What's with boots of speed?

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Here's two things which i've found annoying about Bg2......


The boots of speed: Are these just the cheepest items around or what? Maybe i'm wrong(and please correct me if i am) but aren't they just supposed to make me walk faster? It seems they not only do that, but also make it so your permantly hasted? That's ridiculous, the first time i played through i had all my fighters wearing them and they were insanely good, they would mow down everything that got in their way. I personally found this insulting, it means any character half as tough as me could just strap these things on kick arse, because not only to they make you walk faster, you also do a trmemdous amount of attacks (twice as many?). All this for the meager price of around 700gp from what i remember, with absolutely no drawbacks. That sucks.

And also......

Being evil: Wasn't BG2 made so you can choose to be good or evil? Sure on the outside it appears you can, but not nearly as much as you should. Pretty much all the quests in the game are made to destroy evil and be the hero of the day. sure the odd quest in the came let's you chooose for an evil outcome, but shouldn't being the Lord of murder's son allow you to be really evil? Should you not be able to work in league with evil characters, thus instead of killing them you could take bribes from them and taking and a share of the profits? The main thing wrong with games good\evil situation is reputation points system. It makes little sense considering that if you want to be truly evil the only way to go is get your reputation down to it's lowest, from what i've heard this makes everyone (accept some key charcters) become immediatly hostile to you. Yeah right. Like some meager peasant would instantly attack some incrediably tough and evil charcters on the street, run and hide would be a better idea. It's odvious this game was designed to be for good samaratins, which doesn't bother me, but it shouldn't make out to give the option for anything but that.

That's all, there's two completely unrelated topics to get you thinking, please correct me if i'm wrong, i don't intend to slander the game because i absolutely love it. I'm playing through it for the 4th time, which means i've spent alot of time in front of this computer, i just want to know if other people agree with me.

 

the extra attack(s) is an animation flaw in the game. All the "extra" attacks you actually see, aren't attacks at all. And you only do walk faster as you should, the haste symbol is just to show you walk faster

[This message has been edited by Lokken (edited January 06, 2002).]

 

Ahhh..... makes sense i guess, the haste symbol did have me fooled (and the animation), it's weird though, i'm quite sure i remember in BG1 there wasn't the extra animation or haste symbol when wearing the boots of speed, i wonder why they chaged it.

 

Wow, I never wore the boots of speed anyway, since I like to keep my party together, but now I have all the more reason!

 

I haven't found boots of speed.
Some claim that there is a pair of these boots in planar spehre and spellhold... I haven't found them. How do I get back to spellhold?

 

Back to spellhold? No way.

 

***Minor Spoilers***

From what i remember there are two pairs in bg2, and then a few more in tob. The boots of speed in spell hold are acutually in the dungeon\maze under spellhold, theres this crazy machhine which you feed coins into, and by putting a certain amount of coins in you get the boots (you'll know what i'm talking bout if you've been there).

 

**Spoiler**


AFAIK, there are 3 pairs in SoA.

1) Off a corpse of a bounty hunter in the Planar Prison (Different place to the Planar Sphere)

2) Off the corpse of Aran Linvail

3) From the token machine in spellhold.

 

Tal, stop with that ToB spoilers

The boots of speed are great for a thief.... You can very fast explore a big area... while hidden in shadows. You can also backstab someone and then run away. You are faster then your enemies so you will be out of sight again soon and hide in shadows again.

It seems that the boots also make you get a faster attack, wich is a bug.

 

There are certain problems with original Boots of Speed.
What Tal said is true, the icon only shows these Boots are equipped and you don’t get attack bonus. In fact, boots are defined as to provide permanent Haste spell but with removing bonus attack. But there is additional effect from Haste spell, the certain initiative bonus.

The first problem occurs if you cast another Haste or Improved Haste on the NPC who has Boots of Speed equipped. It will also happen if that NPC uses Oil of Speed. The Boots will remove bonus attacks from those new effects as the spells were never casted!
Another problem comes with initiative bonus. The attack bonus is removed and so the NPC sometimes “skips” the whole round before actually attacks (effect numbers in item file match in negative manner). Not only that, such NPC can’t do the backstab. The round that is “skipped” turns the NPC visible and so the backstab actually can’t be performed in next round.
There were also some reports on strange effects when these boots are combined with Ring of Free Action or regeneration items, but I really can’t confirm it.

Anyway, there are several possible solutions to these glitches. If you analyze Boots of Lightning Speed you may spot that those don’t use Haste spell in definition but only the change of movement rate. The same goes for another pair of Boots of Speed – created especially for Drizzt.
So, to fix original Boots of Speed you should replace the Haste spell from boots definition and place the change of the movement rate.
The only question that remains is the exact amount of the movement rate increase. From Boots of Speed description you can’t see if it is some fixed number or it is a certain percent of original movement rate.
I’ll just write down all possible solutions and you just apply the one you take the most correct.

First you need a hex editor. Another thing you need is an utility to extract Boots of Speed as a single item file. For this I suggest you nice utility called Infinity Engine Explorer. The code for Boots of Speed is BOOT01 (others mentioned in this text are BOOT10 and BOOTDRIZ). With rightclick on BOOT01 in Items section of Infinity Explorer you can save it as a single file.
With hex editor open the file you got. At address 0070 you’ll see this set of values:
02 00 10 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 02 02
I’ll skip explanation of all bytes in item files, for example it is irrelevant for this post that first 02 sets how many effects are included in this item (haste and icon addition on the picture).
Value 10 stands for Haste effect. Instead of that, you should place 7E which is code for effect of movement rate change. Next value is 01 – leave it as it is because it means “apply the effect on wearer/caster”. Amount value must be placed from second byte after the 01. In original file it is 00. In our file it will be a fixed number to add, fixed number to set or percent of rate increase. Next value is again 02. This value you’ll leave as 02 if the change is in percents, but if it’s setting a fixed movement rate this value must be set on 01. If we want to add a fixed number to original movement rate this value should be set to 00. Last, we have to change the last 02 in the line to 00.

First solution would be if we edit the item to add a fixed value to original movement rate of an NPC:
02 00 7E 00 01 00 05 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00
In this example original movement rate is increased by 5. We can also decrease the movement rate with this, for example we can put instead of 05 the value FB FF FF FF which is in fact –5 so the NPC who had movement rate of 7 would have the rate 2 after this decrease.

For setting the speed to fixed rate we’ll have on 0070 (example from Drizzt’s boots):
02 00 7E 00 01 00 09 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 02 00
The 09 value determines the fixed movement rate to be set instead of original one. This value may be changed according to your taste, so experiment but try not to be megalomaniac (Boots of Lightning Speed have the value 1E which is decimal 30).

Finally, for percent rate increase we’ll have on 0070 (it will be double in this example):
02 00 7E 00 01 00 C8 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 02 00
C8 is decimal 200 and it means to double the movement rate (RATEx200/100). If we placed value 64 (decimal 100) there, that would mean to set the rate on 100%, which actually won’t affect the original movement rate of the NPC. Lower values would decrease movement rate, for example 32 (decimal 50) would penalize movement rate on half of original (50%). To summarize, value you put sets the NPC’s movement rate to:
( ORIGINAL_RATE x YOUR_VALUE )/100


Whatever you choose to do, just copy the file BOOT01.ITM you edited in override folder and the Boots will automatically be fixed when you reload the game.

However, if you never use backstabbing, if you never use Haste spells or Oils of Speed, there is no reason to fix this item. Are you sure you play without those?
Remember, the SoA patch does not fix these Boots.

 

Memorize 2 haste spells, problem solved. If they only increased movement rate like they did in BG1 and nothing else, I'd keep 'em in the inventory for scouting, but with all the added problems......