A4 - Okay now that pisses me off (testing shade)

[samidha]

I just did the second test, the one by Mortax's cave. I went through the fight with all the advantageous spells I could think of including augmentation. It was still really long and annoying though. Then the thing crumbles, and it said:

 

"The test is complete. You have not suffered sufficient damage. You have not succeeded. Depart from here and the test will await you when you've gathered your courage." Or something close to that.

 

Buh? Is that because I used spells it wasn't expecting or something? Does it always say that? Do I even care? I'm confused. All I did was wait til I could use prismatic shield... Did I confuse it by using augmentation too, and if so do I need to redo the fight?

[olop4444]

Don't attack it, and don't shield yourself.

[Randomizer]

You need to redo the fight by reentering the place or reloading an older game. This one is about damage taken so augmentation is fine. Don't attack the testing shade and keep healing.

[Toby-Linn]

I had a weird thing happen with this one too, I kept on failing the test because I was attacking the shade and maybe using Mass Healing.

 

Once I shielded myself, only hasted my priest and didn't use the spell mass healing (and didn't attack the shade) it was fine and I passed the test.

[Alorael at Large]

You can heal as much as you want and use Augmentation to stay alive, but the test is actually testing the damage you've taken. Shielding is a bad idea. Killing the shade is a worse idea.

 

—Alorael, who got through by sending in only one character with Augmentation and with healers standing back to heal as necessary. The one character just stood around and got pummeled. It wasn't fun or interesting, but it worked.

[Toby-Linn]

I think it was the attacking that made me fail the test before. I noticed that when I had everyone hasted, and attacking twice each round there was one round where the shade didn't attack me.

 

That's why it says "you did not stand sufficient damage" because of the round where it doesn't attack.

 

Once I shielded, healed as necessary, and stood still I passed.

[DrRorschach]

Originally Posted By: Tomorrow is on Fire

You can heal as much as you want and use Augmentation to stay alive, but the test is actually testing the damage you've taken. Shielding is a bad idea. Killing the shade is a worse idea.

—Alorael, who got through by sending in only one character with Augmentation and with healers standing back to heal as necessary. The one character just stood around and got pummeled. It wasn't fun or interesting, but it worked.

Ok, i have a question about this... Jus thow much dammage do you need to take? i augmented my main melee fighter, took off his armor, and let him get beat up. I ran out my priests mana on minor heal, then used an energy potion and ran it back down. then i trained my mage in 1 priest skill, and ran out the mages mana on minor heal. then i trained my second fighter in priest, and ran out his 30 mana.

thats 80 base health, and 180ish mana on healing, and i have yet to see a message one way of another. just how tedious is this otherwise interesting challenge?

[Toby-Linn]

I think it's 8 rounds, but I'm not sure.

 

I know it seems like a long time

[Earth]

Originally Posted By: DrRorschach

Ok, i have a question about this... Jus thow much dammage do you need to take? i augmented my main melee fighter, took off his armor, and let him get beat up. I ran out my priests mana on minor heal, then used an energy potion and ran it back down. then i trained my mage in 1 priest skill, and ran out the mages mana on minor heal. then i trained my second fighter in priest, and ran out his 30 mana.

thats 80 base health, and 180ish mana on healing, and i have yet to see a message one way of another. just how tedious is this otherwise interesting challenge?

Get more intelligence for your spellcasters so they can cast more spells in battles. Also don't remove any shields/armors/etc since those reduce damage too.

[Toby-Linn]

Yes, don't take off the armour, and don't haste your fighter.

 

Just have him stand there and not attack at all. Keep you other characters out of the way and heal fighter as necessary. Keep on pushing the space bar to skip combat and you can use augmentation and shielding if you want.

[DrRorschach]

OK, thanks guys, i got it now. after going through the whole process again, i got pissed and killed the shade. then it gives me the little message across the bottom of the screen.... i thought he would stop during the fight, not that he needed to die... and i much prefer the A5 message thing where you could scroll.... thanks though

[Aran]

Quote:

Killing the shade is a worse idea.

If it were actually possible. I did my very best, but after getting it down to a very low HP level, further attacks just did not affect it. Even though the attacks did normal damage, the shade did not appear to lose HP.

In fact, I did exactly what has been advised against - heavily shielding and blasting the shade with all I had - but I still passed the test. I didn't know it was possible to survive this and fail, unless perhaps you ran away or started summoning.

[Alorael at Large]

Necromancy from Aran?

 

It's definitely possible. Scripts that I do not currently have probably show how much damage you need to take and how it's measured. If it's proportional to total health, this would actually work fine with heavy shielding early in the game. Later you would need to make sure the same attacks do more damage to get the same percentage damage taken.

 

—Alorael, who doubts the programming is that complicated. Aran, you just got lucky.

[Ephesos]

Well, but don't forget, the shade's "unkillable" flag could be set. Lovely how that concept got introduced, wasn't it?

[Swimmin' Salmon]

Blame it on death_state.

[Ephesos]

Well, it's not like Blades ever featured code like this:

 

Code:

beginstate DEAD_STATE;     dont_die();break;

[Aran]

So does the actual "death" happen before dead_state is triggered, meaning that dead_state code cannot cancel death? Is there some attacked_state?

 

In A4 I've occasionally had dialog messages appear when attacking something, but only when initiating a battle. So I'm not sure if a boss could, say, heal itself when killed.

 

But hey, that's why video games came up with "boss forms". Just play the death animation, then place another monster that looks completely different (and much more badass). Repeat as needed. It makes perfect sense!

[Ephesos]

I mean, as far as I know, once the DEAD_STATE triggers, the creature is dead and can't be saved. You can do the boss form respawn thing like Aran said, but otherwise, the creature is doomed. And sadly, there is no ATTACKED_STATE that I've ever seen, useful though it would be.

 

(In cases where you just want them to flee or something, you can slip an erase_char(ME) into the DEAD_STATE and the death animation won't play, and no experience or loot will be gained.)

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Ephesos

(In cases where you just want them to flee or something, you can slip an erase_char(ME) into the DEAD_STATE and the death animation won't play, and no experience or loot will be gained.)

It's this that makes me think it should be possible to heal a creature to stop it from dying - clearly, the creature isn't killed until everything in the DEATH_STATE is called. I'll spend some time testing this later.

[Men are from Slars]

The creature isn't removed until everything in DEATH_STATE is called, but it could very easily be irrevocably set to be removed once that happens. I suspect this is the case.