MSDOS Version Bugs

[Maven]

When adventuring at night in Skara Brae, you meet tougher monsters and get better booty then in the daytime.

Unless you drop into the Catacombs for a second (like, to play a song), and come back out.

It's still night, and you can't go visit Garth or the Review Board, and you don't regenerate Spell Points. But you also don't meet any Wolves or Zombies or Jade Monks, and you won't find any helms or instruments or Mthr Swords.

[drifting]

That's a good one. I can confirm it from looking at the disassembly. It's not limited to the Catacombs. It will manifest when the party enters any dungeon at night and then leaves again at night.

[drifting]

In the DOS version of BT1, a melee attack by an illusion (Wind Wolf, Wind Ogre, Wind Giant and Wind Dragon) will never miss. It's due to an overflow in the melee to-hit check.

[Maven]

When you first start or re-load a game, whether you can hit an opponent or not seems to adhere to the expected rules. However, there is a point after which you can ALWAYS hit any monster. I think I tracked it down to the point where you are first out in town when it turns night time. After that, even level one Conjurers with no armor can hit Skeletons and Spiders. And later on, even level one Wizards can hit Spectres.

Update: I finally found the correlation. It's after you fight a group of Magicians, and one of them casts a spell. Not the one that withers you or gives the "no effect" message -- the other one.

[Maven]

When fighting against a single opponent, like a Samurai or Mad God or Spectre or Crystal Golem, if the opponent strikes first, any successful attack against it after that will kill it. Even if you only do 1 hit point of damage.

If the opponent doesn't go first, you have to hit it twice. Again, it doesn't matter how much damage you do as long as you do at least one hit point.

[Maven]

I encountered a doppleganger in the catacombs. My party consisted of a Bard and a Conjuror. I had no special and failed the flee. I killed the doppleganger before he had a chance to jump into my party, but somehow the game decided my Bard WAS the doppleganger. My Conjuror and the doppleganger Bard fought it out to the bitter end, and the doppleganger won. I got the "Sorry, Bud" screen and ended up back in the Adventurer's Guild, even though my Bard/doppleganger still had hit points left. I removed my Bard/doppleganger from the party so I could add a Wizard and go resurrect my Conjuror.

After that, every time I added my Bard to the party and went adventuring, the first time I got in a battle he would turn hostile. If I cast Disrupt Illusion, he would turn into a doppleganger and fight until I killed him, at which point he would disappear.

This was incredibly annoying, and I tried everything I could to get him back to normal -- healing at the temple, possession or Mind Warp spells, Disrupt Illusion, Flesh Restore and Restoration spells... nothing doing. The only thing that would end the battle was killing him. I tried various methods, all of which ended up with him disappearing. Which didn't help, because then I couldn't remove him from the party and save over the bugged file.

Eventually I resorted to editing the .tpw character file. There were two 01 bytes, at offsets 95 and 97, that I had never seen before. All of my other characters have 0's at those offsets. I changed them to 0 and my Bard returned to normal.