Beware: Massive Bug if Hounds in Water

[Stead_man]

Just as a fair play to others, figured I would make this thread to document a bug with how the hounds can glitch out in the water and wipe your entire party in a few seconds flat.

Situation was: hound spawned while the target was on floating platforms in The Newcomers, target was no longer on the same platform, so hound spawns in water. While hound is in water, the DoT stacks increase very quickly, going from tier 3 to 4 in less than a second, and then later jumping from 4 to 7 in another second. Every time the DoT stack increases, you take damage instantly, so when it jumped from 4 to 7, everyone took 150 damage in an instant.

Clip of the entire thing:
https://clips.twitch.tv/RepleteResourcefulLardFloof-UJdG4Fr7PTSR30r-

Essentially, there is a bug where if a dog spawns in the water it can jump DoT levels and kill the party instantly. This killed Noobicabra, Mazinger, and Steadman.

[Oriyen]

Definitely hurts to die like this. Both to a bug, or at least unintended interaction, but also the fact that the hound dot's the entire dungeon so Mazinger and Steadman had no chance to do anything but die.

The dog full resetting it's HP & also teleporting to unstable ground to reset it's dot application cooldown is super punishing for something that's clearly not intended on the games side. As a player it is super disheartening to want to spend so much time and energy enjoying the game, but then having to tailor the enter experience around bugs & unintended interactions.

Hopefully this gets addressed so others don't have to go through that upset

-Noobi

[Halciet]

How fast you hit your TP out yet still died. It really shows how atrocious that interaction was.

[FengXian]

"But this is Hardcore, it's supposed to be hard, only bad players complain!".

Dying to bugs and lag should always be reverted by SSG. And if they can't it's THEIR problem, shouldn't be ours. At the very least give an extra life to help mitigate such issues. If a player isn't good enough for HC, they will die more than once or twice anyway.

But dying to such BS is disheartening indeed. I'm baffled how SSG hasn't realised this yet.

[C-Dog]

Hounds def do not interact well in/with water.

Before I read this, was doing some testing (in Stopping the Sahuagin). The dog spawns underwater ("at the feet" of the hunted character floating there) and then sinks, and then that becomes a loop, possibly even if the character moves (sometimes if the character got out of the water, the dog didn't change spawn locations to the hunted's new location, just stays looping at the same spot).

[Halciet]

It seems like, as a safe strategy, every water section must be preceded by thumb-twiddling until a hound shows up; that way it becomes unlikely for it to spawn underwater and nuke the party.

[Aelonwy]

So what about quests like Shadow Guard? That's more underwater than above it. Wait for a hound at each landing? And that's a flagging quest for Shadow Crypt with several underwater sections too. What about cut scene quests like Spinner of Shadows? what are people doing about those?

[Vespero]

I will admit this event would be fun on live servers, where death doesn't cost you time, possibly money....

It poses a few problems on hardcore. There are so many instances where a teleporting overpowered DOT mob appearing will cause serious problems. I'm not going to try to think of them all here, but we are seeing them all over the forums. I wonder how many people will get to 5k favor. getting to 20 is WAY easier. 5k favor requires you to go through so many scenarios where these hounds will wipe a party.

They need to turn this event off, and resurrect all characters on hardcore.

[slarden]

It seems like, as a safe strategy, every water section must be preceded by thumb-twiddling until a hound shows up; that way it becomes unlikely for it to spawn underwater and nuke the party.

This is great advice and true in other cases as well.

[FengXian]

So what about quests like Shadow Guard? That's more underwater than above it. Wait for a hound at each landing? And that's a flagging quest for Shadow Crypt with several underwater sections too. What about cut scene quests like Spinner of Shadows? what are people doing about those?

All skips. Such great design ^^

[Aelonwy]

They need to turn this event off, and resurrect all characters on hardcore.

They are never going to do that... that is tantamount to admitting how poorly coded and thought-through their game mechanics are and I don't think they are capable of that level of apology? for possible legal and business reasons if nothing else. Would be interesting to learn exactly who thought these were good design decisions.


All skips. Such great design ^^

That's no good though. Don't you need Spinner of Shadows to go to Eveningstar? What about being held on the first quest of Isle of Dread? What are people doing about that?

[FengXian]

That's no good though. Don't you need Spinner of Shadows to go to Eveningstar? What about being held on the first quest of Isle of Dread? What are people doing about that?

I guess you can wait for a dog to spawn and then do the held scene, but it seems extremely annoying (and at least in spinner before 2nd hold it's also dangerous).