Oin has finally found a limit on your character level. More precisely, a limit, behind which the game becomes a pain without any gain or forming a challenge.

During his acting in Gael Serran, Oin has detected the logic used by the game for your total mana points. There seems to exist something like "reasonable number of mana points" in the game, which equals:

10*(SPI + character_level)

If you have less mana points then you will get SPI mana points when you gain a level. If you have more mana points then you get nothing. The whole concept isn't so trivial: Sometimes you won't get your mana points even if you should get them (and you get them next level up), sometimes only some of your magic schools get the mana points (and the rest of them gets them later) and so on. But the concept works as described above in principle.

The concept has an interesting consequence: it doesn't matter how much is your SPI. If it is low, then you get mana points in smaller quantums but you get them more often. If it is high, then you get mana points in bigger quantums but you get them less often. The only thing that matters is having SPI at least 10. If your SPI is lower, then you get less than 10 mana points when you level up and your total mana points cannot keep in step with the "reasonable value".

Now, Oin has foud out that your total mana points value is stored in a signed short integer. Therefore, you cannot have more than 32 767 mana points. The "reasonable value" reaches this value somewhere at level 3260.
If your level is higher then your mana points overflow, the game will think that you have negative number of mana points and it forbids you casting spells. You can continue the game but only as a pure warrior. That's exactly what happens to Oin yesterday.

Final stats (after killing Oakenmir):

level: 3282
HP: ca 27500 (sorry, I forgot to make a note [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img] )
SP: overflow, the spellbook isn't reachable
Hit: 3288
Parry: 824
Speed: 12
Kills: 57352
AC: 63
Assists: 16
Resistances: 80 90 90 65 - 100 100 100 90

Skills: 9 at 14, 1 at 13, 2 at 12, 4 at 11, 2 at 10, other skills at 3 or not gained so far.

Wow! that's some precise information there. Looks like Oin will need a hex editor to get back down to spellcasting range (Dwarves never liked magic much anyhow).

One thing I'm not clear on: what's so special about SPI of 10? According to your formula, a SPI of say 11 would give you 130 mana points at level 2, a SPI of 10 would give you 120 at level 2, and a SPI of 8 would give you 100. Not a big spread. At Level 20 these same SPI's would give you 310, 300, 280 respectively. Etc. Because they climb arithmetically, not exponentially, the gap never increases. So I agree with the first half of your assertion, that SPI is not important, but I'm not sure that I agree that it's important to have at least an SPI of 10. Am I missing something? Could you elaborate?

Compare characters with SPI 8, 10, and 20.

If the first character gets mana points during level up, he gets only 8 mana points. At level 50, the "reasonable value" will be 580 but even if we suppose that the character gets mana points every time he levels up, the character will have only 420 mana points.

The second character can get 10 mana points every time he levels up. That means, his number of mana poins is able to keep in step with the formula for "reasonable value". At level 50, his "reasonable value" will be 600 and he can get his 600 mana points theoretically.

The last character gets 20 mana points. He can expect that he gets mana points every second level up. He can be sure that he will have his "reasonable value" at level 50, which is 700.

Summary:
The first character suffers from low SPI. The value below 10 causes that he cannot get the mana points, which he should have.
The second character has a theoretical chance that he will get his "lawful" amount of mana. Well, it's only a theory and he needs a bit better SPI.
The last character need not fear that he won't get his mana points.

It's the multiplier '10' which makes SPI 10 a "breakpoint".

Radek... once again, your analysis is impressive. I've slighted my wizards for a long time now, spending skill points in anything but SPI. I think you've convinced me to switch... and to try to stay below level 3200 :D

[img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] Great analysis, amigo [img]smile.gif[/img]

Radek: Yes, I see it now. What I failed to note was your phrase "if you have less mana points then you will get SPI mana points when you gain a level." I was using your formula to calculate the n of mana you GET per level, as opposed to what it should be used for: to calculate the base amount for that level, which the SPI rating then moderates.

Thanks for taking the time to open my eyes to what you clearly explained in the first place!

Just think: Some shoddy programmer thought, "Geez, a signed short is more than enough for this ... memory conservation is key, after all ..."

When an unsigned long wouldn't take up anything, to speak of, and would let you keep playing for a few more decades! [img]graemlins/biglaugh.gif[/img]

[quote]Originally posted by aleph_null1:

Quote:

Just think: Some shoddy programmer thought, "Geez, a signed short is more than enough for this ... memory conservation is key, after all ..." When an unsigned long wouldn't take up anything, to speak of, and would let you keep playing for a few more decades! [img]graemlins/biglaugh.gif[/img]

;) I'm also guessing that they were thinking that building in support for level 3200+ was unnecessary!