All craftsman/blacksmiths are not equally skilled in the art of forging weapons and armour. And so throughout the land varying qualities of equipment can be found:

-Normal items will have 3 levels of quality: Poor, Average and High.
Poor: THAC0 Penalty and damage penalty(in regards to average quality), a chance of breaking.
Average: Normal
High: THAC0 Bonus and speed bonus. No damage bonuses. Those are for magical
items

- High quality normal items can be upgraded through gems.
- 4 different gem types - the elements fire/poison etc
- There can only be one gem per item (stops it from getting too complicated).

Magic items of course can still have things added to them just like in bg2.

cool.

Yes, it is cool isn't it? But what is it that you think is so cool? That is my question for you. I personally like the gems and how they are going to be able to change the damage type of the sword. That will be cool.

Can I ask how is this being done, from a technical point of view?

igi: it is possible via converseable items. All the upgrades can be done through teh dialog. However, I'm curious whether there is any better way...

Ok. That will mean a lot of items, good luck.

The gems, are cool. I also like the different quality of craftmanship.

somes questions
1. Will these items still be useful compared to magic items you'll find?
2. Will pre-enchanted items be harder to find early on than in the bg series to make this feature more usefull?
3. In adition to craftmanship quality, will materials also vary? i.e. shitty iron weapons early on, steel weapons as standard, and powerful mythril(sp?) (or an equivlent for this world) latter on.
4. Will poor just reflect craftmanship quality, or also bad weapon condition? (i.e. a rusty dagger that was origionally well made)

I think I remember pondering socketable weapons for ages with Max and Avenger, to no avail. There was some crazy way that wouldn't work in multiplayer or something, and the general upshot of it was that whatever happened wasn't going to work very well.

Sim: Any details at all? Or is this another "we talked about it, but none of us can remeber anything at all" things?

Oh, most definitely. And it was almost certainly horrific.

Thanks for some detail, FD.

1. Well, since there will be different elements of weapons(fire, ice, poison, etc.) and some magical items won't be like this, some of the creatures that you may come into contact with may be of a certain type that is weak against fire, but you don't have any magical weapons that are of fire type. So, the answer is yes.

2. We don't plan on making pre-enchanted items more enchanted. But the way things are going to happen are that Ragnar's dwarves forge the weapons and my elves enchant them. So there is a possiblity that I may make a Non-party NPC able to enchant them more. Of course there will be a price and some other restrictions so that it isn't too easy.

3. Material variations may be available, but we haven't discussed it yet. Thanks for mentioning this. I'm sure we will discuss it soon.

4. It will also reflect weapon condition. Note: I just decided this myself without discussing it with the team, but I'm sure they will agree.


Sim: I'm not sure that I understand your post. Socketable weapons?

When I say socketable weapons, I basically mean the system you're proposing here (albeit potentially allowing multiple enhancements). It's an excellent feature for the game, so I wish you luck in implementing it... but I certainly couldn't be bothered, heh.

Craftsmanship Bonuses:

Three levels of elemental gems for item upgrading (these are rare magical gems):

Hell Fire Gem: +15 to fire resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +3 Fire damage then.

Inferno Gem: +10 to fire resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +2 Fire damage then.

Wildfire Gem: +5 to fire resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +1 Fire damage then.


Storm Gem: +15 to lightning resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +3 Lightning damage then.

Lightning Gem: +10 to lightning resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +2 Lightning damage then.

Thunder Gem: +5 to lightning resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +1 Lightning damage then.


Toxin Gem: +15 to poison resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +3 Poison damage then.

Poison Gem: +10 to poison resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +2 Poison damage then.

Venom Gem: +5 to poison resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +1 Poison damage then.


Ice Gem: +15 to cold resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +3 Cold damage then.

Hail Gem: +10 to cold resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +2 Cold damage then.

Snow Gem: +5 to cold resistance until enchanted by elves. Recieves +1 Cold damage then.

The bonus's from the gems seem overpowered, and the names are pretty sucky (is this a gem, or just a piece of rock that makes weapons better?).
Other than that, ok.

Here's where I object... I don't think it'd be overpowered at all. We're not talking about further enchanting holy avengers.. but a select (fairly small) assortment of weapons which have no bonuses to begin with.

It doesnt matter if it's 1, 10 or 100 items, I feel that +15% to a resistance from a single item is overpowered.
If you had a character wearing 6 items giving +15%, you'd have close to 100% resistance, which you'd have to say is not desirable. Even 50% resistance to something is too much, hell, even 20%.
Why not use smaller numbers, 1%, 5% and uber-rare items of 10%? Sure, it may not sound impressive when someone comes to read the website or advertising, but it will play a lot better.

Thank you for your input it will be taken under advisement.

When i was reading igi's post and he mentioned the sucky names of the gems I started thinking. Its true that there would be no reason why a generic readily available gem should grant magical abilites to a weapon unless the gem is magical in its own right already. In BG gems are generally used as a cost of upgrading and only rarely as magical items in and of themselves.

So I propose some alternate names which will at least give some reason to why they grant the ability:

Hell Fire Gem: Demons tongue/heart
Inferno Gem: Phoenix's Feather
Wildfire Gem: Fire Elemental's Hand/Eye

Storm Gem: Storm Falcons Feather
Lightning Gem: Lightning Rod
Thunder Gem: Thunder Drum

Toxin Gem: Vampires Nail
Poison Gem: Belladonna
Venom Gem: Adders Tongue


Ice Gem: Yeti's Pelt
Hail Gem: Ice Salamanders Crest
Snow Gem: WinterWolf Pelt


There are bams available for most of these already so it shouldn't be too much trouble! What do you think?

there seem to be a common misunderstanding with these gems, these gems are very rare, as much as the some of the more rare items you have listed.

and the WTP will have all new bams, to bg that is, and some that have never been seen before. spells, items, and summoned weapons.

I like the name for the Phoenix stone

I have to agree, as it was mentioned. These stones\gems, are suppose to be very rare, and it would be foolish, seeing as you can only put 1 on an item, to load up all your gear with frost protection and go face off against a red dragon.

A mix of, I'll use, gems will give a little protection against a couple of differant elements. And ask yourself, do you keep whereing the same armour through the whole game? How about the same weapon? Even though I would have to say that a weapon upgraded should only count as offence and not provide protection properties.

In closing, I would have to say I agree with the percentages as they are presented.

That is a good point. I've tried discussing this in blackwyrm chat right now, but dragon_lord doesn't know, but I think that we should move the gems for protection from the weapons to the armor. As for the rarity of the gems here's how it will work:

1 for the highest quality of a gem
1 for the medium quality of a gem
2 of the lowest quality gems

There is a screenshot of it in the Screenshot thread stickied in here. There are also several screenshots of some animations that I have put into the game.

At the moment we're not sure if we will change the upgrade system to have equipment specific upgrades. Eg Swords get gems attached to their hilts and armour gets strengthened with mithril etc.

btw poor quality items have a chance to break.

Not bad, a little fine tuning and it would be great.

If possable, as stated before I'm inept at modding, maybe you could add some colour, or maybe make it look like a chunk of ice?

Are you talking about the inventory bam or the description bam?

On the description bam Sir-Kill isalready working on it. but yes, he is working on making it more frozen looking.

@Everyone: We are trying to figure out what we should do for the poison gems. Does anyone have any ideas?

For the pic, I would suggest, seeing as they are suppose to be stone or gem type of item. Maybe you could make a rock that has like steem coming off it, or little puffs of gass coming from it.

Funny thing that. I had that exact idea, but we rejected it because the element is poison, not acid. It's somewhat confusing as the two elements are very close, but there is a difference. Perhaps we will change the element to acid, but I seriously doubt it as poison has more options and just seems, well, better.

Perhaps I could get some public opinions on one of my ideas as well. I'm thinking of two different gems. Holy and unholy. There will only be one of each throughout the whole game. Only a few items will be upgradeable with it as well. Also, holy weapons cannot be made unholy and vice versa. For example, Holy Avenger cannot be upgraded to Unholy Avenger. A holy weapon will, depending on the weapon, either be able to smite undead or deal extra damage to them. For unholy weapons there will either be disease inflicted, chance of spawning undead, chance of smiting living, or level drain.

Unholy weapons will have the chance of backfiring on the user. They will only be usable by Evil, while holy weapons will only be usable by characters with good alignments and reputations of 12 or greater.

Opinions please.

I dont mean to sound negative, but:
1) Doing such a large amount of work, if these gems are to be so rare, seems pretty silly
2) If a gem by itself isnt magical, why does it have a magical sounding name (Hellfire, Wildfire, Toxin etc)?
3) Taking a generci gem and adding a component to it shouldnt really do anything, unless the component is magical (and the gem acts as some sort of focus). So, how does this work? You stick an adders tongue on top of a Green Gem, and the gem suddenly does poison damage?
4) If your not going to have any originallity in the gem names, how about some in the gem components? It's hard to get more cliche than asking for a Demons Heart...
5) Upgrading to Holy/Unholy versions of something - surely this should require a Cleric of some sort? A generic smith and a few lumps of stone (however cool their name is) cant really make something Holy.

Acid and poisons are completely different, except for the fact that they are both often portrayed as a green liquid, hence the confusion.

Suggestions:
1) If your upgrading is done by sticking a gem on to the hilt of a sword or some such, how about a small chance it can be knocked off in combat?
2) If your going to use "Poison Gem" and "Toxic Gem" and so on, how about actually making the gems act like their name? E.g carrying/handling a poison gem has a chance to poison the holder, bringing 15 Storm gems together in close proximity will attract a lightning storm (and I dont just mean lightning strikes on nearby enemies).

Questions
1) Will you be able to un-upgrade enemies weapons, and use the compoments to upgrade your own gear?
2) Will you be able to un-upgrade your own gear?

And I still maintain that 15% is too high. You'd rapidly turning character into BG2 level, where they run around as ground-shaking super-people who can decimate the entire annual convention of Particularly Mean and Powerful Liches (and thier Beholder Pets. Who summon Pit Fiends to play with).


I know this probably sound pretty negative, but, I am broadly in favour of this, I just feel if your going ot do it, try and avoid clichess and try to make it feel like something real, as opposed to "heres a cool idea we can put in our mod".
/igi

What i meant in my previous post was that the gem names be completly replaces by the "component" names i listed. Its easy enough to believe that using a demons heart to enchant a blade to have some fire resistance would work, demons being from one of the lower hells etc Or that using a Yeti's pelt to line a suit of armour would protect you from the cold would work.

At least the components in BG2 are magical items, the Eye of Tyr or Hand of Vecna etc have reasons for being magical and aren't just some rare gem lying in a horde somewhere that happen to have a sticker attached to it that says "Poison Gem : Handle with Care" so you know what it does. If on the other hand you knew a smith would upgrade things for you if you ask and you find an Adders Tongue there is at least a reason for thinking it might be of use!

Any upgrade feature that is part of a mod will always be open to these problems but at least if the components are unique magical items with their own reason for being that way it lends some credibility to their use as an upgrade component.



This i really like the idea of, if something can be used to create a poison weapon then it should be poisonous to the bearer too! That would bring a big negative side to carrying around all those upgrade items...i like it!

Hua-Ha-Ha, Silly mortals! The world is full of magic. All things were once created by divine force, and in all things that spark still exists. The form and nature of this strange force varies from object to object of course, but there are masters among mortals that know the secret nature of flesh, steel and stone. These grand masters understand the underlying nature of things, and through this understanding can bring forth the essence of this spark during the act of creation.

This is the nature of the Soul of the Forge. A power that in the right hands, with the assistance of power of the Great Forge can extract the spark of first creation from seemingly mundane items. With this spark they can embue items with the most marvelous powers.

I do not understand mere mortals of mundane minds to understand the secrets of wizards, oracles and sages. Know this however, there are those that Can undo creation as well as bend it to their will.

/me yawns

So, everything is explained away by the fact that "some nifty magic" resides in all things, as a left-over from the act of creation?

So.. my old boots can be added to my sword?

I guess I fail to see what the problem is. the Pommel Jewel, Equalizer Hilt, and Equalizer Blade makes the Equalizer. nothing magic there and Gesen Bow Shaft and Gesen Bow String makes the Short Bow of Gesen. nothing magic there, and Wave Shaft and Wave Blade make Halberd +4, Wave, again... so you have some gems that have magical properties that can make non magical weapons to have some magical propreties from the inate magic inside them. you can have a horn but not a gem, I see no difference there.

BG2 doing something weird doesn't mean it always has to be done like that. Anyone who's read Salvatore's Demonwars saga will be familiar with a rather interesting magic system based on gems.

so what you are saying is that if the gems did something on there own, that it would be a good thing. thats a posibility.

Are you a grand master mage/smith enslaved the the Soul of the Forge, imprisoned within the Great Forge? If so you may be able to use the leather from those boots to make the grip better so you drop it less often..

It's about forumlas, and arcane knowledge...

As for the spark of creation or "Nifty magic".. some research could do you good. Principals of this sort have been incorporated into not only modern views of physics as well as metaphysics, but also in ancient achemy and philosophy.

I perseonally like adding the nethack esk element without requiring the players to eat corpses.

Edit;

If you'd like the concept put to a poll I'd be more than happy to, but not here. Any major player polls will be conducted on sites that are not aimed at the modding community, but at players.

Sir-Kill: Theres a difference between components of something being reassembled (e.g. the Equalizer Blade and the Equalizer Hilt) and sticking some random gem onto some random lump of metal, and expecting it to do something magic.

Sim:

I whole-heartedly agree. BG2 isnt perfect, and the phrase "BG2 does it this way" should not, and does not serve as justification for a method, idea or process.

Chevar:
Introducing some meta-physics into the magic mix still doesnt make the explanation any better. And if only Great Super People Who Are Within the Forge and Wear Orange Flares can forge stuff, how will forged items ever be available to the player?


I am happy about the *concept* - I think item crafting and forging is cool, I am concerned about the back-story and the story-implementation. You can put up a Poll if you want, but I'll probably vote *for* item-crafting.

If you want, I can try and write out my concerns, issues and hopes for the thing, and e-mail them to you, then you can read through them all and take note/ignore them all, rather than having an endless debate

By all means,

Mailto: Chevar@yahoo.com

I have no desire to debate either. I think you're taking to broad a veiw. The items as far as I know will not be upgradable by the player, but in the "take it to" (whoever) to have it done for them. As opposed to in Diablo in which the player just plugs it in. Along the lines of cromwell.

according to ancient alchemy (as well as modern metaphysics), certain things are considered to have certain properties. It's a matter of what objects have what properties, and how they function in cooperation. The cooperative is the vital part. consider it as if it were mixing potions, or creating spells. The concept behind those trained at the great forge (as seen in myth and Mythera) is that these properties can be extracted and function in certain ways when combined by those that understand how to do this..

It's like this.. anyone can try to combine coal, salt and sulfur, but if you don't know the right proportions you'll never get gunpowder.

The gems that have come up in this thread can't be just plugged into any item, but into specific items which were designed to unlock the power of the gems (correct me if I'm wrong in this DL).

One thing in BG2 always put me off: the sheer amount of +2, +3 and +4 weapons, not to mention creatures that yielded only to them. I know the party is *supposed* to be uber and all, but the numbers of powerful creatures slain in the course of BG2. I've easily counted at least 20 liches, one demi-lich, two dragons (add two more for ToB), numerous giants, golems, dozens of mind flayers and beholders, elementals, djinni, a shade lord (wasn't he supposed to be a minor power with a strong avatar?), taking on an entire Drow city, and two of the most powerful mages in the history of Faerun (Irenicus and Bodhi), not to mention the bhaalspawn in ToB, or demogorgon. This was all absurd. Whilst I understand the player wouldn't like to be submitted to dull fights, but what's with those goblins or kobolds? Wouldn't they be 'available' in greater numbers?

Enough of the rant, now to the point:

Make as few pre-enchanted weapons as possible. Make the player save his +1 arrows, bolts and bullets, and savor +2 or greater! Make the prices on +1 weaponry 1,000 times higher than normal, unenchanted, and prices on +2 and greater weapons even higher.
Of course, by all means, include uber items, but available with multiple restrictions. Like a very powerful sword would be wieldable by a lawful good paladin only, and even though possessing a very strong enchantment (say, +4), it could only be used on evil (to full extent), and chaotic neutral enemies (with only +2 enchantment), or simply enemies, but would work as unenchanted. Similar items for evil characters. It would become even more interesting if thieves did not have the ability to use items that have an alignment, or class requisite (sorry, but a neutral evil thief being able to use the Carsomyr to behead every single member of the Order of the Most Radiant Heart? Ridiculous...). If the (evil) thief wanted to use it, make it so that the weapon would cure the wounds of the enemies, and hurt the wielder. I know it's extremely difficult to code, but maybe possible. And if not possible - well, such items would best be left out of the game.

As for improving pre-enchanted weapons - make it impossible. They are supposed to be unique in every aspect. An explanation that would best follow is that it is not possible to further enchant a weapon that has had a finalise process completed (heh, akin to what burning CDs is like - finalisation of a multisession disc makes it impossible to add further information to it), but with finalisation come additional effects (like add three diamonds for +1 damage and +1 THAC0 vs. undead, but if you decide to enchant the weapon completely and finally, you get 2× damage (or twice the die rolls), +2 THAC0 vs. undead, disrupt undead at -4 penalty, and always considered to have +10 enchantment determining what undead can it hit, but considered unenchanted (without bonuses) against other creatures), but you can finalise the enchantment only when doing minor enchantments (and lose more potent possibilities if you decide to do so).

The whole Bhaal spawn thing anooyed the heck out of me that's why we're cutting plotlines of that type from WTP.

As for items.. the amount of Items annoyed the heck out of me as well.. Magic items are meant to be rare... but the players like them, regardless of whenther I tend to be a purist or not, you have to cater to your players to a degree... Let's face it there are a good number of things that can only be hit by +# weapons.

So inorder to keep the plentiful items trend from the BG series that the players like, and to justify it in a way that is more acceptable to those of us that are appauled by the frequency of magic items, I decided to create The Great Forge.

I've long advocated the concept of weapons being varied without being magical. Add a serrated edge onto a dagger, and you have a slightly different weapon without having to add +9999 bonuses.

I would just like to point out that while it was annoying in BG2 to see all these powerful weapons and all of the creatures that fell to them, this isn't really BG2, this is Mythera. Things are different in Mythera. Rules are different. For example, where a dragon would have fallen to a level 20 paladin in BG2, now I could make a Wyvern that wouldn't fall to a level 60 Fighter. Things are a lot different in Mythera. That is why it is called a TC, because it's totally converted.

Just to give you a bit of an update the script for item upgrading is finished as are all the upgraded items for the sword weapon types.

Corrections, the script for the item upgrade is done. I'm about to upload it into the workroom.

Also, the bows for the weapon upgrades are almost done. I'd say about 3 quarters of the way done.

And about Sim's comment about making weapons via serated blades and stuff like that, I like that idea. Though, I'm not quite sure how this would be any different then just adding +1 or whatever Slashing or Piercing or whatever damage.