A small curiosity [endgame spoilers, be warned]

I just stumbled upon this screenshot when I was searching for something on my hard drive. The file's properties inform me that it's four years old and frankly, I don't remember if I have ever shared it with the community. I think I haven't but if so, at least the newer Lords may find themselves amused a bit and if not - all the better. I've never read about such a thing on the forums, so I hope the whole thing will be quite surprising for you.

Okay, now for the screenshot:



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"SWEET BABY NASRUDIN!!"

As you can see, there were multiple Kerghans, but killing just one was enough to end the battle and set the end movies & slides in motion. From what I recall, I achieved that effect by casting Mind Control on Kerghan, beating him up till he was in his regenerative shell and, instead of finishing him where he stands, cancelling the spell. A new hostile dragon Kerghan emerged from the regenerating robed one, and when the robed one recovered enough hit points to fight back, he turns into a metal dragon as well. Repeat a few times and you have more and more of 'em.

Then again, maybe not. As I said, it was years ago and I don't remember the exact trigger, but I do recall that it involved tempering with Mind Control and Kerghan's regenerative shell. I would have checked it, but it's impossible to cast Mind Control on Kerghan in the UAP version and I don't think reinstalling the game just for that is worth the trouble.

While we're at it, from what I recall, Drog always put emphasis on the fact that he's making a patch, not a rebalancing mod and that he focuses on removing bugs and restrains from putting any new content in the UAP (apart from some schematics and sprites, but those ones were already in the game files rather than being completely new content), and yet Karghan's stats and abilities are visibly buffed in the UAP. Does it mean Kerghan's combat sissiness in vanilla was a glitch rather than an intended weakness or was Drog inconsistent? Anyone knows anything on the topic?

 

yes your right on this but i remember something about drog saying that kerghan was intended to deliver moster damage . so he restored his monster flag or something among those lines.

 

Indeed, while Robed Kerghan still is marked as Human, Transformed Kerghan's race in the UAP is Monster, while in vanilla he was Human as well. That explains his 12/20 points in melee with expert status.

It does not, however, explain his buffed stats, which were definitely much lower in vanilla. They may have even been 8 in each stat, which indeed seemed quite odd to me, even as if it were a glitch of some sort. His resistances might have been lower too, but I'm not sure about that as well.

I'm not complaining about a tougher Kerghan, mind you. I definitely prefer my end game bosses to be challenges rather than punching bags, I'm just curious about Drog's consistency and/or the reasons why Kerghan was such a wuss in vanilla.

 

He spent 2000 years standing in that room, doubt he did one push up the whole time.

 

From the look of the picture, I'd say he found a way to fuck himself.

 

I only flipped the monster flag on. The "8 in each stat" thing is a problem with *all* localized versions (just goes to show you what kind of testing the game had), basically if the stat names (strength, dexterity, etc) in monster/npc/unique txt files in the "rules" folder don't correspond with the stat names in mes/stat.mes, then the game resets their stats to 8s. As far as I'm aware, all translated versions had this bug. So yeah, all monsters/animals (and some spawned NPCs) in localized versions were pathetically easy.

 

Hey Drog, long time no see. Planning to stay?

Wow, that explains a whole lot, it does. Indeed, prior to using the UAP I played the Polish version exclusively. Never thought such bugs could be created during a localization process, which is why I automatically assigned them to the vanilla game. Thanks for providing all of that useful information and clearing that out.

 

So that's why everything is basically totally and absolutely pathetic, no matter if it's a demon, an elemental spirit or whatever... okay, yeah, makes sense. Guess I should really get my hands on an English version.