The Useless Facts, Weird Trivia, and Overlooked - Thread

[Satribe]

I asked about the <F3> key for Normal Roll / Severe Roll / Cross Hatch and what the comment in the patch notes meant about "response to the "Quadrant Jerk" complaint". I found the following in the text file for the 1.03 version of the game.

7. NEW FUNCTION KEY ASSIGNMENT:
(For DX 66 VESA Local Bus owners experiencing quadrant shear effect)

The F3 key now toggles between one of three modes for
registering hits in combat.
Normal Roll: This is the default which simulates a blow to the head.
Heavy Roll: Lessens shear effect to improve roll stability.
No Roll: Self Explanatory - The screen will flash red
when you are hit.

For optimal effect on your system toggle between these modes.

It sounds like a graphic issue. It's a little surprising that the Heavy or "severe" roll is better, but I get it. (Not a real explanation, but weak-guess-analogy) Kinda like skipping frames which actually makes it more jerky (severe), but skips the transition that's causing graphic artifacts.

I also finally found where I got the idea that a Knights repair ability may have something to do with his/her level. The 1.04 patch notes mention this.

-Knights repair at 10x their level instead of 3x their level for items.

I'm not sure what this means or how this works at the moment, but I know that OpenTESArena also has some notes about the level affecting something in regards to repair. I'd like to explore that to know where that all fits in.

So what does "SeaGtGruff" mean, or stand for, or how do I pronounce it?

[SeaGtGruff]

So what does "SeaGtGruff" mean, or stand for, or how do I pronounce it?

It's supposed to mean/be pronounced "Sea Goat Gruff." I'm a sea goat (Capricornian), and one day many years ago my mother told me that I could be so gruff at times. I immediately thought of "Sea Goat Gruff" as a punny mashup of "Sea Goat" and "The Three Billy Goats Gruff."

Back in 1995, when I went online for the first time via AOL, I wanted to use "[email protected]" as my username/email address but it was taken, so I decided to use "[email protected]" instead-- except back then AOL had a limitation where a username couldn't exceed 10 characters, so I had to abbreviate "Goat" as "Gt" to make it fit the 10-character limit.

I've kept "SeaGtGruff" as my online identity ever since. Back when I spent a lot of time in chat rooms, mailing lists, and usenet newsgroups, a lot of people used to call me "Sea" for short. I still hear that on occasion, but these days more people seem to go with "Gruff" instead.

[Satribe]

Ahh; thanks. I was reading it like "Seargent Gruff", but that's because I can never spell sergeant right the first time. I never know where to put the "a". I thought of Billy Goats Gruff, but it was the Sea Goat that was throwing me. I didn't know that was a representation for Capricorn. Is being self absorbed a trait of Scorpio? I never bothered to pay attention to the other signs.

Killing Trolls
I was wrong. (that happens a lot)
The blood splatter is always the same. The reason I thought I saw something different was because I had paralyzed the troll first. Notes on the wiki mention that paralyzing a troll will keep it from respawning until the spell wears off. It also prevents it from crumpling down to the floor. So it stops mid animation with it being slumped down with a big splatter, but it doesn't fall or jiggle. (I only "thought" I killed it.)

• Everyone says FIRE
  • That's the default for trolls; right?
  • Online comment - can kill with weapon, just have to keep knocking it down 3 or 4 times.
    • It didn't seem to work for me. I don't think it's true, but maybe there is "a" weapon.
  • Respawn time seems to be between 1 and 2 minutes real time.
  • Aparently "any" magic will kill it (online comment)

In my brief testing I was able to kill it (gain exp) with Life Steal on an Elven Longsword, Bracers of Wizard's Fire, and a Ring of Shocking. Interestingly; Life Steal always took 5 attacks, Wizard's Fire would "mostly" take 5 attacks (4,2, and once on the first try), While ... SHOCKING - always 3. Was it shock -vs- fire, or bracers -vs- ring?
It "seems" that it's probably based on the amount of damage rather than the number of hits with magic. If I disable the Troll with a sword, after he regenerates, i can (often) knock him down again with a single swing. However, it was then taking 4 hits with shock. My theory is that the game is keeping track of magic damage. If he has already been damaged by a physical weapon, then he will get knocked down because his physical health is low, but the magical damage counter isn't high enough yet to kill him. When he regenerates, his HP is lower than my Shock can damage. So, he instantly goes down, but it doesn't count the full shock damage; just the amount it took to knock him down again. It keeps accumulating on the magical damage counter, so I am eventually able to kill him. Meaning - unless you need to in order to survive, it's faster if you don't use any physical weapon on a troll.

[SeaGtGruff]

Regarding monsters that can only be killed using certain types of weapons, I'm not so sure about that. I'm wondering if it's more to do with the modifier that's added to the plain weapon's normal damage values, and if perhaps the Strength and/or Agility modifiers might also work.

The reason I say this is because I'm able to kill Iron Golems and other high-level monsters using my bare fists-- that is, with my gauntlets (and all other armor) removed. My character has four ebony items (belt, bracelet, amulet, and torc) plus an artifact that gives an additional -6 boost to AR, so her AR is excellent even without her chain armor on, therefore I wanted to try exploring a dungeon with her armor and shield removed and with no weapon equipped, since that would let me pick up more loot while questing. Her Strength is 100 and her Agility is also pretty high-- I'd have to check to be sure, but I want to say it's 91, or maybe it's 81.

Anyway, she was able to destroy an Iron Golem with her bare fists, and Iron Golems are supposed to be impervious to all weapons below mithril, so evidently the game must be checking the value of the damage modifier rather than the actual material of the weapon.

[Satribe]

I do know that bare fists break the normal rules. Blades do less damage to skeletons than blunt items. (Which I think is cool, because they don't have flesh to wound, but bones to smash apart.) The rest I haven't fully tested, but Golems are resistant to items below Elven. Fire Daemons and above have a resistance, but I haven't tested enough to know if it is below certain materials, or just immune to specific materials. Although Vampires are not resistant to Silver, which is why your silver dagger story had a happy ending.

My point, is there are some material resistances. However, since fist don't have a material associated, it seems it was accidentally skipped.

[SeaGtGruff]

I remembered another place with closed-off areas. I used to think they might just be graphical glitches, but it turns out that they're actually treasure rooms!

If you enjoy "visiting" houses as much as I do (they really are the best source of gear, especially magical gear), and if you've checked out the nobles' houses, you might have noticed that some nobles' houses have an attic level that's just a single tiny room-- except there are one or more spots on the map that look like they might be rooms, although they're too small (often just a single cell) to be normal rooms, there are no corridors leading to them, and they're scattered about far from the single tiny room so they look like they might just be graphical glitches.

I usually just ignore them, but since my current character is a magic-user who knows the Passwall spell I decided to tunnel my way to one of them to see if anything was there. To my surprise, there was a nice pile of loot waiting for me, so I made my way to the other ones and each of them contained one or more piles of loot depending on how many cells there were; I think each cell contained a pile of loot, but I might be mistaken.

[SeaGtGruff]

On the other hand, one of the Main Quest dungeons has a place where you can jump up onto a ledge which is actually the border wall of the dungeon, so you can walk all the way around the dungeon on top of the wall-- and the weird part is, you can even walk off of the wall and off of the map into "outer space" as it were, or into the void that surrounds the dungeon map. I didn't have the nerve to keep walking to see how far away it would let me get; I chickened out and walked back to the top of the wall and went back into the dungeon.

I found it again! It's in-- appropriately enough-- the Temple of the Mad God.

On the second level, in the room in the northeast corner where the crystal is, there's a platform you can jump up on, and from there you can jump up to a ledge that runs around the room. If you follow that ledge to the northern wall of the dungeon there are two openings that take you to a ledge that encircles the entire dungeon-- one in the northwest corner of the room, the other in the northeast corner.

You can actually walk off that ledge into empty space that surrounds the dungeon, completely off the map. As you step off the ledge, the dungeon wall disappears and is replaced by what looks like a brown stone floor, but the empty space looks like a sort of checkerboard texture. You can walk around out there but the map won't show you where you are. If you turn around and walk back to where the brown stone floor is, the ledge and the dungeon wall reappear as soon as you step back onto the ledge.

I'm still too nervous to walk very far from the dungeon, because I'm worried that it might do something crazy to the game.

EDIT: I just checked the UESPWiki, and it says the following:

(Beware the explorer's temptation; for just behind the diamond is a cascade of raised platforms beckoning you to ascend the stairs. You will find that you can walk around the entire outer parameter of the dungeon. If you dare to step over the edge, you may find that you can walk on air in an endless cavern. You may find a duplicate dungeon where the paths are the same, but all the walls are invisible. You just might be able to return from your journey to complete your quest, or drop to the floor, and find that you are now trapped forever. This truly is the Temple of Mad God.)

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Arena:Crystal_ ... of_Mad_God