Can't progress in Black Knights Fortress

[UmbrellaCorp]

The door leading to the stairs from the room with 3 black knights doesn't open, it just triggers the Black Knights to say Die Intruder!

[Stormy]

You need to kill the knights which are saying "Die Intruder!" and then you can progress.

[UmbrellaCorp]

Oh I see, thank you. I need to train up a bit in that case

[Logg]

My first impression was that this must be a bug too. When I checked the RSC wiki article, it claimed that you simply "must evade two Black Knights" (there are actually three in the room) and will not need to kill any enemies. However, after research, apparently it really actually should be very hard to get through this door. It's not as simple as "you need to kill the knights", as stated above, but it's not possible to just slip on through undetected either, like is possible in OSRS. Prior to the game's closure, "Enemies to kill" on the RSC wiki said "3 Black Knights (level 46) unless you can rapidly click your way through the door before they kill/swarm you", which seems accurate with the evidence compiled below. I've gone ahead and revised RSC Wiki to emphasize you probably will need to kill some black knights (though technically it isn't a requirement).

In my own RSC experience, I seem to have only gone through this door one time in RSC+ replays, and I was there specifically to kill black knights and capture their respawn locations (I guess verifying that they didn't change since last included in the 2001 "F2P" cache that I didn't know about at the time...?), so I didn't have too much trouble getting through the door. And it had probably been 14 years prior to then that I would have done the quest originally, so I didn't recall it being as hard as it is.

Here's everyone else's RSC+ recorded experiences that I could find quickly:

At 7:50 in BerryPi's Black Knight Fortress replay, he struggles with it a lot, having to kill two guards before finally it looks like runescript failed to grab the 3rd black knight

In RSC 2001's replay "black knights fortress- interior 2nd- door- spam click thru", he also struggles a lot, having to kill a couple before the same thing happened where it looked like the black knight saying "die intruder" was unable to be grabbed for some reason.

In "black knights fortress- interior 2nd- door- spam click thru (sample 2)", he makes it through the door at 2:32 after killing all black knights except one, who says "die intruder" then he's spamming through the door and it can't grab the NPC again. He makes it through a second time at 3:48, this time i'm not sure why, because black knight with ID 3297 kind of looks like they have no reason to not be able to stop him?

In "black knights fortress- interior 2nd- door- spam click thru (sample 3)" he makes it through at 1:09.

In 1e_Luis's "Black Knights Fortress" replay, he is able to get through at 7:31. Also at 31:10 (weird one). At 47:09 it is weird that he doesn't get through. 48:24 he gets through (i guess the knights all the way hugging the north wall are too far away in this case)
1:00:00 into "ShaunDreclin/06-04-2018 19.18.10 some of grand tree AND black knights fortress AND prince ali rescue" he actually has to teleport out, after doing some impressive juking, the door doesn't let him through. 1:06:12 is when he gets through.

26:56, Tylerbeg goes through the door in "08-02-2018 02.58.30 arena around ice mountain". This one is also strange, the black knight across the table for whatever reason doesn't prevent going through the door.

It is really very strange behaviour. psyduck

The pattern I see in most of these successful attempts getting through the door:

• It happens right after the knight says "Die intruder!!", there is a moment where that assaulting Black Knight might still be "busy" in their dialogue and is unable to trigger the "Die intruder!!" dialogue against the player a second time
• Then also, maybe because that assaulting NPC is still executing its script, and is still interacting with the player, another black knight is not able to pile on and also shout "Die Intruder!!" yet

I'm not completely sure though, it is weird and probably revealing for the runescript engine. I reviewed the code in fortressdoor.lua, it looks correct to me.

I'll leave another comment on whether I think the RSC Sundae engine is treating the lua-runescript correctly in this niche & rare interaction, once I gear up properly for the apparently quite mandatory black knight killing and get back.

P.S.

Door 39 (the first one) can also sometimes trigger the Die Intruder!! dialogue (seemingly randomly, and after a delay...) seen at 30:00 into 1e_Luis's "Black Knights Fortress" run, at 59:25 into "ShaunDreclin/06-04-2018 19.18.10 some of grand tree AND black knights fortress AND prince ali rescue", and 26:00 into "Tylerbeg/08-02-2018 02.58.30 arena around ice mountain". This seems to also be correctly implemented in fortressdoor.lua.

No one seems to have any "Die Intruder!!" problem when going through the doors "backwards", (leaving).

[UmbrellaCorp]

Interesting insight into Black Knight NPC behavior, thanks for providing such a detailed analysis. I never saw "Die Intruder!" while trying to enter or exit the Black Knight room only once inside, however I did notice if you try to exit the fortress to the exterior while not wearing a medium bronze helmet and iron chain mail body it triggers the same dialogue event as if you were trying to enter without those items equipped. Not sure if that's the intended behavior or not

[Rin]

It was fun to read a detailed report on the behavior, I had no idea it could be so tricky. I guess I've always been lucky as I was able to basically spam click my way through the door each time that I have done the quest, at least as far as I can remember.

That said, though, I did recently assist someone in clearing the room because it seemed like it was impossible to sneak by for some reason. I guess it's one of those "YMMV" type of things.