Asherons Call: Answers About Critter Balancing from the Great Hunter Himself

Esfandiyar_LC asks: Can we get a definitive answer - Date Edited: 2/21 2:03pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Esfandiyar_LC Can we get a definitive answer regarding future creature balance, whether the 2002 creatures magic resistances are going to be dropped to something realistic and that a year of mage hate is finally over?
Orion_Turbine: So how is this for clarity:

It looks like most that have posted here are hybrids worried that they are going to lose an edge. No you're not. Just wait and see.

And for those of you that missed the point of what I was saying, at low levels all melees need to concetrate on are their melee skill (melee defense), archers more of the same, but mages at the early levels have three schools to focus on. As your character progress there are, of course, more skills that you need to focus on and we are aware of the plateaus where a player moves his focus from his main hunting skill. But it is never neglected entirely. If it is then typically there are supplemental skills being added to assist in gaining those shadow skill points through magical means.

Dev speak translation: You start out focused on your weapon, then you get your creature magic/life magic/item magic. Using thouse schools along the way to adjust your weapon skill to be that slight bit higher than it was if you were just dumping your xp into it. Again breath you haven't even seen the changes there is no reason to get into a tizzy without first knowing what this is all about.

ballanbint asks (in a long thread with many questions): Will critters be level oriented? I understand from your post that you will be able to kill critters for your level. Does this mean that level 15 with level 7 buffs will no longer be able to kill so far above their level? That buffs to some extent will be ignored in preference to your level?
Orion_Turbine: Answer A): Okay here is a reference for level. Diamond golems are currently 279.

These are not creatures that are really 279 and they use their usefullness to most hunters are 90, cause there are platinums out there. (Before anyone goes off on a tangent and claims that mages can't land on Platinum's remember that things are be rebalanced, please this will save my poor fingers from further carpal damage and it will save you some heart palpitation.)

So now that Diamond golem who was once 279 will have a more legitimate level, (higher than 90). You'll know that yeah you can take that diamond on and by the time that you are 90 you might want to move on because you've been owning the sparkly golems behind for 30 odd levels now. I mean that gets boring. Killing walking rugs all day is not my idea of fun I like variety and I think most other people do as well. So now you might just choose to find something else to hunt.

Rest assured these changes are not going to restrict XP. They are going to make XP correlate more directly to difficulty. Wait and see. ;-) Remember deep, even breaths.

Answer B: To everyone else worried about rerolls: There will still be plenty of areas for you to get your fast xo to get you out of the doldrums of 1-20. There will still be plenty of ways for you to get to whatever your goal level is because the new map is guideline not a rigid hunting zone that says "You will die if you go here and are under the suggested levels for the area." Nor are the creature levels a strict guideline, until of course you notice that you are taking an experience loss for fighting things that are too easy for your level.

You're losing sight of the fact that it hasn't happened yet so you have nothing more than speculation to base your opinions on. Why are we doing this now? Well we just moved all the creature on the world to more level appropriate areas. Some of them are in 20-40 areas launch level 6 spells at a newer player that doesn't have level 7 buffs protecting them. Some are in the Direlands and are wandering around with 120 hitpoint and a level monniker of 42. It was decided, when we started the redistribution that we wanted to rebalance and we wanted it done right. That's it. This is not changing some base fundamental of the game, creatures have always been designed toward a certain level of player, the only thing that has changed is instead of saying wow this creature is certainly tougher than that Tusker Guard and that Tusker Guard is 126 I better make my creature 254. Creatures are getting more apporpriate level numbers assigned to them.

To those of you fearing that the VoD is the only place that 100+ can hunt. Umm, no. Again the new map and the new creature levels are "guidelines". When you see the new creatures in action you'll notice that they are higher level than the area in which they live. Extreme areas are 80+ You can hunt there all you want, in fact you should if you are over 80 or an uber template that is buffed with 7's maybe as low as 50-60 who knows? Guess you'll need to try it out first rather than running yourselves ragged with wild speculation.

The sky isn't falling. I think once you face off against the new creatures of Dereth that you will be pleasantly surprised.

Slordax states (summarized): Hunting as a pure melee is difficult unless in groups. The days of a pure melee are gone. Most melees are hybrids now so they spend just as much xp across skills as mages.
Orion_Turbine: The goal is to make that melee that never wants to take the magic school possible. How is that done? By making sure that there is a spread of creatures out there that the melee only character can survive against.

Most "Melees" are melee's. They may take item and get it to 150, so they can portal. A hybrid, I am sorry to say is not a Melee it is a hybrid and because you can ultimately do more, you take a hit early on in one of your areas of expertise so that you can reach that maximum potential in the end. I primarily solo and I have always played a melee as my primary. I hunt in the high level areas and as long as I get patron buffs I have no problem. Once I drop to my store bought and found jewelry it becomes of game of diminishing returns on my elixir management. Granted I do have Item and creature, and at 90 I get life! Woohoo! Then I will self buff with 6's across the board.

My base UA is at 336 or so, and my base melee D is at 317. Now granted I am not like the majority of our players who are about 30-50 points behind me in one or both of those skills. (I'm currently 67 with this char for reference.) I have to tell you that as a flat melee I am not spending nearly as much as xp true mages. My divisors are 2 stats divided by 3, whereas theirs are 2 stats by 4. In the end they spend more XP.

Hybrids are what we number crunchers like to call long term broken. Because given enough time and devotion they will be very nearly as good at all things as their brethren that focused on one area. Though ultimately they are a shade behind. Just wait and see.

I was pointing out that you can go flat melee without really focusing on your melee defense. Granted there are things as you get higher up that will ring your bell, but with a shield that has impen and above average protect layered over life prots and solid al armor with good defensives you can almost guarantee that the damage you deal is going to outclass the damage dealt to you. You should also not that I said this is not recommended. I also want to direct your attention to the comment about the divisor costs for the base skill, Mages spend more on their skills because their base is lower, the same is true of missile characters. Sure you want item, sure you want healing and arcane lore and maybe you want fletching and cooking and alchemy who knows what else.

The point is that as a Melee you spend less to reach the next plateau because your base divisors are less. As a Missile character you can get by without fletching, because you can purchase your arrows.

Again I never said that you should go without melee defense for any of these, just saying that there is an option. Bear in mind also that not all mages, and I would daresay that there are a lot more any of us that regulary frequent boards would believe, are not specialized. ;-) We're concerned about those players too.

Gilligan.USCG asks: If the attack mod on Bows didnt help AT ALL, WHY is the lvl 7 version of HS called Elysa's Sight? A name of an Archer?
Orion_Turbine: So the definitive answer given when we came out and told you it didn't and never did work, didn't work?

All right then here is the definitive rehash of the definitive answer that tells you once and for heartseeker never worked on bows/crossbows/or atlatls.

Heartseeker and the spell Elysa's Sight never worked on bows/crossbows or atlatls. The heartseeker 7th level spell is so named for the determination to hit a creature and Elysa's uncanny nack for hitting her opponents. Any belief, observation or other "test methods" used to determine that having heartseeker on your bow makes any difference is an error in user observation. We did not delete attack mods on bow we instead removed a factor that was not functioning and replaced it with one that does function.

The enhanced % to hit with bows/crossbows and atlatls is found by adjusting the slide bar. At full accuracy you are at 150% of your skill.