Need help trying to guarantee an ambush encounter

[catchystick]

Hello! I am using Near Infinity to mod BGEE

There is a specific ambush I am attempting to force to occur. The Nashkel AR4800 zone has two map links that head to Nashkel Mines, AR5400. One of them in particular, the eastern link, has by default a 20% chance of linking to the ambush map OH1000. This area is related to Dorn's quest, but according to OH1000.BCS, if you have not spoken to Dorn, you will instead be waylaid by 6 hobgoblins.

I would like to make that 20% chance of an ambush into a 99% chance of an ambush.

I thought guaranteeing the ambush would be as simple as editing the map link and setting the Random Encounter probability to 99, but that didn't work. I then went to every instance of a link to AR5400 (there is another link in AR4800 that linked to a different ambush zone, and there is a link in AR4900) and changed the encounter probability to 99, but that still didn't work. No changes I make to the WORLDMAP.WMP file seem to affect the game at all. I even tried changing the distance scale between the areas to see if that would affect travel time, but no dice.

I also tried going to AR5400's area and changing the random encounter probability on its map link to AR4800 to see if that would help, but also nothing.

Any help would be appreciated!

[catchystick]

Okay, I finally discovered the issue: I needed to begin a new save file.

Once I made a new character and made it to the area, the scripts I had made were functioning as intended.

[Graion Dilach]

You can also just delete the area from the savegame with NearInfinity, but basically yes, if a file is stored in the savegame, all changes applied to it are ignored.

[jmerry]

When there are multiple links between a pair of regions, only one of them is ever actually used. Regardless of which edge you travel from. The last listed link between those areas wins. Which, in this case, is the link from the south edge. The single-link change you were attempting to make would have absolutely no effect.

I discovered this in the course of my in-game time speedruns. Some of the travel links on the minimum path have multiple options with different travel times, and I thought I could exploit this. Nope. It didn't matter which edge I took; the travel time was the same either way.

Edited May 22, 2022 by jmerry