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Ess-Eschas

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Posts posted by Ess-Eschas

  1. 4 hours ago, The Almighty Doer of Stuff said:

    What if you didn't absorb the fyora's brain at all, and just replaced the body around it, reshaping the brain to suit the new body but otherwise retaining the memories and personality, rather than absorbing its whole brain and its mind and then recreating them?

     

    That’s the idea! If you move a Fyora’s brain from its old body, and place it into the body of a Drakon, the result would be a Drakon that has the personality and memories of the original Fyora. In other words, that original Fyora and the new Drakon are the same person.
     

    Exactly how you do that doesn’t matter. If you move the brain directly, or absorb it and recreate an identical copy, the result is the same. You have a new creation that is the same person as the old one. Note that I’m not talking about creating memories and emotions from scratch here – just copying a brain that exists already. Creating a brain is hard. Copying one is easy!
     

    As for whether it is possible for a being to change from one creation type to another while maintaining its sense of self, it definitely is. The games themselves make this clear, and even provide direct examples!
     

    In Geneforge 2, we learn how the very first Drakons were created. They weren’t shaped out of thin air, but were instead produced by working shaping skills on Drayks who were already alive. The very first Drakons were previously Drayks. We even get to meet one of these, although this might not be clear if you’ve not played Geneforge 1. In the first game, you meet the Cryodrayk Rhakkus, who lives on Sucia island. You meet him again in Geneforge 2 – where he is now a Drakon. He clearly remembers his experiences on Sucia island, since he talks about them to the player. Here is an example of a being that changed creation type, but maintained their sense of self!
     

    It’s also a demonstration that Drayks and Drakons don’t have brains that are all that different. One of these creations is simply a modified version of the other. If that’s the case, perhaps this is a more general example of shaping practice? Perhaps all creations, or at least creations of the same type, share a broadly common internal structure, having brains that are largely similar to one another. If so, having a creation ‘evolve’ along the tiers of creations would potentially be quite feasible.
     

    49 minutes ago, TM Paladin said:

    I just want to congratulate Ess on finding a way to bring up Thomas Riker in a thread about creation names.  Impressed.


    Yes! Someone got the reference! Hats off to you, Slarty :)

  2. I’m not sure you’ve entirely followed my logic here, alhoon. That’s no doubt my fault for not explaining myself well! I’m trying to argue that the constituent components of a creature are irrelevant – that what really matters is whether the brain remains the same. I’d argue that, in the situation I’m describing, this is highly likely.
     

    Let’s see if I can couch it in your example. Consider a Rolls Royce engine, in a Rolls Royce car. Now, take that engine out and put it into a BMW, adapting the connections between the engine and the car when needed to make it run. Hey presto, you have a BMW that drives! But the engine is still a Rolls Royce engine. Whatever car you put the engine into, it’s still a Rolls Royce engine – even if the car looks like something else entirely. The identity of the engine, and its history of being in the previous car, has not changed.
     

    Using that analogy, consider a Fyora. Someone absorbs the Fyora, and creates an identical version of the creature’s brain. By definition, that is the same brain, so the same experiences, memories and so on are carried along with it. What body the brain is in, or if it even has one at all, is irrelevant. The brain is the same.
     

    In its current experience, that brain will remember a former life as a Fyora, and would act exactly as that Fyora would have done in its current situation. In that sense, it is the same person as the Fyora was. The brain is the same, so the person is the same, regardless of what body it finds itself in.
     

    Why would a shaper recreate an old brain? Well, why would they not? When a creature is absorbed, all the complex information is woven back into the creator’s own structure. So why go to all the bother of creating a new, complicated, tricky organ when you have information about it immediately to hand? Wouldn’t a shaper just make a copy of what they already had available? In that sense, every brain a shaper creates would be a copy of the last creation they absorbed (or, I suppose, the first brain they learned how to create, before they had absorbed anything – which would presumably be harder than copying a pre-existing brain).
     

    Using that approach, Cryoa Yharim and Fyora Yharim would start of having identical copies of the same mind, and thus being the same person. Of course, since they have different bodies, their experiences would quickly change the two of them, driving them apart. When you absorbed Cryoa Yharim, and made a Clawbug, that Clawbug would be the same person as Cryoa Yharim – but not the same person as Fyora Yharim, for that person has now taken a different path through different experiences. If you were then to create, say, a Servile, that Servile would also be the same person as Cryoa Yharim, at least at the time you absorbed them.
     

    I hope that expresses my ideas a little more clearly! It’s hard to really talk about this without being a little confusing, since we’re not used to cloning ourselves in the real world just yet!

  3. For the record, ladyonthemoon, you should be able to recover your code simply by playing through from your last autosave. That will likely place you a few minutes from the end, given all the travel that goes on in the endgame, so you'll only have to play the game for a few minutes, skipping through some dialogue, to recover its end state.

    Why not do it now, and record the code for your later use as TriRodent suggests?

  4. 3 hours ago, alhoon said:

    I find it poetic that you see them as evolving when in truth they are killed, dismantled back to essence and you create the new version. 

     

    Ah, but that’s a question of consciousness, alhoon. If you’re saying that the new creations are different from the old ones, that’s only one possible interpretation. There are others, as Vinlie demonstrates! As with many questions like these, the only way to know with any degree of confidence would be to be the creation itself – and that’s not very helpful from a scientific standpoint!
     

    Consider a teleporter in Star Trek. Person A walks into Teleporter A. As described in the series, this teleporter completely destroys Person A. Their component parts are annihilated, converted into energy that is absorbed by the teleporter. Person A is very thoroughly dead. Meanwhile, somewhere else, Person B is created by Teleporter B. Person B is identical in every way to Person A, except that they are made out of completely different molecules, ones synthesised by Teleporter B. No physical component of Person B is the same as in Person A. And yet Person B walks out of the teleporter believing they are Person A, acting as Person A would, and having all the legal rights and statuses as Person A.
     

    When Riker gets teleported somewhere, the Riker that emerges is a completely different Riker, in terms of the physical components. But, from the point of view of Riker and his society, he is the same person.
     

    Likewise, consider yourself. No living part of your body from 10 years ago survives in you as you are now – all your cells have died and been replaced by new generations. In terms of living physical components, you share nothing with the alhoon of 10 years ago. But I imagine, from your perspective, that it seems as if you lived through all the intervening time, right? That you and the older you are the same in some way?
     

    So, to get to the crux of this, consider someone in Geneforge absorbing a Fyora, and then creating an identical one sometime later. This is exactly the same scenario as the teleporter example, just phrased differently. It might look as if the Fyora died from the creator's perspective, but from the perspective of the Fyora, the creature has a continuous consciousness from the older to the newer version – regardless of time elapsing in-between.
     

    Likewise, think of someone absorbing a Fyora, and then using an identical copy of its brain to create a Drakon (making only those little changes necessary for the new body to function – note, those changes are unlikely to impact personality or memory). Much like the last example, wouldn’t the creature still have a continuous consciousness throughout this – merely suddenly substituting one body for another one? If so, Vinlie’s ‘evolution’ comment is an entirely valid interpretation.
     

    As for why this would happen, why would someone absorb a perfectly decent brain, only to create an entirely new one when they made a new creature? That sounds needlessly wasteful – and would probably be more tiring, requiring more effort. Wouldn’t it make more sense for them just to duplicate the pattern they already have in their memory? If so, the scenario I describe above should be common-place.
     

    I’m saying this just to show that there are different interpretations of what’s happening here. Poetic or not, unless anyone here happens to be a Fyora communicating to us through a dimensional or interfictional rift, we’re unlikely to know for sure what it’s really like! :)

  5. Hello Hotbutter,
     

    Just to avoid any confusion, that little exploit you describe relates to the original Avernum games. This forum is for the updated version of these games, the ones released in the last few years. These new versions are quite different internally from their predecessors, and little loopholes like the one you described have been closed!
     

    For what it’s worth, your exploit is well known around here. Summons aren’t actually necessary to make it work, by the way. It’s more about the party’s placement than how many squares around the party are occupied at the time. Take a look around on these forums for the ‘end combat glitch’. You’ll see that people have done some interesting things with it!

  6. I’m not sure it’s all that controversial a view. These forums are perhaps slightly more biased towards the game than some other places, but I’ve seen some very good opinions and analysis on here from players who didn’t enjoy the experience.
     

    Queen’s Wish is an experimental game, one in which Spiderweb tries out some new concepts. Some people like the changes, and some don’t. As a result, the reviews tend to be a little more mixed than some of the other titles.
     

    But this is the first step in a process. I think it’s worth noting that Spiderweb has said on a number of occasions that it’s been listening to the criticisms they’ve been receiving, and will act on them. The implication is that some of the more unpopular changes are going to be reviewed for Queen’s Wish II.
     

    So keep your fingers crossed. If you disliked the experience of Queen’s Wish I, the sequel might be a little more to your taste!
     

    Also, al_dude, I’d suggest that you try out Nethergate: Resurrection at some point. Since you mentioned Ultima, to me Nethergate feels like the Spiderweb game that’s closest to that series, even if it’s only a standalone game. I can’t quite put my finger on why that is, but it’s probably a combination of factors. Some of the ideas and motifs explored are similar, the way that magic is tied into the world feels not dissimilar, at least to me, and there’s even a simple virtue system!
     

    If you ever feel like taking some time out of Avernum, do give it a try!

  7. This is posted a little after the fact, but I recently remembered that there are a few fans of the Dragonlance series on these boards. I thought I’d post this here just in case it was of interest!
     

    A few months ago, I spent some time working on an illustrated piece of fan fiction, a short story set within the world of Dragonlance. This story, ‘Your Turn!’, takes place within the events of one of the canonical books in the series – ‘The Doom Brigade’, the first novel in the Kang’s Regiment series penned by Don Perrin and Margaret Weis. The story fits in to the gaps of that book, looking at some of the characters in the background, and ends up leading in to one of the events described in it.
     

    For those who are unfamiliar with the series, Kang’s Regiment follows a group of draconian military engineers after a war in which their side has cataclysmically lost. Draconians were created to serve the forces of darkness and to act as their soldiers, but what happens when the war is lost? What happens to the surviving draconians in peacetime?
     

    Unlike the books, my story focuses on baaz draconians, the weakest and most common of the species – frequently used as foot soldiers and grunt labour, and often looked down upon by their more powerful cousins.
     

    This story was written relatively early on in the lockdown in my country, and I was surprised to find that the mood and themes of The Doom Brigade meshed rather well with the concerns and worries of a life under quarantine.
     

    The illustration is a relatively simply study of the baaz form, using a number of different sources of inspiration – yes, even the Dragons of Autumn Twilight movie! It was an attempt to build on and improve how I draw anatomy of relatively realistic humanoids. I’m not quite there yet, and there are still a few features that I don’t have a good grasp of, but I’d like to think that I’m slowly learning and improving!
     

    If you interested in this little bit of fan fiction, do take a look:
     

    https://www.deviantart.com/dermuda/art/Your-Turn-837686271

  8. If Blades of Avernum suffered from serious graphical glitches every time it produced an outdoor section, I suspect there would be far fewer scenarios, and far more aggravated players :)

     

    I would politely point out that this problem is by no means a unique one in Blades of Avernum. There are scenarios that face exactly this sort of issue – that is, using portions of the Avernum maps from the various games of the two trilogies, but only allowing the player to explore so far. One example is 'A Visit to the Madhouse'. Another is 'Bahssikava'. Don't forget what I said at the beginning of this thread. There are very many examples of how designers deal with simple issues like these in the pre-existing scenarios. Don't be afraid to dive into them in the editor, or to play through them, and see how designers work around problems like these!

     

    In other words, don't feel like you have to reinvent the wheel every time you encounter an issue that others will have grappled with before you! If car manufacturers did that, I don't image we'd have many cars on the roads these days ...

     

    That ‘blue’ you talk about is water. Blades of Avernum, as with many games of this type, faces the typical problem of what to do when the end of the world is reached. The map inside the game is only so big, so what happens when the player gets to the edge? If the designer didn’t code in something, you’d get weird graphical anomalies at best, or more likely the engine would just crash entirely. So games like this need to put in some sort of information, something that tells the game what to do if the player sees off the edge of the world.

     

    Some games put in blackness, some put in mountains, some put in generic empty space tiles. Blades of Avernum puts in ocean. It makes sense, if you think about it. The game needs to put in some sort of physical barrier to prevent the player from moving off the edge of the world – and one of the nice simple, big barriers provided by nature is a huge expanse of water, one so large that you can’t see its edges.

     

    You are seeing this ‘blue’ because you’re letting the party see off the edge of the world. You need to make sure they can’t do that – and that’s easy! Just add additional outdoor sections onto the sides of the ones that border the edge of the world. You’ll need to partly decorate these sections to allow for the fact that the party can see into them – remember that Far Sight can extend much further than the party’s vision – and you’ll need to put in some form of script barrier to explain why the party can’t actually explore these dummy areas. Of course, you can’t do that at the fixed borders of the world on the north and west – you might need to shift your outdoor sections around to get the desired effect!

  9. 1 hour ago, Warrior Mage said:

    Avernum 6 is not compatible with Windows 2000.

     

    To avoid the spread of misinformation on these boards, I’m going to need to correct you on that point.

     

    Avernum 6 is definitely compatible with Windows 2000.

     

    If you’re having problems with compatibility mode on another OS, that is a separate issue. If you were running Windows 2000 directly, then Avernum 6 would in principle run straight out of the box. I know that's not so helpful in your situation, but it's important to stick to the facts!

     

    Otherwise, I'm afraid I can't offer you much advice. This is a detailed Windows issue, and I don't have the right specifications to look into it. It may well be a graphics issue – in which case, there would be no harm in focusing your attention there for a while. Try experimenting with adjustments to your system's graphical interface and see if you notice any changes. A change is still important to note, even if the game doesn't start to work right away – that will at least help you to diagnose the problem!

  10. For anyone who’s stumbled onto this problem, and doesn’t want to fight Melanchion twice, I’ve come up with a little script fix. This fix makes it so that, when you've defeated Melanchion somewhere, he doesn't show up anywhere else. You can download it from the link below:

    Double Melanchion Fix.zip
     

    Many thanks to Carranzero, who helped test this out!
     

    Instructions are contained within the file itself. However, I will highlight one particular point. As with all script edits, make sure to back up your game before making any changes! This is just to make sure you can return to a normal version of Avernum 6 should anything go wrong!

  11. Hello Sunking,

     

    You can escape from outdoor combat in Queen's Wish! It just sounds like you're not interacting with the right map border.

     

    To escape from combat, you generally need to run around the battle. If you look at the map of the combat area, you should see that one border has an edge that is tinted a darker colour than its surroundings. It should look the same as the tinting around a town exit. In order to flee combat, you need to move your entire party into this region. Once you've done that, you'll be able to escape!

     

    Unfortunately, that can sometimes be a little tricky. If necessary, you can distract your opponents with summons while you try to make your way around them.

     

    I say this with the caveat that there are a few special battles that can't be fled in this way. If you don't see a border, unfortunately the battle you're in is a mandatory one!

     

    Otherwise, welcome to Spiderweb Software's forums! If you come across any more things you'd like to ask about, by all means do so – we're happy to help!

  12. Tag! Sorry for missing this message when you first posted it, Traute.
     

    Just to confirm what Fireball Fodder said above, the statue you find in the Aranea Cave is only important to the party because of its value. You can’t make any use of it, and it doesn’t apply to any future encounters.
     

    There's no in-game reason to keep carrying it around, so by all means sell it!

  13. For the curious, here’s what I think causes this rather odd behaviour. I’ve placed the explanation in spoiler tags (just so the length doesn’t snarl up the flow of this thread):
     

    Spoiler

    As I understand it, the BoA engine processes the outdoors by splitting it into two different portions of the program’s memory. The most important part of the outdoors from a gameplay perspective is the region in the immediate vicinity of the party – think of this as the ‘active’ part of the outdoors. This is where all the interesting stuff happens, such as your party moving, triggering encounters, seeing outdoor groups move around, etc.. This ‘active’ part of the outdoors is stored in one part of the memory.
     

    However, far away from the party, not much happens. Indeed, it’s wasteful from a design perspective to make anything happen there. The party can’t see it, and doing any calculations there only eats up computational time and slows everything down. These parts of the outdoors need to be in the memory somewhere, since the game has to know what it looks like for, say, drawing the automap, or connecting walls up correctly, but those regions don’t have anything like the same priority as the ‘active’ region.
     

    What BoA does is that it stores this part of the outdoors, let’s call it the ‘inactive’ region, somewhere else in the memory. It’s different from the active region because no code is run inside it – it just exists for the reasons I stated above.
     

    Think of the ‘active’ part of the memory as a big rectangle placed around the party. This region, incidentally, is about the same size as an outdoor section. Everything inside is in colour – active – and everything outside is monochrome – inactive. As the party moves, the rectangle moves with it, with squares at the boundary moving between being active and inactive. Your detailed, colourful region moves along with the party, leaving inactive squares behind it.
     

    set_terrain() works by looking up a set of coordinates, and changing the terrain; it does this by changing the memory cell associated with that terrain to a given value. That’s all well and good when the target is in the active region. But what happens if you use set_terrain() to alter something in the inactive region? What happens if you try to alter some terrain that’s a long way away?
     

    What happens is that the call looks up the memory cell, in memory space, that would correspond to the coordinates it’s been given. But the crunch is that the inactive region is stored somewhere else in the memory entirely, and set_terrain() doesn’t compensate for this. Instead, it overwrites a memory cell in that portion of the memory adjacent – in the program’s innards – to the active outdoor region.
     

    That region, for the situation described by Kelandon, is the party data.
     

    Instead of changing a terrain, set_terrain() in this case will write whatever number it’s been given into some part of the party data. This could be the number of charges of an item, or what item is being held in a certain slot, or what value is given in a certain skill, or what level the character has, or what traits they have, and so on. Every single piece of information about the character can be overwritten. Even their name.
     

    This usually happens with the first player character, but with large enough x coordinates, you can start to affect the others in sequence.
     

    Some really nasty things can happen. Choose a bad spot, and you can crash the game, or even permanently delete a character. It’s not pretty.
     

    It’s also not always obvious when this happens. For instance, for certain coordinates, you can permanently change a character's attitude with respect to the party. This isn’t obvious in the outdoors, but enter combat or a town, and it becomes quickly apparent that this party member has now become hostile to the others forever (despite the player having full control over them – it’s different from charming). This is a subtle effect, not at all obvious at a first glance, but one that entirely ruins a party. There are others like it.
     

    This overwritten memory only seems to be a problem on the right side of an outdoor zone. The call will start overwriting the party data when the party moves far enough away, in the same outdoor section, for this region to move into the inactive memory. In other words, they need to be on the left side of the zone. Thankfully, whatever memory is being overwritten on the other borders, it doesn’t seem to have any noticeable effect.
     

    Those safe zones with odd y coordinates, by the way, come from how the item data is stored. Each item definition has some buffer memory associated with it that serves no purpose, possibly as a holdover from the structures of previous Avernum games, or from some alteration of the code over the course of the design. This memory is never used for any computing, so can be overwritten without any consequences.

     

    To be safe, and to avoid nasty problems happening with your party, follow the conditions in Kelandon’s post. These conditions apply for Mac BoA, but might be different for Windows BoA. If so, I’ll post an update to that effect.
     

    To summarise, be very careful when using set_terrain() at the right edge of an outdoor section!

  14. Hello Max_,
     

    Given that this problem is the result of a recent update, I think it’s important that you send a report about this straight to the game developer. While it’s possible you’re experiencing an isolated problem, it’s best to be prepared just in case this turns out to be affecting others too!
     

    Just send a quick email about this issue to the address below, including all the helpful information you gave in this post:
     

    support@spiderwebsoftware.com
     

    With luck, they’ll be able to figure out what’s wrong, and advise you on how to fix the issue!

  15. Hello 42wolfe42,
     

    That’s an interesting little discovery you’ve made! I’d always assumed that nest was placed there just for the atmosphere, so it’s nice to learn that it was once intended for another function. And putting in a little script edit to activate it is a nice idea!
     

    Generally speaking, it’s usually a good idea to remind people to back up their game before installing script edits, particularly if you’re not completely sure about the content you’ve uploaded. If you check other posts on these forums offering scripts, you’ll usually see people put in a little warning in the first post. I’ll add one below, slightly emphasised so it will catch the eye, so you don’t need to worry too much this time – just remember to put a warning like this on any future posts where you share scripts!
     

    Be sure to create a backup copy of your game before installing this script. This is to make sure you can restore the original version of your game should something go wrong!
     

    Otherwise, welcome to the forums! It always nice to see people finding new things in these games, and who are happy to poke around and see what they can find!

  16. Ah, sniped by Slarty! Still, for my take on the gremlins at least, and for more information about the food caps:

     

    For the sake of reference, the caps for gold and food in Exile I are both 25,000 units.
     

    While it’s possible to reach the gold cap using certain styles of play, reaching the food cap is quite a bit harder. As it happens, for a little fun, I did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. How long would it take for the average player to buy 25,000 units of food?
     

    In Exile I, most food merchants sell food in small batches of a few units each. For this example, let’s consider the merchant in Almaria, who sells food in batches of 4 units. Let’s assume that the average player can click the buy button twice a second. If the player were to start with 0 food, and did nothing but repeatedly click the buy button, it would take them over 52 minutes to buy enough food to reach the cap.
     

    That takes some patience!
     

    Granted, those are fairly extreme circumstances, since a player will probably already have some food, and food can be picked up from battles. But I hope it shows the point. Reaching the food cap in Exile I is hard.
     

    Also, and I don’t mean to be deliberately contrary here, but there are definitely gremlins in the vicinity of Silvar – you encounter them very early on, since they’re fairly weak adversaries! After all, think of the friendly tribe of gremlins north of Fort Exile (who guard a patch of alchemical ingredients in Exile I, and send you on a quest to the giants in Exile II).
     

    By the by, I noticed that this particular encounter in Exile I can rob the party of all of its food, and the game doesn't record this per se in the log. Perhaps it was that that caused your problems, Traute Springer-Yakar, and not a roving band of gremlins?

  17. Hello Traute Springer-Yakar,
     

    I think it’s important to correct what’s been said on this thread so far.
     

    While there are limits on the gold and food you can carry, the limits are so high that you’re unlikely to come across them. It’s not something you should ever really need to worry about! After all, if Exile was so poorly programmed that players stumbled onto the limits even in the early game, I imagine it would be reported widely – and there would be a lot more complaints on these forums! :)
     

    That’s not what you’ve been experiencing.
     

    Given what you’ve said about where you’ve been exploring, I think it’s far more likely that you’ve come across some gremlins.
     

    This isn’t something that appears much in games written these days, but back in the days of the Exile series, gremlins were commonly represented as creatures that stole food. In the Exile series, and in many of its contemporaries, gremlins will not only attack the party and cause damage, but they will also steal the party’s food when doing so. This isn’t always made obvious, since it was in some ways a piece of pop culture. Players encountering gremlins in any game would be wary, since there would be an expectation that the characters would steal supplies, so games wouldn’t feel a need to particularly flag it up.
     

    It’s possible this has happened to you, and that you happened not to notice the little prompts in the game. They’re easy to miss! It’s entirely possible to lose hundreds of items of food in a battle with gremlins if they catch you unawares, or if you’re not used to the mechanic. It always pays to be careful around gremlins, and to attack them from a distance if possible.
     

    There are other explanations, but this seems the most likely to me!

  18. Trying to determine the cause of sound issues in a game is tricky business. This is not least because there are all sorts of possible causes, both on the player’s end and on the game’s end. Working out what exactly is causing the problem is by no means easy, I’m afraid!
     

    Unfortunately, the videos you’ve posted here don’t do much to demonstrate your issue. At least to my ears, there’s no static in any of them. Given that this post hasn’t gathered more replies, my guess is that that’s the general situation.
     

    So, at least based on my experience, it looks like the problem is still based on your audio setup, not on the game. After all, if your audio equipment produces static when the game is played, surely it will also produce static when you watch someone else play the game! It’s just unfortunate that you happen to be experiencing the issue on multiple different devices. Given the way equipment works these days, it’s not all that implausible that you’re experiencing the same issues on different sets of equipment that you own.
     

    I’d like to propose an experiment, just to try and at least record what the problem is. If it’s possible, please could you record a small portion of one of these videos as they play on your device, and upload the footage to Youtube? This need only be a minute or two, and the aim of this is so that we can hear how things sound when played through your setup, not through ours. If you do this, make sure that you’re recording the audio as played on your speakers (rather than writing it directly to video, as some players can do), and try to choose a part of the video where the static sounds particularly bad.
     

    Alternatively, if the static sounds worse when you play the games yourself, then record that instead!
     

    I can’t promise that doing so will lead to a solution, but it will at least help us to define the problem – sometimes that’s half the battle!

  19. Hmm, that’s an interesting exploit you’ve uncovered there. You’re quite right – the cap for skill points does not apply to a newly created party member. It’s not a huge difference, since you can only gain a few levels above the cap, but it's a difference nonetheless. It’s also something you can only encounter near the end-game. I suspect that’s why it hasn’t been caught before!
     

    However, as I’ve said a few times on this thread, it’s not overly helpful us knowing on these boards. There’s not much we can do about a bug like this! So, can I encourage you to take this information and send it Spiderweb’s support email? Even if it ends up not getting fixed in Queen’s Wish 1, which it might not given that the release was a little while ago now, your information will make sure it gets fixed in the sequel! Here’s the address:
     

    support@spiderwebsoftware.com

  20. You haven’t found any arrows because they’re not necessary for this game. You can use your bows without any separate arrow item – just equipping a bow is enough to start using ranged attacks. Just think of the Hand as being well-prepared, and always taking enough arrows with them.

     

    In other words, you can use your bows right now. Give it a try!

     

    Otherwise, welcome to the forums! We’re always happy to help answer questions, so feel free to stop by again if anything more comes up!

  21. The vahnatai enchantress glowered at the visiting adventurers, her every breath feeling like an attack on their very presence in her inner laboratory. And yet, they could feel her gaze looking over their weapons, their scars, their equipment, carefully won over many exploits. Her eyes sparkled.
     

    “Perhaps you may be of some use. There is a tome of great value that was stolen from our lands. I have determined that it was taken by a group of demons over the chasm-filled lands to the north and east. Such a trifle is not worth my time, but perhaps if you retrieved it, I might consider letting you know the secret of quickfire.
     

    “The tome is formed of several sheets of micah, bound by –”
     

    One of the adventurers groaned.
     

    “Really? I thought we done with all the demons. Is this all worth it?”
     

    Another member of the party nodded. And then they started, as if an idea had just come to them.
     

    “Hey, we found this great, powerful sword. We don’t need it any more – we’ve already fought the battle it was important for.
     

    “Say, how about it? The magic sword for your knowledge of quickfire? We get the spell, you get powerful magic, we get out of your hair. What’s not to like?”
     

    Renter-Ihrno frowned. And yet, if the sword was as powerful as it felt, and had the ability she thought it did – it sang of control – perhaps it was a worthwhile trade. If she could better work with the nearby demons, maybe she could make some headway on the summoning projects she’d drafted a few years back.

     

    Maybe talking to these adventurers wasn't such a bad idea after all ...

  22. I suspect we may be talking at cross-purposes. I think Kelandon and I were fairly clear in our explanations, so it’s possible you’re misunderstanding a certain point about the game mechanics.
     

    There is a difference between character creation and character training. Character creation happens right at the very beginning of your time with a party. This occurs when you select a new game, and you are presented with a screen in which you define your party. This is the same screen, incidentally, in which you set the character type for each party member.
     

    When you’re creating a character, in the same screen, you can click on ‘Edit Statistics’. In addition to allowing you to add traits, this also allows you to spend skill points to improve your party. This is the case regardless of your character type. If you select a Custom character type, you are given a full set of skill points to assign to your character as you see fit.
     

    The idea is that you assign these skill points before you start the game. Otherwise your new party will have negligible skills, and will be extremely weak!
     

    If you assign Mage and Priest Spells to a character on this screen, they will have access to the level 1 spells described in the posts above. If you think about it, it makes sense. You’re creating a character with a past, one that you only start interacting with when you create the party. If these characters have trained in magic in their past, they are going to know some spells. By contrast, if you teach them magic within the game, those spells are not just going to crop up out of the aether – they need to be learned from sources that can teach the information to you!
     

    All of this is different from character training. This happens after a party is created, and is something you do during the game itself.
     

    The problem, then, is that you are not assigning points to your characters during the creation process. Maybe you’re doing that because you want to spend all your points at once, but it’s also making life more difficult for you – including the need to teach yourself basic spells!

  23. Just to clarify this, you can gain a level of a spell from a level 3 location at any time – getting to locations too early is not your problem here. In order to raise a spell to level 3, however, you need to do two things, and you can do them in any order:

     

    1. Buy two levels of the spell at a trainer.


    2. Learn the third level from a special encounter (e.g. a book, quest reward, etc.).

     

    If you’ve been using the spell list on the forums to find the level 3 locations, but your party isn’t able to cast level 3 spells, then you may not have bought the right number of levels from the appropriate trainers. If you want to complete your lists of level 3 spells, check back with people you buy spells from – you should see them still offering to impart some knowledge to you!

    If you would like, there is another post on the forums that can help you find these people:
     

    http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/21049-spells-earliestcheapest-to-buy/

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