Rescue or Ransom a Prisoner - How about this gets either finished or fixed?

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Justout

Recruit
This is the single most frustrating/impossible/ridiculous quest in the entire game. I've never spent so long in a game trying to accomplish one straightforward quest.

What's wrong with it? Plenty. It's near impossible if your kingdom is at war with the other (which, it stands to reason that it would, seeing as that's why they have your prisoner), there's a great many serious bugs and glitches involved with it, and it's overall frustrating.

I don't know what factors contribute to how easily you can sneak into a town, but in my case, I get caught almost every single time. This puts you into a fight where you're equipped with virtually no armor, a quarterstaff, and throwing knives against 5 to 6 low tier enemies at one time. Tiers or not, no matter how good you are at blocking, if you want to do the fight fairly, you're quite simply going to get killed every time. 5-6 enemies at once just isn't possible. The only way to win is to separate or single out the enemies, which, in some cities (like the one I'm trying to work with, Tihr) it just isn't possible.

You can set fire to a nearby village's field, but this seems to have no impact on how well you can sneak into town.

Once in it becomes a great deal more possible until you have to deal with the bugs. Getting the lord to follow you makes them attack you as soon as you exit the prison. I've heard that sometimes he comes out and attacks you even if you tell him not to. Guards killing citizens and shopkeepers.

Really, what is this? This needs serious revision, this one quest is making my gaming experience a lot less enjoyable. I'm about to resort to lowering damage to me to 1/4 and using automatic blocking, and if that doesn't work, cheats.

/end rant
 
If you think about it, this technically shouldn't be available to vassals.  While its not inconceivable that a lord would send you to save his son even if it gets you captured also, it seems more like a quest for a mercenary.  I have my own faction that is neutral with most, which allows me to save lords and keep my armor each time.

The fire in a nearby village only works if you head straight into the town/castle after requesting it at the town, the lord attacking you can usually be fixed by restarting warband, and killing random peasants is strange but if you were a guard called to stop a jailbreak, how do you know which of the people are involved? Safest to capture everyone on the streets I'd say :razz:

But yeah there are issues with it. I tend to only do the quest when all conditions are favourable.
 
The prisoner you are rescuing deciding to murder you is annoying but I never had a problem sneaking in. Well, more like fighting your way in with a stick, but still, you just get really really good at stick fighting. Try zig zagging backwards while swinging left and right. That is my method and I am successful at fighting them off 80% of the time. I think the hardest part is when you have to beat a plate armored Swadian jail guard to death before his buddies reach you (with the stick of course.)
 
escaping from a rhodok town is nigh impossible at times, as usually theres a sharpshooter that looms on the wall right infront of the door and pops a bolt in yo grill before you realize you can move. :evil:
 
I really wish you could smuggle a short sword, or pick, hammer, etc...under your robe (which is where you'd hide the throwing daggers I assume). I generally don't make too much use of pole arms, so my skill with them isn't that great, and it can make sneaking into an enemy town (for any reason) a bit of a pain sometimes.

It'd also be nice to have the ransom option implemented, in case one didn't want to fight it out (or was unable to win). I'm not sure if that's a really pressing issue or not though; while the quest lists it as an option, I think most players would still probably choose to fight, most of the time.
 
Justout said:
Really, what is this? This needs serious revision, this one quest is making my gaming experience a lot less enjoyable. I'm about to resort to lowering damage to me to 1/4 and using automatic blocking, and if that doesn't work, cheats.

Quite amazing these bugs still linger after all this time, isn't it?

To be fair though, I've never encountered them, so there appears to be some degree of randomness to it. As for sneaking into a hostile town being so insanely difficult, I for one have simply chalked it off as being out of my league, only freeing prisoners from towns or castles they'll let me walk in with my weapons.
 
Sneaking in is a lot easier when you are with just a small party. If you stand with 100 soldiers outside the walls, they catch you far more often than with 10.

I agree these bugs should be fixed, though I haven't encountered some of the ones you mentioned.

 
i haven't encounted any bugs yet, but i must admit it's more or less impossible to rescue a prisoner from a town, but what do you expect, there's guards everywhere, it's not suppose to be easy...
 
Hm i completed this mission two times, both got catched and had to fight. When you trying to sneak in enemy city even if you dont doing any quest there always need to fight with 5-6 enemies If you get catched. If its hard to kill them with staff, try to kill one and take his weapon and shield if he have it. When you forcing prison guard to give the keys dont fight that fight if you can (i dont remember right) just go to prison and talk to lord. When you go outside you will receive all you stuff. Just kill everyone around and quest completed. By the way make difficulty to very easy and you should succed. :wink:
 
Has anyone tried doing it the right way?
Visit a town near the keep or city you're trying to break into and talk to the Elder. Go through some dialogue options to ask him to start a fire on the edge of town. You'll have to pay him to get him to agree. How much depends on your Persuasion skill. Then wait till the appointed time. The village will catch on fire. Wait a bit after that, then break in. Voila! No guards. You only have to fight the guard with the key and one solo guy on the way out.
 
As has been said, repeatedly, that only works for the actual breaking them out of prison. To sneak into a hostile town, you still have to fight five or so enemies if you get caught.

For people having trouble with those guards when you're caught sneaking in, there's a tweak here to give you your own equipment when you get caught (rather than the crappy quarterstaff and pilgrim disguise).
 
I always find rhodok towns to be the easiest to sneak in since even if you are attacked by six men at once, they all are thrusting with spears. Down block. Nord towns and Kherjit towns are the worst. Nord towns are obvious, a low tier nord still has an axe. Kherjit towns also suck due to the amount of ranged weapons thrown or shot at you.
 
Sneaking in and prison quest are technically two different things.

Sneaking works without bugs as far as I know.
When approaching enemy town/castle, log text can pop up that you were spotted by town/castle. In this case your attempt to sneak in is nearly guaranteed to fail and you will be forced to fight your way in. The bigger your party, bigger the chance you will be spotted at longer distance. Night/day time might play role too. So if you want to snake in, go alone or with as few men as you can and approach at night. If you get spotted, abort, get away and wait some time. Perhaps till next night.

As for prison brake, there is one occasional bug when prisoner turn hostile to you from time to time and quest can not be finished without killing him, which of course will sent him back to prison. If that happen, just save, exit to desktop, start game again and load. Should work fine. It is wise to save before entering town/castle just to be sure or at last tell prisoner to stay out of fight. That way he will be less dangerous to you if bug kicks in and you can knock him from distance.

Correct way to do this mission is as was already posted to go to associated village, ask elder to start fire, wait for village to start burning then do mission. Number of guards will be greatly reduced (but not always to single one in/out). On the way in to prison, it is enough to kill prison guard, you don't have to deal with others. Sometimes villagers will not start fire. In that case you have to ask them again or try other village. I don't know it it is bug or feature however. In any case, do not enter town/castle until you see village on fire.

Hope this helps.
 
richmix said:
Has anyone tried doing it the right way?
Visit a town near the keep or city you're trying to break into and talk to the Elder. Go through some dialogue options to ask him to start a fire on the edge of town. You'll have to pay him to get him to agree. How much depends on your Persuasion skill. Then wait till the appointed time. The village will catch on fire. Wait a bit after that, then break in. Voila! No guards. You only have to fight the guard with the key and one solo guy on the way out.

Thanks Richmix, I never knew if I was doing it right and now I know I wasn't! So next time I will actually wait until the village visibly sets on fire on the campaign map.
 
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