The Drunken Lizard Pub

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I'm about 2/3 the way through the game, I think, and I'm having no problem with money and I'm not wanting for skills. Perhaps your playing style is hampering your enjoyment of the game as is, or you haven't played far enough into it yet to get the full enjoyment of a well built character developed through careful planning and skillful decision making. What I'm saying is that my enjoyment in playing this game is in finding my own expertise in creating and developing a character that has enough skills and money within the current game parameters. I wouldn't want to lessen that challenge by cheating and I certainly don't feel the need to in Eschalon Book II. I am finding it well balanced so far. I have only played a fighter but look forward to challenging myself with all the classes eventually. Now I've said my piece.

The savegames are very easily readable for a trained eye, it's not coded or obscured at all. It needs only a little background with hexadecimal numbers. Or a trusty calculator

While I could care less if someone else cheats...

I find it odd that you go straight for the cheats instead of asking/reading about character building strategies... there's plenty of active discussions going on.

I also find it amusing that you preface your arguments with what equates to "I know I'm gonna get flamed for this." Is that supposed to be some sort of magical anti-flame chant? 0_o

So would I flame you for using cheats? No. Would I call you lazy for going straight for the cheats instead of finding out how to build a character that doesn't need them? Sure.

Of course, if you searched a little harder, you'd find discussions on how to cheat as well...

CrazyBernie wrote:While I could care less if someone else cheats...

I find it odd that you go straight for the cheats instead of asking/reading about character building strategies... there's plenty of active discussions going on.

I also find it amusing that you preface your arguments with what equates to "I know I'm gonna get flamed for this." Is that supposed to be some sort of magical anti-flame chant? 0_o

So would I flame you for using cheats? No. Would I call you lazy for going straight for the cheats instead of finding out how to build a character that doesn't need them? Sure.

Of course, if you searched a little harder, you'd find discussions on how to cheat as well...

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CrazyBernie wrote:While I could care less if someone else cheats...

I find it odd that you go straight for the cheats instead of asking/reading about character building strategies... there's plenty of active discussions going on.

I also find it amusing that you preface your arguments with what equates to "I know I'm gonna get flamed for this." Is that supposed to be some sort of magical anti-flame chant? 0_o

So would I flame you for using cheats? No. Would I call you lazy for going straight for the cheats instead of finding out how to build a character that doesn't need them? Sure.

Of course, if you searched a little harder, you'd find discussions on how to cheat as well...

and so is ham and eggs.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why ANYONE would want to cheat in this type of game. It completely defeats the point of what it's all about.

Just me maybe.

That's funny, with a character that has 7 in Mercantile, I find sellers don't have enough money for me to sell all my stuff.

while I don't like the idea of cheat codes, skills in the game do need a lot of work for the sake of balance. take for example defensive skills:

dodge: 1% per point to dodge an attack, +accuracy vs dodged enemy
light armor: approximately 0.8% per point to reduce damage by half
heavy armor: approximately 1.3% per point to reduce damage by half

no contest on dodge vs light armor. chance is lower, damage reduction is lower. no sane person would add points on light armor if they knew exactly what it did. heavy armor at least has higher chance per point, however damage reduction is still half compared to dodge's 100%. all 3 skills have no trainer.

magic >>> everything else

-buffs are still OP compared to skills and stats combined.
-to get high chances at disarming traps and picking locks, non-magic using thieves need both pick locks & skulldugerry in the 20s. dex & con too. if they did that they're gimped at everything else. there's no trainer for skullduggery & the pick locks trainer is not only part of a quest, the area he is in has difficult enemies for lowbies (and a good number of them, too) plus the locks and traps are difficult - what's the point in training if you need to invest in the skills to reach the trainer in the first place. magic users get easy access to the magic trainer, and they can lockmelt and trapkill without fear of being gimped. plus the spot hidden skill is augmented by perception, mages can ignore the skill and rely on perception alone, which is incidentally a lot more useful for them than for pure thieves.
-alchemy vs magic. to create potions you need skill, flasks, reagents and recipes. you also need foraging because the reagent shops are extremely retarded selling only a few random reagents per restock (heck even sulfur is rare if you rely solely on shops) & they restock only after a long while has passed. that also means you need to camp. a lot. magic you only need the skill & spell. get 5 divine and you can rival the effects of 10 or more healing elixirs per full mp bar with no cost to you but the divine heal scroll which is a lot more common than sulfur.

taurax snipers
spearmasters are accurate even at the range that you can't even see them on-screen (had 40 AR, 30 dodge and they had 69% to hit even with range penalty). they can attack at 1 cel away from being seen, meaning they get 2 attacks in before you can even retaliate. i wouldn't mind cheating against these guys because they are clearly cheating me.

flushfire wrote: magic >>> everything else

-buffs are still OP compared to skills and stats combined.
-to get high chances at disarming traps and picking locks, non-magic using thieves need both pick locks & skulldugerry in the 20s. dex & con too. if they did that they're gimped at everything else. there's no trainer for skullduggery & the pick locks trainer is not only part of a quest, the area he is in has difficult enemies for lowbies (and a good number of them, too) plus the locks and traps are difficult - what's the point in training if you need to invest in the skills to reach the trainer in the first place. magic users get easy access to the magic trainer, and they can lockmelt and trapkill without fear of being gimped. plus the spot hidden skill is augmented by perception, mages can ignore the skill and rely on perception alone, which is incidentally a lot more useful for them than for pure thieves.
-alchemy vs magic. to create potions you need skill, flasks, reagents and recipes. you also need foraging because the reagent shops are extremely retarded selling only a few random reagents per restock (heck even sulfur is rare if you rely solely on shops) & they restock only after a long while has passed. that also means you need to camp. a lot. magic you only need the skill & spell. get 5 divine and you can rival the effects of 10 or more healing elixirs per full mp bar with no cost to you but the divine heal scroll which is a lot more common than sulfur.

Magic has always been easier. The difference is that you get no experience using magic versus thief skills. Plus you only need lock picking to 12 to do difficulty 9 doors and 15 if you want the difficulty 10 doors that lock melt doesn't work on.

taurax snipers
spearmasters are accurate even at the range that you can't even see them on-screen (had 40 AR, 30 dodge and they had 69% to hit even with range penalty). they can attack at 1 cel away from being seen, meaning they get 2 attacks in before you can even retaliate. i wouldn't mind cheating against these guys because they are clearly cheating me.

Turn up the sound and you can hear them coming before you see them. Raise your armor into the 70s and watch there chance to hit drop below 10% and I've gotten it down to 1% for taurax legionnaires.

The fact they can hit before you see them is to give them a fighting chance.

Randomizer wrote:Magic has always been easier. The difference is that you get no experience using magic versus thief skills. Plus you only need lock picking to 12 to do difficulty 9 doors and 15 if you want the difficulty 10 doors that lock melt doesn't work on.

i had lockpiking at 12 prettly early and still broke lockpicks fairly often. i might've noticed skullduggery more because there's no trainer. i have it at 15 and still only have around 50% chance to disarm even poison (forgot the name) that sucks for balance considering magic can do a lot more at that level other than trapkill. if i wasn't roleplaying a non-magic using thief i wouldn't have bothered with pick locks and skullduggery.

Randomizer wrote:Turn up the sound and you can hear them coming before you see them. Raise your armor into the 70s and watch there chance to hit drop below 10% and I've gotten it down to 1% for taurax legionnaires.

The fact they can hit before you see them is to give them a fighting chance.

yeah I was just using plain armor & still no magic by that point. it's just them being able to attack me before i see them that i had a problem with.

Actually I'd be asking why Book 2 doesn't have a Difficulty system Like
Easy
Normal
Hard
Hardcore

It's all n Good to have a Hardcore player tell you the game is easy and all but that doesn't help the Average player now does it.

there is, in a way.

gish: easy
ranger: normal
everything else: hardcore

I don't think there are any cheat codes, per se, but using a hex editor on your saved games is easy enough. You can set your gold, skills, and stats to pretty much anything you want.

Some character types are certainly more difficult than others. There is a fair amount of advice on this forum on making effective characters.

I'm not sure it's actually possible to make book 2 be "hardcore" difficulty. Playing with as many challenges as possible is probably as close as you can get, but if you know the game mechanics, that still looks a LOT easier than, say, Torment difficulty in a Spiderweb game.