Make it be able to tell the happiness level of a servitor when you look at it? Might be reall hard to do, but it would be soo nice and make detect charm more useful.

look elemental
You sense that an elemental is content.
You sense that an elemental is ambivalent.
You sense that an elemental is upset.

Something like that would be a really cool tool to have. Maybe even as an edge you can get for the spell. Thanks for the thought!

If it's not pounding on you, all is well.

That don't quite help you as much as they could because they don't like your face. A passive-aggressive archon, for example, wouldn't be a nice thing to have when you are relying it to heal you in a fight.

Instead... only try to realize the truth ...

I don't understand why you people want to de-mystify things, when it's exactly that mystery, that makes it fun/rewarding.

Conjurers are clearly designed to be hard to figure out, just accept that, or play something else.

They've put a great deal of effort into designing ways for the process to wrong. Yes, there's a system for finding out how to make things go "more right", but if it was too obvious there'd be no point in implementing "wrong" ways to do it, because then no one would ever do it wrong.

Splntrd

Or are you saying that evil conjurer's archon performs just as well as goodie conjurer's archon if they happen to be same kind of archons of the same level? When I levelled with an evil conjie who called an arhon, he decided to use a demon/devil instead since the archon was clearly being passive-aggressive and didn't really dish out healing for the conjie.

I'm just pointing out that the happiness is a sliding scale as far as I know and not quite as simple two-state happy/whacking you -system you let out. My point was not to demystify conjies, just to show that there's something there, I don't know all the details. I think it is better that it is known that there is more content and depth into the servitor happiness than the sudden state switch from happy to whacking you.

BTW. I never said that I wanted a more thorough means for conjies to find out the servitor happiness. The disagreement was what you said and not with what your policy decision was, which I think was fine.

And aimed to point out what I said on the follow-up post.

At high level, happiness is rather easy. You just know an evil conjie isn't going to do as good with an Angel/Archon as an actual goodie. That's just obvious.

Other than that, it's try your luck. Which is what the entire class is about.

They've made conjurers harder and more of a crap shoot over the years and it's kinda annoying. It also seems like when they added conjurer edges, they made conjuring harder to compensate, so now with edges is what it used to be like before edges. I could be insane, but with around 10 hero conjurers under my belt, this is my general feeling. It's really such a pain now days.

You're insane.

I'm just saying.

He is. But the overall point that there's a lot of "black box" stuff related to conjurers is still semi-valid, I think.

.

Take a skill which you can use every 50 ticks.. Which has vague and incomplete helpfiles and requires him to use all of his mana several times over which has a VERY good chance of killing you. If you ask "why is this skill killing me". You will be called a noob and told you should of used your full mana bar in the circle & binding & dismissal. Without fail the answer to every death is "you made a mistake".


In truth servitors happiness is RNG to begin with, and involves too many unknown to be managed perfectly.

One question I've always had (for example) is: "How do you conjure servitors which aren't pissed off on arrival?". This seems to be the most glaring problem for the class imo.

- Don't summon within cabal grounds
- Don't summon within the guild

- Don't summon orderly oriented servitors unto wild areas
- Don't summon wild servitors into civilized grounds
- Some may like to see your familiar around, others don't

- Some servitors would likely be happy to find something in particular, upon their arrival

- Don't play a neutral/evil conjie before trying a goodie.

- If all else fails, a strong bind is your friend.

And so on ...

Just put yourself in a servitor's shoes. Basically, you grab them by the proverbial collar and drag them into a new environment. If they're happy or not depends upon how welcoming it is to the servitor, or not.

But what do I know ...

Never did notice a differance in wilderness/civilization though. Also always seemed to get better conjurations outdoors than indoors. For archons anyhow. Also, I think Nep just posted the other day that familiars don't help you get better conjurations.

But don't take everything Nep says as the literal truth
Doesn't necessarily mean it's not true though.

Good to know. Seriously though, all I play are neutral conjurers pretty much and they have been much more diffacult to play since edges came in. I rarely died to a lesser arch-angel prior to edges being put in the game. Now a lesser arch-angel is a no #### 50% chance of death. Ah well.

Honestly, y'all make this more complicated than it actually is.

Through all of my characters I've had a MUCH higher chance of getting a strong archon during the day. That's archons from around 10 conjurers. I'd do the math, but I am way too lazy. If this is true... wow... I'm going to start playing differant.

>- Don't summon orderly oriented servitors unto wild areas

Doesn't matter. Although that's an interesting idea this isn't currently a factor.

>- Don't summon wild servitors into civilized grounds

Doesn't matter. Same commentary.

>- Some may like to see your familiar around, others don't

Doesn't matter.

Here is the complete list of factors as to whether a servitor is angry or not upon initial arrival, in the general case:

- What kind of servitor it is (demons are more murderous than archons, etc.)

- Your alignment/ethos relative to the servitor's alignment/ethos.

- Your charisma.

And then there's some luck. Sometimes even if you're good you get an angel that isn't all that happy. Them's the breaks.

Exceptions to the above or cases where there are additional factors are mostly obvious or stated in helpfiles, such as svirf and earth elementals.

That's it. It's really not that mysterious or complicated.

>Take a skill which you can use every 50 ticks.. Which has
>vague and incomplete helpfiles and requires him to use all of
>his mana several times over which has a VERY good chance of
>killing you. If you ask "why is this skill killing me". You
>will be called a noob and told you should of used your full
>mana bar in the circle & binding & dismissal.

Uhm, no you won't. And it's not required.

>In truth servitors happiness is RNG to begin with, and
>involves too many unknown to be managed perfectly.

No, it's fairly stable to begin with.

>One question I've always had (for example) is: "How do you
>conjure servitors which aren't pissed off on arrival?". This
>seems to be the most glaring problem for the class imo.

Ripping someone from their plane of existince, bringing them into yours and binding them to your will isn't a "happy" thing. Take it a step further, being an evil conjurer and ripping an archon from its plane of existence and binding it to do your bidding is likely going to make it even more pissed. Taking that archon, and hunting down some dude in Fortress goes against everything the archon stands for (but is bound to do your bidding so ultimately can't resist, but sure as hell can get pissed off about it).

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

A conjurer can conjure a servitor of the -same- alignment and it will come angry. If it's angry, it'll turn at an inopportune time even if the conjurer has made an effort to please it.

Which is why I made a post about making contact other planes not so painful. That was actually much more important to me than this post. Not sure why it blew up like it did while the other post got ignored. However, I don't think conjurers are broken. Don't take that awayt from my posts. If you are smart, you will rarely die. But it takes a #### ton of patience.

>At 36% health the demon turns and kills the conjurer.

And this has absolutly nothing to do with how happy or sad the harmentia demon is. It's just a bloodthirsty bastard preying on your weakness.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

But this type of demon doesn't turn on you when your health is low. And 36%? That's not a threshold any demon uses.

>And 36%? That's not a threshold any demon uses.

I wouldn't say that's true.

The didn't didn't turn just because of health. It turned because it was angry on arrival, and I had fled a few times, and I was low health.



This wishy-washy mysterious nature behind how happy or how sad servitor is has really got to be clarified better, if you expect players to enjoy the class.

To put things in perspective, you tell players what their morale is.

You tell them what their stats are at level 1.

For as important servitors are to a conjurer, why wouldn't you tell conjie players what the servitor morale is?

>This wishy-washy mysterious nature behind how happy or how sad
>servitor is has really got to be clarified better, if you
>expect players to enjoy the class.

Yet you always play conjurer, you always do reasonably well with it, and you always complain about it.

You must be enjoying yourself, and I'm pretty sure you're going to find something to complain about no matter what I do.

>
>>This wishy-washy mysterious nature behind how happy or how
>sad
>>servitor is has really got to be clarified better, if you
>>expect players to enjoy the class.
>
>Yet you always play conjurer, you always do reasonably well
>with it, and you always complain about it.
>
>You must be enjoying yourself, and I'm pretty sure you're
>going to find something to complain about no matter what I
>do.

I don't think I'm complaining. I'm just throwing in my two cents, because honestly.. I don't think most people (most immortals included) understand or appreciate the challenges of the class.

The suggestion that Khaos made was a very good one.

>A conjurer can conjure a servitor of the -same- alignment and
>it will come angry.

Shockingly, this is more true as the servitor gets closer to chaotic evil.

Surely you're not surprised that the demon doesn't want to hug a chaotic evil conjurer just because they both have black hats.

But what if it's my conjurer's role that he was the Prince of Demons who was accidentally transported to the prime plane and trapped in a human body? Huh? Huh?

>>>>In truth servitors happiness is RNG to begin with, and
>>>>involves too many unknown to be managed perfectly.
-Turing

>>>No, it's fairly stable to begin with.
-Zulg


>>A conjurer can conjure a servitor of the -same- alignment
>and
>>it will come angry.
-Turing

>Shockingly, this is more true as the servitor gets closer to
>chaotic evil.
>
>Surely you're not surprised that the demon doesn't want to hug
>a chaotic evil conjurer just because they both have black
>hats.
-Nep


I just want to show why there is so much confusion.

But last three neutral conjurers had about twice as many deaths to servitors as my previous four neutral conjurers. Could all just be coincidence!

I just ran through the source code for conjureres, and I honestly don't think we've changed anything specific to the mechanics of conjuring in years (I went back through 2007). We've changed/added/removed echoes, added edges, but that's really it.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

These are only my hero conjurers. I had multiple level 30-45 ones not counted.
2001-2 Warlock, can't remember the name. First CF hero, other than my Lord Adept of Necromancy
2002 Unalim, Warlock
Missing one here.
2003 Gyronalis, neutral
2004 Kedewyn, neutral
2005 Sotino, neutral
Missing one or two here.
2008 Ashtalar, neutral
2009 Current, neutral

So basically, I've died a lot more post somewhere between 06-07 time frame. Some time after edges were added. I rarely died to arch angels with Kedewyn or Gyronalis, with ashtalar and the other more recent I can't recall, it was literally every other that would break binding and kill me or just be flat out impossible to bind. I don't even bother with an arch-angel as a neutral conjurer anymore. Demons are much less likely to kill me. Like I said though, might be all in my mind like Nep said and is certainly nothing I think you need to waste your time on! Conjurers are still quite nice, even with the major risks. I was just putting a thought out on making detect charm more interesting and it blew up somehow.

This is correct to my memory as well.

Conjurer edges coming in only helped conjurers. If you're dying more now you're either unlucky, have a selective memory, or doing something different.

.

Because the act of walking around doesn't make it dead obvious already.

.

The speed at which a servitor follows you is directly related to how pleased the servitor is. When you have two servitors out at the same time, it's especially apparent. If your demon lags behind the elemental and takes nearly a tick to enter the room you can bet it's about to turn.

Servitors can and do turn even when they follow you quick. Yes it's true that sometimes they follow slower when mad, but it isn't always a true indication. Perhaps even indicate how strong the binding is holding on them would be nice. I dunno, just seeing that they are bound makes detect charm a rather useless spell. It should tell you a little bit more I wish.

Average speed of your servitor based on a large enough pool of data IS a true indication of the mood of the servitor. Outliers exist, which is why you move around a lot if you'd like to gauge the morale of your servitor.

I agree that detect charm should be more useful, but damn! When you're wrong, you're wrong.

nt

nt.

nt