Vagabond

Druid merc is for Romans. Celts get to pick from two fighter types. They have identical stats, except the Roman guy has Tool Use 4, and the Celt gal has Fairy Lore 4.

Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: Every point of Berserker skill you take lowers your ability to avoid attacks. As in, gives the attacker better % chance to hit you? Isn't it weird then, that log window shows no hints of such penalty? Tohit percentages are the same no matter how many pts of Berserker someone has. It's pretty damn easy and quick to test this too - summon monster, save the game, hit it once and let it attack you. Then reload, change Berserker skill with character editor and repeat. Skill description doesn't say anything about lowering defense either (not that it's definite proof by itself - there's plenty misinformation in other descriptions, but still, in this case observations support what it says - increases your damage and gives mental resistance, and that's about it). So, are you really sure about that? Not that it matters much, because as it was mentioned, most enemies have max chance to hit you anyway, especially on higher difficulty settings. Just busting some myths. In my experience raising Berserker skill for your melee guys is a nobrainer, and it's as "playable" as it can be. It increases melee damage like Strength - twice more than weapon type skills or Roman training - and it's cheap. It doesn't do much else, as the mental resistance seems to be pretty much useless in this game, but what it does is useful, considering that doing damage is the most important thing in the game.

Quote: Originally written by Randomizer: Celt Beserker is the equivalent of Roman Training. Ups your damage and assures that you will always get hit. Are you sure about that?

It could be as simple as adding one conditional statement to the code - checking item number(s) (170/171/172 = candle/torch/lamp) or, better yet, item ability (#210 for those items) and allowing use if it's a match. In case of flag proposed by Thuryl, it's not like it would be necessary to add a new entry to item definition data. It could be a hardcoded array of bytes, each representing an item. So again, as simple as one conditional statement and one array. That "nuisance" would take five minutes to do. Seriously, if I can do it in assembly, there's no excuse for someone with source code.

Quote: Originally written by divergence: It would have been much simpler for you to say "I disassembled the binary" the first time someone asked I suppose you have a point, but does it really change anything? Anyone can say those words, this alone does not increase credibility and provides no "evidence". It's still a matter of personal trust, and still anyone can reply "but my test result is different". Quote: Originally written by divergence: On the defensive side: Each level of dexterity gives your enemies -5% to hit you. A shield spell, apparently regardless of the skills or traits of the druid that casts it, gives enemies -15% to hit. It also seems to reduce damage by some fixed amount (which may depend om the druid's skill; I haven't checked), rather than by a percentage like armor does. The defense skill is interesting: it apparently reduces the enemy's hit chance by a random amount each time they swing, from 0% (no reduction at all) up to -5% per level of defense. I believe your observations are correct. And shield spell damage reduction? It gives -3 dmg levels to the attacker. Doesn't depend on caster's stats, just like bless spell.

Quote: Originally written by Maimonides: Predictions are not data. Your definition of data is different from mine, that's all. As for the evidence, right now I have a strong impression that OP is stressing this issue for reasons that are not related to the topic at all. That pretty much anything I say would be countered with the same "oh, but my test tells otherwise", coupled with an attemp to discredit whatever evidence I present. That's already happened when I posted what you call "predictions", and it's going to happen again. Since I didn't feel like playing these kind of games, especially when I'm physically outnumbered to begin with, and because the evidence I can present wouldn't make any difference even if there was genuine interest in it, I tried some other ways to present you the required proof. Which isn't good enough for you... fine, but what can I do (or should I even care). I say it wouldn't make any difference, because most likely you are clueless as to what I would say is true or not. Which you shouldn't take offense at, as it's impossible for anyone to be expert in every field, usually each of us is layman in most. There are things or theories in our lives that we simply have to believe in (as the effort wasted trying to get the question "how?" answered is simply not worth it). Or declare them bogus and believe in something else, that's always an option too. In any case, it's still a matter of belief. I mean I could say that, for example, this particular snippet Code: 0041B475 |> 8B8D 4C125300 MOV ECX,DWORD PTR SS:[EBP+53124C]0041B47B |. 0FB79424 A2000000 MOVZX EDX,WORD PTR SS:[ESP+A2]0041B483 |. 8B85 48125300 MOV EAX,DWORD PTR SS:[EBP+531248]0041B489 |. C1E9 08 SHR ECX,80041B48C |. F6C1 40 TEST CL,400041B48F |. 895424 18 MOV DWORD PTR SS:[ESP+18],EDX0041B493 |. 894424 2C MOV DWORD PTR SS:[ESP+2C],EAX0041B497 |. 74 0E JE SHORT Netherga.0041B4A70041B499 |. 83C7 03 ADD EDI,30041B49C |. 834424 10 0A ADD DWORD PTR SS:[ESP+10],0A0041B4A1 |. EB 04 JMP SHORT Netherga.0041B4A70041B4A3 |> 8B7C24 14 MOV EDI,DWORD PTR SS:[ESP+14]0041B4A7 |> 8BB424 48010000 MOV ESI,DWORD PTR SS:[ESP+148] from the disassembly of Nethergate.exe tells me that blessing pools give +3 dmg levels and +10% tohit bonus. I could even go great lengths explaining you the steps I took to get to that particular snippet, and how I made myself pretty damn sure that it means what I believe it means. I could do that for every bit of my info. It would take much more than this page to do so, and in the end, I'm not sure it would be successful, as there's a lot of side information to take in when you start from 0, and I'm not particularly good at explaining things. So what's the difference if I've said it or not? I know I've grown to trust my skills more than any test consisting of limited repetition and calculation of average result from a pseudorandom number generator neither you nor I know much about (even though I'm not overruling possibility that sometimes my skills may be not good enough. And I would like to say once again - OP data is close enough to the output from my formulas, only with some difference which can be easily discarded as expected margin of error in the method used to collect that data, close enough to reassure my belief that I haven't missed anything of importance in my research, so that data from independent source was useful to me). What do you trust, is up to you. Anyway, now is a pretty good opportunity to cry out "evil haxor" and run me out of your town

Armor Use is simply a must if you want to get anything worth their weight out of your heavier armor pieces. With 0 pts in Armor Use, Bronze Plate Mail (advertised 30% reduction) does not offer more protection than Fine Leather Armor (advertised 10% reduction). In fact, as shocking as it may sound, actually it offers 2 times less theoretical reduction. That's because, as with all advertisments, the percentage you see in the ingame description is misleading in the way that it states maximum protection you could possibly get in theory. And how much of that you get in practise, depends on Armor Use. Lets analyze this. As per corescendata2.txt, Bronze Plate Mail has it_protection = 30, it_bonus = 0. (so that's total advertised 30) Fine Leather Armor has it_protection = 6, it_bonus = 4. (so that's total advertised 10) Now, it_protection is only a max. The actual protection of any armor piece is calculated this way: min(it_protection, (skill_armor_use+1)*4) + it_bonus. So with Armor Use = 0, Bronze Plate Mail = 4+0 = 4% Fine Leather Armor = 4+4 = 8% And that's that. If you want to maximize your armor/shield/etc, you need to raise the Armor Use. 7 points for Bronze Plate Mail, to be exact. Highest it_protection is 44, that of Polished Plate Mail, and is satisfied with 10 Armor Use. After that extra AU points won't give any additional protection, as far as a particular armor piece is concerned. Armor Use gives another independent reducement bonus, similar to Hardiness and Luck, so the extra points don't go to waste, especially for Romans since it's cheap, but aren't terribly useful either, unless you really dedicate your build to it. Overall it looks like this, as far as skills go: + luck + hardiness + max(0, armor_use-4) + min(it_protection, (skill_armor_use+1)*4) + it_bonus, for each piece of equipment Each of the above is calculated independently, not stacked into a bunch. Another thing worth mentioning is that the process is heavily randomized, as evident from log window. That's because, unlike in some games, where X% reduce means something like DMG-DMG*REDUCE%/100, here X% reduction means that each point of damage has a X% chance of being nullified. Which is very unforgiving to those small reduction values, like for example, char has 3 pts of Luck which offers 3% reduction, and receives 70 dmg, it's quite possible that 1, 2 or 3 doesn't come out of rnd(1,100) in 70 tries even once. Not to mention the situations where incoming dmg is too low to expect a steady single pt decrease even if it was happening in a vacuum. So these skills are either pump it or forget about it (talking about phys. reduction, not other bonuses they may provide)...

Quote: Originally written by Yama: How is your info for the Windows version if it's based on my data[/i] It's not based on your data at all. How did you come up with that nonsense? I presented you your data with my data side by side, since you were having troubles noticing it in my previous posts and comparing it with your tests. Aparently you still do. Plz increase your reading comprehension skill before replying. Kthx.

I'm aware that in SW games 1 level of tohit adds 5% and that on magical items in official campaigns tohit levels are handed out equally with the dmg levels, but in this case it is the way it is. Btw, tohit is the easiest to check as it actually appears in the log area. Give non-blessed and blessed versions of the weapon to someone who doesn't have melee skills and dex = not very high chance to hit so that it doesn't max out at 95% in both cases, and take a whack at something decent. Dmg levels are definitely harder to evaluate by ordinary means, although low skill values (slowly raising them up as necessary) and a weapon with the smallest dmg range (dagger/stick 1-3, or damaged dagger 1-2) still would be the best to start such analysis with. Since it's better to log min and max dmg values in some number of tries (in which you are convinced that no smaller/bigger values would appear) and then try to come up with formulas out of such data, than to pay any attention to average dmg (which is too imprecise kind of data without knowing the exact formulas to begin with). The solution then is to modify corescendata2.txt file, setting some weapon's it_damage_per_level to 1, which means it will do constant damage each hit, which means the total damage will be affected only by other stats of interest, so the number of tries necessary to come up with some conclusion would be defined purely by the complexity of game system and brainpower, unlike the methods of preset number of tries calculating the averages. But the above method isn't the main source of my conclusions, so in any case, you'd have to either trust me on it or not. Whether I'm pulling it out of my ass or out of disassembly, or hitting the same wolf 500 times and writing down the numbers, it still boils down to trust.

Quote: Originally written by Yama: You claim that "any increase will be more noticeable on the spear", but in fact this was not the case; That's not just some claim, that's logic. dice 1-7 vs 1-5 avg 4 vs 3, difference = 1 avg 5*4 vs 5*3, difference = 5 avg 10*4 vs 10*3, difference = 10 and so on. Couldn't care less if you use your main data (which is prone to RNG fluctuation and loss of precision when rounding to begin with) to deduce some other data (which further lowers precision) and then jump to conclusions based on these new numbers. What matters is, if you check the numbers from my previous post with the numbers from your test (first two columns), they differ very reasonably. How reasonable is reasonably, depends on your sample size - how many repetitions you did of each, because my formulas do not depend on that. The only error my info can have is human error, but the same can also be true for your data too, and I assure you that I have a habit of double-checking mine until it hurts. Base (+0): 121.2, 82.4 vs 120, 84 +10 str (+10): 166.7, 113.9 vs 160, 114 +10 mw/sp (+5): 141.7, 103.1 vs 140, 99 +10 bserk (+10): 150.0, 110.5 vs 160, 114 14(?) Mighty (+5): 141.4, 99.4 vs 140, 99 Bless (+4): 136.6, 97.1 vs 136, 96 A couple of points difference is quite reasonable when we're talking hundred points, given the nature of your data. Even with 400 repeats, 5% margin is to be expected. (Almost) everything of the above doesn't exceed that, which quite frankly should make you happy, not sceptical. As I said, the only thing that sticks out is your Strength vs Berserker for Spear, which I'd prefer to write off as a product of that random fluctuation unfortunately going opposite directions - which was acknowledged to be quite possible in the 1st post of this thread by yourself. And the next biggest difference between your data and mine is melee skill for Icy (103.1 vs 99) which by itself isn't that huge, but unfortunately doesn't translate into your conclusion too well. Everything else is almost to a tee, sometimes even remarkably so. I could check some Strength vs Berserk cases again, to see if maybe there's some weird modifier hidden somewhere that I've missed, but frankly such idea doesn't sound too probable to me, given how blunt the rest of the damage system is. Damage for "spears" and "melee weapons" is generated identically as far as I can tell, and levels from Strength are added before any checks of what kinda weapon the attacker is using. Another thing that just occured to me, is that maybe there are some minor differences between different versions. All my info is for Windows version of N:R.

Quote: Originally written by Yama: but they fail to account for a few things, such as the fact that weapon damage die affects Strength more than Melee Weapons. Uh. Not sure what you mean... +10 pts of strength is the same as +19 or +20 pts of melee weapons, so yea, there must be a big difference if you're comparing between +10 of each. Moreover, any increase will be more noticeable on the spear because of the better dice: 1-7 vs 1-5 (and the bigger the increase, the bigger will be the difference between the two). Lets put your stats to use: Base levels of damage with 10 Strength, 10 Melee and Spear skills, 10 Berserker: OS - 10+5+10+5=30 Icy - 10+5+10+3=28 So the average damage is: OS - 30*(1-7)/2 = 120 Icy - 28*(1-5)/2 = 84 Average with Bless spell: OS - 136 Icy - 96 Average with +10 Spears/MeleeW: OS - 140 Icy - 99 Average with +10 Str: OS - 160 Icy - 114 All of this is reflected in your results quite nicely. And the only thing that stands out - relatively big difference in the results of +10 Berserker vs +10 Strength using obsidian spear - could be attributed to RNG, and generally, the margin of error (surely it can be at least 5% or so) in your empirical test.

I was intrested in damage calculation too, so here's what I found out... Total damage breaks down like this: Each point of Strength adds 1 level Every odd point of Spears/Melee Weaps adds 1 level Every even point of Roman Training adds 1 level Each point of Berserker adds 1 level Mighty Warrior bonus: charlvl/4 + 2 levels Blessing pool weapon bonus: +3 levels Bless spell bonus: +4 levels Berserk bonus (woad): +5 levels And the weapon itself adds base-1 levels of damage (for example, obsidian spear, base 6-42=6*(1-7), so 5 levels of damage). Also there can be bonuses on items (such as Warrior's ring, +2 levels), and a few other things I didn't check (such as curse = -4 levels). So lets say, there is lvl 18 Mighty Warrior, with STR 7, Spears 11, Roman tr. 9, wielding blessed Obsidian Spear. That's total of 6+7+6+4+3+5=31 levels of damage. Which means a dice of 1-7 will be rolled 31 times, each result adding up to the total damage.

From re-search. Whaddya think, I'm pulling random numbers outta my arse?

Ya, it's definitely not cumulative. Adds 3 levels of damage and 10% chance to hit.

Thanks guys. Somehow I missed that one added sentence in item's description... probably because I expected something a bit more impressive, or at least better documentation of those added bonuses - such as added new magic abilities to a weapon, "+X level to melee damage" and "+X% to hit", or something like that. Oh well...

What's the deal with them blessing pools? I've read here in these 3 year old threads about all the neat stuff they used to do in the old version... Now when I use the pool it says that all the equipped weapons will be blessed so they hit more often and do more damage, but then there's no visual proof that anything actually happens - all my weapons stay the same.

Thanks, movement is ok now And right click works as in BoA (although I'd like that the look mode could be turned off when the button is pressed again - just like it is now with the keyboard 'l' key, if that's easy enough to implement). So far noticed one minor bug introduced in this update - when picking up items from ground or containers, the next one in line takes the place of the item that was picked up (that's all good as should be), but its name and description doesn't change until mouse cursor is moved.

Yah, plz bring back BoA mouse movement. This one is not 'slightly slower', it's a pain in the ass. Can't even force myself to play the demo because of all the sloppyness. Also minimap/inventory switch change from 'space' to 'tab' surprised when I attempted it during combat. 'space' now does the same as 'd' in combat mode, and same as 'w' outside combat, which is even more confusing. But I can live with that. Couldn't care less about the right click too, I brought that feature back for meself with a simple AutoIt script (also added 'talk' to middle button, heh). Love the fact that now 'look' can be escaped by repressing the same button. Minor visual glitch, with some probably unnecessary redrawing going on - Game Menu dialog reappears for a sec after 'Save' is clicked, flickers once when changing window focus back to Nethergate, and flickers twice when exiting from Preferences dialog, is that a bug too?