curious
liberty or license
as im about 90% finished, im guessing with my second play through, i'm finally think i've figured out just how unique items are 'dropped' in chests. there are 5 types of chests, not counting jars, that can be opened. 4 of which require locks. 2 of these locked chests can be opened with your starting lockpicking skill. of these 2 one is wooden with some metal braces and the other is metal and either the same or similar looking to the chest requiring the skill-difficult locks. they are different though. all unique items are contained within the metal normal locks. i will explain in a moment.
for those thinking of sinking any points into thieving i would advise not wasting any points in lockpicking unless you play on becoming a full thief since all 'unique' items can be found without any lps in thievery, and the difficult and impossible locks will only give you more random items. also there are many open lock spell scrolls which can be used if you want, though there will not be enough to open all difficult and impossible locks.
i believe there are around 50 of these normal lockpicking skill metal chests throughout the kingdom, some in remote locations, and others in caves, ruins, and some even in towns: for example there are 2 in the upper vengard castle.
in these chests are rare weapons/shields, amulets and rings, and pure ore weapon recipes that can only be found once in an entire game.
now i am not entirely sure all the factors that go into exactly calcutating what you will get when you open one of these chests. it could be level based. it could be that each of these chest has a weighted value so it is more likely to give you a better one than another. but it is certain that you will find the better items later in the game so i believe it 'checks off' the weaker items first as you open one of these chests. this time through for example i am mid 70's level and have cleared all but 1/3 of nordmar and have found a couple higher quality level items than my first game in which i cleared all of nordmar but only 2/3 of varant.
it is unfortunate this is not one of the things i set about to map as i believe it could be possible if you opened all these chests even at a very early level then you could get the best weapons, though it would be tough. personally i like the way they did this with the chest as it negates the exploit of prior gothics where since you knew where the powerful items where from prior games you could make your way to them early on.
i would be interested to know what others think about this.
by the way i am compiling a list of normar with lots of detail that should be finished in a couple of days, for those who have had difficutly their. i started nordmar 20 levels higher than last game and although being a powerful mage makes things easier, i find it much easier than the first time after they cut substantially the size of animal packs and maybe their amount to. the orcs are still bountiful though!
for those thinking of sinking any points into thieving i would advise not wasting any points in lockpicking unless you play on becoming a full thief since all 'unique' items can be found without any lps in thievery, and the difficult and impossible locks will only give you more random items. also there are many open lock spell scrolls which can be used if you want, though there will not be enough to open all difficult and impossible locks.
i believe there are around 50 of these normal lockpicking skill metal chests throughout the kingdom, some in remote locations, and others in caves, ruins, and some even in towns: for example there are 2 in the upper vengard castle.
in these chests are rare weapons/shields, amulets and rings, and pure ore weapon recipes that can only be found once in an entire game.
now i am not entirely sure all the factors that go into exactly calcutating what you will get when you open one of these chests. it could be level based. it could be that each of these chest has a weighted value so it is more likely to give you a better one than another. but it is certain that you will find the better items later in the game so i believe it 'checks off' the weaker items first as you open one of these chests. this time through for example i am mid 70's level and have cleared all but 1/3 of nordmar and have found a couple higher quality level items than my first game in which i cleared all of nordmar but only 2/3 of varant.
it is unfortunate this is not one of the things i set about to map as i believe it could be possible if you opened all these chests even at a very early level then you could get the best weapons, though it would be tough. personally i like the way they did this with the chest as it negates the exploit of prior gothics where since you knew where the powerful items where from prior games you could make your way to them early on.
i would be interested to know what others think about this.
by the way i am compiling a list of normar with lots of detail that should be finished in a couple of days, for those who have had difficutly their. i started nordmar 20 levels higher than last game and although being a powerful mage makes things easier, i find it much easier than the first time after they cut substantially the size of animal packs and maybe their amount to. the orcs are still bountiful though!
