I would like to thank those staff that I have asked dozen's of questions from since I started playing again. This post is not to be taken as a flame or a vent of frustration, I am posting here because a staff member said it is where I should discuss such things.

As I understand things those within your (pk) range are the only ones who can steal from you, or attack you, or kill your mercenary or be a pain in the buttox. There are a few creative ways that people outside of your range can influence you. Summoning assisting monsters, kill stealing npc's that your exp'ing on, recalling or healing people that you are attacking. I think these add to the unity of a cabal or a guild within the game.

My question about "By design" is to why players out of (pk) range are able to summon pets away from players who can do nothing to prevent it. I am currently playing a necromancer, low level due to a few to many mob deaths, and have thus far suffered several times from heros summoning my pets away. Frail as necromancers are I rely heavily on my pets, even when they fail to rescue me from danger, to try and advance and explore.

Once I was trapped in a section of an area and I had to flee past a aggressive monster to escape. I wanted to sacrifice my golem to get past this monster. Said monster was two north of me and I moved in that direction and then ordered the golem to rescue me. The problem was that my golem 'suddnely disapeared' the room before the monster, and when I ordered it to rescue me it wasnt there, and I ended up being bashed to death.

Another time I had just managed to finally animate a corpse after failing 14 times in a row. I went to sleep to regain mana, before I had even regained half my mana I recived a message that the zombie stoped following me. A hero paladin had summoned the zombie and killed it.

Why is this by design, Will I be able to cast forget on anyone regardless of pk and heavily handicap them? Conjurer pets follow them
everywhere and make zombies look incredibly weak with their total inability to return to their animator.

I am truely perplexed as to why this is 'By design' can someone clearly and precisely explain why this is so ?


I had thought that reducing that preventing the pets from being summoned away from their owner would be easy enough. If the pets were not with their owner I might understand such 'By Design' comments. I spent hours trying to get a pair of zombies just to explore some only to have them summoned away and killed in five minutes, unable to do anything to prevent it. Is this design a WoW timesink, built with the intention of wasting the players time ?

Simple. If a petshop can do so, you should be able to as well.

Whether it costs mana or lags like hell, what if you are allowed to name your undead and add it with 'zombie, golem, mummy, ghoul' etc. as a keyword?

This way people can come up with their own naming conventions, and would be forced to make it sufficiently unique that it wouldn't conflict with other parsing in the game.

I wouldn't know if you'd have the 'Guard'lon #### happening again however, such as the person the necromancer wants to protect being 2. in the room, his zombies walk in after, then the zombie is named after the one he wants to protect...

However if this wasn't a problem with a petshop, why can't the zombies be named during the creation at least, since allowing a player to restring the zombie at any time might be crash-prone or unbalanced?

I thought bone/flesh golems were protected by PK range? I remember when playing one of my failed Felar APs I was in a group with a necro and his bone golem. We were on our way to Chessmaster's but his legs tired out. I summoned the necro and then tried summoning his golem with just 'golem' his the keyword. I got a message saying how 'The gods would protect a flesh golem from you'. Eventually a few moments later I figured out how to summon the right golem to me. Of course, after I then went on to see how many golems I could summon. But yeah, I'm pretty sure I could only summon those who had owners within my PK range. Or is all this really wrong?

You get that message but it doesn't prevent you from summoning. You cannot attack the charmies of a necromancer while he's in the room with them, but you can summon them away and attack them while he's not there.

You can summon mercenaries the same way. You'll get that message but it won't stop you from summoning them.

I feel as though there isn't any answer I can give you that will make you feel better about the state of things, which, yes, IS by design. However!

> My question about "By design" is to why players out of (pk)
>range are able to summon pets away from players who can do
>nothing to prevent it.

The assumption that you can't do anything about it is false.

I think you're also assuming that a necromancer can't do anything without their undead, or even, would prefer to have their undead with them all the time. These also are false.

>I feel as though there isn't any answer I can give you that
>will make you feel better about the state of things, which,
>yes, IS by design. However!

I'm not playing a necro, but I've never understood this either.

Animating an army takes forever. Raising full army is pretty much impossible if you can't count being logged in for hours and hours at a time. My rough estimate is that it you can expect it to take about 3 hours to raise 4 strong zombies. This makes necromancers the only class that can be used to its full potential exclusively by people who reliably have extra-long login sessions (6 hours means you can spend half your time at the top of your game).

Basically:
They take 45 minutes (average) to animate
Any summoner can summon/kill them
They dissapear when you die
They dissapear when you logout

I hesitate to say that I wouldn't practice animate dead, but the combination of those factors makes it pretty marginal for anyone who doesn't play very conservatively for several hours at a time.

>The assumption that you can't do anything about it is false.
>
>I think you're also assuming that a necromancer can't do
>anything without their undead, or even, would prefer to have
>their undead with them all the time. These also are false.

Sure, you can park them in nosummon locations, but that's incredibly inconvenient if you want to actually use them. You might occasionally prefer your minions to be absent, but you're almost always better off having them with you. Is that not true? When would you ever really be better off without them?

Of course necromancers can do things without undead. Dullameh was reasonably succesful, after all. Still, if necromancers are balanced, then a necromancer without zombies must be at least slightly underpowered, no? Either way, the current mechanic disproportionately favors people who can login for a long time.

I feel as though there isn't any answer I can give you that will make you feel better about the state of things, which, yes, IS by design. However!


... I do not need to feel better, I am not feeling hurt in any way at all. I merely am interested in why this is by design. I am interested in examples that demonstrate why this is by design. Can I put in a request to have this explained ? It seems that others who have encountered similar issues support my questions of why?


The assumption that you can't do anything about it is false.

... I admit that I know little compared to others who can look at the whole game seeing how every item and ability is coded. I do however also know that there are many things that can be done to prevent people summoning your pets away.

- Dont use pets. No pets to summon means that they cannot be summoned.
- Dont have your pets in a summonable area, ever.
- Never play when any summoner of higher level is online.
- Never play the game outside of nosummon areas, ever.
- Dont learn animate untill you have joined empire and can ensure that your sect powers swaps your zombies being summoned with a spirit.
- Somehow animate level 65+ zombies as to make them almost impossible to summon, not to mention almost impossible to animate!

... I see a trend here, are all of these methods also 'By design' ?


I think you're also assuming that a necromancer can't do anything without their undead, or even, would prefer to have their undead with them all the time. These also are false.

This is not my first necromancer , much has changed since my last i will admit, however I think you are fooling yourself if you think necromancers are fully functional without their army. Some examples perhaps ?

Equiment gathering:
- Without pwk, an instant kill, killing for equipment is very very difficult.
- Killing for equipment is easier when you have resists, but resist are often on or behind or require a tough or high level mob to be killed.
- Mob's immunity to or resistance to a necromancers craft. Many equipment baring mobs are resistant to or sometimes even immune to some if not most of a necromancers arsenal.

Exploration of areas:

- Exploration of areas stops as soon as you encounter a aggro or blocker, because often a necromancer without a army cannot kill it. They do not have resist's because they cannot hold onto a army. If they manage to have some resists often their army which they might have raised in a protected area is summon and killed as soon as they move from that area to the area which they wish to explore.

- If you use the sleep & spellup abilities of a necromancer you often end up with a mob that is half dead and yet still remains unkillable. Unable to take the blows long enough with the few resists that you have to kill it with offensive wands or staves or even scrolls.

- Many area's seem to prevent or do not bring the pets, if you can keep a hold of them, with the necromancer. Hidden exits, size restrictions, progged movment activated by voice or commands that leaves them behind.

Player killing:

- There is are hundreds of necromancers who have all emplored the same tactics, lich and mummies aside, most necromancers rely on a single method. Flee & sleep

- Without many other methods avaliable to deal damage, or take it for that matter, without an army this tactic of flee & sleeping is very common. Perhaps with a army at hand that can deal and take damage might actually give the players the ability to not rely totaly on such tactics.

- There are skills avaliable to other classes that force a necromancer to leave is army behind. Pull, drive, summon, a various range of spells such as buffet and vortex, songs from bards etc.



... I look at all of the above and wonder still to myself, Why is this 'By design'.

Conjurer's pets automatically follow them, why was their pets not made exactly the same as that of necromancers? Conjurer's pets are far far far more lethal with their abilities, responsivness, damage output and abilities.

Your comments could be applied to a conjurer as well. Wielding axe's, shield block, reliable decent damage from magic missile, flash, resistance to positive and negative and so forth. I have seen conjurer's pk remotely with just their familiars. Imp's hitting three times a round for mauls to mutilates against fighter classes, not to forget the poisoning and abilities of the fam ontop of that.

Three mutilate magic missles sure does hurt more than a evis chill touch, it would almost be close to a low end **DEVA** vampiric touch.

I am sorry, but I just cannot see where this 'By design' comes into it. It is such a easy and simple fix that could be implimented in multiple simple ways. None of these changes would remove other classes abilities to still use viable tactics against a necromancer who has a army with them.

I must admit I still remain perplexed as to the reasoning behind all of this. Can it please be explained to me and others who are eager to find out why it is 'By Design'.


Thank you for any efforts in attemping to explain this.

>... I do not need to feel better, I am not feeling hurt in any
>way at all.

Ah, but you're dissatisfied with the status quo, which is why we're having this discussion.

>... I admit that I know little compared to others who can look
>at the whole game seeing how every item and ability is coded.

Most of it's pretty common sense. There's a lot of necromancer players who manage this pretty well that I'm pretty sure have never seen the code.

>- Many area's seem to prevent or do not bring the pets, if you
>can keep a hold of them, with the necromancer. Hidden exits,
>size restrictions, progged movment activated by voice or
>commands that leaves them behind.

There's a lot you can do about almost all of these things. For example, who said you had to make zombies out of giants?

> Conjurer's pets automatically follow them, why was their
>pets not made exactly the same as that of necromancers?
>Conjurer's pets are far far far more lethal with their
>abilities, responsivness, damage output and abilities.

Necromancer-style is what is normal. Druid pets work the same way. Mercenaries work the same way. Orc enslaves work the same way. Etc.

Conjurer pets are different for a number of logical reasons, and one major game balance reason which is that conjurers are more reliant on their pets than any other class. If a conjurer without servitors kills you, anyone should be able to kill you. Unshifted water/water shifter coming your way on land? Better run for it.

> I am sorry, but I just cannot see where this 'By design'
>comes into it.

Well, we designed it that way, and it is that way.

It's not something that happened by mistake.

Keep in mind that out of range help can also GET you zombies. It giveth, and it taketh away.

I *think* summoning pets out of your range is a bit too good/easy of a trick. Mostly because it's so hard for a necro to summon his pets back (finding the right 'x.zombie'

Perhaps make it possible for the necro to summon back the right zombie with an easy syntax, so you don't have to loop from 1.zombie to 24.zombie before finding the right mob - by then it's too late.

Like c summon lostpet automatically targets the last pet that was summoned away from you.

nt

Just seems to me this could even be a good excuse for a new necro edge. Call it In Tune. You are more in touch with your zombies and can more easily summon them back to your side. But if they die you take a little damage. Not like, conjie familiar damage but a little something.