Upgrading Weapons and Armor to Guards, Officers & Bandits

Hello there, so I am looking into the mes files in order to improve the supplies that stores/merchants and Starting Barter offer (invensource.mes & invensourcebuy.mes) and was successful.

Whilst browsing through invensource.mes I found the equipment carried by many fixed NPCs such as guards etc. I have already updated them with new weaponry and armor but am unable to reflect that result in the game.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there another mes file that I have to edit just live invensourcebuy.mes for the Starting Barter? My aim is to find the procedure to give NPCs stronger weapons and armor.

Thank you.

 

Update on my quest.

There are apparently two ways to achieve this albeit one seems more unlikely.

1 - The Inventory Source Way

Initially, I pursued this option in view that invensource.mes has entries for guards, thieves etc. However, editing their entries yields no results.

Adding items to shopkeepers does produce the intended result in their shops in-game. Editing guards etc, however, does not show the weapons, armors and accessories I code. They are rendered with their standard sword, bow and jacket.

I was about to abandon this channel of thought when today I read in detail some chapters of AMTUT from this link. Notable quotes:

Now you see the drop-down menu next to ‘Inventory Source’? Select it and scroll down to see what’s there. At the end you’ll see a few in the list that say ‘Smith(Dwarven)’, ‘Smith(Magical)’ ‘Smith(Quality)’ and ‘Smith(Rural)’. These are the ones we’re interested in. Which one you choose will depend on the type of good we want our Smithy to sell (When we eventually put in a Smithy). Is it a magical smith shop? Or a dwarven smith shop? Let’s make it a Dwarven Smith. So choose ‘Smith(Dwarven)’. The container will now be filled with lots of goodies that a Dwarven smith would normally have. Click ‘ok’. Now, delete the chest. That’s right, click the ‘destroy’ button and then click on the chest. Notice all those itmes on the ground? Whenever you destroy a container, all the items that were in that container will end up on the ground. To remove them, you’ll have to ‘destroy’ them one by one. (By the way, you may accidentally destroy a light, or some background scenery while you remove them. If you do, just put whatever you destroyed back in again)​

Oops! My mistake! I wanted the dwarf to have a different type of armour. So, let’s get rid of the armour the dwarf is wearing. With the ‘select’ tool, right-click on the dwarf and choose ‘poop’. All the items we’ve given the dwarf will now be on the floor. Delete the platemail and the axe (it might be useful to drag them away fron the dwarf and then delete them, rather than accidentally deleting the dwarf or any scenery). Now, right-click the dwarf and choose ‘edit’ this time. You should notice that NPC’s have inventory sources just like containers. This is an easy way of equipping characters en-masse. If you have a large number of guards that you want patrolling your city, rather than putting in all the suits of armour and weapons and individually equipping them, you can just give them all an inventory source and they will automatically equip themselves with items from that source. Let’s give our dwarf the inventory of a ‘Dwarven Bounty Hunter’. Click ‘ok’ and your dwarf should be wearing some different armour.​

From those quotes I understand that invensource.mes is indeed meant to give NPCs an inventory stock. What I do not know and also not yet understand is how to achieve this as by just adding the entries of the equipment I want the guards/thieves/bandits to use I am not achieving the intended result. As such, I need guidance on this, please.

2 Proto/Mob files

This is more complicated but seems more promising. Conversing with the author of this guide, in the comments section is a reference to proto and mob files in order to upgrade those NPCs. I have to locate the appropriate files and inject the weapons etc.

I am currently doing research on using this method. This is tedious but shall also try this. Any help is appreciated, thank you.

 

Update

I deleted the gibberish files in modules\arcanum\maps\ and also all protos in data\proto\ but still no noticable change in inventory and equipped items of guards etc.

https://terra-arcanum.com/forums/threads/editing-shopmap.14492/
https://terra-arcanum.com/forums/threads/mob-files-i-need-help-again.15662/#post-206936