Overview
Hello guys, while playing this game I’ve ran into some of the quest bugs. Some actions within the game render some quests unable to be completed by the player. There is a fine guide here on steam on how to avoid such things happening. If, however, you have unfortunately missed that information (like me :D) and did something that renders some of the quests uncompletable, you might be stuck looking for a solution. I mean, other than starting the game over just to solve one particular quest. This guide is built around solving Maria’s quest, but the solution presented further on might be applicable to other quests aswell. Please note that there are spoilers within this guide.
Maria’s quest bug solution
The problem with Maria’s quest is that at some point during the game you might find yourself with this kind of situation: 1) the NPC Maria is not responding to your atempts in starting conversation with her, 2) it is not possible to find any evidence about Malcolms misdeeds in his house. Because of that, player is not able to move further with the side quests other than killing Maria. The way to go around this is as follows:
1) Create a new game and save it under your_newgame_save_name;
2) Quit the game;
3) Go to your divine divinity savegame folder (mine was in C:Program Files (x86)Steamsteamappscommondivine_divinitysavegames);
4) Make a hard copy of your saves before you do any changes;
5) Go to your your_newgame_save_name and copy dialogs.000 file;
6) Paste the file into your your_old_save_name folder;
7) Start Divine Divinity and load your your_old_save;
8) Maria should be responsive so go talk to her now;
9) After talking to her, the evidence on Malcolm should be back at his old house, go take it and proceed with the quest;
10) Finish up Maria’s quest and get another quest from the merchants guild leader;
11) save the game under your_new_save_name;
12) Return the dialogs.000 file from your_old_save_name folder to the your_new_save_name folder.
This resulted in such kind of situation: quests related to Maria have been finished, I have my house in Verdistis, and after putting the file back Maria doesn’t talk to me again but is save and sound in merchants guild. The merchants guild leader has been somewhat reset and I only get the dialogue options one gets when first meeting him. This however does not stop you from finishing up another quest related to this guy.
If I understand correctly, putting a newgame dialogs.000 file into an old save resets all the dialogues. Therefore such method should not break the game in any way. Although I would advise you not to speak to any other people not realated to the bugged quest. I haven’t tested all of the possible outcomes of tapping with the game files in such way but this came out okay for me. If you encounter any bugs related to this method, please let me know. I’ll update this guide if I’ll find some bugs myself.
I hope this helped you!
2019-01-10 Update: I have finished the game last week and can confirm that this solution didn’t break my savegame in any way.