I'm having trouble understanding the workings of the Dark Helm. I started a new character and shipped him off to Ashbury Castle right away to get the Dark Helm for himself and Virgil, and whoever else asks for it really. I abused it to get to 100 MA, which put me at around -80 alignment. Then I took it off, prepared to enjoy the MA and do whatever good deeds that might need doing. Soon after finishing with the Helm my alignment dropped to -100 for no reason that I could see, and while it will get better when I do good deeds, it always falls back to -100. Is this how the Helm is supposed to work? (Yes I know it's bugged, I mean "supposed" within the context of its bugginess.) So, no matter what else I do in the game, my alignment will always fall back to -100?
Picture the Evil - O - Meeter as a signed integer. You start off at 0 & can go to over 100 each way. 128? 256? You have shifted your base from 0 to - 80 or 100. So you should be able to go positive, but.... The evil get eviler for doing things that the rest uf us can easily get away with. Like shooting first. (I tested that one out, had an evil PC loose 20 points in the sealed sewers in Tarant. Had another loose 4 points killing undead on the main floor of Ashbury Castle.) At this point I don't think you can get to -50 no matter what you do. Try big good deeds, such as giving the mine deed to Sarah. Grit your teeth & let the monsters atack first. Or go to an earlier save & forget the DH.
I gave the deed to Sarah, returned the altar stone to Vooriden, and retrieved the statue of Geshtianna (sp). NO change in alignment at all. I was thinking about playing it evil anyway, but never having it budge is rather like playing Baldur's Gate, and I loathe Baldur's Gate. Ah well, so much for that little experiment.
It could be of course, that you've just so evil that you're off the scale. Thus, even though you do good deeds your overall 'evilness' is still greater than 100.
But each time you use the Helm it knocks your alignment back, what, 20 points? I only put it on maybe four times, and it put my alignment at around -80. It slipped to -100, and stayed there, only afterwards. Maybe it's as Shadygrove says, evil people shouldn't shoot charging orc bandits first. :shrug: Anyway, that's it between me and the Dark Helm.
