Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

Hi there, this is my first post, so I'll try to be brief and to the point. I'm up against Kailasa, the last opponent in a single player game. I keep getting the notice each turn that "Suddenly an arrow comes out of the sky yadda yadda yadda and hits so-and-so". My guys are getting whacked and I have no idea how! Argh! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

I'm sure someone here knows what this is, but I can't for the life of me find anything about it in the manual or here on the forums. Is this an assassination attempt? If so, why don't the units I have assigned to "Guard Commander" help him out? Is it a spell? If so, would it be stopped by extra magick resist? Or how about one of the various Dome spells? I'd also like to know how to do this back at my opponents because it's frighteningly effective http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

It won't be long before I finish these little monkey buggers off, but I'd like to know what keeps killing my guys! It's making me loooopy! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Thanks in advance for the help!

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

Welcome to the forums,

They're casting 'seeking arrow' (ench3). I believe the dome spells will work.

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

It's Seeking Arrow, an Air 3 spell in the Enchantment tree. It an 8-point armor negating attack on a random commander in a distant provice. Ways to survive it are domes, giving your commanders items (something that grants luck for instance), or a global enchantment like Gift of Health that increases the hit points of all your units. I'm not sure if shields help, but if they do then that's your bet. It probably isn't feasible to craft dozens of items to defend against this, just on your most important commanders.

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

You can protect spesific commanders with items that give Air Shield, and just giving them armor would probably help a bit too. Domes and killing hostile air nations are more efficient in long term, though.

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

Argh! I completely missed that spell. I thought I'd combed the whole list, but apparently not. Oh well http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif . Thank you for the help, and I'll be researching Ench S3 to give those monkies some of their own medicine!

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

The other thing that can be useful in protecting your important commanders, ie mages, is stationing lots of cheap indy commanders in the provinces being targeted.

The spell targets a random commander so the more 30gp commanders are present, the less 300gp mages die.

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

Will Anti-Missile Robes and other artifacts protect them from this spell as well?

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

Excluding level-8 items:

50% protection (luck): Faithful, Lucky Coin, Pendant of Luck

80% protection (air shield): Shield of Valor, Robe of Missile Protection, Silver Hauberk, Amulet of Missile Protection

100% protection from 1 arrow (twist fate): Shroud, with S9/S10 god

20-80% protection (air shield): Shroud, with A4-A10 god

Other armor, shields, or items do not help, because the arrow is Armor Negating.

Artifacts or other means of getting the (luck/air shield/twist fate) attributes will provide protection as above.

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

The best defense it to really just get indy commanders in the same provibce as valueble targets. Pepole really only use this spell against either lone, or low hitpoint targets valuable targets. It won't be worth casting if there is a larger group of disposbale commanders in the provice. That is also a good defense against assasination.

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

The best defense is a Robe of Shadows. If I recall correctly then the spell does no damage at all to ethereal commanders. Good air magic can prevent from landing a hit, too, I think.

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

Not at all. There was another thread talking about this at about the same time:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...?Number=581736

A robe of shadows did nothing, the seeking arrow is magic damage. I didn't try with air magic on the target, but I don't see how that could help, since it's not like you get an MR roll to resist.

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

Hmm. When I was sieging Arco in our game, all air queens gulped down the seeking arrows without any damage. Maybe they have special rules, the flavor text from the message made it sound like it was due to their etherealness. Or maybe I am confusing this with the Wind Rides that were fired along with them. But my eagle kings were mostly unscathed, too. Maybe they were wearing amulets of luck, I had some of them with it.

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

I just tested this. Thuella got the "managed to escape her deadly fate" message. Never got the message for Aella, she gets hit every time. Thuella got hit sometimes. Nephele also escaped her fate sometimes. But it's less than 50% protection. More like 20%.

Mystery!

Okay, I tried with an Arch-Devil. He "managed to escape his fate" too! (On the fifth arrow.) Maybe flight gives partial protection from seeking arrow?

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

Remember there's about a 6% chance that the protection DRN will exceed the damage from the 8AN arrow as well, so an odd miss or two could just be indicative of some lucky dice.

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

Bah, where has MaxWilson gone?!?! We need his professional statistical analysis! I am merely a student of crude approximations and random guesswork.

Thanks again Micah, once again you have helped clear up the mysteries.

Used a flightless Ice Devil, 20 arrows total: 3 "escapes".
Used an Air Queen (Thuella), 20 arrows total: 1 "escape".

So, conclusion #1, flight has nothing to do with it. Conclusion #2, I need more patience to generate enough results, probably 20 is not enough for a result with an expected occurrence of only 6%.

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

Well, then forget what I wrote, maybe my commanders were just plain lucky. It was fun seeing so many gems wasted without any visual effect on my shock paratroopers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Arthur! Monkey Outta Nowhere!
 

Well, they probably at least carried a Pendant of Luck, right? So that gives them a 50% chance to escape. Then they get the 6% chance of no HP loss from 0 protection versus 8 damage.

Still, you'd need an awful lot of seeking arrows to take out something like an air queen in a province with other commanders in it!