Dungeon Master Forum

Is there any use of sword Meteor Blade? Its nearby cauldron , maybe can be transmuted or ...

I don't remember a sword called "Meteor Blade"...

Meteor metal you mean?

This sword does two things - Increases your luck (according to the entry in creatures.dat) And can be transmuted into Blue Steele in the Vexirk cauldron (1st floor of the Skullkeep. The formula (correct me if I'm wrong) was: 1 Spirit Cap, 1 Red Gem and 1 Meteor Blade.

And one gold coin. The meteor metal also respawns in the Axeman glade in the PC version (not sure about others), so you can make as many Blue Steels as you want. I usually pick it up when I do an axe-run and sell the Blue Steel. (It's not as strong as a Vorax.) Personally, I prefer the Exscimir (sp?) for it's double attack. It ends up doing more damage than Blue Steel if you hit both times, and it's very fast. You find two or three in the entire game.

Thanks for correcting the formula for me. I knew I made a mistake there.

Well after analysing graphics.dat I've found this out

DM Weapon > DM2 Weapon
Delta -> Excysmyr
Diamond Edge -> Blue Steele
Hardcleave -> Vorax
( I didn't manage to decode all of them yet...)
The itema seems to have same properties (Excymyr's mana bonus have been boosted though as many other items) and combos (Yes! the '-12.5%/-25% creature defence bonus also applies)

Exscymyr is a very good, Melee attack works wonders and the mana bonus is good. I like to use Blue Steele / Exscymyr combo or Vorax / Excymyr combo. The second one works best with Equus.

I always used to use a Blue Steel(e?) and Excymyr combo...gah I wish I could get Dad to let me try downloading DOSbox again, then I could play the bloody thing again .
The only things I can remember that can be done with the cauldron are recharging the Numenstaff and creating a Blue Steel(e?)...I can't even remember what the recipie is (yes I know someone posted it above but I mean I can't remember it myself) but we used to make loads of them so it can't have been that hard...maybe it's on a scroll or something /shrug.
And I can't be arsed to get up and go get the strategy guide thing from the shelf so I can't remember if Blue Steel(e?) has an "E" on the end .

There is another recepie for the cauldron: Staff + Mana Blossom = Snake Staff. But yeah: Making Blue Steeles was a great way to make money... combined with axes you get from the 'vikings' you could buy all of the shop contents in no time.

Yeah, selling axes was my main source of income once I got that far, money is so easy to get in there, I had a big ton of blue gem things by the end of it hehe.

Axe Selling / Thron Beast hunting was one of the elements of the game I loved. Too bad the stores didn't replenish their stock.

Yeah killing the Thorn Demons (well we used to call then Rhinos before we got the strategy guide and found what they were) was great - unlimited uber food right near the home base thing. And we always used to use that starting room (the one up the ladder from the HoC) as a bse in which to store crap and to sleep, since you could lock doors just by removing the key. Was a good break from the annoying Attack Minions sent by Dragoth once you started to penetrate the keep.
I never finished DM2 although my dad did. I didn't want to get the harder minions attacking me (you get weaker ones attacking you until you reach a certain point in the keep, then harder ones come and they hurt ) so I just kind of spent ages messing around with the Axemen and the Thorn Demons and stuff .

Attack Minions... I hated those with passion. Always finding me when least expected. Usually I was woken up by a BLAM of a lightning thrown at me or finding them behind me when I fought off mosters.

Oh yeah that's bloody annoying...you're sleeping and then you crap yourself when a Lightning Bolt to the face wakes you up . I preferred when you were just walking down a corridor or something and you could hear them coming. Fortunately, as far as I can remember, they never zapped you from a long way away - they always came to within a couple of squares to do so. Of course, if you needed to sleep in a room with no door or something, you could always stick a Guard Minion at the entrance just in case...

Or use the scout map's "all-seeing eye" to block them. There was a way to dispose of them though. You could lock all of them in the HoC building. I managed to do it with most of them.

Ahh but I used that building as my rest-base thing. Anyway, ther was an unlimited number of them, they just kept coming forever. And I never really used the Scout Minion/Scout Map for anything. I made use of the Porter Minions with their map for collection and delivery of axes to the weapon shop though . But apart from that I never really used any of the other minions.

Thanks for answers on M.B. You say that MB increase luck, but for whole party or for wielder of a blade ? Maybe should be good use the sword with somebody who is in second line and not fight hand to hand.

Only for the wearer. The sword itself is not too good. You can put it in a quiver though and it wil;l grant you the luck too. For good swords find my post about digging through the data files. It should give you a nice spectrum of things worth getting (it's a sumplement to things posted on DM Encyclopedia)

MB is generally intersting weapon ...

You have to close the blue portals on the walls with a spell, that reduces the number of minions that can come through. Though they will open again eventually!

Yeah, only a couple of mins, if that...I'm not sure if the strength of Zo spell you use affects the duration the portal stays shut. In the room nearr the Zo-Link machne where there's two or three Minion portals, there's also a brazier and (I think) a table. I think if you put, say, the brazier in the way of a portal, Minions can't come through. But I can't remember and anyway they're not that hard to kill, just incredibly annoying .

iirc the power of the spell did affect the ammount of time it stayed shut. Or perhaps I wanted to think that to justify the extra expense of mana used on the spell

I often blocked the portals with torches. Not directly in front, but a square away. I also got into the habit of putting torches in doorwarys where they came from, so I kept them all contained inside Skullkeep. But we've meandered off topic.

What position exactly the meteor metal was respawning in FTL-PC-MSDOS-DM2? For in RTC-DM2 there is neither a meteor metal respawning place nor any single meteor metal at all to be found in the axemen area, and I'd like to forward that to George all along with precise coordinates.

Tom Hatfield wrote:And one gold coin. The meteor metal also respawns in the Axeman glade in the PC version (not sure about others), so you can make as many Blue Steels as you want. I usually pick it up when I do an axe-run and sell the Blue Steel. (It's not as strong as a Vorax.) Personally, I prefer the Exscimir (sp?) for it's double attack. It ends up doing more damage than Blue Steel if you hit both times, and it's very fast. You find two or three in the entire game.

I don't remember there being more than one. It's been awhile.
I think it would take a lot to get me to play that one again.
My oldest son mentioned seeing me play it.
I may try it out (a third time, I believe), just to see if it peaks his interest.

P.S. Interesting post count (666).
Do you plan to stop posting for good or will we possibly see you again?

Was the meteor metal not through a hidden wall somewhere close to the cauldron? Been too long...

[img=http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/4868 ... cc9.th.png]

That tile, marked as 29,12,10 in kentaro's editor (x = 12, y = 10, map# 29) is the destination of all items from the cauldron.

From my best interpretation of the actuators, placing all of the correct items in the cauldron triggers the actuator, which a) creates the new item and b) teleports all the ingredients to the target tile in the forest. When the items get to the square, they linger while the actuators wait to be called or are on their delay. When THOSE actuators fire, the items are sent to different merchants to be resold.

Ah, that explains it. I do remember seeing all the ingredients there on at least one, possibly several occasions. I thought the game was being generous; it never occurred to me that this was a side-effect. At any rate, thanks for verifying that the ingredients are recoverable. People probably thought I was crazy.

It's a great mechanic to exploit if you want money. A Serpent Staff is worth a TON. It's faster than killing off Axemen and as a bonus, it doesn't create hundreds of unnecessary piles of bones which clog up the map.

purple1 wrote:I often blocked the portals with torches. Not directly in front, but a square away. I also got into the habit of putting torches in doorwarys where they came from, so I kept them all contained inside Skullkeep. But we've meandered off topic.

Wait - is there a way to stop minion from going outside Skullkeep?! Anyone else tried it?