dtgreene: Does this mean that enemies don't respawn? (If so, then that is another reason for me to avoid the game.)
Also, nobody's answered my question about missable stats and (non-)retroactive HP gains.
- Enemies (including animals) do
not respawn in Balrum. Nor do rocks you can mine. Trees do near wisps and you can plant
most plants.
- Enemies mostly drop random number of stuff you'd expect (deer can drop meat, leather and antlers, skeletons can drop bones, fractured bones, skulls and occsionally rusty swords etc.), some monsters have preset loot.
- Loot in the world is hand placed.
- There is at least 2 cases where you can get extra stat point ONLY if you have exactly 5 points in the stat. If you are over, you're out of luck.
- There are number of skill books in game and you can only use them if you have the requirements (level 1 skill for level 2 skill book) and don't already have the skill at level or above it (if you already have skill 2, level 2 skill book is unusable). Learning skills costs learning points that are finite so you save them using books and waste them if you learn skill when book is available. (
skill book locations.
Obviously spoilers!)
- I'm pretty sure you get set number of health each level up and 50 per vitality point. If you lose vitality, you lose health and if you gain it you gain health. You can get more health from trainers by spending learning points and there are few other things that can improve your health in game. Mind that I've only played as melee character (chose swordplay at start) but I just tested starting with arcane arts and had less base health and more base mana so it's possible that what combat skill you have affect mana/helth you gain at level up. Also just tested and you do NOT gain the bonus health/mana if you get other combat skill later in game.
- You get one base stat point per level (you have 8 points to distribute at start). Base stats determine what equipment you can wield. You can use learning points to improve your base stats at trainers. There are also few other things in game that can improve you base stats. Majority of your total stats eventually come from your equipment (2/3 or more). Stats given by equipment are bonus stats and do not affect what equipment you can wield (so no, that +5 strenght sword won't allow you to wield that 5 strenght requiring platemail) but as far as I can see otherwise act the same way as base stats.
- You start with 4 skills at level 1 (1 is carpentry and you are given 3 choises each for 3 others skills) and 5 learning points. You get 6 points per level up and there are few books that give you learning points, few that gives skill levels and you can gain learning points from killing certain special monsters. You spend these learning points to improve your skills and stats. As far as I can tell, even if you get all the LP (from level ups, books and monsters) and use all the skill books available, you can't max all skills so build you character accordingly.
- Majority of xp gained in game comes from quests and monster xp only amounts to 20% or so of total xp if you kill everything worht xp and do all quests available to you.
- Max level people who completed this game have achieved is around 12.
Any other questions?