SCI: QfG3 - Unfinishable state, if you bring a horn to the Laibon without entering first

[lwcorp]

After dispelling the Simbani prisoner, a Fighter/Paladin must visit the Laibon and get asked to defeat a dinosaur and bring back its horn as proof.

If you do this, but already posses certain other items which are needed later in the game for the same Laibon (1 Fine Spear, 1 Fine Robe and 5 Zebra skins) then as in the attached saved game, you can't tell the Laibon about the horn, and once you exit his hut you can never return, thus you can't finish the game*.

In fact, the whole conversation at this point is full of bugs:
1) Clicking mouth on yourself does nothing, so you can't leave by saying good bye.
2) You can only ask 2 things.

Interim solution to this situation (shorter):
1) Enter your guest hut.
2) Store either (or both) the Fine Spear or at least 1 Zebra skin in the chest (meanwhile, the Fine Robe is not allowed to be stored).
3) Visit the Laibon and suddenly you'll be able to tell about Dinosaur or give the horn and continue the plot!
4) Don't forget to later take back what you stored.

Alternative interim solution to this situation (longer):
1) Enter your guest hut.
2) Store the horn in the chest.
3) Visit the Laibon. You can talk if you want, but the important thing is to leave (by walking out because of the "mouth on yourself" bug above).
4) Go back to the guest hut.
5) Take back the horn.
6) Revisit the Laibon and suddenly you'll be able to tell about Dinosaur or give the horn and continue the plot!

Suggested solution:
1) Once asked to bring a horn, don't allow to enter the Laibon's hut without it
2) Once you have the horn, skip right into the second conversation

Tried in ScummVM v2.2.0git4477-g0a0e650b61 (Apr 14 2020 06:13:00)

• The food at the inn is charged on Kreesha if you don't have money. Even if it wasn't, as long as you defeat random monsters you'll always get money to buy food. So it's not like the game itself is over, but the plot will be stuck forever without anything new to do.

[lwcorp]

Save game before entering the Laibon's hut with a horn for the first time

[sluicebox]

Fixed in: ​https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/commit/6e743a97efe438b638b3f27e39b853a5b011ff61

This was a difficult set of patches. Reminds me of QFG4. This one was worth doing though, it's clearly affected a lot of people and is easy to trigger. There's an impressive amount of posts out there from people getting stuck by this even though they're doing exactly what they're supposed to.

I *think* that any existing saved games that are stuck should be fixed by this, although you might have to exit the village and return to refresh things with the new rules.

I'm wary about doing too many QFG3 alterations because we know from Ash Lancer's patches that are like hundreds of things wrong. We have to focus on the ones that are worth doing and can be achieved with inline patches and don't really change the game. Also, I don't think any current SCI devs are QFG3 experts. I happily recommend Ash's patch set to anyone who wants to play a lovingly reprogrammed version; this game needs that kind of treatment.

Not being a QFG3 expert, I didn't realize how infamous the Laibon bugs were. I'm happy they're now taken care of and compatible with all official and unofficial versions. (the hardest part!)