Torches and Animals

I think wielding a torch should keep animals at bay unless you get too close to them.

This might give humble harvesters more of a chance to gather materials without having to always come prepared for combat in zones with lots of animals.

Also: as a suggestion, if you specialize in Moon Magic, Animal Charm should become an area of effect spell.

 

Fire in general should keep animals at bay.

An animal should not run into a ring if fire willingly.

 

@Proteus Tempest Except maybe obsidian animals

 

Or Immolation.

 

The same could be said about a few spells or spell effects. Making animals fear fire magic would make fire magic very difficult to attack animal mobs, and would also just make everyone use a fire deck for gathering.

Using a torch in the offhand requires a trade off, rather than just giving another bonus to an already very popular magic tree, IMHO.

 

I don't think that people would suddenly use torches rather than Light spells just because it scares off relatively low level wolves and bears, and that would only matter for scenes in which animals are heavily populated, not say places like dungeons.

I think it would would be a very cool thing, so props to the idea in the OP, but I don't think it solves the problems with trade-offs. I don't think you'll be able to do that with bonuses to torches, because magic will always be easier to use than giving up a free hand. Even being able to do fire damage with a torch could be substituted for with Ignite Weapon, which lets you use your second hand.

So, in the end I think they have to think about how easy it is to use magic. I still think we need a carrot and stick approach for trade-offs to work properly, not just more carrots for torches.

 

Dazzling rays works on animals doesn't it? Its an aoe for up to 6 targets if i recall correctly. You can charge that up and gather to your hearts content.

I do like the torch idea, but if an animal is hungry enough a torch might not be enough to scare it away. As long as it isn't 100% effective, I think it would be a nice alternative for players who don't want to use magic. Maybe if the animals are higher level than you, they are more likely to attack. That way low level players can't just run into a t5+ scene and gather all the resources that are around animals with no risk.

 

Nice idea - fires and torches need work on several levels though, they still kill town guards and pets who wander into fires and fail to realise it's killing them, similarly with pets that stand next to you happily ignoring the fires they are standing in until they die. Alongside coding making wild animals nervous, at the same time they should address these other 'fire hazards' too. The modifications to creature and mobile AI should surely not be too dissimilar for both things

 

I would like it if you had to hold the torch in your main hand and swing it to cause that affect

 

By the same token should Undead recoil from the Ankh ?

 

Why would they?

 

Because it's a holy symbol that represents life, everything the undead hate and fear.

 

That’s what it represents in Novia?

 

Well, that's a good question, it's not clear. It's a symbol that was used to represent the avatar in Ultima IV, and I assume that's still the case (although the avatar appears to have become LB based on that scene in Midras in the Crypt of the Avatar.)

But that is it's true meaning regardless of it's meaning in the game. And you get resurrected from Ankhs so... must be related to life..... (the chaos ressurect we'll ignore, lol)

 

I think holding an ankh should aggro undead.

 

I was in a town the other day (Ardoris maybe? I forget which) and my pet Razorback pathed through one of the NPC buildings and had a fire DOT on him. I think he must have ran through a fireplace that was lit or something.

I was quite shocked when it happened, mostly because I was in an NPC town and there weren't any mobs to attack him.

That wasn't really what this thread was about, but sort of relevant I think.

 

Im with Redfish.

Its a great idea but one of those "realism" things that just doesn't fit in a game because one could apply that thought to any magic on the avatar. To boot, it defeats the purpose of making people work for their resource nodes and not be given out for free. If you notice in game, just about every node is generally guarded by something to make you work for it (done on purpose).