Ankheg exploit
speancer
Member Posts: 9
Hi there, I currently am on my first-ever BG:EE playthrough. Last night I accidentally discovered - assuming from what I found about this issue in Google search - an exploit with Ankheg worms, in a location directly north from Friendly Arm Inn, down in the Ankheg Nest. I went down there to clear the area, I ran low on HP and I had used up my healing spells (yes, I'm that kind of player who usually stores the potions for a better occassion 
), so I tried to rest... and here we go. Each time I tried resting, one Ankheg would spawn. It can be repeated endlessly.
I don't like cheating, not even in single-player games, so concerning this issue, I have two questions:
- Do you know if this has been reported? If it has, why hasn't it been fixed? That could easily be called game weakness abusing, right? Or perhaps farming is considered part of the game? This feels kind of game-breaking, not literally, of course, but you can pretty easily get infinite XP and gold by just 'rest-spawning' the Ankhegs and selling their shells to Taerom Fuiruim in the city of Beregost, so that just breaks the game's inteded economy and experience gains
- Is it true that Taerom Fuiruim was originally intended to only buy ONE Ankheg Shell from the CHARNAME, or to only accept one shell to make the armour, without the possibility to sell shells to him afterwards? I read that once he'd take all of your shells and just pay for one, now he pays for each shell every time he is talked to
Any help in that matter is much appreciated
), so I tried to rest... and here we go. Each time I tried resting, one Ankheg would spawn. It can be repeated endlessly.I don't like cheating, not even in single-player games, so concerning this issue, I have two questions:
- Do you know if this has been reported? If it has, why hasn't it been fixed? That could easily be called game weakness abusing, right? Or perhaps farming is considered part of the game? This feels kind of game-breaking, not literally, of course, but you can pretty easily get infinite XP and gold by just 'rest-spawning' the Ankhegs and selling their shells to Taerom Fuiruim in the city of Beregost, so that just breaks the game's inteded economy and experience gains
- Is it true that Taerom Fuiruim was originally intended to only buy ONE Ankheg Shell from the CHARNAME, or to only accept one shell to make the armour, without the possibility to sell shells to him afterwards? I read that once he'd take all of your shells and just pay for one, now he pays for each shell every time he is talked to
Any help in that matter is much appreciated
1
Comments
Personally, I don’t think this is an exploit worth removing because if you’d rather spend four hours spamming rest and killing ankhegs than actually playing through and enjoying the game, then more power to you.
However, I think you are right, in the original game once you got him to make a set of armour he would stop buying shells. He would also only ever make one set of armour. Now I think he will buy as many shells as you can supply and make as many sets of armour as you want.
Personally, I don't see any problem with this. If people want to go ankheg farming that is up to them. The critters have killed enough of my characters in their time that I take positive delight in culling them.
Thanks for replying
Thanks for answering. Why do you think these elements you mentioned are broken? As for rerolling, this is possible in all AD&D games, is it not? I'm planning on playing all the Enhanced Editions, so Baldur's Gate II is next, then Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights and Planescape: Torment (not necessarily in that order), this works the same in all these games? I don't really see how else could you make that work. Even if a roll limit was set, people would just cancel character creation and try again. Is it legal in D&D rules to roll stats as much as desired, or are there limits?
Thanks for your answer. Yeah, that's what I read. I should've written that if not sold one by one, he'd take all of them shells and pay just for one. In current BG:EE version Taerom Fuiruim will only make one armour and he will buy as many shells as desired, I checked it in-game. Apparently once he'd start dropping them if he was sold too many and you could pick them up from the floor and resell them endlessly as well, at least from what Google told me. Not sure if that was fixed.
To me, an exploit is a clear bug in the game - like being able to talk to a character about something multiple times to get the same reward due to a bug.
As for Taerom, well, he is simply buying material to make hideously expensive armor. Why would he cut you off after the first dozen? Again, this can be abused, but by default, it's perfectly fine.
in NWN you don't roll ability scores, there is a point buy system ( i believe they either use 28 or 30 ) and the higher you put points into an ability score the more it costs ( all scores start at 8 then +/- racial modifiers )
in 3rd edition dnd, the point buy system was there and based on what sort of campaign you were playing was how many points you had ( 25 for easy, 28 for medium, 32 for hard i believe it was )
they also had an elite array set you could use ( 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 )
for when it came to rolling ability scores, it was basically whatever you got, you had to keep and you weren't allowed to reroll unless;
you DM said you could ( house rule )
or ( actual rules)
your highest ability score was 13
or
all your ability modifiers put together equaled to 0
usually for my 3rd edition campaigns for PnP we do a 32 point buy system, ( which is what NWN 2 uses ) and it seems to be the sweet spot of not to over powering but enough to be useful for any class, even MAD classes like paladin and monks
https://advanced-dungeons-dragons-2nd-edition.fandom.com/wiki/Rolling_Ability_Scores
The short answer is: No, it is not legal under 2e rules to to roll for stats as many times as you like. However, as mentioned earlier, in the computer game there is nothing to stop anyone from simply reloading character creation until they got decent scores, so allowing infinite stat rolls (for crpgs) makes a twisted kind of sense.
While that's true, I do think that deprives the player(s) of feeling that rush of headiness when the dice go your way and you wind up with some amazing stat rolls. At my table, I allow a combination of both; I give a fairly generous point-buy array where players pick one stat (automatic 18), pick another stat (automatic 15) and then have 50 points to divide among the remaining 4 stats as they see fit. However, if a player wants to try his luck rolling for his stats, he's more welcome to try, with the caveat that he's stuck with whatever he gets, no rerolls or opting for point-buy afterwards.
Ogre Berserkers are not immune. Welp, have fun with that info!
It depends on the particular one. Some of them are coded as having 4 HD with 30 added HP - and are thus vulnerable. Others have a base of 5 or 7 HD - and are thus immune. Personally I would say the ones with 4 HD should have been constructed differently - in the 2nd edition, stronger variants of ogres do have more HD, not just more HPs.
Ankhegs are a different matter. Those were specifically listed in the original Monstrous Manual as having only 4 HD - and thus are more vulnerable to spells than you might expect for such a powerful enemy.
Well if you play with SCS then ogre berserkers really can go berserk (and sleep is useless against that) - but if you're careful you can still catch them without their buff active.
I never had it work on them so just figured they were immune and stopped trying. Who knew there were so many types of ogre-berserkers???
If op is uneasy about farming Ankhegs, better not tell them about the Flesh Golems...
i thought the EEs changed that cave and now make it so only carrion crawlers summon instead of flesh golems?
although you can still get waken up by more than 1 sirine in the same map just outside the cave...
Yeah the EEs fixed that.
I was about to post this exact change, but you beat me to it I see. So perhaps OP is on to something? I mean if the flesh golem cave was meddled with, why not the ankheg one? Spawn crappy beetles in there or something.
Also on the note of sirens, anyone remember when Sil was a juicy 9k exp? Why the nerf to 2k?!
Sil was never worth 9000 XP, perhaps you had a mod back in the day that made her worth more?
the only other sirines that are worth more are the one in durlag's tower and the sirine queen on werewolf island and their XP values aren't changed