Chapter 6 - Equipment
6.1 Going to market..
You can find equipment for sale at easily recognizable buildings. To buy an item
just pick it up and walk out of the building by stepping on a shop mat 
.
The cost of the item will automatically be deducted from your money 
.
To sell an item, enter the shop and drop the item on the shop floor. Money from
the sale will automatically be placed in your inventory. Use the examine command, or the cursor and left button of the mouse to examine the price of an
item before you buy or sell.
6.1.1 Some notes about shopping
Most items will have a value based on their "standard" cost multiplied by a factor based on your charisma (see table primary stat effects). You can never look good enough that you can buy stuff then sell it at a profit.
Some notable exceptions to the above:
- Gems will always be sold or bought 3% more or less their standard value.
- For magic stuff value is 3 *(magic)^3 of standard value.
- Unidentified items value is 2/3 of standard.
6.1.2 Plundering shops
It is not possible to steal from shops (sorry!). If you somehow make it out of a shop with "unpaid" items, you will find that they will be unusable until paid for. On another note, if you save yourself with unpaid items in a shop, then crash the game and reload, you will find that the unpaid items will not be saved.
6.2 Items
In this section we detail some interesting properties of various bits of equipment which may be found in Crossfire
Books:
This is how players can obtain magical spells, sometimes a player can learn the
spell, other times they cannot. The chance depends on the type of spell, either
INT (incantations) or WIS (prayers) is used to help determine the percentage chance
that the spell might be learned (see section learning
a spell for details).
There are many, many different types of books out there, as well as being spell books (grimores and prayer books), the following information can appear in books generated in shops and/or monster treasure hoards:
- Compendiums on monsters. Their powers/abilities are described as in the spoiler.
- Compendiums of incantations/prayers by spell Path. Higher level texts are more complete in their description of available spells.
- "Bibles:" various aspects, properties, and characteristics of a God/cult are described. Higher level texts have more/better information.
- Compendiums explaining the powers of magic items. Higher level texts have more items detailed.
- Alchemical Formulae.
- Other randomly generated information.
Book level is assigned when the book is generated as treasure. Level is based on the difficulty of the map the book is generated on. All information is server specific.
Scrolls and Potions:
Most of these items provide a one-shot use of a spell without making the user
expend either mana or grace. Scroll use depends on the user's literacy skill and may fail. Potions always work, but are more expensive to buy. Several
kinds of items are classed as "potions:" balms, figurines, and dusts. Some potions
don't cast spells, but instead raise the drinker's stats. Beware of cursed potions.
They can lower your stats instead!
Wands(Staves)/Rods/Horns:
These items provide use of spells. Wands have a limited number of charges, while
horns and rods will recharge, but don't fire as much damage in a small amount
of time. Horns are used at the overall level of ability of the user, while rods
and wands cast spells at the item level.
Rings:
Many different types, rings can be worn to add/remove different immunities, gain/lose
spell Paths and alter all types of stats.
Food/Flesh:
These items provide sustenance. Food is generally more healthy to eat, while some
flesh items can be sold for good cash. Both types may temporarily alter your stats,
and/or be poisonous. Many flesh items inherit the properties of the monster they
came from. For example, a "poisonous" monster will leave behind poisonous flesh.
Don't eat it if you know what's good for you!!
Weapons/Armour:
Tons of items, it is up to you as the player to figure out which work better then
others. Take a look at weapon/armour weight in the spoiler to get an idea of how enchanted unidentified items are.
Artifacts:
These are the real treasures of the game. There are more than 20 artifacts out
there, and they are very hard to come by.
6.2.1 Glowing Crystals
Glowing crystals store some number of spellpoints - default is approximately 500, but this can be customized on a crystal by crystal basis, so some could have fewer, some could have more.
If you have full spellpoints and apply the crystal, half of your spellpoints are transferred to the crystal, up to the maximum amount the crystal can store.
If you are below full spellpoints and apply it, you draw points out of the crystal up to your maximum, and limited to when the crystal gets to 0 stored points.
You apply them just like any other item.
The speed of the animation is a rough indicator of how charged the crystal is - the faster the animation, the more points it has.
6.2.1 Holy Symbols
A character can cast divine magic (prayers) by successfully learning the prayer through a book or manual and one of the following:
- The character has successfully learned the praying skill
- The character has choosen a race or class that starts with the praying skill
- The character has a holy symbol applied
However, if a character has the praying skill and a holy symbol in their inventory (even if it is _not_ applied) they will automatically apply the holy symbol when a prayer is cast. The reason for this is so all characters can take advantage of the special effects of certain holy symbols like attuned: summoning, etc.
Note: if you have a holy symbol and do not want to use it due to denied spell paths (for instance), place it in a backpack or other container, sell it, leave it in your apartment, etc. Also, be aware of the following:
- Any new talismans picked up will be used when casting spells. This means the last talisman picked up will be the one that is used.
- If the character has multiple talismans in their inventory, the talisman used after saving then rejoining the game will not be the same talisman used prior to the save.
6.3 Encumbrance
Armour, weapons, shields will encumber a wizard and cause spell failure. Light equipment causes no failure at all whereas heavy equipment causes mondo failures.
The reasoning is that the bulkiness of objects, not their weight exactly, is what causes failures. So the basic idea of encumbrance is that items get in the way more than they weigh down. Unfortunately, our only measure of 'getting in the way' was the weight.
6.3.1 How encumbrance is calculated
Encumbrance points are tallied only from applied objects. Weapons give 3x their weight in kg in encumbrance points. Shields give 1/2 their weight in kg in encumbrance points. Armour gives its weight in encumbrance points.
There's an allowance of encumbrance points which all players get before they start losing incantations, this was about 35-45, not too much.
The formula works like this: You make a roll of 1-200. You compare it to a failure threshold. This threshold is: encumbrance + incantation level - caster level - 35
For example, lets say a 4th level wizard is casting a 5th level incantation . The wizard is wearing plate mail (100 kg), a 20 kg shield and wielding a 15 kg weapon. His encumbrance is 100 + 10 + 45 = 155. Thus, his threshold for failure is 155 + 5 - 4 = 156 or just about 3/4 failure rate.
There is no special bonuses for using magical equipment, although, it is clear that magical armour and weapons make things better through their weight.
6.4 Enchantments
Some items will have numerical values such as +1, +2, +3, etc. trailing their names. These magic values indicate that the item is enchanted, and in some way may be better or (if the value is negative) worse than ordinary run of the day items of its kind.
6.4.1 Enchanting armour
Enchantment of armour is achieved with the enchant armour scrolls.
Each time you successfully use a scroll, you will add a plus value, more armour
to the piece of equipment and some fractional amount of weight.
You may only add up to 1 + (overall level/10) (rounded down like an integer) in pluses to any one piece of armour. How much armour value you add to the item is also dependent on your overall level. You may never enchant a piece of armour to have an armour rating greater than their overall level or 99.
6.4.2 Enchanting weapons
This is done via a series of scrolls that you may find or buy in shops. The procedure is done in two steps. Use the prepare weapon scroll to lay a magic matrix on your weapon. Then use any
of the other scrolls to add enchantments you want. Note that some of these scrolls
will also require a "sacrifice" to be made when they are read. To sacrifice an
object just stand over it when you read the weapon scroll. Scrolls for weapon
enchantment are:
- Prepare weapon
Diamonds are required for the sacrifice. The item can be enchanted the square root of the number of diamonds sacrificed. Thus, if 100 diamonds are sacrificed, the weapon can have 10 other enchant scrolls read.
- Improve damage
There is no sacrifice. Each scroll read will increase the damage by 5 points, and the weight by 5 kilograms.
- Lower (Improve) Weight
There is no sacrifice. Each scroll read will reduce the weight by 20%. The minimum weight a weapon can have is 1 gram.
- Enchant weapon
This does not require any sacrifices, and increases the magic by 1.
- Improve Stat (ie, Strength, Dexterity, etc)
The sacrifice is the potion
of the same type as the ability to be increased (ie, Improve Strength requires
strength potions). The number of potions needed is the sum of all the abilities
the weapon presently gives multiplied by 2. The ability will then be increased
by 1 point. Thus, if a sword is Int +2 and Str +2, then 8 potions would be needed
to raise any stat by one point. But if the sword was Int +2, Str +2, and Wis -2,
then only 4 potions. A minimum of 2 potions will be needed.
WARNING: Something to keep in mind before you start enchanting like crazy - you can only use a weapon that has 5 + 1 enchantments for every 5 levels of physique experience you possess. So, a character with 10th level in the physique experience category may only be able to use a weapon with a maximum of 7 enchantments!
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