Uses of Move Silently and Hide in Shadows

Here's where all things related to Book II are being discussed!
Farwalker
Officer [Silver Rank]
Officer [Silver Rank]
Posts: 382
Joined: June 30th, 2008, 8:50 pm

Re: Uses of Move Silently and Hide in Shadows

Post by Farwalker »

cal1s wrote: City Guard in Eastwillow, 4 squares
The pic for this one shows you 5 squares away, but if you took one more step towards him and were still silent (and he didn't move), that's pretty good! (Especially for just 2 move silent!) I don't know if unskilled wearing of light armor causes a problem or not. I didn't test for move silent skills that low before, so hard to compare, but I suspect you are getting some dexterity benefit - if I had to make a wild guess it would be equivalent of 1 per 5 points.

At some point I may test this in detail again, once I level a character up a bit more. Unless someone beats me to it of course. :D

Tidbits from Book 1 testing (no heavy armor feet/legs/torso):
Bow: point blank use was silent at level 24 skill (possibly even level 23)
Fleshboil: at skill 20 silent at range 6, at skill 24 silent at range 4
Farwalker
Officer [Silver Rank]
Officer [Silver Rank]
Posts: 382
Joined: June 30th, 2008, 8:50 pm

Re: Uses of Move Silently and Hide in Shadows

Post by Farwalker »

Hmm... started testing and found that there is a delay of a full turn between when you do something and when it shows up in your silence status. Reported as bug, hoping for a correction in next patch.
Farwalker
Officer [Silver Rank]
Officer [Silver Rank]
Posts: 382
Joined: June 30th, 2008, 8:50 pm

Re: Uses of Move Silently and Hide in Shadows

Post by Farwalker »

Ok, also proved in testing that Dexterity isn't helping with move silently as it should. :cry:
Will post that as a bug as well with test details...
Cairn
Initiate
Posts: 9
Joined: July 1st, 2017, 8:47 pm

Re: Uses of Move Silently and Hide in Shadows

Post by Cairn »

I know this is old, but Hide in Shadows was a necessary in Eschalon Book I if you wanted to play any type not known for direct confrontation.

I like to play Ranger types . . . always, and so I often pick skills they'd have, such as the ability to sneak up on prey, which is essentially what 'move silent' and 'hide in shadows' indeed is. People think of these as rogue or criminal skills, but they aren't. They're hunter's skills that criminals use for nefarious purposes.

Anyway, in Book I, if you wanted to be that type, it was absolutely necessary to have hide in shadows, but not really move silent. Truth be told, I often got annoyed when enemies didn't come towards me because it meant I had to move out from hiding or waste arrows. Move silent didn't help attract their attention, and in fact makes it harder to attract their attention.

Oh, the benefit was that the enemies would walk around you without striking at you, which meant you swing your sword and miss or do no damage a bazillion times without getting hit back, and often that's how long it took to actually get a strike that does damage. It was frustrating. At times, it seemed like I swung that sword 20 to 40 times before it actually did any damage. I would just sit there with my hand on my face relaxing my head, and click and click and click and . . . and click and then damage finally. They always have a chance of finding you once you do damage, and they attack. Then you step onto an adjacent square, typically up against a wall, and you go back into hiding. Hide in shadows allowed me to actually finish the game because even at citadel level, I still couldn't take on the more powerful enemies in a direct one-on-one fight. A single Taurax would still beat me in a fair fight. But using hide in shadows . . . read below.

One instance was epic. I had about 7 goblins and 5 Taurax all following me like the computerized marching sounds of an army, and couldn't even take on a single Taurax in a direct fight, much less 5 and 7 goblins . . . and then the sun went down. I disappeared into the night as I walked (hide in shadows was high enough by that time to disappear at any location so long as it was the dead of night). I buffed with some spells and even before the moon hit midnight I had slaughtered each and every one of them. I earned a name that night that no goblin dares speak for fear I may hear it slaughter them like as an invisible phantom. I don't know what that name is, because like I said, they dare not speak it. Granted, that was at the time that I was ready to take down the Citadel, but still, it was movie-worthy epic.

I don't know about Book II. I'm trying that one now, but the first few levels of hide in shadows seems to only work when you're not already seen. So far I can't just disappear when I'm already seen like I could in Book I, so it's been pretty useless to me so far.
User avatar
SpottedShroom
Captain Magnate
Captain Magnate
Posts: 1372
Joined: June 4th, 2010, 6:18 pm

Re: Uses of Move Silently and Hide in Shadows

Post by SpottedShroom »

Yeah, the general consensus is that Hide in Shadows was good to be the point of being unbalanced in Book I and basically useless in Book II/III. I remember using the character editor to give myself ranks of it to try to test its effectiveness and just giving up.
User avatar
MyGameCompany
Officer [Platinum Rank]
Officer [Platinum Rank]
Posts: 516
Joined: September 22nd, 2009, 6:56 pm
Location: Michigan

Re: Uses of Move Silently and Hide in Shadows

Post by MyGameCompany »

Hm. I never noticed any problems with it when I played. Granted, I did have to pump more points into both skills and DEX, as well as Light Armor (if I wanted to wear light armor and move silently), but I was able to sneak around most places without being seen/caught, and distinctly remember sniping clueless enemies from the shadows with my bow. I think the later updates/patches of Book II helped with balance issues, though not everything was fixed.

I just pulled up an old save game I had, and I've got DEX=36, Hide In Shadows at 16 (aided by 2 Phantom rings and a Cloak of the Shadow), and Move Silently at 10. At night, I can be standing 4 spaces from a lit torch, and I'm hidden. I can start shooting a townsperson, and I lose neither status. They do move toward me, but that doesn't bother me so much (in real life, I'm sure you could tell roughly which direction the arrow came from). Once I am spotted, though, it's difficult to recover that hidden status (which again, in real life, makes sense to me). But that's not too big a deal, because by that time the bad guy is dead or almost dead. Obviously that's tougher if you're facing a crowd of enemies, but there are strategies to deal with that.
Troy
Former indie game developer
Check out my Book III mods: The Mystery of Rockhammer Mine and Expedition into West Mirkland
Post Reply