Location of elf cloak?

[DavidDraper]

Hey- I am looking for elf cloaks. I have two, but I have forgotten where I got them. I have checked the internet, (different sites say Sewers 2-3, HK 1, and/or 2) but I still haven't gotten any in an hour or two of play on all of these levels. Is this just due to low drop rates? Thanks in advance!

Dave

[forkofspite]

Per a thread from a couple of months ago, Dargoths.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/843260/discussions/0/6278597937774953520/

[DavidDraper]

Hi Fork-

Thanks for your tip. I apologize, I should have specified which game. I'm playing Bard's Tale 1. Any ideas where they drop in BT1?

David

[forkofspite]

Sewers makes that apparant - whoops. I just remembered a relatively recent thread on the same topic, so looked for that.

As for BT1 - I don't remember. However, I do remember that nothing in particular was especially rare.

[CyberPope]

Strange I know I got a ton of them when I was doing my Perma-Death challenge. I feel like I saw it the most in Harkyn's Castle.

[kaypy]

Digging through the Level3 data file, elf cloak first appears in the 1fa4 to 2238 section, which I believe corresponds to late catacombs & early castle. But they are also in the next (late castle) section.

[CyberPope]

Originally posted by kaypy:

Digging through the Level3 data file, elf cloak first appears in the 1fa4 to 2238 section, which I believe corresponds to late catacombs & early castle. But they are also in the next (late castle) section.

How do you look at that data? Always been curious to look under the hood.

[kaypy]

You go to the TheBardsTaleTrilogy_Data folder and you start chucking files into a hex editor.

Then you try to make any sort of sense of it. Possibly by hanging around on the forums enough to remember j_kz's posts on their experiments.

[Marcycle]

Originally posted by kaypy:

Digging through the Level3 data file, elf cloak first appears in the 1fa4 to 2238 section, which I believe corresponds to late catacombs & early castle. But they are also in the next (late castle) section.

My savegames confirm this. My party didn't have any Elf Cloaks before entering the Catacombs, but then had Elf Cloaks after completing the Catacombs. My party had full Elf Cloaks after repeating the 99 Berserker battles a few times.

[DavidDraper]

FWIW, I have played the game about 5 hours now only on catacombs level 3 and castle 1 one, and at this point have 3 elf cloaks. I have piles of all the other loot I could get in these areas (and thus, mountains of gold.) I suspect elf cloaks have a relatively low drop rate; I get one about every 5th or 6th time I clear catacombs level 3 and every 10th time I clear castle level 1.

D

[j_kz]

The loot list for the various areas are composed of two parts, first a number and then the item in question. As an example the first list starts with 05, then Torch, and then 04 a bit later, Lamp, then 0A, Broadsword then 0B, etc, with all numbers adding up to 138 (including arrows) for the first loot area (Skara Brae daytime + cellars lvl 1) and to 187 for the second loot area (Skara Brae nighttime + sewers lvl 1 + sewers lvl 2).

The figures for the Elf Cloak is 09 for both instances in BT1, and I don´t know if this is the drop chance or connected to something else. As I remember it the system did not like it when I adjusted those (but that may have been due to other changes made at the same time), but everything worked fine if I changed the item before the number to something else entirely. So changing 09___ELF_CLOAK___ to 09___BLOOD_AXE___ (same number of digits, completely different item type, no other changes) worked fine and resulted in a Blood Axe dropping instead.

In the same part of the loot list Mithril Arrows occurs four times, all with a 0E before it (just like all other entries for Mithril Arrows), while Ag's Arrows have a 0B here, just like there are at all other entries for Ag's Arrows.

So, no real conclusion, but if that number (which varies from 01 or 04 to 0E) influences drop rates it could be either the relative chance with a higher number meaning more drops, or a priority for a drop, but it seems more likely that main influencec on drop rates is the number of times an item is found in a specific list, which is normally only the case with arrows.

Of course, the easiest way for guaranteed drops is just to edit the loot list enough to get many more chances of the item you want.

EDIT: And I just realized that the figures are actually the number of letters in the item name, which also neatly solves the issue with changing them. :)

[kaypy]

Yeah, there's a number for the count of entries, and a number for the length of each entry. We found that back in the bracers experiments.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/843260/discussions/0/3419934180304059155/#c3419934180313179368

[j_kz]

Yeah, should have remember that. Thanks for the reminder. :)