"My Retrieve spell failed to lock onto anything" (Mage's Initiation, spoilers)

[baronsmoki]

As an air mage, I'm trying to stop Strof's summoning ritual. I cast retrieve on him to try to grab the summoning book, and I got the chime sound & 2 XP, but I still get the same message that the spell failed to lock on.

I've tried casting it about 20 more times, and no luck. I'm assuming it's a bug because I'm getting the XP, but it does nothing. I'm completely stuck.

[GameDevChris]

Could you email the savegame to support@himalayastudios.com and I'll take a look at it. (Instructions on how to do so are in the game's readme.txt file.)

Also, which Interface are you playing the game with?

[baronsmoki]

I'm using the Compact Interface. I've just emailed my save to support. Thank you!

[GameDevChris]

Thanks for sending in the save and for reporting this glitch. Wow, that's quite the major oversight! I'm surprised the bug made it through beta testing and hasn't been reported by anyone else in over two years.

I've implemented a fix, which will be rolled out in the next patch. Normally, I'd simply get past the glitch, re-save the game, and send the save-game file back to you. But in this case, I'm actually using a newer development version of the AGS engine, and my save-games will not be backwards compatible with the older version of the game you're running. However, I've found a reliable way to bypass the issue. When targeting your Retrieve spell on Strof, make sure to position the mouse pointer at the very top of the red cap on his head. The bug causes the game to think you're targeting the crowd of goblins behind Strof, and it prioritizes them (they intercept the click). By targeting the mouse cursor well above the heads of the crowd and clicking only on Strof, that seems to work.

Let me know if that does the trick for you?

[baronsmoki]

That works! Thank you!

[maldaye]

Interesting, I had the same problem in my first air mage save didn't even realize it was actually a bug! I gave up on the save instead, that means I can play air mage again. Thank God I'm locked in quarantine in my property in Turkey for two weeks which means I can enjoy the game without worrying about anything...