Have You Seen These Bugs II

[Per]

NPCs Suffer from Permanent Jet Withdrawal:
I think I know what this is. If you use jet on an NPC right before or during combat they will gain a temporary drug bonus. If you gain a level, and they gain a level too, they will have their stats set to the leveled up version of the NPC, but the jet effect is technically still there. 10 minutes later the NPC will lose stats based on the jet withdrawal, and with the game assuming that their leveled up stats were the drug bonus stats they don't reach their normal levels again.

That makes sense, I'll test it.

Hole in the wall in Broken Hills Mine:
Are you talking about the secret room on the top of the map? It's there, sometimes enemies walk into it (that's how I discovered it.) It's possible to get inside, too, but there's nothing there and it's terribly disappointing.

Supposedly there was a hole in the wall dividing that room from "outside".

It's like this: start with no addiction or withdrawal to jet. Take two doses of jet. Get an addiction to jet. Wait until the bonus is gone and you have low stats. Use the antidote at this point. The bottle doesn't disappear for some reason (because you were addicted? That makes sense?) Once you have gone through withdrawal and get the YOU NEED JET NOW text you will have a permanent bonus to strength, perception, and actionpoints.

I know the long and short of it, I'm looking for a specific looping routine, e.g. "take x jet, wait y hours, take antidote, wait z hours, repeat steps a-b, take rotgut, wait q hours..." I can always get the raises by fiddling around long enough, but I can't seem to pin down the underlying mechanics.

I managed to get myself to instantly die while trying it. I was poisoned and radiated at the time, but nearly enough for either one to kill me, so it must have been the jet inducing a heart attack. You never can tell with those instant deaths, it's impossible to read the text before the screen goes white.

You die if any stat drops to 0 because of radiation, and that would of course be more likely during withdrawal.

 

[OnGame900]

Specific looping instruction for jet?

The fastest way would be this:
1)Take jet until you get addicted
2)Rest 10 minutes
3)Use antidote

Repeat these three steps for as long as you can, while considering the final step.

Concluding Step) Wait until you get 50 or so "YOU NEED JET NOW" messages. Then take 50 or so jets (as many jets as you had addictions gained in the previous steps.) At this point just clean your self up, wait a day or two and take the antidote again if necessary. You'll have an assload of action points, and 10 in perception/strength.


For a more scientific approach, to understand the mechanics, do this.

1)Take one jet (reload if you don't get addicted(for the purpose of demonstration))

2)Wait 24 hours, or for however long it takes to recover full stats
(I had a character with 10 endurance, and he recovered full stats in 24 hours. I'm not sure endurance effects it or not. This method might not pan out so well if it takes several days to recover full stats. The previous method still works fine for stat accumulation, though.)

3)Take the jet antidote. You'll notice that your strength, perception, and action points go up by one. Why? The antidote assumes you are addicted, and so this bonus is to negate the penalty you would have if you were going through the addiction withdrawal stage already. (The reason we're getting an overall bonus is because we're using the jet BEFORE that penalty is being enacted.)

4)Wait some more. Keep pressing wait buttons until you get ripped out of the pip boy screen with the message saying "NEED JET NOW." Check out the character screen. The stats you have are now your normal stats again. No bonus? Wait, check out step five!

5)Take one jet. Now look at your character screen again. The text screen says you gained +1 strength +1 perception and +2 action points, but the character screen says you gained +2 strength, +2 perception, and +3 action points. The "NEED JET NOW" penalty has been lifted from you AGAIN. That's where the gain comes from. So over all we have a loss of -1/-1/-1 and a gain of +2/+2/+2, which means we have a permanent stat increase.

6)If you didn't get addicted from the last jet dose, take more until you do. Then repeat these steps. This way you can safely control your stat increases and get the exact number you want.


So what's the deal with rotgut? Did someone claim that was part of the formula or what?

 

[OnGame900]

Oh, and in case any one was wondering, I've confirmed that you can up the strength and action points of NPCs by giving them jet, resting 10 minutes, and getting them to gain a level with you.

My Marcus has 15 base AP, so if I give him two doses of Jet before combat he's doing three burst attacks per turn.

 

[Per]

So what's the deal with rotgut? Did someone claim that was part of the formula or what?

Nah, that was just random. Thanks for the recipe, I'll try it out. Also, for the future,

edityourpost

 

[Omegawolf]

The bottle not disappearing is a bug? I just always assumed you had plenty of doses, since taking a whole bottle of it for a single dose just doesn't seem... although if you take the antidote without being addicted to jet first, it does disappear.

 

[Per]

You can get Robo Melee Weapons from the eyebots in the Enclave using 0-damage kill criticals. It's pretty sweet because they deal electric damage, so you can run up to someone and punch them in the eye and they vanish in a violet flash. Doesn't do as much damage as a Mega Power Fist, but doesn't need ammo.

 

[Per]

I'm still having problems with the Jet thing. I can cut the "wait 10 minutes" out of the procedure and still get the same result some of the time, a lesser result some of the time - possibly depends on whether you get addicted when you take Jet in the "concluding step". I also get bonuses on the form of X/X/X+1 rather than X/X/X. There seems to be a difference between the first time and the rest of the times; as long as you've used the Antidote once, even if you use it "properly", things are slightly different after that. For instance, if you use the Antidote while you have withdrawal, you'll return to normal stats afterwards; if you then ever take Jet again, you'll get the "supercharged" bonus, but the game also supercharges the penalties afterwards, meaning you don't end up with a permanent bonus - even though you got the "remove withdrawal penalty" twice. So obviously the game remembers something about this indefinitely, not sure what, and it only gets confused when you have multiple addictions at the same time.

I also managed to get NPCs addicted now. They can seemingly have any number of concurrent addictions, each with its own penalties. Very strange, since I could have sworn I've tested this before with negative results. It also seems each Jet addiction takes 1 AP, though it should be -2 according to my notes. Plus I got some erratic results when combining chems and NPC levelling.

If only testing these things by trial and error wasn't so tedious. Why hasn't anyone decompiled the engine yet?

 

[OnGame900]

Yeah, I'm going to have to retract what I said about NPC jet addiction. I had sort of noticed stats, jet related stats, slowly going down on NPCs but it was rare and I assumed I was doing something distinctly wrong that I wasn't aware of. Now, however, I have this save game where Marcus just beat up a bunch of Enclave patrolers, and we're all just standing around. I started the battle by loading Marcus up with two doses of jet. I win the battle and then wait a day to clear Marcus out of the withdrawal cycle. His stats say he has 11 AP (as opposed to 15, but this is normal now. Like I said, they have been slowly going down, but I assumed I was just screwing something up.) However, and this is the sad thing, if I wait an additional day, either through rest or walking or anything else, his AP goes down to 10. No apparent way to fix it. This roughly syncs up with jet addiction, one day to recover and then one day or two to gain the withdrawal. I'm really hoping Marcus has got one more level-up left in him, or else he's getting pretty close to useless.

Woe! If only I hadn't tried to play god! Curse these jet stained hands! Hang in there, Marcus, we'll... Marcus? MARCUUUuuuussss...!

Ehem.

This jet thing is very confusing. Just to clarify, my jet algorithm for player stats still works when used "properly," right? You're just experimenting and noticing some weird anomalies?

I think I remember having an additional AP bonus, like you experienced, for the first time that it happens. I don't have a game where a) I haven't already used the jet antidote and b) I can get it without devoting 8 levels and 8 hours to playing, so I can't test that out, unfortunatly.

There's something weird going on if you can get the bonus without resting some. When I was first testing with single jet addiction/cures I wasn't able to get a bonus without resting, and I thought the game included a manual override to prevent jet-stat stacking during normal game play, but that wasn't included once the stats were reduced. Are you stacking jet addictions/cures? I can't think of a reason why stacking addictions/cures would cause stat gain, other than it's too complicated for me to rule out.

I wish I had more time to devote to testing this out, but I really shouldn't even be spending time writing this message. If there's still jet ambiguity in three weeks I'll see if I can't figure it out.

Also, Per, for the future,

 

[Per]

This jet thing is very confusing. Just to clarify, my jet algorithm for player stats still works when used "properly," right? You're just experimenting and noticing some weird anomalies?

Something like that. Thing is, I'd like to understand it on a basic level that would account for all observations. I eventually gave up on it since a) it was getting frustrating and b) I was running out of time and decided it could be spent more effectively on other things.

I don't have a game where a) I haven't already used the jet antidote and b) I can get it without devoting 8 levels and 8 hours to playing, so I can't test that out, unfortunatly.

Well, if you have any archived save where you have a couple of chem types, you can get Jet and the Antidote in seconds with the inventory editor.

There's something weird going on if you can get the bonus without resting some. When I was first testing with single jet addiction/cures I wasn't able to get a bonus without resting, and I thought the game included a manual override to prevent jet-stat stacking during normal game play, but that wasn't included once the stats were reduced. Are you stacking jet addictions/cures? I can't think of a reason why stacking addictions/cures would cause stat gain, other than it's too complicated for me to rule out.

I'm at the point where I believe addiction stacking must have something to do with it, since they do seem to stack for NPCs. They seemingly lose 1 AP for each time they fail the "saving throw" against Jet addiction; if you could only have one addiction (which would be the sensible assumption) they should only be able to lose 1 at most.

I wish I had more time to devote to testing this out, but I really shouldn't even be spending time writing this message. If there's still jet ambiguity in three weeks I'll see if I can't figure it out.

There's absolutely no rush now, I ran into the deadline I set for myself for this guide update. I noted the thing about NPC addictions and levelling up, but left the Jet exploit alone for now rather than patch it with something I wasn't entirely happy with. The routine it describes now works as well, it's just not the most elegant; I'd simply like to fix it once and for all. I do appreciate your input and explanations so far and anything else you can come up with.

Also, Per, for the future,

It's the difference between three hours and three days, you know?

 

[Darek]

* Too many items bug: there is a definitive possibility that this is caused solely by collecting all the holodisk entries in your pipboy. Experiences from people who a) hoard all items but don't read holodisks and b) hoard holodisks but don't collect items would be useful here. Or just try going back and forth between two maps in one or both scenarios and see if it freezes up eventually.

I've done lots of testing on the Skilldex button going black bug. What's causing it is the number of entries in the pipboy status screen.

22 entries for Fallout 2 us 1.0
23 entries for Fallout 2 patch 1.2 (most likely the reason for the difference is they fixed a bug caused by too many automaps in the pipboy).

It doesn't matter if it's only holodisk entries or only location entries (I've tried both). Hell I even tried to remove all the text from the entries, leaving the status screen black. No surprise, it still broke.

Since there are 14 locations you can only add 7 or 8 holodisk (depending on version), any more and the skilldex button will eventually break.

If you suffer from the black box bug and want to get rid of it, grab holodisk.txt from the data folder in Master.dat, and put it in your fallout folder\data\data. Open it up and remove as many holodisks you need to get under the limit.

I'm a bit skeptical the holodisks would be the sole reason for the too many items bug. I get the black box bug every game, I do horde stuff (although not excessively) yet I've never gotten any map corruption.

If you easily want to test with full holodisk entries and no collected items:
Put holodisk.txt in data\data folder as before. Open it and change the gvar number to 220 for all holodisks. Remove # in front of the fake 13 disks number.

Start new game. Leave Arroyo and head straight to the Military base. Grab the MB outside holodisk and add it to your pipboy. You now have 22 status entries, Arroyo + 21 holo's. Go to San Francisco and get one quest if you need 23 entries to bug up the pipboy. Now try to get the game to freeze.

I couldn't, but I did not try very hard.

About items hoarding, does multiple items in the same slot (money stimpacks...) count as one item or many?


cheers

 

[Frank Horrigan@BIS]

I succeeded in my game with the procedure given by OnGame900 by slightly altering/extending it.

1) Take jet until addicted then rest 24 hours.

2) Use the antidote then rest 24 hours again so that the "you need jet now" message will pop up.

3) Save the game then load.

4) Use Jet but don't get addicted then rest for a day and your ST, PE & APs should have been raised by one. Looks like the game remembers to give you the double raise but fails this with the double withdraw after being loaded.

5) Save and load again then repeat with step 1. Note that during the second approach you don't benefit any increases. It should work flawlessly if it's repeated thereafter though.

Went through with the procedure twice with the same character, unsure at this point if it can be shortened down.

 

[weirwood]

* Critters knocked down don't require AP to get up. I found this not to be correct. Rereading the report I got the impression the player had expected that when you knock someone down and they get up as part of the same animation, they should suffer an AP "debt" in their next round. Is the fact that they don't so bewildering that it merits pointing out?

You might want to point out that there is a difference between knockback and 'knocked down', and that they merely share an animation.

'Knocked down' is a critical effect, and critters suffer an AP penalty for it, as well as being easier to hit until they get back up.

'Knockback' happens from melee weapons, and merely moves a critter back one square for every 10 damage, having the same animation, but no AP penalty. Weapons with the 'knockback' perk seem to increase this to 1 square for every 5 damage.

 

[RecoveryPal]

I came across a bug in NCR where Dorothy's power station is blowing up which causes the game to crash.

This happens repeatedly, and the only way around it is to avoid going into NCR altogether

 

[zenbitz]

Reported that although you nominally get a bonus to hit critters that are lying down, in reality the chance to hit would go down dramatically. Not really something I have observed.

I have noticed that your % to hit seems to go up, but if you aim at the eyes you rarely get criticals. My FO2 guy has 25% crit rate. It may be that it increases your chance to hit but not crit proportionately.

I came across a bug in NCR where Dorothy's power station is blowing up which causes the game to crash.

Huh. When I played (1.02d) I don't think I ever met Jack, I just fixed Dorthea's computer for 3000 xp + books.