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Lei

Thrown Weapons Rework

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The Case of the Black Bear's Hatchet

 

Recently in my endeavors, I came across a black bear in the mines underneath an inactive (but deeded) settlement. I engaged in combat with the bear, and during my fight, I somehow activated ranged combat by accident. Some backstory: before entering the mine, I was felling some nuisance trees which had grown in front of the mine entrance (it was long abandoned) and the hatchet (rare, 92ql, 90 enchants - a very nice hatchet) was still active. So whenever I engaged in ranged combat, the hatchet, of course, was first to be thrown.

 

The hatchet struck the bear square in the shoulder! A few more wacks from my steel staff, and the bear was dead. It was then I noticed that my hatchet was no longer on my toolbelt and I realized my mistake. I looked around, and sure enough, the hatchet was square inside the black bears corpse. So I went to grab it and be on my way, but nope. "That would be very bad for your karma and is disallowed on this server". So I looked around and I assumed the problem was the fact that the bear I had just killed was on a player owned deed, and since I threw the hatchet, the player who owned the deed now owned my treasured rare hatchet. This assumption was later found incorrect.

 

Queue me calling in the GM's via support ticket, and panicking about the possibility of me never seeing my precious hatchet again. Alas, after a long 30 minutes, the fabled Enki showed up. He explained that the hatchet no longer belonged to me, and it was not owned by the deed holder, but in fact, became the black bears hatchet! The bear was dead, how is that possible? But it was true.

 

Enki grabbed the hatchet right from the bears now stiff paws and handed it back to me. But the whole encounter got me thinking. If this is the case in this accidental scenario, how would anyone actually use ranged combat on purpose if things like this come up. In my opinion, it would deter me if I was throwing weapons on purpose. You could theoretically use a thrown weapon (think throwing daggers) with the caveat that you would never receive the weapons back again. They become the creatures possession, yes, even after death, which defeats the purpose entirely.

 

My suggestion: 

Allow thrown weapons to retain ownership to the thrower, and not be transferred to the victim. It makes logical sense (A dead bear cant possess much of anything) and it enables a new style of combat - ranged fighting without the use of a bow.

 

Alternative suggestion:

Disable the option of throwing items. Using a bow is one thing, but the throwing of previously selected hatchets is simply not feasible in a combat scenario, even if it was by accident.

 

What does the Wurm community think?

 

~Lei

Edited by Lei

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Throwing, if ever reworked, should be given its own skill.  Not sure why it never was to begin with.

 

 

  • Like 2

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Personally in my opinion, the thrown weapons/items mechanic needs to be reworked from the ground up for it to be worth even bothering using to any actual avail, for anyone. This however would be a good step in the right direction. (though it's kind of just fixing something that looks broken)

 

Throwing weapons is almost useless for killing PvE mobs by itself since you'd need probably 20x 50+QL shortswords on you to actually kill anything. After a single kill, you may not even get half your used ammunition back, even archery with creation QL arrows has better returns than this. The only advantage I've ever seen is purely meta; and it's because even a newly spawned character with no skills can do it just as well for most purposes. Provided a newb could acquire 20 decent longswords...

For PvP the mechanic is absolute garbage and using it in an actual fight is pretty laughable. Especially considering that the enemy will receive your thrown weapons in their inventory and are unlikely to willingly return them.

 

Things that I think would make throwing weapons worth it:

  • If it was given its own skill and modifiers that affected damage, accuracy, and range.
  • If it was given a fairly significant damage buff (This is almost a must, see modifiers)
  • if it was given its own ranged context menu so as to include aiming points, same as archery.
  • If thrown items and weapons could benefit from damage enchantments such as Frostbrand, Flaming Aura, or Rotting Touch as well as Nimbleness for accuracy.
    • This may already be the case but I doubt it is. Will test soon
  • If throwing weapons and items not only used a thrown skill, but utilized the item's individual skill as an additional modifier
    • I.E. For throwing a shortsword versus a longsword, at different skill levels, yield different results

 

Also I think would help out in general If there was maybe some more information publically available about how the throwing mechanic actually works. That's something the public can now do with the WU code however.


 

Edited by whereami
Ideas

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I would suggest that the only real "thrown" weapons be spears, javelins and items of that nature. They should all have their own skills, maybe even allow short spear and shield  combo for those who want it?

 

For additional fun, what about a trident?

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I know something you can throw...

but still +1 to throwing rework

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