QFG4 - Wraith as paladin

[Tinuviel]

Well, I've got a new problem.

I'm playing a paladin; I need to get one of the rituals from the barrow of the wraith near town. Well, I defeat the wraith, but the game freezes after I defeat it -- the screen goes back to the forest scene with the barrow, but I can't do anything. I can't click on anything -- I can't even see a cursor. If I move the mouse up, I can get to the icon bar, but everything is grayed out but the controls and health icons.

Do you have any suggestions on how I can get past this? I'm using the QFG Anthology on Win 7 64-bit. I used the installer on the Sierra Help site to install, and I imported the paladin from the last game.

[Collector]

This is a bug that seems to mostly effect the thief class, but can strike others. It seems to been introduced by the NRS patch. Try deleting two files from the NRS patch, 53.HEP and 53.SCR.

[Tinuviel]

Thank you as always, Collector. That did it.

Should I put those files back? How necessary are they for running this game?

[Collector]

Those files are the part of the NRS patch that are meant to address the health draining too quickly issue on fast machines. Removing them will reintroduce the speed bug, but that can easily be overcome in DOSBox. The latest version of the QfG4 installer has those two files zipped to prevent the NRS bug, but anyone that still wants to use them only needs to unzip them.

[Tinuviel]

Interesting. I thought that DOSBox took care of the speed bug inherently -- I finished playing the game without issue; I believe there's a speed issue in the final scene with Ad Avis.

Ah well, I think I'll just zip them up and keep them in case I have problems. Thanks again.

[Collector]

I think there were still problems with the end with Ad Avis that NRS was aware of, but never did much more with his patch.