How to make stealth useful

[cttw]

I need it explained to me. I am too thick to see it by myself. It seems that even on 1.5 mastery, 5 points in stealth, and 2 stealth bonus items, everyone and I mean everyone can see me.

[darkgod]

Being spotted means that on one occasion they caught an idea of where you are, it doesnt mean they can track you perfectly, they melee will still have chance ot fail and spells will land randomly

[random417]

When you're battling rogues and they kinda blink in and out of existance, that would be what it would appear like from a mobs point of view, I do believe, Not that I use stealth much, so I could be wrong.

[darkgod]

Yes, players & npcs follow the same rules (on that and most everything else)

[tylor]

It's still hell confusing. Needs a lot more feedback. May be, add quazy-status "Sees you" (with tooltip) for those who detected you when you are stealthed/invisible? And show them a little different - without desaturation, may be?

[sofocles]

He sees you means he detected you.... THAT turn, he can loose sight of you the next one.
In anycase whats most important is you stay Stealthed , even if you are detected to get the huge bonus to damage: automatic crit + 100% dmg
with bosses, they will detect you almost always but the problem is you WILL break stealth with them. That is why you need to:
either re-cloak (crysis 3) or escape to where you arent seen and wait for stealth cooldown.
With criters you can basicly go around killing everything you see:
the standard development of the stealth line is 5/5/1/5
Number 1 to get stealth and harder to detect
number 2 is your main damage choice
number 4 to keep always stealth even after killing.
number 3 just to put stealth out of cooldown (or to cloak directly if ur lucky)
End game bosses have detection above 150 so they will detect you quite easily.
Items that give stealth bonus:
Death embrace armour + 0,10 arcane tier 5
Serpentine cloak: +0,10 not arcane tier 3
Duathedlen heart: +0,10 arcane light

If ur lucky u can get an object that increases cunning/stealth: extra points in stealth also help to decide if an enemy sees you or not.

[cttw]

I've personally never had any trouble dealing with the stealthed NPCs. It is true that they blink in and out of view in some turns, but they are still easy to find, and hit. This may, of course, be because I always stock up on see stealth/invis stuff ever since I was surprised by Elandar's long term invisibility the first time I got that far.

And I fear that the big nasties are the same as my characters. They also are stocked up on stealth detection, as you say, and they see you. More, the ones that see you only sometimes, you still need to pass a stealth-check just before the attack to get the shadowstrike bonus.

Spells that hit the ground next to you are also extremelly dangerous, like the multi-nuke-to-the-face you get in the Orc prides. So having them slightly miss you is useless.

I understand the mechanics, my question is how to make it useful? The suggested build of 5/5/1/5 Stealth + 2 cat points seems to be quite expensive, for a minimal, random benefit that doesn't really work on the most dangerous enemies. So my question is, in what situations is this investement better than the other talent trees, like getting more stamina and resetting cooldowns on the attack skills, speed bonuses, etc.

[AlexanderR]

So my question is, in what situations is this investement better than the other talent trees, like getting more stamina and resetting cooldowns on the attack skills, speed bonuses, etc.

Just don't try to make stealth useful in listed situations. Or play marauders. Personally, I have long given up on using stealth for anything, except one-shotting non-elites with shadowstrikes. Note, that regardless of what people are saying, many of rogue/shadowblade deaths aren't to bosses, but to mobs/elites, ganging up on you in unfortunate ways. This is why stealthy shadowblade builds aren't that great, despite existence of Tricks of Trade prodigy - stealth protects from most common threat earlygame.. and that's all. Max out Cun, buff category mastery, build your gear from items with bonuses to stealth score, get Lucky Day prodigy, and you may be able to land a couple of shadowstrikes on some bosses. Don't hope for more.

To be honest, I am also not fully content with how useful stealth currently is. But alternatives are grim. Making stealth stronger would make crazy see stealth/see invisible score mandatory for everyone (like detecting traps was, when those were stronger). Trying to balance rogues/shadowblades around it would result in reducing their damage and turning these two classes in rogue alternatives of bulwarks, tanking everything by guaranteed high miss rates and taking antimagic as mandatorily as solipsists. Alternatively, darkgod may change entire stealth mechanics, introducing vision zones, alarm levels etc. Either way probability-based nature of stealth makes relying on it in the roguelike too dangerous.. unless ToME 4 gameplay with stealth-based classes is separately classified as action-adventure stealth game

[HousePet]

Stealth is useful, but I don't think you can make it reliable.
Unless you get lucky with gear.

[ohioastro]

High stealth can be extremely reliable. Look for + stealth gear. The single most fun thing with a high level rogue is to walk into a room and have no one react.

To be effective you have to combine it with mobility options - so that you only have to be stealthed for a couple of rounds to get your business done.

[Niegy]

Stealth is useful, but I don't think you can make it reliable.
Unless you get lucky with gear.

But Stealth is broken/stopped once you have been detected how can it be useful??? Seems more like a fake feature like it is implemented and a waste of skill points. Moreover when you are in stealth mode you become blind hahem, seriously. Or eventually (but I didn't get that feeling in game) the game doesn't show well the Stealth mode. For example it is broken because an enemy see you but it is still on for another enemy. The point is is enemies go straight to the character so for me seems rather pointless.

The only point of stealth would be later to get it when you can have the skill allowing enter in Stealth mode even when in sight (Hide in Plain Sight) and resetting Stealth cooldown. But it's only quite later and until that any point in Stealth is a waste. Moreover the cooldown of Hide is very high and the chance of success at 1 point is less than 50% so not really useful until many more skill points spend.

Ok what's above is what's the newbie feel about Stealth. But I'd like be en-lighted, is there really any utility of taking Stealth apart to fake that your character is blind??

PS: I don't wake up an old thread, I reuse an old thread covering the subject but not answering it fully for my questions.

[tylor]

In theory, with 5/5/1/5 you have big damage bonus and chance to not being attacked for entire duration of fight. But I never tried it personally. Is it working/as good as seems?

[HousePet]

The feedback about stealth could be much better.
You have no easy way of knowing when it is doing something or not.
Something to indicate whether an enemy is: completely oblivious to your presence, has seen something and wants to check it out, or can see you directly would be great.

[Niegy]

In theory, with 5/5/1/5 you have big damage bonus and chance to not being attacked for entire duration of fight. But I never tried it personally. Is it working/as good as seems?

Ouch "end of game" only feature? Well that's not good at all.

The feedback about stealth could be much better.
You have no easy way of knowing when it is doing something or not.
Something to indicate whether an enemy is: completely oblivious to your presence, has seen something and wants to check it out, or can see you directly would be great.

Totally agree but I bet that currently it would just show how pointless are the skills related to Stealth.

Beyond Divinity had one of the rare RPG Stealth system with a great management of the feedback to player. But it was working with areas with more squares, not easy to see it working as well with many one square corridors, small rooms and so on.

There's three points about Stealth, are you seen, when you'll be seen, if you are seen will you be seen constantly until re enter in Stealth mode:
- First point is, are you seen or not requires clues otherwise it's too weird.
- Second point is being seen by an enemy means being seen by all. It makes sense because an enemy could warn others, but it's not fully ok because an archer or mage couldn't target you as well even if he knows the direction.
- Third point is is being seen means Stealth broken, with a system with a constant check every step it means pointless Stealth. If it's not broken but recheck at each turn it makes it very random and the clue that an enemy see you is pointless so it would be just random and no feedback to the player.

So here how Beyond Divinity managed it:
- The stealth mode was on/off ie if seen by one you are seen by all.
- But in stealth mode you had a visual clue of the area where you could be detected. It was computed by the enemies in the area, their sight range and accuracy, the obstacles blocking vision was used in the computing, and their look direction too (in their back they could detect only at a very close range).
- And enemies was moving plus sneaking was making you walk slowly.

This was generating a rather funny sneaky progression. I noticed some shareware games used such design to make puzzle oriented games.

But as I mentioned it can't be ported directly in a game like Tome4.

[SageAcrin]

ToME Stealth is, once you really get it, not actually all that complicated and pretty intuitive.

Basically, if an enemy does not pass his check against your Stealth this turn, he functionally is blinded and reacts as such.

(Weaker AI enemies mill around and spray magic in random directions hoping to hit you, while tactical AI enemies have a general idea of where you are but no specifics, effectively making you immune to ranged attacks that aren't large blast area. Additionally, physical attacks have a fixed chance to miss, above and beyond your normal Defense, if an enemy somehow manages to stumble into you. Finally, if they haven't seen you at all, yet, and no other enemies in the vicinity have, they won't do anything.)

Basically, when someone sees you, they are seeing you for that turn and only they can see you. You're getting all the feedback you actually need, when those enemies are spotting you... it's just that how Stealth functions is a little odd, so it may not be immediately evident what's going on.

It doesn't need to be reliable when it's functioning like a constant, moderately good, full screen and impossible to fully immune status effect when it's working. It's already being really good, when it's working, and if it fails, it'll probably pick up next turn. It is, once you get how it functions, really good.

Ouch "end of game" only feature? Well that's not good at all.

16 points isn't endgame. You can easily get that amount of points into Stealth before Dreadfell, without too much hardship.

Yeah, it's an investment, but it's also worth it.