Underwater movement

Started by Calimport Smoke, May 31, 2012, 05:32:12 PM

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Calimport Smoke

Account: BlackIsom
Character: Harriet Thistlespike
Relevant factors: Level 9 pure rogue with athletic perk, underwater, retreat potions, shield, light armor.

While underwater and drinking expeditious retreat potions my character suffered decreases in movement after the effects of each potion wore off until she was barely able to move. I ended up dying but SC gave me a TR and asked me to try and reproduce what happened.

To test what happened I set an arbitrary point on the sea floor next to a building, activated two retreat items (successively, waiting for the effects to wear off) and then ran as far as I could in 10 seconds (I counted one one thousand, etc. Not totally accurate.) I marked my ending point with a bullet.

I then went out of the water, entered again, and ran as far as I could from the same point. Eyeballing it, I believe I was able to go about 40% further than I was able to go after the retreat potions affects wore off.

My suspicion is that there is a hard cap of 40% movement speed for non monks (and thus for barbarians a haste potion will simply match the speed of someone else who drank haste) and the potion raises that should  raise you up to 40% movement speed but only in effect raises you 20-25% and then is discounted the full 40% when it wears off. Thus, every potion you drink, would lower your movement speed by 20% until you're barely able to move.

I believe this would affect rangers / barbarians similarly.

Sponduli

With a level 6 ranger, holding a bow and wearing cloth armor, I've traveled underwater under near-constant effect of Expeditious Retreat without having something like this happen to me. Maybe the shield is causing the bug?

xXCrystal_Rose

So you actually made it further without retreat than you did with it? That is strange. I've not experienced it myself before, but then I've not tested it while using armor and a shield. That might be what is causing it though.


Let's say base movement speed is 10. That's how it is pnp anyway (in yards), and will represent 100% of your speed. These numbers will just be figurative so don't quote me on exact values. In ideal underwater conditions you might have your speed reduced by 30%, but you are using armor and a shield, so for the sake of easy numbers let's say you're down to 50% reduction. Your speed is now 5.

Expeditious retreat boosts your speed by 150%. What we don't know is if it boosts your base speed or your modified speed. If it boosts your base speed then your 5 speed will go up to 10, normal land speed. If it boosts your modified speed your speed will go up to 7.5, 75% of normal land speed. We will use the assumption that it boosts your modified speed.

What I suspect is happening is that when expedition retreat wears off there is an error in the speed formula. It is recognizing 7.5 as your base speed, and not 10, so instead of the 5 speed you at before drinking the potion you are getting 3.75 after the expeditious retreat wears off. Then with a second one it boosts you to 5.625 (this is a 150% increase bonus) and then counts that as your base movement speed, cutting it in half again when modifying your armor and shield penalties, which is why you seem to be going slower and slower each time your speed potion wears off.

So briefly what is happening in this example is when you go in normally, the script checks your current land speed (10) and lowers it by 50%. Then when an expeditious retreat is used and wears off the script doesn't revert to your old base speed of 10 when applying the penalties, but rather it uses your modified speed with the retreat potion, which never ends up matching your old land speed, explaining why you go slower and slower each time. Is this accurate to what you are experiencing? It's just the first guess that comes to mind, and might explain why I have never experienced this bug before when doing it without armor or shield. It could be that without shield or armor the retreat actually boosts you all the way up to normal land running speed, so there is no error experienced.

Relinquish

Ranger/Barbarian speed does work underwater, you do move faster.

Futzing equipping shield/armor/weapon tends to reset any bugs with movement speed underwater.