Soul capture bug

[divinefistoka]

Not sure if the bug is still around or not, but...

When playing the ORIGINAL build of portralis (then called 'newangband 180', according to folder) i got hold of a soul guardian class before the main questor (unique) in the jail cells, shortly before a certain towns destruction. I liked the spells, and thought this would be nice, so i went out of the way to capture his soul. Sure enough, it let me, and when i got back out, i thought 'I'll give these guys swarming the town a taste of there own medicine.' I summoned a copy of the main questor i'd captured, and immeditaely received the messages associated with the storyline. Not a good thing, and very buggy, but after finished with the messages, he was indeed summoned, and loyal to me, and started tearing through a lot of the enemies like so much swiss cheese. No clue how game breaking it would be back then, since the early version ended there.

If this is still around, how damging would it be to the game to capture such 'lesser' quest-related creatures? Remove the bug with messages, and they would be quite nice. Obviously the endgame questors would be bad, but others should work i think.

Again, not sure if this is still around or not.

[Variaz]

Hmm...just checked the code, Questors do work with Simulacrum, but their dialogues will surely pop-up. Will have to make sure it can't happen.

Questors and Uniques will continue to work with Soul Guardians. Considering that it's EXTREMELY difficult to capture them, you deserve to be rewarded if you do.

By "EXTREMELY difficult", I mean that for Uniques, you must lower their hp to 5% at most, which is extremely difficult since you can deal so much damages. Then, to capture them, it's a test between your wisdom versus their level + mind. Later Uniques will have very high amount of both, so this is going to be tough without Raise Wisdom spells/Licialhyds/wis-boosting items.

[divinefistoka]

Does this mean we could have a Variaz simulacrum and some post-game extra stuff to use it on?
*grins evilly*

Or should this only be limited to lesser questors?

[Variaz]

I won't make a game appearence in the main quest, which is much more serious this time around. The villains you'll face will be entirely new!

But you will be able to capture the final boss(good luck, you'll need it), and there will surely be some post-game quests. The main quest will be made for levels 1 to 100 with average levelable items, but the game allows levels of 200, levelable items of 200, and some pretty insane damages. (read the Damages Overflow thread. When I say "insane" damages, I mean it. ). So yeah, it will be useful.

[divinefistoka]

Um... you seemed to neglect to mention something important here... Does using simulacrum on main questors as it exists now in portralis, break the game? Are they safe to use and just annoying because of the dialogue? Don't wanna screw over a game again. (Blasted game-breaking bugs in tome)

[Variaz]

Well, not save file ruining bugs or game crashing bugs, but it might reset some event variables and may have some effects on the main quest. So it's better to not do that at the moment. Just Soul Bind them on some powerful items.

Again, good luck capturing one in the first place.

[divinefistoka]

It didn't seem to hard for that first razor-disk throwing guy in the prisons, summoned a meat shield to keep him busy (they were too weak to kill him) and just sat there trying over and over. Its also how i deflected those powerful spells away from me. He threw razor-disks, a kobold died (i seem to remember it being kobolds, but its been a long time, i dunno what i summoned.) and i just summoned more later. They chipped his HP down with occasional help from me. when he was low enough, i just attempt repeatedly to capture.

[Variaz]

Well, he's just a minor boss, and isn't very strong anyway.

Try capturing the main quest boss of the current beta. Now that's much harder.

[phlinn]

Hmm... will Soul power let you use scripted abilities associated with certain quest mobs?

Which is harder, capturing qazar, or a high level twisted dungeon boss?

I may have to actually try a soul guardian at some point.

[Variaz]

Well, you cannot capture quest bosses, so it's out of the question. Reason for this is because all random bosses uses the same monster slot, so the soul's abilities would keep changing. Monster Magics aren't dependant on monster slots though, so that's why you can learn them.