"Poison Arrow" WTF?!

Hello.

While I was fixing some stuff for an old map, ... I was about to change the spell for one of my heroes and saw an ability called "Poison Arrow". Well i selected it because I had no idea what it is. Then I went from object to ability editor and tried to find it... but there is no hero spell called "Poison Arrow".

I thought: OK

And just started the map. Poison Arrow looks like Searing Arrow, has the Searing Arrow description but if it his a unit, the unit has a poison effect and takes damage over time...

I went back into ability editor. It wasnt one of my spells ... and I couldnt find it anywhere.

Help?

Poison Arrow was an old RoC ability that never ended up getting used in the game. Until TFT, most people didn't know about it. But, perhaps Blizzard forgot to include the ability in the Ability tab of the Object Editor? Or, perhaps you're not looking in quite the right spot. Search thoroughly, and if you don't find it, then the only alternative I know involves editing .slk files to cause the WE to show it.

I could have sworn it was in the regular abilities you know, for units, not a hero spell.. But the layout is exactly like searing arrows. And the buffs can't be changed by making new ones *pout*.

Extract the AbilityData.slk from the latest war3patch.mpq.
Open it in Excel, scroll down to where you see the Ability "Poison Arrows".
Change the value of useInEditor from "0" to "1".
Save.
Create a folder called "Units" in your main WC3 directory.
Put the edited AbilityData.slk in that folder.
Open the WE, and the ability should now appear in Neutral Hostile Hero abilities :)

Unfortunately, upon investigation, while this does add the Poison Arrows ability to your editor, apparently using a custom AbilityData.slk also removes the Targets Allowed and Buffs Used values from abilities.

This is weird. Can anyone confirm, having had a similar experience?

At any rate, you can add Poison Arrows, modify it however you like, add it to your hero, and then remove the AbilityData.slk from your Units\ folder, and the hero will still have the ability.

Panto, are you using the v1.14 AbilityData.slk...? It sounds like you may be using an older one.

Hm, you're right, I think that may have been from war3x.mpq instead of war3patch.mpq.

Then again, I don't have the listfile for the patch mpq. It seems to correctly enable the ability, either way, though.

You shouldn't need a separate listfile for the war3patch.mpq... since the AbilityData.slk will still show up.