Is Magic Unreliability a Bug?

[Radek]

After dozens of frustrating examples provided by the game, I think I can tell what is happening with defensive and fortifying spells in the wilderness. You cannot cast vast majority of "blue" spells in the wilderness if any monster is nearby! "Nearby" does not mean "under a direct attack" or "sensed by a monster". Nearby means somewhere around; the monster need not know about you at at all.
The spells that do not work: Armorplate, Bloodlust, Heroic Might, Merlin's Shield, Haste, Create Portal (yeap! Don't be mistaken! When you cast Create Portal, you get a message "Portal Created" but nothing was created! Try Call of Home and Teleport.), and many others. The spells that work are Heal of all kinds and Call of Home.
As if the game wanted to tell you: "You can cast defensive and fortifying spells only if you do not need them. You are forbidden to cast them if you need them!"
A really feebleminded logic. I cannot believe that the game logic was devised by somebody with IQ less than today's date. Therefore, it must be a bug. A nasty bug, indeed.
Let us note that the spells usually work in dungeons. Usually!

[Fantaghiro]

Well, if that has been your experience, I must have been lucky so far. However, my party don't cast many fortifying/defensive spells, preferring instead to use their high level offensive magic. When they can take a few steps back and cast a Meteor Storm, two Firestorms and/or an Icestorm, defensive magic seems to be a waste of mana. But on the few occasions when they have decided to be a bit defensive, they've had no problems. The only place where I experienced any problems with magic was the Boogre Caves - I'd been led to expect magic wouldn't work there, but I only had a couple of spell fizz, and never when they were fighting a Jungle Lily.

I wonder if Sorcery skill has anything to do with this, although none of my party has especially high Sorcery skill, ranges from 5 to 7. I also guessed that Intelligence (or Intellect) might matter for magic users and raised it up to 18 as quickly as I could.

Any ideas out there?

[mammawlin]

Hiya, Radek! Yep, it must be a nasty bug because my spells work great, all kinds of spells, all the time (as long as there is target). Sorry to hear you are having problems with them.
Mammawlin

[Radek]

Neither Sorcery, nor magic schools skills (fiendcraft, etc.), nor INT, WIL and so on: Sorcery = all magic schools = 12, all stats = 24, Quickspeak Trait.
@Mammawlin: offensive magic works as expected everywhere in the game. Try Merlin's Shield or a similar spell after getting "Jungle Lilly has been here" to see what I am speaking about.
Note: settings: hard - often - hard - deathmatch.

[Sazerac]

I've had no problem with any spells, defensive, offensive, or otherwise, save in two locations:

1) The Lost Sea area has some problems holding a portal...you have to be in certain points.

2) Some of the dungeons will not let you teleport...most notably the Boogre Caves and Cet's Pyramid. This was by design, not by bug...so you wouldn't be able to "get around" the Blasting Rooms in the Boogre Caves and so you wouldn't be able to flee the final battle with Cet (as if!) Vanish doesn't work well in those caves either.

Radek, I know you're having problems with this, re your previous posts. The only thing I can think is that something got corrupted in the game itself. If you'd be willing to try it, back up your saved game, uninstall W&W, and reinstall it (do the full version), then put your saved game back into the Save folder, and continue.

I don't think it's just a run of bad luck.

-Sazerac

[Sazerac]

On second thought...it may because you're playing the game at "Deathmatch." That may disallow certain spells to be used in monster presences. Try bringing it down to "Guarded" mode and see if that helps before you do anything else.

-Sazerac

[dlimbaugh]

Hi All

A couple of observations. In the lost sea area, WW does not like portals on the surface of the sea. They are more sucessfull if you place them on the bottom

Also, I've never had any problems with Create Portal and Teleport in the Boogre Caves, I use them quite often with no problems (Except the occasional fizzle)

I've been throuh the game both single and with parties about 10 times so far

By the way, the hex code for an object is the index (starting with zero) of the items entry in D6ITEMS.dat (the rest of it should follow the description of the item in that file as well).

[This message has been edited by dlimbaugh (edited 05-18-2001).]

[Wyvern]

dlimbaugh - Wowzah! 10 times!! That's great!!

What took you so long to find our board! lol!!

Wyv

[mortification]

dlimbaugh,

check out the mod-making/hex editing post on the main board....

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[mammawlin]

Well, jeesh, Radek, I can't seem to duplicate your problem. My spells continue to work even if my Scout senses a monster, I can still cast Merlin Shied, Bloodlust, Healing, etc. I'm wondering if Sazerac has hit it with the Deathmatch thing??? I sure hope you can continue your game anyway. It sounds like a real challenge. Let us know how you work it out, or work around it. Stay close!
Mammawlin