Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

:confused:

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Vastness

Ok.. Hypothetically...

So my favorite nemesis, Bob the vastness, is paralyzed and surrounded by 100+ undead and misc others most with antimagic (negate blood vengance a bit?), mistform, strength of giants and weapons of sharpness (should negate etherealness???). Anyway, they beat on Bob (paralyzed, defense 0, protection 0, fatigue 90,lucky, ethereal, blood vengance +2, MR 24) for many many rounds dying from blood vengence from the score but barely scratching Bob. You'd think one lucky hit per round at least would bypass BV and luck and chop off a big chunk of otherworldy ooze... but no.

the other odd thing is Bob Paralyzes quite easly but shugs off dozens of enslaves like water. I do have the 5MB -ddd debug. Reads like beatnik poetry..

-- so hits from phantasmal wolves easily miss due to MR

hitloc Phantasmal Wolf strikes Vastness wl0 diff4 -> 4
hitunit 25 14852 dmg0 spec4097 ba4
spec_mr pen 12 mr 24 (unr 25 vic 14852 dmg 2 eff 0)
resisted

--- but the other normal attacks can't get through the BV even with decent MR on the attacker.. odd no MR check for BV that I can see

hitloc Iron Corpse strikes Vastness wl1 diff4 -> 4
hitunit 1085 14852 dmg5 spec2097217 ba4
damage shift negated 21 pnts of dmg
hitunit 14852 1085 dmg21 spec128 ba4
damage 24 on Iron Corpse, spec0x80 ba4
Mistform negated 23 pnts of dmg
Mistform expired (dmg 24)
1085 striking with weapon Short Sword. att28 def-1
hitloc Iron Corpse strikes Vastness wl1 diff4 -> 4
hitunit 1085 14852 dmg5 spec2097217 ba4
damage shift negated 18 pnts of dmg

Does BV work off the defender's MR? That might answer some things. In any event, hats off to Robert the Vastness:evil:!

-ssj

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

Hmmm odd, maybe the vastness picked up some of my tenacity? Or it is simply awesome enough to ignore such trifle as reality and physical laws in the game world.

I must say I'm surprised to see it still alive when clicking on my province.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

I watched the fight a few times. Some things I noticed:

The guys that you had weapons of sharpness died much faster. That was obviously due to by-passing etheralness

Most of your troops had MR of 10. They were summoned after the anti-magic so that didn't help them. Bob has blood vengence at
+2. So the typical guy had 1/8 chance of hitting (etheralness and luck) and then had to pass a MR check at -2 (~30%). This means that only 3.75% of your attacks would land.

I think you were unlucky even so.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

oh also the base MR check is actually 12 (it was an epiphany when I learned this), so it's a -4 roll to beat BV+2 with MR 10.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

Why is it 12? I assume that Bob would function as the spell "caster", and since Blood Vengeance is Blood path, Bob's astral magic shouldn't matter.

Am I missing something?

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

You're not missing anything. It's just simply that the baseline mr check is 12 in the game as a whole, not 10 as you would expect.

It has nothing to do with bob or his magic paths really (and I'm pretty sure blood skill don't affect the mr check for blood vengance), but it explains this battle a bit.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

Good points. I did not realize the check was at 12. That also explains a litle better my 24MR air queens dropping like flies to boosted MHs.

It was pretty cool to watch BV pop them like ripe fruit. Image if Bob had slots! <shudders>.

-ssj

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

Interesting so each of your guys had about a 2% chance of hitting. This leads us to the cliche'

"You couldn't hit the broadside of a paralyzed vastness"

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

I'm a bit new to the game... how does one get to recruit The Vastness?

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

The Vastness is a void monster that R'lyeh has a chance to summon through their void gate.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

No, weapons of sharpness does not make the weapons magical or bypass BE in any way. (I actually tested it to be sure, sometimes the game mechanics can surprise you:))
Weapons of sharpness must make them die faster in some other way.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

Does it just mean that when the damage is applied to them its AP so is more likely to get through their armor? Or does BV not work like that? I've never been quite sure.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

Well since these are iron corpse we'll talking about, they have high prot, so I guess... the reflected damage retains the AP property and went through their own armor faster?

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

Did the Vastness have any protection buffs cast on him?

I did some testing and log diving :). The way blood vengeance seems to work is:
1. The damage that penetrated the protection of the vengeful one is negated.
2. As retaliation the attacker is hit by a AN attack with damage equal to the negated damage. This attack is subject to DRN rolls like any ordinary attack. (Which is why you sometimes see the little blood cloud effect on the attackers but no damage. Blood vengeance was activated but the damage roll was less then 1.)

This severely reduces the usefulness of BV. Building a strategy around BV would require low protection, inviting heavy damage from anyone with decent MR.

There are many other interesting things to test but no more testing for me today :)

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

Interesting. I haven't played with BV much.
So it's always a normal AN attack? Does that apply to other types of damage? Spell, elemental weapon attacks, etc?
I'm pretty sure I've seen BV stop Frozen Hearts and kill the caster. Can't remember if the caster had CR or not.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

I know very little about BV myself. Maybe all this is already known, but it's not in the wiki at least.

It seems likely that it works the same way for all types of damage but I only tested with physical attacks.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

I believe your description is a bit off Kadelake. When blood vengeance triggers the attacker is hit by whatever attack was just negated, including all it's properties. That means if, for instance blood vengeance negates a hit from pillar of fire, then if the attacker is fire immune then he will never take damage. If the attacker has weapons of sharpness active, then he's hit with AP damage. So, weapons of sharpness is quite detrimental in this scenario.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

To clarify, BV triggers when a "hit" occurs, so high defense/awe/vine shield, etc. will make BV not trigger that much. High protection, mistform, & regeneration is what you want for maximum BV triggers, basically you want to get "hit" a bunch with the hits not doing that much to you. Not sure about luck & etherealness (my guess is they keep a hit from occurring), but it seems like BV triggers when mirror images are hit.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

No, I believe that you're mistaken.

I tested with attackers with 5 damage and 20 protection (black hawks with army of gold). Against targets with 5 protection, BV was killing hawks left and right. But against targets with 30 protection it never even triggered. I even tested with "naked", protection 0, hawks against 30 protection enemies and BV never triggered. (Only the defenders had BV. There where no other effects or damage shields on the units. Fatigue was kept at 0 for the defenders.)

My conclusion is that my previous description was correct. The part about DRNs comes from reading the log. (Log diving isn't as fun as it sounds :p)

I don't know how BV handles elemental damage or mistform. I wanted to test it but didn't have the time :o I guess BV will handle BE the same way as mistform, since both BE and mistform activates after the damage has been dealt.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

I just played around with BV and Frozen Heart and the results weren't what I expected. When BV triggered, the Skratti casting Frozen Heart took the damage, despite being cold immune.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

I dont believe that the attackers defenses matter - I think it is just a straightline damage applied. Sympathetic magic - you hit me for 20 damage - so if you fail the mr you take the damage.

Seems in keeping with the name of the spell and description.

I did a fair bit of testing with FFA's. I could still find no real way to make BV interesting. There aren't enough items or spells that add to BV to make it interesting - as in you can't get a high enough BV value (combined with hp and regen) to make it a viable strategy.

Although I would ask the original poster if it occured in a +magic or -magic province, where the penalty or bonus to the save might have made a difference.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

Interesting. You got me motivated enough to do some more testing even though I don't have the time :)

I can confirm that elemental damage is not returned through BV. (I tested with springhawks, lightning immune and lightning attack.)

I also tested BV, BE and mistform together. Turns out that after damage has been dealt (penetrated the target's protection), they are checked in that order: BV -> BE -> mistform. If the first one fails to negate the damage, it goes on to the second one and so on.

That means that the combination BV, BE and mistform can be effective. A Dakini with Robe of Shadows would be really fearsome against mundane weapons :shock:
But attackers with magical weapons should make short work of that strategy.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

I see! BE check coming in after BV is surprising and very interesting, and means vastness is better then it looks as it's already ethereal (prot 0, BV +2). I wonder if luck also comes after BV check, I may have to test later today. Did you find the sequence in the log using -ddd?

I was infinitely curious in the order of buff checks (luck, BE, fire/astral shield, eye/vine shield, BV ...etc) for effective buffing, this definitely is good data.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

there was a thread where someone tested order of attacks / defenses applied.

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

My search-fu is still weak then, I'll look further thanks

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

cp
I believe it was a magic+1 prov. There seems to be some interest in the subject so I've attached the debug -ddd if someone needs some light reading.
-ssj

On another note I did see in the debug that game mechanics do try to account for friendly fire (though it doesn't always seem so:hurt:)


...
rightplayer teamhp 2345 max 2830
Mrlreport (right): good179 broken35 autobreak0 turn10
Removing flyatt order for 25 Phantasmal Wolf (2105 335250)
Too high friendly fire for Adept of the Silver Order (unit228 snr-1)

Re: Bob the Vastness..... Dead to rights?
 

I found it in the log using -dd. What is the difference between -dd and -ddd?
That info would be great! Do you remember anything that might help us find it? Like who posted the tests?