Not killed. We're all discussing pros and cons. The only one who can kill an idea is Thomas, and he's not weighing in on these discussions that I've seen. He's lurking and trying to discern what sorts of changes he can reasonably make to please people without upsetting too many other people and without too much monkeying with the engine.

I do agree that Foraging finds should be delimited similarly to random encounters. Certain items should almost never occur in some places and be more common in others. Your one specific example I might disagree with--sulphur in Hellice Lake. Sulphur springs occur all over the place, and with all of the craggy mountains I would say there's lots of volcanic activity deep beneath that area. Some of the plants would be much less likely, such as belladonna. Those specifics would have to be figured out by Thomas for how he wants things to play out. He may give each possible item a weighted probability based on the area, so that at really high levels, you might be able to stumble on a stash of extremely uncommon material for an area, but never at lower levels.

Mountains? The Solenguard Mountains are atleast 2-3 maps away from northwestern Hellice Lake. Even the mountains north of Durnore (can't remember the name) are 1½ map to the west. South-west Hellice Lake is really in the middle of nowhere, nearly devoid of any terrain features. I may be wrong, but I think it's hard to find sulphur in the middle of a frozen lake. Even if it's 'deep beneath', it would require some digging.

About noximander venom: Why can we even forage it? I haven't seen any noximanders in Mistfell. Unless it grows on the ground...

Sorry, didn't mean to come across that way. As Kreador said, we were just discussing ideas. I apologize if it seemed like a personal attack. That wasn't our intent.

I'm not looking to get into a detailed argument about the specific ingredients. I agree with you on the principle of adjusting Foraging to make items more or less accessible based on where you are. The specifics of how those things are determined should really be left up to BW because it's a matter of game balance more than concerning ourselves with pure logic. This is, after all, a fantasy cRPG.

Clearly, logically, ambergris should only be found in quantity near an ocean coast (it being whale barf and whales not doing a lot of swimming up streams or walking across vast savannas). Given the uses of ambergris, that may throw off the balance of the game to require that you ONLY find it on the coast. See what I mean?

Or the game could be balanced such that a player who wants to do all their own alchemical ingredient hunting has to determine where the ingredients are most likely to be found and camp there (and risk the camping encounters in those areas--some of the best stuff is likely to be found in some of the most dangerous places to camp). Then Crazy Bernie could write up some new books helping to point players in the right direction for groups of ingredients.

Heh, no problem. It was a bad idea afterall.


Yes! I agree, for adding depth is always good (unless it's unwanted depth ).

I haven't seen this suggestion in the thread, so I hope I'm not repeating something someone else has already come up with. Apologies if someone missed it.

I'd like to see an option to cancel active spell effects before they would naturally expire. This may seem odd, but there are times when it makes sense to do it.

In Book II, my mage was exploring Westwillow. I had Gravedigger's Flame active so I could see, and Predator Sight active so I could spot bad guys at a distance.

With this character, I prefer to fight in the dark. I'm doing most of my attacking with ranged spells, so the darkness penalty doesn't matter, and if I do have to fight hand-to-hand, fighting in the dark with the Bless + Predator Sight combo active gives my character a much better chance to hit than his foes have.

However...as long as I've got Gravedigger's Flame going, the bad guys can see me just fine (and the ones with ranged weapons can shoot at my fleshy little mage dude, who does not react well to pointy objects). I like to use it to help navigate around in the dark, but it would be nice to have the ability to cancel an active spell, so I could "go dark" and make it harder for enemies to hit me.

Is putting in some sort of means to cancel an active spell (or effect) a viable mechanic, and if it is, are there other players who would find this helpful?

Threlkish, I think that's been mentioned before but it bears repeating. By the way, in a situation like that you may consider switching to Cat's Eyes and a torch for now. The Cat's Eyes spell amplifies available light, so your torch goes from lighting up a few squares around you to lighting up a whole large area. If you use Cat's Eyes and Gravedigger's Flame together, you get close to daylight visibility.

Semi-Offtopic: Funny how Cat's Eyes was changed in Book II. In Book I it only lighted up a few tiny tiles in front of the character. Now it's much more useful.

I like the combo of cat's eyes + predator sight, though I haven't used bless with it.

I'd like to know how a skill affects To Hit. I have two weapons of equal base+bonus damage, but my skill in one is much higher.

Also, I set the game options to pre-seeded treasure chests, and it seems that lockpicking and trap disarming results are also predetermined. Is that supposed to happen?

Yes. Fixed Random Seed sets it for all random actions when they occur. You can "change" the result of a trap disarming or lock picking attempt by doing some other random thing before trying again after reloading. But that's a big pain in the behind.

I believe that using Cat's Eyes with another light source worked the same way in Book I, but I'm not certain of that. The biggest improvement to night-time and dungeon visibility in Book II is the adjustable brightness setting.

Okay, tnx for the clarification. And knowing that will save me some time reloading and trying again, reloading and trying again, reloading and...you get the picture. I will try your suggestion. I'm okay with some BITB stuff.

Actually it doesn't work entirely like that. Well, atleast the effect is smaller compared to Book II lights-up-entire-screen. Also, doesn't turning brightness up null the immersion?

In Book II most books that when read gave you a skill or if you had that skill already increased it by two points. If this is going to be continued in Book III what about having some books that give a minor increase to your health, mana or one of your eight attributes?

Not for me. I personally have excellent night and low-light vision, so why shouldn't my characters? Also, it makes the dark, stormy nights that much more menacing. No matter how much you turn up the brightness setting, it is black between flashes of lightning.