue, without a thief. So sometimes tied to the thief, sometimes not.

I can't figure out exactly why it sometimes happens or not, but it is very frequent.

Two additional issues with the knights:

1) The undead forms seem to get some kind of an hp buff a second after spawning--though maybe I'm crazy, but it seems like I hit them and their hp total is in double digs, then hit them again and it is a couple hundred. But if you immediattly swing, you beat the hp boost, and they tend to go down with a single strike or two, probably easier than intended. Maybe it should be faster.

2) Balancing issue--So by storing gold now and then in the chest immediatly outside the crypt inside the spreightown dungeon (there is a chest right to the left of the crypt exit), and throwing a cobblestone to hit the head of any undead thief and then robbing him while he is dizzy (which allows recovery of stolen gold), it is actually very easy to make a fortune here, a couple hundred thousand per real life hour or so. Maybe the gold reward option for sending a friendly undead monk on his way to the afterlife should be reduced (especially since the monks lacking guns means they pose no real danger to a player with a good sword and fencing skill, random bandits are much more dangerous)

(in the meantime, I think I'll just toss the money I made so far from this. It took me days of jungle hunting to save the 150,000 I made for my ship, and I don't want to cheapen that by exploiting this way of making money)
 
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One thing that may help in tracking down the bug:

After it bugs out (meaning standing corpses), if I stay in the same area and kill more monks, then it seems the HP boost the monk undead forms are supposed to get stops working as well (and they all go down in 1-2 hits). Huge difference and very noticable. So it seems the corpses resurection and hp bonus are tied to the same malfunction and stop working together.

By the way, I just stumbled upon the poisonous HP boost mist. Is it temporary, or subject to a cap?
 
I believe the mist is temporary but I'm not sure anymoer.

thanks for the other info. when someone has time they will look into it.
 
Tested and the hp boost is permanent, and can get the player up over 1000 HP in about 10 minutes. Made a balancing post about it, the money gain, and other balancing issues.

Adding to the bug reports above:

1) checked again and confirmed the HP boost to the undead is too slow. They get over 100 extra HP if you wait a second, but if you strike first then die before they can get it. I watched the numbers very closely.

2) the exorcist red clothing living maltese monks (that appear sometimes when digging) inconsitently are invulnerable, or are absolute weaklings that die in one hit. Probably should be never invulnerable, but stronger, but at any rate the inconstency creates a bug. They are usually not invulnerable, but in an occasional spawn 2 or so of the 6 are invulnerable and do not take damage.

3) Neither they, nor the grandmaster, nor the indian mummy leave a lootable corpse, which seems like a bug.

4) The maltese monks are invulnerable to ranged weapons (guns, grenades) until they draw their swords, and after that they become fully vulnerable to them. Very odd, they should probably always be vulnerable, but at the least one or the other should be picked. Maybe something to do with the code that keeps them from actvating and swarming the player until close? (but as I suggest in the balancing post, that restriction on them noticing the plauyer probably should be removed anyway, as the dungeon is far too easy right now).

5) the scene change points in the crypt are pretty badly mapped. To pass from the crypt to the spreightown dungeon, for example, you can easily missthe point and have to walk up and down again and again to find it and finally exit. Similar problem thought not as drastic with some of the other exit points from the crypt.

Of course the standing corpse issue and the others bugs mentioned earlier are much more significant (not to mention the balancing issues), just keeping everything organized here for when someone does have time to bugfix the dungeon. ;)

EDIT: Turns out the spawned maltese exorcists, grandmaster, and indian mummy not being lootable is a symptom of the standing corpses bug. When that bugs out, they become unlootable as well, if it hasn't bugged out yet, they are lootable.
 
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I have found the icon for looting is occasionally some distance away from the corpse - particularly if it was killed by an NPC.

If you have side step enabled and accidentally move through a wall, I find this triggers the issue you are talking about with non-lootable corpses - the ones you kill.

I like this place as it is a significant challenge early in the game with the chance to get some money and perks from digging - but often am killed. It maybe that difficulty increase would make this impossible at the start of the game. - I like digging up the French rapier as it is the best weapon early in the game on Oxbay.
 
It's not an issue with the icon for looting--it appears, you can click it, and then a standing corpse is generated that just sits there. From that point on, all future looting of corpses just generates another standing corpse, and whatever generates the HP boost for the undead version of the monks is broken and they don't get their HP boost, and things go wrong with looting of the digging triggered enemies as well.

Basically, once it triggers, all sorts of mechanics break, and stay broken until you change scenes. Sidestep isn't the issue, as long as you keep killing and looting, the bug will trigger. I've triggered it over 20 times now, it always happens sooner or later if you are activating the corpses of maltese knights (happens in both the crypt and the abbey).

As for difficulty, do you mean my comments in the separate balancing thread? As I said there, the issue is that the monks being locked to the same low level sword means they don't keep up and can't pose a threat to the player, and the lack of ranged weapons combined with low piercing ability makes them harmless. Fixing that doesn't have to unbalance tackling the dungeon in the early game (though honestly making the "hardest" dungeon in the game actually hard for beginning players isn't a bad thing), but something needs to be done to keep it competitive in the higher levels. And by higher levels, we really mean it becomes a cakewalk when you get professional fencer, which happens very quickly at low levels. At least the current state, where once you have a couple of fencing perks it becomes much easier than any other dungeon populated by random bandits, needs to be addressed.
 
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If you kill the Knight twice, he's supposed to trigger a dialog with some explanation and the potential for a bit of a reward.

I wonder if your observation about their HP suddenly increasing could be because of @Levis' Leveling System.
That one sets them correctly, but it can take a few seconds before that happens.
This was also a notable issue with Governor Ship Hunting captains, where the problem was far worse as it resulted in them always getting far too small ships.
To fix that, I added some code to enforce them being intialized immediately. Maybe something similar needs to be added for these guys?
 
@Pieter Boelen

Yes, if you kill twice you can activate him for an insanely high reward (7,000-10,000 gold usually per activation if you listen to their story, 4th dialogue option, in the crypt--abbey maltese monks rewards are lower maybe because they lack that dialogue option).

However, there IS a Bug that only applies to maltese monks and will always occur after killing and speaking to a few of them. It is completely reproducable, and I have attached a saved game showing it above in this thread.

Salonikasurf is mistaken, this bug has nothing to do with normal looting or the issues he mentions.

After activating a few dead monks getting the dialogue a couple of times, then the next one you activate doesn't trigger the proper dialogue, instead it creates a standing corpse that just stands still and does nothing. From then on each additional one you try to activate does the same (I have lined up 8 of these standing corpse dolls in a row before). Further, after this triggers all sorts of things bug out--the HP boost stops working (so I guess the leveling system gets disrupted), other corpses become unlootable, and generally everything gets weird until you leave the scene.

The saved game I posted above shows the effects afterwards, with the weird named walking corpse, but to see the bug fully, you have to exit the scene, reenter, and trigger it again by killing and activating a few knights (save reload erases some effects, preserves others). It generally takes between 3 and 8 knights killed and activated for the bug to trigger, but it always triggers sooner or later.

On HP triggering: That makes sense. I think the issue is the system has only a moment to give them HP, since the undead second form of the monk spawns right in front of the player and can be killed quickly, before it can work. Your solution sounds great. It would only need to be for the second form of them, the undead one.

What is interesting is that triggering the Corpse bug breaks the ability of Levis's leveling system to work until you exit and reenter, so it must be disrupting all kinds of scripts.

SUMMARY: Triggering the HP boost immediately would be great! However, the more serious Maltese corpse bug is real, reliably reproducible, and has nothing to do with problems with normal looting Salonikasurf mentions. I am not misunderstanding something here--I have killed several hundred maltese monks, spoken to them countless times, spent hours in the crypt. Trust me, it is bugged, and I even attached a saved game showing this. ;)
 
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Don't worry, I believe you.
Wished I understood why though.
Maybe Leveling Post Init is interfering with the uncommon looting for Monks?

If you could find any sort of specific "trigger" for that bug, I'd definitely be interested.
 
Hi Pieter,

I have looked for a pattern--triggering the bug some 20 times so far, I have seen it happen on the 2nd monk I killed, I have seen it not occur until the 8th. I have seen it happen with the monk previous being all the different versions of the dialogue.

I have not found any pattern at all. :(

All I can say is it always triggers when activating a dead monk, and after that, it will trigger everytime until you change scenes.

I have a suspicion--I think something stops the monk from initiating the dialogue, which is why there is a standing body that doesn't do anything. But no clue why or what.
 
Summary: I think the bug is just caused by too much spawning overwhelming the game.

I spent some time testing, and as it turns out, what I have named the corpse bug isn't only caused by the corpses (I could tell because the other symptoms are obvious even without spawning the standing corpses).

Several times I went into the crypt, and just killed maltese monks, never once searching their body and inititating the dialogue. Always, I could get the bug to trigger just by killing them and leaving the bodies alone, together with doing things like digging in the treasure spots (and spawning enemies from digging), after awhile of this it would be obvious the bug had triggered from the other symptoms, and I would initiate (first time) dialogue with a corpse, and sure enough it would be the standing silent bugged type.

My Theory: something is wrong with the scripts that spawn the undead versions of monks and the other encounters from digging (exporcists, skeleton, grandmaster, indian), as well as the undead dialogue initiating monks after searching. When it runs too often without a scene change, or too rapidly, or with too much going on at the same time, it breaks.

So, to sum up:

Causes of the bug:lots of spawning creatures, whether from killing monks, searching monk bodies, or digging

Effects once bug has triggered:everything breaks, no hp boost at all for enemies from leveling system even if you wait, monk bodies trigger standing silent corpses, and other normally lootable bodies become unlootable. In addition, the game begins to lag a bit (even running msi afterburner with fps locked to 60). If you stay and keep killing, even weirder stuff happens, like the undead fighting version of monks stops spawning after their first death, and some of the exorcists from digging become immortal.

If you keep pressing on after that, the exe will terminate if you try to save the game (leaving a corrupt save). This one happened twice in port royale modeled crypt location, after killing all the monks rapidly (there were alot).

Maybe the game might just not be capable of handling all the spawning and respawning of enemies in such a large scene, without things breaking.

Proposed fix: Can we reduce the number of monks that spawn in each of the crypt scenes (port royale and cozumel modeled dungeons) as well as the abbey by 50%? With half the number of guys, I suspect that may fix the bug, or at least render it rare.

If that works to fix the bug, then, as part of the balancing changes I will be working on later for the crypt, I will make the monks even tougher than I had intended, to make up for their lower number.

Is it hard to change how many enemies there are in a location? If it isn't and someone can point me in the direction of a starting point, I can try it out and test when I work on the other crypt changes.

Or let me know if what I describe isn't likely to be correct, I really don't know how any of this works. :)
 
Should be doable, but I'm not entirely sure where.
Would need to do a bit of searching.
 
Yah, the crypt stuff is definitely a lower priority than other bugs, given how isolated and minor it is to the game as a whole. I'm just keeping this thread updated with new evidence for when people do have time to look into the bug. :)
 
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