Pledge reward combat pets permanently dead?

Reproduction Rate: always (out of two available trials)

Blocker? no, but possibility of permanent loss

Details:
I allowed my pet Chest Mimic from a Royal Founder Royal Artisan Taming Creature Call (tm) to fall in battle. On the current live server, this pet would be resurrected if I left the scene; alternatively, I would be able to resummon after the pet's body decayed. Neither works on QA. The summoning skill fails as if the pet is no longer attached to the call:


Tried again with a new Chest Mimic from a Founder Royal Artisan Taming Creature Call, and the same thing happened.

Also notable--the pet's name is no longer listed on the summoning call's tooltip, which seems to confirm it's well and truly gone--an ex-pet:


If this is intentional, an announcement before next release would be appreciated!

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Summon your pledge reward creature.
2. Heartlessly allow it to die in whatever manner you choose.
3. Wait for the creature's body to decay, then attempt to resummon. This won't work; you should see '<PLAYER NAME> tried to use Summoning, but failed: You must tame a creature.'
4. Leave scene; the creature will not appear.
5. Check the tooltip on the summoning call--it will no longer list the name of the pet.

User Specs:
Linux 64-bit QA build 393

 

Bug submitted. We apologize for the inconvenience, and will fix this issue as quickly as possible. Thank you for reporting.

 

This release we've changed and fixed perma-death for tamed pets.

The intended behavior (which will be in the release notes) :
1) There is a window of time for resurrection to keep your pet from permanently being killed.
2) If your creature dies and you are still in the scene, you can resurrect.
3) If your creature dies and you leave the scene :
..a) it will not re-summon automatically - as it's waiting for resurrection.
..b) You will see a countdown timer for resurrection by looking at the necklace tool-tip.
..c) Once it hits zero, your pet is dead permanently.
..d) To resurrect your creature ( in the necklace ) cast Taming "Resurrect Creature" on yourself.
..e) If successful, your pet resurrect timer is cleared and you are free to summon your creature again.
..f) You can attempt to call resurrect as many times as it takes during that time window.

If this is not the behavior you are seeing please let me know.

Thanks.

 

We found a bug today with the data save of the resurrection state upon leaving the scene.

You can repro with getting your pet killed, resurrecting, then zoning. Upon re-entry it then says your pet stills needs a resurrect.

We'll fix that quickly.

 

Regarding number 3, this is not what I am seeing, @Scrambler. I went into Midras Ruins, summoned my pet spider and let an obsidian golem kill it. Then, I ran out to the map and into Spectral Peaks,targeted and tried to cast resurrect on myself, but it would not cast, just went red as when there is no valid target. I went back into Midras, but my spider was gone and I could not cast resurrect there either. Does it have to be the special pet res skill? I think I have another pet stashed somewhere to test that skill once I get it open, but RIP, Persephone the Ferocious Wolf Spider. You will be missed :'(

 

Just for clarity, can you confirm that this changed behavior is only intended to apply to pets that have been tamed within the game and will not be applied to the pledge reward chest mimic?

 

Definitely curious about that.

@Scrambler, do you know if the rules for next release will apply to reward pets as well as those tamed in the game? Thanks for checking in with us!

 

Was going to post my own bug report, but thought it would be better to keep it consolidated here.

I have a Royal Founder Royal Artisan Taming Creature Call, which had a Ferocious Red Spider attached to it via taming in previous release.

I logged into QA over the weekend and since there were no patch notes yet, I decided to just wander around the map and do some things I normally do to look for bugs. The last thing I was doing was mining in Graff Gem Mines, having my spider out to protect me from the Kobolds (which he does quite easily without much effort on my part by the way.)

When it was time to leave for work, I moved back to the entrance of the mine and logged out, planning to continue mining on next login. As far as I can tell, neither me nor my spider was in combat when I logged out. I left before the 20 second timer completed... but I was well up the hill and no mobs were near me when I logged out. Even if one got close enough to agro my pet, there is no way it would have killed it in that 20 second window. It was killing 2 kobolds at once and surviving with more than half health all by itself while I was mining before!

Today, I logged in, no pet was summoned and my health bar was very low... as if I had just been in combat!??? I tried to resummon my pet spider and nothing happened.

I then looked at my character sheet and noticed that my creature call no longer had my pets name, and doesn't show any pets attached to it (not even the original chest mimic).

After reading this thread, I tried to cast res on myself and nothing happened. It seems my spider is permanently gone.

I have no idea how/why it's missing from my whistle because I wasn't even in combat and certainly did not have a dead pet the last time I logged off.

 

Sorry, yes, use the Taming "Resurrect Creature" skill.

 

Let me clarify on my side.

I checked with the design folks, and they are supposed to follow the same rules. So, yes, they can be permanently killed and can be lost. If I hear otherwise from Starr I'll post a followup.

 

I'll double check that case (logging out while having pet out).

Update: latest code is QA 395. Everything looks like its behaving properly. I'm not seeing any strange issues with tamed pets and death after disconnect or logout.

 

This is incorrect. Verified between myself and Starr. Reward pets (Chest Mimics) need to be special cased to ignore normal permadeath conditions.

 

Hmm, well I'm really not sure what happened because my pet was not even fighting, let alone dead the last time I logged out with him already summoned... and I returned to the game with him missing completely.

It's not a big deal because this is QA and I still have him on Live server... but if this happens on the live server there will be some very angry players.

But, if you checked and cannot find any causes for this issue then I suppose it was either fixed by build 394 or 395, or it happened due to some other glitch that cannot be reproduced.

 

Thanks for the confirmation, good decision.

 

So we made the design adjustments Starr/QA/Design agreed on. Changes will be in QA build 396.

 

Thanks much, both!

 

Be mindful of the fact that a new animal can be added to these whistles and it should follow normal rules of permadeath. Then the whistle should revert back to the reward animal.

Or...
Make it so that the whistle cannot have any other animal tamed onto it. (Which might bypass durability rules).

 

Yes. that's what we chose to implement. It makes it straightforward and fixes up a few other odd quirks.

 

Ugh, so my pets that were tamed over my chest mimics are going bye bye?

Just checked one on QA build 396 and it's reverted back to the Chest Mimic.

 

Chest mimic just died in the Necropolis in QA build 396.

I tried to cast Resurrect Creature on it (enough times to level the skill from 1 to 20) and it failed every time (cast bar showed "Resurrecting Creature <1% Chance" ???).

Chest Mimic vanished before I could res it. Tried to re-summon it via the summoning skill - "Your call was unanswered". Can't even unequip the creature call whistle either, it seems to be locked into the neck slot.

Guess permadeath still exists for chest mimics?

Errr, maybe not. I exited to menu and hit resume and was then able to summon it again.

Note - This may be an issue with also having Samael as a "pet" for the Necropolis quest.