Hello old-school RPGers. Thanks to GOG I'm playing POR again for the first time since it released for my Apple ][e. Anyway, I ran into some Ghouls and Wights and some party members were hit and paralyzed temporarily. I thought nothing of it until I realized one of my guys lost a ton of experience/HP and went down a level. How do I get his experience back up? I've read there are spells, but where do I go to get them cast, or better yet, where can I get scrolls so I can scribe it? Hopefully this is possible since I've overwritten my latest backups (before level drain and experience loss). As far as where I am in POR, I've cleared the Slums, Sokol Keep, Kuto's Well, and just experienced the auction at Podol Plaza.

Thanks in advance!

P.S. GOG should have the individual titles of this series in their 'search' list. I looked for "Pool of Radiance" around here many months ago and 'search' came up with nothing.

This is what the cleric spell Restoration is for. If I recall correctly, you're given a few of these when the clerk commissions the job to clear the graveyard, and then you find even more while in the graveyard itself.

Thanks for the prompt reassurance, codefenix. Looks like I got a couple more blocks to neutralize.

The only way to get XP back is with clerical scroll of RESTORATION. This will only take you up the minimum XP required for the new level though, and hitpoints are re-rolled on level-up so you could end up with fewer (or more) hp than you had at that level previously. This spell is too high level for your cleric to learn, but you can cast it from the scroll.

You can get RESTORATION scrolls by accepting the Valhingen Graveyard task from the Phlan Council (you only have to accept the task, you don't have to complete it yet). You can also find a RESTORATION scroll in Mendor's Library (just south of Kuto's Well).

I don't recall exactly when the Council will give you the Valhingen Graveyard task, but I think it's roughly around the time where you are now. You could check at the Phlan City Hall, and if it's not there then go to Mendor's Library instead.

Thank you 01kipper. Yes, thank you for the reminder about the XP cap; Restore will not give back all XP points! Didn't know about the HP re-roll, so thanks for that tip, and for mentioning where I can get the spell/scrolls.

With the use of save/reload, this can, of course, be exploited to get arbitrarily large amounts of HP.

However, be aware that the Gold Box games use only a single byte to store your HP, and if your HP gets above 255, it will overflow and decrease by 256. Be careful of that if you're going to take advantage of this.

Unlimited Adventures has a related bug: If you play on a harder difficulty, enemies that normally have over 170 HP will have their HP overflow and become small, so enemies that normally don't die easily could be killed quickly on harder difficulty.

(Is it possible for level draining to cause your HP to underflow, if a level drain would take your max HP below 0? What happens in that particular case?)

a hex'ing we will go, a hexing we will go, hi ho the merry oh, a hexing we will go!

A little gentle massaging of the characters data file with a hex editor could be your salvation, the experience bytes in your SAV file are at line 0A byte C - line 0A byte F (hex) 172 - 175 (Decimal) 4 (bytes). Just copy the bytes from one of your toons that didn't get drained (same spot on his/her .SAV file) onto yours.

At the risk of invading Brutus's privacy, here are his XP Bytes: 07720000 (hexadecimal format).

Think of this as 07 72 00 00 or (x07 ) (2^0) + (x72) (2^8) + (x00) (2^16) + (x00) (2^24) = Decimal 29191.

The little x in front of a number means it is in base16, or hexadecimal format.

Which means he has x7207 XP, punch in base16 7207 into your calc, and hit the decimal button and it shall return 29191, which is Brutus's current XP. Note the switch in significant digit placement from the .SAV file to what you enter in the calculator, in the file the least significant digits go to the left, on the calculator they go to the right.

His XP is still low enough to be recorded on 2 hex bytes, so that makes things a little simpler, but if it were not, the process is the same for the higher bytes.

#... Description of character save file formats. List of all effects and items in the games.[url=]http://gbc.zorbus.net/formats.zip[/url]

something I have noticed here in regards to hit point loss and return. In "real D&D" you would record each hit die individually and when a restoration spell was cast you would regain the specific hit die lost, you would NOT reroll your hit die when being restored by spell. The game works similarly except it simply averages your hit point score and removes the appropriate total based on that average. When you then get a restoration spell you get those hit points returned to what they were before draining, the game does not roll a new hit die for you {at least it never has for me in many draining and restorations}. The only way to get a new roll for a previously earned level is to earn the level naturally and then roll your hit die again when training {which is how the table top version of the game also works}