New Player Old Questions

[Gandaug]

Hello, all.

I just discovered Eschalon the other day by visting Play This Thing! It's a great site for finding indie games.

In any case I'm playing the demo for Eschalon: Book I now. I'm loving the game for it's old school feel. As much as I like the Mass Effect games they will never hold a place in my memories like the old school games Fallout, Baldur's Gate, and the other "Golden Age" RPGs do.

Now on to the questions. I'm sure these have been answered before, but my search-fu is tired and failing. Feel free if you know of a thread that answers these questions to just link it rather than typing it all out again.

1. Is there a hard cap to attributes and skills? If not is there a soft cap where the attribute or skill no longer really benefits from more points put into them? If so what is the hard/soft cap? I know the highest starting roll you can get for an attribute is 14. I'd hate to throw 16 more points into Strength or something just to find out that it stopped benefiting from more points at 20.

2. Time limit? Is there any sort of time limit in this game, or am I free to rest/wait as much as I please to recover HP/mana?

3. Respawning enemies? Does this game have respawning enemies? Actually the real question is there more than enough XP to around in the game to reach max level? I saw on the forums that 180,000 XP is the most you can earn. Is it possible to earn that much?

4. Any detailed information on attributes? I'm not looking to min/max my stats, but I hate not knowing exactly how certain things are derived. To hit? Resisitances? HP? How are this numbers calculated? Concentration attribute? The game says it effects everything. How?

That covers it for now. Thanks in advance.

[SpottedShroom]

Hello, all.
1. Is there a hard cap to attributes and skills? If not is there a soft cap where the attribute or skill no longer really benefits from more points put into them? If so what is the hard/soft cap? I know the highest starting roll you can get for an attribute is 14. I'd hate to throw 16 more points into Strength or something just to find out that it stopped benefiting from more points at 20.

There are definitely limits to when some skills are useful, although you can keep pumping them as long as you like. At least alchemy, elemental/divine, cartography, lore, pick locks, and skullduggery eventually stop getting better.

Attributes keep being useful, but HP and MP regeneration from Endurance/Medicine and Perception/Meditation are capped.

2. Time limit? Is there any sort of time limit in this game, or am I free to rest/wait as much as I please to recover HP/mana?

Nope. Rest away, but be aware of random encounters. Also consider boosting Endurance and/or Perception to improve your recovery rate.

3. Respawning enemies? Does this game have respawning enemies? Actually the real question is there more than enough XP to around in the game to reach max level? I saw on the forums that 180,000 XP is the most you can earn. Is it possible to earn that much?

No respawning enemies. If you want more stuff to fight, camp out and wait for it to find you.

4. Any detailed information on attributes? I'm not looking to min/max my stats, but I hate not knowing exactly how certain things are derived. To hit? Resisitances? HP? How are this numbers calculated? Concentration attribute? The game says it effects everything. How?

As far as I know the exact formulas haven't been calculated for most things, but here's a general outline for some important things. Weapon skills increase to-hit and damage 1/2 per level. Most attribute-based things count every 5 points or every 10 points. Thus it's generally better to spend skill points on improving your combat abilities and ability points on things that skills can't help with or are inefficient at - mostly carrying capacity and HP/MP regeneration.

[Gandaug]

Thanks for the reply.

Just came up with another one/few.

Spell effect limitation? I noticed there are only five slots for active spell effects or conditions like Hidden. Am I limited to those five or are any others simply not listed? Are there any in game visual timers for effects or do I just have to keep watch for when they expire?

[Kreador Freeaxe]

Thanks for the reply.

Just came up with another one/few.

Spell effect limitation? I noticed there are only five slots for active spell effects or conditions like Hidden. Am I limited to those five or are any others simply not listed? Are there any in game visual timers for effects or do I just have to keep watch for when they expire?

You can stack as many as you can get, they just scroll up out of view. Unfortunately, there's no timer and nothing to say "x-spell has expired" in Book I, so the only one that's obvious is invisibility (because your character becomes visible again). Ogre Strength can be obvious if you're carrying a lot--that "you're overburdened and can't move" thing is hard to miss.

One correction from Shroom's post--there is no "medicine" skill in Book I. That was added in book two, which largely replaces survival in Book I. The implementation of it makes other ways of achieving the effect (higher hp regen) more efficient by a large margin, so it wasn't used much.