Wilderness Sneak and Auto-Flee Mobs

[Hexxaex]

It may have been addressed before, but why doesn't wilderness sneak allow hunters to sneak up on mobs that auto-flee?

Skill Sneak                                                      (Movement)

  This skill allows your character to enter and leave areas without being
detected, and to avoid more easily persons who would do you harm. It
functions for a certain time after a successful use.
  There are two separate varieties of sneak: the one which is used by
rogues and thieves, and the one which is employed by rangers, desert
elves, and halflings for purposes of hunting. The latter operates only
in wilderness terrain and has no application within a city or indoors
(and vice versa).

It's not very useful for hunting at all, because the animals that flee always notice you, the aggressive one's do too, and the one's that don't flee anyway don't really need to be snuck up on.  The only thing sneak is good for in terms of hunting is for hunting PC's, but not a lot of people defined as "hunters" do that.

Is there something going to be done about this, or is there a good reason as to why you can't hunt animals with wilderness sneak?

[jhunter (2lazy)]

As far as I remember it does work on autoflee critters, you just have to be really good at it.

[jstorrie]

One problem is that desert critters (and NPCs in general) look around quite a bit. So you may succesfully sneak in, but they look before you can get a 'hide' off.

That being said, animals in general have finely tuned senses and should be harder to sneak up on than people. Maybe your sneak skill isn't high enough to sneak up on them yet.

[RunningMountain]

I don't think it works at all. This came up before and it was said that NPCs are coded so as soon as they see you in the room they flee, and they use the
'look' command over and over and over.

-RM

[Rindan]

I have not played a person with wilderness sneak in a good long while, but last time I did I am pretty sure that wilderness sneak did not work against NPCs then.  The NPCs 'look' too much to sneak up on.  It doesn't matter how good your sneaking skills are if NPCs are constantly spaming l w;l e;l s;l n;l.  It would be great to see it fixed such that wilderness sneaking worked, but the technical fix might be daunting.

[Revelations]

Hmm, I doubt they actually "look" every second, cause that'll cause a huge lag, IMO. Just likely react to a certain trigger.

[Savak]

Well, that's not -precisely- how it works, but certainly at one point that was -effectively- how it worked.  It has indeed come up a few times before, and last I recall someone was working on it.  However, that was a significant amount of time ago, and although I haven't tested it recently, what people are saying here indicates it may not have been fixed/updated at that time, or any fix there was isn't doing what it's supposed to.

The issue was that NPC's generally didn't pay attention to the method by which someone entered a room, merely whether they entered it -- at least when it comes to being timid types & automatically fleeing.  So, whether you hopped, skipped, jumped, ran, or snuckeded into a room didn't matter, they reacted on the fact you entered.

If that's still the case, then yes, I think that's something worth looking at from a code point of view again.

-Savak

[HardCarbon]

Well, that's not -precisely- how it works, but certainly at one point that was -effectively- how it worked.  It has indeed come up a few times before, and last I recall someone was working on it.  However, that was a significant amount of time ago, and although I haven't tested it recently, what people are saying here indicates it may not have been fixed/updated at that time, or any fix there was isn't doing what it's supposed to.

The issue was that NPC's generally didn't pay attention to the method by which someone entered a room, merely whether they entered it -- at least when it comes to being timid types & automatically fleeing.  So, whether you hopped, skipped, jumped, ran, or snuckeded into a room didn't matter, they reacted on the fact you entered.

If that's still the case, then yes, I think that's something worth looking at from a code point of view again.

-Savak

I recall trying to sneak up on a critter.. I did it literally 20 times in a row... all failures.   I suspect its part of the timid code.. IF someone in the room THEN flee self

[Rural Ninja Kank]

I'm inclined to believe this is still a bug, based on a PC of mine that was more or less a ninja with outdoor sneak. It never worked on auto-flee mobs. It would be a very cool fix for a lot of reasons already described.

[Agent_137]

so is the fix separate for auto-aggro-mobs too?

[jmordetsky]

I was able to desert sneak into a room and get off a sap on an aggro mob, just recently. Not sure about auto flee-ers, though.

[Nao]

I was able to desert sneak into a room and get off a sap on an aggro mob, just recently. Not sure about auto flee-ers, though.

It wasn't just the attack delay? Some critters and agro mobs tzake a while to attack...

*remembers encounter with elves that stood there for a minute, then suddebly tried to hack my char to pieces*

[Fnord]

I was able to desert sneak into a room and get off a sap on an aggro mob, just recently. Not sure about auto flee-ers, though.

It wasn't just the attack delay? Some critters and agro mobs tzake a while to attack...

*remembers encounter with elves that stood there for a minute, then suddebly tried to hack my char to pieces*

To the best of my knowledge, what Nao and jmordetsky describe is the code working as it should. Even if you successfully sneak into a room, it just takes a "look" by the occupants to see something new is there. Without going into gory details, NPCs look every so often, just as players do. So you've got to sneak then hide to remain undetected, before the aggros try to lay the smacketh down. In the case of the sap, he probably acted quickly, if he didn't use hide.

So as not to derail... I think any of this is currently impossible against auto-flee.