Sorry if this is a redundant topic, but I haven't seen info on this anywhere. I'm at the Test of Purity in the Ophidian ruins in Furnace. The problem I'm having is every time I try to open one of the three doors, the door opens, the Avatar automatically attempts to walk through, gets stuck, and the game freezes. I'm unable to reload a saved game during this time, and my only option seems to be to quit out of dosbox.

Is this a bug anyone has encountered before?

I don't remember seeing this before. Where is he becoming stuck when he attempts to walk through? If he's getting all the way into one of the rooms then it suggests that the test hasn't initialized properly and you might need to revert to a save just before talking to the king - if you haven't spoken to the king near the pillars before going in, that might be causing the problem.

What else is happening in the game right now? You've completed the first visit to Moonshade/Monk Isle/Freedom in order to get there, but what about the other areas?

Are any of your companions dead or not yet recovered after the visit to Freedom? That could cause scripting issues.

Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it.

I'll try and give you as much info as I can, but this is my first playthrough and I'm trying to keep relatively spoiler free, so I don't know if I can tell you about every single flag or whatever. I'm not using cheats or anything if that helps.

I've done the Monitor stuff up till you're supposed to go to the goblin chief village, did the freeing the Oracle quest in Fawn, Moonshade/Erstam/Monk Isle/Freedom stuff you mentioned, though there are probably some loose ends. I more or less gathered up Iolo, Shamino, Dupre and Boydon and went straight for the catacombs in hopes of getting back to the mainland, I haven't talked to Gustacio yet. I have the Serpent Staff from fooling around in Furnace through the Monitor side entrance, which in trying to find out about my problem have read I am not really supposed to have. Got the Blackrock Key as well.

My party is Iolo, Shamino, Dupre, Boydon and Stefano. I don't know if that could be an issue.

By king you mean Zhelkas right? I spoke to him at the bridge but I don't see him near the fire and ice pillars. It's before noon in my save so I don't know if there's a schedule issue.

The Avatar stops a few paces away from the doorway after it's opened and all the sparkles fly. When trying to go through the left door I can see a couple people milling about (music keeps playing and the serpent orb animations keep going, so maybe freezing wasn't the right word). I can't interact with them (or anything) however. I'm guessing the Avatar is getting stuck in some kind of scripted sequence that isn't going right?

Sorry about the long post, but I was trying to name anything I could think of.

EDIT: Something else interesting. I tried to use the Serpent Gate in Furnace and got the attached message.

How did you get out of Freedom with Stefano still following you? Without spoilers, you have some unfinished business with Gustacio.

Stefano should not be in the party at this point. He normally leaves as soon as you return to Moonshade, and it he hasn't done so, something may have gone wrong with the scripting there. I don't know whether that would impact the Furnace events, but an oversized party (normally you can't get more than 5 at once) could muck some things up.

Did you receive the earring and scroll via one of your friends? That could be necessary to help trigger the Furnace events.

Do talk to Gustacio and deal with his experiments. I don't recall with absolute certainty, but I think it's necessary to continue normally. Any other loose ends in Moonshade should probably be dealt with before you leave.

It isn't strictly wrong to have the serpent staff that early, since it's quite possible to find it by coming in the Monitor entrance. The only issue relating to the staff is the pick-up bug (flag doesn't get set) in the original engine; I believe that Exult has a built-in fix for it though.

I figured something was up with Stefano still being around, since he won't leave (he gives the same message as when you are in Freedom), but I figured maybe he was supposed to leave later.

When doing the Freedom dungeon I ran into a problem where the teleporter at the end would send me to the pad in Filbercio's house, then that pad would teleport me back to the beginning of Freedom. I didn't know if that was supposed to happen, but figured I had done something wrong and went back through the dungeon, flipped the tree room lever and the mystery lever again, and went through the end teleporter once more. This time we stayed in Filbercio's house, but Stefano never left the party at any point.

I have no idea what I could have done to break the game this bad, but from what you are saying it sounds like I'm going to have to replay a significant portion of it. I somehow broke Black Gate in a way that nobody online seems to have mentioned as well, but managed to fix that one myself.

EDIT: Following your advice and speaking to Gustacio seems to have fixed the issue with the Purity Test, but I still don't know how to get Stefano to leave the party. I tried reverting back to a save from before leaving Freedom but am running into the same issue with the end teleporter. At this point I don't know how far back in the game I have to go to prevent this from happening.

EDIT 2: After looking at some old usenet posts (!) and screwing around in cheat mode I think I've determined that the egg that causes you to teleport to Freedom in the first place was never deactivated/removed, which is causing the teleporter loop. Weird.

Tried doing that, but you're right, he still was giving Freedom dialogue options, and using teleport to npc to check where he went after leaving showed him back in his little camp in Freedom where you first find him.

The solution I found ended up being to teleport to Filbercio's place, move the egg off the teleporter that was supposed to have been removed/deactivated when Filbercio throws you in the dungeon, teleport back to the last room in Freedom and try to leave normally. Trying again after that I didn't get teleported back and Stefano left when he was supposed to. Then saved, quit, reloaded the game without console activated and continued normal play. I don't know what the next game breaker I'll run into is but it's looking ok so far. Thanks to everyone for your help and ideas.

Unless you do something obviously silly like toss a plot object away, there are only two other likely showstoppers: the serpent staff pickup bug (which shouldn't be an issue in Exult), and using unique scrolls directly when you find them rather than using Transcribe to put them into your spellbook. Dispel Field and Create Soul Gem are the two main culprits there. You need to use each of them several times (and Dispel Field is useful for some non-plot critical things too), so failure to Transcribe will cause you to become blocked.