Rod of Absorption

[red255]

So... theres this quest in the underdark, where you cast a ninth level spell to release a mage, and he rewards you with a rod of absorption with one charge.

now you can persuade for some 8th level scrolls and kill him for 9th level scrolls.

but I'm wondering about this single charge rod. that was meant as some kind of reward. from some mage with 8th and 9th level spells. My character felt he was significantly cheating me so I killed him, but is this maybe some great item?

[Tasi]

Check his alignment. Yeah, he is exploiting you.

[Godsarm]

But...you can sell it to a merchant who will recharge it for you, you just need to either buy or steal it back. If you plan to steal it, make sure the merchant can be stolen from.

It's a good item to equip on the party leader when he must be protected from spells but isn't a Mage that has Spell Trap or a Cleric/Druid that has Shield of the Archons.

[red255]

stealing and buying back rods always felt like an exploit. If it was intended I feel there would be a recharge feature or it be explained at some point by some person. instead the wands at 0 charges are both worthless and stop being in your inventory implying no mechanic to recharge them was intended by the game creators.

[Godsarm]

Originally posted by red255:

stealing and buying back rods always felt like an exploit. If it was intended I feel there would be a recharge feature or it be explained at some point by some person. instead the wands at 0 charges are both worthless and stop being in your inventory implying no mechanic to recharge them was intended by the game creators.

I have a hard time believing that, especially since SoA is set up as a Thief's paradise. The first thing that I do after exiting the Irenicus dungeon is go on a massive stealing spree and the first thing I steal is more Potions of Master Thievery. If it was an oversight, they'd have corrected it in the EE. Since not all merchants can be stolen from, implying enhanced security and only a few will accept stolen goods, it seems to me like it was intended.

[red255]

what you believe is irrelevant.

there is only what is and what is not.

[Godsarm]

Originally posted by red255:

what you believe is irrelevant.

there is only what is and what is not.

Let me rephrase it then...It's not an exploit, it's a function of the game both in BG1 and BG2. So, since it is what it is, it's perfectly legit. How's that?

[kaiyl_kariashi]

it's an exploit due to poor design of the game engine. Selling any item essentially resets it back to it's base reference state, rather than the manual implementation of the individual item the game was given when it was placed.

A lot of items were purposefully given signficantly reduced charge counts as a balancing measure for their ease of access but they are functionally the same as the other versions of the item, which gets reset to the default state if you sell it.

The wands at the end of Irenicus's dungeon coming to mind, which are by design only supposed to have 1 charge but you can get a set of wands and recharge them due to the recharge exploit, including a wand that doesn't appear anywhere else in BG2.

Even if you made seperate item references for each item, aside for the 1 charge wands, you could still exploit the recharge glitch since they wouldn't be consumed as long as you didn't use the last charge, they'd just have a lower maximum charge. (hell you're not even supposed to be able to know how many charges a wand has, something the original first game actually did properly, though you could still make an educated guess based on it's current sell value).

They could possibly fix it so that sold items retain their charge counts and fix the exploit, but I dunno how much work that fix would be or if it would even be possible (though that is harder to speculate on as Beamdog can do stuff with the game code that we simply never can).

[red255]

its not that its a work issue, its a 'fix' that would be a nerf to a single player game. which is not beamdog's philosophy. they wouldn't 'fix' something that causes no harm if you simply ignore it.

in BG1 if I bought rods from vendors I got them with 20 charges of fireball, in BG2 if I got some rods from vendors its up to 50 charges. I'm not sure any vendors in BG2 actually sell wands. beamdog actually added some in during neera's quest line.