Seeking Arrow & Shadow Brand

[Mysterio]

Two questions for the experts:

1. Is there any item defense against Seeking Arrow? For example, will an item that provides missile protection cause the arrow to miss 80% of the time?

2. Based on my testing, it looks like the 1H weapon Shadow Brand does an AoE5 Leeching Darkness attack. Unlike the spell of the same name, which lasts two combat rounds, it looks like it lasts only for the attack. Is that correct?

Also, since the spell is listed as magic resistance negates, I would want to max out the MR of the commander wielding the Shadow Brand to avoid being hit by the AoE, correct?

[Verjigorm]

I was thinking about the Seeking Arrow thing and thought this:

An Air Shield Bless with a Shroud of the Battle Saint might give you some protection, but do you really want to take that many air books?

I would say if you have A4N4 on a Shroud that would provide the best protection against the actual missile itself and any wound it might produce.

Seeking Arrow is a physical attack, so protection is good against it I believe.

Let me do a quickie test and see because I've wondered the same thing...

Neither high protection nor the blessings I was referring to appear to have any affect...

Attached is a test turn file.

I tested previously with just shrouds to see if the 80% Air Bless had any effect and unfortunately all of the seeking arrows penetrated the air shields which means that either (a) Caelum got really lucky or (b) Shroud Air Shield doesn't effect SA...

Ok...

I went out on a limb and did an RTFM.... Book says that Seeking Arrow is 8AN which means that it is NOT a "missile" and it is NOT affected by protection.

Therefore the best ways to protect against Seeking Arrows are the dome spells. Specifically...

Dome of Flaming Death (My #1 all time favorite dome)
Dome of Arcane Warding
Forest Dome
Dome of Solid Air

I don't like the blood dome under most circumstances. I think as far as bang for buck goes, DOFD and DOAF are the best in overall gem cost because they can't be brought down and can be pumped to last for an extra turn for a single gem whereas if you get your FD or DOSA brought down, while they are permanent, they are comparably expensive to replace especially if you're getting bombarded by spells.

[vfb]

That, or do a search of the forums, and find where it's already been tested before.

[Mysterio]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

Let me do a quickie test

How are you able to create a scenario within the game to test this? Are you using BattleSim?

[Verjigorm]

I setup Arco vs. Caelum in a two-player hot seat game and fired arrows at mystics wearing various armor to see if they died. The save game is above in my post. If you wanted to do more extensive testing, just load the game up, set up the provinces the way you want them and blast off some seeking arrows until you figure out what you like.

[sector24]

Here is the extensive testing: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42946

Short answer, luck and air shield help.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by sector24

Here is the extensive testing: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42946

Short answer, luck and air shield help.

80% Air Shield from a Shroud didn't appear to help, but I didn't engage the mystics in combat first either... Let me try that quick...

Nah, it doesn't do anything...

Robe of Missile Protection blocks it 100%, but an Air bless from a Shroud has no effect regardless of whether or not the wearer engages in a battle beforehand or not.

[Calahan]

That's a nice find regarding the Air Bless Verjigorm Can't recall anyone mentioning it before. Probably because it's so rare that anyone takes a meaningful Air Bless.

With your permission, I will add your findings and an appropriate test game to my thread about various Seeking Arrow tests that is linked above. And of course credit you accordingly with this find.


I've posted several test games on the forum, and two useful tips I find to follow are.....

1) Try to use maps that come with the vanilla game so that everyone can access the game files you post. For example, people are unable to access the test game you've provided above because they lack the 'TestBed.rgb' map file. Which I'm guessing is a small test map you've created to quickly test stuff out (I'd imagine a lot of players have a map like this). The Silent Seas map I find to be a good small vanilla map for testing.

And try to provide any mods you've used as well, since some can be hard to track down if they go out of date (old versions of CBM for example).


2) Try to avoid making absolute claims unless your tests are incredibly intensive. For example here....

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

....Robe of Missile Protection blocks it 100%,....

...you claim the Robe of Missile Protection offers 100% protection against Seeking Arrow. Which is not true, but it does help a lot (around 80% actually ), but it does not offer absolute 100% protection. There are not that many absolutes in Dominions, as most of the time the things you can do just affect the odds of something (elemental protection is an example of an absolute though)


Thanks again for the find. Keep up the good work as they say

[Maerlande]

I love to use the Debug Mod for testing. You can quickly wish up a pile of whatever units you require and GoR them cheap if required. Most importantly it includes a 1 pearl wish and 1 pearl GoR. Speeds up the preparation of armies to do the big tests fights.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...ighlight=debug

[Verjigorm]

Apologies for the 100/80%. Yes, it's 80%, but the bless effect on the shroud still doesn't do anything which was the biggest disappointment. I suppose, though, shroud is a 1S item that can combat diseases without healers (with Nature bless) on any mage among other very useful in-combat applications, so it's already quite awesome if only for those reasons.

I had wondered about the map thing... I suppose simply copying the map files into the save game directory (since they're tiny anyway) would be the most efficient method as that is how random maps work.