Re: Exploring apparently has hidden requirements?

From: Bryan Thexton <bethexton_at_...>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 14:55:58 +0000 (UTC)

I think the only treasure I ever get from the Dragonnewt Wilds is the statue that you find on your first exploration, but I can't say that I've ever heavily re-explored the area--now I feel inspired to do a new game where I focus on re-exploring all of the named regions to find what I can find! I generally explore up there in my first year, as part of my standard opening. You always find the statue on your first time there, the trick is managing to take it away successfully.    My best luck in stealing it away has been sending someone who has high animals ability (first priority) and good combat and magic (second priority), and I typically send three thanes and three farmers.  My reasoning is that in a couple of dragonnewt scenes it seems that animal skill matters (I forget the details now but I concluded this at some point when I was playing a lot of games), magic just seems like it might be applicable, and combat is a back up up in case they are attacked.  The three and three is attempting to send a balanced party, because balance seems to be a theme with dragonewts, and seven is a lucky number for the Orlanthi (and maybe sometimes a leader says something about sending a few people but not too many, ' perhaps seven,' but I could be imagining that--I haven't played the game much in the past several years.  And as with most things, having more magic stored up probably improves your luck, but I admit that I'm normally doing it with just one point of magic in store. It doesn't always work, but it often works, and when it doesn't going back to a save and trying again often does. Finding the rest of the items up there, I have no real idea.
--Bryan

      From: "question2005_at_gmail.com [KingOfDragonPass]" <KingOfDragonPass_at_yahoogroups.com>  To: KingOfDragonPass_at_yahoogroups.com  Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2015 7:49 AM  Subject: Exploring apparently has hidden requirements?    

  I did several dozen save/reloads after sending exploration teams into the dragonnewt wildlands, and i only got the standard 3 encounters :

-Everyone dies

-Party is attacked while transferring temple treasure, some survive

-Party is attacked while transferring temple treasure, everyone except the leader dies

Party consisted of a Vingan leader with "good" in most skills, 1 weaponthane, 30 footmen and set to "slow" speed, during fire season.

I did more than two dozen reloads and could not get any of the treasures like the dragontooth spear. This was when i started suspecting that some treasures might have hidden requirements, like a minimum sized party, etc.

I used cheat engine, gave that same vingan leader very high stats (according to cheat engine, heroic starts at about 2.3, i gave her 3s in all stats) and i sent her with 48 weapon thanes and 30 footmen. Almost every encounter resulted in gaining a treasure. Sometimes i got the temple goods encounter, but the dragon newts didnt attack (probably because the party was too large). I never got an encounter where the party was attacked.

I tried sending my normal elmal warleader which had heroic combat (2.55 according to cheat engine) and excellent or above in most of his other skills with the same number of weapon thanes/footmen, and i still couldnt get a single treasure. However i did manage to get the encounters where the dragon newts just watched but didnt attack, so clearly party size plays a huge factor. But what i found really surprising is that a heroic combat war leader with excellent stats couldnt get any treasures either.

So i played around with the stats on the vingan leader again. I set all of her stats to 2.55 (heroic) and i STILL couldnt get the treasure, athough it did ensure that she never got attacked by the dragon newts. Changed them back to 3 in all stats and yup, she got a treasure in the first 3 tries.

I dont know which of her stats is affecting the chance to find a treasure, it might be all of them for all i know, but whats worrying is that even a very high skill level of 2.55 cant get any treasure. Heroic starts at a value of about 2.3, and completing orlanth and aroka seems to bump up your stats by about 0.05 each time...so that basically means that its impossible to get to 3 in a skill without cheating.

I guess there might be some other hidden requirements affecting it, but since the game doesnt actually tell you what they are...good luck.

Unless any of the devs can shed some light on this?

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