Progress Quest FAQ v1.02 - 28 May 2003 by Peter Karsanow - p.karsanow[AT}sbcglobal{DOT)net Revision History v1.02 - 28 May 2003 - Fixed the line lengths. Sorry! Guessed how long Act II runs. Updated stats for top 10 on Knoram. Added something about Guilds. v1.01 - 30 August 2002 - added in the "missing spells" document that was formerly separate, combined versions of this document developed for 3 different computers into one, formatted for GameFAQs. v1.00 - 18 June 2002 - started SOFTWARE The Progress Quest (PQ) software can be obtained from download sites listed under "Download" at http://progressquest.com This FAQ is written for version 6.1, which has been available since sometime in March 2002. SETUP During game setup, press the Unroll button to go back to a previous set of rolls. There is no apparent effect on stats from choosing different races or classes. If the total of rolls is from 73 to 80, the background for the total is yellow. If the total of the rolls is from 54 down to 46, the background for the total is light grey. At 81 and above, the total background is red. At 45 and less, the background is dark grey. The highest total seen so far is 97 (red). The lowest total seen so far is 33 (dark grey). People posting on the PQ forums only claim lowest of 36 and highest of 95, last time that I checked. Using the Macro Tool from The Progress Quest Companion site (http://www.nailhead.org/pq) helped me expand the limits for lowest and highest. But it slows down under some versions of Windows as it does more rolls, and sometimes doesn't work until you exit both the tool and PQ. STATS The primary stat value that has a known direct effect on the game is STR. You can carry up to 10+STR items in Inventory. This controls how often you return to the shop, therefore how often you can successfully buy "better" equipment. See below for exhaustive analysis of this. Some combination of INT and WIS (possibly CHA, but doubtful - probably just INT) controls how "wide" the range of spells is chosen from. At higher values of INT and WIS, it's possible for characters to learn relatively advanced spells like "Aqueous Humor" and "Magnetic Orb" long before the typical "Hastiness" or "Sadness" appear, and for a lower-level "smart" character to have a lot more spells (although each at lower levels) than a higher-level "dumb" one. Other stats may have some subtle effects yet to be deduced. When one of the first 6 stat values increases (STR through CHA), the HP Max and MP Max do NOT increase based on them; maybe they are recalculated when you gain a level. The increases in the first 6 stat values are apparently proportional to their initial value. HP Max probably depends on the value of CON. MP Max probably depends on the values of INT and/or WIS. ACTS The Prologue is apparently just time-wasting and/or game setup. Act I runs for 6 hours. Act II ?unknown, 10 hours? Act III runs for 15 hours. Act IV runs for 20 hours. Act V runs for 25 hours. Act VI runs for over 29 hours (probably 30). Act VII runs for at least 35 hours. You can expect later Acts to run even longer. It seems Act length is (Act number)*5 hours, but 1 has an extra hour. I don't think anything special happens when an Act ends; it certainly doesn't clean out the Quests list, or even interrupt the current quest. YOUR PROGRESS Your character always starts at Level 1 with nothing but a Sharp Stick. Maximum Encumbrance is 10+STR in cubits; each item in inventory except Gold (always at the top of the list) is 1 cubit each. When a monster is "executed", you gain some experience, some progress on the current quest, and either a regular or magical item in inventory. The latest item received is highlighted in Inventory; it may be an addition to the Qty of an existing item, so it isn't always at the bottom of the list. Each monster type always generates the same regular item in inventory, so these may stack up in large quantities. Some monsters (many types of dragons, Ghost, Invisible Stalker) generate "Magic" items instead (named as of ), which are relatively unique. They can be gained from killing those monsters or completing quests. Any "passing " killed will also gain you a magic item. When a character is tough enough, you may see the execution of multiple monsters of one type at once. Unfortunately, you get only one item from the group, no matter how large it is. THE STORE AND EQUIPMENT When Encumbrance is full, you always immediately head to the store. "Regular" items gained from executing monsters are sold for "Level" gold each. "Magic" items (named as of ) sell for a random amount of Gold, usually large compared to normal items. This appears to be some random integer multiplied by Level; it could depend on CHA. Gold required for a purchase is 20+10*Level+5*Level^2 (a second-order arithmetic sequence with coefficients of 35, 25 and 10). This has been verified for levels 1 to 10. A random category of equipment is "upgraded" for a fixed amount of gold, repeat if you still have at least that much gold left. When you can't buy, it's back out to the Killing Fields. There are 11 categories of equipment listed, but in practice they are considered of 3 types: Weapon, Shield, and 9 various pieces of Armor. There is a hierarchy of descriptions for these, using modifiers for +/-, material condition, and material of construction. It's possible to upgrade the same category more than once in a visit to the shop, but the upgrade may be the exact same thing - although you still pay for it. Sorry! If you use the equipment attribute values from the PQ Companion site, with additional values added in version 6.1, you'll find that the total is always (for new equipment) your current level. It could be lower, depending on how long it's been since buying the item. So buying additional equipment, unless it actually affects the speed of killing monsters or completing quests in PQ, is basically a waste of time and a way to detect cheaters. There's apparently some limiting that keeps really low types of equipment from showing up as you get higher levels, e.g. no "+99 Lace" armor items. Maybe level or some stat values control this. The code that generates item adjectives is smart enough not to duplicate them, e.g. no "Vorpal Vorpal". The "Stick" weapon doesn't seem to take adjectives and modifiers like other weapons; all I've seen is "Sharp Stick" (default starting weapon), Heavy Stick, Serrated Stick and +1 Stick. QUESTS A quest to Exterminate will include killing some number of that type of monster. When a quest reaches 100%, you get a reward upon killing one MORE monster. The reward is (randomly) an increase in one of your stats, a new spell, a piece of equipment, or a magic item. The reward is highlighted on the screen until the Inventory changes. LEVELS When you have gained enough Experience that the Experience bar is full, you gain a level upon killing one MORE monster. Upon gaining a level, stats often rise in value, and a new spell is always learned. It's possible that experience needed for the next level allows carry-over from the last monster, instead of any partial experience towards the next level being lost. SPELLS Spells are listed in order learned, which is not necessarily the same for each character. When a new spell is learned, that can be either an increase in the Level of an existing spell, or a completely new spell added to the bottom of the list. Does it matter what spells are known, or how well? Probably only for bragging or storytelling purposes. The list of spells for Progress Quest at The Progress Companion (http://nailhead.org/pq) is incomplete. Instead of 41, there are at least 44 in Progress Quest 6.1 (the latest download as of June 7, 2002), up from the "2/3/2002 build". Here's the list from TPC (in case it goes away again) with my additions: Acrid Hands Angioplasty Animate Nightstand Animate Tunic Aqueous Humor Astral Miasma -> Big Sister <- apparently new Braingate Clever Fellow Cone of Annoyance -> Cone of Paste <- apparently new Covet Curse Family Curse Name Dropsy Eye of the Troglodyte Good Move Grognor's Big Day Off Gyp Hastiness Holy Batpole Holy Roller Hydrophobia Infinite Confusion Innoculate Invisible Hands Lockjaw Magnetic Orb Mulligan Nestor's Bright Idea -> Nonplus <- apparently new Rabbit Punch Revolting Cloud Roger's Grand Illusion Sadness Seasick Slime Finger Spectral Miasma Spectral Oyster Tonsilectomy Tumor (Benign) Tumor (Malignant) Ursine Armor Vitreous Humor If the random numbers fall your way, your character should know all of these spells by level 38 or so. "Infinite Confusion" seems to be the most difficult one to get; it took one of my characters until level 65 to initially learn it! MULTIPLAYER In Multiplayer mode, the Ctrl-B (Brag) and Ctrl-M (Motto) commands are available. They don't work in Single Player mode. Use Motto to enter a short text message about your character. It will be displayed on the ranking list alongside ranking, name, race, class, level, plot status (Prologue or Act #), best equipment, and best spell. Use Brag to report your latest character information to the ranking list. While your information on the ranking lists will be updated, it seems that the ranking itself is calculated periodically (probably every 15 minutes) and not correct until then. Unfortunately, Multiplayer mode requires some interaction over the Internet that some firewalls don't like. You may be able to use Progress Quest at work only in Single Player mode if you can't connect to the servers. Using Brag appears to put your character to the lowest rank for characters of that level. As other characters slowly send in their Brags, you bubble back up to the top of your level's ranking. Changing Level or Act or Motto is enough to reset you when you Brag, but only has a visible effect when the rankings are updated every 15 minutes or so. Character data is also automatically sent in when you get a level or new Act, possibly also when you complete a quest. So if you want your character to have the best possible standing on the rankings, DON'T BRAG! Just let the game send in data on its own, and live with obsolete information but the best possible ranking on the charts. GUILDS I haven't tried these out, but they're relatively new and only available to players in the "newer" realms of Oobag or Spoltog. On the PQ site, click on "Realms", then "Guilds" under either of those 2 realms that have them. INTERACTION WITH PQ You can resize the horizontal and vertical extent of the Progress Quest window. Below a certain width, you'll only see part of the left column; the center column will disappear first. Above a certain width, you'll just make the center column wider. When minimized, the game goes to the system tray/notification area of Windows, but continues to run. Either a left- or right-click will bring PQ back from the tray. Under some (all?) versions of Windows, you have to close PQ manually (get the saved character message) or the computer will appear to hang instead of shutting down or resetting. You can change the widths of column headings in the left and center columns. But when a new item is added to inventory, it will resize to default values; that happens very often so don't bother. When resized vertically, the "Executing" progress bar is the last thing to go. Next to last are the Encumbrance and Quest progress bars, although these will suddenly disappear to show the Equipment and Plot Development columns until you reveal the beginnings of the Encumbrance and Quests columns again. Means that if you want a severely minimized view of what's going on, you can compress the window vertically until you show only 3 progress bars - although you'll miss out on seeing Experience. If you leave the mouse pointer on most of the progress bars, you get information about the relevant quantities. The Experience, Plot Development, Encumbrance and Quests bars will show a small "tool-tip". The "Executing" bar never shows anything. Annoyingly, the Quests bar tool-tip will still show 100% just after it's reset to 0 when you've just killed the monster that more than finishes the quest. Progress momentarily stops when you left-click and hold the mouse button down on the title bar, because then you can move the window. TIPS - I suspect that nobody has reached the "end" of the game yet, and there may not actually be one, because it can keep increasing numbers for equipment bonus and spell level. But as of 28 May 2003, maximum known character Level was 81 and maximum known Plot Development was Act LXII. These are based on the online rankings for Knoram, which is the "oldest" set of characters. - When a character has high STR, they take longer to "fill up", therefore don't go to the store as often. This saves time, because it means a higher possibility of large quantities (which sell as fast as 1, but for more gold), and more likelihood of having enough gold to actually buy something (sometimes more than once) on a trip. - Analysis: Gold needed per equipment goes up as 10*Level+5*Level^2, but gold gained per item goes up as only Level. Therefore, if you want to get equipment each time you go to the shop, you either have to hope for lots of magic items (average about 12*Level gold each) or lots of increases in STR. - The only character statistic shown to make a significant difference in speed of leveling the character is STR. As seen by this forum post found at GameFAQs: Strength however DOES make a difference, if slight. Take an example of 2 characters, one with 990 strength, one with 1990 strength. Both characters kill 2000 characters. The character with 990 strength had to sell twice in that period, the character with 1990 just once. Each time the 990 strength character sells then incur 1 trip to town, 90 sells of common items (10 of each item), 100 sells of rare items (1 of each), (assuming that this netted ~600K gold and that it's 30K/item) 20 negotiations for better equipment and 1 trip back. So for the 2000 kills the 990 strength character incurs 4 trips (2 to and 2 from town) 380 sells (90 common, 100 rare, all twice) 40 negotiations Note that the cost for an item of equipment is solely determined by your level. At level X all armour and weapons cost the same. For the 1990 strength character, each time he goes to town he incurs 1 trip to town, 90 sells of common items (20 of each item), 200 sells of rare items (1 of each), (assuming that this netted ~1200K gold and that it's 30K/item) 40 negotiations for better equipment and 1 trip back. So for the 2000 kills the 1990 strength character incurs 2 trips 290 sells (90 common, 200 rare) 40 negotiations So the 1990 strength character saves 2 trips and 90 sells in each 2000 kills. Practically this has allowed one of my characters who is high in strength to gain about 1 day on a weak character over the course of a month. --Refed - However, to make the above example more realistic, note that there are about 220 different monsters plus an unknown chance of encountering a passing "another" character (which gives you a magic item). And about 10 of the monster types will give magic items just like the characters. So after STR passes 200 or so, you expect to get at least 1 of each type of monster item (which will stack if you get more than 1), and everything else is magic items that don't stack. This alters the numbers as follows: weak char. medium char. strong char. STR 290 590 890 Total Enc. possible (for one trip to store): 300 600 900 If magic items occur 20% of the time (that's probably high), then the number collected should be 60 120 180 and the regular items are stacked up, say in 200 piles. So the number of total sells will be 260 320 380 Let's assume you can buy after selling 200 regular items or 50 magic items. That means 240 regular 480 regular 720 regular 60 magic 120 magic 180 magic 1.2+1.2=2.4 2.4+2.4=4.8 3.6+3.6=7.2 buys of equipment each trip. As far as I know, buying equipment is actually just a waste of time, as it doesn't appear to alter progress in experience or quests. So, to handle 1800 kills, the three characters will do 6 3 2 round trip(s) 1560 960 760 sells at store 14.4 14.4 14.4 buys of equipment Assuming that STR doesn't change how quickly a character kills monsters, and other stats don't affect speed of trips or sells, this means that high STR translates into quicker advancement only because it avoids time-consuming trips to the store and selling. Refed is right, but how right I can't tell. BUGS! Access Violation at address in module "pq.exe". Read (or write) of address . -or- "Invalid pointer operation." This was seen at seemingly random intervals while running PQ under Windows XP Pro. Program usually appears to keep running OK, but sometimes can crash or corrupt the saved game AND the backup. Eventually all 6 characters that I brought over from Windows ME "died" this way; the one I kept as a "single-player" one under Windows 2000 got up to level 67 and Act XXV before I got tired of the PQ process' hit to my distributed.net keyrate. One of the monster adjectives is showing up on some computers as "f-tal", where the "-" is a small black filled-in rectangle instead of a letter or typical symbol. This is probably the "o and e run together" character. Several occurrences of a blank line appearing above "Gold" in Inventory. If you scroll down so Gold leaves the view, then back up, things are OK again. Something similar in Quests, where a blank line may appear above the top entry in the list, until you scroll down then back up again. The "blank line at the top of the list" has been seen now on the Plot Development list as well, but much rarer. In my case, it occurred for single-player and online characters during Act X. All of the above have been reported to Grumdrig already (well, not ALL of the addresses with access violations), but I don't know if or when they will be fixed. There's some other things that could be fixed concealed in the rest of this document as well. SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE VERSIONS If Grumdrig or somebody with input into the Progress Quest development actually reads this, here are some suggested additions: new Weapon adjective "Tempered" +2? new weapon adjective "Damascened" +2? new weapon adjective "Elven" +3? new weapon adjective "Flaming" +4? new defense adjective "See-Through" -2? new defense adjective "Silvered" +1? new armor material "Denim" 3? new armor material "Cast Iron" 9? new armor material "PVC" 11? new armor material "Adamantium" 27? new armor material "Neutronium" 35? Please fix the annoying horizontal slider bar that sometimes appears under the Plot Development progress bar, and no amount of horizontal resizing will fix. "Act " doesn't seem long enough text to be causing it. Please allow PQ to receive Windows shutdown/reset messages and automatically save the character and close itself. 3D MODE Ah-Ha! Ha! ha ha ha... cough cough cough... heh. Try crossing your eyes. Or wearing those red/blue glasses from your kid's fast-food meal. OK, for those who don't understand, it's a joke perpetuated by the inmates of the PQ Forum. P.S. If you like Progress Quest, you may also enjoy Statbuilder at http://statbuilder.stupididiotstudios.com/ However, it requires a lot more interaction, but allows cheating. Pete Karsanow This document Copyright 2002,2003 Peter Karsanow. http://www.geocities.com/hentaihelper/p_gmhelp.htm