joleneth

I've certainly switched in to combat to run across conveyor belts. I didn't do it in the golem factory, since I quite enjoyed that, but I didn't have qualms about doing it in the new factory. This would be interesting. Just thinking about it again, I opened an old save and can confirm that rings of skill reduce encumbrance - my mage can still cast when wearing iron plate (enc 4) if they've also got a gold ring of skill equipped. This certainly isn't the case for Exile 3. I'll need to keep an eye out for one on my next playthough, although having done one a few months ago that'll probably be in 5 years or so

If you have enough defence, any item with encumbrance of two or more will be reduced by one. An item with 1 encumbrance will sometimes be reduced by one. As @osnola says, one item with 3 encumbrance would never reduce AP, and one item of 4 encumbrance would always reduce AP. One item of 2enc and one item of 1enc would also never reduce AP, since the 2 encumbrance is guaranteed to be reduced. You could even have two items with 2 enc and not take a hit. Three items of 1 enc will, however, sometimes give a hit, but the chances aren't very high if you've maxed out defence (~1.5%, if I'm counting right - three chances of 99/130). Even at 10 defence, three chances at 77/130 works out at having AP reduced ~6.8% of the time, or about 1 in 15. If you're interested, in the original release it uses the "hit chance" table, which is (from 0-20): 20,30,40,45,50,55,60,65,69,73, 77,81,84,87,90,92,94,96,97,98,99

Ah, that's interesting. It's this from the open Blades? I looked at the source of the originally released code, since I understand a lot of bugs have since been fixed. Curiously, in the Mac version, it checks all 24 slots - the bug is only in the Windows version. I guess Jeff reckoned Windows users needed all the help they can get I agree about generally avoiding plate, getting the full AP is really worth the lower defence in my opinion (especially with an item to boost speed for a second melee attacks). The resist all that Pachtar's plate gave was just too good to pass up, though. In the end I managed the final fights pretty easily, so I think it didn't make too much difference either way. I must have shot by accident, so ended up with everyone on the map being hostile. It didn't change the ending. I really enjoy having the released code to look through, I like understanding the mechanics of things so I can decide whether it's worth equipping something or not. I know that's not everyone's idea of fun.

Just wondering what everyone's thoughts were on exploiting bugs in game? I've just found Pachtar's Plate in E3, and was playing around with equipment combinations to see how the encumbrance affected APs. Weirdly I found two different characters ended up with different AP for the same gear, and after digging into the original Blades source I found that only the encumbrance from the first 16 of 24 inventory items is taken into account. There's really no right answer. I don't much enjoy dying, so why not? On the other hand, deliberately exploiting this feels sort of weak - it's all on a slope to just hacking savefiles to make immortal characters, which I know I wouldn't enjoy. On the other other hand, it turns out I've been accidentally exploiting this for a while now, and it feels obtuse to deliberately punish myself by not doing it now I know. I guess I'll continue to exploit it but not abuse it, 4 or 5 encumbrance with no AP hit, which I was already playing before I found out. I have enough rings/boots of speed to bring my three fighters up to 5 AP, which lets them get in that second melee hit, so it's really quite an advantage. I've seen a few different takes on here for related things, so was just curious about what people thought. Cheers, //joleneth

I haven't tried it, but you might manage to install Windows 3.1 inside DOSBox, which should come out much smaller. There are a few posts on these forums about doing it on Windows and Mac.

Thank you for the extra stats @Motardo, this is exactly what I was looking for. I think decreasing the encumbrance is actually the easiest explanation. I opened up an Exile1 save I have, my mage a defence skill of 4 and has magic chain mail equipped for an encumbrance of 2. With the fang necklace, I manage 10/10 attempts to cast (just set him as active in combat - you don't even need to cast a spell, the check is done when the select spell dialogue comes up). Without the fang necklace, he failed 4 times out of 10. Simply increasing defence by a couple of points wouldn't work this well.

It's great that you're looking into this. Are you decompiling the code to look at these, or using something like a hex editor? I had wondered why the Blades source had the short and long description, I wondered if it was to provide compatibility for parts of the code that hadn't been rewritten from older versions. That obviously doesn't make sense if you see it in Exile 1. If you only see some items listed twice, it's possible they're just duplicates - I know there are two lemonwood bows in Exile 1 with different bonuses, and I think there are also two yew bows with different (gold) values. This seemed to crop up for a few other items too.

Ah, thanks, I should maybe have thought of that myself.

I think what you see in game (at least Exile 1) is the item level (0,1,2, respectively, for bronze, silver, gold rings of protection, and 0 for the fang necklace, although zeros show up as empty boxes), rather than the item ability strength. Yes, it seems that way, it's a neat way of doing it. There weren't any matches for "fang necklace" or "ring of protection" in the game files, so I looked a bit further afield. Both strings also crop up in the three bundled scenarios, but it's binary data so I can't just read the values out. Of course, the stats could also have changed since Exile 1.

Poking around the BOE code also gives some other answers, as you expect. A ring of skill has an item ability level of 2,5,8 for bronze, silver and gold, respectively. A fang necklace has an ability level of 4. The other items aren't in the list (PC editor/ITEMDATA.H in the original open source BOE). I also looked to see if I could answer the question by @Walter (in 2006! but it's not like the game has changed since then 😅) about spell failure and encumbrance, but the behaviour seems to have changed between Exile 1 and BOE. In BOE, the encumbrance for each item can be reduced by up to 1. Also, the chances of reducing the encumbrance of an item with 1 encumbrance is higher, and is guaranteed for a sufficiently high defence skill, so you can wear as many items with 1 encumbrance as you like as long as you have a high enough defence skill. As soon as you have an item with 2 encumbrance, there is a chance of failure, and failure is guaranteed for encumbrance 3 or two items with encumbrance 2. The chance of failure depends only on your defence skill with no modifications, so this is certainly different to Exile 1, where e.g. a ring of skill can let a mage cast while wearing armour.

Yes, sorry, the "effective" skill value used for the lookup. As you said, this contains a bunch of stuff - luck, dexterity bonus, item bonuses, and a penalty for the town/dungeon difficulty. It's interesting how different the implementation is to picking a lock, which doesn't use a lookup table at all.

Thanks for the pointer, I downloaded the BOE source to have a look. There doesn't seem to be a bug in that version - the code applies limits to the skill value so it's never below zero or above 20. However, I can certainly believe that there used to be a bug - I notice the lookup table has 30 values in it, which would only make sense if these limits weren't applied. I will have a look to see if I can find details about the item bonuses, but probably not today.

Old thread, I know, but I've been playing Exile 1 under Linux without difficulty. I used Lutris to do the install, which uses a "community installer" to set up a Wine environment for each game you install. It doesn't do anything you couldn't do yourself, but saves a lot of time messing around with different Wine settings. Perhaps give it a go. You're right that it does take up some space, but from my perspective it's worth it for the amount of gameplay I get out. I notice Geneforge 1: Mutagen also has a community installer, but I haven't tried it yet. Cheers, John

Thanks for the extra info. The thing I do feel I miss for Exile is a big old table of values so I can work out what's worth investing in - this was something I enjoyed a lot when playing games like Baldur's Gate. Did you pick the lookup table out of the source? On the other hand, I'm aware you don't need to be especially wise with the skill points when mid-game gold is plentiful and you can just buy a potion of knowledge.

I used the editor to play around a bit more. A different character with a dexterity of 4 and a luck of 1 was still succeeding the majority of times with 18 traps and the nimble gloves. When I increased to 20 traps, this jumped to failing most times. Thanks for the lookup table of values - do you know if the dexterity bonus adds to the traps skill before the lookup? This would then be consistent with an overflow.

I just tested this again, and yes - removing the gloves significantly improve my chances. I used the Bandit Lair near Fort Saffron - there's an alarm trap right at the entrance which respawns if you leave and come back. After playing around a bit, I sat down and started counting - I did sets of 10 attempts with, then 10 attempts without the gloves. Out of a total of 40 attempts without gloves, I didn't trigger the alarm once. With gloves, I triggered it 31 times out of 40. I should add that I have a luck of 1.

Hi everyone, I'm currently replaying Exile 1, and it's been a lot of fun. Could anyone suggest good resource for the details of item bonuses? A fang necklace "blesses occasionally", but it also allows you to wear heavier armour without being encumbered. How does it compare to the circlet of giants, or the gauntlets of skill, or a ring of skill? I also noticed my thief got worse at disarming traps after equipping the nimble gloves. I was reasonably high level by the time I got them - dex 16, traps 14 - so I guess the value is rolling over. I saw an old post about this for Exile 2, but there wasn't an answer. Does anyone know the details of this behaviour? Cheers, John