Project 1999 - Game Mechanics: Max Resist Cap should be 255

It has always bothered me that the stat cap is 255 but the resist cap is 500 or something. 255 is not an arbitrary choice: the mediocre programmers at Verant, unaware of stuff like Amdahls Law, were trying to save memory and use byte values to store these things serverside (for a rough savings of 45kb; they were morons). This is the same reason nothing in Kunark has more than 32k HP, which is the amount which fits into a signed 2-byte integer.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...ead.php?t=2180 from 1/15/2001

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Uh...315 WIS isn't possible, I think. A gnome cleric I know by the name of Bishoopugget on Luclin had his WIS stat wrap from 255 back to 1 when he tried to go higher.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...hp/t-2256.html Also from 1/1/2001

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This is enough to get you close to 255 rp. Do not go over 255 you will get mess up. I have tried it both ways and no matter what VI says I resist the RP with 239 rp and get creamed with 255+.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...hp/t-5049.html 3/2002

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At 54 your likely to be taking full or near full damage on every WW dragon AE, so instant cast buffs will be of fairly significant importance... you'll drop fast if you lose symbol + hb + resist buffs. As I am sure you know shoot for 100+mr AND 100+cr or fr simultaneously depending on the type of AE you will be facing. If you can get a bard in your group it would be helpful but DO NOT roll over 255 in any resist when fully buffed (inc bard songs)... Verant keeps saying that the resist rollover bug is fixed and I keep seeing evidence to the contrary. Ideally you should be sitting around 190-210 in the resists you need for a specific encounter when fully buffed. That number is from my personal experiences. Example:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...ad.php?t=10918 11/2001

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That's an old rumour, and I'm pretty sure it's completely false. People just expect to resist *everything* at 300 resists, and when they don't, or when they have a string of bad luck, they start looking for reasons why. Resists may be capped at 255 (or 200), but they don't roll over. I sit at 262 MR fully buffed, and I resist a lot more than I do unbuffed, and a whole lot more than I would at 7 MR, I'm sure.

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As far as i know:
Resists are based on level a lot. A lvl 60 with worst resists will resist much more then a 55 with better resists.
Resists cap at 255. They don't roll over, they just cap.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...ead.php?t=9096 8/2001

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I think EM legs have poison resist too, add on a couple of +5 resist all items, prismatic shield for 10 resist all, BD bracers and earrings, electrum diamond mask, then add talisman of shadoo and DMF and you're above 255 at that point. Disease shouldn't be much different, because like poison it's seen as a giveaway resist on items, though I do agree that disease resist is rarer just because it seems to be the forgotten resist stat.

Now let's also remember that this was the dot-com boom. If you were a great programmer, were you working at Verant Interactive? Hell no. My suspicion is:
1. Originally the programmers stored both stat and resist values in 1-byte unsigned integers with no check
2. Somewhere in late Kunark people started getting enough gear to go over 255; some programmer did the 1-liner hack val = min(255, val) thus at least fixing the wraparound
3. Somewhere after this (before Planes of Power for sure) the typedef was changed. It might have been around the release of Luclin where Verant realized that their itemization guys weren't talking to the game balance guys and decided to handle everything with caps.

It's definitely not an ironclad proof or anything, but if things really were the way I suspect it would be almost impossible to prove one way or another. Nirgon where the hell have you been on this issue?