Good morning, good people!
After several fruitless attempts to get my old save games working with the new patch, I've re-started the game and am currently rather enjoying it. I have, however, come across what must be a bug.
When my PC hands Slasher over to Smiruk, the game stops. It's not a freeze, because the animations are still present. Smiruk holds the axe in his hands, moves to the centre of the screen and just stands there. No comedy killing of his fellow orc. No completion of quest. No xp. Nothing. I've left the game to stand for several seconds and nothing happens.
Has anyone else encountered this problem? And is there a way around it?
(I've tried it with both identified and unidentified Slashers, btw. The result is the same.)
Yours,
d

I think I've heard of this one.
Did one of his orcs happen to get killed before you handed him the axe? I've heard that if the orc he wishes to kill is missing, this will cause the game to hang.

Thanks for the reply. I certainly didn't kill the orc in question, but it is possible he may have got killed by some skeleton warriors in the catacombs as there were some about after I had the initial conversation with Smiruk. (They were probably following me, although I didn't lead them into the orcs deliberately.)
Come to think of it, there is a rather suspicious looking gap where the unfortunate orc should be. Not to worry. I can live without the quest being completed. I'll know for next time.
Thanks again for the reply.
jd

Possible causes -
"Don't kill the big ork Smiruk's pals near the beginning of the game (the Slasher quest). And don't let your zombie pal kill them either if you've got him. Otherwise Smiruk won't have anyone to try Slasher on when you find it and the game will just hang after you give it to him. And identify all axes before giving one to Smiruk, otherwise he takes them all and uses them on his Orc victim. If it's the wrong one and he gets Slasher afterwards: hanging cutscene. "

I know its an old topic, but to save making another one.....

I retrieved the axe but when I go back to hand it in Smiruk is nowhere to be found. I haven't activated the zombie so I know he didn't kill him !

Is there any way around this or do I need to go back to an old save?

There is a way to restore and/or teleport NPCs. See the topic Reviving dead NPCs (and maybe Teleporting Anywhere, via hex editor as a reference).

If you are not comfortable hex editing, you can zip your latest save and email it to me (raze@larian.com) to fix.



Each save is a separate subfolder in the '..\Divine Divinity\savegames' folder.
Under Vista/7, depending on how the user accounts are set up, if you install the game to the Program Files path, Windows can create separate savegame folders for each user, and then map that folder to the game's savegame folder (so it will just see the saves for the relevant user).
C:\Users\ %account name% \AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Divine Divinity\savegames

You can zip a file or folder by right clicking on it in Windows Explorer and selecting 'Send To | Compressed Folder'.

Thanks for the reply. Is this a known bug or was I just unlucky?

Usually it is a case of the zombie or other opponents in the area getting close enough to kill or draw one or more orcs away from where they start, but a couple people have had orcs go missing with no zombie or signs of a fight.

It is a known bug fixed by patch 1.33 for CD release of the game. This bug is still present in any digital or modern release of DD based on 1.0029A.

That would explain why I didn't see it before. I still have a boxed copy around somewhere