Ishad Nha

Peculiarity of the original Nethergate, Dexterity does more for your hit points than either Strength or Endurance. Health is 7 + (Sum of Weaponry skills) + Endurance*. As it happens, 7 out of 9 Weaponry skills have base values derived from Str, Dex or End. These base values are boosted more by Dexterity than anything else. *Note "Endurance" not "Endurance x level" or anything else like that. Weaponry skills: Melee Weapons (MW, Base level: (STR + DEX) / 4, Roman cost: 1, Celt Cost: 1) Spears (SP, Base level: (STR + DEX) / 4, Roman cost: 1, Celt Cost: 1) Javelins (JAV, Base level: DEX / 3, Roman cost: 1, Celt Cost: 3) Slings (SLI, Base level: DEX / 3, Roman cost: 3, Celt Cost: 1) Armor Use (ARM, Base level: DEX / 4, Roman cost: 1, Celt Cost: 3) Berserker (BRZ , Base level: 0, Roman cost: X, Celt Cost: 3) Hardiness (HRD, Base level: END / 3, Roman cost: 3, Celt Cost: 2) Defense (DEF, Base level: DEX / 3, Roman cost: 2, Celt Cost: 3) Roman Training (ROM, Base level: 0, Roman cost: 2, Celt Cost: X) Str Melee Weapons (MW, Base level: (STR + DEX) / 4, Roman cost: 1, Celt Cost: 1) Spears (SP, Base level: (STR + DEX) / 4, Roman cost: 1, Celt Cost: 1) 12 Strength means 12/4 + 12/4 = 3 + 3 = 6 Dex Melee Weapons (MW, Base level: (STR + DEX) / 4, Roman cost: 1, Celt Cost: 1) Spears (SP, Base level: (STR + DEX) / 4, Roman cost: 1, Celt Cost: 1) Javelins (JAV, Base level: DEX / 3, Roman cost: 1, Celt Cost: 3) Slings (SLI, Base level: DEX / 3, Roman cost: 3, Celt Cost: 1) Armor Use (ARM, Base level: DEX / 4, Roman cost: 1, Celt Cost: 3) Defense (DEF, Base level: DEX / 3, Roman cost: 2, Celt Cost: 3) 12 Dexterity means 12/4 + 12/4 + 12/3 + 12/3 + 12/4 + 12/3 = 3 + 3 + 4 + 4 + 3 + 4 = 21 Then you have saved Skill Points on these weaponry skills. End Hardiness (HRD, Base level: END / 3, Roman cost: 3, Celt Cost: 2) 12 Endurance = 12/3 = 4. Plus the 12 hp from the 12 Endurance, total is 16. Base 0 Berserker (BRZ , Base level: 0, Roman cost: X, Celt Cost: 3) Roman Training (ROM, Base level: 0, Roman cost: 2, Celt Cost: X)

This is the first port of a major, full-length, BoE scenario. Hopefully it will be the first of many.

With missile weapons you can do fire and movement, just the thing for the Maze. Secret doors are usually only one square wide, so you must check every last square in the affected area. Numeric keypad makes that quick and simple. You don't need Heartshock but that only leaves two offensive spells, (then there is Bite of the Serpent which is annoying rather than dangerous). With the Beastmaster Bracelet you can now cast Coils of the Serpent, handy in a tough fight.

Slings are still useful for Romans, just the thing for enemies on raised platforms, all party members should have them. Wand of Carrunos strengthens the foe, just the thing for an interesting fight. You missed two treasure areas in the Maze of Thorns. It has five inaccessible areas. I always check every body for loot, frequently you find junk but sometimes you really hit the jackpot. Romans never get Heartshock or Total Healing, regardless of levels in War and Health Circles, not without hacking the game. This is different to the original Nethergate where you did get both spells.

My party was able to totally wipe out all hostiles in the Hollow Hills, without any losses, when they were level 16. This happened when fighting from combat mode not the easier exploration mode. Before you take out the Rose Lady remember to buy up anything that might prove useful, the storekeepers all turn hostile once you attack the Lady. In post #72 I was talking about concentrating all of a PC's skill points in combat skills for fighters, and concentrating them in magic for Druids. I suspect that if you split a PC's skill points between combat and magic, the PC will be much weaker. I have three fighters and two Druids. Slings are still useful for Romans, just the thing for enemies on raised platforms.

My hunch is that N:R is set up in a way that makes a pure Fighter and a pure Druid more powerful than a pair of Fighter/Druids. Fighting from exploration mode rather than combat mode disguises this.

I am now trying a party where you have three warriors and one Druid. Warriors develop combat skills and Druid develops the spellcasting. Each warrior has one, and only one, level in the Healing Circle. They don't wear heavy armor so they are not encumbered, hence they usually hit their targets. Druid has only one level in Melee, Javelins and Slings. So far it seems a strong party, it went through the Mines effortlessly. Rhian will join as the second spellcaster.

Hero of Old is like being able to cast Beast Ceremony and Haste on an individual PC in the middle of combat. I use it a lot. Especially useful in N:R when you open a door and find a big fight awaiting you, then you usually can't close the door to cast Beast Ceremony (unlike Original Nethergate). Useful outdoors in both versions of Nethergate where you can never cast non-combat spells like the Ceremony. I don't think you ever get Total Healing or Heartshock as a Roman. You never get the ability to cast any of the five Nether Circle spells. You may be doing a second version of your playthrough entitled "Older but Wiser", Romans really get a raw deal in spellcasting.

Piercing Sight, range is not all that great if you are walking away from its area of effect. It is best cast on the boundary between the known and the unexplored. The room with the Savage Altar was thus not detected. Two other areas were not detected too.

If you don't edit game files you have to kill the Selkie Chief or pass over a really nice reward... (This game is biased against the Romans in the area of quests). North of that bridge you will find dungeons that should be profitable and survivable.

Someone at the office slippped up? He is not even selling the game, it is in limbo.

I give myself the Pelt, via the method outlined in post #45 above. I may also kill the Hags after the quest is completed. Never do I harm the Selkies. Thus there is a good way to do both the Selkie and the Hag quests.

Hagfen, the place to be, as you will soon see... My Druids have minimal weapon skills and strong magic. Their melee/ranged attacks leave a lot to be desired but the magic makes up for that. Once they have attained level 8 in Druidism, Health Circle and Battle Circle they then go on to develop more weapon skills. Roman melee is impressive but they still need magic. Celts can just begin playing but Romans really need to know what is going to happen in the game. That means they can go straight to sources of spells as soon as they are able. Reptrakos the Dragon can be wiped out with no loss of PCs but the two fighters used Invulnerability Draughts as soon as combat started. Hero of Old was then cast upon each of them.

The interesting thing about Original Nethergate is that it has not been Avernumized, it has its own game structure. You can start with spells greater than level 3 as I recall. You have two terrain types occupying the same square on occasions, other terrain types can have a third icon as well as a second one. Also, there can be up to sixteen custom terrain types per town. Combats will have different levels of difficulty in the two games. Romans get better spell access. Piercing Crystals are cheap and unlimited in O:N...

Quicksilver Feet might give your fighters the edge, it should double the damage they do in a given space of time. Ditto, it would enable the Druids to heal twice as much damage in the same time.

Freewebs is the place to go. There might be a few days before you can upload something 7MB.

"Since the first byte is never used for creature stat levels, could it be used to insert the name of the stat?" Use the Vlookup function to match the number with the stat name.

"Are undefined stats based on level, and can all of them be overridden?" If they are defined on level, they can only be changed by altering the level. I don't know if they are defined by level, but that is the case in BoA. Grah-Hoth, I forget if he is actually present in the Tower of Magi meltdown.

Sounds like you need the Sever Seal spell from the Spirit Circle, Romans can't cast spells from that Circle without hacking the game.

No, I reckon that the numbers are usually "Short", 2 Byte. For the stat levels the final number = (256*Byte 1) + Byte 2, hence you could have a stat level of 255*256 + 255 = 65,535. These numbers are base-256, first byte is not unused, as you would see if you altered it. You should make a backup copy of your Town.dat file and then open it in a Hex Editor, this will show you what the game is dealing with. Hex editors are frequently freeware too, I use Hexplorer and HxD myself.

My party was able to complete this easily enough. Toughest fight is in the NW corner of the Warrens. You could cast Beast Ceremony before you try to smash the tiles. Alternately, retreat around a corner and let the undead come to you in melee. I don't bother trying to kill Reptrakos the Dragon. That would require the use of Invulnerability potions or whatever.

It is hex viewing. Translating the file from hex to decimal is easy enough, I prepared an Excel spreadsheet showing the monster data array. I was hoping Kel might host it but he did not want to, so I had to do it myself: http://www.freewebs.com/ishadnha/A3Towndat.7z The printout was created with the ProjectA3.exe program. Included is the source file used to create the program. The program is a simple console, MS-Dos Prompt, program to be run from the same directory as the file 3AOutdoor.dat.

I can email you the demo if you want. It might be handy if someone could host it.

From offsets 2,606 to 29,742 of Town.dat you have 256 records of 106 Bytes each. Most numbers seem to be Short, 2 Byte. I have not checked Outdoor.dat. First few columns seem to mean: 0 to 1: Creature level 2 to 13: Creature stats, for list of stat numbers see below. 14 to 25: Levels for stats 0 Strength 1 Dexterity 2 Intelligence 3 Endurance 4 Melee Weapons 5 Pole Weapons 6 Bows 7 Thrown Missiles 8 Hardiness 9 Defense 10 Assassination 11 Mage Spells 12 Priest Spells 13 Arcane Lore 14 Potion Making 15 Tool Use 16 Nature Lore 17 First Aid 18 Luck 19 Barter 20 Find Herbs 21 Blademaster 22 Anatomy 23 Gymnastics 24 Pathfinder 25 Magery 26 Resistance 27 Dread Curse 28 Vahnatai Lore 29 Parry Table was created with this code: Creature names occur separately: from offsets 100,298 to 105,418 you have 256 Creature names each of 20 Bytes. Code used was:

Life as a Roman, "learning" spells that you will never get the Spell Circle levels to actually cast. (Not without hacking some scripts.) Maximum bang for your buck spells are the combat buffs: Shielding, Battle Rage and Quicksilver Feet. Especially true for Romans, who don't get the best spells anyway.