Potion of Hiding & Potion of Sneaking do nothing?

Continuing on with trying to fill in item descriptions, the Potion of Hiding and the Potion of Sneaking appear to do nothing. They certainly don't grant any skill bonuses.

Note that these are different items than the Elixir of Hiding and the Elixir of Sneaking, which work perfectly. Also note that the Potion of Glibness, which has an identically structured .py file for its effect, DOES work just fine, so it's not a problem with the py file.

The redundancy it items (elixirs and potions) grants two ways to fix this issue.

The first is to replace all occurrences of these items is shops and chests with the corresponding elixirs.

The second is to change the protos.tab entry for the items so that they trigger the same internal effect as the elixirs.

Would one of these fixes seem to be more desirable than the other? I'd lean toward substituting in the elixirs, since having Potions of Hiding and Elixirs of Hiding is kind of stupid.

 

Hmm... that a fair point, but I've run into a related problem.

Items 8032 & 8033 are wonky Potions of Protection from Acid/Electricity which don't work properly. I suspect they are a testing version based on the .py files, and it's pretty clear that they are not intended to be in the game and indeed, they do not appear anywhere in the standard game, and are not craftable.

EXCEPT, they were added at some point to the inventory of the Alchemist in Verbobonc. My suspicion is that whomever was creating the inventory of that guy essentially just shoved in all the relevant looking potions that existed, and those two got put in there.

My preferred solution is to just remove those from his inventory, BUT I'll first see if there is any way to de-wonkify the potions.


As far as the potions of hiding/move silently, I'll probably take your suggestion and just turn them into reskinned versions of the corresponding elixirs via the protos.tab file.

 

Rudy, great work on all the magic item creations and updates you did this weekend. :drunk: You really got to some of the stuff I had been wondering about for a long time like those potions of hiding and sneaking, and the protection potions. I didn't want to clog up your main official thread with this message, but the work is much appreciated.

 

That's very kind of you, and appreciated, but I must for perspective point out that my fleeting contribution is pretty pale in comparison to several users here who've been in this for the long haul. I'll continue doing these little polishes as it keeps my fancy, but I've never had the real dedication that's kept this game alive. So, I'd rather not claim more credit than is my due.

 

hmm... I will do more testing on it, to check; perhaps the mistake was mine. Irritatingly, the .py files from the Protection from fire, protection from acid, and protection from electricity potions all have significant code differences.

 

So, I was indeed partially mistaken. It's only the potion of protection from electricity that doesn't work. It's possible that I sleepily thought I had tried both, but only tried one. So, I'm going to go ahead and see if I can figure out precisely what the acid one *does* do, then see if I can fix the electricity one to work like the acid one. Then, if that all works out, I'll add the long_descriptions and give them back to the alchemist in my items mod.

 

hmm... the fire one worked when I tested it, albeit giving only 36 points of fire damage reduction before dissipating (it works like a protection from elements (fire) spell cast at 3 level from my testing; the level being easily changable via protos).

By fix do you mean you changed it to a sufficiently high caster level for the spell to actually be cast? (since it's a 3rd level spell, I guess that would be CL 5 in this case).

 

Hmm, so the electricity one wasn't working at all, and the acid one was working very weirdly: as a Protection from Energy (acid) spell with 12 points of protection (caster level 1), but with a duration of 20 minutes (caster level 2). And the fire one was working, but not giving particle effects, which makes me sad.

I've fixed the Potion of Protection from Fire, the Potion of Protection from Acid, and the Potion of Protection from Electricity, so that they all function as Protection from Energy for their respective elements, cast at the minimum caster level for that spell, 5. So, 60 points of damage reduction to use, 50 minutes duration. The price of the potions I also increased to that of a 3rd spell level potion (750gp)

The nice thing about them having internal codes for their effects is that the brew potion feat should not overwrite the effective caster level, which means that even if the potion is brewed by, say, a 9th level caster, it will remain at caster level 5, as it should.

I'm going to see if I can't add one for cold damage, as well (I don't think there is much point in bothering with sonic damage, but maybe I'll do that too if the cold one is easy). Then, I can add them as craftable potions, fill out the Brew Potion window a bit, and give them back to the Alchemist in Verbobonc.

 

The only time to bother with sonic damage is very early on (Moathouse and Emridy Meadows).

 

Oh my god; I spent three or four hours trying to figure out why my Potion of Protection from Cold wasn't working, for which I had created a custom spell.

The problem?

I used "//" to comment out a line (the C/Java standard) instead of "#" (the python standard).

*bangs head against wall*

ANYWAY, I have the four potions working now.

* Fixed potion of protection from fire so that it gives a particle effect, and the correct amount of DR for a Protection from Elements spell.
* Fixed potion of protection from electricity, which wasn't working at all.
* Fixed potion of protection from acid, which gave a particle effect, but only provided DR as CL 2.
* Created potion of protection from cold.

All four potions now function the same: as a Protection from Energy spell, cast at 5th level.

As an aside, in the course of testing this I could not get the particle effects to work for potion of protection from electricity. Upon testing the actual Protection From Energy (as cast by my druid), I found that the electricity version of it didn't give particle effects either. Turns out that it was applying:

partsys_type = 'sp-Protection From Elements-electricity'

which, lo and behold, doesn't exist in temple.dll. Resist Elements had the proper line,

partsys_type = 'sp-Protection From Elements-water'.

Yes; protection from electricity uses a particle effect called water.

So, fixed that for both the potion and the actual spell (Protection from Energy).

Going to:

* Triple test these all
* Give them different colored potion graphics if available
* Make them craftable via Brew Potion
* Add them to the inventory of the Alchemist in Verbobonc (that is, return the acid and electricity one to him, and give him the cold one in addition)

All of this will be documented and included in the next version of my little mod.

 

Hmm... I dislike having so very many different potions look the same, especially when there are several potion graphics that are practically unused. I may go ahead and use different colors for my own sake, though I certainly wouldn't expect you to include that change in the Co8 mod. I'll try to remember to include a version without the icon changes.

As an aside, all of the above was successful; the potions are craftable now. Going to see if I can use the same internal spells to make scrolls/wands available as well, and then try the same for resist energy.