Concern with wizards and the recent code upgrades

[Zorinar]

I thought I should post something just in case it was not intended. I find my wizard now very much weaker in every sense. For example, I can no longer kill a troll unless completely prepared before the fight with spells I normally don't even use in combat regularly. Npc's hit with more attacks, hit with greater accuracy and seem to do more damage. My attack spells seem weaker, hits miss more, and I take more damage and get hit much more often even though my AC is the same as before. I was able to kill trolls easily before. Thus I am posting. I kind of feel like Newbie wizard again:) If intended, then NP, Ill just play much more conservatively.

Thanks,
Z

[Isolrem]

seems like all classes are suffering from the recent mob buffs. Yeah, I'm sure it gives the MUD more variety that mobs down to level 1 are now able to punch, kick, disarm, second attack, third attack... but now to kill a rabbit takes me down from 100 to 20%.

[Mask]

seems like all classes are suffering from the recent mob buffs. Yeah, I'm sure it gives the MUD more variety that mobs down to level 1 are now able to punch, kick, disarm, second attack, third attack... but now to kill a rabbit takes me down from 100 to 20%.

Hi Isolrem,

While I appreciate the sentiment, this is a little unhelpful for me: clearly, a level 1 rabbit mob disarming you is farcical, but I'm pretty sure that you have not encountered a level 1 fighter rabbit (guerrila model) which has punch, kick, disarm and multiple attacks - unless of course the rabbit is the feared Monty Python rabbit requiring the holy hand grenade of Antioch to kill.

If you have encountered such a warrior, please post it in bug reporting. What *has* changed recently is a tweak to 'fight strategies' - the embarrasingly primitive 'AI' that runs mobs combat progs. There was a bug whereby mobs were able to use skills that should have been beyond them which was fixed, this has caused mobs to revert to lower level skills, which in turn highlights the long-standing bug with skills like 'kick' which is that they pretty much bypass armour class, which has a pending bug fix being tested currently.

[Skeas]

I'm actually SO stoked about the recent code changes, the nerfing of the uber powerful characters and the buffing of what should be uber powerful mobs. Makes the game a lot more fun, and the experience a lot more enjoyable when you DO rise victorious over the new and improved dracolich/red dragon/ etc. etc.

[Isolrem]

Mostly I was just talking about kick, pretty much every mob kicks now, and its ridiculous as it amounts to them doing 2 - 3 times more damage than they did before. Bit I guess this is already known.

edit: I guess the problem with kicking is that mobs that "are far more experience than you" but "are weaker than you" (aka the ones you can actually get experience for killing) seem to infallibly land their kicks presumably because of their level advantage. Secondly kicks are incredibly damaging to equipment, so that armor which used to last a long time or indefinitely before are getting shredded by these kicks. That said it seems much better now than before, was there a recent code update to tone down the kicks a bit or am I just imagining things? Is there a place to get a changelog for code updates?

eidt2: nvm I was probably just imagining it.

[Isolrem]

Alright now I'm just confused. Some mobs who are far lower level than me miss their kicks 95% of the time, other mobs who are far lower than me lands their kicks infallibly. What exactly is the factor here?

[Skeas]

it might have to do with their wheatie consumption (in weight)

[Llaytan]

I think that as it is now, kick/punch/gouge/disarm/whatever is based on a static roll, no matter how high (or low) is your defence rating, when someone uses one of those skills against you will likely fail if he has a low score and will succeed should it have high since they aren't rolling against you but against a fixed value, so low level mobs will likely fail much more than high level mobs (the higher the mob level the higher their skill levels). Mind this is just pure theory.