Shattered Kingdoms

I disagree with this statement of what is more important. You and your friends can go worry about "grander problems with sk" if you want. I don't really care about that.

For me the fact that certain pets can be invincible to mellee damage is a far bigger problem than no fancy new code coming in recently.

Additionally, I accept that another human being may have higher priorities - putting food on his table - than improving a game he implemented. I also (having read the crucible forum posts from when they went over a year without full cabal spells) accept that Dulrik does what he can when he can. So if someone explained/understood why this bug happens he could then have a good go at resolving it.

I don't think you understand how MUDs work if you think an "armor leak" is the cause of this bug and new code isn't needed. . .but you seem to awkwardly admit the situation anyway by the end of your post.

It is hardly a grand thing.

Ignoring grep's issues with the huge problems with the grand scheme of the big picture and his attitude towards how much time anyone should contribute towards a not-for-profit game......

I've just logged on briefly and tried to check my hypothesis, and at the very least it hasn't been disproven.

My test was this:
0) Order pet stance defensive.
1) Start a fight with a particular NPC (quixxling in elisair palace). Get a general feel for how many hits my (newly bought) pet took (plenty).
2) Get a NPC to armor it (paladin in elisair palace).
3) Log off.
4) Log on.
5) Repeat steps 2-4 4 times.
6) Attack same NPC and see how many hits my pet took (almost none).

Did the same with another pet - a bee from elisair. Initially took 8/10 hits unspelled (no stance update, so whatever it came with. Defensive it still got hit plenty). After 5x armor; log out; log in. Took ~3/36).

Finally, just to check one thing, I bought a new bee, stance defensive and got it armored, and it took something of order 10/20 hits.

Disclaimer: I have no logs to show this as am on a really rubbish connection. I also can't quite be bothered to count up hits and misses exactly over large sample sizes right now.

I just tested this using a store bought lion with a champion priest. Unbuffed fighting a beaten half-elf my lion took 63 hits and required 2 heals. Buffed with armor and magical vestments it only took 29 and healed its self a bit with a berserk. This proves what no one doubted - the spells do make a difference.

HOWEVER I could not replicate the log-on/log-off portion of this bug since it was my own pet and it remembers the buffs I put on my own pet. Probably has something to do with a NPC casting it on another NPC which then "logs out". This seems to be the source of the bug, based on what dorgan said, allowing it to stack the AC bonus of spells.

About daggum time someone figured this out.

Dorgan, you're a goshdurned genius.

How did this thread get to three pages, when the whole thing was demystified in the first post?

Congratulations.

You've discovered that spells active on your pets that are maintained by NPCs might not be properly removed on logout. A potential code-level bug involving the same spells everyone has been citing since this came to be discussed openly.


Guess how many people can fix it if that is true?


Based on what I've seen, all we need now in order to get this fixed is for Gilgon or whoever it was to roll a character based completely on this mechanic.

I'm not being grandiose, I'm being realistic: I haven't seen any indication that this bug -- if it is a bug -- is going to go away any time soon because it will be added to a long queue of things that someone whose own staff wistfully misses needs to do.

You know, though, you're right, this is a free game, and all... we're just getting what we pay for, I guess.

Here's my realistic prediction: tribunal NPCs will forget how to cast armor and MV after this gets exploited enough.

Why haven't bards been doing this for a long time, though? Something still doesn't add up.

They might not have noticed...I mean most bards I have seen haven't been out picking fights.

grep, I have to ask because by this point I'm incredibly curious, if you feel that the game is so poorly maintained and doomed why do you waste so much of your time on the forums?

dorgan was not so much "awkwardly admitting" anything at the end of his post, as he was just pointing out that our coders have lives too, which seems a lot less awkward and more like... accepting? I would say that is the more realistic attitude.

That said, I'm sorry to you and everyone else that this is still an issue.

If you must know, this problem has been carried to the top of the list by several staff members including myself. Will that make it go away soon enough? Clearly not. But blaming us is not the solution. Perhaps find something else to pass the time.