Ever felt like disintergrate just isn't powerful enough? Tired of using disintergrate only to have your fatigue drop through the floor in moments? Well, there is a solution! Simply invest in disintegrate, lower your willpower below 18 and then the spell becomes completely free! If people already know of this then I must apologize for wasting your time, but I ran a search and from what I could tell there is no knowledge of this exploit. Also if it is just a bug I have then again I apologize, someone will need to verify if this is true on their own game. You get the message "Your character loses concentration" as with casting any spell with less than 18 willpower, but your enemies still vanish! You don't get any experience, and the weird thing is "vanish" is more appropriate than kill as they still seem to be around partially - they don't add to your kill counter and though the sprite disappears whatever spell they had active (such as agility of fire) remains on screen. It is also possible to properly kill them after they vanish if you were already attacking them using a weapon whilst you cast the spell. Apart from that they seem impossible to target and furthermore they can't attack you. See my lovely pictures below - the first is just me with molten arachnids, the second is one where I cast the spell, and the third shows how one has died because I was attacking it with a weapon before I used the spell (the other spider now being impossible to target): Now it is my personal opinion that disintergrate when exploited in this manner causes banishment to the void! Yes it's true, for all of you who dreamed about banishing another now you have the means! As a side note even though you use no fatigue or mana to cast the spell you still have to have the requisite fatigue or mana left to cast it - so for this character who's a force master the spell costs 25 so I have to have 25 or more fatigue or mana to cast the spell even though that fatigue is not used. I have no idea if the fact of being a force master has any bearing on the exploit - I'd imagine not - also I've tried it out in turn based as well as real time and in both cases it works, your enemies disappear at the end of your turn with turn based. Occasionally you will still use mana or fatigue to cast the spell, I really have no idea what causes this, but 9 times out of 10 the exploit holds up. As to if this works with other spells I don't know; I know you can't cast teleport, invisibility or tempus fugit but as this character doesn't have access to any other high level spells I'm unsure about any others. If you're curious about others find out for yourself; it might work for level 3 or 4 spells too (excluding bolt of lightning, spatial distortion, phantasmal fiend and stasis which I also tried), obviously you'd have to not have a really high willpower to be able to lower it to 14 or 11 to test this out. Ways to lower your willpower are achieving a willpower of 18 through using the Finger of Mannox and then unequiping it, get Halycon's blessing to reach willpower 18 then use Velorien's blessing to cancel it, go toe to toe with an enemy that knows drain will (dread spiders for one as I found out shortly before the above screen shots when trying to isolate the molten arachnids), use therapeutics to temporarily raise your willpower long enough to purchase the spell and then wait, use the muscle maker on yourself, or equip the chill shield (Velorien's +100 fatigue boost is independant of the fatigue reduction from the shield, making it a very viable option for a shield with the blessing if you can counteract its other draw backs - if you don't have the blessing couple it with an arcane dagger or great sword). Apart from that I'm out, think of your own ways to lower your willpower! I discovered the exploit by using Halycon's blessing for most of the game for 18 willpower; planning on using the Finger on Mannox and the vivifier to make up these points once I got Velorien's blessing. I got to the altar before I had made the vivifier, accidentally cast disintergrate without thinking about the fact that my willpower wasn't high enough, and it still worked! Now all I need to do is unequip the Finger of Mannox for some free disintergrate fun time! Obviously I realise that disintergrate is pretty powerful already - I'm not advocating the use of this exploit as being okay because it is unequivocally game breaking. I just thought I'd post it up for curiosity's sake really - just something to tickle your fancy. Anyway... Enjoy!
This bug was reported to me and I have even fixed it in my never released version of the UAP. The enemies are simply flagged as invisible to the player and this causes a lot of problems. Like being unable to kill a critter to advance a quest.
Oh well I do feel foolish now! I would have thought searching for "disintergrate" and "free/bug/glitch/exploit" would have turned up the fact that it was common knowledge or at least it's presence in your old sticky bug reporting thread, but apparently not. And yeah they do seem to be invisible, does Perception 20 alter this at all or are they not classed as invisible in that respect? Maybe some people will still get a kick out of the thread anyway. As an aside how come you haven't released a newer version of the UAP if you had one in the works or is it just too much effort to develop it if you're not as interested as you once were in Arcanum? Not that I'm complaining or criticising, just curious that's all.
I myself was aware of the bug, though it's quite possible that it was never mentioned on the forums, so I wouldn't really call it common knowledge. No need to feel foolish, I'm fairly sure quite some of people may learn something new from this thread. Neither that nor Sense Hidden allows you to see the halfly disintegrated foes. The effects of casting a spell with not having enough Willpower is identical to the effect of casting a spell when you have enough fatigue points to attempt to cast the spell but not enough to actually cast it, except that in that case you lose consciousness instead of not losing any fatigue points at all. Anyway, in most cases the spell is simply not cast, but there are a few exceptions, with the obvious potential of abuse, what with them being free of fatigue point charge and all. You already mentioned disintegrate (disintegrates opponent, no XP). Other ones: Quench Life - does damage, gives you XP, kills are noted in the Log Book. Overall, devastating. Resurrection - successfully resurrects NPC. Stun - successfully stuns NPC. Body of Fire/Water/Earth/Air - has quite an amusing effect, namely it turns the NPC naked (assuming he has any clothes/armor equipped. Doesn't work on those that only look dressed while actually being naked from the game's point of view). Charm is fairly destructive - it permanently decreases reaction by 30 each time it is cast on a NPC, even if it's the same one over and over again. The above mentioned are the only spells with any tangible results. Bolt of Lightning, Stone Throw and Fireflash have no useful effect, but it's interesting that you can shoot projectiles at people all day and they do not mind at all.
Well even if people haven't learnt much from my post they certainly will from yours! Your knowledge of Arcanum seems truly encyclopedic. I might have to try these peculiar exploits out some time, maybe in conjunction with a meta abuse. At least this thread now catalogues these effects if anyone was interested in using them.
Not really, no. The game doesn't consider those disintegrated with this method as killed, so in the end using it to deal with the guards outside you-know-who's castle will actually disable access to it, irreversibly.
On the matter of ethical playthrough, smiting undead can be considered merciful, and certainly hygeinic. Consider Dumbledore who famously never kills anyone, yet he cheerfully incinerates inferi. Remember, in any ethical dilemma: What Would Dumbledore Do?
...What would who do? OT: If it doesn't count the enemies as killed, would it work for a 0 kills playthrough?
Basically, some enemies have to actually be defeated to complete a playthrough. This would work well for random encounters.
Basically, the Disintegrate spell consists of two parts. First it does 30000 of electrical damage to kill the target, then sets the OF_DONTDRAW flag on the critter to hide the body. If the caster's WP is below 18, then the fist part doesn't fire, but the second still does. OF_DONTDRAW is similar to OF_INVISIBLE, except it cannot be overridden. PE20 and other invisibility detecting tricks will do nothing. If you want to fix this bug yourself, then simply change {Callback} to {Begin} at line 2707 in rules\SpellList.mes.
