Hmm. I had read from somewhere in the forum that some epic items only appeared in Hard Mode. Never knew that Hard Mode also crippled them.. Thanks for the info.

You are right, I'm new in Act 3. In Act 1 & 2, it is very useful to have additional damage against the undead. I have yet to see any demons (aside from a few exceptions), but I'm positive that they will start appearing more in Act 3. That's why you'll need it more in your playthrough.

After 16, you need 4 points to increase a skill by one point, so don't worry.

I never used a genie in a battle. I rely on my own "weapons" myself :) True, some bosses in the game (and even some non-bosses) kill you in under a second. It's about micro-managing. Your position, your summons, your followers and the last but not least, your spells.

Every genie gives you one skill point. You can see additional info about it in the "Infinite gold, bug or intended?" thread I opened in the forum. It's just under this thread.

I cried a "bad guy laughter" when I at last found the only solution to get all the items in all the chests without any Alignment loss or killing anyone. Mwahahah :)

So, I weighted the possibilities the game has given me. Until now, I always tried to pursue the way of eluding the guard. Why? Because if he caught you, you had to give all your possessions to him, down to your panties. Your gold included.

So I told myself, if it is impossible to elude the guard, let's try his "forfeiture of property" option.

As long as this option is concerned, you would dump all your belongings to an empty chest, be it a stony chests in the wilderness or the chests in the NPC's houses. This way, the guard could not take them from you. But the problem here was your gold, that you can't store it anywhere else in the game world.

And at this point, our beloved skill Eloquence comes into play.

Every thief should improve his Eloquence to 16. From the shops, find four items (I have two rings, a belt and a necklace) that give 1 point to Eloquence each. Equip them and go to the astrologer guy in Hillbrandt. You'll see that his Magical Box price is reduced to 2112 because you have 20 Eloquence. Buy it and when it is in your inventory, look at its sell value: 2758. That means you can buy and sell Magical Boxes and profit 646 gold in the process. Please have a look at the attachment to see for yourselves :D

But this is not our point here.

You must buy magical boxes with all your gold. When you have about 100-200 gold, you are nearly done. Go to a chest and dump all your items in it. This leaves you only with a small amount of gold.

Now return to the chest you want to plunder. Open it, close it, let the guard catch you and tell him that you can solve it with another way. He tells you he will take all your possessions. Let him. He will take your small amount of gold and leave. If you look at your alignment, you'll see that nothing changed there. Problem solved.

Now if you want, you can go back to Hillbrandt and sell those magical boxes back, if you need the money. You'll get "Number of boxes x 646" gold more in addition to your original gold.

But STILL, the guard's appearance after disarming that trap is simply ridiculous. I hope it will be fixed in a future patch. Although I doubt one will be published and if I will already have finished the game.

Nice find but I would consider that an exploit and for me that would harm my "RPG principles". ;)

Good tips about eloquence items, I'm gonna get some immediately.

Definition of exploit isn't cheat but rather finding loop holes in game mechanics e.g like you did, at least that's how I see it.

And while it's logical you can profit from it by trading it doesn't make much sense you can do it to the same merchant unless you meant you buy from one and sell to another.

Considering this game is a 10-year of work, I think those loop holes are intended :P

Anyway, after getting the contents of those damn chests, I can sleep relieved :)

Hey there guys, it's me again.

I've experimented with the Trap Detection system in the game here is what I found:

I'm currently testing on the chests in Act 3. Golden ones, which give you 100 EXP for lockpicking and 100 EXP if you find and disarm the trap. These are the hardest chests as far as I know, and some of them summon the guard even if you disarm the trap (bugged probably). These are the things you have to do to disarm them:

1) You must have 20 Perception. Either with potion, items or totally spent skill points.
2) You must cast only one of the following spells: Light, Keen Senses, Insight.
3) I did my tests with the Light spell. Now even with 15+ Mastery Level with Light, one time casting is not enough to detect the trap. Below is the Mastery Level versus the number of casting the spell chart (to detect the trap):


Inquisitorial Magic Mastery Level / No. of times Light Spell Cast
15+ / 3
14 / 4
13 / 4
12 / 4
11 / 4
10 / 7
9 / 9
8 / 8
7 / 12


The only thing that is against the consistency that I had to cast the spell 9 times with 9 Mastery Level, and 8 times with 8 mastery level. It should have been 9 / 8 and 8 / 9...


So this test has shown me that the spells are cumulative.

Just so you know, you don't have to invest skill points all the way to 15+. You just need to cast certain spells more than one time :)