Love Has A Price is maybe one of the most iconic quests in all of Divinity Original Sin 2. Where else can you think you’re buying a really expensive bowl of soup, only to wake up next to somebody you don’t know with an inventory as empty as the day you were born?
Many players have had the fortune (or misfortune) of stumbling into this quest line, but it can be a bit hard to find and harder still to recover your missing gear if you’ve never done it before. Here’s how you can find the quest, complete it, and handle the consequences without too much trouble.
How To Start The Love Has A Price Quest
Love Has A Price is an Act Two side quest; you won’t need to complete it to move on with the story, but if you’re playing as the Red Prince or Ifan ben-Mezd, it does have some interesting origin story ties. If you’re playing as anyone else, it’ll have some hilarious consequences. To start the quest, talk to Lovrik in the Driftwood Tavern. He can usually be found sweeping around the first floor.
When you talk to him, he’ll insinuate you should try some delicious “soup” he has for sale. If you have high persuasion or the Jester tag, you’ll be able to convince him that you also enjoy “soup”, but otherwise, keep raising the price until he warms up to you. It’ll cost you 250gp at most, with a 100gp fee at the end that cannot be avoided. He’ll ask which type of soup you prefer, and your decision will change which character meets you in the suite. No matter what you say, your companion will always be a lizard.
Meeting Your Companion
After that, Lovrik will give you the suite key, which unlocks the attic door on the second floor of the tavern. Head through that door with only the character who paid Lovrik, and you’ll be able to talk to your companion: either Zharha or Zharat. As a warning, if you aren’t great at rolling with the punches or are playing on a high difficulty, you may want to read about the consequences of the quest before you speak with them, or at least save your game in case things go very wrong.
When you talk to your companion, you’ll have the choice of either committing to the “experience of a lifetime” (according to Lovrik) or walking away at the last moment, which will end the quest. If you choose to go through with it, you’ll wake in the morning with the Lucky buff and not much else.
How To Get Your Items Back
Most characters will wake to their new companion beside them and a gang of bandits huddled around the bed. This is when they reveal that it was all a scam to steal your weapons and armor. Yeah, this quest is a little dark. Your loot isn’t gone forever, but it can be quite the treck to get it all back. The items have been placed in a backpack at the foot of the bed, called the “Burgled Backpack.” This will contain everything your now-naked character had on them.
Negotiation is useless here, as the thieves won’t give you back any of your items and tell you to talk to Lohar instead. You can try to fight before they leave the room, but that’s a tough sell considering that even the most powerful character will have trouble fighting with no armor.
Fighting the Thieves
Divinity Original Sin 2 isn’t the hardest RPG around. There are a few fights that can feel downright unbeatable, however, and this is one of them. Nevertheless, as long as you think outside the box, there are quite a few ways to pull it off. If you move all your items to another character beforehand, you’ll lose nothing when you’re woken up in the morning and can re-equip before getting out of bed. If it’s too late for foresight, you can always use the blue and red teleporter pyramids to juggle characters into combat. They can’t just run upstairs, sadly, because the suite door locks during this event and can’t be picked.
To make this fight as easy as possible, your spellcaster or summoner should be the one to initiate the quest, since their abilities don’t depend as much on gear. Finally, even if you can’t teleport in, you can always try to make a mad dash for your gear at the start of the fight by clicking on the Burgled Backpack.
When fighting these thieves, keep in mind that equipping takes action points, and putting on armor won’t affect your current armor values until the fight ends.
Getting Your Gear Back From Lohar
Your best option is likely to let them take your stuff and disappear. All is not lost! The bag will reappear on a table in Lohar’s lair in the Undertavern, and it will still have the same name: Burgled Backpack. You can talk to Lohar about the bag (you’ll have to work through the main quest dialogue related with him before you get the choice), but he will refuse to give it back.
That’s not a problem, however, since you can just steal the backpack anyway! Divinity Original Sin 2 doesn’t have the most involved stealth mechanics, but with a bit of imagination you can pull it off. If you have a high enough Sneaking skill, you can simply take from the bag like you would anything else. If that’s not an option, you can use the Chameleon Cloak skill to make the sneaking easier or the Teleport skill to move the bag far away.
In Some Cases, Your Gear Won’t Be Taken. Here’s Why
If you have some knowledge of this quest but are confused now that you’ve woken and your gear isn’t gone, keep in mind that Ifan ben-Mezd and the Red Prince have a special relationship to this quest. This means that neither will lose their gear upon waking. Ifan just so happens to know the person running the scam, and the Red Prince has a hallucination about Zharha being the Red Princess before disappearing in a puff of smoke. Tons of players run into these two events naturally and think something must be wrong with the quest. It’s nothing like that. You just found a hidden piece of lore!
