question about rate of fire and mods

[Guest John]

I noticed in my current game that the rate of fire for darts and for Melf's Minute Meteors (?) seems slow to me. My pc, a sorcerer level 10, dex 18, is proficient with darts and has them equipped. The character screen says that the number of attacks with darts equipped is one per round. ISTR that darts were supposed to have a rate of fire of 3 per round. Similarly, I thought MMM had a high rate of fire also. In the game, it looks like my sorcerer was throwing them at the same speed as the darts.

 

I have a number of mods installed and was wondering if it's just me or might one of the mods have intentionally changed the rate of fire and I just didn't realize it when I installed it. In previous games I played, it seemed that a character throwing a dart might not do much damage but did throw quite a few.

 

TIA for your help.

 

John

[CamDawg]

MMM might be a Fixpack issue as Kulyok reported a similar issue.

 

Darts are supposed to have an equipping effect that sets ApR to 3--are you noticing the issue with all darts, or just a few?

[Guest Guest]

MMM might be a Fixpack issue as Kulyok reported a similar issue.

 

Darts are supposed to have an equipping effect that sets ApR to 3--are you noticing the issue with all darts, or just a few?

 

It was the normal darts, um, that's all I have at the moment. But I just noticed that I've got a bug in my game. I cast MMM while at an inn and the screen showed 5 ApR as I would have expected. Then I got into a fight, used up all the MMMs - again, at 5 Apr, cast another MMM spell (during the fight) and this time the ApR with the MMMs dropped to 1.

 

I'll have to see if the ApR for MMM changes depending if I cast it before, during or immediately after a fight. That's when it was most obvious to me in game

 

I don't know if Fixpack is an issue or not. I do have ver 1 installed but wasn't using any magicians or sorcerers.

[Guest John]

Sorry, forgot to put my name in previous post.

 

FWIW, I just noticed another strange behavior. I saved the game in which the MMM ApR was 1. I just re-loaded the game and now the ApR is 5. I tried another saved game (same pc, just earlier) and same thing. Wierd.

[CamDawg]

OK. The effects on MMM are supposed to (in order) set ApR to 5 and then prevent any other ApR-changing effects. If the engine is applying these effects out of order sporadically (wouldn't be the first time it's surprised us) it would cause variations like this. We may have to experiment and see what the engine will give us here.

 

Normal darts should be setting ApR to 3. Is this something that's going away if you re-equip them?

[Guest John]

OK. The effects on MMM are supposed to (in order) set ApR to 5 and then prevent any other ApR-changing effects. If the engine is applying these effects out of order sporadically (wouldn't be the first time it's surprised us) it would cause variations like this. We may have to experiment and see what the engine will give us here.

 

Normal darts should be setting ApR to 3. Is this something that's going away if you re-equip them?

 

No. I did have some darts of wounding. My pc was equipped with a quarterstaff +1 and normal darts during the fighting while MMM was in effect.

 

Here's various things that happens once the MMMs at the 5 ApR have been used up.

1. Staff gets equipped (no problem). Switching to the normal darts, ApR is 1

 

2. Switching out the staff for darts of wounding , normal darts. The ApR is still 1.

 

3. With normal darts and DoW equipped, whether I use the inventory screen or the quick slots to switch between each type of dart, the ApR remains 1

 

4. Unequipping both weapon slots and then re-equipping darts or casting MMM does not change the ApR

 

5. casting MMM yields correct number of MMMs but ApR is 1

 

6. saving game and then continuing the game produces no change in ApR

 

7. saving game, quitting and then re-loading the saved game resets ApR to 3 for darts and to 5 for MMM

 

I'll have to play and see if using ctrl+r will reset ApR.

[CamDawg]

This makes me wonder if the engine is not taking away the effects attached to MMM when you use them all. They're set to apply while equipped, but perhaps because they're being used up instead of being unequipped 'properly' (for lack of a better word) I wonder if their effects stick around until the inventory is reevaluated--possibly upon loading.

 

One way that might show this is to equip some of those darts (make sure ApR go to 3) and then use them all. Before changing weapons or reloading, check your character record screen again and see if ApR is still at 3. If it is, try saving and re-loading and see if they revert back to 1 at that point.

 

Infinity Engine.

[Guest Guest]

This makes me wonder if the engine is not taking away the effects attached to MMM when you use them all. They're set to apply while equipped, but perhaps because they're being used up instead of being unequipped 'properly' (for lack of a better word) I wonder if their effects stick around until the inventory is reevaluated--possibly upon loading.

 

One way that might show this is to equip some of those darts (make sure ApR go to 3) and then use them all. Before changing weapons or reloading, check your character record screen again and see if ApR is still at 3. If it is, try saving and re-loading and see if they revert back to 1 at that point.

 

Infinity Engine.

 

Not quite sure I follow the logic of the last step, or perhaps I'm misunderstanding something. Did you mean that I should leave the weapon slot empty, save, quit, re-load and then put some darts in the empty slot to see what their ApR is? So far, each time I re-load, the ApR is 3 for the darts and 5 for MMM.

[Guest John]

This makes me wonder if the engine is not taking away the effects attached to MMM when you use them all. They're set to apply while equipped, but perhaps because they're being used up instead of being unequipped 'properly' (for lack of a better word) I wonder if their effects stick around until the inventory is reevaluated--possibly upon loading.

 

One way that might show this is to equip some of those darts (make sure ApR go to 3) and then use them all. Before changing weapons or reloading, check your character record screen again and see if ApR is still at 3. If it is, try saving and re-loading and see if they revert back to 1 at that point.

 

Infinity Engine.

 

Well, I followed the procedure you suggested and the results were the same, ApR reset to proper setting when game reloaded.

 

I also tested what would happen using ctrl+r on the character. Again, no change in behavior. I confirmed that both MMM and darts had an ApR of 1 before using the ctrl+r, did it, cast MMM. ApR was set at 1. Used up all the MMM and equpped darts; those darts had an ApR of 1.

 

To recap, the ApR of MMM, normal darts and darts of wounding (other darts may suffer the same problem) is set to 1 instead of 3 for darts and 5 for MMM when my sorcerer exhausts the MMM during a fight, and it would appear that the ApR remains at one until I save/quit the game. When I load the game to resume, the ApR has been reset to the proper ApR even if the ApR was at an incorrect rate at the time that I saved the game and quit.

 

At this point, I'm at a loss as to what more that I can test in my game for you. If I had to guess, I wonder if the game has gone bonkers, doesn't recognize that the pc has equipped darts or another MMM and is applying the attack rate of the staff to whatever is getting equipped. I'm reluctant but might go ahead and do a fresh install of all the mods, but that'd be a last resort.

 

[Guest John]

Follow up to previous post.

 

FWIW, I just tried casting MMM after unequipping both weapon slots to see what would happen. The MMM still had an ApR of 1.

[Nythrun]

My big concern here is not changing the melfmet.itm patch to a specific exclusion of Boon of Lathlander / Offensive Spin if that proves to be necessary (though I haven't replicated any of this yet) but rather that it might be a symptom of something the engine is doing on a regular basis. If that turns out to be true then a lot of other things may be broken also, and perhaps irreparably

[Guest John]

My big concern here is not changing the melfmet.itm patch to a specific exclusion of Boon of Lathlander / Offensive Spin if that proves to be necessary (though I haven't replicated any of this yet) but rather that it might be a symptom of something the engine is doing on a regular basis. If that turns out to be true then a lot of other things may be broken also, and perhaps irreparably

 

I don't know if it's of any help, but from what I remember and comparing to my present game, this problem with MMM only started up very recently, say within the past month or two when I last played a group that had a sorcerer. I enjoy the sorcerer class, so generally play with at least one of that type in my group. IIRC, I did not have this problem in August or so.

 

Also, I know that on occasion my install of a mod has resulted in corrupted files in spite of the best work of the WeiDU and that's why I generally just do a fresh installation of everything. I have no reason to think something broke because so far everything with the exception of the MMM ApR looks like it's working properly.

 

I'll start a new game with a solo sorc and try to see if this problem occurs in it. I have not tried to see if this problem occurs with a mage, so I'll test that also.

[Guest John]

I'll start a new game with a solo sorc and try to see if this problem occurs in it. I have not tried to see if this problem occurs with a mage, so I'll test that also.

 

 

OK, I did. Same thing happened for a mage character as did for the sorcerer. First cast of MMM had an ApR of 5. The next cast dropped to an ApR of 1. Similarly, darts equipped before casting MMM had an ApR of 3. Afterwards, the ApR dropped to 1.

[Guest John]

CamDawg, Nythrun

 

Thanks for putting up with my questions and comments. After re-reading your comments, I went to the readme for the core fixes, and then found melfmet.itm in the override folder.

 

I think I have solved MY problem through the brute force method - I renamed the melfmet.itm file. AFAICT, MMM now gets its 5 ApR each time it's cast AND the darts have the correct 3 ApR when equipped.

 

Without your help, I would not have begun to have known where to look. Again, thanks. I know this doesn't help with the potential problem Nythrun mentioned, but I hope you're able to resolve it.

 

John