Smart escorts!

[snoop]

Just wanted to give out some kudos on the improvement to escort AI. I got 4 straight escort quests in the Old Forest, and on the last one we ran straight into Wrathroot on the way. Well I'd burned a bunch of mana already plus my Manasurge to get there so I figured he was screwed. First glimmer of hope was when the warrior... ran away??!?!?? No more suicidal charges? Awesome. So we both retreat for a bit, but I'm still not too hopeful; my Manasurge is still on cooldown for a good long while. We both back into an open area, and I'm moving a lot faster than he is. I figure it's hopeless but I just keep backing away. Now he's closer to Wrathroot than I am but the giant tree ignores him and continues to pursue me, eventually tossing a Freeze my way. Now I'm at about half HP, and frozen, but not too far from Manasurge coming back! Suddenly I see my warrior friend turn red... huh? What happened, did I hit him with collateral damage or something? No... wait... he's helping me get out of the ice! As soon as I'm free he turns green again, meanwhile I've managed to Manasurge just before leaving the ice and I'm ready to unleash some serious whoop-ass. What an amazing sequence! And it wasn't even over... after Wrathroot I had another unique to deal with but my warrior friend just kept on heading for the portal while I dealt with it. He was pretty beat up, but he survived.

[Zonk]

Maybe it was luck but they seem somewhat saner to me, yes.
Fonts of life also help if you're lucky enough to get one!

[SageAcrin]

Yeah, a few versions back, in response to commentary about escorts in general, their highest end rewards(Alchemist's Imbue Item and Anorithil's Providence) were removed(or in Providence's case, altered to Healing Light), but in exchange they got the tactical AI setting that makes them less likely to charge enemies.

Outside of a tendency to dance around on traps when enemies are around, they're much brighter now.

[Pyris311]

Yes, "saner" is a good word for the AI improvements. I don't really want them to be "smarter" (sometimes they are hilarious, being smarter would diminish the hilariousness), but they definitely don't go rushing toward an undead horde peppered with vamps and horrors anymore. That was amusing maybe once or twice; after that I was like, "OH COME ON! ".

Though the whole "Here buddy, let me smash you out of the ice!" is definitely a sign of some intelligence. Hope to see that soon.

[hollower]

On the flipside I've occasionally had trouble getting them to move forward. It seems they can get stuck targeting some distant poison ivy or such, and I have to go find whatever it is they are targeting and kill it before they will move again.

[wobbly]

On the flipside I've occasionally had trouble getting them to move forward. It seems they can get stuck targeting some distant poison ivy or such, and I have to go find whatever it is they are targeting and kill it before they will move again.

Yep, I've seen this one. It'd be nice if they stopped fleeing from immobiles unless they're in their direct path. I'd also rather them tell me where the portal is as their next direction of movement rather then as the crow flys. I think if you could tell them to avoid a square or small radius area it might also stop them walking straight in to traps you know are there but are helpless to stop them moving onto.

On the plus side I'm rarely losing escorts these days, even saved one on the spellblaze crystal level today (escorts there are just plain mean).

[wobbly]

They still walk straight in to traps. Avoiding known traps would be a great improvement.

[Grey]

Disarm trap wands help.

[Frumple]

The one and only time I've tried using a trap destruction wand... it failed. In like, Kor'Pul, with a 20-something power wand.

It promptly got transmog'd because, welp!

[grayswandir]

Well, maybe you should've used it more than once.