Hello there, I hope someone can help me out with my little dilemma.
The character I am playing right now is a persuasive female mage that wears the fine dress (the one that boosts reaction) in towns. Right now I am in Tarant and want to go out to explore the elven ruins and steal the burial stone. When leaving the city I exchanged my dress for a magic robe I found in the sewers. Now after arriving at the ruins, killing the dark elves and leveling up I realized that between Tarant and then my magical aptitude dropped by 10 (from 55 to 45). I tried to reload from Tarant and repeat the whole thing and again I ended up with a lowered magical aptitude. Can anybody explain that to me, because I really don't know what I did to make this happen? I would really appreciate that.

Cheers,

zettel

Yeah, what did you spend points on when leveling up? if it was any of the tech disciplines, or a tech skill like firearms or lockpicking, then it will have lowered your magical aptitude. I'm pretty sure if's the only way to lower your magical aptitude.

Well actually I realized my aptitude had dropped before I spent my point, that's the really weird thing about it. I have also thought that its maybe the robe, but it's a magical (non-cursed as far as I can see) robe, so it also shouldn't do that. :(

That is really, really weird... I do not have any type of answer of how that happened.

If you want (/want to go to the effort of it) I'd be willing to take a look at your save game and try and repeat the thing on my game. If you want PM me and I'll send you my email address.

@SheBear: thank you very much for your kind offer. I can't send you the save game right now, because it's on my desktop pc back home and I'm visiting with relatives right now. But if you'll still be willing to take a look in two weeks time (if I still haven't found out), I'll gladly take you up on it.

yep, no problem, just pm me then and I'll look into it. :) Not that I can promise to fix anything because I'm seriously baffled by how you can have a drop of magical aptitude without doing anything - but whatever.

I had similar problem just now (first time playing this great game). Googled it and looks like the game has different MA and TA areas where you take some penalty if you are the opposite type. This happens even within cities like Tarant. At least I can clearly see one tile to the north I have 40 MA, tile to the south I have 30.

Cheers !

In certain towns and areas you get magic or tech aptitude bonus. The same goes with your melle or gun accurancy.

Wait... woah. What? I have literally never noticed this in my 11 years playing this game.

wdubb, I assume in Tarant the Magic Quarter gives you a MA bonus and the factory district gives you a TA bonus?

gangangagiunga, where does the melee or firearms accuracy bonus occur?

Its harder to hit than its dark, like in a cave and easier on daylight in open areas. You can have light in one hand instead of shield.

To expand on this, I've noticed this during the crystal ball quest in Tarant.
I brought back the crystal ball to the quest giver and she died.
So I took the crystal ball from her inventory and was on the way back to Madam Toussaude's.

Almost got to her place, then I was like maybe this crystal ball is hexed or something, took a look at my character sheet and my MA went down.

I then repeated it without the ball, same thing- the MA dropped once I got to part of that area. I googled it and ironically enough someone else noticed this during the SAME quest, LOL.

Then I experimented and could pinpoint the area in which the MA goes down.

And yeah, the lighting thing makes sense. Virgil usually equips a lantern (if he has one in his inventory, of course) automatically in his other hand and illimunates the caves/dark dungeons

Oh yeah, I knew about that. I was thinking that there was something that actually changed the stats on the sheet (as it seems that that is the OP's problem).

Wow, I hadn't noticed this at all, but it is probably the most unique feature I have seen in a game. Very interesting