Item description error: Ale Barrel
 

Item: Ale Barrel
Type: Artifact (Level 2)
Race: Dwarves

The desription says:
A big belly beer keg.
+1 Morale to all dwarves in the army

Sniper set
-3 Attack, +20% probability of Critical Hit by from arrows
- Ale Barrel
- Telescopic Sight

The issue: it's either by arrows (in which case it grants a 20% bonus to the probability of critical hitting with arrows) or it is from arrows (in which case it grants a penalty where you have a 20% larger chance of getting a critical hit from arrows incoming to you).

Side question: is the bonus/penalty for all projectiles (ie cannons and alchemists as well) or just arrows as stated in the description?

Grants a bonus to crits. Not all "ranged" units get the bonus though.

I forgot specifically which ones get it, but for the most part, humanoid archers get it.

e.g. hunters, elves, bowmen, goblins.. not sure on catapult.

Only to units that shoot arrows and not to catapults, thorns and the like (not sure about goblin's; they use axes).

The attack penalty is for the hero (-3 attack to all your units)

Thx for the answer guys!

The Sniper Set affects:
Skeleton Archer, Archer, Cannoner, Goblin with the Catapult, Elf, Pathfinder, Goblin.

Pathfinder = Hunter.

The description is a little misleading as it clearly affects more than just "archers." It probably means a subset of projectile users, as indeed the goblin uses axes.

Now those little bastards are gonna be even stronger? Seriously the devs wanted to make a mega-goblin or something that they have made they way too strong?

No. Not any stronger than in Armored Princess with regards to the Ale Barrel. They have been affected by the Sniper Set since Armored Princess.

Goblins was my 4th candidate archer when I was going the 100% critical build.

Hunters
Elves
Bowmen
Goblins
Paladin

I ended up using a Royal Griffin as my "interdictor" unit though. Seems like the strongest archer builds are 3 archers, one interdictor, one paladin.

Heck, Unicornxp beat the game with goblins, goblin shaman, catapults, royal griffins, and paladins.

I wanted to avoid a repeat of the super sniper build though, but the template seems apparent. :)

The description says:
A big belly beer keg.
+1 Morale to all dwarves in the army

big problem: those 2 types of droids don't seem to get +1 morale allthough they are dwarves. Maybe a fix in the upcoming patch?
I've just tried this in Champion of the arena.

I'm guessing that's actually WAD. Droids may be technically considered "dwarven" troops, but when was the last time you saw droids drink ale? :)

WAD?

It is possible that droids, as a side effect, can never be affected by Morale, which overrides the "Dwarven Race Morale boost" factor.

In fact, I think it lead to strange bugs where if you used droids, that army "slot" would be forced into a neutral morale, even after swapping the droids to another army "slot."

Yeah, you don't see them drink ale, and, the AI on those Droids are not enough to simulate happiness yet. :)

WAD = Working As Designed, i.e. not a bug.

Regarding the definition of "dwarves" for the Ale Barrel, does it affect giants, who are considered a "dwarven unit", or just units who are literally dwarves (dwarves, miners, foremen, cannoneers, alchemists, engineers)?

I don't care whether they do or don't drink (anything). They are dwarves and I had a formation of dwarves and I bought that artefact and it didn't worked (as advertised:)). There is no WAD on the contrary, someone forgot to add to the artefact's effects the droids.

And it's not the only item with morale specs that doesn't work properly. These problems appeared with KB:AP' new units and artefacts.

How do you know that? To me, it makes perfect sense that an Ale Barrel wouldn't affect the morale of machines. And we already know that many of the descriptions are either wrong or misleading, so unless a developer can confirm it, I'm not convinced this is a bug. I think the problem is the ambiguous description rather than the effect.

Actually, the problem is you have two rules, so which one takes precedent. I eluded to how Droids have a Neutral Morale but when you swap their army slots around. (every other unit in there ends up neutral, even when they shouldn't). But I digress, one should have asked, why are they Neutral morale to begin with?

Droids and Repair Droids are of the type "Mechanical".

Select your unit, mouse over the Mechanical description.

"
Mechanical creatures have neither mind nor living flesh. Properties include: Always neutral Morale. Immune
to effects of Mind. Immune to Poison and vulnerability to magic. Cannot be healed or resurrected.
"

Always neutral Morale.

But they are dwarves! They cannot be resurrect or healed, but they CAN be repaired (which is not noted here, but stated elsewhere with the repair skills).

So, which one takes precedent? Apparently the Mechanical attribute. It makes logical sense too and is subtly documented. :)

It gets far more be-fuddled with the whole "sniper set" archer stuffs, yet it works on axe throwing goblins. :) Since most of the bow weapons only help archers with bows; a rather small subset of units. :(

My suggestion is to save often. I have dozens of saved games at every key point just to check for this sort of thing. :)

That said, there are a lot of the Human items where it says "+1 morale to all troops" but since it is of the Human race, it really meant to say "+1 morale to all HUMAN troops".

Unfortunately, the droid thing is fairly clear. Droids can never have morale bonuses. Until they all get turned into "I, Robot" style machines. :) Maybe in King's Bounty 2015: The Isaac Asimov Edition. :)

Giants are considered Dwarves, as such, the Ale Barrel affects them!

actually the problem is this is a bug and that's all there is to it. The race is "higher" as importance than their description unless stated otherwise (and it's not stated otherwise anywhere). so to me it's a bug. It makes no sense whatsoever to have some creatures belong to a certain race but to have no bonuses (like the other dwarves do in this case). They should have been neutral in the first place.

I agree that it's confusing, but if the developers intended it to work that way, then by definition it's not a bug. A bad design decision, perhaps, but not a bug.

The item descriptions in general are too vague and don't always indicate clearly enough which units are affected and which aren't.

Nope. That is not a bug. Have you played Heroes III, Mandea? Golems (from the Tower town) were similary mechanical creatures. Now, in HOMMIII if all your troops were the same race, all creatures received a +1 morale bonus, then there were skills, spells and artifacts to increase morale. But no matter what you did... Stone and Steel Golems were always on Neutral morale.

It's logical... how could you motivate a machine to raise its spirits? ;) On the upper hand - this made Golems useable in Undead armies, as they never get negative Morale either. They were also immune to the spells Sorrow and Mirth that affect Morale.

Droids in AP are the same category, it is not a bug they do not increase their morale.

Reminds me of the movie poster in Discworld II - "Attack of the 50-Foot Dwarf". :grin: The way races are defined in KB isn't always quite intuitive...

Well, if I were to think of KB as a "logical" game I wouldn't be playing at all. :D
It doesn't matter that it's logical or not. I don't understand the reason of droids being dwarves. What's in it for them in this case? just an icon ?

Well, someone had to make the Droids. :) Engineers can repair droids and they also provide bonuses to all droids in the team (I think more defense and speed).

If it was like a special race of Droids that came out of no where...

Anyways, there is usually a subclass of race within each race. e.g. Moldok's "bleeding wounds" and adrenaline boost buffs only work on Orcs... not Goblins, even if they are both the Orc race. However, they both benefit from Moldok's +1 to speed and +1 initiative.

That said, look into both the -X% leadership in droids AND -X% leadership in dwarves items for some additional firepower for the droids. Then you will be really glad they were part of the dwarven race. :)

"into "I, Robot" style machines. Maybe in King's Bounty 2015: The Isaac Asimov Edition. "

Good idea! With Dominatrix style Amelie, trying to free the land from Master Hacker BaaL and rescue model ex-police officer Ron Gilbert with his "mechanical robot crushing arm"!!

With CW now the droids have a lot of options to become some very strong units so it's a good idea to use them (it's not that bad that they have no moral since good part of the game you will have trouble getting +2-+3 moral with negative enemy buffs with normal units)

I think some naming bugs like these can be fixed manually if you changed the extension of the (campaign).kfs or loc_ses.kfs files (whichever has the description error) to .zip extension, then extract and edit them in Notepad/Wordpad. Move them back into the .zip after saving. Don't have to hex edit...

Might be helpful to correct typos, grammer, etc. that you find confusing.

They built them, maybe? :)

Plus, it means they are considered one of the Dwarven Race, meaning items that affect Dwarven units like the Axe of Elements have effect on them. :)

set_krit { unit=archer,bowman,cannoner,catapult,elf,elf2,goblin,go blin_shaman,satyr
belligerent=ally
}
pbonus=krit,20,0,0,-100,0,0 (20% Crit bonus to your above allied troops)
pbonus=attack,-3,0,0,-100,0,0 (-3 attack to your above allied troops)
items=ale_barrel,telescopic_sight

So this are the only units who gets the bonuses from the set :

archer = Skeleton Archer
bowman = Bowman
cannoner = Cannoneer
catapult = Catapult
elf = Elf
elf2 = Hunter
goblin = Goblin
goblin_shaman = Goblin Shaman
satyr = Faun

On nice. Satyr/Faun are included...

Wait. ugh no. Don't make me look into the Plant Race as another play through. Not sure how much more I can take... :)