Has any upgrade been done to make the Sword of Balduran better?

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Rome wasn't built in a day.

I've been studying IE for years and I'm still learning new stuff on every project I undertake.

DLTCEP can certainly be overwhelming, but it's the tool for developing most content for IE games.

Most of us old-timey modders have had the benefit of researching file structures to begin with and then later working with somewhat easier tools like Infinity Engine Editor Pro (IEEP) which is now deprecated. They were limited, but at the same time, the lack of functionality meant fewer things to worry about and a cleaner interface.

Feel free to ask more questions. Alternatively, you could look up some tutorials for item creation in DLTCEP. Since you're not a game designer and you've never modded IE before, that might be a more prudent course of action than trying to figure it out on your own.

 

How do I understand what each of the Equipping Effects means? The Sword of Balduran shows:



How do understand what any Equipping Effects means? They make zero sense. "Colour Set" "Character colours"? "by Palette [7]"? "(0xe6 0x14)?

 

Well, you can't tell much from just the name. I mean, you can't. I can easily tell that it's an effect that that changes the color of the weapon grip to the gradient 0xE6 (230).

"Color" is the effect group, "Set Character colours by Palette" is the effect, "[7]" is the effect number (its numerical representation), and the hex values represent the color gradient and location.

I don't know what's with the large gradient values though. There's no such thing as an 0xE6 gradient in the default engine, but I suppose they use 1PP's extended palette in EE.

Of course, that doesn't really do you any good. You need to click the Edit button on the right to get to the actual input fields with the effect description and everything.

This is the important (and slightly scary) part.



If you can master this and extended effects, you can make pretty much any item in the game.

 

Yours has "Location" and mine has "IDS File" why is that? Did I do something wrong?

 

Actually re-looking at it there are a couple difs. Is it because of the item loaded?

 

No, it's because it's a different effect. It wouldn't make any sense for that effect to have a color gradient or location field. If you open one of the color effects, the fields will be the same.

 

Can you give me info on what to do to turn it into the sword described in the wiki:

The Sword of Balduran is an enchanted long sword +2 which can deal 1d8+5 points of fire damage. It gives the wielder a lore bonus of 10 points and 10% magical resistance. It has -4 THAC0 bonus, a speed factor of 2 and it weighs 4 lbs.

I would also like to make it +4 if possible?

 

Which properties are missing? The fire damage and +4 bonus?

To make it a +4 weapon, make sure to change the Magic Level in General Properties to 4. You can set the THAC0 and damage bonus in Extended Effects to whatever you like.

To give it fire damage, go to Extended Effects, click on the Add button (the one above the Effect # dropdown, not the one at the top), then click the Edit button on the left.

In the effect editor window, select effect #12 (HP: Damage) from the dropdown. Put 5 in the Damage Amount field and 1 and 8 in the Dice fields (next to Type).

To set the damage type to fire, put 524288 in the Type field. You can also click on explode and set it to 0080 if you prefer (less chance of error).

The description also says it can deal fire damage, so maybe you want it to only deal fire damage 20% of the time. To do that, just change the probability fields to 0-20.

When you're happy with it, click on Exit. Make sure everything else is how you want it to be (e.g. speed factor in the Speed field) and save the file.

 

Sorry i didn't reply sooner. Finally got around to testing it and seem,s to work
Thanks Ken
Is there an easy way to turn the Flail of the Ages +5 into a katana?

 

Depends on what you consider easy. You'd need to change the item type, proficiency type, usability flags, icons, animation sequence, and possibly a minor detail here and there (like damage dice and speed factor if you wanna be accurate). Equipping and extended effects shouldn't need changing though, so it shouldn't be too hard.