In another thread I had raised the spectacle of using a character created in ToEE Vanilla that had then been ported over to Co8 Mod 5.7.2. Gaear kindly pointed out that it was best to create a whole new character in 5.8. There was no specific reason given, only in general that it might cause problems. I wanted that character because I had carefully crafted him, a Dwarven Ranger, his feats, skills and other things. One of these was his Favorite Enemy, gnolls. And seeing as there is no method to console such things as feats, and perhaps skills as well, into the game, I went ahead with my plan. Heedless of Gaear's words I went ahead and copied his character *.ToEEPC file to a save directory, installed 5.8, copied him back and proceeded to start a new game. I had thought that everything would be copacetic. Such was not the case. While playing the game my character eventually became 5th level. At the 5th level a ranger gets to choose his 2nd Favorite Enemy. I was choosing my favorite enemy for the first time! In other words though I had copied his ToEEPC character file, his first selected favorite enemy had not come along for the ride. I suspect this information lies buried in the associated character's *.TXT file. This file, a mystery to me, seems to contain such items as his inventory, his skills and feats and likely his "what I have done" information. But seeing as I was starting a new game I would not want the latter information. So, the results are this: Even if you want to copy your character over from an earlier vanilla or modded game, DON'T! You may lose skills and feats and at present there is no method to console them in! At least to my uneducated knowledge.
I am not an expert, but I believe the character file only contains the basic stats of the character at time of creation. The feats and skill points you choose in each level up (and gear) is kept in your save game file (I believe). Therefore, nothing you did in vanilla will carry over. This is why you can have multiple adventures with the same character (in the same mod) without it writing new files for each character/adventure. Note, there is a bug with ranger's and favorite enemy that I have noted in a previous post. If you are leveling up a character, and choose a favorite enemy, and move onto the next scree (skills for example), then decide to go back and adjust something before the favorite enemy screen (such as an attribute point or something if possible), then favorite enemy will reset. If you do not go back into the favorite enemy screen and reselect your enemy, you are able to jump over it (without knowing) and not pick a 2nd enemy and go straight to skill points or finish. I know it sounds complicated, but it messed me up once.
Thanks for the clarification Ranth and you may be correct. Without the ability to accurately examine the makeup of the *.TXT file, we just may never know though. In the short term I am going to start a new character and new game and move on. I have actually already created a new character using die rolls, and in some regards he actually came out far, far better. I actually rolled three 18s, two 11s and a 10 after 21 rolls. Since I chose a dwarf the game engine adjusted the rolls by where I placed them—I ended up with 18 Str, 17 Dex, 19 Con, 10 Int, 11 Wis and 8 Cha. So I took a hit on dexterity and charisma but got a bonus on constitution. I'll keep 'em and work on the lower ones as the game progresses. <g> My rule is not to console enhance the character beginning stats. But after saying that I think I might console the rolls to what I actually rolled before the engine played with them. I'll worry about my conscience later. <g>
