The long conf had:
--firmwarepath=/usr/share/qemu:/usr/share/seabios:/usr/lib/ipxe/qemu
Adding that to the short config which had most things disabled made it break as well.
Since it has much less moving parts having most other features disabled I'll continue to use that.
I wanted to make sure why different qemu configs make it trigger or not, and after finding seabios to be related the candidates were obvious.
Default config gets us: share/qemu
BIOS directory /usr/local/
The long conf had: /usr/share/ qemu:/usr/ share/seabios: /usr/lib/ ipxe/qemu
--firmwarepath=
Adding that to the short config which had most things disabled made it break as well.
Since it has much less moving parts having most other features disabled I'll continue to use that.