Items
War in Middle Earth has a small, fully-decoded item system: 17 items,
each a single bit in a 16-bit inventory mask carried by every entity
(entity+0x10 — bit N set means that character or army holds item N).
Every effect below is decoded from the item property table at DATA+0x4342
and its use-dispatch logic in the game’s executable — see
docs/wime/amiga/exe-gameplay-data.md § “Item Table” and
docs/wime/amiga/game-logic.md § “Item System” in the main repo (not part
of this site) for the disassembly-level evidence.
Items do have their own icon art: the same property table’s +0x04 byte
is a mapIcon field — the id of a BScene.res IMAG resource (#50-#65)
holding that item’s own small sprite (a ring, a sword, a potion bottle, and
so on). This is a separate icon space from IMAG #100 (the
80×96px, 5×6 grid of unit/character/army icons in AMaps.res —
still real, but unrelated to items; see the earlier correction retired
below). All 16 real items (index 0-15) have one; index 16 (“other useful
objects”, a catch-all with no dedicated art) does not.
The 17 items
Section titled “The 17 items”| Icon | # | Item | Consumed on use? | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | the Ring | No | Win/lose condition and bearer tracking (DATA+0x3E6A); warded while worn. Passive — no encounter bonus. | |
| 1 | a Dwarven Ring | Yes | Recruits Dáin (entity 17). | |
| 2 | a Gnarled staff | No | Passive — holder is warded (only magical power can harm it). | |
| 3 | an Ancient sword | No | Passive — attacks join the army's magical damage pool. | |
| 4 | an Elven blade | No | Passive — attacks join the magical damage pool. | |
| 5 | a Dwarven hammer | No | Passive — attacks join the magical damage pool. | |
| 6 | Mithril mail | No | Passive — holder is warded. | |
| 7 | a Palantir | No | 69% chance per use to trigger the scenario event "Sauron's armies march forth"; otherwise shows advice text. Reusable. | |
| 8 | an Elven cloak | No | Passive — +20 to the party's evasion score in random encounters. No active use. | |
| 9 | a blue potion | Yes | Fully heals the holder (hit points restored to maximum). | |
| 10 | a black flask | Yes | Permanently +1 combat stat. | |
| 11 | a glowing vial | Yes | Permanently +1 maximum hit points, then fully heals. | |
| 12 | the Red Arrow | Yes | Recruits Théoden (entity 26). | |
| 13 | a coil of rope | No | Shows a message and nothing else — an unimplemented mechanic. Not consumed. | |
| 14 | a sceptre | No | Recruits Denethor (entity 32), gated on his obedience already being 1. Not consumed. | |
| 15 | a silver orb | Yes | Recruits Thranduil (entity 22) and activates his elf host (entity 62). | |
| 16 | other useful objects | No | Catch-all — no effect. |
All item icons
Section titled “All item icons”BScene.res IMAG #50-#65, decoded and packed into one atlas by
tools/wime/build-assets.ts’s buildItemIcons(). 16 icons for the 16 real
items (index 16, the catch-all “other useful objects,” has no art).
Where items are found
Section titled “Where items are found”25 of the 30 slots in the item placement table (DATA offset 0x3DB0) are
populated at game start, each giving a close-up map position and the
nearest named location for reference. Items 0 (the Ring) and 16 (“other
useful objects”) have no placement entries at all — the Ring is only
obtained through the story’s scripted start, and item 16 is a catch-all
with no dedicated location.
This same 180-byte table doubles as the live dropped-item list once play starts: when a figure carrying items dies in battle, its items are written into the first free slot of this same array — so what ships on disk is the map’s initial state, not a fixed, unchanging list.
| Item | Map position | Nearest named location |
|---|---|---|
| a Dwarven Ring | (1456, 656) | Dol Guldur |
| a Gnarled staff | (720, 416) | Buckland |
| an Ancient sword | (1024, 624) | Ost-in-Edhil |
| an Elven blade | (752, 416) | Bombadil's House |
| an Elven blade | (768, 400) | Barrow Downs |
| an Elven blade | (768, 416) | Barrow Downs |
| a Dwarven hammer | (1744, 208) | Erebor |
| Mithril mail | (1216, 384) | Rivendell |
| Mithril mail | (1104, 192) | Mount Gram |
| a Palantir | (176, 368) | Forlond |
| an Elven cloak | (1344, 656) | Lorien |
| a blue potion | (480, 384) | White Towers |
| a black flask | (1104, 192) | Mount Gram |
| a glowing vial | (1344, 656) | Lorien |
| the Red Arrow | (1104, 192) | Mount Gram |
| a coil of rope | (1344, 656) | Lorien |
| a sceptre | (624, 272) | Annuminas |
| a silver orb | (1344, 160) | Near Gundabad |
| a glowing vial | (736, 896) | Edoras area |
| a blue potion | (704, 928) | Near Edoras |
| a blue potion | (416, 400) | Grey Havens |
| a blue potion | (576, 400) | Michel Delving |
| a black flask | (176, 352) | Forlond |
| a black flask | (640, 400) | Tuckborough |
| Mithril mail | (352, 224) | Belegost |
Some items appear at multiple starting positions (three Elven blades, four blue potions). Coordinates are map pixel positions, not tile coordinates — see the Map page for how those coordinates relate to the 160×100 tile grid.