GameBanshee Forums

Not sure about possible spoilers, but becareful reading this, and be warned, I have posted this info before, but buried in other posts and I realized this is too important to leave without its own topic...

Level drain can destroy loot....this is not 100% confirmed, since I stopped experimenting after a while, but in one game, for my kensai sorc assassin beholder mutated char, I cluaded in black razor at beginning of game, and upgraded gram the sword of grief. I whilwinded a troll in the druid grove and other creatures with both, blackrazor is such a killer weapon, and got the shatter animation. like when you hit a creature with a spell triggered triple cone of cold. I suspect whne you level drain acreatuer and kill it that way, you get the shatter animation, and I suspect the shatter effect. this will destroy all loot except gold!!!!now, this isnormally not a major worry, since the majority of creatuers like werewlves, and vampires dont have major magical artifacts, but what about spell scrolls, eh???

I get most of my good spells before underdark via random encounters. this is officaially a major concern. beware of level drain!!! if you kill somethin via level drain you could lose loot....for example, think about using vampires via dark rooks marvelous

"can you say marvelous? simply maaavelous...."

summon vampire setup...In fact, I have configured my current party to set up for picking up viccy just before underdark...have minsc talk to djinn...giggle...

but if you summon vampires for dragon whomping, you could lose holy avenger!!! or more likely staff of ram in watchers keep!!! level drain is risky, usually not a problem, since only for godly creatures will I go thru the hassle of getting my vampires ready, and most of the vampires will be mashed before the klilling blow lands, and its pretty hard to kill via level drain, since gram and vampires do meelee and drain attacks, only the last few hit points being drained causes this to happen, but be warned, level drain attacks are not totally safe. now I like level drain, you know, do onto vampires what they do to me, but watch out!!!.

Are you sure of this?
Because when vampires kill the thieves in the streets, the corpses still have a lot of stuff - scrolls anything.

-Sylvanerian

those are scripted, just clua in gram the sword of griefand whack some baddies...

lets face it, we take care of our npcs and only if something really bad happens do we allow a npc to be level drain to death...

also, like I said, vampires do combination of meelee and level drain, so if the physical attack kills, you keep loot, but a intense level drain attack, with gram or black razoer will sometimes, SOMETIMES shatter a enemy...

Maybe you're right. In my first time through the game I recall a fight with vampires in the Bridge District resulting in Nalia's death. Of course, I went to the temple and resurrect her afterwards, but when she came to life again, she didn't have her family ring anylonger.

Cheers

Indeed this does happen.

This is caused by LD dropping the max/current hp to a low enough level that the next hit drops the hp of the creature to a negative greater than 9 ( I think its -9 and below but I could be off a small bit, its something near that range). Once a creature has such a - hp, the game engine changes his state to STATE_EXPLODING_DEATH which as you have seen, destroys items, removes the cre, and plays a bam of parts going everywhere where the creature was.