Mostly Dead

[gial 2]

Miracle Max ("The Princess Bride") says that only True Love can save you once you are "mostly dead". I'm sure many, if not all, have gone through the horror of seeing their character laid out on the ground, and, for all intents and purposes, dead. Yet sometimes they bounce back to life. I'm wondering how this can happen. Is this a bug? Does Sacred calculate zero life differently at different points? Can it be a floating point round off error? Is this an additional benefit of high SB, a little "buffer" time to get that 1 hp back? Does anyone know, and could it be related to how some HC characters are resurrected as SC during a lag death?

[bdiggity 0]

I do not know this for sure so, you know, take it with a grain of salt.

 

I believe it's another bonus provided by high SB. The only time I've ever had it happen was on characters that have really high SB (like 60%+). I also notice that when it happens all the baddies in the area tend to stop attacking you. This gives you a second to hit that health potion the moment you stand back up before being attacked again.

 

edit: I've also noticed that when you fall down there are birds or something flying over your head.

Edited August 23, 2007 by bdiggity

[Funkilicious 1]

Actually I would be interested to know how death is actually defined, I know I have experienced it once, seeing my body with no life left on the ground and then the next second bounced back to life.

 

Also saw it with EM once and thought he was a goner but in the next second was alive.

[Silearth 6]

This happened to me a few times. There was one time where my toon didn't just fall, but was in the actual death pose. When he stood up he was still frozen that way for a second.

[Arilaftia 0]

I have felt that heart stopping moment of "Oh god! I'm dead! Ive lost it alll!.... oooh She's up, Oh Yay! *tears* "! I would love to know anything on this as well, to ease the traumatic roller coaster of emotions!

[erialc 2]

It is a curious one this I've seen it happen and had it happen to me. I once attributed it to lag as the server was really laggy, I saw one of Csaszars characters loose all it's health fall and then....Disconnect. He didn't see any of it as his toon was/game was go lagged out. Was a relief when he logged back in with full heath.

[Nihilith 0]

Hi there

 

It happens to my cota wood elf very often. I think it's due to the fact that you're beat to death exactly when one of your attack drains enough life to keep you alive. The death process must be taken into account just before the drain process. I can say this happened to me at least once a day with my low level softcore druid WE. Little SB but big LL. I'm sure that, during the death pose, my life still goes up due to the LL of the COTA.

I saw it happen also with my ROI/IS BM, hit to death by an orc champion walking in my roi, and back to battle. Didn't happen to my DS glad as DS does NOT LL. My glad took a trip to Haven isle.

Sometimes, you're hit for more hit points than your attack drains at the exact same moment, and then, you're really dead.

This is my 2 cents about it.

 

Cya

[myles 2]

I have a weird feeling about this is being done intentionally, a change in UW after people complained about characters died due to lag. I suspect that there is a sec or two between life and death in Sacred, a critical time so to speak.

 

Besides the red circle we see doesn't really reflex how much life a character has, you could have flashed forever when in fact the HP is still enough to take a hit or three.

 

I must confess, I was quite disturbed at first how Schot's BMs never seem to have any HP at all, more than once I thought he was dead when I joined his party. It bothered me for a while you know?

[Nihilith 0]

My Cota WE has done 60 out of her 65 lvls on Sacred Plus. This mostly dead fact was already here. I'm pretty sure of it. But maybe, like myles said, it's an add-on (but older than UW) to prevent lag-death.

 

My 2 cents... and a half !

[Waaah 0]

This never happened to me

My charackters always die and then leech their life up to 100% but still lay on the gorund - lost forever.

Concerning the birdies:

At least in PVP there is a kind of newbie protection so if you hit someone way below your level he doesn't die but become unconscious. That is when you see the birdies. You won't be able to kill that charackter and you may only attack him if he attacked you first iirc.

[Schot 407]

I must confess, I was quite disturbed at first how Schot's BMs never seem to have any HP at all, more than once I thought he was dead when I joined his party. It bothered me for a while you know?

 

Ah the good old Sacred Plus days and widding, lol. I think I disturbed many people back then. Running around with no red in my health bar. In HC! Haha. It went from many weeks of "OMG Schot! Are you ok?!" and with various people porting to me to come save me. Bless their souls, lol. Eventually people got used to it and probably were thinking that I disserved to die.

 

Well as to the reasons why we sometimes "nearly" die I've always imagined SB working much like MF. I'm pretty sure it is an established fact that SB increases your chance to recover from a killing blow. Killing blow meaning that an enemy causes damage to you that takes your health down to 0. With that said it is an established fact that after about 1 min of battle with a new level 1 character that character will have 1% SB. Keywords here are of course Survival Bonus.

 

I think it is better to say at the point of acquiring an SB of 1% or more that characters who recieve a killing blow will not die but rather that they will have a chance of dieing/surviving. It's a kind of wheel of fortune, (or misfortune for the dead ones, eh heh). At the point of the killing blow the game throws out an algorithm/dice to determine a yes/positive(Woot! I live!) or a no/negative(Nooooooo! *cry*). As I see it your SB% plays a role in the algorithm to your favor and that the higher your SB the greater the chance of your survival. As to whether or not there are other aspects within our control that would result in a higher survival chance I could not say.

 

I did happen to experience an accidental experiment. Some time ago this year I was working on a BM with high SB. I got my level 1 BM's SB up around 93% or more in the hopes of getting better drops. I had set my BM up with some pretty nice gear albeit perhaps a bit too much MF and not enough defense, oops...

Well being the brave lad I was I went off to fight. Around the braverock area. At level 1... Haha! Well I was doing ok at a distance but my regens were really bad. A few hits landed on me and BAM! I hit the ground hard and had the butterflies for a few secs. Fearful of loosing my hard earned SB I ran into a cave to get away from the baddies and, whack whack whack. BAM! I hit the ground again. With butterflies. Yay! Shortly after in a matter of 10 or so minutes I got the butterflies yet again. So I survived 3 killing blows within a very short amount of time. (yah yah. I suck! lol )

 

That experience is suggestive of the fact that high SB vs low character level results in very good chances of survival.

 

I guess the best way to have a better idea is to export a char and go on a suicidal rampage. Though there is the possibility that SB is applied differently in SC and HC...

[gogoblender 3,070]

I'm sure that lag has to do a lot with the quick rejuvenations of our Sacred toons. In fact...I'm never quite sure if a toon of mine has made it through as session until after I log out and then back in again. After that last episode of my toon turning into a sofcore character, we just never know.

 

 

gogo

[EvilMale 7]

Well I have been "mostly dead" several times with my ms mage he would lay there dead as a door knob then pull a matrix thing and be standing up tears of mixed emotions would flow and I would continue wreecking havoc again

[gial 2]

OK, this event seems to be as common as I thought, but so far still, all is speculation. Here's another guess -- the game won't let you be 1-hit from full life to death -- as that would not give you any chance to recover. So if 1 hit drains all of your life from full to empty, you have a chance to recover, either with leech or the spacebar or just physical regen. But if you weren't full, then you die. So far though, I have seen nothing definitive to convicne me that SB is doing this.

 

Just ran a test. Took a level 1 to ZN and got hit. No matter what, the baddies NEVER took all my life with the first hit. They always laid me out, but I had a little red left at the bottom (easier to see with only 92 total hp). Saw the birds/stars every time. Drank a red to fill up and again, same thing on the next hit. And I always had a recovery time available. Even when I was poisoned. Laid out, popped up and a second later the poison kicked in and killed me.

 

Perhaps an argument for always keepinhg 100% health . . .

[griffman 0]

The 1-hit death isn't right. I've died in 1 hit before in VoT while being leveled up by someone. You said you tried zhurag nur, what about VoT? Or do you think there could be level limitations? As in maybe monster level being 30 or more levels above you can kill you in 1 hit?

 

 

Ok I just tested it as well... in VoT.

 

I ran 5 trials with level 1 characters.. the first character died on the 2nd shot from full life, the other 4 died on the third shot. They all had at least 1 set of "butterflies"...

[Schot 407]

Just tested my survival and survived twice.

 

With a level 1 Dwarf @ 97% SB. I went to fight priests outside of braverock. They were level 20. I let the first one attack me. The priest threw a fireball at me which brought my health to under half. Seconds later he threw a second fireball which drained my health completely and stunned me with butterflies. After recovering and filling my health I killed off the priest. Moving onto the next priest I let him do the same thing. After the second priest threw two fireballs and drained my health something different happened. My Dwarf did a unique and dramatic fall which signified death. The fall is somewhat slow to complete in animation and before the animation completed I hit the space bar to replenish my health. At that moment he popped out of the fall of death and his state changed to the stunned with butterflies. Seconds later and he was recovered. After killing this second priest I moved on to a third. I let the third priest kill me in the same way as the previous. My character did the "fall of death" animation but this time when I pushed space to replenish my health nothing happened. He died.

 

Note of interest here is that there are two types of death animations. Actually there are three that I've seen:

 

Upright stunned with butterflies

Laid out on ground with butterflies

The slow "fall of death" animation

[FrostElfGuard 9]

Hmm. (Yeah, I'm slow).

 

Hmm. I wonder what your state said in your logbook for each of these experiences.

 

I vaguely recall doing a test a long time ago and surviving in similar circumstances... but with SB wiped to 0%.

 

Perhaps surviving a real death leads to SB set to 0?

 

Then, dying with SB at 0 leads to permanent, real death?

 

=====

 

I based my previous "near death" experiences on Wilbur from SP. Wilbur has a habit of dying---and coming back to life, or getting the burtterflies and coming back to life again. But sometimes, when Wilbur dies, he just flat out dies. Perhaps he starts with a very high SB?

 

Another npc character with high SB is the Dark Elf sorceress near Highmarsh/Mounted Shaddar Rim church area. The Dreamer quest npc. She dies a lot and comes back often...though sometimes she just flat out dies. Reminded me of Wilbur... and this npc is available in UW and online.