Stealth cooldown in EE
Mivsan
Member Posts: 139
Hello,
I feel stupid asking this, like I missed some huge announcement ~2 years ago, but - is the "cooldown" on Hide in Shadows after leaving shadows intended in the Enhanced Editions of Baldur's Gate games?
What I mean in detail:
While being hidden, ordering any action (attacking, quick-switching weapons, talking, etc.) will result in the "leaving shadows" message, and that triggers the "cooldown" on your Hide in Shadows - the icon is grayed out for the rough duration of a round.
In the originals, you only got that cooldown/grayed out icon after your Hide in Shadows failed, not when you left the shadows on your own (through a backstab or looting a chest, for example).
I tried to look the issue up, but the only thing I found were patch notes mentioning a cooldown for the Shadowdancer kit, supposedly activating after a backstab. The issue I'm describing however, happens to all Thief kits, multi and dual classes. I see no difference between a Shadowdancer and the others.
I've just noticed the whole thing recently, after creating a backstab-oriented character in the EEs, for some "backstab -> run out -> backstab -> run out" good times, but it seems like that tactic has been "enhanced" out of the game.
I feel stupid asking this, like I missed some huge announcement ~2 years ago, but - is the "cooldown" on Hide in Shadows after leaving shadows intended in the Enhanced Editions of Baldur's Gate games?
What I mean in detail:
While being hidden, ordering any action (attacking, quick-switching weapons, talking, etc.) will result in the "leaving shadows" message, and that triggers the "cooldown" on your Hide in Shadows - the icon is grayed out for the rough duration of a round.
In the originals, you only got that cooldown/grayed out icon after your Hide in Shadows failed, not when you left the shadows on your own (through a backstab or looting a chest, for example).
I tried to look the issue up, but the only thing I found were patch notes mentioning a cooldown for the Shadowdancer kit, supposedly activating after a backstab. The issue I'm describing however, happens to all Thief kits, multi and dual classes. I see no difference between a Shadowdancer and the others.
I've just noticed the whole thing recently, after creating a backstab-oriented character in the EEs, for some "backstab -> run out -> backstab -> run out" good times, but it seems like that tactic has been "enhanced" out of the game.
Post edited by Mivsan on
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Comments
I know you can go into the inventory and manually switch weapons without leaving stealth. Haste will also reduce the 6 second cooldown on stealth into 3 seconds instead.
BUT it doesn't apply to your enemies
There are also videos on Youtube, showing how people abuse that kind of stuff. For example, BG1 and BG2 solo playthrough by Chris67132. He relies heavily on using backstabs in the way I described in my opening post. Beware of lots, and I mean lots of cheese, if you decide to watch those playthroughs. That's what I was afraid of. In order to balance/nerf their new class I have no interest in, they just changed the entire mechanic for every other Thief as well :+/.
Oh well, it's not a big deal either way, just feels weird having that cooldown all of a sudden.
Well then, I stand corrected. Had to dig out my copy of ToB and messed around for a couple minutes and you're right. It must have been "enhanced out" of the game as you say.
One thing here to note (a workaround for people who like to backstab a lot). As @Grum found out, if you click "detect traps" before actually backstabbing or otherwise leaving shadows (just wait 2 or 3 seconds), you'll start a timer that will let you hit the "Hide in shadows" button again sooner.
This way you can have your button ready as soon as you backstab, after you play with it a bit and learn how much time it needs exactly.
As a shadowdancer you can hide immediately after a backstab in this case. And as any other thief you can hide faster - for example, if you have Boots of Speed and run away from the enemy you backstabbed you'll be able to hide as soon as the enemy loses you from its own line of sight.
Note however that there are two issues with this solution. First of all the gradual way of leaving stealth doesn't always work. I've had characters of mine become visible rather shortly or even immediately after leaving stealth, before they could actually land their backstab. (I'm not sure to what extent stealth scores are of influence here, and I also don't know if there's a difference between clicking the Find Traps button and clicking on one of your weapons. I do advise against clicking the stealth button to leave stealth because it will make your character visible for a split second, fatal when facing enemies like Beholders.)
Secondly, the time it takes for the stealth button to become clickable again, and thus for stealth to become possible again, is circa 7 seconds. This is quite long, and will sometimes allow enemies to catch up with your character when the character moves around a corner but cannot re-enter stealth yet.
As a fervent player of all kinds of Thieves I wasn't very happy with this change, but I've grown more or less used to it. You'll have to be more careful with your backstabber and take precautions like keeping invisibility potions or items at hand, using summons as decoys etc.
@Blackraven Concerning your issue with Thieves appearing faster than usual from the shadows, I think I played so much Shadowdancers I finally found out the problem and how it works.
-When you enter stealth, your character becomes Invisible for about 4 rounds (16 seconds in my BG2:EE at 40 FPS)
-This Invisibility buff is refreshed every 4 rounds, every 16 seconds in my game I see a 'Hide in Shadows Succeeded' in the combat log
-The cooldown for hiding again is about 1 round (5 seconds with 40 FPS)
-Clicking the stealth button while stealthed will shut down the Invisibility instantly, even if the game is paused.
-But the cooldown for HiS/HiPS and the actual duration of stealth (the Invisibility) are desynchronized!
Which means that:
-If I click HiS then instantly cancel it by clicking on a weapon, a thieving skill or on the spellcasting menu (anything work actually) then 5 seconds later, HiS will become available again and 11 seconds later for a total of 16 seconds later, my character will become visible again. As expected.
-But if I click HiS, wait for 15 seconds then cancel my stealth, I will become visible only a second after! Because the 'Invisibility buff' provided by stealth was actually running out and was going to be refreshed one second after if I stayed stealthed, so in that case I will become visible nearly instantly while I still need to wait 5 seconds for stealth to become available again.
But what is 100% accurate and can be used reliably for no-reload runs is hiding then immediately canceling stealth. That way you will always become visible in about 4 rounds while the cooldown for hiding will be available in only a round.
Something I do when I play my Shadowdancers nowadays is that I frequently re-enter stealth while I'm already stealthed, only to force the 'Invisibility buff' to be refreshed. This way you can be 100% sure you won't randomly drop out of stealth (but you need 100 in HiS/MS to avoid failure).
Initially, I thought I'd just alternate between stealth and invisibility (while stealth cooldown recharges) to chain some backstabs like: start out in stealth -> backstab #1 -> potion of invis -> backstab #2 -> run out and restealth (it should be ready by now) -> backstab #3 -> another potion or something else, if needed.
However, I see there's a lot of testing I need to do, taking the info provided by you guys, especially Gotural, in regards to how the stealth buff works and how haste affects it all. Thanks!