Many questions regarding game mechanics.

[Hugo]

HI,

More than 130 hours on record, but still alot to figure out regarding game concepts.


My first question is regarding ”curse resistance”.

I’m constantly walking about with all of my front-line characters cursed, since it seems to be pointless to purify them – in just a few days they will be cursed again anyways. In addition, purifying curses is extremely expensive.

Is there any way of reducing the possibility of getting a curse?
(perhaps mental or divine resistance?) What is a "divine"- attack anyway?



Another question,

I’m not sure I understand how the ”divine armor” –spell work.
It clearly states that it increases the physical defense of a character, but what is considered physical damage?

In some cases this is easy to figure out. Like when a solider is hitting you with a mace.

But then there are situations were the ”divine armor” –spell does nothing.

As an example, It does not seem to reduce the power of the attack of an Ulrog for instance, even though the attack of an Ulrog is physical to the highest degree (he’s using a giant mace after all) An Ulrog hits 3 guys in the front row every time he attacks, but why would that bypass the divine armor of the protected character?

Then there are too many other cases where it is unclear what the nature of the attack is.
(Like a Witch launching a wave of ravens against all of your characters, or the Yotung dealing ”tremor” damage to all characters)
It’s very annoying, when you’r facing a strong enemy – even a boss perhaps, and don’t have the slightest clue of how a protective spell actually reacts to this or that attack.



On to the next topic - what determines how much a character is penalized if wearing too heavy defensive equipment? There do not seem to be a linear pattern – is this bound to the heros class or the armor-skill level?



My last question is regarding time. What kind ot concepts does time or days affect?

I have noticed that prices for certain items goes up drasticially as time goes by, but is this actually because of time or becouse the level of my characters? Also, is it bound to time, events, or hero levels, that causes merchants to stop selling certain items?

All in all, is there any reason at all to pay attention to time and to how many days have passed?


Thanks for any help

[wulfster42]

I can't answer the first two, but on time I can help a bit.

I generally use the priestess to heal/refill power points to avoid using up too much time. I never stay at the inn, or rest. This makes blessings more efficient and just basically makes the game go smoother. It does have a few negative effects though.

Time does not stop items from showing up in the shop, but it will mean that the inventory doesn't reset as often. I believe the shops are location dependant, but level may have some effect as well. I do not see time changing what is available though.

First few times I played, I rested/used the inn etc....and I have not noticed much of a difference in anything on the games I have played where less then half as much time passed.

[Hugo]

Thanks for your input. Regarding items showing up in shops, I was mainly refering to the fact that some items (like small heal or small magic potions) will eventually stop beeing sold.

I actually would prefer the tiny magic potions beeing sold longer into the game, since often theese can be given to heroes outside combat to speed things up (healing while camping, for instance, often takes 8 hours not becouse of low hit points, but becouse one or two character are compleatly out of power points).

It is stupid to heal for like 8 hours if the main problem is that someone is out of powerpoints, expecially if the hero beeing out of powerpoints is a bard, or perhaps Gaulen.

If the optimal situation would be to give a character 20 power points prior to rest, then it's much more desireable to give 2 * 10 pp potions than 1 * 20 pp potion. This is becouse a 20pp potion cost around 80 gold while 2 * 10 pp only cost 40 gold.

Reason for editing: Spelling

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

Originally posted by Hugo:

HI,

More than 130 hours on record, but still alot to figure out regarding game concepts.


My first question is regarding ”curse resistance”.

I’m constantly walking about with all of my front-line characters cursed, since it seems to be pointless to purify them – in just a few days they will be cursed again anyways. In addition, purifying curses is extremely expensive.

Is there any way of reducing the possibility of getting a curse?
(perhaps mental or divine resistance?) What is a "divine"- attack anyway

I believe it's either mental or divine resistance and defense. With decent defense and 30ish resist you won't get cursed at all.

Another question,

I’m not sure I understand how the ”divine armor” –spell work.
It clearly states that it increases the physical defense of a character, but what is considered physical damage?

In some cases this is easy to figure out. Like when a solider is hitting you with a mace.

But then there are situations were the ”divine armor” –spell does nothing.

As an example, It does not seem to reduce the power of the attack of an Ulrog for instance, even though the attack of an Ulrog is physical to the highest degree (he’s using a giant mace after all) An Ulrog hits 3 guys in the front row every time he attacks, but why would that bypass the divine armor of the protected character?

Divine Armor does work against that attack. The thing is defense only starts reducing damage once your defense is more than half of the enemy's attack. So if an enemy has 100 attack and you have 50 or lower defense you take full damage. Also the reduction is slow at first. Basically if you have low defense then cast Divine Armor you probably won't see a difference but it does work.

Then there are too many other cases where it is unclear what the nature of the attack is.
(Like a Witch launching a wave of ravens against all of your characters, or the Yotung dealing ”tremor” damage to all characters)
It’s very annoying, when you’r facing a strong enemy – even a boss perhaps, and don’t have the slightest clue of how a protective spell actually reacts to this or that attack.

Those are both physical attacks affected by defense. Worth noting: There are elemental attacks affected by defense, examples include those giant bird's screams (which is flagged as a mental attack, but is affected by defense and not mental resistance).

On to the next topic - what determines how much a character is penalized if wearing too heavy defensive equipment? There do not seem to be a linear pattern – is this bound to the heros class or the armor-skill level?

If you're over armor weight you take a 10% penalty. This penalty will eventually increase if severely overburdened but unless you throw high level plate mail on a mage with few armor ranks this will never happen in practice.

My last question is regarding time. What kind ot concepts does time or days affect?

I have noticed that prices for certain items goes up drasticially as time goes by, but is this actually because of time or becouse the level of my characters? Also, is it bound to time, events, or hero levels, that causes merchants to stop selling certain items?

All in all, is there any reason at all to pay attention to time and to how many days have passed?


Thanks for any help

Any item that has a fixed cost will never incresse in cost.
Any item that doesn't will increase under the following conditions:

You buy some, but not all of a given item (always).
You run out of a given item (sometimes).
You run low on a certain item (rarely).

Fixed costs are listed in the bottom right of an item if it has one. If you don't see a number it doesn't.

It is NOT affected by level or time. Provided you always buy ALL or NONE of the item and never drop below a few of them Lockpicks/Torches/Shuriken/Crystals will remain at base price the entire game. Food will also remain at base price the entire game provided you never drop far below 1 day's worth, but as there is plenty of free food you should never be buying it anyways.

Shop items have 5 levels. Level 1 (the smallest potions) quits being sold around level 15 or when you reach the second town, whichever comes first. Level 2 (the next size potion) quits being sold around level 25 or when you reach the third town, whichever comes first.

So if you want as many cheap potions as possible don't enter these towns until you've done everything you can in the areas already available.

Now there are events that are time based (dogs are an example, if you go slow you get a lot more of them) but mostly it's just a noob meter because noobs will spam rest and get an absurd day count (and then complain about the tedium of food farming or get the mod that removes food management not realizing it was made tedious on purpose so they'd learn strategy and resource management).

[MightyFox]

1. I find "curse resistance" is based on the total defense of the character (armor + evasion). Though a high defense won't prevent curses from occuring I do notice they happen a lot less often on characters with higher defense. I find the same is true for most debuffs in general. There is also the strength of curses and those applying it to consider. I find young hell hounds become unable to curese me after a time, wheras Hell Hounds and Mummies will do it consistently until my defense becomes higher. Ultimately, the best "curse resistance" is just to kill the enemy as quickly as you can.

Also, make sure to look up the curses affecting your character. Some curses won't even affect certain classes at all. (-10pp has no effect on Barbarians for example)

2. Divine armor simply increases your characters defense rating. That's it. It should lessen the damage of physical attacks, but I think your not noticing it because the numbers at play arn't as large as you might have been expecting. For example, a defense of 100 only lowers enemy damage by about 10. That's a rough number, so your mileage may vary, but the best use for rasing defense scores is to diminish wounds, bleeds, and other debuffs, upon which high defense has a much more significant effect.

As far what's physcial damage, if it causes bleeds or wounds, its physical damage. Stuns can also be caused by electricity, but its usually obvious when its a spell effect and when its from being bashed. Certain effects, such as disease and poison, are usually applied via physical attacks, but require resistence to diminish. Defense rating has no effect upon spells. For that you'll need to increase your resistances.

Armor penalties are simply wearing armor that puts you over your characters weight limit. I haven't noticed any real difference in my plate wearing characters vs. my cloth wearing characters in terms of speed or agility, so I don't think armor itself carries any penalty. When you go over your character's weight limits (determined by the ST and Armor Skill) then you take speed and action penalties. I've never gone too far over, so I don't know if they stack or not.

3. In my expereince, the number of days passed is irrelevent. I wish it were relevent, but I have never seen anywhere mention it is. Merchants items depend on character level. No matter where they are, I've found almost all merchants start selling around the same quality goods depending on how far you've gotten in the game and the overall strength of the characters.

Where time becomes relevent is food and how long it lasts.Your characters won't fight well if they run out of food (and will actually start to die on the hardest difficulties) This means every time you leave a town, your timed based on how much food you have in your pack before you have to return. Early on, the map has lots of food lying around so not being well stocked isn't a huge deal, but when you get to the glacier and the desert, that timer starts to have ALOT more meaning.

P.S. Here's a tip for the rest issues your're having. You don't have to rest for 8 hrs unless you have a lot of wounds stacked. "Rest until healed" is good to get your bars back up without wasting more time than you have to.

However, this is why I wish time had more relevence (and hope it does in the sequel). I would much rather be pressured to stock up on items to save time as opposed to resting after every other fight or so. Without that pressure though, item stacking just becomes another chore to me and I'd prefer to take a few hours to restore my bars than burn through my potion supply.

[Hugo]

Any item that has a fixed cost will never incresse in cost.
Any item that doesn't will increase under the following conditions:

You buy some, but not all of a given item (always).
You run out of a given item (sometimes).
You run low on a certain item (rarely).

Fixed costs are listed in the bottom right of an item if it has one. If you don't see a number it doesn't.

It is NOT affected by level or time. Provided you always buy ALL or NONE of the item and never drop below a few of them Lockpicks/Torches/Shuriken/Crystals will remain at base price the entire game. Food will also remain at base price the entire game provided you never drop far below 1 day's worth, but as there is plenty of free food you should never be buying it anyways.

Shop items have 5 levels. Level 1 (the smallest potions) quits being sold around level 15 or when you reach the second town, whichever comes first. Level 2 (the next size potion) quits being sold around level 25 or when you reach the third town, whichever comes first.

So if you want as many cheap potions as possible don't enter these towns until you've done everything you can in the areas already available.

Now there are events that are time based (dogs are an example, if you go slow you get a lot more of them) but mostly it's just a noob meter because noobs will spam rest and get an absurd day count (and then complain about the tedium of food farming or get the mod that removes food management not realizing it was made tedious on purpose so they'd learn strategy and resource management).

Thanks a lot for this explanation. This explain the huge problem I'm having - with lockpicks costs in particular.

So if I always buy ALL available lockpicks, then the price for one item will remain at about 30 gold (or whatever it is) permanently.

So far when playing, the price, for lockpicks in particular, has always risen very quickly to insane ammounts, to about 350 gold/each(!) and this even before reaching the first prince.

Now I understand why. (though, I must say this mechanic seem to defy every possible piece of logic I can come up with)

Also. I never knew the crystals was items, that was supposed to be consumed as hambugers at McDonalds - I thought they were precious emergency objects, and therefore expensive, so only once have I ever used one. But the buying logic seem to imply that they are items that can safely be used frequently, whitout fear of them beeing insanely expensive as a result.

[MightyFox]

Originally posted by Hugo:

Also. I never knew the crystals was items, that was supposed to be consumed as hambugers at McDonalds - I thought they were precious emergency objects, and therefore expensive, so only once have I ever used one. But the buying logic seem to imply that they are items that can safely be used frequently, whitout fear of them beeing insanely expensive as a result.

They almost become a neccessity later in the game when food consumption becomes a serious factor. Especialy if Gaulin's Terrain skill hasn't been leveled

[Hugo]

Originally posted by MightyFox:

Originally posted by Hugo:

Also. I never knew the crystals was items, that was supposed to be consumed as hambugers at McDonalds - I thought they were precious emergency objects, and therefore expensive, so only once have I ever used one. But the buying logic seem to imply that they are items that can safely be used frequently, whitout fear of them beeing insanely expensive as a result.

They almost become a neccessity later in the game when food consumption becomes a serious factor. Especialy if Gaulin's Terrain skill hasn't been leveled

Yes, I suppose I will have to think twice about some matters. And on how I spend my gold as well. Also, I porbably would like to restart, due to messing up the cost of certain objects because the cause to the price increase had been unknown to me.

Also. I think that because of theese factors, I might have over-estimated the value of my thief.
Yet, I think I will stick to my party formation (gaulen, warrior, thief, bard, cleric, summoner)

Or perhaps I'll switch the thief for a mage. Don't know yet.
Or then I could exhange my bard for a mage, but then I would not have anyone left for object indetification etc.

[MightyFox]

Originally posted by Hugo:

Or perhaps I'll switch the thief for a mage. Don't know yet.
Or then I could exhange my bard for a mage, but then I would not have anyone left for object indetification etc.

Mages have object ID as well. It's just more expensive for them. I find the only reason to take a theif is for cheap trap disarm and lockpick. However Gaulin can learn one of those and still concentrate on nature and weapons. I recomend disarm. Edit: I forgot about shurikens. They are useful to be sure, but don't make them the only reason you take a theif.

The problem with mages is they peak at midgame. Like the bard they specialize in crowd control but the bard is a little more sturdy. In all it comes down to whether you want damage (mage) or buffs (bard)

[wulfster42]

I'm a fan of mages personally, although having more then one greatly improves how effective they are. Multiple fast mages with AoE spells can destroy many hard fights without even getting hit. You don't need a thief (Gaulen and 1 mage can deal with the important skills), and while shuriken are great, a mage is more versatile.

I'm running a 3 mage party right now (pally/gaulen/cleric in front). Early game with blessings is insanely easy (don't even need spells with +5 speed/agility/str and 5% exp). You just clobber everything. By level 5 you have all 3 mages able to cast spark for heavy damage, and I was actually able ot take out the big mushrooms at that point (3 casts takes out the poison ones, so generally you only get poisoned once if at all).

By level 10 I think it was you get blizzard, and 3 blizzards is pretty insane for any fights with more then 3 enemies (Still good with only 3, but it makes the larger group fights cake).

Late game the mages might drop off a bit, but even then, having 3 mages that can stun, cause wounding or bleed, along with having aoe spells etc...is probably going to be pretty great. My cleric will get mass regen....and my pally will have the nice defense/evasion aura. Should handle my defenses just fine, while my mages continue to deal with the damage.