Sadly this seems to be a bug. I ran into the same thing, all I could do was reload a save before I went to the pirates the first time then go talk to her by the waterfall first. After that, the next time you go to the pirate area, she'll be there and say something along the lines of "Okay, these are the pirates, be careful, get the key/hat, I'll meet you at the death wall" then walk back through the entrance, leaving you to deal with them.

Having figured that out though, I have no clue how to deal with the zombie pirates besides straight up combat, which I can't win. I think I'm just out of practice at adventure games...

Fighting Zombie pirates involves using tactical combat. You want to fight only one or two at a time. That involves MMO techniques such as "pulling" and "kiting." Use the terrain and traps to your advantage.

As far as not seeing the pirates after Katie has said she'll take care of them, that's because she's really good at this and took care of them. You need to fulfill the other tasks she gives you to progress. Everything you need is somewhere in the Sea Caves, except perhaps a way of getting beyond the barrier at the Gog Shrine.

Once you've done everything Katie asked you to do, and meet up with her again, you can get past the Skull Wall.

well right along this topic, and since 6 days in there isn't much help on the google yet -

Katie sent me to get the skull at the pirate scene (after I had the red gem), and she was gonna take care of the pirates.

and I'm to meet her at the "skull wall."

I got the tattoo skull with a day and a half of the midterm break to spare. But Katie is nowhere. I've since used up the rest of this day and through dinner on the final day looking for her (at dinner, the rec room, by her dorm room, and every area of the sea caves). I interpreted the skull wall as either the skull door (where she is not) and a skull wall in the catacombs (which seems unlikely but the name is exact). She wasn't there and I died quickly in the catacombs as I tried to look deeper.

I like doing everything and it seems god dips his knowledge to this thread. heeeelp!

^^ ok well instead of sitting on my hands and pouting, I decided to do more google-fu. I found more people having issues regarding katie and zombies and her showing up after, and people having success if they themselves fought the zombies.

So I decided to load 3 days back and just fight the zombies myself, and see if I can get it to work.

Then I noticed something odd. When I did it over again, I ended up with extra journal entries / todo tasks. I then got an inkling. Many cavern plunders and panda pieces later, I have solved the problem.

I just posted the following in the bug forum, but incase someone sees this and not the bug forum (like I did to begin with) I'll reproduce it here

TL;DR:

If you did not kill the zombies (and therefore not get the key) and already have the map piece before talking to Katie at the waterfall, AND you offer to help her with the treasure BEFORE offering her the map, the quest will bug (Katie does not show at the skull door).

VL;WR (very long will read):

My hypothesis was that offering to help her and then the game forcing me to give her the map (rather than you selecting to give her the map first and then offering to help afterward) was causing the issue, as you don't officially get the quest (in your journal) if you offer help first. Further, When you offer the map and then to help, she gives you the option (skull or key) -- if you offer help first and are forced to give the map, she does NOT ask what you want to do, and you do NOT get the quest / journal entry.

I ran several paths of the quest to test each scenario, making sure to keep every other variable constant (have all the same items, make all the same choices in interim (e.g. feed the serpent, then free him and loot the ring))

(1) have the key - offer help and map forced
(2) have the key - offer map first and then offer help
(3) zombies alive - offer help and map forced
(4) zombies alive - offer map first and then offer help

notes:
*I already had the piece of map in my inventory for every trial, as I obtained it before midterm break (maybe this is causing the whole problem?)
*I already had the red gem as above
*I originally did scenario 3 the first time 'round (which I retested under stated controls)
*every scenario results in 1 journal quest: to help katie find the treasure. only (2) and (4) result in an additional entry (skull or key quest).

We'll skip (3) for this initial list, as that is where the problem lies

Scenario (1)
Offering to help first forces shawn to give katie the map, which results in (a) no second quest entry and (b) no choice of skull or key. However, as I already had the key, I headed down and grabbed the skull. Katie was waiting at the skull door.

Scenario (2)
Offering the map first and then offering to help her results in a quest entry (either find the skull or find the key - whichever you choose). I already had the key, and I chose to find the skull (because pandas). After obtaining the skull, Katie was waiting for me at the door.

Scenario (4)
Offering the map first, as above, gave me the choice of obtaining the key or skull as an official quest. I chose to obtain the skull (because, again - pandas). I got the skull, and Katie was waiting at the skull door.

Scenario (4b)
FURTHERMORE I did a side-test of this scenario to see if perhaps speaking to Katie at the zombies was an issue. After obtaining the quest for the skull, I did 2 parallel runs (one not going to the zombies to talk to her, and one going to the zombies and talking to her). Both scenarios resulted in success.

Scenario (5)
Huh what scenario 5? Well, there is an addition scenario I didn't run (zombies alive, offer map, offer help, choose key quest). But that would have taken me an additional hour at least, and I think I nailed down the problem in scenario (3).


OK SCENARIO (3)

As a refresh, this scenario is when you talk to katie at the waterfall while the zombies are alive, and you offer to help her before you offer the map, which forces shawn to offer her the map, resulting in her not giving you the choice to choose skull or key. Katie goes to the zombies by default, and kicks you out of the area. After obtaining the skull, she is gone from the zombie area, and does NOT show up at the skull door.

So to sum up

When encountering katie at the waterfall, and
shawn has the red gem, the map scrap, and does NOT have the key,
then offers to help her BEFORE offering the map scrap,
the game does not offer key - skull choice,
and ultimately results in katie bugging out.

Thanks for the detailed research, ak373! We had a LOT of issues with Katie's Sea Caves quests during testing and fixed many of them. So I'm not too surprised that one case slipped through the cracks despite six months of tests. I've put it on my personal task list to fix, and will try to get it into the first patch.

Pleasure to help. I put this in the bug forum on herou.net also, as I didn't know which you'd be more likely to check. Can ignore that one I suppose! It's essentially a cut and paste

It turned out to be a single missing line of code, easily fixed. Hopefully there aren't any other bad cases - those scripts are some of the most complex in the entire game, and required multiple fixes during beta testing.

I also added some lines in which Katie explains how she was able to get the treasure on her own if Shawn doesn't complete the quests in time. A couple of players expressed anger and disbelief that someone else at the University besides your character can be a hero. (I'm reminded of the Dread Pirate Roberts telling Inigo Montoya, "Get used to disappointment.")

Well I just finished the game an hour ago and I didn't encounter any other issues. So there's that!

All the students are well established as heroes!... well except jerk-face, of course. It wasn't even until near the end that I was even confident I'd be awarded RotY.


While I of course have many comments and ideas - like everyone else on the hero-u forum does, I am left with this one, burning question:

Can I pre-order Hero-U 2 yet?

When will the fix be available? I seem to be suffering with this problem. Will I need to replay any part of the game to be able to get the pirate key from the zombies now?

the issue seems only to arise if you follow my scenario 3 above, which is

If you did not kill the zombies (and therefore not get the key) and already have the map piece before talking to Katie at the waterfall, AND you offer to help her with the treasure BEFORE offering her the map, the quest will bug (Katie does not show at the skull door).

If this is the case (as it was for me), you will have to load to before the point of no return, which is talking to katie and offering to help her before you give her the map (note that giving her the map and then offering to help her after will be fine).


If this isn't what you did, then there is something else (working as intended) going on I think. A few things to consider:



it needs to be during midterm break, which is when the quest takes place. If it's not break (day 25-27 I think) then the quest has not yet started or katie did the quest herself and you missed it.

You yourself (shawn) do not need the key. If katie gets the key that's totally fine. You just need to get the skull and red gem and katie will be waiting for you at the door with the key (and will give you the captain's hat I believe).

Yeah I'm definitely experiencing the bug. Was hoping one of the Coles could say when the fix would be released and if I would need to replay from an old save or not.

At first I didn't want to redo everything I had done in days 25-27. I resigned to not going forward without a solution. However, after I checked the few forums that this young game exists on and found no solution, I then figured it was either wait indefinitely or just load back to day 25. If you discount the time I spent doing bug test runs, it took me like 3 hours because I already knew the layout of the sea caves and exactly what to do and where to go.

I can't speak for the development team, but the patch most likely will not be out in 3 hours from now. As someone who was in the same spot as you are, I recommend biting the bullet and in the very near future you'll be wondering why it took you so long to do it in the first place

Hey developers, thanks for a great game. I just wanted to added my 2 cents and an update to the bug from the play perspective. I still have a problem and the sequence of events is that when I was accused that I took the map, I talked with Joel Kyro and he told me about the map piece I could return to Katie. Overhearing the conversations in front of the rooms that night, I heard Katie talking to the Esme about me or Joel being only possible culprits. I simply never showed up in Joel's room and the next day, they were talking about me not showing and Joel confessing it was a trap, but that particular quest never got done, the one named: Find Katie's Missing Map although she apologized for the accusation.

So I met Katie during the midterm in caves, and we talked about the map and I saw the two pieces for the first time together. When I got to the Dead Man's Chest and took the Red Skull Necklace, came back to Katie, we talked about those and the next step was to choose which one I'd like to take on, the skull or the key. As I have already obtained the skull before the midterm, I went with that and from that point, it was impossible to me to get to those pirates (even though I chose the skull, I ended up having to go after the key, with the same text one gets when he clicks to go for the key right away - not talking about the skull). So I loaded that save and took the key option although the skull was with me. That time, it went fine. Although the quest about me finding Katies missing map was still on (although we have already looked at the whole map together). EDIT: The quest disappeared later on as we found the treasure, but was nowhere to find among the finished quests.

To add a bit more, since these bugs were encountered at the same time, I tend to hit and run a lot, it happens that after longer fights, camera gets too tilted down (once to the point it was almost horizontal and I couldn't see a thing so used the popups to navigate to other screen where everything was fine again. Also, some of the times, Shawn leaves combat with a victory dance only because I get away from opponents (like I initiate the battle, by clicking on the enemy, then I walk away to have more space to throw my daggerang, but then he leaves, so I am forced to hit the enemy as the first action to keep his attention and make us stay in combat). In such situations, it can happen that such an enemy experiences runes I used on an enemy beforehand. I have no idea where should I post this, so I just plugged it here and would be glad to be redirected.

EDIT: And yeah, I hardly notice effect of Frost rune on any enemies.

With kind regards...