Weather in Elona is a system that affects the player character's actions, like traveling, swimming (Elona+ only) and gardening. Storm, snow, and Etherwind are classified as "bad" weather, during which char can enter town shelters by talking with innkeepers, pass time quickly in home/shelters and use training machines/skillbooks without becoming bored after.
Types of Weathers[]
Rain[]
Rain gives the character as well as allies and NPCs wet status, even inside a building.
It's suggested to plant seeds during rain to prevent withering and also harvest in rain to boost regrowth chance.
Storm[]
Storm (also called heavy rain) makes characters wet, also bring difficulties to traveling, causing blindness and confusion as you walk on the world map. Note that if you put on an aurora ring, it will nullify the confusion status, but the blindness still applies.
Gardening bonus also applies during this weather.
Snow[]
In snowy weather, player character's movement speed in the world map is heavily slowed down, unless equipped with an aurora ring.
Note that in some areas, for example, the area from west Lumiest to Noyel, rain and storm will automatically change to snow for most of the year. Only using a Statue of Lulwy may give you a temporary rain. The opposite is also true: moving to a "warmer" part of the world with active snow weather will cause it to "melt back" to rain. With this in mind it can be quite useful to set your home (the only movable return point) near Noyel (common snowstorms) and your farms near Lesimas (returning to it and exiting back to world map will transform snow to rain) for easy on-demand rains. Also transformation does not occur until char enters worldmap and spends a bit of time here, so one may return in the depths of Lesimas and act as if its still a bad snowy weather outside (for training purposes).
Etherwind[]
During an Ether Windstorm, several things happen.
Monsters mutate due to the effects of the magical ether, which means that any monster generated on Etherwind-affected map have extra chances to be an <unique> specimen of its type. You incur symptoms of ether disease. Ordinarily, your character's ether disease will worsen slowly and sporadically in any weather, but exposing yourself to the Etherwind increases the rate of ether corruption by a large amount. On the plus side, your movement rate will actually increase as your character flees the dangerous magical storm.
You can be partially protected against the effects of the Etherwind by being an Elea or by wearing any equipment that has the attribute "It protects you from etherwind". Vindale cloaks and Shena's Panty always have this attribute.
To avoid the disease-hastening effects of the Etherwind entirely, you need to leave the outdoors and find proper indoor shelter. All travel time during the Etherwind is halved.
Effect on travel[]
- Rain increases travel cost by 30%.
- Heavy rain increases travel cost by 60%.
- Snow increases travel cost by 120%.
- Etherwind reduces travel cost by 50%.
For more details, see the traveling page.
Protection from Bad Weather[]
You can speak to an innkeeper to take you to a shelter, or deploy and enter your own if you possess one.
You can also find protection in your home or a dungeon, but time will pass at the normal rate so it may be a while before the storm passes. You can actually use this to your advantage, since you can eat food (which boosts your attribute growth), sleep (potentially getting good things out of dreams) and, in the case of dungeons, read books or use training machines many more times than would be possible with the accelerated passage of time in a shelter. Reading books or training in your home or an indoors building you own will cause time to pass at an accelerated rate while you read and then return to normal afterward. Note that you may also take advantage of books and training repeatedly during bad weather on outdoor maps as well, though this is not recommended during the Etherwind!
If you are caught out in the wilderness during an Ether Windstorm without any protective items, you can enter the wilderness (press > or Enter) and read a scroll of return or cast the corresponding spell; you will only spend 10-20 turns out in the Etherwind before returning to your chosen destination. Lacking that option, you may set up or enter any shelter you carry, though this takes longer than using Return; you may also run for the nearest town.
Changing the weather[]
Weather changes randomly on its own with exception of Etherwind, the only weather type that never appears randomly: only in first third of every month divisible by three (natural Etherwind) or as result of triggering "it brings an end" equipment attribute (short artificial Etherwind). But there is a tool to change the weather forcibly.
It is the statue of Lulwy, Goddess of wind. The normal way to obtain one is getting it as a reward for the Rare Books quest, although you may burn your way to the statues decorating Lumiest, identify one and buy it from little sister quest (the statue is a precious item) if you want it immediately. When used in weather other than Etherwind, it randomly changes the weather. When used during Etherwind, has no effect. It has a cooldown time of 120h.