Jul. 21, 2013: Elementals and the Environment

Some elementals will start being affected by the place they are summoned.

Earth Elementals:
- When summoned underwater, they take on the appearance of the seafloor (sand and rocks).
- When summoned in volcanic areas such as within Forge, they are composed of lava and obsidian.

Water Elementals:
- When summoned underwater, they are almost completely invisible (it's almost impossible to see a blob of water that's...underwater).
- When summoned in freezing areas like the Icereach, they are made of solid ice.

I think this was mentioned elsewhere but is this just an appearance change ?

RustyDios wrote:I think this was mentioned elsewhere but is this just an appearance change ?

It's mostly just an appearance change.

Is this feature active yet?

I can't wait to see what my toons' symbiotic water elemental looks like underwater or frozen!

Yup, this change should be online, as of July 21st.

I tried out the water elementals underwater and in the Icereach, it was so awesome!

The water elemental was totally invisible underwater (and it continued to be invisible after leaving the water, which made me wonder if a vc reset appearance command might be useful).

The frozen water elemental was way cool (only wondered if it could be blue rather than pink).

Very neat, indeed, thank you, !

The magma elemental is also pretty cool, which was the first one which I tried summoning when the change came.

I second Ramana's thoughts on the slightly pink ice elemental though. Looks a bit odd, but as long a it isn't yellow ice I'm fine with it.

Must just be the area lighting.  The ice form should be white.

Hmm. That could be it--that or maybe light property on a PC perhaps? If the texture is white and transparent, it would reflect other light sources.

From what I've seen, the tile lighting in the Icereach, where we both went, doesn't seem to include any rosy tones.  If it did, one could probably detect such a tone in the shadows in the area.  I also went into the Frost Trolls cave and my two ice elementals remained pink.

But the real confirmation would have to come from examining the tile areas in the toolset.

If I can find another frozen area, I'll see if the rosy tone manifests there also.

Or, one could create an ice elemental in the frozen area, and then go to another area.  Because, presumably, just as with the liquid elemental created in a water area which persisted as invisible after having left the water, the ice elemental should stay ice until it dispelled.  So you could see if the tint changes, in a new area.

I'll look into this myself when I have more time, but there's some experiments to try.

Cannot speak to this directly, but have had a sim problem with another game that allows reflective skies. Try altering graphic settings like removing Shiny Water and other sky oriented FX.

That's an excellent point, Ancient One!

Skybox color reflection did occur to me after I wrote my previous point, and graphics reflectivity settings could indeed play a part.

Also check all your gear for light effects. Even a dim red light could cause the issue described. Also active spell effects.

Here's a couple of photos of the pink Ice Elemental, the frozen environment version of the Water Elemental summons.

I really don't see this as an environmental coloration issue, and I'm sure her gear contains only blue light effects if any.

When I saw my Ice Elemental next to Aga's Crystal Golem, it made me wonder if the models came from a set of gem crystal elementals?  It's almost as if the Water Elemental is using a Ruby Elemental Form which has an inner red light that hasn't been overcome.

(A funny coincidence is that Ranara summoned this one with a Ruby Staff --but I've seen the pink in the other sizes also.)

BTW, if it proves difficult to get it white, then a Sapphire gem crystal form would be pretty cool, if a blue gem form is available.

I didn't really catch this last night.....  Aga's crystal golem is wonky colorwise as well in those screenies.  It's not usually that particular shade of neon lime green   It's usually far darker reddish color.... at least from my end of the game.

They do appear to share the same model, so perhaps it's something in the model itself that goes wonky in certain lighting conditions.

Hello! I'm a mysterious being from the NWN Custom Content forums

This is a problem with the models themselves. The two original Crystal Golems by DLA actually have an ambient light via the SetIllumColour on them which makes them shine pretty nifty. Unfortunately there's a batch of the recoloured versions of it in the CEP which haven't changed this field, meaning that they don't have the correct shine going on and instead keep the Ruby or Emerald one. Quickest way to check this out is in an area with the Reset to Black fog going on

Confirmed which model it is, the Diamond Golem c_goldiam. Chucked a fixed model 's way but it'll happen with all of the other CEP ones as well. Just need to change the "setfillumcolor 0.549019992 0.145098001 0.239216" or whatever it is for the others. That colour, in particular, is why its pink. Other colours tend to have a murky greenish slop to them

Thank you so much for visiting, mysterious being , and granting us the hidden knowledge to solve this issue! 

I've fixed the models for the next hak update, thanks to Mecheon.