[b25] Cannot rescue lost merchant under certain situations

[haenlomal]

Defect Summary:
If the player agrees to the Assassin Lord's request to join with him, but then decides to betray the Assassin Lord by attacking him, then the Lost Merchant is not rescued at the conclusion of the ensuing fight.

Steps to Replicate:
1. Make your way to the Assassin Lord's lair, but do not attack anyone there.
2. Talk to the Assassin Lord, and agree to work for him.
3. Attack and kill the Assassin Lord and all of his minions, while keeping the Lost Merchant alive.
4. Exit the level.

Expected Results:
The Merchant is successfully rescued. The most immediate visible sign to the player would be the gain of the achievement "Rescuer of the Lost".

Observed Results:
The Merchant isn't rescued. No achievement is granted, and the merchant isn't there in Lost Hope.

Comments:
Please see this post for more details about this. Basically, this bug occurs because the quest status is updated to "evil" at the conclusion of the dialogue. Doing this precludes the possibility of the player backstabbing the Assassin Lord.

The logic can be something like the following:
1. On attacking the Assassin Lord: if quest status is "evil", then set it back to non-evil (may need to create a new state, or maybe LUA allows states to be turned off).
2. On exiting the lair: check if Assassin Lord is alive.
3. If Assassin Lord is alive, and quest status is "evil", grant evil ending.
4. If Assassin Lord is alive, and quest status is not evil, assume player betrayed Assassin Lord and left the Lost Merchant to his fate -- maybe set quest status to failed here.

Alternately, having the exit stairs disappear, as well as clearing the "evil" flag on attacking the Assassin Lord should do the trick.

On a related note, when the quest is complete, there should be some sort of text in the quest log to acknowledge the player rescued the merchant, or maybe the player sided with the Assassin Lord.

-- The Haen.

[Hedrachi]

If your intent is to make the Assassin Lord fight an easy one, the answer is simple - use an attack power on one of the first rogues/thieves/whatevers you see on the lair fight, while the AL and the merchant are both out of sight. Doing so causes them to become hostile (including AL) and chase after you, but the merchant stays in place and is ignored unless you try to talk to him before finishing off the AL.

Edit: nm that, most of the time it works, but with my higher corruptor it didn't. Looks like he took a beating from an assassin in my log.