Daggerfall Workshop Forums

I ran into a weird bug just now.

1: I find the Beldama Coven in Daenia.

2: I talk to the head witch NPC called Vyctolda Hearthart.
(Correction: I was probably mistaken. The NPC probably had a male name even here, I simply did not notice.)

3: She gives me a quest to kill a vampire.

4: I set a Recall anchor at the coven and complete the quest.

5: I recall back to the coven, but I can not turn in the quest.

6: I then notice that the head witch NPC is now called "Theodyrick Yeomton". Which is a male name.

7: All other NPCs in the coven have also be renamed to random male names.

8: I reload and try again. Same thing.

9 I travel to a nearby location and ride over to the coven. This still produces male names, but new ones.


I have tried restarting the game without any change in behaviour.

Is that save when you arrive back with the problem, when you take a quest or before accepting?

This is one I need to look at.

Related issue: http://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4768

Hazelnut wrote: ↑Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:32 pm Is that save when you arrive back with the problem, when you take a quest or before accepting?

This is one I need to look at.

The save is after having completed the quest, before returning to the coven.

And from just a first little test, my gut feeling is that whatever name list is used for the last settlement you were in, gets re-used for the Coven. Even though you have already been there.

Thanks Jay, I had completely forgotten about Interkarma's theory which I think is very likely the cause of this.

I did a bit of additional testing, both to see if I could manage to turn the quest in and to help pinpoint how this bug behaves. And the results were strange.

I tried a few different sequences of loading save games both in and outside the coven. No matter what I just got male names for everyone.

Then I tried restarting the game, and load a character that had never been to the coven. Still male names.

Then I tried rebooting the PC, and load the same game and discover the coven. Still male names.


So I checked another thing: I took a new quest from the coven. And here I realized that the quests get the correct NPC names. But the names assigned to them "live" keeps changing. But even though the witch is called "Alabyctor Buckingwing", when I check my log, it says the quest givers name is "Barbyrra Buckingwing".
Note the last name though. It is the same. I tested this a couple of times and each time the last names match up.

This is a game data related issue, the same happens in classic. However there is a very easy fix which is to use the gender provided by FLATS.CFG. I just submitted a PR that does this. In fact, classic does use FLATS.CFG information for quest NPCs, which explains why the gender is correct in this case.

Thank you Ferital.

Good to confirm this gender issue is separate to the problem linked in earlier topic (related to quest hand-in). That one is still an open problem.