This is not my first play through of the game. I always had a question to how this works. So I am doing a play through on my life and sometimes use Sanctuary for boss fights. The question/problem I have is that I start with 2 power pips no matter what (109% power pip chance). The first move I usually do is put up a sanctuary. It costs 3 pips, but why does it take 4? Why would it not just leave a white pip for exchange? Does anyone else understand this pip system for odd pip spells? Can anyone help me?
Alexander ThunderBane 130 Alexander StormBane 130 Alexander Rainbow 130 Alexander EmeraldBlossom 70 Alexander MistBlossom 52 Alexander Owl 54 Alexander Sand 20 Alexander SunBlaze 88 (Just Kidding)
The game counts a power pip as a single pip and uses both power pips to cover the cost. It is like giving a $20 bill to pay for a $10 item. The original bill is gone.
Now you say but I get $10 change. The game does that to but not every time. This is called pip conversion. If you have a high pip conversion there is a chance that you will be given that single pip back as change. This happens a lot more at higher level as you start to build up your pip conversion rating.
Power pips, as annoying as it is, cannot be replaced by normal pips. If a spell costs 3 pips and you have 2 power pips, both power pips will be used to "pay" for the spell. Using an imp while you have 1 power pip will use the entire power pip, and not leave a white pip behind. It's how the game is set up. There really isn't much to it.
If you use a spell that is an odd number of pips, but you don't have any normal pips, it'll use the power pips to "pay" for using the spell. In using spells of your own school, it'll use power pips, then a normal pip if the spells has an odd number rank.
Now that I think about it, it's probably more of a "rounding" thing. Instead of it using 1.5 (the exact number) of pips, since it can't use half of a power pip, it rounds up to 2 using the whole power pip.
By the previously stated logic, if you were to use regenerate with 3 power pips or rebirth with 4 power pips, it'd do the same thing and use all 3 or 4 respectively.
The only way to "ensure" the pips are used "correctly" is to have at least 1 normal pip, I'm afraid.
(Just Kidding)
