Unconfirmed Bug Rescue Peter Blood's crew - Finian Whitesmith

[Jerdna_Stark]

So I've reached the point in the Side Quest where Peter Blood wants to go back to Port Royale before the Quest concludes and he becomes my officer. According to the Wiki, you are supposed to walk through the port gates and you will automatically walk to the center of the town. This is where this Finian Whitesmith is supposed to approach you and fight you.
I've done all those things but when I stop auto walking, Finian is nowhere to be seen! Furthermore, I am blocked from entering any buildings, leaving through the gates and using fast travel! I can leave the area by walking along the path to the right of where the auto walk leaves me and there I can enter houses, go through gates, etc. But when I go back, the same thing happens.
Is there a way to fix this? Is it a bug? Is there something I'm missing?

 

[Grey Roger]

Have you a savegame from before you go to Port Royale?

 

[Jerdna_Stark]

Have you a savegame from before you go to Port Royale?

My last savegame was just outside the harbour.

 

[Grey Roger]

That should be good enough. Can you upload it?

 

[Jerdna_Stark]

That should be good enough. Can you upload it?

Where would I find it if it isn't in the SAVE folder?

 

[Grey Roger]

Have a look at this part of the FAQ:
I can't find my saved games in Windows 10. They're not in the "SAVE" folder. Where are they?

 

[Jerdna_Stark]

Have a look at this part of the FAQ:
I can't find my saved games in Windows 10. They're not in the "SAVE" folder. Where are they?

Oh, thank you so much! How should I upload it?

 

[Grey Roger]

The forum software won't allow you to upload the file as it is, so first compress it with something like 7-Zip:
Download

 

[Jerdna_Stark]

Damn, finally! Took me all day to figure it out.

 

[Grey Roger]

That save is from before you even started the quest! I had to go to Cayman, talk to Peter Blood, get his crew from Havana and his officer from Santiago, and then went to Port Royale, where Finian Whitesmith did indeed fail to show up. That's because I met Christian Greaves instead. The character and his minions are all fantoms - that is, a type of temporary character created for a quick encounter who ceases to exist when you leave the area. This one isn't assigned a fixed name so he'll have a different name every time you play this quest. But the important thing is that I did meet the character, fought him and his associates, then recruited Peter Blood.

Are you in the habit of taking extra crew? Did you have any other officers with you by the time you went into Port Royale? Officers left on the ship don't count, I'm only interested in anyone you may have had following you ashore and into town.

 

[Jerdna_Stark]

That save is from before you even started the quest!

That's... odd... I only have two saves in my game and I think I only saw two in the files. Must've misinterpreted them...

I had to go to Cayman, talk to Peter Blood, get his crew from Havana and his officer from Santiago, and then went to Port Royale, where Finian Whitesmith did indeed fail to show up. That's because I met Christian Greaves instead. The character and his minions are all fantoms - that is, a type of temporary character created for a quick encounter who ceases to exist when you leave the area. This one isn't assigned a fixed name so he'll have a different name every time you play this quest. But the important thing is that I did meet the character, fought him and his associates, then recruited Peter Blood.

Wait, so you're saying that, at the point in the quest when somebody is supposed to confront you in Port Royale, somebody did show up, just with a different name? Hm, so maybe there's something I did wrong in-between the save point I sent you and the point where I'm supposed to fight...

Are you in the habit of taking extra crew? Did you have any other officers with you by the time you went into Port Royale? Officers left on the ship don't count, I'm only interested in anyone you may have had following you ashore and into town.

Yes, I had three officers in my party and nine additional sailors.

 

[Grey Roger]

Wait, so you're saying that, at the point in the quest when somebody is supposed to confront you in Port Royale, somebody did show up, just with a different name? Hm, so maybe there's something I did wrong in-between the save point I sent you and the point where I'm supposed to fight...

Yes, the character had a different name. That's not due to anything you did. The character has no fixed name. If I do the whole quest again, the chief mercenary will have a different name again. In fact, you could probably get as far as Port Royale port, walk up to the town gate, save game, then go into town for the fight; then reload the game and go into town for the fight again; and again; and each time the chief mercenary will probably have a different name. For that reason, I've made a slight change to the walkthrough - it no longer mentions Finian Whitesmith, it just says "a mercenary".

Yes, I had three officers in my party and nine additional sailors.

That's probably what is breaking the quest. There's a limit on how many characters can be in a location. Against that limit are counted the normal population of Port Royale town centre - guards, permanent citizens and random civilians. Then there's you and your three officers. I normally have three officers as well and don't recall having any problems with this quest in the past. But nine sailors extra sailors will probably reach the limit, so the mercenaries can't be placed. Other quests may break as well.

 

[Jerdna_Stark]

That's probably what is breaking the quest. There's a limit on how many characters can be in a location. Against that limit are counted the normal population of Port Royale town centre - guards, permanent citizens and random civilians. Then there's you and your three officers. I normally have three officers as well and don't recall having any problems with this quest in the past. But nine sailors extra sailors will probably reach the limit, so the mercenaries can't be placed. Other quests may break as well.

Thank you so much for your help! This clears up a lot of confusion actually. I remember doing the follow-up quest, The Search for Peter Blood's ship and having to meet a guy on a beach but he didn't show up. Is this the same issue as here?

 

[Grey Roger]

I wouldn't think so, unless you have a huge army with you. There are about a dozen permanent residents in Port Royale centre, including guards and citizens. Add in about half a dozen random civilians, plus Marc Blacque if you haven't done his quest, and that's around 18-20 total. You turn up with three officers and 9 crew, plus Peter Blood, adding another 14 in all. The limit is about 32. So it's possible with all that lot that the limit is reached and the mercenary can't appear.

The normal population of a beach is 0. So even if you bring three officers, 10 crew and Peter Blood, you're still nowhere near the limit. However, it's possible the guy you want to meet is hiding somewhere among your men because there's not much room for so many people!

 

[Jerdna_Stark]

The normal population of a beach is 0. So even if you bring three officers, 10 crew and Peter Blood, you're still nowhere near the limit. However, it's possible the guy you want to meet is hiding somewhere among your men because there's not much room for so many people!

Thank you again!

 

[Jerdna_Stark]

That save is from before you even started the quest! I had to go to Cayman, talk to Peter Blood, get his crew from Havana and his officer from Santiago, and then went to Port Royale, where Finian Whitesmith did indeed fail to show up. That's because I met Christian Greaves instead. The character and his minions are all fantoms - that is, a type of temporary character created for a quick encounter who ceases to exist when you leave the area. This one isn't assigned a fixed name so he'll have a different name every time you play this quest. But the important thing is that I did meet the character, fought him and his associates, then recruited Peter Blood.

Are you in the habit of taking extra crew? Did you have any other officers with you by the time you went into Port Royale? Officers left on the ship don't count, I'm only interested in anyone you may have had following you ashore and into town.

I have one more question:
How do you load an external save file into your game? Do you just put it in the corresponding section in the SAVE folder and unzip? Or is there more to it?

 

[AkrimalS]

I have one more question:
How do you load an external save file into your game? Do you just put it in the corresponding section in the SAVE folder and unzip? Or is there more to it?

The save may not be read if it is saved as -Test1- QuickSave, it should be -=Test1=- QuickSave. You can edit the file and it should appear.

 

[Grey Roger]

If it is a quicksave then I'll need to rename it anyway. For some reason the game won't read a profile containing just a single quicksave. And your saves with Russian character names don't work on my non-Russian system, they show up as "Bad save" unless I rename them using Western characters. I can recognise enough Cyrillic letters to get some idea of the place and date, and in any case the game doesn't care if the filename matches the place and date in the game. It doesn't even care if I've put it in the wrong folder because I couldn't tell which storyline was being played. So if the person providing the savegame didn't tell me the storyline, I'll rename it to something readable and then put it in the FreePlay folder. A quick look at the questbook should tell me which story it is, then I can move it to the correct folder - for example, if the questbook says anything about Silehard then it's "Tales of a Sea Hawk".

@Jerdna_Stark: your filename was fine and it wasn't a quicksave, so indeed all I needed to do was unzip it, put it into one of the folders in "SAVE", then load it.

The other thing is that there are different versions of the game in use. If the game in which the save was made is not the fully updated version then the savegame will show up as "Incompatible save", and "compile.log" will show which version the savegame needs. Mostly it will be because the player is using the January 2022 version without updates, in which case I can just edit "globals.c" to match. And I have a couple of older installs on my hard drive, so if the savegame matches one of those then I'll move it to that install.

 

[Jerdna_Stark]

And your saves with Russian character names don't work on my non-Russian system, they show up as "Bad save" unless I rename them using Western characters. I can recognise enough Cyrillic letters to get some idea of the place and date, and in any case the game doesn't care if the filename matches the place and date in the game.

I really don't know where Cyrillic letters could have come from in the game. I don't remember using them to name anything.

The other thing is that there are different versions of the game in use. If the game in which the save was made is not the fully updated version then the savegame will show up as "Incompatible save", and "compile.log" will show which version the savegame needs. Mostly it will be because the player is using the January 2022 version without updates, in which case I can just edit "globals.c" to match. And I have a couple of older installs on my hard drive, so if the savegame matches one of those then I'll move it to that install.

I think my game is fully updated? I installed it from Mod DB in August last year.

The save may not be read if it is saved as -Test1- QuickSave, it should be -=Test1=- QuickSave. You can edit the file and it should appear.

Thank you!

@Jerdna_Stark: your filename was fine and it wasn't a quicksave, so indeed all I needed to do was unzip it, put it into one of the folders in "SAVE", then load it.

Thank you so much for your help!

 

[Grey Roger]

I really don't know where Cyrillic letters could have come from in the game. I don't remember using them to name anything.

They're not. That was meant for @AkrimalS, who plays in Russian, and his savegame filenames are therefore in the Cyrillic alphabet.

I think my game is fully updated? I installed it from Mod DB in August last year.

ModDB might not have the current installer, and there have certainly been updates since last August! The best place to get the current installer plus the latest update is here:
Mod Release - Build 14 Gamma Version [Last update: 9th June 2023]