The pillar of skulls

I have been wondering if it was possible to pull out of the pillar once you put him in. So I went and setup up multiple games and wasted lots of my time trying different things, but as of yet I have had no succes. So now i pose the question to anyone who still looks at these torment boards, and ask is it possible?

Hmm, i have a character at level 45 fighter 16 mage 13 theif.... I can't pull him out.... This annoys me..

Ok well I am basically giving up on trying to pull him out. So i was wondering if you could please tell me if anything changes? And if morte is different or knows more after being pulled out. Thanks I appreciate it.

> Hmm, i have a character at level 45 fighter 16 mage 13 theif.... I can't

> pull him out.... This annoys me..

Level 45!? Cheater!

Calm down myself, now I really was mage level 11 when I aproached Pillar. And tried to trade Morte. And failed. So I got back to kill some Abishai for XP. Reached level 12 and sudenly... I succeded!

Maybe you are supposed to do something else before, but I don't know what could that be.

Anyway, if you tell you'll give Morte and if you are able to pull him out later, Morte will ask you to promise to get him out! If he starts crying you aren't so powerful as you were once that means don't throw 'im there!

If I were you, I'd lie about Fhjull (use friends spell!).

And when you pull annoying bastard back, he remains as nothing have happened. Nothing improves. Too bad.

Just don't give Modron Cube, willya?

Thanks, and no i didnt cheat, I just spent too much time kill abaishi's and dieing while leaving the rest ofmy party in the pillar screen basically die 3 times and get a level.... i ended up with over 500 in life... 1 point for every re-dne level and all that fighter con bonus, wonderful really... I am immortal right? why not use it to my advantage?? anyways I think i missed something or messed something up because i cant pull him out, sigh oh well. Not to mention with my conseqeunt ability score conversation with vhailor and such is that much better. But no I did not cheat.

You need to be double specialized in your class of choice (meaning having reached level 7 and level 12 with the same class first). Morte will indeed mention that you are powerful enough to rescue him or not and if you haven't talked to Grace about him (and learned he has a Baatorian smell), he will mention it himself now (that he thinks he has betrayed you in the past, that he feels guilty about it), thus improving him.

Since you got fighter level 45 and can't get Morte back I started wandering what's going on there. This took me awhile, yet I found some clues (and butchered dlgfiles.bif file).

Nameless One gets two specialization bonuses when reaches level 7 and level 12 for the first time. Gaining BOTH bonuses in the SAME CLASS makes him Specialist in that class. Each bonus works only first time you get on pointed levels, so if you first get fighter bonus on level 7, you can't get mage bonus later again on level 7. But you actually can get first mage bonus if you reach level 12 as a mage, before reaching it as a fighter. In this case you got first fighter bonus and first mage bonus so you lost chance to get second fighter bonus. Whatever, DON'T you ever do this because you will never become so called Class Specialist.

The point is that Specialist title in active class of Nameless One is needed to pull Morte outta Pillar!

There's one more catch in story about specialization: if you level up from level lower than 7 to level 12 or higher in one stroke, you get only first bonus, but not the second! And you are not Specialist!

Let's say you started the game, played as a fighter all the time but remained on level 3 until you got enough XP to reach level 15. You pressed Level Up button and what happened? You got only first bonus but second one is lost.

What's this? Is it a bug or cheater's buster?

Why you can't specialize in two classes at the same time?

Answer: there's only one global variable to keep the value that shows it!

However, you still CAN cheat for Specialist title.

This concerns ONLY those who reached level 12 but haven't got both bonuses for the same class and are not ashamed to cheat.

Get your favorite HEX editor and open TORMENT.GAM file. Find ASCII 'Specialist' and hack it's value (31 bytes after 't'). You'll see what's your first bonus here:

01 - Fighter

02 - Thief

03 - Mage

This value you'll change into desired Specialization:

04 - Fighter

05 - Thief

06 - Mage

It should look something like this for fighter (xx means values of no importance to us):

Before edit: 20 53 70 65 63 69 61 6C 69 73 74 20 20 xx xx xx

S p e c i a l i s t

xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx

xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx 01 xx xx xx xx xx xx

After edit: 20 53 70 65 63 69 61 6C 69 73 74 20 20 xx xx xx

S p e c i a l i s t

xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx

xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx 04 xx xx xx xx xx xx

There are few more facts about specialization, leave a question if you really want me to spoil more.

Well shit my friend, sounds like you put a lot of effort into that... I justmight try that so that I can experiment with possible stroy line tangents having once pulled morte free of the pillar.... and basically i got level 7 as fighter then level 12 as mage and woe to my ignorance on the speacialist thing.

Just a thingie more - you can basically put values 7, 8 and 9 but the game doesn't test them anywhere!?

Find 'Specialist' ASCII ocurences in dialog.tlk file. It seems Black Isle planned to specialize Nameless One even more (three times) - why did they put the thing away beats me.

Uhhhh.......right. Did anyone ever consider that you could do it if you just had Strength to 19 or higher and Dexterity to 17 or higher? I did it at lvl 10 with those stats as a fighter.

> Uhhhh.......right. Did anyone ever consider that you could do it if you

> just had Strength to 19 or higher and Dexterity to 17 or higher? I did it

> at lvl 10 with those stats as a fighter.

I had similar stats but was a mage at that piont and i couldnt do it?

I just lied to the pillar instead of putting mort through his personal hell again.

Arnt i sensitive.

Before you all forget I have a lvl 46 fighter/18 mage/13 thief.... i had all the stats i needed.... And in the end I am most inclined to believe it has to do with speacialization and not attributes

Hello @ all,

since it's the only hint in the whole net for Specilisation & Hex editoring I am goin to resurrect it...

I am lvl 13 (mage) and did a mistake by going first lvl 7 warrior and after that lvl 12 (meanwhile lvl 13) as mage.

I already found the entry in my savegame (quicksave):

53 50 45 43 49 41 4C 49 53 54 00 00 00 00 00 00       SPECIALIST

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

If I change the 09 to 06 for double specified mage nothing changes - I still have +1 Str and +1 Int and my prophecy didnt change...

Do u have any clue why?

Best regards & thanks fo help in advance.