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Well guys last Tuesday 3/11, I picked up a virus and my PC crashed. :speech:
Could not get it past the log-on screen. It was still under warranty, so the guy from Dell made a house call after they couldn't do anything on line.

Good news, he fixed it. Bad news he had to restore it to factory settings, which meant I lost everything on the PC.

More bad news, I did not have anything backed up. I guess this it the price I pay for waiting until I'm 60+ years old to start learning about computers. But I will not let this get to me. I love playing these games to much for that.

Just hooked up a 500GB external hard drive and have it set up to back up every thing on my PC every morning at 1 AM.

Sorry about rambling. Just had to get it off my chest. I had just finished Jaheira and the Harpers quest and was heading to Umar Hills.

My question, now that I know about Yoshimo betraying me. Is there a way to avoid him getting killed and keeping him in my party. Or would that be considered cheating. And is he worth the effort when it comes to taking him all the way to ToB.

Thanks everyone. Again sorry about rambling.

sonny wrote:
My question, now that I know about Yoshimo betraying me. Is there a way to avoid him getting killed and keeping him in my party. Or would that be considered cheating. And is he worth the effort when it comes to taking him all the way to ToB.

Sorry about the computer problems. As far as I know, there is no way to keep Yoshimo alive without hacking the BG2 game. However, there is at least one mod,[url="http://vlad.blackwyrmlair.net/tsmain.html"]Tortured Souls[/url], which keeps him around. Though, read the various readmes carefully to make sure it's what you want to do. I believe you get saddled with another NPC, as well. That mod does add some new dialogues and quests, I believe. But don't expect any Bioware content for Yoshimo after Spellhold.

There may be other mods that do something with Yoshimo, I'm not sure. Honestly, it's probably not worth the effort. If you just want a good thief, find a higher quality user-created mod or use Jan. Jan makes a very good thief, if used properly.

In an unpatched game you can petrify or imprison yoshimo before spellhold then release him afterwards and use him. He will miss out on plenty of experience though.

If you chose to leave him someplace, you can also quickly talk to him, before he collapses dead, inviting him into your party. These methods however are tricking the game, so you won't receive any further banter from him.

Legally, there is no way to save him.

hey sonny, sad to hear your problem :/

but now you can do the quests in a different order, and if you decide not to take yoshimo with you, you can see how spellhood works without him,


i would advise if you want to get privat with yaheira, do her quests befor spellhood, since there is not that much mainstory after the underdark, although you have still pretty much todo with the sidequests you didnt finish in act 2

Tough break Sonny, you're not alone by any stretch, been there and have the mental scars to prove it.

I did keep Yoshimo alive one run through. I released him from the party in The Vulgar Monkey prior to going to Spellhold, then managed to get him back in before he died, when I returned. However it was pretty pointless really, as Crenshinibon pointed out there's no more dialogue with him, and he didn't appear in ToB. He survived the final encounter in SoA, but when I arrived in ToB he'd mysteriously vanished.

Has anyone ever found out what the point of his black heart is? I'd assumed it was so that you could resurrect him but I never found any way of doing so, I suspect it was a broken storyline that got abandoned by Bioware, which is a shame.

I may be mixing up quests here, but shouldn't you bring that heart to some other temple for his redemption?

galraen wrote:
Has anyone ever found out what the point of his black heart is? I'd assumed it was so that you could resurrect him but I never found any way of doing so, I suspect it was a broken storyline that got abandoned by Bioware, which is a shame.

It's not for a resurrection. You need to take it to a priest of Illmater (the one near the Waukeen Promenade or the one on top of the Copper Coronet will do). And you'll get to remove the geas so his soul might rest in peace. It's worth a massive amount of experience, if memory serves.

Faust This Is A Spoiler

The thread has a spoiler warning in the title. Deal.

I thought Yoshimo's fate was clear. He submitted to a geas from Irenicus, and there is no earthly way to break it. If he disobeys an order, he will wither and die. To preserve what remains of his honor, he feels that his only choice is to die in battle (fighting you at Irenicus's command) and to pray that Ilmater (his god) will take his soul and spare him from an eternity in Hell for his sins.

As Yoshimo explains, "I can wither and die for failing to kill you, or I can fall in battle, and pray that my heart will find purchase with Ilmater. No redemptions, no second chances! Let us get this over with! I stride into the hell that Irenicus promised! Ilmater take my heart, I have no choice!"

That's a clue for you to take his heart to a temple of Ilmater. If you do, your party receives 200,000 experience points. That's all you can do for Yoshimo. Irenicus's geas is too powerful for you to break (perhaps a god could do so, but a mortal is unlikely to receive such aid), and Yoshimo's fate in the afterlife rests with Ilmater (the Crying God), who will determine whether he deserves relief from the torment that his shame has brought down upon him.

The game designers went to a lot of trouble to make sure that you cannot get around Yoshimo's fate. Just get used to it and accept the fact that his time is up.

Look on the bright side--you can restart. Some people enjoy doing that frequently.


As for your PC troubles, I can recommend a few ways to protect your computer from viruses, trojans, etc. in the future. First of all, there are two easy ways to prevent your web browser from going to malicious sites that could upload "malware" to your computer. 1) You can use a customized HOSTS file that will deliberately misdirect your browser to the wrong IP address if your browser tries to go to a site on the list. A good HOSTS file that is ready to use can be found at http://www.someonewhocares.org/HOSTS. 2) You can add malicious websites to the Restricted Zone in Internet Explorer, which will restrict the actions they can perform. I use IE-SpyAd, which is a simple utility that will add thousands of websites to the Restricted Zone.

I also run AdAware manually on a regular basis, and I have Norton Antivirus running in the background at all times. (I use an older version that works perfectly well with Windows 2000.)

If you have a broadband connection to the internet such as cable internet, DSL, etc., then you should use a broadband router with a built-in firewall. I like D-Link and Linksys products.

I can't remember the last time I got a virus on my own computer, but I've helped other people remove viruses from their computers. If an antivirus program can't do it automatically, it can be done manually, but you have to know what to look for. Normally, the malicious files can be found in the root directory, the Windows directory, or a temporary directory. You can usually find them by looking at the programs which your computer runs automatically when you turn it on. If you boot up in Safe Mode, they won't be running, and you can safely delete them if you can find them. There are some really bad ones that run as "services" as well as some that can disable your antivirus scanner, but again, Safe Mode will prevent them from running. The worst ones are the ones that infect your hard drive itself--they can only be removed if you wipe your entire drive. I don't think using a Restoration Partition will help you in that case.

Thanks very one for the help.

Thought since I'm starting a new game I would run the Yoshimo thing by you before I got him, in the event I could take a different approach. So now I know.

Starting the game over did not upset me as much as not knowing enough to prevent the crash in the first place. I had planned on playing SoA through a 2nd time before ToB anyway.

The Dell guy loaded a program called Spy Sweeper with Antivirus and Firewall which he says runs in the background and has real time blocking. He also loaded something called McAfee Site Advisor, which is supposed to alert me if a site is unsafe. It's all new to me, so I hope it works and they are good programs. Keeping fingers crossed. Oh yea, and he also installed a program called CCleaner. Said to run it once a week.

If there's any thing else that a novice like me can use, please let me know.

Thanks again. Have a great day.

VonDondu wrote: The game designers went to a lot of trouble to make sure that you cannot get around Yoshimo's fate. Just get used to it and accept the fact that his time is up.

Yeah, I've always considered Yoshimo's "betrayal" to be a significant and tragic part of the game. Exploits to get around it seem, well, wrong to my style of gaming. I would add, however, that not taking Yoshimo to spellhold is far less interesting than actually taking him. The result is basically the same.

Good luck with the computer issues. Sounds dreadful.

Crenshinibon wrote:If you chose to leave him someplace, you can also quickly talk to him, before he collapses dead, inviting him into your party. These methods however are tricking the game, so you won't receive any further banter from him.

Legally, there is no way to save him.

How about leaving him in the Copper Coronet before setting off to Brynnlaw? He should be standing there when you come back, shouldn't he?

Of course, you might need a thief in the meanwhile, so that's not really a solution. Consider hiring someone else for the job (I recommend Jan for his lively interactions )

Sanguin wrote:How about leaving him in the Copper Coronet before setting off to Brynnlaw? He should be standing there when you come back, shouldn't he?

Yes, he will be there, but he will drop dead as soon as you walk through the door. The timing is a bit unbelievable, but it does make sense in game terms--he failed to follow Irenicus's orders, so he dies.