Strange horror behaviour (likely bug)

[alexti]

I've encountered rather interesting behaviour. My rainbow pretender was quietly doing his things (meaning searching for magic sites) when he was attacked by Hunter of Heroes. He didn't have any horror marks (or anything remarkable at all). After he has defeated the horror he got morphed into "Old Standard" (what is "Old Standard"?). He has retained all his magic levels, but not physical characteristics. As it happened on that turn he was moving to another province to search that was [as it came out unfortunately] populated by barbarians. Needless to say that in the new morphed form my rainbow pretender has promptly got slaughtered http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

I haven't seen (or read) anything indicating the possibility of morphing due to horror attack. I wonder if it's a bug.

Btw, why he has even got attacked by a horror?

I kept saved game in case it's a bug and IW would want to investigate.

[Taqwus]

Can't shed much light, except that within a fairly short time the Hunter of Heroes ate two of my EA Abysian HOFers, neither of whom was horror-marked, and away from ex. Vale of Infinite Horror.

I was wondering whether this was a weird property of Malphas the Corrupter (attracting horrors to attack his teammates), but perhaps this particular DH has become more active with 3.01.

[tka]

Several of my HoF Starspawn mages have been eaten by Hunter of Heroes since patch 3.01. None of the poor fellows did have horror mark.

[Arralen]

Now it ate my Frogzard-prophet ... .
He was 4th in the HoF, although he had the most kills (7).
He was cursed (witch event), but not horror-marked.

This sucks .. losing a 350gold mage on turn 8 !!

[Johan K]

This was the funniest bug in a long time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif And it is a bug, no horrors should appear unless you are horror marked or some mighty blood spell is in effect.

[Nerfix]

I also got attacked by RAWRku, but since I was testing out one of Amos' mods I thought that the creature that was attacked was powerful enough to draw to horror's attention anyway.

[Endoperez]

Johan K said:
This was the funniest bug in a long time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif And it is a bug, no horrors should appear unless you are horror marked or some mighty blood spell is in effect.



Can it be avoided? I'm thinking of disabling Hall of Fame. Would that work?

[Amos]

I also got attacked by RAWRku, but since I was testing out one of Amos' mods I thought that the creature that was attacked was powerful enough to draw to horror's attention anyway.



Lol funny http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Tyrant]

Yeah, while this is indeed quite funny, it's also the kind of bug that can hose a MP game right quick, when is it going to be fixed?

[Meglobob]

Tyrant said:
Yeah, while this is indeed quite funny, it's also the kind of bug that can hose a MP game right quick, when is it going to be fixed?



Yea most of the MP games have patched already, when the turns start coming in with dead heros...well the screams will be loud...

[UninspiredName]

Hunter of Heroes... The name sort of suggests he goes around murdering heroes. Seems like a special form of horror, that only needs a gold star as his beacon. If turning off the Hall of Fame stops heroic abilities, I'd say it would most likely work. I've never tried messing with the Hall of Fame, so I wouldn't know for sure.

[olaf73]

lol please hotfix ASAP!

[PhilD]

This reminds me of a funny Dino Buzzati short story - the one where the rulers of the world start dying unexplainably, of apparently natural causes, one each week, until the whole world is at peace because nobody wants to have more power than the others.

Beware the Hall of Fame! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

(I've seen this as well - my pretender in a SP game met with the Hunter after a few turns)

[PDF]

Isn't Old Standard the unit id 0 -or 1- ,that is, the first existing unit ?

[alexti]

Johan K said:
This was the funniest bug in a long time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif And it is a bug, no horrors should appear unless you are horror marked or some mighty blood spell is in effect.


Johan, did it make sense to you what happened with my pretender (getting morphed) too? If you need a savegame I can send it.

[FrankTrollman]

In the sample picture, your god does have a horror mark. Did he get that during the battle with Hunter of Heroes?

Or did he pick it up as an event during the battle?

-Frank

[Hetzer]

Hmmm are you sure that it is a bug? I tried 2 games with sc´s... One with vanheim ea and one with abysia ma...

I played both in the 30th turn and never see such a horror. with abysia i had even 5 heroes in the hof.

Are you playing with luck-3 or something?

[alexti]

FrankTrollman said:
Or did he pick it up as an event during the battle?



Horror has attacks that give horror mark - that's how he got it (in the battle that resulted in morphing)

[alexti]

Hetzer said:
Hmmm are you sure that it is a bug?


I wasn't sure. Morphing looked highly suspicious. But Johan (from Illwinter) said that horror attack is a bug.

[Cainehill]

Tyrant said:
Yeah, while this is indeed quite funny, it's also the kind of bug that can hose a MP game right quick, when is it going to be fixed?



Yeah. Not that "amusing" to see the developers describing it as simply one of the most amusing bugs they've seen, when it can totally [censored] up an MP game.

Then again, the army movement spells not working can [censored] up any game, and they didn't see fit to fix that in the patch. Nor the unbalanced pretenders.

If I were only a player, I'd be less disgruntled. As a programmer/developer, I'm starting to be unhappy for the horrible example it sets. (Especially for a game that set pre-order sales records.)

[Corwin]

Any ETA on hotfix yet from devs? (or at least confirmation that hotfix is coming)

[LeSquide]

Wait. The travel spells are still bugged? >.<

[Jack_Trowell]

I confirm that the eater of heroes attack units in the HoF without any horror mark.

Tried several games yesterday :

in the first game, 2 mages (both with heroic abilities) got eaten in the same game.

Second game : ermor with awake prince of death : my pretender was killed in a year of two (did'nt have any item yet, and raise dead in not enought versus an horror).

Third game : another mage eaten

I didn't have any game where I didn't lose at least one commander.

Scales that could have an influence :

magic was neutral or drain in all games (so I don't think that high magic can increase the chance)

luck was +2 or +3 in all 3 games (I'm tryibng differents nations and want to see their heroes ^_^)
I would think that if anything luck should decrease such random attack, but from a previous poster in the thread, it look like it could increase ?!

[Nerfix]

LeSquide said:
Wait. The travel spells are still bugged? >.<

Yes. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Archonsod]

I dunno, it is kind of funny.

Actually, I'd like to see the hunter of hero's left in, if tuned down a tad. It's a nice restriction on SC's.

Alternatively, it might be fun to have it randomly attack arena champions...

[Teraswaerto]

Do SCs need still more restrictions? I don't have any MP experience with Dom3 yet, but I've gotten the impression that they are much weaker than in Dom2, and that there are more counters to them.

Originally, from the horror's description, I thought the Hunter of Heroes was supposed to attack entities in the HoF at random whether they were horror marked or not, just not quite as often as it now does with the bug.

IMO, misfortune 3 (or maybe just 2) should cause random horror attacks even against non-marked targets.

[alexti]

Archonsod said:
Actually, I'd like to see the hunter of hero's left in, if tuned down a tad. It's a nice restriction on SC's.



It's not much of a restriction on SCs. They aren't really bothered much by those attacks (unless they get morphed into something else, of course). Scripting is pretty much the same (whether for horror or for planned batle) anyway. Supporting battlemages are in worse position, because their scripts designed to support an army with powerful spells don't work so well vs horrors.

[NickW]

Nerfix said:

LeSquide said:
Wait. The travel spells are still bugged? >.<

Yes. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif



Wait, what? I just used gateway like 5 times in an SP game to move troops rapidly around the map.

[Nerfix]

The patch didn't mention of the spells being fixed. Did it work? O_o

[Arralen]

Nerfix said:
The patch didn't mention of the spells being fixed. Did it work? O_o


8th october
* Correct game name in credits.
* No more snowfall events under water.
* Gateway fixed.

[NickW]

Nerfix said:
The patch didn't mention of the spells being fixed. Did it work? O_o



Yeah it worked. I was playing Suaromatia and I'd run across a site that let me recruit S3 mages. So I'd recruited a bunch of them, equipped them with whips of command and the astral boosting hats, and was using them to zip groups of 35 troops from my capital directly to the front lines of my expansion. 35 troops doesn't sound like much, but it can be a big impact when it's 35 hydras suddenly showing up http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[mivayan]

alexti said:

Archonsod said:
Actually, I'd like to see the hunter of hero's left in, if tuned down a tad. It's a nice restriction on SC's.



It's not much of a restriction on SCs. They aren't really bothered much by those attacks (unless they get morphed into something else, of course). Scripting is pretty much the same (whether for horror or for planned batle) anyway. Supporting battlemages are in worse position, because their scripts designed to support an army with powerful spells don't work so well vs horrors.


The bugged hunter of heroes attacks isn't much of a restriction on SCs? It's an assassination. Your unit goes first, then usually dies.

Or are you talking about normal horror marks?

[Meglobob]

2nd year, my pretender blue dragon got attacked by the hunter of heros, slain in 1 hit.

Hall of heros, contains 10/15 dead heros/pretenders by the 2nd game yr...the hunter of heros as been busy...erm...not what I would call in any way balanced.

Game destroyer/wrecker would be my words...

[alexti]

mivayan said:
The bugged hunter of heroes attacks isn't much of a restriction on SCs? It's an assassination. Your unit goes first, then usually dies.


I didn't notice SC having much difficulty in slaying Hunter of Heroes - it has rather mediocre stats by SC standards. I imagine you face the risk of failing MR roll if you're attacked before you can put MR items or spells on your SC. But considering that the time frame between getting into HoF and getting MR items is small and that early your SC is probably your pretender (with MR 18) overall chances of your SC getting killed are pretty low. I'm not considering a risk of getting morphed here (nobody else has seen it, so I suppose it's pretty rare occurence).

HoF full of slained heroes is usually a result of battlemages or early thugs quickly getting into HoF and they stand little chance vs HoH.

[biekert]

Man, the Hunter of Heroes is a bloodthirsty chap in 3.01... he attacks a hero every 3-4 turns!

[mivayan]

Year 8, early winter. I'm playing LA ermor vs AIs. My duskelder SC got attacked by a hunter of heroes (because of the bug in dominions 3.01).

Wormfeast the dusk elder
current hp 35 from previous life draining, max hp 30, prot 18 morale 20 MR 21 enc 0 fat 0 str 20 att 13 def 28 prec 16

These stats include the underwater penalty.
5 of the def is parry. then +3 att/def after round 1 quickness.
Magic W2 D3.

weapon is built-in life drain. items: Charcoal shield, helm of horrors, chainmail of displacement, boots of giant strength, pendant of luck, amulet of antimagic.

Rarku the hunter of heroes
hp 92 prot 25 morale 30 mr 20 enc 0 fat 0
str 17 att 20 def 20 prec 15
Fear +15.

Attacks: (attack/defence/length)
1x Consume soul. Damage: Death (0/0/0). MR negates.
1x Astral fetters, Damage: Special (0/0/0).
2x Astral Hooks, Damage -5, nbr of attacks 3, (0/0/0). Horror mark.
2x Life drain, Damage 0 (AP, life drain). (0,0,0).
1x Curse luck. Damage: special. AoE 1. (0,0,4). MR negates.
All these are magic weapons.

Round 1: My SC cast quickness. enemy attacks, gains +4 hp somehow, but my SC hasn't lost any hp or fatigue.
Round 2: My SC cast soul vortex (61 fatigue now). Enemy attacks, gains +9 hp, my SC loses 11 hp and gets a horror mark.
Round 3: My SC rounts in fear, with 24 hp remaining. And auto-dies.

Maybe i'd had a chance... but I lose 16 def from his attacks before the two life drain attacks, so need like 36 def to dodge those half the time.

[Shovah32]

In another thread i lsited what happened to my SC, it was a titan chassis (200ish health) with enough reinvig to keep him goings for good, a mirror image (air lvl 11) that took up 9 squares, mistform, around 6 high strength attacks, great def, good prot, 18 mr.
Went down after a few rounds of combat with this guy (getting severely horror marked in the process)

[Graeme Dice]

I believe that the hunter of heroes has an area of effect attack or two, and those cannot be dodged. Mistform wouldn't have helped, as most of the horrors attacks are magical, and a MR of only 18 means that 5% of the instant death attacks are going to succeed.

[Cainehill]

Gee, wonder why people are coming up with HoH nerf patches. If age patches were easier, I expect those would be there too.

[Twan]

This bug at least showed how the doom horrors are overpowered (able to kill not only an unlucky, or weak SC but any pretender even well geared, in a high dominion province and with bodyguards and a duel script). I probably continue to use a nerf horrors mod (with a smaller but general nerf like all doom/unique horrors = normal horrors with a little more hp) after the bug is fixed, and will prefer to play mp games using this kind of mod. I can't see the interest of these "bad luck you are dead" creatures in what is supposed to be a strategy game (and especially when horror mark is not an high level spell), even if they have 0,0001% chance of attacking someone (what is worse strategy wise than several %, who wants extremely random game-breaking events ?).

[Hammerstein]

Can you use Wish to get a Hunter of Heroes for yourself ?

[Endoperez]

Yes, you can. He might attack the caster instead, and will leave after a battle or two or couple, or gets bored. And I think you might get some other Doom Horror even when you Wish for a spesific one. Slave to Unreason doesn't follow your orders... and makes random units, possibly commanders feeble-minded in the province he's in. Pretty nasty, as he will stay parked in that one province.

[tromper]

I agree with Meglobob. I've been playing a random map single player game this morning and have lost my pretender and four heroes within about the first 25-30 turns. I don't know what the deal is, but I don't recall this happening previously. And if I'm horror marked, why isn't it showing up in the Hero/Pretender info screen during the assassination battle playback and paused? *confused*

Bleh. A game breaker for me. At least today. Off to EVE. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Oh yeah, and off topic, but the random map generator routinely screws up province border placement as well as province name placement. But no big deal, comparatively. *wave*

[NTJedi]

alexti said:
[
I didn't notice SC having much difficulty in slaying Hunter of Heroes - it has rather mediocre stats by SC standards. I imagine you face the risk of failing MR roll if you're attacked before you can put MR items or spells on your SC. But considering that the time frame between getting into HoF and getting MR items is small and that early your SC is probably your pretender (with MR 18) overall chances of your SC getting killed are pretty low. I'm not considering a risk of getting morphed here (nobody else has seen it, so I suppose it's pretty rare occurence).

HoF full of slained heroes is usually a result of battlemages or early thugs quickly getting into HoF and they stand little chance vs HoH.



Well this depends on the turn of the game... SCs attacked on turn_10 usually don't do so well against this horror. And this horror carries a nasty attack which can give its victim a horror mark. So even if your SC does survive there's a chance the SC or Pretender has been horror marked.

[alexti]

With a standard research it's hard to make SC much before turn 10. I suppose you need at least Alt-2 or Con-2 to make a "sort of" SC. And then he'll need couple of turns to get into HoF, so the "dangerous zone" is really narrow.

Mivayan has posted his SC stats (SC with Att 13?) and I'm not exactly sure why it did so badly. MR 21 is kind of low, but I'm not sure if 24 vs 21 makes such a big difference. (My SC had everything slightly better, except attack that was somewhere in 20s). With attack-13 he wouldn't probably stand a chance anyway, but it didn't seem to affect the particular scenario. Perhaps it was combination of all factors with a bad luck.

[NTJedi]

alexti said:
With a standard research it's hard to make SC much before turn 10. I suppose you need at least Alt-2 or Con-2 to make a "sort of" SC. And then he'll need couple of turns to get into HoF, so the "dangerous zone" is really narrow.




Many pretenders are SCs ready to go solo on turn 2 into many types of provinces.
It's easy to enter the hall of fame early in the game... first turn select one of your starting commanders as your prophet and second turn have him bless, smite, smite, smite. Unfortunately the HoF is cursed with that horror.

[alexti]

Those are hardly SCs - they're more like thugs capable of dealing with indies. My point was only that this horror things doesn't make big difference for SCs. For someone like smiting prophet or battlemage it's a big issue. Looking at it from another point of view, in Dom2 it wasn't uncommon to get your dragon killed by some outrageuosly lucky militiaman in the early game. Different scenarios, but the same result as with HoH.

[NTJedi]

alexti said:
Those are hardly SCs - they're more like thugs capable of dealing with indies. My point was only that this horror things doesn't make big difference for SCs. For someone like smiting prophet or battlemage it's a big issue. Looking at it from another point of view, in Dom2 it wasn't uncommon to get your dragon killed by some outrageuosly lucky militiaman in the early game. Different scenarios, but the same result as with HoH.



Vampire Queen, Prince of Darkness and a few others can deal with more than indies especially with an awe bonus. Every level of research buffs their powers even greater. As the game progresses and opponents acquire tough summons and battlemages have learned battle spells these pretenders have to wear equipment to maintain SC status.

[Saxon]

Howdy,

We had the HOH show up in our MP game. This is an old thread that I found by searching. Did the HOH get altered/nerfed in any way since late 06?

Thanks!

[NTJedi]

The hunter of heroes is a horror which was originally bugged attacking anyone in the Hall of Fame. This has been fixed and to my knowledge the horror was not nerfed.

[Endoperez]

You need severe Horror Marking to get attacked nowadays, and Horror Mark the spell might have been slightly adjusted.

[vfb]

If AC is up, then the HoH is much more likely to show up, and he doesn't require horror marks either. Had him attack a super-high-kill-count commander of mine in a 3.14 MP game, with AC up.

[Saxon]

So horror marking is required unless Astral Corruption is up? Our game is way too early for AC.

Also, I seem to remember horror marking being permanent, even with pretender revival. Is that correct or can it be removed?

[Kamamura]

Old Standard... hmmm... sounds like a name of an exceptionally good booze :-)

[Endoperez]

Horror Mark is indeed permanent, but getting it to the levels where it's dangerous isn't easy. Huge amount of Horror Marks, or perhaps that astral geysir spell, and then a Titan who is hit by a huge horror's Astral Hooks (cause horrormarking) might eventually get so badly horror-marked that it would be useless, but I haven't actually heard it happen after Hunter of Heroes was fixed. There might have been other changes to horror marks at that time as well, so it might not be possible any more.

[Kristoffer O]

I think the horror mark lvl decreases (but not disappear) upon death nowdays, meaning your god is less likely to get attacked when he is called back.

[meister_miagi]

My pretender just got killed in a MP game by a hunter of heroes one turn after I got horror marked. Then he got attacked by a horror again on the turn he was called back. Wonder what he he to get such a bad curse.

[llamabeast]

When the first horror killed him it probably also covered him in lots of nasty horror marks.

Very unlucky to get attacked by the hunter of heroes so quickly though!

[NTJedi]

Kristoffer O said:
I think the horror mark lvl decreases (but not disappear) upon death nowdays, meaning your god is less likely to get attacked when he is called back.



This helps somewhat, yet unfortunately the attacking horrors have one or more astral claws which will add a horror mark level for every strike. The pretenders with lots of hitpoints will usually return with more horror marks as a result and even more likely to be attacked.

Unless I misunderstand the astral claw attack?

[Kristoffer O]

You are not mistaken. The hunter of heroes is particularily bad on the hooks. An attack from it will probably doom your pretender to one additional death. Hopefully that attack will not be from the HoH.