maxing out

[FifthHorseman]

How does the game determine when you max out and hit purple elan?
I only ask because my elan meer is filling up with yellow pretty fast and I don' have a very high score (just over 90 k).

[Xaa]

fifthhorseman said:

How does the game determine when you max out and hit purple elan?
I only ask because my elan meer is filling up with yellow pretty fast and I don' have a very high score (just over 90 k).

It is based entirely on your score. Have no fear, in normal gameplay it takes about a year to max out a character.

The gold "elan" rating prior to maxing out is based on how tough the character is given their current abilities, training, and the gear they are currently using. Swap out a knight's sword for a simple knife, for example, and you'll notice it goes down.

[FifthHorseman]

Oooo! Nice!

[Xaa]

Yes, it's actually one of my favorite things about the game. You know how tough your character is just by looking - if you've just got a little sliver of gold, you know you're a weenie. Start filling that thing up, and you know you're getting somewhere. When it turns purple, it literally means "this character is as tough as they can possibly get." Of course, that FAR exceeds what a normal human is capable of - consider that a purple character can very often take an arrow to the chest and keep fighting. Most humans, after getting shot in the chest with a longbow, will lie down and quietly die.

[FifthHorseman]

Alexander the great didn't if I remember correctly, he took months. And even then he might have been poisoned.
On that note I'm surprised that the black warriors don't use poison of some sort. I suppose it would have been impossible to program.

By the way, I just got off the airship port at QR5.
INTENSE!!!

[Xaa]

fifthhorseman said:

Alexander the great didn't if I remember correctly, he took months. And even then he might have been poisoned.

Most historians think Alexander died of a bowel perforation, likely from parasites in his food - which, given the conditions of the time, wasn't an uncommon way to die.

Bear in mind Alexander was also insanely tough, and a total loonie - he would often go into battle naked, or wearing only a loincloth, and fight in the front lines rather than staying in the rear to oversee the battle and give orders. Yes, he was a great general for his time. But really, compared to the tactics of later generals, he wasn't all THAT great. Many of his battles were won simply because the enemy leaders he was facing sucked. As Alexander led from the front, often charging into battle at the lead of his troops, he wasn't giving much in the way of orders after screaming "ATTACK!" and charging down the hill. This means that much of Alexander's "brilliant" strategies were executed not by him, but by the lieutenants he had beneath him. That he survived as long as he did, given how many times he was wounded in battle and the primitive state of medical knowledge in his day, is a testament to how astonishingly tough he was. Thus, surviving being shot in the chest was merely par for the course, for him.

And yes, it's possible for ordinary men to survive being shot in the chest, but you aren't going to be popping back up and fighting seconds afterwards.

I should add, however, that some historians, archeologists and paleobiologists are coming to the conclusion that another reason for Alexander surviving his wounds so often was because he lived before the days when the Black Plague swept Europe. Many of the medical techniques we know to be used in the time of the Greeks (as recorded anonymously in the medical work we traditionally attribute to Hippocrates) would, if tried today, kill the paitent every time.

For example, the medical treatment in those days for a cracked skull was to peel back the scalp and apply a paste made of a mixture of milk and flour, then plop the scalp back on and wait a few days. Then, you lift the scalp back up, scrape out all the muck, and you can see the crack in the bone because it will be higlighted in black from the goo you had atop it. They would then chisel it out with bronze tools, plop the scalp back in place, and send you on your way. Hippocrates tells us that this technique was very successful. However, if you tried it today, the patient would die from massive infections.

So, if we presume Hippocrates wasn't lying (after all, if he was, his book wouldn't have survived to be handed down to us, it would have been cast aside ages ago), this then begs the question "Why were people in those days able to do this but we can't do it today?" And some scientists are coming to the conclusion that the reason is there just weren't as many hostile bacteria in the air and soil back then. However, following the Black Plague, literally a third of Europe lay dead in the streets. In some cities, so many people died that they literally couldn't bury them all - they were just dragged out of town and placed on huge bonfires, which did little more than roast the meat since there weren't many left alive to chop wood. Some cities just cordoned off the plague-infected areas, and let the corpses rot. This amount of rotting flesh lying around all over Europe in large quantities bred bacteria which specifically thrives in human flesh - and, by the time it was all over, many of the techniques the Greeks had once used could no longer be used, simply due to the inevitable infections. And, as these infectious bacteria expanded their populations, following human movement, they eventually spread all across the world. In the Americas, we know that prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the Incas and others were doing trephining for various medical and religious reasons. Nearly all the trephined skulls we have recovered show clear evidence of the patient surviving multiple trephining operations over the course of what was, apparently, a normal lifespan. All done with stone and copper tools, without anesthetics or antibiotics. After the arrival of the Spanish, however, the practice entirely disappeared, simply because it was no longer survivable thanks to the bacteria the Spanish brought along with them.

Of course, other scientists disagree with this theory, as they believe the basic infectious bacteria have been around since the dawn of life on earth, and things were always like this. But, we don't know - bacteria live literally in a completely different world, as far as we're concerned. It's not uncommon for bacteria of different species to swap genetics with each other upon bumping into each other. Mutations in bacteria and new sub-species of bacteria can happen very rapidly, over the course of days - or even hours. Thus, it's impossible to know how old most of the infectious bacteria species are, because their genetics changes so rapidly. All we really know is that the Greeks have records attributed to Hippocrates that tell of them doing things that we can't do today without dying.

In support of the notion of a cleaner world before the advent of the Black Plague, we have known results FROM those days. DNA studies have shown that some plague survivors in medieval and renaissance Europe appear have passed along an abnormal version of the CCR5 gene, known as CCRS-delta 32. It is believed to have developed in Europe about 2000 years ago, and at that point one in 4,000 people had the mutation. Following the emergence of the Black Plague in Europe 700 years ago, this jumped to about 1 in 7. Today, the percentage of people of European descent who carry the gene is between 1 in 40 and 1 in 7, with those having Scandinavian ancestry apparently having the highest percentage, and the percentages dropping down to 1 in 40 the closer you get to the Mediterranean and the Near East. Having the gene makes it impossible to contract plague in any form.

Interestingly, the reason why having this genetic mutation makes it impossible to contract plague is because the altered protien strand produced by this gene is the exact protien used by the plague bacillus to enter the cells and begin reproduction - with the malformed protien, the plague bacillus cannot find the `lock` it inserts its molecular `key` into. Coincidentally and even more interestingly is that this same protien is used by the HIV virus to infect the immune system - thus, people who have the genetic immunity to plague also posess an imunity to AIDS. Similarly, constant ravages of smallpox during the medieval and renaissance periods have left large portions of the population of Europe (and white decendants in America) genetically resistant to Smallpox. And more, our rennaisance ancestors, particularly in England, had eating habits that, today, would kill us. Pheasants were very often left to hang outdoors by the neck until their tail-feathers fell off, then the rotten carcass was cooked and eaten. If you and I did that today, we'd simply die from botulism poisoning. Our English ancestors, however, were eating this as a delicacy, and considered it quite tasty. This is believed to be a legacy of the plague days, as for those who lacked a flat-out immunity only those who had a tough immune system survived.

As to whether or not it's even possible for the underlying immunological systems and disease etiologies to change like that, consider the phenomenon of allergies. Here's a quote from my novel, The Ship's Cat, which summarizes the situation:

Doctor said:

Odd that no one in the 20th century made the connection between their lifestyle and the development of allergies - by the 1970's, most people and their physicians assumed that allergies had existed since God invented ragweed. But, this is not the case. The word was only invented in the early 20th century, and there literally were no described cases in all the history of medicine before the 1890's. Curiously, it wasn't until the early 21st century that medical researchers even noticed that the word 'allergy' was coined in 1910 - one of the oddest cases of intellectual myopia in the history of science. The cause, of course, was simple - widespread use of soap and water with children. Children's immune systems actually need to be exposed to bacteria and other diseases as they grow, or they develop histamine reactions to random chemicals they encounter in their environment. Like their little minds, their immune system develops rapidly, and constantly seeks something to latch onto, and test itself against.

And, it's true. Prior to the 1890's, there were no recorded instances of allergies in all of medical history. It simply didn't happen - nobody had allergies. No medical practitioner in any earlier period records anything like them. Even the careful and precise works of Hippocrates, which accurately record what we know today as lactose intolerance, record nothing like allergies. Today, we consider allergies to be a fact of life. But, they're not - they're of very recent development. We have allergies today because we're cleaner than our ancestors were - and, conversely, our ancestors didn't have allergies simply because they were filthy compared to us, and their immune systems were stronger, used to handling a constant onslaught of bacteria and viruses from the environment. Of course, the tradeoff is in average lifespan - it wasn't until the 20th century and the discovery of germ theory and effective antibiotics that the average lifespan began to significantly rise above forty years of age. Today, the average lifespan is over 70, for most folks, and people living past 100 is not unknown. A hundred years ago, however, the average lifespan was merely 45 or so, and people living past 80 was VERY rare.

So, the bottom line is that Alexander's toughness and ability to survive the multiple wounds he received over his career may have arisen from the fact that in his day, wounds simply didn't get infected as often. Nowadays, however, most of the wounds Alexander received would be quite serious, and without modern medicine, likely lethal from infections.

On that note I'm surprised that the black warriors don't use poison of some sort. I suppose it would have been impossible to program.

No, actually, it would be tremendously easy. I didn't do poison because I neither my wife nor I like poison-using NPC's in games. Since the game was made to please my wife, there's no poison in it. =) Poison is basically a cheap way to die, and lacks any "fun-factor" to it.

[FifthHorseman]

Once again Xaa demonstrates his complete lack of anything approaching ignorance.
I want his brain.

[Xaa]

fifthhorseman said:

Once again Xaa demonstrates his complete lack of anything approaching ignorance.
I want his brain.

It wouldn't do you much good, it would just sit there in a jar.

[FifthHorseman]

We'll see about that. I'm a mad scientist at heart.
Now where's a crash of thunder when you need one?

[darkarbiter]

lol ya guys should come down to the RTR forums... we're having the good old Alexander was 1337 discussion again (as usual).

[xyzzy]

I realise that this post is sort of a long time after this thread was started, but ... I thought you said it would take about a year to max out? I was attempting to get Pooka's STR over 30 (made it to 29.5) and then I get a purple elan thingie - and I've only been playing just over 100 hours (this game).

Previously (in another game), I managed STR 30 OK. Did I do anything wrong. I was also hoping to boost TAL as well. Sob ...

[Xaa]

Jun 25, 2008 6:55:59 GMT -5 xyzzy said:

I realise that this post is sort of a long time after this thread was started, but ... I thought you said it would take about a year to max out? I was attempting to get Pooka's STR over 30 (made it to 29.5) and then I get a purple elan thingie - and I've only been playing just over 100 hours (this game).

Clearly, you're better at killing things in the game than I expected when I wrote that.

It's based on your score, and your score is based on the number of times you attack things and hit things. When the announcer says "excellent" or "flawless" or etc, you're also getting a couple extra points there.

And note that not all characters will max out with the same score, since score itself is based on your stats. DEX counts more towards score than STR, because higher DEX makes the character a lot more deadly than higher STR does (since higher DEX controls not only how often you hit, but how accurately - and as such, controls how much damage you can do).

[xyzzy]

OK - thanks (I think)
I restarted from an earlier save anyway, just in case I had "broken"
something. I'll try it both ways.