Skeletons in the closet

OK, so what's the deal with skeletons now in r16?

First off, they "come back" to... unlife?... when you kill them the first time. (Hehe - I love it!) I'm not sure if it's working as intended, but we're getting XP for each time they 'drop', whether they rise again or not. I imagine this was intended? Either way, cool and cool.

Second, I currently dual-wield swords, no magic damage (yet), so I can't test this myself. But I heard somewhere that if the killing blow is magic, the skeletons don't "come back" after they go down the first time. Is that true?

 

According to the instructions this is all true.

 

That's the rumor. I haven't had a chance to test it myself but as another duel wielder without magic expect to be highly annoyed at stubborn undead in the future.

That said.. bludgeons should be more effective vs skeletons I think. That would be nice.

 

The only instructions I've 'heard', is that they rise again. Your reply doesn't help me on either account (I know they rise from the dead), though perhaps I should have worded it better (it's been a LONG day):

1. getting XP for both times they drop
2. they won't rise if killed with magic

 

We don't really have any particulars about magic. We've only been told vaguely what you've heard. Some spell chucker will have to come around and verify for us.

The XP may be intentional but if it is I imagine a number of mages will complain about fighter types getting more XP than them. Will have to see how that plays out.

 

It is supposed to only give XP on the final kill. I guess they haven't fixed it yet.

 

I killed several skeletons in Northmarsh yesterday with ranged fire spells and they still came back to life.

 

Haven't tested on live server, but on test server magic was not keeping them dead. I'll run out shortly and test it with magic.

I believe they only implemented the raise back to life and not the permadeath bit. Brightbone Pass control point should be avoided as it gets unmanageable after the 4-5th batch of skellies.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

You know, there's been a few games previous where skeletons or the undead came back to life (or were raised from eternal sleep by a boss or elite NPC in the vicinity) and my friends and I would joke, "it wouldn't be so bad killing all these things if they would give us XP each time you kill them!"

In this one instance, I got my wish, you could say. And after camping them for an hour this morning, I think it actually makes fighting the skeletons challenging/fun. And if I had to kill them twice for the XP equivalent of another NPC their level, I would make it a point to avoid them because the reward would not be worth my time, especially as melee.

The skeleton mages and skeleton archers AI is great, they try to reposition themselves frequently if they are engaged in melee range. It's an awesome encounter in it's current iteration in my opinion and I really hope it stays that way.

Also, I very much appreciate that NPC's can interrupt our gathering of resource nodes now. It was previously trivial to run around collecting ore and other resources because you could ignore the NPC's, gather your resources and move on.

How do we know that they are only supposed to give XP once? If that were the case I'd avoid skeletons whenever and wherever possible. I mean, we're killing twice and getting XP twice - I wouldn't call that broken or needing a fix, personally. It's not like we get to loot twice or corpse camp them.

 

Hi Veronica,

It was mentioned by the Devs in another thread.

 

As long as skeletons don't bleed!

 

Hi Veronica

Hmm, I'm only getting XP for the final kill...

On my reading of the game instructions etc... For this release, skeletons will indeed come back to life. Seems pretty standard that you have to kill them twice. The ultimate goal (for future releases) seems to be that if you kill them with magic (eg death magic) they will stay down. With conventional weapons, not so much. I do not know if that means they will keep on getting up.....

 

This seems a bit unrealistic - unless they are trying to force players to spend points on magic? I think I few solid whacks with a mace, or some other type of bludgeon, should be enough to make them stay down permanently. Kind of hard for a pile of bone shards to get up and walk around, right?

 

I haven't been in game since this morning, but according to previous posts - magic does not kill them on their first fall, they rise a second time it seems no matter what.

 

First iteration .. though I can't say I know if they've considered the difference between types of undead.

Personally I wonder why kind of effect something like fire or arrows would have on a skeleton. Fire for example might be quite effective on a zombie.. but a skeleton? What's to burn? But a good solid mace or axe? yeah crunchy!

So at some point I hope different weapons and spells vary in their effectiveness vs undead.

 

I killed them with Earhtquake, death touch, lightning... even my staff. and they always came back to unlife.

I think that probably only spell that can finish them the first try is the Banish Undead, but I have not tested that one yet.

 

They will die from first kill with magic when that is fully implemented, right now they get up no matter what you kill them with.

 

Something like in Ultima 8 and 9 would be cool. You can kill skeletons once and for all only with special weapons and magic or if you take away bones from them when they drop to the ground just before they get up again.

 

Good thing could be kill them healing it.

 

I love the re-spawning undead. I had a thought a minute ago about complimenting the re-animating undead. What would happen if it could have the chance to spawn into a higher level mob? Say a skeleton could possibly re spawn into a lich. A lich could re-spawn into a ghost. A ghost could re spawn into an Ancient lich. Something along those lines. That would be pretty cool. It would not have to be every time, just a random chance of it happening.