, 28 September 2018 - 04:41 AM.
The quests in SoA are largely optional, so it's perfectly valid to retrieve Afaaq's lamp very late in the game. Yes, the Underdark quest is quite interesting, but you can still continue the plot without it. It may lead to a slight personal sacrifice in an upcoming event though (or not, it's your choice in the end).
The skull is actually one of several options to solve another quest, later in ToB. Purifying it is purely optional and may have it's own downsides. You can ask one of the priests in the ToB part of the game (Saradush or Amkethran) if you still want to purify it.
Edited by Argent77, 28 September 2018 - 06:02 AM.
Oh, wonderful. That's all lovely to hear, I was concerned I'd missed out on the skull upgrade and other goodies.
Just noticed, since I haven't played the game much since last post, but the Purified Skull of the Demi-Lich has a major and possibly unintended downside: It blocks Whirlwind / Greater Whirlwind attacks from increasing your Attacks Per Round past 5, and it should (and is) 10 APR when activating those without the skull equipped. Removing the helm every two rounds so I can Greater Whirlwind is a hassle. Likely is due to 'immunity to haste', since WW / GWW give two rounds of Improved Haste. Which reminds me, it also interferes with the epic mage spell Energy Blades, which *also* gives Improved Haste and 10 APR for 5 Turns or until all Energy Blades are thrown.
Edited by Jenavee, 15 October 2018 - 11:30 AM.
Yeah, the powers granted by the skull can be both a curse and a blessing. It will make the wearer immune to a great number of disabling effects (even imprisonment), but also prevents several beneficial effects, such as anything haste-related. The purification merely removed the more lethal effects from the artifact. I think the item is still very powerful, even with the current handicaps.
Then I'd suggest adding an effect that removes any haste spell effects on equip, because all it does right now is simply prevent you reaching 10 APR *while wearing it when gaining the APR.* If you take it off, cast Whirlwind Attack, GWA, or Energy Blades, then re-equip the Purified Skull, you get all the benefits of the skull without losing the extra APR or speed, making it an easily-bypassed meta hassle.
Edited by Jenavee, 15 October 2018 - 02:39 PM.
Unfortunately the game engine is too limited to find a good solution for this issue. It might work for the Enhanced Editions, but most likely not with classic BG2 or BGT. I will do some further tests though. Maybe I can come up with something.
Actually, I'm almost certain, looking at A7Skull2.ITM in NearInfinity, that adding a Dispel (Spell Effect) on equip is *possible*, I just don't know what effect #'s Haste and Haste2 are.
EDIT: Oh, wait. You know what? It might be possible to, instead of dispelling existing effects, OVERWRITE them, by having the Purified Skull of the Demi-Lich apply a 1-second Haste to the character on equip. Then it wears off after that second, taking the previous Haste buffs with it. I know for a fact you can put a duration on effects, so this should be a reasonable solution, even though they'll get a single second of Haste. You'd probably have to apply the Haste BEFORE Haste Immunity, however, so it gets applied *before* the immunity does.
The "Dispel effects" opcode will remove all removable effects of the character. Moreover, Whirlwind attack and several other innate abilities can't be dispelled, so it wouldn't even be effective for these effects.
Overriding effects works only in rare cases, e.g. for permanent effects that are directly applied to the character. Temporary effects just pile up in the effects list. So adding a second short-duration haste instance will just override the original haste for that duration. Afterwards the original haste will take effect again.
In EE games you can simply apply a bunch of opcode 337 instances to remove all the desired effects. Maybe I will do that if I can't find a better solution.
Good to know, I'm not as up-to-date as I should be on the underlying mechanics.
Occurs to me, I haven't looked in the files, but I wonder if the Improved Haste from Energy Blades spell isn't actually on the Blade weapons it conjures, since it fades as soon as you've thrown the last one. That might make countering it impossible.
It looks like adding the afore-mentioned opcodes to the skull will introduce their own unwanted side effects. The current state of the item is probably the best tradeoff between intended and undesired effects.
If you really, really wanted to allow for WW and similar abilities to apply their hast effects you could probably change your item to apply that buff once per second and then patch WW, GWW, EBs and so on to first remove that effect before continuing to apply their normal effects.
Sorry for the late reply. I'd rather not add hacks to make the item more compatible with the specified spells. In my experience these kinds of "optimizations" usually lead to compability issues as soon as other mods are involved, or when Beamdog decides to update the spells in one of their patches.
A fair point, and there isn't really a need to fix it anyway besides consistency. Easy enough to adjust it in NearInfinity, anyway, if someone wanted to alter the behaviour.
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