Suicidal NPCs

[ScifiSeraphim 5]

Hey, as I mentioned in my introduction thread, I'm on my first playthrough of the game and I've managed to reach chapter 9 on bronze (yes, I know, but I'm testing the waters on RPGs in general as I've played almost all other genres in my life).

One gripe I have are NPCs in quests where they follow you and you have to protect them. I've failed so many quests by losing said NPCs, even after I discovered that I can tell them to stay close to me. The intended response would be for them to stay close behind me but nope, they Leeroy Jenkins their way into a spider or jaguar.

How do you people handle this sort of quest? Some of these have pretty nice premises and I'd like to revisit them on a different playthrough someday, and I don't want to avoid them just because the AI is brain-damaged.

[lujate 574]

Escort quests can be a pain.  IIRC, you can heal NPC's with potions and CA's (e.g. Hallowed Restoration).  You might also check the wiki for the specific quest.  The write-up there might have tips.

[Hooyaah 2,816]

You could try killing off the enemies in the area before you accept the quest and try to stay close to the ward in question and defeat the targets that are nearby and on the way to the destination. If you rush ahead to the objective, the escorted one will transport close by once you reach a certain range away from them. Slapping the space bar repeatedly helps as well.

[ScifiSeraphim 5]

11 hours ago, lujate said:

IIRC, you can heal NPC's with potions and CA's (e.g. Hallowed Restoration).

True, and I have Hallowed Restoration on "speed dial", but this happens faster than I can react.

 

10 hours ago, Hooyaah said:

You could try killing off the enemies in the area before you accept the quest

I was under the impression that the enemies respawn after enough time and/or subregion change anyway?

[Hooyaah 2,816]

"After enough time," indeed says it all. Raze the area of targets, then navigate the area with your ward (lollygagging obliviously somewhere nearby) as quickly as possible.

[Flix 5,116]

There is a tweak you can make to alleviate this.  The file you need to edit is balance.txt located in the game's scripts/server folder.

The line is "NpcFightDamageDownScaling"

Change the value to a very low number, for example 5 or 10.

[gogoblender 3,068]

On 4/9/2021 at 3:53 PM, ScifiSeraphim said:

Hey, as I mentioned in my introduction thread, I'm on my first playthrough of the game and I've managed to reach chapter 9 on bronze (yes, I know, but I'm testing the waters on RPGs in general as I've played almost all other genres in my life).

One gripe I have are NPCs in quests where they follow you and you have to protect them. I've failed so many quests by losing said NPCs, even after I discovered that I can tell them to stay close to me. The intended response would be for them to stay close behind me but nope, they Leeroy Jenkins their way into a spider or jaguar.

How do you people handle this sort of quest? Some of these have pretty nice premises and I'd like to revisit them on a different playthrough someday, and I don't want to avoid them just because the AI is brain-damaged.

 Here for the Leeroy Jenkins in all of us!  Sacred's NPC AI has always been tragic... so much so that I remember some folks creating builds from the premise of guaranteed NPC dying and supreme fodder generatormanship

gogo