Ring of Infravision: Finally Found a Use

Quartz

So... the Ring of Infravision. Most games I loot it from Nimbul's cold, dead corpse and proceed to pawn it ASAP. For once I decided I would keep it. Arbitrarily, I gave it to Imoen. She sounds like a bit of a kleptomaniac in the first game anyway ("those monks never have anything good on them"!), so it seemed fitting enough.

I found myself using it without even realizing it. Every time I went to find a shadow so she could hide in shadows easier, her sprite would become reddish and I could tell when to click the button.

I realize you can tell if someone is "in the dark"/in a shadow without infravision, but it makes it more readily apparent anyhow. I also realize one can simply turn on party infravision.

So it's not a game-changer, but convenient anyway!

Mathsorcerer

Speaking of Nimbul, I find it fascinating that he is a 7/7 mage/thief who has 6 instances of Magic Missile memorized. That's a pretty neat trick!

I should edit his items and script like I had several years ago--as soon as his dialogue ends and he goes hostile he would cast horror, then use a potion of invisibility, then use throwing daggers against any party member who was not state_panic.

Monotremata

In my current game Imoen is a 7/5 Mage/Thief and she's got 6 Magic Missles memorized. (She's got a total of 8 lvl 1 spells)

Grond0

There's a couple of nice instances in SoD where the use of infravision is required to access additional areas.

Skatan

Mathsorcerer said:

Speaking of Nimbul, I find it fascinating that he is a 7/7 mage/thief who has 6 instances of Magic Missile memorized. That's a pretty neat trick!

I should edit his items and script like I had several years ago--as soon as his dialogue ends and he goes hostile he would cast horror, then use a potion of invisibility, then use throwing daggers against any party member who was not state_panic.

I've always thought he was a bard! How a level 7 mage can mess up so bad in a fight is just bad scripting, I mean a level 7 mage can take down Sarevok and his possy, hehe..

tbone1

And how does a mage/thief use throwing axes?

Quartz

Monotremata said:

In my current game Imoen is a 7/5 Mage/Thief and she's got 6 Magic Missles memorized. (She's got a total of 8 lvl 1 spells)

Right, but she has a Ring of Wizardry too, no?

tbone1 said:

And how does a mage/thief use throwing axes?

...This is an excellent question.

SharGuidesMyHand

Mathsorcerer said:

Speaking of Nimbul, I find it fascinating that he is a 7/7 mage/thief who has 6 instances of Magic Missile memorized. That's a pretty neat trick!

Skatan said:

Mathsorcerer said:

Speaking of Nimbul, I find it fascinating that he is a 7/7 mage/thief who has 6 instances of Magic Missile memorized. That's a pretty neat trick!

I should edit his items and script like I had several years ago--as soon as his dialogue ends and he goes hostile he would cast horror, then use a potion of invisibility, then use throwing daggers against any party member who was not state_panic.

I've always thought he was a bard! How a level 7 mage can mess up so bad in a fight is just bad scripting, I mean a level 7 mage can take down Sarevok and his possy, hehe..

tbone1 said:

And how does a mage/thief use throwing axes?

The way that a character is presented in the game is not always the way he or she is structured. Remember, the original devs never intended that players be able to "see" what non-playable characters really are. For RP purposes, Nimbul IS a bard, but he's secretly structured as an illegal human mage/thief multi-class. I believe Silke may also be structured the same way (not sure about that, though).

Chronicler

Why would Silke need thief levels? All she does is cast arcane magic and swing her staff at you.

Noloir

@Chronicler

Quarterstaff backstab with better scripting maybe? She casts invisibility so that wouldn't be much of a stretch.

SharGuidesMyHand

Chronicler said:

Why would Silke need thief levels? All she does is cast arcane magic and swing her staff at you.

Noloir said:

@Chronicler

Quarterstaff backstab with better scripting maybe? She casts invisibility so that wouldn't be much of a stretch.

Like I said, I might be misremembering Silke (it's been a while since I cheated her into one of my parties).

EDIT: Wouldn't giving Silke thief levels improve her THAC0 when swinging her staff, and also give her more HPs? Just a thought.

OlvynChuru

Silke is a level 10 bard. She could easily cream some of the toughest enemies in the game with her 10d6 damage lightning bolts. Yet she frequently gets beaten by a level 1-2 team.

Back to the subject of infravision, a neat way to make infravision more useful would be to slightly reduce the vision range of creatures without infravision during the night and in dark places.

Mathsorcerer

Silke also has a Potion of Invulnerability in her inventory...which she cannot use. Trade that out for a Potion of Defense then have her script drink the potion first and those low-level parties are going to be in some serious trouble.

Chronicler

OlvynChuru said:

Back to the subject of infravision, a neat way to make infravision more useful would be to slightly reduce the vision range of creatures without infravision during the night and in dark places.

I'm pretty sure they already do this.

The only thing is that every body in your party can access the whole group's visual range. So with a full party it doesn't really make a difference if one or two of your guys don't have infravision.

OlvynChuru

Chronicler said:

OlvynChuru said:

Back to the subject of infravision, a neat way to make infravision more useful would be to slightly reduce the vision range of creatures without infravision during the night and in dark places.

I'm pretty sure they already do this.

Sorry, but I'm pretty sure this is not implemented normally. And it cannot be explained by group infravision. I've done playthroughs where no one in my party has infravision (such as solo playthroughs with a human). It doesn't reduce vision range in such a situation.

Furthermore, if lack of infravision did reduce vision range at night, it would be apparent if an elf in the party saw a hostile human at the edge of the fog of war and the human did not attack.

Chronicler

So then I'm kind of unclear on what Infravision does... at all.

What does Group Infravision even mean?

lroumen

Infravision just makes other characters look reddish when those are in the dark. If you don't have infravision those characters will look grey/shadowed.

For group Infravision only one party member needs to have it and then any selected party member will have it (see characters red when they are in the dark).

SharGuidesMyHand

Chronicler said:

So then I'm kind of unclear on what Infravision does... at all.

What does Group Infravision even mean?

I believe infravision was initially intended to have some sort of real benefit, but it was never actually implemented in the original (BG1) game - similar to how wisdom was supposed to have a "magical defense adjustment" against mind-controlling spells, but this was never implemented either.