UO Second Age

REPORTED ISSUE: Blade Spirits (and possibly EVs) not targeting correctly

ISSUE DETAILS: I came up on an abandoned tame dragon in the woods (it had gone grey but was still at the point where it would attack monsters and not attack blues) and provoked an ogre and a troll on it to allow myself time to cast Blade Spirits with a scroll. While it was busy fighting I cast and dropped a Blade Spirit within two tiles of the melee while standing six or seven tiles away. The Blade Spirit immediately targeted my character with 84 Str/ 0 Tactics/ 0 all weapon skills and came after me instead of all the stronger creatures right around it.

ENVIRONMENT DETAILS: The woods east of Vesper

STEPS TO RECREATE: Cast a Blade Spirit with a non-fighting character right next to a few immensely powerful creatures and see who it chases

EXPECTED RESULTS: It has been my understanding that Blade Spirits chose targets by proximity first and then by strength or melee ability. In my experiment, they did neither and chose the weakest being (me) that was also the farthest away.

DATE REPORTED: 06/06/2012

STATUS: (?)

DATE STATUS CHANGED: (?)

AFAIK, this is working as intended since a patch from 2010/11 that changed the ways EVs and Blade Spirits acquiring targets. I would search the patch notes for you, but where's the fun in that

I did a search for Blade Spirit and went through many pages of posts looking for a patch reference. The first thing I found was pretty old - viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10433&p=90507&hilit ... rit#p90507 - and I went from that discussion to the patch itself - viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10433 - in which Derrick says "Energy Vortex and Blade Spirits stats and skills and behaviors should much more closely mirror OSI ......Both will more accurately be attracted to the smartest, or strongest creature in the vicinity"

The T2A stratics - http://web.archive.org/web/199910121810 ... atics.com/ - just says this: "Blade Spirits are spirits of blades that will fight the closest thing to them"

EV/BS targeting is fairly bizarre. The order of what it chooses is like this:

-Checks what is 1 tile away from it, attacks the thing on that tile with the highest INT/STR respectively.
-If nothing is 1 tile away from it, it checks for a player within 10(?) tiles. If a player is found, it will immediately chase after that player. There is probably a INT/STR check on the players in the area on this step, too.
-If no player is found within 10 tiles, it will start "idling" and wander aimlessly until it either comes within 1 tile of an NPC mobile or 10 tiles of a player.

nightshark wrote:EV/BS targeting is fairly bizarre. The order of what it chooses is like this:

-Checks what is 1 tile away from it, attacks the thing on that tile with the highest INT/STR respectively.
-If nothing is 1 tile away from it, it checks for a player within 10(?) tiles. If a player is found, it will immediately chase after that player. There is probably a INT/STR check on the players in the area on this step, too.
-If no player is found within 10 tiles, it will start "idling" and wander aimlessly until it either comes within 1 tile of an NPC mobile or 10 tiles of a player.

Sounds exactly right to me. And of course that's not the way they worked in T2A and not the way that either stratics or Derrick's patch notes indicate either. I got chased (and killed) by EVs sometimes back in the old days but it was always clearly my fault when I did. I hope they can be turned back to their proper behaviors because right now they're too difficult to be useful in most cases.

I'm pretty sure the implementation, as Nightshark describes, is intentional. (Well, I thought it was supposedly supposed to be Tactics, not STR, for blade spirits).

To get it changed, I think you're going to have to find supporting evidence that it wasn't like this. I don't think this is a "bug" discussion, but rather an "accuracy" discussion.

Mikel123 wrote:I'm pretty sure the implementation, as Nightshark describes, is intentional. (Well, I thought it was supposedly supposed to be Tactics, not STR, for blade spirits).

To get it changed, I think you're going to have to find supporting evidence that it wasn't like this. I don't think this is a "bug" discussion, but rather an "accuracy" discussion.

I couldn't find any indication among the patch notes that it is like this intentionally. Patch 115 indicates they should work completely opposite of the way they do now, in fact. I posted a link to it earlier. Era stratics indicates they should work differently.

Currently these spells prioritize targeting the caster over any other consideration. If anyone can find a link to a patch showing that was done on purpose, then I'll shift this to an Era Accuracy discussion. Until then I'll keep assuming this is a bug.

Unfortunately EVs on the demo are bizarre and obviously not something that should be implemented. Not sure how hard anyone has tried to research this..

There is definitely a bug involved with EVs and BSs when it comes to differential heights where the summoned creature will not fight back other mobs. This would mean something is wrong with the code and possibly other areas too.

Found this for EV's:


June 2 1999:

> Can anyone tell me the best way to use this spell. Most of the time I
cast
> it right next to a monster and it just sits there. Am I doing something
> wrong?


It is almost impossible to get it to attack weaker monsters. You can get it
to attack wraiths, orc mages, and the like, but it isn't a sure thing.

It will both go after and kill drakes. It will go after deamons and dragons,
but they will dispell it. This is not really a problem since the EV hits
them with a really high level poison spell, so if you wait around for the
monster to lose some hit points you can kill them with only 2-3 EVs.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 1b3de8e1e7

Robbbb, if I had two more hands I'd give your post four thumbs up.

EVeee wrote:Robbbb, if I had two more hands I'd give your post four thumbs up.

Thank you!

There are a lot of posts that state that they attack based on intelligence.

Also, that it's based on your mana pool not just your total intelligence.

nightshark wrote:EV/BS targeting is fairly bizarre. The order of what it chooses is like this:

-Checks what is 1 tile away from it, attacks the thing on that tile with the highest INT/STR respectively.
-If nothing is 1 tile away from it, it checks for a player within 10(?) tiles. If a player is found, it will immediately chase after that player. There is probably a INT/STR check on the players in the area on this step, too.
-If no player is found within 10 tiles, it will start "idling" and wander aimlessly until it either comes within 1 tile of an NPC mobile or 10 tiles of a player.

You didn't included movement in your list
If you have two char. with equal INT/STR and line them up next to each other with just one tile in between them and drop the EV in the middle tile between them and neither char moves the EV will idle there and not attack either person(this is of course if there are no other chars or spawn besides the two there). In order for the EV to target at that point which ever if the first char. to move the EV will target and attack. I am not 100% sure if this still works, but the last time I tried it worked for us.

Also Eveee if you are worried about getting attacked by the things you cast then just use BS and go on a bard char. or take a bard with you. BS can be provoked just like monsters, and you will not have to worry about targeting. Sadly, EV can not be provoked

Khalidah Razor wrote:Also Eveee if you are worried about getting attacked by the things you cast then just use BS and go on a bard char. or take a bard with you. BS can be provoked just like monsters, and you will not have to worry about targeting.

I don't even mess with BS currently because the way they operate is too aggravating and I think it far outweighs any potential usefulness.

Khalidah Razor wrote:Sadly, EV can not be provoked

Jeez... you may have just started another Bug Report/Era Accuracy thread

Look at this page from T2A Era-Stratics (Oct. 12, 1999) - http://web.archive.org/web/199910121810 ... atics.com/

In particular the part at the bottom, boldfaced below:

SCENARIO
1. Joe casts vortex on an ettin. The ettin dies. The vortex then attacks and damages Sue. Sue manages to escape via Recall.
2. After seeing his pal Sue get attacked, Bob decides to provoke the vortex on Joe. Bob is successful and the vortex kills Joe.