Escorts are effing STUPID

[angstymeierlink]

seriously, either take these things out or fix them. I've only been able to save 1 and thats because the exit portal was in the next damn room. The escortee's are MORONS, even if I tell them not to move they just run off a few turns later and die. most of them die within 5 turns because they ambush me going down the stairs and there's 5-10 monsters around us. STUPID. AND my arcane powers hurt them... STUPID. They walk right into monsters and die, they run away from me and die. you might as well be asked to save a chicken with its head cut off! The only reason I was able to save melinda was to dig a spiral hole in the wall like the wiki said... Why can't we just tell them what to do? Move here and stay there and what not. As Adam Sessler said, NO ESCORT MISSIONS. I know rougelikes aren't supposed to be fair, but this is just idiotic.

[Kemipso]

Hey,


I have no issue with escorts and actually enjoy them. I do not mean to offend you, but you might be handling them in wrong way.

You should always have a mean to scout around you quickly - either by moving your own char, a minion or using reveal spells / items. If you do that, you should be able to ask your protegee to stop moving when danger is ahead.

Sometimes, the escort starts in a really dangerous position, and then it becomes really hard to protect the NPC. I find it OK - it adds uncertainty to the game, without destroying the game for you even if you lose.

I usually succeed with at the minimum 7 escorts out of 10, try to scout farther away than you currently do!

One last thing I like about escorts - their AI is very predictable. Adapt your strategy to its behaviour!

Sorry about the long post.

[marshmallowpeep]

If you ask them where the portal is every once in a while it's pretty easy to keep them from "running off" by just going in the same direction they're inclined to go. The AI is stupid, but it's extremely predicable (they either move towards the portal or run back and forth saying "HELP A MONSTER"), which makes it pretty easy to deal with. If you're always closer to the portal than they are then they're not going to move in any direction other than towards you. If you keep yourself between them and the monsters, they'll probably stay alive. Yeah, it's annoying if there's a bunch of monsters in the first room and sometimes you have to just accept that they're unsaveable, but I like the escorts and am able to save them more often than not.

[edge2054]

Statistically they're savable more often than not.

They're not supposed to be 100%.

And really if you think they're bad now you should have seen them in beta.

[HousePet]

Also, Melinda doesn't use the same rules as the escortees.

[Sradac]

As someone else said, their AI is very predictable. Stay directly in front of them and they are safe most of the time. If you block the path they are trying to take, they just wont move. Even if its like, say the trollmire and the "want" to go between two trees and you stand there, they wont try to go around you.

Really its just spellcasters and ambushes you need to watch out for.

[Radon26]

how about adding a rule
"if the escortee is cloer to the enemy than you are, he will go to you"
sometimes, they can only move left, to you, or right, into a corner.
ofc, right, is oposite than towards you, and enemies seem to always target escortee first.
GL saving him from that situation.

while it is realy eazy to predict their movement in a forest, GL predicting them in a maze. (not THE maze)

[breadsmith]

Even then, predicting their movement isn't truly necessary. For anyone but a Stone Warden with vines up, you should be able to still fairly easily get in front of them.

[Dhurke]

Really good addon:

http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/hz-escorts

Escorts Enhanced

Various enhancements to escort quest NPCs:
- Escorts now follow the player when not close to the portal.
- Escorts occasionally say useful things.
- Escorts heal 5% of their maximum health per turn.

[angstymeierlink]

Excellent stuff from everybody, and I'll try that addon. I always seem to get the escorts RIGHT at the stairs, when there's monsters everywhere, and I'm playing an arcane blade, so I don't have a lot of ranged capability, with my build anyway. They just die so quick and there's nothing I can do and I want those damn points. Maybe with a different class next time. This IS my first play through so... but I played crawl for a long time and I'm good at this kind of game. I just wish I could tell them to hide in a corner while I wipe out the room and then move on, I'll be fighting a big group and they'll just walk on past me right into the group and die... STUPID. And I'm glad I didn't experience them in beta Thanks everyone, maybe some minor changes will come of this.

[jenx]

Excellent stuff from everybody, and I'll try that addon. I always seem to get the escorts RIGHT at the stairs, when there's monsters everywhere, and I'm playing an arcane blade, so I don't have a lot of ranged capability, with my build anyway. They just die so quick and there's nothing I can do and I want those damn points. Maybe with a different class next time. This IS my first play through so... but I played crawl for a long time and I'm good at this kind of game. I just wish I could tell them to hide in a corner while I wipe out the room and then move on, I'll be fighting a big group and they'll just walk on past me right into the group and die... STUPID. And I'm glad I didn't experience them in beta Thanks everyone, maybe some minor changes will come of this.

also....
1. many of yuor talents will hurt them, so be careful of anything that does that
2. if you can get nature's touch or bathe in light, you can heal your escorts and that helps a lot, and a few talents allow this as well
3. you travel faster than them in normal speed, so put on boots of speed etc, and race ahead and clear a room, then scoot back to them. *sometimes* this works well.
3b. if you have wanderer's rest, or any targetted movement talent, even rush if an npc is present, you can jump ahead in leaps and bounds (speed boost is good too), and clear rooms in advance.
4. watch enemies that throw area attacks, like poison ivys. they splash onto escorts easily and escorts are damaged easily.
5. in dreadfell, and dungeons like that, the portal can be close by in real terms, but a long trip by walking, as they won't open doors. again, *sometimes*, opening doors, or even tunnelling (in reknor!), can get you a handy shortcut to the target. having Track etc type talents can assist with this, if yuo know there is a room to avoid. burning star is great for planning this.
6. escorts have goal line fever, so they can shoot across a room if they have freedom to move. this is a real problem early on, but again, *sometimes* this is great, once the portal is in the room with you and you can distract all the npcs. give the escrot a clear LOS and distract the other npcs and they will shoot to it. it is risky but often works.
7. some talents, like creating dream forge blocks etc, allow you to protect the escort from dmg for a few turns, by altering landscape temporarily. that's often all you need.
8. once you unlock temporal warden, well, you'll discover all sorts of ways to protect them.

my last two night mare runs i got achievement for rescuing all 9 escorts, so it can be done. i would average about 7. if i lose 4 or more, i feel that i've had a bad run.

[HousePet]

Nah, if you lose a lot of escorts, its them that are having a bad run, not you.

[breadsmith]

Oh, and Escorts always spawn right at the entrance to a zone, so if they're in dreadfell/kor'pul/reknor, they'll spawn right next to the stairs.

[Mankeli]

I don't like escorts either but it has nothing to do with the escorting being "difficult". It actually is pretty much the opposite for me: Escorts are fairly easy to save (on normal difficulty you can pretty much always save them if they don't spawn in the middle of a rare wyrm/drake pack in Dreadfell) by tedious tactics of moving one tile at the time without autoexplore, constantly switching places/phase dooring them, constantly using scouting methods, switching to an equipment that doesn't have AoE things and generally avoiding talents that can hurt your escorts. Escorts slow down the gameplay considerably, encourages tedious and degenerative practices and even though there are situations where actual choices may exist (in the line of "do I want to save the escort and take a risk of losing a character (BTW you shouldn't risk your character's life)) the vast majority of the challenge for me is the tedium -not actual tactical choices.

The rare occasions (on normal) where you can't save the escort: Well, if your escort did get slaughtered in one turn by grandmaster assassin rare before you could even get to/phase door him/her or kill the enemy then there wasn't much tactics involved in here either. The situation is slightly different in higher difficulties where player's stupid choices are punished more prominently but the basic complaints remain valid.

If it would be up to me escort quest would be implemented in one of two following ways:

1) Get rid of the escorting part entirely. You automatically get the reward screen when the game would roll an escort and you get to choose the reward just like you do now. You saved the escort by finding him/her. Tune down the number of "escorts" a bit if need be.

2) Ged rid of the escorting part entirely. When the game rolls an escort there is a choice given where you can teleport to a remote place like, but not actually, Fearscape where a rare/unique/boss monster is guarding the escort. You can duel it out with the rare/unique/boss 1:1 and if you kill him/her you get the escort quest reward because you set the escort free. You should most likely be allowed to exit the level anytime so that it doesn't become a complete death trap. Now there would be at least potentially an interesting fight every time and you wouldn't have to spend time by being afraid of the poison spit the whole freaking old forest (or on insane/madness, Trollmire) level. Although, still, escorts are not really worth losing your character over (if you are trying to win on every character you start the game with, that is).

On both suggestions the risk of the escort dying would be 0. On the latter suggestion the PC might die or escape without the reward. I would personally prefer 1).

(BTW getting rid of escorts completely was done in zTome but it hasn't been updated in over a year so and probably won't be so...)

[angstymeierlink]

More good stuff, thanks everyone. I recently just lost one in reknor even with the addon... and it was an elite assassin orc that did it