Updated Manual?
 

Hey folks,

A few quick questions from a prospective buyer...

Has the manual been updated since the original release? In other words, am I getting the same manual if I order direct from Shrapnel vs. somewhere else like Amazon? If the manual has not been updated, is it still sufficiently accurate now that several patches have been made?

Thanks!

Re: Updated Manual?
 

It has not been updated, so it does not document all of the changes made via patches since the initial release (e.g. new nations.) Also, there are a number of technical inaccuracies (see other threads, including the FAQ at the top of this forum, and the "Lies my manual told me" thread.)

That said, it still gives a good overall "feel" for the game and in most cases it will be generally correct, even if the details differ slightly. I would say that for a game of this complexity, it does a great job.

Even if it was totally accurate, a lot of what's there really won't make sense until you try it; this game is one of those that take a few runs through before it "sinks in." The reward is worth it, however, IMO.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

It's like 80% accurate, so it's still useful unless you want to be absolutely sure of something, in which case it's basically useless.

The same could be said for most sources of information like responses on this forum or anecdotal observations though.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

As a Manual, I think its still excellent and above average as far as game manuals go. It will definetly get you started in the game and has an excellent tutorial in it. I would recommend getting Edi's Database and using the tables in it for information on units and equipment. Much more up to date.

As a strategy guide it might be getting old. But even that is pretty amazing considering its been years since it was created. For many games I have paid as much money for, any strategy advice was dead within a couple of months at most.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

There are certainly parts of the manual that are useful. There are also parts that I wouldn't touch w/a ten foot pole. Among these are: the mini-strats (90% of them would never work in MP), any explanation of mechanics (Nearly all of them are wrong to one degree or another), and to a lesser extent the spell Grimoire (Since CBM is used in nearly all MP games.)

Re: Updated Manual?
 

That would be the difference between a manual and a strategy guide. Personally, Ive never preferred games that came with a strategy guide that was any good but that might just be a personal preference for finding things out for myself.

As for CBM, well anytime that is said and disputed there is a rush of new CBm games. But I still wouldnt say "nearly all". Other than in IRC of course. Any mod would tend to need its own documentation rather than rely on the manual. Particularly one that modifies the game as much as CBm does.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

I looked at every one of the games on the first page of the MP forum, which is not necessarily all those in progress. Total of games with CBM- 29. Total of vanilla games- 6. Seriously, its not just the IRC that's aware of how superior CBM is.

As for the strategies, what's the point of putting them in if they're known to be bad? Just to screw around w/the newbs? I'm aware its not a strategy guide, but that doesn't mean you throw in boneheaded strategies for filler.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

It should be noted that most of the CBM changes are "documented" very handily through the game UI, since spell effects/levels and unit costs (which make up the bulk of the changes) are clearly displayed. Items are a bit harder to determine since you can't call up a list of them as easily, but a simple test game solves that. The demand that there be out-of-game documentation in addition seems more like an excuse not to use CBM than a reason, but that's just my take on it.

Personally, I find out about most of the CBM changes that I COULD find out about by looking at the documentation (in or out of game) when I get stung by it in a game, not by actually looking at the docs. Which is pretty much the same process that I learned a good 85% of the vanilla game though, so it just pays to be able to roll with the punches.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

Well keep telling everyone that nearly all MP games are CBM. It does seem to make a difference. And rally the troops for a new rush of cbm games now. :) but on the servers the numbers arent quite so clear. You could get away with saying "most" or maybe even "double" but lets not give the impression that its now the whole game.

Actually it would probably be clearer to say most of the competitive games. There are certainly few MP games anymore that have no mods at all but there seems to be a split between the competition games using balance mods, and the rpg games using mods such as single age (:)), worthy, mytheology, sites, semirand, etc.

And I wasnt saying people should not use CBM because its not in the manual. Just that its not realistic to say the manual is no good for learning the game because it doesnt support a mod. That seems extreme.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

Eh, I personally would like a CBM documentation, since I don't go through every spell (not even the description (!)) and item in a test game. When you get stung by it in a game it can be too late. Not that it would kill you but it would be nice to have something to search through without a long effort.

Also, sorry to ask, but what is the reason to go against non-CBM games every time? I'm in a non-CBM game atm and it has been quite enjoyable. Not that I think CBM is bad but with CBM already used so often there is certainly no need to badmouth the other games in every fifth thread.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

Of the 70 games currently running on Llamaserver, at least 47 are using a version of the conceptual balance mod. Of the six games starting on Llamaserver, 4 are using CBM, one is mostly modded nations, and one is vanilla. There's a reason that the CBM is as popular as it is, and that is because the balance in the vanilla game is atrociously bad. This doesn't make vanilla a bad game, but it does mean that the CBM version is a better game than vanilla.

The only reason I can see for why people "badmouth" the vanilla game in many threads is because Gandalf constantly shows up and always tells people that they shouldn't be playing a modded game. It gets a little annoying after the dozenth time you read it.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

I NEVER badmouth CBm! EVER!
I was a strong proponent of it from the start and took part in many of the conversations at its inception. I still think its one of the best mods we have going. For game balance in MP its definetly the winner hands-down.

I only dive in when someone tries to give the impression that all of the games use it. That seems to be an effort to create a fact by convincing everyone its true ahead of time. Ive seen many games converted to cbm games because the original poster was convinced that it was expected. QM doesnt push it that way anymore than I would push SingleAge as only way to play Dom3.

And I dont remember ever pushing a vanilla non-modded game either. If anything quite the opposite. I would accept that I too often mention rpg mods over balance mods but thats just my preference for the style of game.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

Sure you do. Nearly everytime somebody suggests that it is the standard mod you supply a PR blurb about how people should play the base game first before they use a mod that actually makes the AI a better player by making the obvious decisions less obvious.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

That's because every game *should* use it.

I've only noted two games started in the last 6 months (since i started playing) that *weren't* using a CBM version, unless NvV3 wasn't using CBM, in which case that number is actually 3, but I can't remember.

If virtually all MP games use CBM, that's a strong argument for all mods to be CBM compatible, and all SP games to use CBM if you intend to ever play MP. No point learning non-CBM and getting surprised by CBM when you start playing MP. Basically, you're training yourself how to ride the bicycle wrong if you use non-CBM for SP and you intend to start playing MP.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

CBMs changes actually are documented very clearly. The dm is a text file and it's easy to read - even easier to look up something specific using a simple find. There are no questions about its accuracy because you're looking at the mod itself.

Then there are resources like Cleveland's CBM forging doodad. Not sure exactly what else people actually want in terms of documentation. Just griping over nothing maybe?

Re: Updated Manual?
 

CBM is above average as mods go for self-documentation. It has many comments thru the file. I count over 1300 lines of comments.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

That's true to a point.
However there's some things in it that are not straightforward (#effect 10021, #spec 4194304
, #pathlevel 1 1 ?) if you don't actually mod.
And now try to find out what has changed about all air summons.
I'm not "griping" (whatever that means), I'm saying it would be nice.

Yeah, I believe that's the intention behind it. Still I disagree.
There won't be the point where we run out of CBM games, so whenever you want to play CBM you can do so.
Going from vanilla to CBM or vice versa doesn't need "relearning" of the game mechanics only checking which of the things are better or worse now.
It's a bit like saying that there should be only one car type since then noone ever has to relearn. If you wanted to have a standard then it would have to be vanilla in any case (see, that's the thing about one car countries, you only get the basic version) - since there is less space for technical issues than a modded game, and since you'd have to "relearn" every time a new CBM comes out. Not that we need any standard imo.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

So, for example, remembering what constr level and path levels all the forgings require is something that is inconvenient to look up. Its also relatively stable across CBM versions (a few change, but those are generally noted on the first post releasing the new version). Since research strategy and forging strategy are important elements of playing the game, going from normal to CBM could really screw you up and you wouldn't even know until you completed the necessary research (or what you thought was the necessary research!). Further, you wouldn't necessarily think to check beforehand for many items.

The most obvious change is gem gens, probably the single most important change for game balance CBM has made, and one where if you plan your strategy around them based on SP experience, and didn't think to check if they were moved in CBM, your entire plan would fall apart. But there are numerous others where knowing something was easier or harder to get would radically change your planning and possibly even pretender design.

At least Cleveland has provided a forging guide that includes Vanilla and CBM, so its at least plausible to check forging. But heaven help you if the *function* of an item changed, as I can't think of a single good way to check that quickly.

If the game had an excellent in-game manual (Civilopedia style) and the developers had made the mechanics more transparent (don't get me started on how much existing spell descriptions annoy me), then I'd say that switching back and forth is sufficiently easy to not be an issue. But many things are hard to reference, and oftentimes its not clear from a description what the heck something actually does. So the only way to know what 50% (or more) of the spell list and a large variety of items do is to try them out - meaning changing the rules set you're using with any frequency is rather obnoxious.

Now, given that the vanilla game is horribly balanced (gem gens for starters, but there are also issues with scales, unit pricing, pretender chassis costs, spell research, gem, and path requirements, etc...), and CBM fixes many of these issues, and is also played vastly more often in MP situations, it would seem to be the best available 'standard' to learn and play under.

(Further, sure there are new versions of CBM, but the base game at least used to get patched regularly, and made sometimes major changes to things like dominion powers for Rlyeh/Ermor, so certainly new versions is not an issue only with CBM. One should argue that CBM's continuing to get updated is an advantage).

When i get a new car, it comes with a manual that actually explains what everything does and tells me the technical specs. If I really care, there are experts who can explain what all the technical specs mean, how exactly the specific engine/fuel injector/whatever works. This makes it a lot easier to switch cars, because it has adequate documentation for *everything*. Also, if the car manual is actively wrong, it gets recalled and I get a new one. The game manual is actively wrong on every remotely technical explanation of mechanics.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

What do you mean by the function of an item? We can only mod the weapon and armour granted by an item. You don't need heaven's help to find out about that, you look in the dm or the accompanying txt file.

There was a mod which changed spell descriptions into technical descriptions. It might be out of date now but you can probably find it by searching.

CBM mostly changes variables which are transparent in spells, units etc. I'd say at least 95% of the changes are things like damage, range, gemcost, visible stats and abilities etc. Things you can see by clicking for more info, not things that need testing or hunting through the .dm file or accompanying txt.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/griping

If you don't know what it means, how can you say you aren't doing it?

You may have noticed that in addition to the dm, there is a parallel .txt file which lists the changes made in plain english rather than modspeak. Not that 'modspeak' is hard to understand, since it only has a handful of terms that aren't obvious and for those you have modding documentation, which is near enough 100%

Re: Updated Manual?
 

modspeak actually sounds a lot like this: Intermission in the Third Dimension
coincidentally: most conversations on IRC sound a lot like this too.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

In Game Manual:
It would be nice to have. Better if the devs programmed it to call an external file which could be added to by the dom community.

But how would adding the overhead to the game be different than making your own clickable link to Edi's Database or to Lch's wiki? I have the same reaction when people want builtin options for screen capture or backups or all of the other things that can be done with 3rd party options. It doesnt need to be in the game, limiting our choices and adding massive overhead just for people who want it in the menu so they can find it easier

Spell Descriptions:
There is a program that will update spell descripts. And the source code is available. Its fairly easy to update it. You can also use it to change the tips that appear and other text. BUT it modifies the executable of the game itself. Thats one reason Ive been leary of linking to it on my dom3 site. It just seemed like a direction I didnt feel right in supporting.

Mod Documentation:
I think this tends to get back into the territory that the manual did. Developers should not do the documentation. By the time they get it to work, they are too deep to think and question and answer like a newbie who is looking at it for the first time. Developers of games feel their game is "intuitive".

And developers of mods feel that mods are self-explanatory. Anyone who has extensively worked with mod commands (or map commands, or command line switches) tends to look at those and feel its clear as a bell. No further explanation is needed than the code itself. In every case (as the manual itself exemplifies) documentation is best done by a 3rd party looking at it from scratch and keeping good notes on what did and didnt need explanation. I dont knock anyones efforts to document their own. I just feel it can usually be done better if done by new eyes.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

In Game Manual/Documentation:
Actually, the developers are the right people to do it because they wrote the code. They have access to the code. They're the only people who know for sure how everything works.

As to what to document? Everything. Every spell, every unit, every item, every mechanic. The actual algorithms used by the code should be made available, as should full stat displays, and so on. In fact, documentation should happen *as they write the code*. Anything else is sloppy programming.

You code a unit, you write the documentation page for it immediately thereafter. Now you have a record of what it does that you can reference as you code, *and* the user will have a document that tells them what it does. If you change the unit, change the documentation. (Ideally, the documentation can update changes automatically by being linked into the code).

I shouldn't have to start up a game as a nation to see what their units do, or play 40 turns to see what their national spells do. That can be a lot of work for another game where you have to fight that nation, and then repeat for all your other adversaries. All the basic information should be accessible from inside the game itself.

Games like Civilizations have been doing this since the mid-90s. Its really not an unreasonable expectation.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

Ahhh I see. That is definitely different than my idea of a game manual.
And different than the devs of this particular game so even if they felt they could have, it wouldnt have happened. In fact, some of that was specifically left out of the manual we have now.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

I agree that such databases are a strong feature of in-game documentation. They also point to good internal data/code structure. But we live in the real world and it's hardly a deal breaker to most people. I'd rather have sloppy code than no code and sometimes that's the choice.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

Well to answer first question about relevance of game manual its p.o.s. for most parts.

Sad but true after cbm. After I have played this game with cbm I think manual seems to be less and less usefull tho I find spell index still somewhat usefull not much else in manual.

Pardon my grammar... been drinkin a bit.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

Formulas in the manual are invaluable IMHO. A new player has no idea what "Attack 15" or "Defense 12" means, or how that applies to what makes a unit good or bad. He can probably figure out Protection, at least in a gross sense (Prot 10 vs. 20 points of damage will usually take 10 points of damage) but doesn't understand how the variance works--how much damage will a Prot 20 guy take damage from a 10 point attack? He will have no clue at all how morale works, or fatigue.

Unless you know the rules you play by you might as well be playing an RTS, and you can't learn the rules without the manual or someone who learned it from the manual. Unless you have the source code, like lch. :)

-Max

Re: Updated Manual?
 

Except in a lot of cases, the mechanics in the manual are wrong.

Want to know how fear works? Too bad, the manual left out the most important part. You'll never understand how fear is as effective as it is based on the manual.

Want to know how criticals work? The manual is wrong. Many of us are still wondering what the actual mechanics are.

Want to know why shields are so effective against arrows? The manual is wrong - it would have you believe that blocking an arrow with a shield is the same as blocking a melee blow with a shield. In actuality, a successful shield parry totally negates the arrow.

If you're interested in how the basic mechanics actually work, the manual is going to steer you wrong something like 90% of the time, or isn't going to tell you.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

I struggle to accept that anyone can have 'no idea' what att 12 and def 10 mean after looking at a handful of units.

Militia has 8 attack, a soldier has 10, an elite has 13. Durr, what could they possibly mean?

I agree they wouldn't know exactly how they worked, but it isn't like the manual is reliable in the cases where you need to know exactly how things work. It doesn't properly explain how prot works, for example. It incorrectly explains how various other things work. No point in me listing this stuff - there's a thread about it.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

At the time that the manual was being created I got the impression that it wasnt supposed to explain all that. The devs, and Kristoffer especially, seemed to want the players to play for the info. The manual only had to tell them how to play the game, not how to win it. I remember arguments given on how long it would take the community to break down and make the formulas available. (it did take longer than predicted)

So I would tend to fault the manual only for things that are wrong. And only if they were wrong at the time it was created, not changed later. Its all impressions unless someone wants to create some actual percentages but my impression is that the manual is 99% good. That is if you arent expecting a strategy guide or a complete code breakdown. That was left to us to do and I think we did it very well.

Of course that disregards what its like to use it playing with any mod that massively changes the game. In that case the manual is probably not going to provide much.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

I hate to say it, but the devs are wrong if they think its ok to obscur information in an RTS. If they want to write a non-competitive game, like an RPG, they should do that instead.

During a game where you compete against other players, access to the rules should not be made hard.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

I'll grant you that the balancing is better in CBM (although I can only fully agree on the gods and pricing part + (many) spell changes - the luck scale I took in the non CBM has certainly paid off).

You missed my point. When you start driving a new car you don't read the documentation, you just drive. Every car drives differently, but the basic "mechanics" of driving are the same.
It's the same for the game - your strategies (and exploits) remain completely the same (prot vs damage - att vs def - awe versus morale - rout and take retreat route and defending against it - buff vs damage spells - etc) only the tools change (this spell has double aoe, berserker costs gems).
In most cases you shouldn't even have problems using something that works well in vanilla in CBM, only that you have more counters and alternatives.
...

...
It is certainly an advantage but it's another point why it is not good to learn the game by learning CBM 1.6. by heart, instead you learn the mechanics and adjust to it in the game you are (as you do in any case).
Which makes "play only CBM in order to learn it by heart" a moot point.

And lastly you have not provided a single reason why you want to have a fixed standard in any case. Of course you are free to play only CBM games. But that doesn't mean that "every game *should* use it".

Re: Updated Manual?
 

I think the devs are right. My own preference is to have a little obscurity. I tend to play more by feel than by spreadsheet. Nothing wrong with playing by spreadsheet, but I find learning what works and what doesn't to be part of the attraction of the game. I absolutely detest games where Unit A has a strength of 3 and Unit B has a strength of 2 and the outcome of every battle is always Unit A beats Unit B. No edge of your seat combat there. :p

Re: Updated Manual?
 

As someone who has done extensive documentation for Dominions 3, here is my opinion:

The manual is quite okay as manuals go. Some information has been outdated by patch changes. Some information was slightly incorrect to begin with, but for the most part even the incorrectly explained mechanics worked more or less in the direction the manual explanations pointed to.

You won't learn to play the game by reading the manual alone. For the most part you learn to play the game by actually playing the game and every now and then checking some little detail in the manual or some other thing for some generics.

There is a Strategy Index thread on this forum for a good reason, to give a handy reference to many of the resources provided by this community. Together with the existing game manual, the documentation resources here on this forum and lch's wiki and playing and experimenting by trial and error it's quite possible to learn the game and arguably do it more quickly than when it had just come out and large swathes of this documentation did not exist.

Writing good, user-proof documentation takes a LOT of time. When you have only a two man team, that documentation is going to be hard to get done thoroughly partly precisely because the developers know the code and the mechanics inside out closely enough that they won't be able to anticipate certain basic questions from completely new users. Never mind necessarily putting together a 1-2-3-A-B-C level of manual.

Never mind also that the documentation is required to be written in a non-native language. Knowing how to speak a foreign language and read and write in it is nowhere near the same as being able to write good technical documentation in that language. Not a trivial task when you combine it with all the other resource constraints here.

I originally found the unit stat listings too incomplete for my own requirements. So I made my own. That then ballooned into documenting other kinds of things that were amenable to listing so I'd have it all in one place. Thus the Dom3 DB.

Later I found the modding manual and the mapmaking manual unwieldy for my purposes. So I took the original documentation and rewrote it to better match what I needed. Funnily enough, those rewritten manuals are now the official documentation that comes with the game when you patch it.

The whole point of this is that I didn't sit around twiddling my thumbs and looking perplexed but instead took action.

So, in conclusion, if people want a completely updated, fully accurate manual, then they should write it themselves. If they can't be arsed, they had better learn to do with what they've got, which at this point in time is a considerable amount.

Would it be hard work? Yes. Would it cut into your available playing time? Yes. Would it require actually learning the game in order to accomplish it? Yes, though for non-newbies here this question is irrelevant. If all the effort spent on demanding improved documentation for x, y and z in Dominions had been spent on actually making that documentation, we'd probably already have an improved manual.

Illwinter is currently involved with a new project, with Dominions 3 support more of a sideshow, since it works "well enough" by now. That and everything I said above establishes the baseline circumstances surrounding this issue. If anyone has a problem with that, well, it'll stay as their problem until they do something about it on their own.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

@EDI
I was hoping you would show up. I had a thought (plug in the mandatory groans here)

Since it was brought up that CBM is so popular, and changes the game so much, have you felt a need for a cbm version of the DB? Not that Im suggesting that its you that needs to do one but I thought you might have looked into it and had a semi-neutral feel for how much difference there was.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

I have no objection if someone does a CBM version as long as I'm credited with the base work of the original DB in it.

The changes in and of themselves would not be hard, especially if it was automated. The only things you need to change in the DB document are the BaseU (units), BaseW (weapons) and BaseA (armor) tables. Everything on the display pages for units, weapons and armor is automatically taken care of by the spreadsheet functions in the full (non-static) DB spreadsheet file. A static version can then be made by copy-pasting the display page data contents and paste-specialing only numbers/text over it and saving the file with a different name.

Any new units, weapons and armor would have to be entered manually (or the entry automated if someone feels like writing the code) into the tables.

Any changes to existing weapons, armor and units could be automated by having a program that reads the mod file (since mod syntax dictates what stat goes where in the tables and is caused by what command). The program would then write the values of those commands directly into the corresponding column on the row related to that monster. Some things like the domsummons etc would probably be best to enter by hand, because they are the iffiest part of the DB documentation. Unlike lch's data dumps, they were not extracted from the game but extrapolated since the information was not directly visible from the game UI.

I know there are several competent programmers here, so if anyone feels up to it, go right ahead. I know quite specifically what needs to be done on the general level, but my coding skills are not up to the task. Hello World I can do, but ask me much beyond that and it starts getting hairy.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

Feh. It's not a matter of fault. Who cares which problems in the manual are justified or not? This thread is about the state of the manual now, not when it was written. Has it been updated? No. Does that mean it isn't reliable? Yes.

This does not indicate a judgement of the devs, Bruce Geryk or anyone else. It definitely raises the topic of documentation generally, but that discussion does not have to involve finding fault.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

Hmm, it came to me that there is one very important thing regarding the manual that should be kept in mind.

It is NOT meant for ANY kind of digital distribution. So in case anyone does have the inclination and the stamina to rewrite the manual to be accurate, CONTACT SHRAPNEL GAMES STAFF FIRST AND ASK PERMISSION. Annette would be the best choice.

Errata documents such as the ones we already have are a different beast, because they simply correct erroneous information in the manual and at most quote the erroneous excerpt. An errata document does not reproduce the manual in its entirety, like a complete rewrite would.

The modding and mapmaking manuals did not suffer from this problem when I did them because they were already distributed in electronic form with the game and that information was simply rearranged in the new modding document. By the time we had the new mapmaking manual, those rewritten documents had become the official ones.

The issues in this post cannot be stressed enough, since they involve intellectual property rights related to Shrapnel Games and Illwinter Game Design as companies and only those entities can have final say on the matter. I don't want anyone to get in hot water because of my previous post on overall Dominions 3 documentation.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

I wonder why that came to you.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

Actually, that's actually how the manual says the missile equation works. Shield Prot should only come into play in melee, according to the manual.

-Max

Re: Updated Manual?
 

I meant that in a quantitative sense. In Diablo II, it was pretty clear to me that higher Attack meant you hit more often, and higher Defense meant you got hit less often. It NOT clear, without recourse to the LCS or the smart people on the web, to figure out whether a +200 boost to defense was worth losing +1000 to attack versus monsters in Act II. In Dominions, what I meant is that without knowing the formulas in the manual it would be extremely hard to make quantitative decisions, e.g. to evaluate whether Helheim is better off with an E9S9 bless or an F9W9 bless vs. EA Ermor. Or to use your example, how many militia does it take to beat an elite soldier? How many regular soldiers does it take? Which is more cost-effective?

While there is some fun in discovery, and there is even fun in discovering mistakes in the manual, if we didn't at least know that the basic Dom3 mechanic is almost ALWAYS an opposed roll with DRN added to both sides--which we do, thanks to the manual--we wouldn't even know the correct form of questions to ask.

-Max

Re: Updated Manual?
 

That's not how I read "Damage is calculated identically to melee combat."

Re: Updated Manual?
 

How do you read the missile formula in that case? It's quite explicit about the shield effect. Can't quote it since I'm AFB but I'm sure you're familiar with it.

-Max

Re: Updated Manual?
 

The melee defense roll also includes shield parrying. I assumed ranged combat tracked shield hits like melee in order to make damage work the same way, based on the manual text. Shield parries totally negating arrows makes damage calculations rather different.

Re: Updated Manual?
 

The manual definitely gave a lot of people the wrong impression about missile parry. Given that it currently works in a completely counter intuitive way I'd say it's a failing of the manual to not explicitly state the way it does work.

Hide shield vs boulder anyone?

Re: Updated Manual?
 

So this thread discussion petered out a couple months ago but i was flipping through old forum posts and saw something that caught my eye:

Has any information been released about this new project?

And I did want to weigh in my 2 cents on the question of whether illwinter should spend time updating the manual. My answer is "no." The community should do that with a wiki and if people have questions they can always use this forum. The devs time, I think, is better spent on a new project for us to enjoy.

Ich's wiki at http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/ is coming along quite nicely. But it is having technical problems at the moment.