quote:
Originally posted by Troas:
<STRONG>While I do admire his stamina at being willing to go on despite his, erm, handicap I'm unable to get a local swordsman to join up with me while he remains in my party. How can I convince him that he should retire?</STRONG>
You cannot, currently. A ruin with undead would probably do nicely for offing him quickly (or a dark fort with archers if you're feeling nasty).
quote:
Originally posted by Troas:
<STRONG>And on that subject - at the last ruin my henchmen ran off to engage zombies. I could hear the sounds of battle but it was night, so I was unable to see where it occured. Is there any way to determine in which direction an ongoing battle lies?</STRONG>
Nope; this obviously sucks if you got a Lord/Champion and want to keep him/her, but my guess is that this problem, along with some other combat-related things, is waiting for a more focused overhaul (when exactly is anyone's guess, though from the dev pages it appears that this will not show up for a long while).
quote:
Originally posted by Troas:
<STRONG>How does encumberance work? Is there some trigger point over which I should stop looting and run back to town to sell or does the weight gradually slow you down as you acquire more?</STRONG>
There's a trigger point determined by your strength beyond which you are guaranteed to become encumbered; every unit of weight past that point slows you by a given amount. I don't remember off the top of my head exact details, but the really important factor to keep in mind speed-wise is 1000; under is bad (most everything else moves faster than this and will thus get extra turns in a fight with you), exactly is the best you can get without any Agility modifiers (as a dwarf or human anyway), and over can mean the difference between life and death (and is thus good/highly desirable). Armor User skill can also decrease the weight of armor you're wearing by a significant fraction, which can mean the difference between being extremely encumbered and not being encumbered at all if you have enough Armor User skill.
quote:
Originally posted by Troas:
<STRONG>When searching ruins I often come across extra clothing - most of it seems to be ornamental in nature but I wonder - would it be better to try to wear all of it or just stuff it in my pack? How does one pick out the proper menacing spiked pendant or earrings to go with chain mail?</STRONG>
Pendants, earrings, amulets, and other jewellery currently have no other purpose beyond adornment. When magic gets in (which according to the dev notes will be after version 1.0 and thus are in the *far* future), this'll probably change, but for now, the most practical use I've heard of for it so far is as currency between civilizations (since civilization exchange rates aren't implemented yet, one civ's gold coin is another civ's useless piece of garbage). As for knowing whether some merchant is offering a pretty bauble or masterpiece armor, first off there's a table in-game you can access that shows the various symbols and what they mean, and secondly any further case-by-case ambiguity can be dispersed easily by 'v'iewing the item and reading the description. One thing that didn't show up in the topic you mention having a copy of the table is that, in the new version, stuff by default shows both the quality of the decoration and the quality of the item (it used to only show the overall quality, which of course buggered anyone who didn't look closely at their purchases). The way that works is that an item that looks like *<<item>>*, for example, is well-crafted and superiorly decorated, whereas an item that looks like -<<item>>- is of superior crafting and only finely decorated. Nicely decorated items are more costly, and only the crafting quality is taken into account, so if you see a *<<item>>* and an *[item]*, you won't really miss anything by buying the undecorated *[item]*.
quote:
Originally posted by Troas:
<STRONG>But I do have a followup question - can worn/damaged items be repaired? If so where/how?</STRONG>
Nope. Actually, AFAIK the repairing of items isn't even implemented in Fortress mode yet, which I think is a sign that if it *is* going to be implemented, it's gonna be a while.