The Astral Light Pen is an item which is found in the Elona+ mod of Elona. It is a reward for part of the Elona+ main quest. It is also dropped by Seraph, Dominion, and Arkhai (at drop rates of 1/100, 1/200 and 1/400, respectively). Ssil the undead witch residing in the Abode of witch, also gives you 2 Astral Light Pens if you have 150 different cards in your deck for doing her quest, Abode of Witch.
Although the item sparkles as if it is precious, the Pen is NOT a precious item, and so can be wished for using "light pen", or "astral light pen", and possibly other variations. It is used to create a copy of nearly any unique NPC, turning it into a pet. No change will occur in the character the pen is used on and the copy does not retain any of the former's ability to speak beyond that of a normal pet. If the character had a portrait, the pet still uses that portrait.
Using the Pen[]
The Pen will only work if the following conditions are met:
- The NPC's level is less than twice your own level.
- The NPC you are trying to recruit is at a <Soul Mate> relationship with you.
- You have (Target NPC's level/10) units of the Magic Ink material, rounded down.
In earlier versions, you had to be at least one level higher than the NPC you were attempting to recruit.
Many NPCs, including most uniques and those with brackets, can be recruited by using the pen. The pen will usually not work on anything that can normally be dominated or monster balled. If the NPC cannot be recruited OR the level requirement is not met, you will get the message, "Nothing happens...".
Different methods to raise relationship levels to allow for recruitment are found here. For hostile NPCs, the only way to tell if their relationship is high enough is to use the pen on them, and see if it works yet. Their relationship status will not be displayed when it increases.
If the level requirement is met, but the character doesn't have a high enough relationship, you will receive the message, "you have been rejected...". To reach the relationship requirement, a combination of gifts, love potions, and friendship tokens can be used. Love potions will not increase attraction once attraction level goes past 100. Be prepared to bring lots of gifts and friendship tokens to bring attraction up to soul mate.
Once the character reaches <Soul Mate>, using the pen on the NPC will check the number of Magic Inks that you're holding. If you don't have enough, you'll get a message telling you so.
Once all the requirements are met, the pen can be used on the NPC. If your party is full, you will receive a message telling you this, but the Pen will not be consumed. Otherwise, you will receive the message that the character has split, and a copy of the character will join you.
The copied character has it's own set of equipment, but is treated as a new spawn of the monster. If they normally have a static artifact, the copy will also have it. If the same artifact is picked up afterwards, it will change shape, as if you found a duplicate. In other words, you cannot duplicate equipment or artifacts by trading them to the character before you copy them, because it is treated as a new NPC.
Certain unique NPCs, when recruited via the Astral Light Pen, will take a penalty to all of their stats. This was implemented in order to re-calculate their INI stat downwards, in order to make it easier (or possible at all) for them to gain AP.
Caveats[]
- Unique NPCs and <bosses> have a 6x multiplier to their HP. Copies of these NPCs don't have the same treatment, so their HP will appear to be reduced to about 17% of the original's. Regular talkable NPCs don't have a HP multiplier, so copies of them will retain the original's HP.
- If the original NPC is of a god race, copies receive the God recruiting penalty. Specific races that this applies to are in the linked page, but generally this means any race with "god" in the name.
- Certain special actions will not take effect when used by a pet. When triggered, such actions will show up in the log, followed by "Nothing happens".
- Certain NPCs who get stronger after respawning, will lose the ability after being recruited.
- Attempting to copy a fellow adventurer will not be a perfect success: the copy will not have the original character's alias. In addition, the copy will be level 5 regardless of the original character's level.
- Like Monster Balls, Astral Light Pen is not intended for use on Custom NPCs. If you manage to copy a Custom NPC (not all of them can be copied), then you will quickly discover that although the character retains the name, sex, age, height and weight of the original, at the same time in terms of race, class, level and other abilities (the sprite will change after entering the next location, by the way) this is a copy of a random character from the “user” folder, not the one you want to copy (unless, of course, the copied character is the only Custom NPC in your the "user" folder).
- Like most recruiting methods, the Astral Light Pen does not work in Moon gates, so you cannot copy a custom character from that location even if that same character can be "summoned into the world." This may be due to technical issues, since in order to “appear in the world” Custom NPCs must have their own *.npc file, which it seems the game can create only through using a Summoning crystal (therefore, as a precautionary measure, the use of Astral Light Pen on custom maps is completely banned).
- You cannot copy characters that are already your pets, even if they are currently in the Doujou or Discarded ranch and are technically no longer considered your pets.
Customization[]
The sprite for the pen is located at row 26, column 12 of the item.bmp file, position 870. Since the items cannot be replaced in the same way as individual sprites, the file must be edited to change the appearance.
History[]
1.38R : The cost of recruiting a NPC via the Astral Light Pen has been changed from (target level/2) AP to (target level/10) units of the "Magic Ink" material. Certain unique NPCs now take a hit to their attributes when recruited in order to re-calculate their INI stat downward.
1.43 : Added the ability to recruit unique NPCs from the Void.