Etherwind

For the effects of Etherwind, see Ether Disease.

Etherwind is a weather effect that spreads Ether Disease, which causes random changes to your character. It is characterized by a howling sound and blue sparkles that blow upwards (as opposed to the other weather effects, which fall downwards).

Etherwind can only occur during days of very certain time periods - during the first ten days of any month that is a multiple of 3 (3, 6, 9, 12). If you are outside in Etherwind, you will move faster, allowing you to get to the nearest shelter as quickly as possible. Be careful, though - if you run into monsters during the Etherwind, one or two of them will have the Godly tag to their names (ie {Troll} instead of the regular <Troll> or Troll). As their 'quality' implies, they are stronger than your usual monster.

Etherwind will also occur as a result of the Ragnarok sword being used (also applies if NPCs use it), though it seems that the Etherwind in this case will last for a shorter duration than normal. This doesn't count as a natural Etherwind, so if it gets invoked by Ragnarok before the guaranteed Etherwind during the usual spawning period, the guaranteed one will appear later after this "artificial" one ends.

The Breeder's Guide mentions that somehow, the Etherwind is responsible for how Ranches somehow generate clones of its Breeder.

Dealing with Etherwind

• If Etherwind starts while you are outside, find a shelter immediately. Do not sleep or rest outside of a shelter or your home, even if you appear to be indoors (e.g. buildings in the cities), because Etherwind will still affect you! The general rule of thumb is that if you can see the weather effect, you are NOT safe.
• One of the best ways for dealing with Etherwind is to carry around scrolls of return. When Etherwind occurs, enter whatever area you're over and use the return scroll. After 10 turns, 20 in later versions of Elona+, you'll be teleported back home.
  • This is the fastest way of getting out of the Etherwind. Setting up and entering a shelter will take much longer.
  • You will fail any active delivery or escort type quest, as well as lose a lot of karma due to return scroll use.
  • Remember that even if you're only two squares away from a city on the overworld map, it will take much longer to reach the city in terms of game time than entering the square you're on and using the scroll.
• Assuming you aren't bothered by the death penalty, another way to deal with Etherwind is to carry around a tight rope and hang yourself on the world map when Etherwind strikes. Any dropped items will remain on the world map where you hung yourself.
• If you have a Vindale cloak, Shena's Panty, or Hero's Cloak, they can also be used to reduce the effects of Etherwind. They will not nullify the effects completely, only reduce the severity, so you still need to find shelter as soon as possible.

Shelters

• A town. Every inn has a shelter, so talk to the innkeeper. This is one of the best options, because the inn's shelter always contains a random skill book and a training machine, so you can use those to improve your character and pass time, rather than simply sleeping or resting. Resting does not make you hungry in the inn's shelter.
• A portable shelter. If you buy a shelter from a vendor, you can deploy it with the tool command, then enter it with another tool command. Resting does not make you hungry in the portable shelter. Note that it takes some turns to set deploy the shelter and some more turns to enter (open the hatch of) the shelter.
• A dungeon. If you don't have a portable shelter and no towns are nearby, head for the nearest dungeon, then rest or sleep until it passes.
• Your home/storage house. Rest or sleep until it passes. A scroll of return will quickly bring you to safety. Note that reading a scroll of return while in the middle of a escort/delivery quest will give you a massive karma drop from both returning during the quest (-10) and almost certainly failing the quest as well (-3 to -20).

If you are in a shelter during any bad weather, time will pass extremely quickly and you will not get hungry. This is obviously not the case if you rest in a dungeon or your home, so make sure you have sufficient food to last over a week. Bringing a textbook or leaving a training machine in your home will make time go quickly, and this is advised to avoid wasting game time. An alternative is to spend time Digging the walls to train the Mining skill and gain items whilst doing so.

Effects of Etherwind

For more information, see Ether Disease.

Prolonged exposure causes various changes to your character. Some are harmful, and some are beneficial with some trade-off (e.g. extra PV but unable to wear amulets, or extra speed but unable to wear boots). None are entirely beneficial, so they are different from normal mutations. You may view any changes to your character on the Feats screen. They will be tagged as diseased.

Aside from exposure to Etherwind and the gradual increase over time, certain monsters have attacks that may increase your ether disease:

• Shining Hedgehogs have a melee retaliation attack "You were struck by several ether spines!" that increases your ether disease.
• Wisps have a gaze attack that increases your ether disease "The Wisp gazes^[sic] you. Your ether disease deteriorates!".
• Eating the corpse of any of these monsters will also increase your ether disease.

Curing Ether Disease

A potion of cure corruption will cure two (three if blessed, but will increase ether disease if cursed) symptoms caused by Etherwind (beneficial and/or harmful) instantly. They can be obtained by:

• Finding one on a dungeon floor, as a drop from a monster, or out of a chest (including rare and normal Treasure Balls).
• Purchased in a shop (base price: 100,000 gp).
• Marrying a pet.
• Winning 4-5 times in a casino.
• At Miral and Garok's Workshop for 10 small medals.
• Following the main quest.
• Getting one as a salary item.
• As a quest reward, rarely.

Known mathematics of Ether Corruption

Elona

Ether disease is tracked via a hidden 'ether corruption' variable. Symptoms appear after every 1000 points of ether corruption. An uncursed potion of cure corruption removes 2000 points of corruption, 3000 when blessed.

During Etherwind, you have a 50% chance each step for your Ether Disease to increase by 10 points. It's different on the world map, but it seems to be an average of about 1 point for every 40 seconds of time passed. Each piece of ether equipment increases that by 50% (so a 50% chance of 15 points instead of a 50% chance of 10). This stacks additively, so two ether items would double the amount, three would be 250%, etc. A vindale cloak cuts the amount in half (50% chance of 5 instead of 50% chance of 10). Multiple vindale cloaks don't give any extra benefit, wearing two of them is the same as wearing one. So, with two ether items and a vindale cloak, your Ether Disease increases at the normal rate during Etherwind.

Outside of Etherwind, it increases by the same amount (10), but the chance is much lower. It seems to be between 1/1000 and 1/2000 per step, unknown for the world map. Ether equipment still increases the amount by 50%. Vindale cloaks don't help here, though, they only help during Etherwind.

Elona+ (1.26, presumably earlier versions)

In Elona+, the hidden ether corruption variable responsible for disease is handled somewhat differently than in normal Elona. Symptoms are queued up at every 1000 points of ether corruption; note that they may not trigger immediately, as there exists code to delay the manifestation of symptoms until a random number of turns since your last save to prevent players easily reloading the game for desirable effects. At some later version, you can scum for a triggering of the disease and get a random corruption. An uncursed potion of cure corruption removes 2000 from the ether corruption variable, a blessed one removes 3000, and a cursed one adds 200. The value cannot drop below zero, so no additional benefit is gained from drinking a blessed potion versus an uncursed one when you have only one visible symptom.

In normal weather types, players infrequently incur packets of 10 ether corruption at a low rate, something like 30 corruption per 5000 turns. During Etherwind, the size of the packet is decreased to 5, but the increases happen far more often (increases of 35 corruption in 10 turns were observed).

The attribute "It protects you from etherwind.", does not reduce the size of the ether corruption packet (10 in normal weather, 5 in Etherwind) you take per turn, but adjusts the probability in your favor, so that you suffer corruption on far fewer turns than usual (averaging something like 1/20 during Etherwind instead of 7/10). Stacking multiple pieces of equipment with this effect did not seem to decrease the rate any further in the Etherwind test.

The Elea racial feat, however, does reduce the base amount of ether corruption you suffer on turns when corruption does happen. An Elea character incurred packets of 6 corruption instead of 10 during normal weather, at roughly the same frequency. More testing is needed to determine if the packet size, the frequency, or both are reduced during Etherwind.

Conversely, wearing equipment made of ether will accelerate the growth of your corruption score and increase the frequency of turns in which you incur corruption, especially during Etherwind. Wearing one piece of ether equipment during Etherwind increased the packet size from 5 to 10 and increased the frequency of gain to every turn. Additional pieces of ether equipment increased the packet size by 5 per piece. More information is needed regarding the effect of wearing the equipment during normal weather, but it is likely that the increased packet size will be carried over.