I still don't understand Move Silently / Hide in Shadows

kaffekoppen

I've read numerous posts about this on various forums and I've tested it in-game, but it's hard to get a proper sample size. I did not reverse engineer the game. Though I probably could, I feel like this information should be out there somewhere.

The manual says *nothing* about the difference between the skills or what the numbers mean. Apparently there are penalties as well involving time of day, whether your character is in the shadows and such. No information to be found.

Various forum posts conjecture many different things:

1. move silently works when moving while hide in shadows is only while hiding
2. there is no difference and (move silently + hide in shadows) / 2 is used
3. a single byte is used to represent the value and thus you will wrap around to 0 after 255 (I was able to set the value to 285 so clearly the value being *displayed* is not one byte) - note that this theory also means that combined with 2 you would start failing if the total is greater than 255, unless the game divides each by 2 before adding (it's getting silly now, right?)
4. point 2. is correct, BUT move silently determines the amount of time before you leave stealth after attacking so you should focus on move silently first
5-\infty. a *lot* of other crazy theories

I'm left with a single question: Does anyone know how it *actually* works? I hate building a character based on pure guesswork.

Edit: I've found that on this forums it seems to be confirmed that the two are simply averages but that there is no difference. This matches the best descriptions I've seen elsewhere but leaves the question of the whole overflow business unanswered. Hopefully the devs wouldn't be silly enough to use one byte for an obvious candidate for overflow, but you really never know.

smeagolheart

that is the best writeup there is:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/183/index/12667733/1

kaffekoppen

Indeed that's also the best I found, but it seems to suggest that indeed overflow may occur, leaving out the details of whether it happens if your MS + HIS > 255, and why on earth it displays more than 255 if it's only 8 bits.

Oh and I apologize if you guys have been through this all before. I wasn't able to dig out the answer and haven't discussed this before.

Edit: Oh I see. Your MS or HIS value is indeed 0-255, but the value it displays is added to your race/dex bonus. Perhaps this is where the confusion came from. If they made the actual computations in 8 bits, that would just be utterly silly.

Pibaro

Your stealth is equal to (HIS+MS)/2 .
There are no malus during the night or in a real shadow during the day. A malus occurs if you are in plain light.
The only difference between HIS and MS is that MS misures also the time lap between the message "leaving shadows" and the moment when you are visible, so it's better to maximize MS before putting points in HIS.
I think that the 255 limit bug was corrected in EE.

kaffekoppen

If that's true, there's no reason to put points into HIS at all unless your MS is maxed. If the BSN link is to be believed, you need 400 points total if you want a 99% success rate in any conditions, so the best strategy (if it is true!) is to put 255 points into MS and then whatever else you need into HIS.

Quite... intuitive!

Pibaro

It's true, if you try you'll see.

nano

I'd like to see some proof that there are actual benefits to MS. My suspicion is that it works the same as HiS and making stealth into two skills is to prevent thieves from maxing their stealth too early. Rangers get a combined "stealth" score and if you wear a stealth item you'll see it go up by the average of the boosts.

@kaffekoppen were you able to actually produce an overflow, or are you running the EE?

kaffekoppen

I tried rolling up two thieves: one with maxed HIS an no MS and one with maxed MS and no HIS.

Then I stealthed (succeeded every time) and clicked the steal button. At that moment it says "leaving shadows". I tried a couple of times with each. Both were able to hit as much as 19 seconds (subtract maybe 1 for my slow fingers), and the lowest I saw was 10 seconds for the one with maxed HIS. Similar results were seen for a third thief I later rolled with maxed MS *and* HIS. It simple does not seem to make a difference.

My hypothesis is that it is more likely based on timing from your last stealth check. To try to verify this, I tried (with my third, fully maxed thief) to:

stealth and immediately steal: about 19 seconds each time

stealth, count to 8 and steal: about 12 seconds each time

I don't know how long I want to try it. It isn't really enough to conclude anything, but I can't say it has convinced me that MS is supposed to do anything that HIS can't, and I am personally thinking the timing explanation is more likely to be true.

nano said:

@kaffekoppen were you able to actually produce an overflow, or are you running the EE?

Well all 3 thieves had a total of MS + HIS > 255 with gear. The third was definitely over and in fact had more than 255 in both MS and HIS. No stealth attempt was unsuccessful. I don't believe there is an overflow issue.

And yes, I am using the EE. Just rolled some TOB characters.

nano said:

I'd like to see some proof that there are actual benefits to MS. My suspicion is that it works the same as HiS and making stealth into two skills is to prevent thieves from maxing their stealth too early. Rangers get a combined "stealth" score and if you wear a stealth item you'll see it go up by the average of the boosts.

If that were true, my low HIS and low MS characters should have failed to stealth a few times by now. It's likely that they are there because they are in PnP, but it was never fully implemented. That also matches what people are saying about (MS + HIS) / 2.

*Edit again*: Just to dispel one final myth before it even surfaces again: The game does *not* only use Move Silently after you are already stealthed to maintain stealth. I was able to successfully maintain stealth through several checks while circling an enemy with ZERO points in MS (and 255 in HIS).

xzar_monty

With that attitude, it might be a better idea to do something else than ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME. There's a great deal of excellent math textbooks out there, highly recommended stuff.

kaffekoppen

So because I want to find out how the skills work, I have a bad attitude and should stop playing the game? Someone even liked that comment?

nano

Don't mind the idiots... I tried a couple of non-EE ToB characters and didn't see any signs of an overflow either, so it might have been something that was fixed by a patch.

Mitchfork

Well, I appreciate the testing. Even if the implementation seems a bit boring ("Thieves have a lot of points, so we should make them burn more points on stealth"), it's good to know that you're not missing out by leveling them equally.

kaffekoppen

Yeah I'm fairly happy with what I've seen. I don't think you're going to go wrong as long as you just have at least 200 points distributed *somehow*. It does seem that there are penalties for hiding during the day if you're not in a shadow. I don't really want to test that right now though

Skaffen

I always try to really step into a shadow in the lower levels when I don't have many points yet. It certainly feels that I'm more successful that way but I never did any statistics and it might be a placebo effect

kaffekoppen

I think it's real enough. I have a low level F/T who keeps failing when it's day and mostly succeeds at night. I'm still not sure I'd spend more than 200 points though. No point in having a thief if the only thing you can do is backstab. It's probably also easier to hide in dungeons.

nano

It's pretty noticeable at the beginning of BG1. I use Imoen as a scout and it's nearly impossible to enter stealth if you're not in a shadow. It's a fun way to play actually - as you know there are occasional stealth checks while hidden so you have to run from shadow to shadow and then wait there a moment for the next stealth check. It's feels very sneaky, much more so than later on when you can hide in the middle of an empty room.