PvE enemies seem to be more focused on Player Characters than 'Others' (Mercs/Shine Knights/Summons (Youkai/Butterflies)/etc). It's almost as if the 'Others' have a psuedo-Incognito; if an enemy is in range to attack an Other, then it will attack, then move towards the nearest PC. The only example I can think of this not happening is in the instance of the

Mercenaries kinda suck. A lot. They probably have 1/3 the stats that Youkai of their same level have ( http://prntscr.com/7t6yn9 - what the HAHAHA).

They can't even stand their own in Level 60 Arena Singles Matches ( which was tested with this bug - http://neus-projects.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1574 ) of 3 mercenaries versus 1 Ghost or Evoker Combatant.

Sure, they're not supposed to be a free pass, but c'mon. They're Ranylyn clones. No offense.

Going over the battle weight doesn't appear to be taking away any evade. It takes away your own chance to hit, though.

If a Phenex is brought to 0 HP from Wretched Oil, from the ashes does not trigger. Or rather, it does, but only after you've died and been defeated.

Wretched Oil is Cast
Phenex Mobster takes 33 Earth damage.
Phenex Mobster takes 43 Darkness damage.
The battle has ended.
From the Ashes heals
Phenex Mobster recovered 96 HP.
Food Buffs Heal
Phenex Mobster recovered 46.92 HP.
Phenex Mobster recovered 32.04 FP.
Brunette Dame (OOC) recovered 0 HP.
Brunette Dame (OOC) recovered 42.36 FP.


No other spell behaves this way that I can tell. Wind slasher, black bubble, and most of the other two-instance attacks will not cause this issue. Additionally, it does not matter if you take the fatal damage from the first or second half of Wretched Oil's damage; it will not proc From the Ashes no matter what.

When you die as a Phenex running Last Chance from the ghost tree, From the Ashes will proc first, healing you. IMMEDIATELY afterward, last chance will proc, setting your newly healed health to 1 HP with badly beaten to boot.

Quick Example:

1. Have 5 health, get Ryemei'd for 85 lightning damage.
2. From the ashes goes off, healing for about 100 health and applying badly beaten.
3. Last Chance goes off, setting the healed health to 1 HP.

I'm almost positive I saw a thread on this before, but I went back several months on the forums and couldn't find it. Using charge order with Youkai will not give you tactics ranks, even if they move.

- Reynes loves to Charge Mind when already charged, leading to entire battles of really not doing much.He also seems to religiously re-apply HSDW despite always being too busy using Charge Mind to use Exgalfa. If Reynes is clearly within range to nuke an enemy, he will HSDW and then move closer. He seems to prefer being at 1 range.

I just performed another test, with the intent of just tanking mobs and seeing what he does...

Round 0: Charge Mind
Round 1: HSDW, Move Closer
Round 2: Move closer
Round 3: Charge Mind
Round 4: HSDW, Move Closer
Round 5: Charge Mind
Round 6: Attack with tome because he wasted all his FP.

... yeah.

- Zoria seems to not trigger Electrojammers. Does she have a Ghosthand? I can't tell since she misses literally everything else. She cannot hit most enemies her own level. This may need some minor tweaking. It's really sad that so far, 90% of the damage she's dealt has been from her armor of nails. She also does not seem to ever use any of her skills aside from Riposte. I am unable to test further as she was taken out so quickly that not even my priest could save her.

- I have not tested the last one yet, since I ran out of murai.

- All mercs will join in for Singles Arena Matches. That's a bit silly.

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This week we have some random additions, including some new NPCs you can hire to fight with you called mercenaries. These are intended for the folks who just can't seem to find a party around their level, but need some help in order to actually clear anything. They won't be as useful as regular players, of course. There are currently 3; Alma Rorick, Reynes, and Zoria. They're all in Cellsvich. I plan to add a manager interface of some kind in the next update, most likely, so you can dismiss them and such. But for right now, since 3 is the maximum mercenaries you can hire, it wasn't a big issue.

There's a new preference setting for handling how mercenaries will work in a party situation. By default, it will pool everyone in the party's mercenaries together and spawn them at the start of a battle, up to the maximum. You can change this with the preference to only the party leader's, or no one's. Also, mercenaries don't show up in PvP battles no matter what, for a variety of reasons.

You can now upgrade everything! Sorta. Things you can equip. This was a necessary prequel to something that I am working on in the background that you will understand in time.

1.31
Mercenaries - You can now hire NPC allies for a fee.

• Mercenaries will spawn in PvE battles alongside you, at a level equal to your party leader's.
  
• Mercenary HP and FP will carry over through multiple battles and can be healed by things like Bandages.
  
• If a battle ends with a mercenary at 0 HP, they will leave your service, but you can rehire them in town.
  
• You can control who can use mercenaries in preferences (mercenaries will never show up in PvP battles).

• Added a new series of 3 tomes for the lightning element.
  
• Added 2 new tomes for each existing element, with increased Power.
  
• Blacksand's icon has changed to a more appropriate color.
  
• All new tomes added can be crafted via Alchemy.

• New preference; Quest Indicators. While on (default), you will see quest indicators above NPCs who have quests that you have not accepted, are in the process of doing, or have finished and are ready to turn in for rewards.
  
• Depending on the status of the quest, the appearance of the quest indicator will change. Once finished, the quest indicator will no longer appear.

• Hands - Hit and Max. FP can be upgraded.
  
• Legs - Evade and Max. HP can be upgraded.
  
• Accessories - Fortune and Greed can be upgraded. Fortune gives you a chance to not drop items on defeat, while Greed is a percetange modifier to Murai gained from enemies. (Both accessories can contribute to their effects).
  
• This also means that all equipment items can now be renamed!

• Steel Mind
  
• Steel Body
  
• Steel Blood
  
• Crescent Rook

Today I'll be focusing on just two of them though.

Spirit Pain.

And Enma's Summons.

Spirit Pain is capable of completely shutting down builds that heavily rely on using basic attack in some shape or form, and can even win fights in and of itself because of this. It's hard to avoid losing to this if you're in the group most affected by it if the map gods decide to throw you too far apart to stop it from happening soon enough (of course this applies to a lot of things). Personally I'd suggest--

1. Reducing its HP regen/damage on proc to perhaps 5 per rank. Not only having your attack redirected to yourself, but also giving the enemy HP and taking the same amount in damage is a lot, especially for how long the spell lasts.

2. Leaving it as is, and bumping it to a C rank, as it can benefit from High Speed Divine Words--meaning it's often that it'll be used without any time to react to it at all beyond preemptively silencing them, but unfortunately not even that is an absolute counter anymore (hi screaming tomes).

3. Reducing its duration. Not as huge a change, but it'd require more upkeep (or upkeep at -all-) if it was docked down to 3-4 rounds as opposed to the current -7-, which generally encapsulates entire fights 90% of the time.

In the other corner, we have Enma's Summons, perhaps now one of the worst invocations in the game. At first it was lackluster because it was easy to resist the damage from it with Dark resistance, thus making its 100-hp threshold a bit less meaningful. With the advent of the Black Beast Slayer stamp insuring nearly everyone will resist it at least somewhat, it become even less appealing, combined with the fact Dark resistance became increasingly more common/desired with the addition of Hexer. Then Evasion happened. I could keep going on about how easy it is to avoid this spell, and the fact that Hexer is typically strained for SP and slots as it is, but, hopefully it's clear enough why it's so undesirable to use.

Enma's Summons 'purpose' I can assume is to guarantee an incap on weak enemies, but unfortunately unless you're running Hexer/Evoker -and- your enemy is at critical hp (far below 100, to insure whatever dark resist or damage reductions they have won't mitigate it), odds are they'll survive the spell. To make this somewhat less common, it could--

1. Not do dark damage, instead deal a unique type of damage. It'll still be lackluster against most forms of DR, though.

2. Ignore Evasion. This would make it somewhat more viable for dealing damage for Hexers that can't get past Evasion.

3. Have a percentage based threshhold on top of its standard 100. Or just make it percentage based. Somewhere around 20-25% would make it about the same for most people, or less lethal even, but it'd make it viable against those with extremely high HP, and offer a reason to use it if nothing else.

4. Do something entirely different all together. Make it a status effect that insta-kills those who qualify as targets after a certain number of rounds.

I'll note that I've literally never seen -anyone- use this spell after a week or so of Hexer's release. Not to say that means UU = UP, but, there's probably a reason for it. I mean I could go rant about the Priest invocations that aren't that great, but, this thread isn't for that.

I rented out the Sothwest (between Asago Building and Western Cellsvich) stall in front of the Asago building, and the Leftmost stall in front of the Mages Guild, after playing for a while i go back to check on my shops, i realize they must have been cent back to me and i go to place them again, only to realize i only have one.

TLR - Had 2 shops, one disappeared, please help.

Quote from a previous update, explaining title =p
- Fixed a bug where having multiple shop stalls could cause shopkeepers to be stolen by void thieves.