Survival and Random Encounters

The postings have been slim lately, so I think I'll blabber on about the Survival skill and some interesting things I've discovered about it. I'll separate the comments into how it works in the main game, and then how it works with the Co8 mods.


Main Game
------------

The Survival skill without the Co8 mods is only used to let you choose whether to accept or avoid a random encounter while traveling. The Survival box comes up and you choose. Some oddities about this:

- The Survival skill of any NPC in the group does not factor in. (I discovered this while playing a solo fighter with Meleny and Furnok along eventually. I had no Survival skill and was counting on Meleny who had a very high Survival, but it didn't help. Once I added a few points to my own Survival, I would start getting the Survival box.)

- You must have at least one point spent in Survival to get this benefit. Even if your Wisdom is very high, and you have other adjustments that raise your Survival to something high like 10, you won't ever get the Survival box unless you buy in for at least 1 point.


Co8 additions
-------------

The Co8 mods have overridden this process from the main game by making a roll for your PC (or NPC) with the best combination of "Survival + Spot + Listen" versus the monster in the encounter with the best set of those skills. If you lose the roll, the mod will override any regular survival check by making the encounter "unavoidable", so you will never get a regular Survival check from the main game, and the Survival box will never appear. If you win the roll, the main game will make a Survival check as normal described above.

- Note that each roll is equally adjusted by Spot, Listen and Survival. So you may have a high Survival score of 15 and think you are safe, but if your Spot and Listen are low, you will lose the roll much of the time to creatures who have only mediocre scores spread between the 3 different skills.

- The difference in the two rolls will also affect the distance between you and the monsters at the start of the encounter. But, the encounter with the campfire is not affected by the roll, it always appears at the same disctance.


Resting encounters are not affected by Survival at all.

 

I count on my druid for this, and all 3 skills are high. That being said, I wish the game handled these encounters better. I wish the CR would scale up with your character levels. After level 7 or so the encounters are no challenge and many offer no exp points at all.

 

But... the latest version did add a ton of new encounters that scale up! Including a few that if they show up early will be almost guaranteed TPKs...

 

I must be a version behind or something. I have 8.1. Is there a newer version?

 

sonofliberty, version 8.1.0 adds a ton of high level randoms that kick in at a certain level, as Daryk said. These were not in the slightly earlier version 8.0.1. Lots of killer stuff that makes you cautious at any level, and be certain you are all rested before traveling. It really adds to the game at the later stage, especially since there is no prebuffing before the encounter usually.

My only complaint is they they kick in automatically at a certain level without any kind of gradualness. So you go from stirges or goblins or an occasional troll to a sudden encounter with 3 Huge Fire Elementals or 4 Vodyani with 215 HP each. It really was nice to be caught by surprise like that the first few times it happened though.

 

You may have also not reached the level where those encounters kick in yet. I think it is post Zuggtmoy that it happens, but it may also be level dependent.

 

The higher level encounters do require a higher level, and they are also NC-only. The level requirements are defined per-encounter, the higher you are the more will open up.

 

My party varies from lvl 12 to 14. Obviously the lower level characters are the ones enchanting my armor, weapons, and creating my special gear.

 

If you have any tag-alongs like animated dead or familiars or animal companions, it could be lowering your party's average level.

 

Nope, just my 6 PCs

 

I first ran into those huge fire elementals at about 6th level. It was a messy TPK in short order.

 

I started seeing the new encounters at around 11th level with my crew of 6. Mostly Vodyanies, Hydras (With troll regeneration) and Invisible Stalkers.

 

Well, don't I feel foolish? I downloaded the latest version but never activated it. LOL
Time for a restart I guess.

 

"TPK?" Total Party Kill? Never heard that one before.

Wouldn't TPM Total Party Massacre be better

 

I have a party with one pc and five npcs. I was relying on Meleny for survival skill but it appears that it is not working. Nearly every overland travel spurs an encounter. On one hand it is fun and challenging, but on the other hand it is becoming tedious.
I then remembered your thread. Since I only have one PC I don't have a lot of spare skill points for survival. That was supposed to be Melenys job. What if I spend a single point on survival? Will Melenys survival skill points start to factor in or will I have to dump more of my precious skill points into survival? I hope not.My PC is the lock pick and face man.