First replay in 15+ years. Some questions.

Who originally sold spell scrolls in that area before the vendor was added? No one?

 

Actually Burne was the vendor. Pishella is just there to whip him (and do the skull ritual).

 

The XP penalty for using 'Raise Dead" is way too high imo. My wizard went from 20-something thousand XP to 12,500 XP which is fucking ridiculous. Might as well just reload on death every time if that's your option.

 

I think you can cast restoration to reduce the penalty a bit, but it'll still be in the thousands of XPs.
Though personally, I think the game is implicitly balanced around this sort of setback (i.e. the occasional one-shot kill from an Ogre is working as intended).

 

If you want to get hardcore, level loss from death is the one thing restoration isn't supposed to help with. The code doesn't seem to account for this, though.

One thing that occurs to me is that ToEE's way of handling this prevents you from catching back up. It doesn't actually lower your level, which is normally to your benefit. But it means you don't get the experience boost of being a lower level. Dying is probably the sort of scenario that that rule was actually meant for (as opposed to the crafting loophole, which is probably an unintended mistake).

 

On the bright side, chunking is not the default (except disintegrate), unlike the BG series. Chunking was when the npc went really far into negative health and that character was permanently removed from the game. I forget the exact numbers.

I have lost a character permanently on ToEE to disintegrate, though.

Iirc, Cambert sells restoration scrolls and casting brings you up to the current level's minimum xp. It's not so helpful if you are level camping, as I sometimes do . It's handy for the monster dominate/kill/raise dead/restore cycle (if adding monsters to the party, because monster classes are always at min. xp).

 

Does the spell Eagle's Splendor stack with a Cloak of Charisma?

I want to recruit meleny, but none of my male characters have more than 10 charisma, and she apparently requires 16 (which I think is way too high btw) to be able to add her to the party. I was thinking of crafting a Cloak of Charisma +2 and then combining that with Eagle's Splendor to temporarily get 16 charisma. Would that work?

*Edit* Too bad we can't use NPCs for quests like that. I have Zaxis, who has 14 charisma, but that's apparently not an option.

 

No, they don't stack.

 

Thanks. I guess I won't be getting Meleny then. I really wanted to try her since she's the only recruitable druid. Had I known about the 16 charisma requirement, I would have given my main guy a couple more points in that stat.

It looks like my only option would be to craft a Cloak of Charisma +6, but I'm not going to spend 18,000 gold on that.

 

You can edit your character, if that sort of thing doesn't bother you. Via console or the DM.

 

I might try that. Thanks.

 

Regarding Smigmal the half-orc assassin, if you don't discover her identidty with the bluff skill when you first encounter her, do you encounter her again later at some point in the game?

Also, I rescued Lareth from Burne's dungeon and brought him back to the tower behind the main entrance to the temple. However, upon returning there later, he's gone. I thought he was supposed to stay there and be a merchant.

 

Well yeah, he is supposed to be there... I think he says something about needing some time to set up shop?