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Falling Star Question


MisterManlyMan

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Hi. It's been a really long time since I've played Blades of Exile, and looking at my copy found deep within the recesses of my computer, I don't think I've ever played Alcritas' scenarios. I decided to do it justice. I played them all in order, and just finished Falling Stars. But I didn't "win" it, if you know what I mean. I'm replaying it now: so far I've gotten the Runesword, Crystal Sword and Heartfinder and recruited Diomed, Ajax and Ralkan (or does Ralkan count? :p). I've just killed all the orcs in Konax Caverns, but I can't get all the way to the bottom because Ettin is very large and mean. I tried killing it but failed miserably, so I think I'm supposed to get that Konax Minoc axe thing. Only problem is that I don't have a single clue as to where to find it. I've asked Jenkins and everyone in Rokig Kodar but I still have no idea. Anyone out there that can give a little hint?

 

Thanks in advace,

MisterManlyMan

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1.) First, you should know that you can only have four NPC's added to your Party. Yes, Ralkan counts, but IMNSHO he is/was not one of my choices because he's not as effective as some of the others. (I assume you know who all the NPC's are, no? If you don't, say so and I'll list them and their attributes for you.) Also, realize that once you have an NPC in your Party, the only way to get rid of it so you can add another is for the first NPC to die.

 

2.) As to the Ettin; as stated above by Tevildo, do the Mushroom Cave, et al, before you try to finish Rokig Kodar. Konax Minoc is part of your reward fo completing that Quest and, I believe, "Manditory" to accomplish it. Konax Minoc is a "Giant Killer" and the Ettin is afraid of it. IIRC the Ettin will hide toward the northwest when you enter his domain. Skirt around the east and southeast to access the hole to the lower level. With some (Major) assistance, you should then be able to defeat it.

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Thank you both for your responses. I already did the Mushroom Cave, but it seems I missed that suspicious waterfall the first time around. I didn't know there was a limit to the NPCs you can have, but the only ones I've met are Ralkan, Diomed, Ajax, Raven and Silnos. Oh, and Krug too. It seems to me that Gemini wouldn't join unless I have a greater reputation, however that's possible. I also fortunately lost Ralkan to the Flayers, so I think I might go with: Diomed, Ajax, Krug and Raven. Unless there are better NPCs? I've done all the missions in the Operations Center, but I've yet to find the last of the five artifacts.

 

With me luck!

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1.) You're correct that Gemini never joins. However, she is a source of information about several Quests, AND she can/will be found in several locations.

2.) As to the NPC's you can have in your Party, Al created seven characters that are affected by the "Max 4" limitation, they are: Ajax, Alanaha, Byrne, Diomed, Krug, Ralkan and Raven. Due to the different abilities, the preference would depend upon the Player's style of play. If you want, I can give you the specifics of each of these seven NPC's

Silnos and Tranosss are not affected by the "Max 4" rule so you should have the four you prefer before you have the opportunity to add these.

Two others, Pharijin and Emilia, will join automatically for a game specific purpose and then they will, just as automatically, leave.

( My personal choices were: Diomed, Krug, Byrne and Ajax. I believe that "the best defense is a strong offense" and the others were too easily damaged and thus, killed.)

 

Question(s): Do you know what the five "Legendary Artifacts" are?

Do you know that the Rune Sword can, (with a lot of luck) reach five levels?

Do you know there are seven Special Spells?

How about Special Items, such as: Fangs, three Keys, four Books and the five levels of the Rune Sword?

Did you complete the "Scavenger Hunt?

Did you purchase the five items in the Auction House?

Did you do the five Dispatches for the "Nordaker Express"?

Did you purchase the three Properties?

Were you evaluated by the "Image Consultant"?

Did you find three locations for "Weapon Enhancement"?

Did you read six version of the "News Slip" from the Newsboy?

There are several other minor "Tasks" but they are mostly involved with the Major "Tasks".

 

I remembered one other "Side Quest" that you may find interesting. When you are in Genovan's Armory, ask him about "Cursed" items.

 

Still here,

me

P.S. I'm sure that there are numerous Players that would agree with me, but this has to be my personal favorite Scenario; not only because of all the Tasks and Quests, but there are so many "Realities" in these "Fables" created by Alcritas.

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  • 9 months later...

FS if any map deserves one, should have it's own clue book/file. :) Like those for E3 in its' group. Walkthrough/hint book. Bit right above about 'finding all 3 location for enchantment' is tantalizing. One in the giant's forge like from the Eye was kinda crummy - no flaming et al. :) So wondering about the other two. :) Like to find a Flaming augment that doesn't involve cheating maps like NMC.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hopefully, what I've listed above should be a MAJOR 'Clue Book". However, if needed, I can give you specific details.

As stated above, I'm...

Still here

Tonweya

 

Appreciate that, but the gamer in me isn't quite ready for spoilers per se'. Just noticed something irking though about it. After getting the Crystal Sword, and leaving the scenario (first time I lived that long apparently that I never noticed before) it vanishes. Are all the legendary items and other special gear FS-only? Crystal Sword isn't so powerful it'd unbalance anything, that it's FS-only really sucks. And if all the special gear is like that it takes an awful lot away from the motivation to go get it.

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Appreciate that, but the gamer in me isn't quite ready for spoilers per se'. Just noticed something irking though about it. After getting the Crystal Sword, and leaving the scenario (first time I lived that long apparently that I never noticed before) it vanishes. Are all the legendary items and other special gear FS-only? Crystal Sword isn't so powerful it'd unbalance anything, that it's FS-only really sucks. And if all the special gear is like that it takes an awful lot away from the motivation to go get it.

 

Items with custom icons can't be carried outside of a scenario, since the icon is linked to the scenario data and not stored anywhere in the savefile itself. This is a technical limitation of BoE.

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Items with custom icons can't be carried outside of a scenario, since the icon is linked to the scenario data and not stored anywhere in the savefile itself. This is a technical limitation of BoE.

It's a technical limitation I intend to lift, eventually.
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It's a technical limitation I intend to lift, eventually.

 

Seems an easy enough thing to fix given "The Magnificent Six" Katana being a custom item that does persist out of the scenario. Notice the Crystal Sword, in inventory has one of those guess custom icons, so why not just not use that icon if that one little thing is gonna make it poof when you leave the scenario? Someone ring up Al' and tell him to patch his scenario making that one little tweak. :)

 

I can't code to save my life, but I've looked through other games' ini type files often and gather that a lot of the time it's simple stuff like "DOTHIS=True" type stuff that's been set to create the glitch so my understanding of fixing these things is going from the assumption it's not terribly difficult or involved.

 

"Shwdow of the Stranger" seems to have both versions, custom icons making items evaporate, but some don't. The shields at the merchant with 9 def Mithril armor for example. The armor is "persistant." The shields aren't. Thie shields display uniquely so guess that's why they poof upon leaving. But if this the case, and everyone making scenarios knows that (as one might assume,) why use the custom icons at all? Custom monsters ya aren't bringing out of the scenario anyway = good idea. Custom gear that doesn't leave with you leaving the scenario = bad idea.

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"Shwdow of the Stranger" seems to have both versions, custom icons making items evaporate, but some don't. The shields at the merchant with 9 def Mithril armor for example. The armor is "persistant." The shields aren't. Thie shields display uniquely so guess that's why they poof upon leaving. But if this the case, and everyone making scenarios knows that (as one might assume,) why use the custom icons at all? Custom monsters ya aren't bringing out of the scenario anyway = good idea. Custom gear that doesn't leave with you leaving the scenario = bad idea.

 

In the early years of BoE, this particular limitation of the engine wasn't widely known, as this was early in the history of the internet and scenario designers didn't have a lot of ways to communicate with each other and share information. In the later years of BoE, players didn't necessarily take a single party through multiple scenarios as was the original design intent when BoE was first made. Instead, it was common for players to use a high-level party maker to create a party of appropriate level for that particular scenario and then discard it once the scenario was done. As a result, what would happen to the party's items after finishing a scenario wasn't a major consideration for most designers. There are also cases of plot-important or unbalancingly powerful items being deliberately given custom graphics so that they'd be removed on leaving the scenario, but I'd say those are a minority of cases.

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In the early years of BoE, this particular limitation of the engine wasn't widely known, as this was early in the history of the internet and scenario designers didn't have a lot of ways to communicate with each other and share information. In the later years of BoE, players didn't necessarily take a single party through multiple scenarios as was the original design intent when BoE was first made. Instead, it was common for players to use a high-level party maker to create a party of appropriate level for that particular scenario and then discard it once the scenario was done. As a result, what would happen to the party's items after finishing a scenario wasn't a major consideration for most designers. There are also cases of plot-important or unbalancingly powerful items being deliberately given custom graphics so that they'd be removed on leaving the scenario, but I'd say those are a minority of cases.

 

Using an artifical 'twinked' party for higher level scenario is an alien concept to me. Of course you use one party across many different scenarios...What else would you do? :) The 'world' is so obviously unnaturally small that that's what you're supposed to be doing. At least comparing it to E3.

 

Playing daily my usual pattern's Dying Things to about 8th level, then the 'medium' scenario to about 10th (mostly just fighting Areneas for loot n coin,) then Shadow of the Stranger for the Alchemy trainer going in with about 8 or 9k and the rest from the freebie gear, taking enough to do some Strong Curing for maxxing gold, picking up Revive All, and Ravage Spirit and other spells, then with re-maxxed gold zipping in to FS for Fine Weps, then to the main city for shopping going back n forth from the two variable item merchants to about day 31 (dunno what max is but usually a month is enough to get some decent armor and items,) then on to Rubacus for grinding to around 22 or 23rd on each of 6 party members. From here I usually try FS and actually doing it but as of now have gotten just the Crystal Sword, and the 'Rescue' mission with Mage Slayer sword. But then that roadway 'Amubush' wipes us out. :) Rinse, lather, repat. Hate reloading and other 'cheats.' If my party wipes I make a new party. :)

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Seems an easy enough thing to fix given "The Magnificent Six" Katana being a custom item that does persist out of the scenario. Notice the Crystal Sword, in inventory has one of those guess custom icons, so why not just not use that icon if that one little thing is gonna make it poof when you leave the scenario? Someone ring up Al' and tell him to patch his scenario making that one little tweak. :)

 

I can't code to save my life, but I've looked through other games' ini type files often and gather that a lot of the time it's simple stuff like "DOTHIS=True" type stuff that's been set to create the glitch so my understanding of fixing these things is going from the assumption it's not terribly difficult or involved.

 

"Shwdow of the Stranger" seems to have both versions, custom icons making items evaporate, but some don't. The shields at the merchant with 9 def Mithril armor for example. The armor is "persistant." The shields aren't. Thie shields display uniquely so guess that's why they poof upon leaving. But if this the case, and everyone making scenarios knows that (as one might assume,) why use the custom icons at all? Custom monsters ya aren't bringing out of the scenario anyway = good idea. Custom gear that doesn't leave with you leaving the scenario = bad idea.

The issue was simply that the game won't know where to find the item's graphic once you've left the scenario. The fix needs to be done in the game's code itself; you can't fix it in the scenario (unless you want to lose the custom icon). The plan is to copy these graphics into a place that's stored with the saved game, so that the item can be preserved with the same icon even after you leave the scenario.
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The issue was simply that the game won't know where to find the item's graphic once you've left the scenario. The fix needs to be done in the game's code itself; you can't fix it in the scenario (unless you want to lose the custom icon). The plan is to copy these graphics into a place that's stored with the saved game, so that the item can be preserved with the same icon even after you leave the scenario.

 

Rather have a Crystal Sword with Dsgger stock graphic than no Crystal Sword at all. :) Lose the custom stuff if that doesn't persist out of the scenario, that's a no-brainer. Or should be.

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Rather have a Crystal Sword with Dsgger stock graphic than no Crystal Sword at all. :) Lose the custom stuff if that doesn't persist out of the scenario, that's a no-brainer. Or should be.

 

Well, the other issue with the Crystal Sword in particular is that I'm pretty sure it has a special flag, which means it's possible for the scenario to check whether it's in the party's inventory and respond in various ways -- as long as it's within the scenario it originated from. Special flags are removed when your party leaves a scenario (the documentation claims the items themselves are also removed, but this isn't the case). So if it didn't have a custom graphic, you could take it out of the scenario and then take it back in, but the scenario wouldn't recognise it as the Crystal Sword any more, which would cause confusion. This is a limitation inherent in the way special flags work: there's nothing preventing different scenarios from using the same flag number for different items, so they have to be cleared automatically when leaving a scenario to stop items from different scenarios from interfering with each other.

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I wasn't planning to do it quite so soon, but there you go. It took awhile, and I'm not quite certain I caught all areas where I might need to draw an exported graphic, but it pretty much works.

 

Rather have a Crystal Sword with Dsgger stock graphic than no Crystal Sword at all. :)

And how is the game supposed to know which built-in graphic to assign to items when they leave the scenario? The dagger graphic might be a passable stand-in for a Crystal Sword, but it'd be a pretty poor substitute for a Worm Fang. Exporting the actual graphics and saving them with the saved game is easier. (Not that it was all that easy to implement; there were a lot of things to consider. But it's easier than making a reasonable guess as to what built-in graphic could be substituted.)
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  • 3 weeks later...

Playing through FS more of late I've noticed the Crystal Sword is the only non-perm special item. So far. Everything else is persistant including custom special weapon like Mithril Sword, Runesword, and the other Auction House sword with the Fear proc (good offhand with Runesword since little survives the Runesword anyway, having it run off isn't as much of a problem since ya get the 'running away' whack when it does.)

 

So if everything else could be made persistant, having one thing not suggest bad day of coding more than 'the custom graphic's so boss and bodacious' :)

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