There is a cap on the Eeofol wishing well

[Xfing]

I found this out the hard way yesterday when beefing up my party to extreme levels using the well. I 60'd all the major skills for 3 of my chars, but found much to my chagrin that nothing remained for my Archmage - the well simply stopped reacting to both clicks and the "trigger" button, it simply lost any interactivity. I must have gotten to like 35 million gold and no less than 10000 skill points for 3 of my chars. I wonder if the cap was stealthily added by Grayface, or was it in the game since day one? Kinda weird that the cap was this high anyway - would have made more sense to make it a bit lower, so that the well can be more of a hard-earned and deserved, fair reward and less of an immersion-breaking exploit.

Observations made in the process and some player tips:

- It's possible to make your Paladin an optimized unbuffed combatant despite his +15 recovery time from Plate with enough investment into Mace and Armsmaster - the recovery rate on Maces can drop to 30 without Haste with enough points, and having 30% or more chance to paralyze can be a big deal. The pure damage will still be below Thieves, Monks, 2h Spear-wielding Archers and 2h Axe-wielding Rangers, though. With Heroism from maxed-out Spirit magic, though, the Paladin can surpass the unbuffed Archer and almost equal the unbuffed Thief (with a sword and a dagger) in raw damage output - counting this because buffing themselves is the Paladins' intrinsic ability, which Thieves and Archers lack. The Ranger can also cast Heroism, however, and due to 2h axes doing more damage than maces, he can stay ahead of the Paladin in damage for the duration of the spell with matching Spirit Magic investment.

- A fully-promoted Thief will still have more hit points than a fully-promoted Paladin at the same level, endurance level and Body Building level, even though the Thief will be an Expert, and the Paladin will be a Master in the skill. With both at level 58, with 100 Endurance and maxed-out Bodybuilding, my Thief has 1547 hp and my Paladin has 1534. Of course if you invest more points in the Paladin's Bodybuilding than you do on the Thief, they can have more hp than the former, but the Thief is slightly to considerably superior to the Paladin in this regard with equal investment - good info for sticklers who want their chars to be sorted descending by their HP.

- It is possible to get a Plate-wearing Paladin's recovery rate on Blasters to the minimum of 5 post-Haste, but you need to break 200 speed on them to do it. The analogous is possible with Chain-wearing Clerics, needing a bit less Speed, but this only works for Blasters - they get no Armsmaster in MM7 at all, so Chain will always affect their already crappy melee recovery anyway. If blasters aren't going to permanently replace maces for your Clerics, Leather might be the better option to take.

- A sword in the right and a Dagger in the left is a better option for a Thief than just dual daggers. Due to weird game mechanics, with this configuration the game calculates everything correctly - so you'll get a flat bonus to your damage from Armsmaster, plus another bonus from Grandmaster Dagger. Once your Armsmaster + Speed get your recovery with swords down to 30, it simply creates more damage than another dagger held in your right hand, as that would only add 2d2+6 tops (Mage Dagger). With swords like Puck you can add 3d3+14 instead. On the other hand, if it's the dagger in your right and the sword in your left, you're going to end up with a broken formula with total damage less than just with the dagger on its own. The game only correctly calculates left hand sword damage if your right-hand weapon is also a sword - in any other case it gets lost, which is a problem carried over to MM8 (which I've made a thread about). With 60 in GM Dagger and 60 in M Armsmaster the damage looks like:
2 Mage Daggers: 146-150
R Puck L Mage Dagger: 155-163
R Mage Dagger L Puck: 95-103
Puck on its own (regardless of hand): 87-93
Mage Dagger on its own (regardless of hand): 138-140
It seems to completely omit the damage bonus from the Dagger skill if the dagger is in the right hand, paired with another weapon which is not a dagger (so yeah, pretty much a sword ).

- This one is pretty much common knowledge, but you don't need to train any school of magic above level 40, as you'll get 20 bonus from "of (insert school) Magic" items (almost if not exclusively jewellery). Thing is, the skill caps at 60 even if your base skill is higher than 40, so there's no need for you to waste any more points, if you ever get to 40 in a school without the well exploit.

- Master Leather and Master Shield can really make a huge difference in Armor Class with enough investment. Knights get both in this game, while in MM8 Vampires do.

That's it - when I feel like it, I'll check another time if the well cap is still in place, or if my experience was just a freak occurrence in the code or something.

[Pitsu]

I wonder if the cap was stealthily added by Grayface, or was it in the game since day one? Kinda weird that the cap was this high anyway - would have made more sense to make it a bit lower, so that the well can be more of a hard-earned and deserved, fair reward and less of an immersion-breaking exploit.

Maybe it is a variable limit. for example the game tracks how many times the well has been used and has a 8-bit integer to store the variable. Once the variable reaches 255, the script returns error because the variable would require more bits than allowed. Just a guess, I have no idea about how MM games are coded. Edit: the point is that it may not be a game design issue, but a side effect (not really a bug) of coding.

[Xfing]

I used to abuse the well in the past too, but never to the point where it gave out on me, so I've found out only recently. But yeah, funny that.

[Macros the Black]

Interesting to know there's a cap on the well, though I agree I would prefer if the cap was smaller.

- A fully-promoted Thief will still have more hit points than a fully-promoted Paladin at the same level, endurance level and Body Building level, even though the Thief will be an Expert, and the Paladin will be a Master in the skill. With both at level 58, with 100 Endurance and maxed-out Bodybuilding, my Thief has 1547 hp and my Paladin has 1534. Of course if you invest more points in the Paladin's Bodybuilding than you do on the Thief, they can have more hp than the former, but the Thief is slightly to considerably superior to the Paladin in this regard with equal investment - good info for sticklers who want their chars to be sorted descending by their HP.

At their last promotions, the Paladin should get 2 more hit points for every level of Body Building skill than the Thief. It's 2*8*skill for the Thief and 3*6*skill for the Paladin.

The reason the Thief still has more hit points is that he gains more from leveling and from his endurance statistic. I'm actually surprised it's this close in your example. In normal gameplay, I would have expected the Thief to have a noticebly bigger hp pool than the Paladin. Of course, the Paladin gets plate mastery so he's still more tanky.

Chain will always affect their already crappy melee recovery anyway. If blasters aren't going to permanently replace maces for your Clerics, Leather might be the better option to take.

I would still usually pick Chain because he's the main healer, but it's nice to have a choice.

- A sword in the right and a Dagger in the left is a better option for a Thief than just dual daggers. <snip>

It would be less confusing if you said "main hand" and "off hand". The game has the characters facing us, meaning their right is our left and vice versa. Also, are you using Grayface's patch or not?

This one is pretty much common knowledge, but you don't need to train any school of magic above level 40, as you'll get 20 bonus from "of (insert school) Magic" items (almost if not exclusively jewellery). Thing is, the skill caps at 60 even if your base skill is higher than 40, so there's no need for you to waste any more points, if you ever get to 40 in a school without the well exploit.

And given that it stacks with artifacts (multiplicatively, I think; so +125% with both), you would only need to be level 27.