Hirelings and negative levels

[Jondera]

Now, I'm not normally one to complain about hirelings. Or anything else, for that matter - I realize that AI (and other things) aren't perfect, but I learn to work around it and get stuff done. But still, I solo a lot with hirelings, and one huge thing I've noticed is that hirelings never check for negative levels, or do anything about them.

And if a given hireling doesn't have Restoration (or greater) on their command bar, there's not much that you can tell them to do about it, either. This is telling when I'm doing a loot run or something, and come up against a beholder or a cinderspawn or some caster throwing enervation, and a few bad rolls later I'm sitting on 8 or 10 or 12 negative levels with no way to deal with it. I suppose there's Restoration potions somewhere, but I've only just capped my first character and am still scraping together the cash to feed my addiction to teleport scrolls and get something resembling decent gear.

So, a request for the devs: Make cleric and FvS hirelings check for negative levels, and cast Restoration or Greater Restoration as applicable. They do it with poison, disease, curses, and every other status effect they can help, but negative levels get ignored.

[schwall420]

Also many hirelings have restore and use them on fatigue/stat damage, but the restore spell is not on thier hotbar.

[axel15810]

Wearing a deathblock item would maybe help? Don't think that affects neg levels though. Yeah I agree that's a pain in the butt. Glad my melee is WF.

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I think the problem is that restore is a separate spell and hires will only give you a couple...they've got to leave something off. Maybe make sure you grab a hire that has restore on their hotbar for those quests?

[Kinerd]

Almost all the divine hirelings have Restoration. The problem is entirely in their ability to recognize when to cast it. It's not just negative levels, although that is obviously the most important and it drives me crazy that they are ignored: Exhaustion and Fatigue are also ignored, although they at least can be Healed.

[LOOON375]

This is just one of those things that YOU have to figure away around.

I don't like it when they tinker with hirelings.

[Jondera]

Wearing a deathblock item would maybe help? Don't think that affects neg levels though. Yeah I agree that's a pain in the butt. Glad my melee is WF.

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I think the problem is that restore is a separate spell and hires will only give you a couple...they've got to leave something off. Maybe make sure you grab a hire that has restore on their hotbar for those quests?

Deathblock doesn't help, I generally keep it constantly equipped on all my characters from as early as possible.

And sadly, the highest level cleric hireling that has any variety of Restoration on his hotbar is level 8, which doesn't help much for doing quests at level 15+

[Tres_Tacos]

Almost all the divine hirelings have Restoration. The problem is entirely in their ability to recognize when to cast it. It's not just negative levels, although that is obviously the most important and it drives me crazy that they are ignored: Exhaustion and Fatigue are also ignored, although they at least can be Healed.

I'm pretty sure most divine hirelings will cast restoration when needed, which is pretty useful when running around on my barb. They also seem to be pretty good at casting neutralize poison when needed too.

I would love it if they cast greater restoration when I get negative levels. I think there are a few who have it on their bars at least.

[Tres_Tacos]

Deathblock doesn't help, I generally keep it constantly equipped on all my characters from as early as possible.

And sadly, the highest level cleric hireling that has any variety of Restoration on his hotbar is level 8, which doesn't help much for doing quests at level 15+

There are a few who have greater restore, lvl 14 fvs skein for one.

[Kinerd]

I'm pretty sure most divine hirelings will cast restoration when needed, which is pretty useful when running around on my barb. They also seem to be pretty good at casting neutralize poison when needed too.

I would love it if they cast greater restoration when I get negative levels. I think there are a few who have it on their bars at least.They are great with poisons, diseases (even Mummy Rot!), curses, remove paralysis... it's just a matter of applying that sparkling recognition code to negative levels.

Make sure you check the FvS hirelings, Jondera. As stated, several of them carry Restorations. Of course, 0% of the divine hirelings available from the guild vendors are favored souls. You didn't think it would be that easy, did you? :D

[marb]

One thing that does help is a deathward clicky. deathblock doesn't protect against neg lvls, but deathward does. The only one i can think of offhand is the visor of the flesh render guards, a tangleroot chain end reward. There are also a couple hirelings that have deathward on their bar.

[Dreamshifter]

One thing that does help is a deathward clicky. deathblock doesn't protect against neg lvls, but deathward does. The only one i can think of offhand is the visor of the flesh render guards, a tangleroot chain end reward. There are also a couple hirelings that have deathward on their bar.

I wouldn't say "a couple" hirelings have Death Ward. In the higher levels, there is usually a Cleric or FvS with Death Ward, Mass available to you at every level. At worse, you might have to grab a -1 level hireling to get it.

However, Death Ward, while insanely useful in general (blocks insta-kill spells, neg levels, and Inflict and Harm spells), is completely useless against the worst offender in the negative levels category: Beholders. They are more than happy to dispell all your protections before they start spamming level drains... :D

Over all, I would love to see hirelings do more about the negative levels, but I'll live without it. Whenever the Devs go tinkering with the Hireling AI, they break twice as many things as they fix, and I don't think Hirelings will remain useful if they get any more broken...

[msdesign]

I use clerics / fav souls hirelings sometimes, mostly when soloing, and sometimes in some small parties. I understand their limitations too, but just as the lack of auto-cast restoration can be a problem, the same we can say about the simple healing when we're incapacitated.

Imagine you are playing with a friend who's got afk for a min, and he is the only one with a hire, or my hire is dead. Then someone attacks me, pins me down on the floor and I get to stabilize with -5 HP. And lets say I don't have Diehard, or I currently have a curse preventing me to regenerate. The hire simply WILL NOT heal me at all. Just as if I were dead.

I believe it would be just a minor change, but with major differences, and would make hirelings a bit clever. Just a bit tough.

:D

[MrkGrismer]

Or put a 'Spell List' button on the hotbar that opens a dialog giving access to the full spell list, so the player can have the hireling manually cast whatever spell is needed.