Questions and a warning

[Schmendrick the Magician]

Questions:

1. What's the difference between the Hide and Move Silently skills?

2. Is the Bard song "The Siren's Yearning" an enchantment? Can I make it harder to resist by taking "Spell Focus: Enchantment"?

3. I seem to come across some areas where I don't get XP but feel like I should. SPOILER HERE!!! At the beginning of Chapter 3 you meet a wight. My Bard talked him into returning to his grave to rest and he let me have his stuff without a fight. Shouldn't there be XP for something like that? I've had some other encounters like that also.

4. Do you come across any good hammers in the game? I haven't seen any.

5. When the druid shapeshifts into a winter wolf, why can't she use cold breath?

Thanks for the help.

NOW THE WARNING:

I used the "Ease of Use" mod, and took the alternate shapeshifting for my Druid. I decided I didn't like it and uninstalled it. After that I couldn't load any save games so I had to reload it, and now I'm stuck with it. That hasn't been a problem with any of the other mods. BTW, the infinite stacking mod is the best! The automatic ID is also very nice. They're not really cheats, they just make the game easier to play.

[Balintherlas]

Question 1: Hide is the initial roll or check to enter the shawdows, move silently is used in every round after hiding in the shawdows.
2: Not 100% sure but I think the bard songs are a seperate kind of magic that isnt affected my any feats other than lingering song.
3: I suppose your right.
4. There are a lot of good hammers, especially in the Spoiler!!!!!!!!!!!!

Underdark

5. I dont know.

[Marty4]

3. I've never beaten that quest with that method, so maybe the game creators left out that reward accidently. When in doubt, do the quest the old fashioned way.

4. In one game, I found a returning throwing hammer +5 with lightning damage. Ownage. Of course, the game focuses on longswords, greatswords, and greataxes.

5. I'm not sure, but did you try the special abilities menu?

[Magness]

#1. Balintherlas is correct about the difference between Hide and Move Silently to the best of my knowledge.

#2. Bard songs are "schoolless".

#3. It's called autobalancing of XP. I'm not certain, but I think that it's a 3e thing. I think that the theory is that as you grow stronger, weaker enemies become so unchallenging that you learn nothing from beating them and you gain no XP from such a battle.

#4. There a fair number of really good hammers in IWD2. Some of them are random treasures, but there are some that I remember that are either in some later stores and some fixed treasures that are very good hammers.

#5. Druid wild shapes? No clue.


Regarding the EoU and wild shapes issue, if you've played with a druid and the wild shapes EoU submod, then try to uninstall it without restarting the game, of course you'll have problems. Your character has all that EoU wildshape stuff that the game engine (after you uninstalled the sub-mod) no longer knows how to deal with.

An alternative to restarting would be the following:

Move ALL of your druid's inventory to your other characters or into a container (a key, a chest, etc.). Write down your druid's stats, XP, Feats and Skills taken. Then delete the character and create a brand new druid. Then use the cheat console to reset the druid to the old druid's XP total, so that you can re-level it to the old druid's level, feats and skills taken, etc.

While I cannot guarantee that this would resolve your druid's problem, give it a shot.

[Magness]

Marty4, no, there's XP awarding code for that dialog option. I just checked it out thru Near Infinity. That said, I don't know how the non-combat XP is awarded and do not know how exactly to translate the line of code in the dialog.

[Marty4]

Originally posted by Magness: Marty4, no, there's XP awarding code for that dialog option. I just checked it out thru Near Infinity. That said, I don't know how the non-combat XP is awarded and do not know how exactly to translate the line of code in the dialog.

Thanks for clearing that up. I had forgotten about the possibility of xp reduction due to level.

[wanderon]

Re: wight in chap 3:

I think it may also be possible that the exp for that quest (and the other ones given by the elder)is awarded by the quest giver and/or the elder and not when you defeat or talk down the wight but have not doen it recently enough to say thats definately the case...

[ZFR]

Originally posted by Magness: It's called autobalancing of XP.

Originally posted by Marty4: Thanks for clearing that up. I had forgotten about the possibility of xp reduction due to level.

I'm fairly sure the autobalancing of XP (less xp for higher levels) only affects the xp you gain from killing. XP from quests, dialogues etc are not affected by it.
If he got no XP after talking to wight with bard then he'd get no xp for it even if his level was lower.

[Schmendrick the Magician]

You're right, I got the XP when I talked to villagers after the quest to save the children.

However, I have more questions...

1. When I asked Tahvo the Huntmaster the way through the Fell Woods he said to mark my map and drop pebbles or stick an arrow in the ground to mark my progress. How do you do this?

I thought it was possible to split up a group of arrows (40 = 39 + 1) but I couldn't figure out how.

Instead I dropped what I thought were unnecessary items along the way, but I'm worried they could come in handy later on. Do I need any of the following...

Rock pile x 2
Wood pile
High Priestess keys from chapter 2
Note from the Master of the Locks ?

(I thought the rock piles could be used for the pebble dropping but no go)

2. I also tried making notes on my map but this didn't work. The manual doesn't say how to do this. Anybody...???

3. Also, my barbarian lost his rage ability. The game says "no special abilities" when I try to use it, and no, he hasn't run out, he just rested. I can probably fix it with Dalekeeper but still, what gives?

Thanks for the help everybody.

[Luvian]

Double click a stack of item and a window should come up so that you can seperate it.