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I'm fine with recharging wands to 100 charges, though - will just mean I get one item place instead of 5 item places (5 wands per 20 charges) in one purchase.
100 seems excessive to me considering the relative ease of recharging them. 50 makes a good balance, I believe. Them pre third ed. mages need some kind of boost. What with those extravagant xp level costs and all.
@O_Bruce I'm reasonably certain that you're misremembering the loading screen. I remember a loading screen text that warned the player about selling items that would only sell for 1 gold, but it was about unidentified items rather than zero charge items.
@O_Bruce I'm reasonably certain that you're misremembering the loading screen. I remember a loading screen text that warned the player about selling items that would only sell for 1 gold, but it was about unidentified items rather than zero charge items.
I politely asked for someone with an English copy of the original BG2 for a reason, in case my memory was wrong. Or to confirm my words if I was right. For now, the best you have is my word against yours, so basically we're not going to get anywhere with that.
Do not try to sell an item with no charges; the storekeep will think it does nothing and offer you 1 gold piece. NOTE: This also includes items that are recharged after resting.
How to interpret that part is up to the player. I interpret it as a way to encourage players to be cautious with planning how much money they can get. You can also headcanon that after the storekeep did give you 1 gold, they then use the item as they wish, including recharging it and selling it for thousands of gold.
If that's the correct line, then it gives more credibility to the thesis that recharging wand via selling them is an exploit. "Storekeeper will think it does nothing". Between that and no evidence to the contrary, the matter should be settled, but let's not kid ourselves. It will not be.
Wow, reading this thread is like reading a law briefing! Personally, I don't mind the 'exploit' since I tend to not use wands that much anyway. The only exception is if I'm doing a solo no-reload where I need all the help I can get. I've never succeeded in finishing either BG or BG2 that way even with the 'exploits'. That's more due to my lack of patience than anything else though. It's really tedious for me to have to try and dot every 'I' and cross every 'T' all the time unfortunately...
If you sell a wand to a shop that already stocks those, another wand the same as the existing ones will appear in his inventory. That mechanic is why, if you want to recharge a wand of frost at Ulgoth's Beard, you may find it preferable to buy his existing wand first.
Making such a sale in BG is not that easy though, as very few shops will buy wands. The ones that do are either run by mages or specifically set up to serve the adventurer market. In both cases it would seem a reasonable assumption that they have links with potential suppliers of wands, so it's at least arguable that they're not recharging them themselves - but either paying someone else to do that, or buying in a fresh copy in response to the interest in that type of item.
Following that train of argument, if a shopkeeper has existing stocks of that item, he's just expanding his stock from his existing supplier. If he doesn't have such stock, he'll have to go to a general catalogue listing and seek a fresh source of supply - only getting one such item in as a 'trial' selection to see what the market demand for that might be ...
Oh - I hope everyone has a good Christmas by the way .
Incidentally, there's one shop in southwest BG city that's very good for recharging. It's a "General Store" that starts with only mundane gear in stock, but buys nearly anything. And you can shoplift from it, with a pretty low difficulty. Give Alora 10 more points in the skill than she starts with, and she's guaranteed to succeed.
In my latest (just concluded) BGEE run, it was the necklaces of missiles that I really got a lot out of recharging. I recharged that first one you can buy in Nashkel at least twice, maybe three times. Cheaper than wand fireballs, usable by nearly anybody, and they go right over spell defenses like a Minor Globe.
Its just an oversight of how shopkeepers were coded and not intentionally added as a “recharge feature” If it was intentional it would have been in the original manual at the very least. I still have it its a lengthy manual and has everything else you can do.
That being said i cant make a value judgement of if its an exploit or not because exploit and emergent gameplay have different meanings to different people. I am fairly certain that it was not put in on purpose that way though its just a side effect of how shopkeepers handle those items in the code.
It's not one of those hard to track down bugs, so at the very least the original developers decided not to patch the 'exploit'. I suspect though they were well aware of this facility before the game was launched. As with some other features now, things might have been done that way partly due to the difficulties of coding an alternative, but I don't think that would have been the only reason. I also find it indicative that the default number of charges for wands when freshly repurchased is always higher than the number ever found on an existing wand in the game.
You could make an argument the high limit on charges was simply done for the convenience of future modders, but that seems unlikely to me (when BG1 was first released community modding was not a feature). Why have that facility if there was no intention to recharge wands? That's particularly so as there were infinite copies of wands for sale, so it's not as though more charges per wand were needed (and for those that don't remember the original BG, the developers were really not concerned with making inventory management as easy as possible ...)
Software tends to ship with a long list of minor issues that are not (game) breaking and it is up to the user to do with it as they want. I think this is one of those cases where users of the recharge 'feature' are thinking too much towards whether this is correct or incorrect behaviour. Probably, the devs never considered whether it should make sense or not and did not have time to come up with the correct implementation (whatever it may be) before rollout
The recharge is likely a minor bug though, given that in a bag of holding (which is in essence a store front) you used to be able to recharge per-day items as well, leading to and it limited to mass ring of the ram spam or easy identification with the glasses of identification.
If that's the correct line, then it gives more credibility to the thesis that recharging wand via selling them is an exploit. "Storekeeper will think it does nothing". Between that and no evidence to the contrary, the matter should be settled, but let's not kid ourselves. It will not be.
But we don't sell the wand with zero charges ...
I think we won't ever find out if it's intended or not. I have come to the conclusion for myself that it was probably not intended in the way that it was initially coded to be meant as a recharge function, but just as side effect of the way shops work. I wouldn't go as far as calling it a bug, though.
The personal definition of an exploit might vary at this point, as does the opinion if it's justified and acceptable to use this function, or consider it cheating and avoid it(or consider it cheating and use it anyway).
I stick to my initial reasoning why I'll continue using this possibility (mainly because the high price doesn't make it feel like cheating to me), others will have a different opinion, and it's great that civilized discussions and exchanges of facts, viewpoints and information are still possible.
Its pretty obvious that it wasn't intended. Some players just have an insistence that nothing they use be called an "exploit", probably feeling that its an entirely negative noun to be attached to them. Nothing says you can't use exploits in single player games in any way you wish. Or that it would somehow be less valid.
Its pretty obvious that it wasn't intended. Some players just have an insistence that nothing they use be called an "exploit", probably feeling that its an entirely negative noun to be attached to them. Nothing says you can't use exploits in single player games in any way you wish. Or that it would somehow be less valid.
I think it's better if we stick to sharing information or our own opinions and viewpoints, not assumptions about other people's motives.
I think that if it's single player, then house rules apply. It's only an exploit/cheat if the player thinks it is. It's been said before but we all really do play differently.
Comments
100 seems excessive to me considering the relative ease of recharging them. 50 makes a good balance, I believe. Them pre third ed. mages need some kind of boost. What with those extravagant xp level costs and all.
I politely asked for someone with an English copy of the original BG2 for a reason, in case my memory was wrong. Or to confirm my words if I was right. For now, the best you have is my word against yours, so basically we're not going to get anywhere with that.
Do not try to sell an item with no charges; the storekeep will think it does nothing and offer you 1 gold piece. NOTE: This also includes items that are recharged after resting.
How to interpret that part is up to the player. I interpret it as a way to encourage players to be cautious with planning how much money they can get. You can also headcanon that after the storekeep did give you 1 gold, they then use the item as they wish, including recharging it and selling it for thousands of gold.
I think the most convincing explanation is that it was an oversight by the developers. The fact that it imitates PnP behavior is an odd coincidence.
Making such a sale in BG is not that easy though, as very few shops will buy wands. The ones that do are either run by mages or specifically set up to serve the adventurer market. In both cases it would seem a reasonable assumption that they have links with potential suppliers of wands, so it's at least arguable that they're not recharging them themselves - but either paying someone else to do that, or buying in a fresh copy in response to the interest in that type of item.
Following that train of argument, if a shopkeeper has existing stocks of that item, he's just expanding his stock from his existing supplier. If he doesn't have such stock, he'll have to go to a general catalogue listing and seek a fresh source of supply - only getting one such item in as a 'trial' selection to see what the market demand for that might be ...
Oh - I hope everyone has a good Christmas by the way
In my latest (just concluded) BGEE run, it was the necklaces of missiles that I really got a lot out of recharging. I recharged that first one you can buy in Nashkel at least twice, maybe three times. Cheaper than wand fireballs, usable by nearly anybody, and they go right over spell defenses like a Minor Globe.
That being said i cant make a value judgement of if its an exploit or not because exploit and emergent gameplay have different meanings to different people. I am fairly certain that it was not put in on purpose that way though its just a side effect of how shopkeepers handle those items in the code.
You could make an argument the high limit on charges was simply done for the convenience of future modders, but that seems unlikely to me (when BG1 was first released community modding was not a feature). Why have that facility if there was no intention to recharge wands? That's particularly so as there were infinite copies of wands for sale, so it's not as though more charges per wand were needed (and for those that don't remember the original BG, the developers were really not concerned with making inventory management as easy as possible ...)
The recharge is likely a minor bug though, given that in a bag of holding (which is in essence a store front) you used to be able to recharge per-day items as well, leading to and it limited to mass ring of the ram spam or easy identification with the glasses of identification.
But we don't sell the wand with zero charges
I think we won't ever find out if it's intended or not. I have come to the conclusion for myself that it was probably not intended in the way that it was initially coded to be meant as a recharge function, but just as side effect of the way shops work. I wouldn't go as far as calling it a bug, though.
The personal definition of an exploit might vary at this point, as does the opinion if it's justified and acceptable to use this function, or consider it cheating and avoid it(or consider it cheating and use it anyway).
I stick to my initial reasoning why I'll continue using this possibility (mainly because the high price doesn't make it feel like cheating to me), others will have a different opinion, and it's great that civilized discussions and exchanges of facts, viewpoints and information are still possible.
I think it's better if we stick to sharing information or our own opinions and viewpoints, not assumptions about other people's motives.