Hello! I've been enjoying my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate 2! I've succumbed to the completionist urge and am burning through all the side quests I have left in chapter two (only umar and winspear hills left).

Here's my problem: In the windspear ruins dungeon, in the 2nd map (not the big cavern but the dungeon/maze proper), I've been having an issue where when I load a save, everything in the map is reset. The fog of war, items lying on the ground disappear, enemies are respawned, as are npcs like Samia (Samia is reset even if I've killed her and her whole party already), the two friendly orcs, and the troll chef. I've seen very little of this issue catalogued on the net, and the only recommendations I saw involved toning down settings, which I did. I had one successful save right at the beginning of the dungeon, but my 2nd save, not 5 minutes later, had the same issue. I've avoided picking up any items and such. That doesn't seem to affect anything. Neither does changing/lowering graphics settings. Ah, and I removed 3d acceleration as well. Didn't seem to help.

Luckily, I have an autosave of me standing at the doorway to the 2nd area which is reliable and never has this issue. I can quicksave and load outside of the dungeon without issues as well. Only in this dungeon have I had this problem. I haven't checked this, but for those few people who wrote about this issue on the web, they reported that not only the map but the entirety of their ch. 2 progress was reset. Quests and everything, as if they'd just finished ch 1. I haven't tested to see if I have that issue as well yet. Perhaps waiting to do this quest in ch 3 would solve this issue?

I suppose it's worth noting that I'm playing on a macbook pro 10.9.4 (just updated. Had this problem before and after the update). I also loaded a few mods in the following order (I think ><) bg2fixpack-itemfix-npcflirts-bg2tweaks. I was careful to avoid conflicting installations, and thus far I've had no issues.

I'm also assuming that a workaround would be to beat this dungeon in one go without ever saving. If that's the case, I'll have to level up a bit more. There are some tough fights in there.

If the level is being reset, particularly as you state you have saves where the issue does not occur, then you have a corrupt saved game. The issue of what is corrupting the save is another matter, and is more likely to be a mod conflict than anything else. Each area is stored in your saved game, and if it gets corrupted, or deleted (which can happen), then the game will recreate it, and you end up with a reset area, NPCs and all.

Do *not* rely on quick saves in this issue, and only ever as a temporary measure. Load a save that you do not have issues with (the autosave, for example), and then create a new save, in a clean slot, and do *not* save over it. As you progress through the dungeon, save often, and always in a new slot; do not use quick saves, and do not overwrite other saves until you are through this issue.

Regarding what you have read online, I fail to see how graphic setting could possibly be a factor in this.

I tried your advice. Annoyingly, the save "portraits" all show my characters in the center of the screen with doors nearby open and the map revealed, but when I load em up I have the same issue. Dungeon reset. Maybe later I'll try again without my mods installed : /

Your save game is corrupt, that is why the save portraits are anomalous.

Right. I've since given up on the dungeon and started the Umar Hills quest. No save issues there. I'm guessing there's a dungeon somewhere along this quest so I'll see if there are any parallels there. Also, before I forget, I just wanted to thank you Hickory for all the help you've given me. This is my third question regarding the BG series and you've helped me with all of them : )

So thanks!

You're welcome. :)