Invisibility vs Hide in Shadows - Invisibility Bugged?

[Farwalker]

I'm noticing that invisibility and hide in shadows work very differently. Is invisibility bugged?

With invisibility, if you hit something it notices you and starts to retaliate. It is able to strike at you, and if you run off it seems to be able to follow you all over and continue the attack. You have to completely renew the invisibility for them to lose track of you again. That doesn't make any sense to me.

In comparison with hide in shadow you can hit something and it still can't find you and retaliate, as long as your hide in shadows condition holds up. If you are noticed, you can often take one step and "disappear" once more.

Given the difficulty of invisibility (steep casting cost for just a few rounds, or make the most difficult potion in the game - alchemy 20 need for invis 3s which still don't last that long!), I expected it to be a lot more effective! Sure, you can use it in bright light, but even so its usefulness is way too low, particularly in comparison to the way hide in shadows works.

By the way, noise shouldn't have been a factor at all in my testing, I used a very high move silent and silence was never broken in the test.

[Asgard The Elder]

I have noticed the same thing about invisibility and have discarded its use. I have found that my meger resourses would better used elsewhere. This is a question BW should answer.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

But invisibility with a high Move Silent is good for robbing people in brightly lit rooms.

[mark]

Probably not so much that invisibility is bugged. More likely that hide in shadows is overpowered.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Probably not so much that invisibility is bugged. More likely that hide in shadows is overpowered.

That has been the case since the start. We have done numerous balance adjustments with Hide In Shadow and the latest left it rather overpowered. Also, there is a problem with the fact that one is a skill (Hide in Shadows) and the other is an effect (Invisibility) so they are processed differently. There is obviously a few inconsistencies between the two, even though they should work similarly.

We will be tweaking every single skill and effect in Book II so I promise it will get looked into. If we can make some simple changes that can be implemented into Book I via a patch, we will certainly do it.

[Farwalker]

Sounds good to me, thanks BW!

[Farwalker]

But invisibility with a high Move Silent is good for robbing people in brightly lit rooms.

It's all good until I hit a lock. Apparently pummelling things with my fists or superheating metal to open something up draws a bit of attention. Who knew?

[Kreador Freeaxe]

But invisibility with a high Move Silent is good for robbing people in brightly lit rooms.

It's all good until I hit a lock. Apparently pummelling things with my fists or superheating metal to open something up draws a bit of attention. Who knew?

I guess this is a time when high move silent and high pick locks comes in handy. I drank a potion of invisibility and stood in plain sight of several Acolytes in Shadowmirk picking door locks. Nobody noticed.

[Farwalker]

Make sense - I was going for more of a silent warrior build and skipped the pick locks.

The silent part took a lot of skill points. I had hoped for some help from my dexterity (the description of move silently states that dexterity is supposed to help), but that's not working. (I reported this as a minor bug already in another post). Without the help from dexterity it takes 19 points in move silent just to be able to stand quietly right next to someone in light armor (feet/legs/torso). I think if you have no armor on it's the same, but if you add a piece of heavy armor the difficulty does jump up (to about 23 for one piece I believe). To actually walk right past someone in light armor and maintain silence takes a whopping 24.

I never did manage to maintain silence in a melee attack, but at 24 I was able to fire a bow and remain silent, even point blank. Was rather pleased with that, for all of about two minutes, until I realized that once you damage someone with an arrow they always know where you are, even if you were invisible, hidden in shadows in some dark corner and shooting from a good distance away. (You can of course shoot, take a step to re-hide in shadows, shoot again, ... it's the shoot step shuffle! Not to be danced to the music of the "chicken dance" by the way, that just ruins the dark mysterious bowman mystique.)

[BasiliskWrangler]

...until I realized that once you damage someone with an arrow they always know where you are, even if you were invisible.

This definitely sounds bugged to me. As long as you are silent, an NPC should never know where a ranged invisible attack is coming from. Hmmm....well, there has been a lot of discussion going on here with how Hide in Shadow / Invisibility / Move Silent should work. The whole system is getting ripped out and replaced in the next few weeks and I hope to really perfect this with Book II.

[Farwalker]

I'll look forward to seeing it in Book II - the platform seems quite promising, and I had fun testing this version out.

Thanks BW!