Test your strength

[Joramun]

Test your strength: even with Stamm, couldn't throw any object far enough. Finally did with 80 strength.
I don't think this is a bug. The formula for Ku potions is known to the party by this point, so I think part of the point of this puzzle is to make the party use them.

I think the riddle is solvable quite easily with almost any character and a throwable item in DM. 80 strength seems a bit high at least.
The formula for throw force must be different than that of DM / CSB, which may break other riddles / tests in other dungeons.

[zoom]

I believe the trick here is to use a crossbow, found nearby...

[Paul Stevens]

I believe the trick here is to use a crossbow

You're kidding! Good grief! How can I learn
new tricks in DM after all these years?

[Jan]

Heh, you're right Paul, I didn't know about it either. Oh, you do learn something new every day!

[Sophia]

The crossbow works.
I also passed the test with a 50 strength Artisan ninja, though it took a few tries.

The formula for throw force must be different than that of DM / CSB

I did some tests in CSBwin throwing a sword as well as various junk, and noticed that many objects did have a bit more range in DM than in DSB. So, I went poking around in the code and realized it was probably my own doing, intentionally:

Code: Select all

	-- My tweak: Only give the weapon bonus if you're not actually throwing
	-- the weapon. Otherwise, you get such a hefty bonus for throwing an
	-- axe or the like you might as well just not even bother melee fighting.
	if (arch and arch.base_tpower and not throwing) then
		power = power + arch.base_tpower
	end

The original version of DM used a function called DetermineThrowingDistance in CSBwin to determine just about everything related to weapons and strength. It was used in swinging, throwing, and shield blocking. Using this single function for so much was probably some attempt to save space and CPU time on the Atari, but the result was that many weapons with a hefty melee swinging bonus became kind of overpowered when thrown because this was applied to their throw bonus as well. This is why throwing the axe often worked better than swinging it.

I do think I was right in my reasoning for removing this bonus, but it also seems to be essential for some puzzles. However, there seems to be a general consensus around here that ninja skills could be more useful, so I think the best solution is to put the bonus back in, only modified by ninja skill. Skilled ninjas will thus get a nice range and power bonus when throwing strong weapons, but it won't be applied across the board, so someone like Stamm with no ninja skill won't get more use out of throwing his axe than swinging it.

[sucinum]

I always used the axe for this riddle because it was the first item which worked for me (20-something years ago ). I remember having problems with other items back then (like throwing stars), but i never tried missile weapons to be honest. Kinda obvious if you think about it with hindsight (i'm glad i'm not the only one who missed this )...

[Bit]

Heya Paul and Jan - you really didn't know? That's fun! I love it!