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What do the two new ranger spells Cover Tracks an Decoy do, exactly? Any tips on when/how to best use them?
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Dive fast, die young, leave a high-CHA corpse. -
Cover Tracks makes the player not leave any scent for monsters to track by. I'm not actually sure how effective it is, because monsters track by sound a lot - it will be more effective the stealthier the player is, and chiefly good for monsters that have good sense of smell and poor hearing.
Decoy lays a glyph (you can only have one per level) that fools monsters into thinking it's the player. Useful for getting away, or shooting the monster in the back while it's running at the decoy. It's destroyed as soon as it's attacked.
I'm interested to hear how useful either of these spells is.One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. -
How do monsters prioritize between the player and the decoy? Does the decoy always take priority, or is there a chance for the player to be attacked instead of the decoy if both are visible? What if the decoy is on the opposite side of the level from the player?Comment
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Monsters will always go for the decoy, wherever it is. This makes it seem very powerful, but on the flip side any attack will destroy it, and the monsters will be back to going for the player.One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.Comment
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Mental note: dig a big ol' twisting corridor, stash a decoy at the end, then sneak into a vault.
In fact...if I dig an anti-summoning corridor, put a decoy at the end, then move a couple of steps away from it (so it can't be hit by splash damage), will monsters even attack me as they attempt to get to the decoy that's behind me? Will they use spells?Comment
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As far as I can tell it checks for LOS at the start from the player perspective. It looks if the player can see the monster rather then the other way round. Most of it's pretty confusing to read. For all I know it could be "look if the player has LOS, if so move towards decoy..."Comment
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Maybe Ethereal slippers should do that too. I can't figure out what they're good for otherwise.Comment
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Thanks! Does the decoy disappear if I try to cast another spell? I've seen it mysteriously vanish a couple of times...--
Dive fast, die young, leave a high-CHA corpse.Comment
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OK, two things:- It seems that I was lying upthread - the decoy vanishes if the player gets more than maximum view distance (20 grids away)
- Otherwise it's only if it's attacked, but it looks like I've made it that it's destroyed when the player has an increase in the time of any status condition (including, eg, quaffing !Resist Heat) rather than just when a monster casts a spell to do that (at the decoy)
I've filed that second one as a bug.One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.Comment
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OK, that explains all the disappearances. The spell I was casting was Speed, indeed, which increases a timer. Thanks!
Some more feedback on the ranger spell list: I haven't managed to do anything remotely useful with Cover Tracks (but that might be just me). It does not seem very intuitive for a new player. Decoy seems fun, but I'm still experimenting with it. Haste Self, of course, is my bread and butter. Herbal Healing is rather disappointing, for being the ultimate ranger spell that I waited 40 levels to get. The idea of timed healing is nice, but it's too little for too much mana cost/failure rate at the point where it comes. Also, it is timed with game turns, not with player turns, so the healing bursts arrive only every few moves (depending on my speed). In the endgame I'm typically at speed 20+, so it's quite slow.
Maybe the effect could be doubled, so that at least it becomes a slow and expensive heal(300)? Another option would be having an early timed-heal spell instead, based on % of HP, so that it arrives earlier in the game and gives more flavour to the ranger gameplay. Something like drinking 5 CLWs in successive turns.
Apart from Cover Tracks and Herbal Healing, the other spells are a nice package overall; all of them are fairly useful all along the dungeon.
(Another thing I have already noted in another thread is that Satisfy Hunger arrives *very* early; basically rangers never have to touch any food, not even the ration they start with. Not that I'm particularly fond of the food minigame, but this spell completely nullifies it even in the early game.)
Overall the ranger doesn't seem too strong anymore. I just killed Sauron, but I think I don't have enough damage to tackle Morgoth yet. I have no Holy Might arrows nor +shots randarts, so I can get only about 350 dmg/turn with archery, which frankly isn't much --- I could probably do better in melee, with appropriate gear; my main weapon does 300 atm. And all the old uber-strong shooters like slings of Buckland are now nerfed with the change to +shots.--
Dive fast, die young, leave a high-CHA corpse.Comment
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A very nice summary analysis you've made of the Ranger changes. I agree the missile attacks have been nerfed much too much. All of my "new" Rangers have ended up with melee as the best option for fighting. Arrows as the highest and best use of a Ranger's time have become secondary instead.“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are DeadComment
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I'm not entirely convinced that archery needs to have better DPS than melee. The tradeoffs are, more or less, that melee is available in unlimited quantity, but means that you take more damage (and deal with melee side-effects, like charges drain, lost stats, etc.). Archery is limited by carrying ammo, and ammo may break, but is quite safe otherwise.
The other two main options for killing things are magic devices (similar issues as archery) and spells, which are safe and don't break, but are limited by your mana pool. I forget exactly how much damage Mana Storm does, but isn't it around 300 with a ~85% "hit rate" (a.k.a. spell failure chance)? And that's 300 per player turn; there's no equivalent to +shots for mages.Comment
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