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Nephil Thief

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Everything posted by Nephil Thief

  1. Oooohhhh that makes more sense.
  2. when I learned that "khazi" is a UK slang term for an outhouse. The more you know...
  3. @Celtic Minstrelthanks. Guess the "worse" part was down to the RNG then. But yes, I noticed this in AtG so the item was probably unaltered.
  4. Another one in Classic BoE: Amber Periapt and other Poison Protection items make poisoning worse, not better, if worn by characters with the Hardy Constitution trait. Seems like maybe another "reading out of bounds on a table" type of deal.
  5. Sanctuary is actually more powerful than I realized too, because it won't dissipate if you cast buff spells, and there seems to be some kind of check for visibility to spellcasters too (though hard to tell on that). You can Sanctuary -> bless/haste -> rush spellcasters at medium levels.
  6. This might be an unpopular opinion but I'm finding summon and charm spells also underrated. Summon: if they're attacking your summons they're not attacking you. Also free debuff spells from e.g. Demon can be handy against mobs, though by the time you get Demon anything more powerful is going to resist them. Charm: nasty stuff, but charming enemy spellcasters at low levels is *powerful*.
  7. Currently The Etched City by KJ Bishop, because I miss New Weird. Not sure what to think so far. I like the protagonist though. @googoogjoob those two Le Guin collections were childhood staples for me TBH. "Diary of a Rose" probably still informs my political outlook.
  8. FYI a Windows XP VM works great for the legacy version IME, as does Wine if you're using Linux or MacOS. If you're on Windows and don't want to buy WinXP on eBay (or download it from archive.org), a Linux VM with Wine may work just as well, though that's a rather convoluted setup to run a 4 MB game.
  9. @osnola For Weilim: if you're going to assassinate someone, it's best done at night. You'll also want a back route AND your target's keys. Search the town records for a backup key during the day; then wait until night, and look for moldy or cracked walls on the north side of town. For the stronghold cell: if you talked with the home security wizard in Schernbuck (sp?), you might remember that he was experimenting with a species of gecko with highly acidic guts. The geckos outside your cell are the same kind. Drop some food to coax them through the bars, kill the poor critters, and apply their insides to the cell bars. Good luck, have fun, and enjoy the surprisingly relevant political themes!
  10. Sorry I disappeared, Real Life has been a horror show. Fortunately I'm starting a new job soon, and so will have less constant worry about money (though also less free time). Anyway. Another one that really bothers me is melee weapon damage scaling with strength, but thrown and archery damage not scaling with anything. Obvious fix is to have those scale with Dexterity the same way melee scales with Strength. However I think I'd prefer Dexterity just affecting hit chance, and Archery and Throwing affecting damage, for balance reasons. Also Archery should add the bonus on the launcher to damage, not just to hit chance (currently IDK if launcher bonuses even do anything). Edit: oh, I already mentioned this one above. But yeah, will try to implement this... at some point... I guess 😐
  11. Huh. Maybe the GCC warning was spurious. Edit: you're right, it's not the case in C so uh... weird. And I should have remembered that, TBH. Edit 2: the warning was about that particular expression, I think. In any case it's not what I'd call good code style.
  12. Implementing -Wall -Werror across the board, I found some interesting breakage in the monster casting code, in boe.combat.cpp: if ((caster->m_d.health * 4 < caster->m_d.m_health) && (get_ran(1, 0, 10) < 9)) spell = emer_spells[level][3]; else if ((caster->m_d.status[STATUS_HASTE_SLOW] < 0) && (get_ran(1, 0, 10) < 7) && (emer_spells[level][0] != SPELL_MONST_PRIEST_NO_SPELL)) spell = emer_spells[level][0]; else if ((friend_levels_near <= -10) && (get_ran(1, 0, 10) < 7) && (emer_spells[level][1] != SPELL_MONST_PRIEST_NO_SPELL)) spell = emer_spells[level][1]; else if ((target_levels > 50 < 0) && (get_ran(1, 0, 10) < 7) && // <- This does not do what it looks like! (emer_spells[level][2] != SPELL_MONST_PRIEST_NO_SPELL)) spell = emer_spells[level][2]; else { r1 = get_ran(1, 0, 9); spell = caster_array[level][r1]; } that logic on the commented line will never be invoked, because comparing a boolean expression with an integer is always false.
  13. @Salt Monolith IME this isn't the case. One piece of 1 or 2 encumbrance armor is okay; two or more piece of armor with 1 or more encumbrance, and you'll start seeing cast failures. IIRC this was confirmed in one of the munchkin skill breakdown threads a while back.
  14. @The Almighty Doer of Stuff Mm yes, thanks for reminding me about those. Re dumbfound, it actually does work, the problem is it wears off really fast - monsters lose one level of dumbfounding every 4 party turns. Since dumbfounding never wears off on its own for PCs, and magic immune monsters always resist anyway (and magic resistant ones have a chance of resisting), I don't feel too bad about doubling that... at least, once I figure out why my mingw-w64 build of CBoE is unpredictably crashing. Edit: okay that last is an optimization issue. Works with -O0, crashes with any other optimization level. Predictable I guess given the archaic code. Edit: ah, another issue with dumbfounding! It seems unable to actually reduce monster spellcasting level to zero.
  15. Thanks, y'all. @Salt Monolith, noted re bless. I won't touch that in my CBoE fork. @The Almighty Doer of Stuff, yeah, I want to have an explicit fork that changes gameplay and balance a bunch. Legacy compatibility is obviously a priority, but I'm okay breaking that within limits.
  16. This is for things that don't fit in the other thread because they're not broken... at least, not on a consistency or function level; but that I still think were bad ideas. Weapon poison only applies to the first weapon in the inventory list This makes poisoned arrows much more annoying to use, since an archer character has to unequip their melee weapons for poison to apply (including from spells). Monsters/NPCs preferentially summon way too much Most summoning spells (except for Demon and Guardian) just clog the battlefield and eat up turns. I'd like to have monsters preferentially use damage dealing spells, to make battles both more dangerous and over faster. Archery and throwing weapons are useless in terms of damage Already covered in another thread but yeah. As I said previously, I'd like to make them less cost effective than melee, but actually useful.
  17. Feel free to add your own below. TBH I'm considering making a CBoE fork where some of these are dealt with, or at least have compatibility options for enabling/disabling them. Acid So in the final version of CBoE, as in original BoE - Acid has no damage cap for PCs, and each attack (acid spit, touch or whatever) adds to the damage. - Avatar is the only spell that can remove the acid status. Otherwise you have to use items or get onto the outdoor map. - This makes acid pretty much the deadliest thing in the game for PCs. OTOH, against monsters and NPCs - Even very powerfully acid branded weapons do like... 1-5 damage per turn max - The damage does not increase with repeated attacks I'd suggest a cap of 15-20 for both PCs and NPCs. That's enough per turn to still be dangerous without being ridiculous. Also Cleanse and Major Cleansing should probably remove acid. Dumbfounding Dumbfounding PCs works as expected. Dumbfounding monsters/NPCs does literally nothing. Doesn't decrease spell frequency, doesn't decrease spellcasting level, nothing at all. Been a while since I looked at the code, but IIRC the game treats it as equivalent to a curse spell. Bless Stacks infinitely for PCs, but not for NPCs. I'm of mixed feelings about this TBH, since the exploitable nature of infinite bless stacking is kind of fun. OTOH this has enormous effects on game balance, especially in the late game. Webbing Does nothing to monsters/NPCs, but it's one of the most dangerous effects for PCs, because it can bring their AP down to zero. Again I'm of mixed feelings about this, because having giant spiders be "that one enemy" that even the most powerful parties have to watch out for is cool. But I'd be in favor of making webs have some effect on NPCs. As is, their only use is the Web spell blocking LoS. Flame Arrows, Venom Arrows, and Smite These spells do not do a useful amount of damage. Death Arrows works out to half the damage of a Kill spell most of the time, but the other arrows spells do like 5 damage with maxed Intelligence and level. That's more like 1/6 the damage of a Flame or Ice Bolt spell. With Venom Arrows, it's so weak that targets often aren't poisoned at all. Ice Bolt It's just... not powerful enough to be useful ever, especially given its relatively high cost. I assume some wonkiness with the damage calculation. NPC Kill and Firestorm damage are reversed PC Kill does up to 120 damage, Firestorm more like 70 max. The opposite is the case for NPCs. [edit: I'm gonna start another thread for things that aren't broken or inconsistent, but that I consider misfeatures.]
  18. Missile weapons would be fun if they hit more often and did useful damage more often. Maybe if dexterity or archery skill increased missile damage rather than just hit chance? IMO it shouldn't be as cost effective as strength is for melee (the long range is a big advantage already). But as things are, an archer with 20 dexterity, 20 archery, a magic crossbow and magic bolts, and maxed out bless level, is practically useless compared to a fighter with 8 strength, some iron weapons, and maxed out bless. The balance is just really, really bad.
  19. Wow. Have I mentioned I love this scenario? The Magites really are the absolute worst. Edit: OMG Anyway yeah I'm pleasantly surprised by how well this scenario has aged, the usual early 2000s video game flaws notwithstanding. Edit 2: okay have to say though, if I'd known ahead of time how the lich in Balinport has to be dealt with (and that this quest is not optional), I probably would have avoided the scenario. That part is about the lowest low point I can think of in any BoE scenario I've played, and it's made all the more gratuitous IMO by the amount of filler in that part of the game (and also just feels like reaching for extra edginess to justify the R rating).
  20. OMG thank you @The Almighty Doer of Stuff! Let's give that a try. ... Nope. Didn't work. Edit: ah, found the issue! I was supposed to talk to Capt. Viatrix after coming back from Tel'moria, not Gen. Vargas. I guess Vargas not being in his office was a feature, and the secretary not knowing was a bug.
  21. So because I have a bunch of free time from now until two weeks after my second vaccine dose, I decided to complete this hugest ever of BoE scenarios... I'm at the part where I just had to take Sister Elysia to Tel'moria, and General Vargas got back to me on the talking crystal saying basically "Come see me immediately once you're back in Zenith." So I went back to Zenith... and he wasn't in his office. Nobody at all behind his desk. The soldier at the front desk still talks about him being there and gives me an appointment though, so... bug? I think? I also checked the League of Zinlasian Nations and the Governor's mansion, he wasn't there either. Is there somewhere else I have to look, some way I can refresh the town, or am out of luck? [Edit: decided to remove OT stuff on characterization]
  22. @The Almighty Doer of StuffI think Drizzt's page might also be in the Truesite archive? And I've added the files to my archive FYI. Directory structure now looks like game/ BoE-1.2.0a-win32.exe scenarios/ alcritas-final-versions/ [Alcritas scenarios] truesite-archive/ [Scenarios from the Truesite archive] Link is in my signature.
  23. @Celtic MinstrelI know the archived Lyceum had the final version of Falling Stars, but AFAIK it disappeared when Truesite went down, and the Wayback Machine didn't catch most of the HTML let alone the zip files. The version in the scenario archive was always earlier than the one from the archived Lyceum. If there's still an archive of the Lyceum floating around though, it might still have the final version. (And if anyone sends that my way, I'll update the one in my own archive mirror.) Edit: yes, the Lyceum is still archived! http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/blyceum/index.html The links did not get modified so it takes some manual changing of URLs to navigate, but it looks like everything should still be there. Thank you profoundly! Edit 2: grabbed all the final version Alcritas scenarios, thanks. This command worked: wget -r -np -l 1 -A zip http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/ Going to put those in my Google Drive archive momentarily. Edit 3: or not. That grabbed a bunch of Javascript files? Weird. Anyway grabbing them manually worked ok.
  24. @The Almighty Doer of Stuff- oh, then maybe there never was a fix for the item placement thing. I might have misremembered v1.0.2 existing. @Ess-Eschasand anyone else - Falling Stars for me is v1.0.1, and Shadow of the Stranger is v1.2.0. Thanks y'all! @Celtic Minstrel- yeah, the versions on Spidweb's own downloads page are the same as those I have.
  25. @Celtic MinstrelNope, my Google Drive scenario repo is basically just mirrored from there; the versions are the same.
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