Does the Bullseye do anything?

Question

I just came across an item called the "Bullseye", which uses the Accessory slot on a character. The description of the item is "There's no good reason for any person to EVER equip this."

Indeed, it does not seem to affect my stats in any way. Does it have any hidden effect, such as making the character who equips it get targeted more often?

Answer 1

Digging into the equipment data (under Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Precipice Of Darkness 3\Content\XML), Bullseye has the following properties.

• name = Bullseye
• equipment cost = 20
• str, mag, def, and so on = 0
• target = 1
• hits = 0
• description = There's no good reason for any person to EVER equip this.

(Bullseye is item #111, the XML is basically arrays).

Digging through Reflector (Episode 3 is a .NET app), found this method on Character:

public int TrueTaunt()
{
    int tauntlevel = this.tauntlevel;
    if (this.HasIndividualEffect(0x7d9))  // Over Here! [doesn't seem to be in game?]
    {
        tauntlevel += 20;
    }
    if (this.HasIndividualEffect(0x7df))  // Flip Off [likewise]
    {
        tauntlevel += 0x19; // 25
    }
    if (this.HasIndividualEffect(0x7ff)) // Glare
    {
        tauntlevel += 20;
    }
    if (this.HasIndividualEffect(0x802)) // Leer
    {
        tauntlevel += 0x19; // 25
    }
    if (this.HasIndividualEffect(0x83e)) // Spotlight
    {
        tauntlevel += 20;
    }
    if (this.HasIndividualEffect(0x851)) // Challenge
    {
        tauntlevel += 0x19; // 25
    }
    if (this.WeaponNumber == 0x1a) // Shotgorn
    {
        tauntlevel += 20;
    }
    if (this.ArmorNumber == 0x6f) // Bullseye
    {
        tauntlevel += 20;
    }
    if (tauntlevel < 1)
    {
        tauntlevel = 1;
    }
    return tauntlevel;
}

So it looks like Bullseye is equivalent to the lower tier of Taunt abilities. Note the two abilities that I can't find in game may just be left overs from Zeyboyd's Cthulhu Saves The World; there are other Cthulhu references in data and code, of course I could just have missed them in PA3.

Taunt appears to work as follows (actual code is considerably denser):

• create a List T
• for each character
  • if that character is alive
  • loop from 1 to TrueTaunt() (inclusive) as N, adding that character to T (only if sizeof(T) <= 256)
• monsters choose a target randomly from T to attack

A weird quirk here is that it appears that if TrueTaunt of your first couple characters adds up to 256 or higher* then your remaining characters are not individually target-able (I don't think attack choice is influenced by taunt level). This is decompiled code so don't hold me to that, I could be missing some compensation elsewhere.

All characters have a basic tauntlevel of 4, and it doesn't seem to increase by level. Looks like your highest possible taunt is with Tycho using the Shotgorn (+20), Bullseye (+20) with the Crabomancer (Leer +25) and Tube Samurai (Challenge +25) classes for a taunt level of 94. If no other character has taunt boosts, Tycho would be targeted ~89% of the time.

_{*I don't think this is possible in this game, maximum summed taunt across all characters looks to be 164.}