Fever Fetish, Blood Stone, and monster magnets

[lch]

While looking at the effect for the Chalice, I stumbled over a couple of effects for the other items, too. The most intriguing, for me, was how the non-Clam items work, Fever Fetish and Blood Stone. The mechanics for them are:

The Blood Stone plain and simple generates one earth gem, as long as as the commander doesn't already carry the maximum of 30 gems in total. I do remember that a Blood Stone seems to have generated more than one earth gem for me on occasion, or failed to generate one when it should. Those seem to have been freak accidents during hosting () but the mechanic is simple, one gem.

The Fever Fetish only generates gems if it is being worn by a diseased unit. No disease, no gems. To generate gems, the following must apply:

• 10% chance for units with full HP (i.e. equipped the fetish for the first time)
• 25% chance for units with one HP less
• 50% chance for units with two HP less
• 100% chance for units with three or more HP less

Thus, one must have had the fetish equipped for four hostings to guarantee getting something out of it. Then there's a little bit of a convoluted mess of code. The gist of it: The Fever Fetish generates one fire gem, if the unit didn't already have 30 gems equipped.

Notes for modders / "code divers":

• The Blood Stone item has the value 3 for the Blood Stone's effect, 3 indicates Earth. Other values would generate exactly one gem for the other paths.
• The Clam of Pearls and other gem-producing items use an effect that is linked to the gem type that they generate (astral gems for the clam) and then specify how many gems they produce by their value. The Blood Stone is too cool to use that simple mechanic. But maybe it wasn't guaranteed to get a gem before or JK wanted to add more checks like in the fever fetish for it, no idea.
• The Fever Fetish's effect always produces fire gems. How many is specified by the Fever Fetish effect value. The item has the value 1.

More fun stuff:

• The Forbidden Light draws horrors to attack the wielder. The chance for an assassination attempt is 15%. Other items that induce assassination attempts have a 10% chance per turn.

Any other non-combat item effects you'd like to know about, ask.

[llamabeast]

Interesting, thanks lch.

[Endoperez]

I'm interested in the knight attack part of the Chalice. Is it just description, or a broken mechanic?

[vfb]

If you put the Fever Fetish on an undead unit with a never-healing-wound, does it generate fire gems every month?

Does regen prevent fire gems from appearing, even if HP is 3 less than max?

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by vfb

If you put the Fever Fetish on an undead unit with a never-healing-wound, does it generate fire gems every month?

Does regen prevent fire gems from appearing, even if HP is 3 less than max?

Also - how do HP boosts affect the formula? For instance, if GoH is up, does it look at current HP max adjusted and then -1, -2, -3HP from that, or is it something else?

[Panpiper]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

I'm interested in the knight attack part of the Chalice. Is it just description, or a broken mechanic?

I've had knights attack my chalice holder on a number of occasions. I make sure to keep the chalice on a commander not afraid of itinerant knights. ;-)

[BesucherXia]

Originally Posted by Stavis_L

Also - how do HP boosts affect the formula? For instance, if GoH is up, does it look at current HP max adjusted and then -1, -2, -3HP from that, or is it something else?

I have used Fever Fetish jointly with GoH in one game. All commanders receive gems after 3 turns, thus I assume the game will compare current maximum HP insteading the basic HP to find out how many HPs your commander have lost due to disease. If a commander can never lose HP due to disease, he should have only 10% chance of receiving gems each turn.

[thejeff]

How does GoH curing disease work in to it? Does the disease get cured, the unit get healed and then rediseased or do they never heal since they've got the disease causing item?

I guess it would help since you could trade off the fetish a turn or two early, let the scout heal instead of replacing him.

[BesucherXia]

I think GoH can never heal "permanent affliction" like this. In my game they never recovered HP given the Fetish was still equipped. You still have to release the item from time to time, just less often.

[lch]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

I'm interested in the knight attack part of the Chalice. Is it just description, or a broken mechanic?

The Chalice does not have an assassination effect to it like The Tartarian Chains (for Ashen Angels) and The Gift of Kurgi (for Lesser Horrors) have, nor any other effect besides the province heal and regeneration +10%. It might be that the mechanic is different, that there's a random event that looks if the Chalice is in the province and in that case has Knights attack it, I didn't check that. Dunno really if the random event phase can generate province-wide attacks like barbarian hordes while the magic items phase only assassination attempts, that might be. And it sounds definitely easier to make the knight attack check when the chalice pops up during the magic items phase than with the event. So I'd say that this mechanic was probably scrapped or fell under the table, but I can't say for sure. It might be that there are so many random events now, and those are limited to four per nation, that the chance for a knight attack has become infinitesimally small.

Originally Posted by Panpiper

I've had knights attack my chalice holder on a number of occasions. I make sure to keep the chalice on a commander not afraid of itinerant knights. ;-)

Well, I remember this from Dom2 days, too, but I haven't heard of a single time that it happened in Dom3. Are you sure it was with Dom3?

Originally Posted by vfb

If you put the Fever Fetish on an undead unit with a never-healing-wound, does it generate fire gems every month?

Originally Posted by Stavis_L

Also - how do HP boosts affect the formula? For instance, if GoH is up, does it look at current HP max adjusted and then -1, -2, -3HP from that, or is it something else?

The game queries the maxhp of the unit. This includes all the usual boni like prophet/god in dominion, neverhealing wound, gift of health, spring/summer/fall/winter power, eater of the dead mechanic and so on. Undead/lifeless get the affliction but don't lose HP from it, AFAIK.

Originally Posted by vfb

Does regen prevent fire gems from appearing, even if HP is 3 less than max?

If the unit regenerates during a battle somehow, then that's its new HP, so that's the value that will be used for the check. Magic item effects get active after Assassinations and Movement, and before Patrol.

Originally Posted by thejeff

How does GoH curing disease work in to it? Does the disease get cured, the unit get healed and then rediseased or do they never heal since they've got the disease causing item?

Without looking, I'd say that the affliction stays as long as the item is equipped. Enchantments are coming directly before Magic item effects in hosting, so it might be possible that the GoH or The Chalice heals the disease from a unit with a Fever Fetish. The question is if the affliction that the Fever Fetish and similar items cause are being applied right away or during the Magic item effects phase, thus "resetting" the fetish. Notice, there won't be a heal phase in-between the GoH or Chalice and Fever Fetish. Still I'd go with "always diseased". But actually, if there was is a permanent affliction, I'm pretty sure that "healing" it uses up the affliction removal chance.