I've always stuck around with a particular creature until all of my defense and offense skills were completely capped. Until recently, whenever my defensive skills capped, I began to take nearly no damage. I could have multiple hunting sessions spanning across days and come home with -maybe- a few scratches.

Now that I am nearing completion of the Misshapen Germish'din, however, I find myself still having to stop my sessions early to go and seek healing. I no longer move my defenses here, the only thing I'm learning are a few of my less trained weapon skills, yet I'm still taking frequent damage. My question is whether this is just something that becomes normal, or if this is a sign that my equipment and stats are no longer up to snuff? Or maybe the Germish'din are just unique in this matter, I'm not sure.

Anyways, thank you in advance for any information you can share with me.

<<Now that I am nearing completion of the Misshapen Germish'din, however, I find myself still having to stop my sessions early to go and seek healing.

With 420ish defenses I can stand in germish all day and never need healing.

<<My question is whether this is just something that becomes normal, or if this is a sign that my equipment and stats are no longer up to snuff?

Have you repaired your armour recently? Once they drop below 80% durability you start to take a penalty to your defensive ability, and the penalty increases as they get more damaged until your defences are only 50% effective.

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> @Absolon I repair all my armor before going in each time, yes. From there it's just luck. Sometimes I'll need to leave after around 50, other times it could be 400 kills later. I suppose when I move on to the next creature I'll see if anything's different. Maybe this is just a creature that particularly does not mesh well with me.

Have you changed your stance recently, or did your shield get adjusted to be on your shoulder? Are buffs falling off? Did you add in tactics or other position/balance changes into your script?

<<I typically spread things out evenly between evasion, shield, and parry, so it could just be that sort of stance doesn't work well with them.

I always run with 100% evasion and 80% shield or parry with the extra points from Defending added to either of the 80% or the 0%. The former increases survivability and the latter helps with learning rates. Any stance with less than 100% evasion just isn't as effective, in my opinion.

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Once you start getting into the 400+ range the critters start to have attacks that can ignore certain defenses, with parry being the worst offender. An even split across all 3 skills can leave you with a lower DF score than normal causing you to get hit/hurt more often. Not sure if Germ have attacks that ignore a defenses though.

>Now that I am nearing completion of the Misshapen Germish'din, however, I find myself still having to stop my sessions early to go and seek healing

How many different armor types are you wearing? Do you hit any burden at all while hunting them?

Good news is you have a substantial number of hunting alternatives in that skill range. If you follow the 100/80 advice it'll probably solve your problems as well.

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You will need to switch between a shield and parry stance to train both. If you use your extra stance points into the off skill you will gain a trickle while still getting most of your defence. If you want to maximize defence then put them all into the one you have 80 points in.

E.g. assuming you have 8 extra stance points:
-100 evasion, 88 shield, 0 parry - absolute best vs. missile attacks or if you are using a missile weapon yourself. Only trains evasion/shield.
-100 evasion, 80 shield, 8 parry - Same as above but slightly less defensive. Trains a trickle of parry.
-100 evasion, 0 shield, 88 parry - best vs. multiple melee creatures. Only trains evasion/parry.
-100 evasion, 8 shield, 80 parry - same but slightly less defensive. Trains a trickle of shield.

What I do is train either shield or parry to 5 ranks then switch to the other and train it to 5 ranks. Then I pick one to mind lock while always maintaining the other at 5 ranks. Once the first is mindlocked then I switch to the other to mind lock it while always maintaining the first at mind lock. The only exceptions are if I'm facing ranged attacks or am using a missile weapon myself. I always use one of the shield ones then.

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If we could summon Kodius and ask him to explain what exactly happened to combat after 3.0 you would get a complete answer but as this is probably not happening i'm going to go ahead and say that what you are describing here is due to combat changes made in 3.0 and after.

<< My question is whether this is just something that becomes normal, or if this is a sign that my equipment and stats are no longer up to snuff? Or maybe the Germish'din are just unique in this matter, I'm not sure.

Pretty sure this is quite normal as of 3.0 and 3.1. There are two things to consider. In 3.1 the hunting caps were considerably lowered and soft caps were effectively removed. You won't be able to "milk" hunting as we used to before 3.1 and pretty much once you hit the soft cap you have to move on. The second factor is that critters now always get a chance for lucky hits that pass your parry/evasion and those lucky hits are only contested by your armor. No matter what, you will take hits. I backtrain a couple of weapons in an area where i have double the defenses compared to soft caps and i still sometimes leave with bruises (i'm armor tert but even my armor skill is above the learning cap).

You can find more information about 3.1 caps in the 3.1 testing thread but i think this post should give you some idea of what lead to these changes:
http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Dragon%20Realms%203.1%20Test/Combat/view/36

Any creature has a chance to connect eventually. The chance can get awful low but its there. For example, I can take my all 1k+ defences to rats and will see the odd brushing/glancing hit.

The thing that makes this more/less noticeable on the player side is really high strength critters (boar zombies come to mind) will punch through armor/barriers more readily on those random hits and actually deal damage more often. As an example, I take more damage in 2 hours of head-splitters than I do in Intressors. This is also exacerbated by Plate being more vulnerable to impact yadda yadda, but you should get the idea.

tl/dr Anything can eventually hit you regardless of ranks, brave new world.

Samsaren

Here's my stats and skills as a comparative reference for you. Note that my reflex is probably highly over trained due to being a Gnome and following the 'train the cheapest first' method of stat training. I also over-estimated my actual skills by a bit, however. Evasion is at the level I said, but the other skills are all lower. I also only wear leather, so I have low hinderance.

Strength : 38 Reflex : 81
Agility : 66 Charisma : 55
Discipline : 55 Wisdom : 55
Intelligence : 82 Stamina : 42

Evasion - 437.28 (buffed to 524)
Debilitation - 434.36
Targeted Magic - 432.30
Tactics - 424.03
Stealth - 390.97 (buffed to 468)
Light Armor - 385.13
Defending - 382.36
Shield Usage - 379.03
Parry Ability - 369.49
Melee Mastery - 358.80
Offhand Weapon - 354.78
Missile Mastery - 348.63
Small Edged - 342.97
Brawling - 339.90
Light Thrown - 333.22
Heavy Thrown - 333.16

My usual relevant combat related buffs are:
Seer's Sense - capped Evasion buff
Cage of Light - capped damage reduction
Manifest Force - capped damage reduction
Shadows - capped Stealth buff

All of your armor:

a coarse lava drake-hide cowl
some coarse lava drake-hide leathers
a gargoyle-hide targe (arm-worn)
some coarse lava drake-hide gloves

But considering all the armor and shields you are wearing or carrying, you are currently lightly (4/14) hindered and your stealth is lightly (4/14) hindered.

These are the two stances I'm using:

You are now set to use your shield stance:

Attack : 100%
Evade : 100%
Parry : 0%
Block : 84%

You are now set to use your parry stance:

Attack : 100%
Evade : 100%
Parry : 84%
Block : 0%

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Sounds like the 4 armor penalty might be the culprit.

I train 4 armors simultaneously as a moon mage and there are times when I have to cut down to 2 until my skills/stats increase and allow me to add in the other 2.

Is your armor in as many pieces as possible? Are your metal armors forged with low maneuvering hinderance in mind?

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<<I forget what it's made of, likely firecat or viper. I think it was from my original set where I paid less than 100pk, so it would seem buying something sturdier would be in order.

Try lava drake. Pricier, but it's the best of the readily available stuff. If you own a small mint and manage to find a supplier then you could look into diamond-hide.

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>Sounds like I might need to get some better leather.

Or cloth.

Even burlap would be better than those leathers. Padded is more balanced, insulated is more impact protection. No need to break the bank on quest leathers or rare materials. Unless you wanted to that is. In which case, ruazin gives you the protection of burlap at the weight of silk and titanese takes the protection up a large notch but also the weight is increased.

https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Padded_cloth_armor
https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Insulated_cloth_armor

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The Kasto mimic abruptly solidifies, looking very much like Kasto.
>
You say, "What a handsome fellow you are!"