Jewels

I loaded a save file in Chapter 6 before entering the graveyard, with the most recent lovetalk involving Nathaniel taking off his ring. I may have encountered a bug here. I was moving from the second floor of the de'Arnise keep to the first, with my party stationed at the stairs except for my PC, so all I would have had to do was select my PC to move to the first floor without triggering the gather party message. So I click on the stairs, and my PC moves towards them, but just as I'm about to get to the auto-save screen, Nathaniel talks to me about the ring. I get him to take it off, but as soon as the talk ends the game immediately auto-saves and I end up on the first floor. I look at Nathaniel's inventory and the ring is still there, unmovable. I reloaded the auto-save to end up back on the second floor, and the unmovable ring is still present. Obviously just to ensure I was doing things correctly I reloaded an earlier save to re-trigger the talk.

I've managed to get the romance working now, with a bit of help from AdvanceRealTime. I think the variable changes to 2 when he wakes from the nightmare and kisses you. I did accidentally enter the graveyard with Edwin in my party though, so his yapping about the Nether Scroll caused the game to freeze when the abduction was supposed to occur.

I think it was convincing him to remove his ring.

Well considering the abduction happens upon visiting the graveyard, I guess it would have to be before visiting the graveyard in Chapter 6.

It's strange because I spent a considerable amount of time in Chapters 2 and 3, completing most quests and even using Ctrl+T to advance the game time, but I never managed to advance the romance considerably. I do recall a few years ago when I didn't even complete the SoA run, where I managed to elicit an outcry from Nathaniel by sleeping with Phaere, but I think that time I also had the multiple romance cheats enabled.

Would that be during Chapter 6 before visiting the graveyard, or can you visit the graveyard first?

I've tried all the methods described so far and I still can't seem to get any text to appear. Both charbase.cre and player1.cre have new strings implemented, along with sound clip references to boot, with the sound clips moved to the override folder and removed from the sounds folder. All NPC subtitles appear.