Bugs (Dragon Age II)

This is a list of all known bugs, glitches and exploits in version 1.0 of Dragon Age II. A patch for PC and Mac updating to version 1.01 was released on 17 March 2011. Another patch, 1.01 for Xbox and 1.02 for Mac and PC was released on April 14. See Patches (Dragon Age II) for further details.
== Current bugs ==
=== Items ===
* Health, stamina and lyrium potions will appear like they have been used and on cooldown even if they were not used at all.
* The Quick Heal / Quick Stamina icons on the Taskbar will often appear greyed out and be unselectable, as if there are no potions left. To fix this, the player must hover the mouse over the controlled party member portrait.
* Removing items that give bonuses to talents such as dexterity, strength etc. will leave equipped items of clothing and weapons that are no longer compatible with the character's current talent ratings. Items will appear greyed out and unselectable but still with the equipped ticks by them.
=== Traps ===
* You can avoid triggering any trap that can be disarmed by running into a nearby wall as you move across it; merely hugging the wall does not work, the character must actively be jogging against the wall.
=== Spells and talents ===
* Party wide buffs such as Heroic Aura will not be applied to companions that die and are revived, or join the party after the buff has been activated. To get the buff to apply properly, you need to re-activate the buff.
* Death Syphon can cause loot to be lost when it consumes an enemy corpse. If this happens with plot items, it may prevent the game from progressing.
* The Haste spell is affected by your party's magic resistance. If your characters have high magic resistance it wears off very quickly.
* The Rally talent for warriors does not correctly extend the benefits of sustained modes to other party members. What this means exactly is unclear, as it was taken from the PC readme file.
* Stealth, Decoy, and Invisible Friend: on activation the enemy sometimes is still able to target you and damage you while in stealth.
* Healing Aura and Panacea only have an area of effect of 1-2m (roughly estimated from a character's height) regardless of their information claiming 6m.
* Backstab and Vendetta: when executed against an enemy whose back is to a balcony (or similar area), it is possible to teleport over the balcony. This can result in a character being stuck in a normally inaccessible area.
* Cone of Cold: sometimes the area in which you aim the semi-circle to aim the attack cannot be moved, forcing the user to quit the attack or attack directly in front of the user.
* Tornado does not work properly and does not increase the critical chance of Whirlwind.
* Auto Attack in combat has a probability that the playable character will simply stop attacking. Witnessed as a rogue. The rogue simply swung their weapons around as they do when they have no target, despite having a clear target, including its label indicator, standing right in front of the rogue. This was corrected by drinking a Stamina draught.
* Holy Smite: This talent is meant to have an Area of Effect of 8m around the Templar. You can set the tactics for the Templar character to activate if x number of enemies are clustered. This allows the Templar to damage a group of enemies across the battlefield.
* Unforgiving Chain's ring will occasionally remain after combat, appearing over item icons for or dialog icons next to a character's name. This will disappear after re-initiating combat or switching to another character.
* Mind Blast will trigger spontaneously for any controlled mage character who knows the spell, even if a different spell was selected from the paused menu.
* In the Subterfuge tree, you can take Stealth, Evade, put some more points in talents that go off one of those, and drop the other.
=== Tactics and AI behaviors ===
* Dog will occasionally not follow the party, instead staying in the last place he moved to during combat.
* During combat, it happens frequently that any Area of Effect talents or spells are locked at a fixed position and the player cannot cast the talent or spell. This happens very often and unpredictably, which seriously affects combat performance.
* The Regroup spell for Anders, or any means of reviving fallen party members, upon use will occasionally continually regenerate their health as if they are outside of combat. They will not draw weapons unless directed to, and after using a spell or talent, they will revert to non-combat mode. This is often triggered if the revive spell is cast while enemies are stealthed or in the case of the Rock wraith "burrowing underground".
* Ranged companions who are not being controlled in combat will always take a break between every attack by swinging their weapon around; therefore reducing their effectiveness by about 50%.
* Companions will occasionally stop fighting during combat, or not initiate combat at all. Manually switching to that character and beginning combat, then switching back, will start them fighting.
* After combat some companions will shout "AH!" or a similar combat noise shortly after combat has finished and the party is moving on. This occurs as a result of Sustainable Skills that are not turned off right after combat.
* The Regroup spell used by Anders, when used in Tactics if a companion falls, will be used even if Panacea isn't activated.
* The Wounds of the Past spell used by Merrill can be used without Blood of the First active if given a tactic to do so.
* After being revived in mid-combat, companions will sometimes stop following their tactics and will keep re-initializing attack. The problem appears to be solved by either exiting and re-entering combat or by opening and then closing the menu.
* Tactics slots with use of an item when moved will not be saved correctly after Tactics Menu is closed. Both the left and right parts of the tactic slot will be corrupted.
* Tactics slots scrolled with the mouse cause other tactic slots to fall out of order, and "Conditions for Next Tactics" lose their targets.
* The cursor used to interact with an object (doors, quest items, etc.) sometimes does not appear, preventing the player from interacting with the object. Switching characters seems to fix this (not always, sometimes only save/load or restarting the game can fix it). In cases where character portraits are stuck highlighted during this bug, it can frequently be fixed by mousing over the highlighted portrait until it is no longer highlighted. 
* During combat, after felling an enemy who is stunned, the enemy, although dead, will still be seen to be staggering in a standing position, though will not attempt to attack the party or exit the stagger to fall to the ground. The only fix seems to be leaving an area and then returning, required if the staggered individual is carrying quest-necessary loot.
* Loot is sometimes be lost when death syphon consumes an enemy corpse. If this happens with a plot items, this may prevent you from progressing in the game.
=== Companions ===
* After Hawke and Isabela sleep with each other and mutual agree not to continue the epilogue claims they stay together despite there being no relationship with them-even if Merrill and Hawke have a romantic relationship to the point where Merrill and Hawke live together and should be in the epilogue together.
* After bringing Anders into the fade, he will not be able to heal himself, even with Vengeance and Panacea off.
* Intermittent screaming/not following Hawke bug. A companion stops following Hawke and simply stands in one position. The companion will warp back into the party when out of range and will engage enemies as usual but will otherwise not move. In addition, the companion screams "EEAAARGH!" repeatedly every few seconds. This bug seems to be caused by setting all of the selected companion's tactics to wait and then traveling to a new area. It can be fixed by switching the selected companion's tactics preset.
* When placing characters, the game does not always check if there is another character there. In dialogs with NPCs, other NPCs (such as guards or passers-by) will often stand in literally the same location as companions, so you might see a companion's face sticking out of a guard's back. Companions will sometimes all generate in exactly the same place when entering a new area, appearing as one body with several heads/limbs. They will sort themselves out once they start moving after the player.
* After defeating the Hurlocks attacking Aveline and Wesley during the quest The Destruction of Lothering, right-clicking on Aveline before the dialogue automatically begins can result in having the same conversation twice, resulting in getting double Friendship/Rivalry points for the Hawke siblings if certain responses are chosen.
* If the Warden romanced Alistair in Origins, and did not marry him or make him king, the Origins epilogue states that he is always at the Warden's side. Then at the end of Awakening, the epilogue states that the Warden and Alistair ran off together. However, in Alistair's cameo in Dragon Age II, he refers to her as an "old friend" instead of his current love. It has him say the same thing if a male Warden is imported who he had no romantic interest in, and does not seem to take into account the correct romantic interest with the female Warden. This mod fixes the bug.
* Zevran and Leliana will not acknowledge their romance with the Warden if you import a save not from Origins (for example Witch Hunt). Their romance dialogues exist, but due to this bug they don't trigger properly.
* There is also a bug that when Anders is in his Justice form, his blue eyes will be lower than his normal eyes. This can be fixed by installing the disk onto your hard drive.
* If you have romanced Anders but side with the templars at the end of Act 3, even though you kill Anders, at the very end of the game Varric will say Anders was the only one who did not turn from your side.
* There is a bug during the Act 3 main quest The Last Straw where Orsino's robes and Meredith's armor turns white when they meet in the Gallows. This glitch can continue and cause large areas of the environment to lack color and texture for the remainder of the game.
* When doing Bait and Switch, the chest in the alienage house will not open. This makes the quest unable to be finished and you forever lose the ability to have Fenris in your party.
* During Act 1 when the player first meets Varric, if the Investigate dialogue choice "How do you know us?" is used, Varric's face will flicker, and the player and Bethany's/Carver's weapons will both show on their backs. This occurs after his first line and during his line about how Hawke has made a name for themself. Choosing any other dialogue option after this fixes it.
=== Quests ===
* Fetch and Return quests such as Waxler's Hat, upon completion you can continuously press the "A" button to turn in the item as many times as you want, gaining infinite XP and gold. This is done by holding out your weapon and highlighting the NPC; as your character puts their weapon away, immediately talk to the NPC.
* It is possible that despite completing a conversation and having the NPC walk away from your character, the conversation will begin again, complete with dialogue choices and the voice of an absent NPC forcing you to complete the entire conversation again to end the quest/conversation.
==== Main quests ====
* Near the end of Act 2, before initiating the quest Demands of The Qun, walking past the Qunari compound at night while Aveline is standing outside the gates can sometimes trigger Aveline's guards to turn against her and attack her. Coming back during the day returns the guards to normal.
* Demands of The Qun - Using Decoy during the fight with the Arishok will sometimes cause him to freeze up and simply stand in place, making the fight incredibly easy. Note however that as soon as the Arishok drinks a potion, he will be able to move again. This bug is only confirmed when dueling the Arishok one on one; it is unknown whether it occurs when fighting with the whole party.
* Demands of the Qun - If an imported save is used in which Alistair is a Grey Warden and Bethany or Carver is also made a Warden, after running into the Wardens and telling your sibling of your mother's fate you may find the game freezes as you move toward the next waypoint marker.
* The Deep Roads Expedition - After Bethany/Carver is infected by the taint and the conversation about looking for the Wardens occurs, the cutscene of actually finding the Wardens will not trigger, thus causing you to be stuck in the Deep Roads.
* Demands of The Qun - Upon entering Hightown the walls and ground turn completely white before (or during) the cutscene. The game remains playable but the bug will persist in Hightown and the Gallows. Reload a prior saved game to resolve this problem; the autosave created upon entering Hightown may be bugged as well.
==== Companion quests ====
* A Bitter Pill - It is possible to begin the quest without Fenris in your party. After entering the Holding Caves it is impossible to leave the area to reform your party. During cutscenes, you will hear Fenris' voice and the camera will pan to where he should be standing, but there will be nothing there. You can still receive friendship and rivalry points with him, despite his not being there. However, killing Hadriana will not trigger a cutscene and it is then impossible to finish the quest, even if Fenris is later brought to the caves. This can be avoided by adding Fenris to the party through the use of "runscript zz_dae_debug" in the developer console prior to defeating Hadriana.
* Sometimes Isabela's outfit doesn't update after she's romanced (Act 2). Reallocating her points with a Maker's Sigh potion can correct this.
* Questioning Beliefs (Anders) - In Act 3 you will receive a message in you journal - active quest - saying "Meet and talk to Anders at his Clinic." When you go there Anders will only say that he is busy with his preparations and can not talk to you despite the glowing quest marker above his head - preventing you from successfully completing the quest.
* Merrill, Friend or Foe? - If you currently are in a romance with Merrill and she has moved in with you in your Hightown Mansion when you complete the quest A New Path, her follow-up quest and cutscene Merrill, Friend or Foe? doesn't trigger. The cutscene that is now missing is the one that the last "Act 3 Merrill Bug" (described below, fixed with PC patch 1.02) caused to run prior to accepting A New Path .
* A New Path - Merrill seems to break her Act 3 quest, regardless of whether she is a friend or rival. The quest is received after Best Served Cold. Upon visiting Merrill to start the quest, you will see the quest chain's last scene, making the chain unfinishable even though you can start it afterward. On the PC, this can be fixed through save editing. (Fixed for PC as of patch 1.03).
* After you have completed A New Path in Act 3, you will receive Questioning Beliefs. The journal tells you that you need to go and speak with Merrill at her home in the alienage, however, no quest marker will appear and the quest does not initiate by talking to her. There is no known fix.
* Occasionally cutscenes will skip several lines of dialogue. In both cases below, the conversation proceeded normally from that point. Reloading an earlier save and triggering the cutscenes again sometimes corrects it, allowing you to hear all the dialogue.
** During a scene which was meant to trigger automatically upon entering the Hawke Estate, it skipped straight to Hawke's first conversation option, bypassing the other character's lines. At this point, the camera also hovered above and behind Hawke's head with no one else in sight.
** During The Storm and what Came Before It the scene skipped straight to Anders' final line of dialogue before he walks away to let you talk to Varric.
* Favor and Fault - When you kill Jeven, he is supposed to drop Aveline's fourth armor upgrade piece, Deflecting Joints - Guardsman Pattern, which adds defense. However, the only items that seem to consistently appear on his corpse are some sovereigns and Cornerstone. For an unofficial fix, try this mod.
** This bug has yet to be fully fixed in patch 1.02. If you have already started Act 3 prior to patching, then save-game editing or other unofficial workarounds are the only solutions. If playing from Act 2 or prior, then the item will drop accordingly. (Reference post here)
* Alone - After finishing the fight with Danarius, in the following conversation with Varania, choosing to not kill her will result in the following conversation at Fenris' mansion not triggering. The only way to fix it seems to be restarting Act 3.
* Repentance - Sebastian cannot be removed from the party after the quest is complete. It's uncertain whether this occurs when all rooms within the Harimann Estate are not discovered or if it results from waiting until entering the Harimann Estate to add him to the party.
* Fools Rush In - When you meet up with Isabela in Hightown at night, after the cutscene you will be ambushed by three raiders. After dispatching them be sure to wait for Isabela to say "check their bodies" before you loot the corpses. Otherwise this will trigger a bug in which Isabela will remain in place and you will not be able to enter the Chantry thus unable to finish the quest. If this happens simply reload to your last save game or auto save.
* Portrait of the Past - When you go to retrieve the portrait, it won't spawn in the chest. Reloading doesn't seem to effect this, nor does it depend on which version of the quest you perform.
==== Secondary quests ====
* Bait and Switch Reward Bug. Hawke will not receive any gold reward despite Fenris insisting that he has made the payment after the quest was finished. This bug occurs when Hawke first meets Fenris and chooses to help him in return for a payment with dialogue option "You better make it worth my time". After clearing out the mansion, Fenris will approach Hawke and claim to make the payment via a Cut-Scene Dialogue which does not physically give Hawke any amount of gold.
* Night Terrors - If you have Anders in your party during the start of the quest and he doesn't have the sustained ability Vengeance, he (Justice) will activate it and you cannot deactivate it unless you get it and manually deactivate it.
** You get the ability for free after completing Dissent.
** Letting Anders/Justice die will also deactivate the ability.
** Swapping Anders out of the party will also deactivate the ability. (Swapping out companions will force the deactivation of passive abilities.)
==== Side quests ====
* Who Needs Rescuing? - In The Wounded Coast when you go to the right of the main entrance and go right again, you will see the leader of the bandits standing there, but you can't talk with him and there won't be any bandits to kill.
* Sketchy on the Details - After the completion, from the Chantry Board, the quest may still be under the active quests section of your journal instead of going into the completed quests section.
* Finding Nathaniel - After killing the first darkspawn mob with the help of the explosives, when you move to the second room, Nathaniel's dialog may not trigger, thus leaving the quest unfinishable.
* Finding Nathaniel - In Act 3, the entire quest may not be triggered if Nathaniel survived Awakening.
=== Locations ===
* In Act 3 during the day, the gate to the Qunari compound is visible but cannot be opened due to it being boarded-closed from behind. At night, only the boards are visible.
* Best Served Cold - during this quest a platform in the warehouse section has an invisible floor, though it is still safe to walk on.
* During Act 1, when trying to enter the docks during the day you get an infinite load screen.
* During Act 1, when trying to enter Lowtown during the night you get an infinite load screen.
=== Hardware and software related ===
* ( Nvidia users only ) Nvidia Driver 384.76 and newer cause random blur events during dialogue. To fix this, enter the Nvidia Dashboard and turn on FXAA as it is set by default to off.
* People in Kirkwall are not rendered and look like ghosts. You can walk right through them.
* Graphic Errors. During cutscenes, people will begin to flicker although scene pieces will not (i.e. walls, furniture). This will frequently happen when speaking to Wesley while he is on the ground and in many other areas in Kirkwall when interacting with someone during a conversation.
* When going to a new area an "Unable to load" window pops up and you are returned to the title screen.
* The loading screen freezes.
* Reaching the save game limit (31 saves) frequently causes corrupt save files when overwriting old files. Manually removing a couple of files seems to fix this.
* Occasionally Hawke's upper body gets frozen in combat stance after battle. Simply pause and then unpause the game and this will be fixed.
* When persistent gore is enabled the blood from enemies behaves as if persistent gore is disabled, disappearing after a while. When persistent gore is disabled blood never appears on your characters, even during battle.
* During side quests, unique equipment does not appear in your inventory after being looted from a chest. This is often accompanied by a white flash.
== Patch notes ==
List of all bugs which has been fixed by a patch.
=== Patch 1.02 ===
* The effects of various follower talents and item properties are now being properly removed and re-applied when loading and saving.
* Anders's default set of tactics will now activate Haste when appropriate.
* Aveline's final armor upgrade is now available during "Favor and Fault."
* Aveline's Retaliation talent no longer imposes a delay when activated.
* The warrior's Rally talent now functions as described.
* The rogue's Lacerate talent now functions as described.
* Party members who are resurrected during a fight now rejoin combat properly.
* Hawke no longer gains random spells or talents after using the Maker's Sigh potion, then saving and reloading.
* Potions, poisons, grenades, and runes can now still be ordered from the Hawke estate after the main campaign is complete.
* Various minor gameplay issues no longer occur.
* "Duty" will now appear on the Chanter's Board even if the player accepted all of the board's quests before installing the Exiled Prince premium content.
* The journal for "Duty" will now update if the player left the Docks (Night) area immediately after killing the Flint Company mercenaries.
* In "Finders Keepers," the door to Woodrow's Warehouse will now open if the player steals the location to the warehouse from the harbormaster's office.
* In "Finders Keepers," if the player leaves Woodrow's Warehouse before finding the crate, it is now possible to return to the warehouse to complete the quest.
* In "Herbalist's Tasks," the varterral's heart is now available even if the player killed the varterral before receiving the quest.
* Merrill no longer refers to the aftermath of "A New Path" before the plot has been completed.
* Varric is no longer confused about which character Hawke has been romancing.
* Various minor story-scripting issues no longer occur.
* Varric's Embellishment talent no longer incorrectly refers to movement speed.
* It is now easier to select party members by clicking on their portraits when the level-up arrow is displayed.
* The game now functions correctly if the Windows desktop is set to 150% size.
* The video options menu now allows a wider full-screen gamma range.
* Various issues specific to DirectX 11 no longer occur.
* Various technical changes should improve performance and limit crashes.
==== Bugs prior to patch ====
* Maker's Sigh can be abused using Saving and Reloading technique to attain 1 more Talent/Spell point each time. However, it is possible to go over the spell points limit (having more spell points than the total spells available) which will disable your character from leaving skill selection screen after spells selection. This is fixed by Patch 1.02
* Maker's Sigh triggers a game breaking bug that reverts any positive Passive Bonuses (provided by current Gear or Skills) into permanent negative modifier. For example, using Maker's Sigh after taking Shadow Specialization for a Rogue with Pinpoint Strike unlocked will give Hawke -25% Critical Damage permanently. This is fixed by Patch 1.02
* Shields Bug. Characters who use shields have an essentially unavoidable bug involving their armor rating. Whenever a new shield is equipped, the difference in armor rating between the shields will be permanently added to the character's armor rating, in addition to the new shield's armor. **Not retroactively fixed**
* Item sets Bug. Removing an item set will (correctly) remove the bonus stats and the set bonus skill from your abilities window. However, after a reload, set bonus abilities may show up on your abilities list again even though you are no longer wearing that item set, and are not receiving those bonuses. This can become dangerous to your gameplay because the game believes that you already have the bonus, and so re-equipping the item set will not apply the bonus; however removing the set items again will remove stats equal to the bonus you should have received, causing permanent stat loss. Saving and loading will yet again erroneously apply the set bonus skill to your abilities without applying the associated stats, allowing this error to occur cumulatively, akin to the Isabela/Sebastian Friendship bugs. This is fixed by Patch 1.02
* Isabela's Game Breaking Friendship Bug. The game will wrongly apply Isabela's and Sebastian's friendship bonuses to the PC (+5 attack speed/+5 damage reduction, respectively); basically the game will assume the bonuses are active even when they aren't, and then "remove" them by subtracting 5 from the affected value. Over time, this continual lowering of your character's stats can have your characters taking double damage and attacking in slow motion. More details here: http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2299 (unofficial PC patch) and here: http://forum.bioware.com/topic/192897-hawke-stuck-in-slow-motion-animation-bioware-response-and-temporary-solution-included/ (tips on preventing the bug's effects).This is fixed by Patch 1.02
* Isabela's Game Breaking Friendship Bug. Befriending Isabela will cause her Thumbs Up ability to activate, which is extremely buggy. It will slowly confer a permanent and increasing penalty to attack speed, eventually making Hawke crippled/unusable. More information can be found here: http://forum.bioware.com/topic/194229-isabella-thumbs-up-problem-solved/, http://forum.bioware.com/topic/190916-do-not-use-sebastian-or-isabella-if-they-are-friends/ This is fixed by Patch 1.02 
* Sebastian's Game Breaking Friendship Bug. The exact same issue exists for Sebastian. His friendship passive will slowly lower Hawke's damage resistance by an increasingly greater amount until he is taking massive amounts of damage and dying very quickly. This is fixed by Patch 1.02
=== Patch 1.01 ===
* Save game issues on single core machines
* Game asking for non-existent drives
* Release control issues where some players were unable to unlock correctly
* Steam-specific issue related to VO not playing after switching languages
 
Category:Dragon Age II