<I'ld like to see it come down some as more leech-type creatures are found throughout the lands. GM Damissak

Yay! I may be able to go back to crocs before I struggle my way outta there range on these ogre/annoyance-beings. My first attempt nearly killed me. I used a knife and sliced and diced myself, within an inch of my life as I neared the Crossing, and of course, the second one just falls off. Ugh! I feel I have been denied some critial... need-to-know information.

-Zakarious, former crocodile hunter

Something I noticed with bloodworms.........and I want to know if I am the only one this has happened to....

Was standing out on the road and had 9 bloodworms on me......I picked 2 off and looked, and had 8 on me.....is the road and bloodworms buggy somehow? Or can you actually get bloodworms just standing on the road itself instead of having to go into the marsh?

~~Synnovea

Bingo. You had the bloodworms on you before you left the swamp, they just hadn't appeared yet. A short interval passes between the time they latch on and when they become apparant when checking your health.

As soon as you see messages such as "You are feeling tired" (got a leech on ya somewhere) or "You feel ennervated." (little buggers have just about sucked you dry!) then stop moving around for a bit and take care of the bloodworms you have as soon as they appear. Also, if you notice scratches, cuts/bruises, etc have started appearing on a limb you know was clean before or the wounds are worse than you remember, that is another indicator you have a bloodworm in that area that has started damaging you but you can't detect them yet.

Stopping movement helps because bloodworms latch on as you move around. The few reports I have heard about people getting them while standing in a room sound shaky since they weren't in the room long and could very well have gotten them on their last move then the bloodworm just appeared while they were standing still.

This does give me a perfect opportunity to note (again) that we should be able to APPRAISE, ANALYZE or SEARCH ourselves with a chance to spot the bloodworms before that point. If they are on the outside and just small before they start filling with blood then they should still be visible under closer scrutiny. If they burrow under the skin and become visible because filling with blood causes them to pop out (even partially) then we should be able to spot their entry point ... breakage of the skin and a minor bit of bleeding caused by it.

This would be based on perception and first aid with appraisal as a minor factor. Tossing in intelligence, wisdom and scholarship as minor factors (might know a bit about blood worms from ones studies or rumours about one's village) would work too. But the major factors would still be perception and first aid. Success and near-miss failures would likewise teach mostly perception and first aid along with a smidgen of appraisal but be usable only once per success. As soon as you found it, what more is to gain by looking again?

I understand typing HEALTH is basically a quick assessment (hence no roundtime) so it can be easily explained away that we just don't notice them at first. But we should be able to scrutinize our bodies more closely (even at the cost of RT) and have a chance of spotting them. WIth enough perception/first aid/etc there should be a chance we spot them so quickly that almost as soon as they latch on, they show up in our HEALTH readout.

~~~Krin

I have a bit of data to throw in.. I forgot to mention this earlier, mebbe it's already been changed. I've been training first aid for quite some time now, and in the last few months I gave up. Gets real hard to lock after 200 ranks. So anyway, I went to crocs to see what these blood worms were all about. I swam around, getting em all latched onto me, then started yankin' em out. This was all fun until ::gasp:: I failed! At the time, I had 247 first aid and somewhere over 100 mech, can't precisely remember that one. If anybody who has that much first aid is hunting crocs and is not an empath, they're truly amazing. I know you already posted on figuring out a solution and lowering the difficulty, Damissak, but I thought I would throw this in to help convey how bad the problem really is. Not only is first aid a risky skill to train, but with the changes to magic, giving bleeders as a warmie is no longer a safe thing to do. The outcome of the FS spell varies too much now. In general, it's alot harder to get first aid skill today. Anyway, don't wanna ramble, hope that helps.

Thanks,

Vetokend

>>I thought I'd misunderstood when someone who failed every attempt to tend and died said they had 148 FA. I assumed that was 148 combined FA and skinning.

>>-Gheist

Oh, not at all.. my combined FA and skinning is well over 400 =/ They definitely need some downtweakin'.

Vetokend

>>in the swamps,i was able to get em all off on the first try

>><ponders>

>>Izzit

The longer they've been latched to the victim, the easier they are to remove.

Vetokend

I just took a trip through crocs and have some updated comments about the bloodworms there. I don't know if difficulty was adjusted, or if my small gains in skill have helped, but I am doing much better at tending worms off. 86 FA, 66 Skinning, 24 agility and I am tending them fast enough on dry land to survive with 25 stamina, but only barely live. The reason i am in danger of death is because in making about 20 moves through crocs, I got 10 worms. In my first 9 moves, I had 6 worms attach to me. This seems vastly too many. I was extremely beat up in about 4 pulses, and I think that if I had not found the shack when I did, I certainly would have died.

So, I feel that the worms are a reasonable challenge when viewed individually, but I think the frequency that worms attach to someone needs to be capped, or significantly adjusted downward. Things are starting to look better to me though.

---

-Gheist

>>>>Personally, I'd like to see their attach rate increase. Significantly.<<<<

whoa!!! statements like this scare the living <expletive deleted> outta me...i find the rate there just fine...every few rooms i get a worm sometimes 2...you increase their attach rate ill have to join all those other voices that are screaming how its ruined a viable hunting area..cause for me being one who like to tan those croc skins that would significantly destroy a part of the game ive come to really enjoy...now looking at Gheist's post he says theres too many,i like em just fine even tho sometimes they do get the best of me...what ive always wondered is why empaths like yerself havent tried to set up shop in or around that area to entice those who dont hunt because of the bloodworms to come up and hunt without fear cause an empath will be there to help if ya get too many on ya...that way adventurer x who can easily handle crocs and would like to hunt in the area but dont have the FA skills to handle the worms wont have to worry about dyin...just a thought there but it seems between removin the worm offa em and healin their wounds from crocs you would have no problem keepin yer trans movin right along

Izzit
Master Tanner in Training

okay,i can see how waiting at the road or even the cabin would be boring,but what about leading parties in there to hunt and you heal while they hunt...you get to dance and get worms...certainly youd be able to remove worms offa others and heal wounds fer trans

but i do agree about the reasoning behind a cleric gettin tons of em...a ranger gettin just about the right amount of em...and an empath gettin next to none...maybe an equation somewhere needs to be inverted so that you get the clerics worms and the cleric gets yers,or lack thereof,as it stands that area is decent for those who would get the most learning out of it,and horrible for those who just wanna figtht some crocs


Izzit
Master Tanner in Training

>whoa!!! statements like this scare the living <expletive deleted> outta me...i find the rate there just fine...every few rooms i get a worm sometimes 2...you increase their attach rate ill have to join all those other voices that are screaming how its ruined a viable hunting area..cause for me being one who like to tan those croc skins that would significantly destroy a part of the game ive come to really enjoy

Hmm sounds like there might be a skill/stat check as to whether they attach or not. I know I've made runs through the whole swamp without getting one and if I'm lucky average one every 10 moves. Never gotten a double bite at all.

Arrys

>>Maybe toss some sand vipers or spiders into the pit to train defenses and we can talk :P Or even better...some quicksand to learn escaping from...<<

She's not allowed to take extended trips to remote area's for long periods of time. She has a husband to tend to in Shard.


Sabashtin..

The last time I went to crocs, there were numerous players that were camping for crocs only (as indicated by the skins and bundles on the ground). I waited about 15 minutes for a croc and never saw one, so I decided to get a bloodworm or two while looking for a croc. I walked through 8 rooms and got 6 bloodworms before I got out. I never saw a single croc in any room including the rooms with campers. The empath that healed me said when she goes looking for bloodworms, she can only finds crocs.

This leads me to belive that the gen rates for crocs and worms are tied together. For example, if everyone is killing crocs, then you will find more bloodworms. Eventually, you will have an overabundance of bloodworms. The situation is the same if you only go looking for only bloodworms.

My advice is if you wish to hunt crocs, stop by the empath guild and see if an empath wants to join you.

Jaig

or your can just train a little FA and hunt there still? thing that make me go hummmmmmm.....


Ajathaer the Last

You should be fine. With 70 FA and 50 Skinning, I could tend them off. They taught me very lil in skinning, but they did get my FA to 95 while I hunted those "ghost" crocs.


Spiritist Shalrin Ottavion--Cleric of Urrem'tier
Don't understand the post, then you don't understand me.