The Animal Companion Problem

In my current game I had the friendly fire issue with the animal companion again.
Hickory Branche, the Dire Bear took most hitpoints from Elmo until he had only 3 left - and then the animal companion moved next to Elmo and attacked him (and fortunately missed).

Reading the thread here:
http://www.co8.org/forum/showthread.php?t=6276

I wonder if the AC targets the most damaged being around - regardless if friend or foe?

 

I'm more intrigued hoiw any party member took damage from the dire bear, I didn't even know you could get to him in his hole. I just shoot him until he dies.

 

GG, what version are you playing?

If you run the latest version you might be in for quite a surprise when you approach the cave in HB.

 

In 4 levels of the newest update my animal companion has attacked exactly one enemy and killed my party's wizard twice.

 

Hi olthar,

Use the search feature at the top of the page and search for AC, or animal companion, there is quite a discussion on this matter and you should find a few answers there.

 

Gaear,

I apologize in advance for this post because it will be a rant and you will not be pleased to read it.

I experienced the same thing that some people reported in the last posts. The jackal just keeps moving back and forth near my characters and doesn't do anything. I even tried to back off a couple times, leaving the animal companion near the enemies, but he just move backs and when the enemies approach him he doesn't attack them.

If you saw my thread asking for help, I created the four core classes and the druid. I'm still in the beginning, but I already have an idea of what are the weakness and strengths of every character. Every one of them is useful at something, but with the change of the AC's AI, to me the druid is the most useless character so far: his strongest feature is the summons, and they simply suck.

Now, I know that this isn't entirely your fault, because Troika could have done a much better job when they released this unpolished game, but I still think that my AC would be more useful charging in the middle of the battle and serving as cannon fodder. Yes, he would trigger a lot of attacks of opportunity, but at least he would do something instead of baby setting my companions 90%+ of the time.

I wish that I didn't bring the druid along. I have lost interest in this game many times since I started playing, and now that I found this thread, I'm unmotivated to keep playing. I don't want to restart the game again, so I'm going to uninstall.

Thanks for your effort in trying to make The Temple of Elemental Evil a better game, but it seems that after 10 years, it's still unplayable.

 

Sorry it is not unplayable,I have played god knows how many AD&D types since 1980s,lol. And even with faults from Troika it is playable,the skill is manipulation the game to your own enjoyment.

I use Druid/Rangers and my Druids kill...lightning and entangle works wonders. I rarely use ACs except for Druid Melaney who is way weak,but adding the right equiptment and magical feats-create weapons/armour etc,does wonders! The AC's do have flaws,but I have charmed Mr Ugly Bear,even large snakes to help me with my Druid. They work,so no real dramas. Meleney with the DIRE Bear as her teddybear,oh lol.

 

Is there a way to toggle the new AC commands in the front end? Like setting of max.hp/hd, or like # of players.

 

Gaear,

As I said, I knew you weren't going to be pleased with my post. I might give ToEE another try, but I will either have to restart the game again and drop the druid, or restart the game and make a new druid build.

I understand that my post was quite vague, but it's hard to explain what is wrong with the AC's AI. I would just say that it simply doesn't work very well. One thing that you might consider is that in the beginning most of my attacks were missing (melee or ranged), therefore I needed someone to tank the damage from the enemies (when they hit), but often the fighter wasn't enough, so I tried to use the animal companion (jackal) for that, but there was no way to control it or to force it to attack the enemies.

 

Well, I did not particularly liked the gung-ho attitude of the original AC behaviour, but I care even less about how it's working out now. At least you had something from your AC before the change... What I see now most of all is that the AC runs around stupidly attracting AoO's. At least before the AC did some damage before dying...

Would it otherwise be possible to bring out a minipatch to revert the AC's behaviour back to how it was?

 

Restarting the game probably isn't necessary. toee_noob, are you aware that you can remove PCs from your party and add PCs to your party (once your PCs are in the game-world) by clicking on the guestbook in either The Inn of the Welcome Wench (in Hommlet) or the Waterside Hostel (in Nulb) or the inns/taverns in Verbobonc? Any PC that you add to your party in this manner will start out at level 1 but it won't take long for your new PC to catch up to your other characters in level - you just need to be careful with your new low-level PC by keeping him/her out of harm's way until he/she has a decent amount of Hit Points.

toee_noob, I agree with you that druids suck! I honestly think that the only useful thing about a druid is that Survival is a class skill for druids. Please don't reply to my post with a pro-druid argument because it won't convert me and I don't care about druids at all. I only ever have a druid in my party if I recruit the NPC Meleny and/or the NPC Kella. My favourite classes are fighter, rogue, cleric and wizard.

I share nyarlathotep's opinion that although suicidal animal companions weren't ideal, they are preferable to the "guard" animal companion A.I. that is currently implemented. Having a suicidal jackal during the Lareth combat in the moathouse dungeon can make all the difference in that combat - that combat would be SO MUCH more difficult if the jackal did not go on the offensive right from the outset and for the duration of the combat! I don't really care about druids or rangers, so please don't pay much attention to my opinion, and I should point out that I HAVEN'T actually tested the new animal companion A.I.. When using the old suicidal animal companion A.I., I could get by with the A.I. by a combination of placing my animal companion at the rear of my party formation (so that my animal companion was in a less suicidal position at the start of combats) and by both healing my animal companion during combat (when necessary) and casting Magic Fang or Greater Magic Fang on my animal companion. And if my animal companion dies during combat, then it's no big deal - I just call forth another animal companion after resting 1 day. I once watched my polar bear animal companion (who had Greater Magic Fang cast on it) maul an opponent by hitting with all 3 attacks in 1 turn for decent amounts of damage with each hit - it was a very inspiring sight which looked and sounded awesome!

Druids who are level 13 or higher are supposed to be able to obtain a Dire Bear as their animal companion. Does anybody know whether a level 13+ druid in this computer game is able to choose Dire Bear from their list of available animal companions? If not, is it within the Circle of Eight Modders' ability to add Dire Bear to the list animal companions that druids can have in this computer game? Again, I don't really care about druids, so please don't pay much heed to my request.