Shade of Kurandara and Essence of Evil

Bug Reports
1

Platform, device version and operating system
Steam - Windows 10 build 2004

Screenshot or image

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What you were expecting to happen, and what actually happened
When Essence of Evil is used on Shade of Kurandara all other negative status effects are applied except poison, disease, or death mark. As Essence of Evil states that it applies ALL negative status effects on an enemy it should be applying poison, disease, or death mark. This is especially true since stun is applied and should disable any traits that would make is immune to these negative effects.

How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
This behavior was consistently encountered when opposing explore team had a Shade of Kurandara.

Steps to make it happen again
Do you know how to make this happen? Sometimes there are certain steps that can lead to a problem that may not be obvious!
– Start Explore in Urskaya where you will encounter Shade of Kurandara. I don’t believe difficulty matters.
– Use Essence of Evil weapon on Shade of Kurandara - All negative effects EXCEPT poison, disease, or death mark is applied.

I assume this behavior is due to the order in which statuses from the weapon are being applied. Where poison, disease, and death mark seem to be earlier in the order before stun can land on the target and therefore blocked as stun has yet to disable Shade of Kurandara’s undying trait. If the effect is designed to lump everything together then it should place disable effects like stun at the top of its stack when applying the negative effects to a target. This should apply to all weapons which behave in this manner.

1 Like
2

Essence of Evil doesn’t stun or curse the target first, so any traits that make a target immune to a negative effect prevent that effect from occurring the first time. The second time around, they are certainly susceptible. Not a bug. Trying using Essence of Evil on a target that is Impervious, for instance. The only thing it does is Curse them.

2 Likes
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From my perspective it is most certainly a bug in the fact that how the order that the effects are applied are not accurate to the description of the weapon ability. If the weapon says apply ALL negative effects then it certainly should apply all regardless of immunity. Stun should be applied first before all other effects. A similar change was recently done for effects that apply lethal damage on targets with barrier where the barrier is dispelled then lethal damage is applied. This is no different.

Additionally, the target I am specifically talking about is Shade of Kurandara which has Undying trait. This only prevents poison, disease, or death mark. If stun was applied in the correct order the weapon would apply ALL effects as it states.

1 Like
4

But it’s not a bug you are reporting. You are making a suggestion, a feature request. But this would have huge ramifications because essence of evil would have no limits. Currently it at least is kept in check by applying curse and stun last.

5

So yeah… they apparently used to be applied in the order of release, then alphabetical order if released on the same date, per here:

This meant Impervious targets would get Bleeding applied on the first cast. It also meant Fireproof targets would have Faerie Fire land but not Burning, since Stun was added to the game after Burning but before Faerie Fire.

This was, of course, completely silly and arbitrary, as pointed out in the comments in that thread. I tested it and found that this was changed (can’t find the patch notes for when this was changed).

So the order of Curse was changed to last:

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(Pictured here, Barbearius, an Impervious troop, not getting hit by Bleed, only Curse)

The order of stun stayed the same, though, for whatever reason:

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(2nd and 4th troops pictured are Stone Biter, which does not have Fireproof, and Pyggra, which does, other statuses on other troops were applied by traits).

So I would say working as intended with respect to Curse, since a conscious decision was made to place it last that required a game change, but ““working as intended”” with respect to Stun, in that it still has a completely unintuitive reaction that isn’t currently severe enough to break anything major (unless/until another powerful status effect is added).

Basically, currently, the only reason Stun applies after Poison, Disease, and Death Mark is because it was added to the game later, which, based on the fact that a similar interaction was “fixed”, is, in fact, a bug. However, logically, based on the design steps that have been taken, the resolution of this bug, if any, will not be to your favor - based on how Curse was changed specifically so it would not remove immunities on the first cast, Stun should be applied second to the last (even later in the chain than it currently does), since it also has the potential to remove some immunities.

edit: typos

6 Likes
6

agreed.
ALL other debuffs, than Stun, than Curse - that’s a good order to keep this weapon from being overpowered…

7

Thank you for an in depth reply that sought to explain how this functionality worked within the game instead of immediately dismissing the claim under grounds of semantics about its classification or the concern of being “overpowered”. This does explain the approaches and does show there has been consideration in the past to the order in which the array which contains the negative status effects are being enumerated/applied to the target.

In response to the claim that it would make the weapon “overpowered”, I disagree. The effect on this weapon is clearly described to apply all negative status effects which should counter immunity to specific status effects such as undying’s immunity to poison, disease, and death mark as it should be applying curse\stun in addition to the other effects. Being overpowered would be the lack of any counter to this weapon. This weapon would still be countered by traits which prevent stun and curse or those with invulnerable traits, providing balance to the weapon. - See immunity/invulnerable traits here: https://gemsofwar.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000335886-All-status-effects-and-immunity-Traits-

Additionally, it was not my intention to start any sort of debate whether this should be considered a bug or not, or if it needed to be changed or not. I was directed here by the support web form as I still consider this a logic bug in the order of how the code is being executed when applying the negative status effects. My intention was to bring awareness to the developers so that they can review and determine if they want to make a change to how this effect functions (similar to barriers/lethal damage change I mentioned before) or a change to provide more clarity to an effect that doesn’t seem intuitive. If I took the time to track down this forum and provide details on the behavior that was observed there are more users that simply decide its not worth their time and/or stop playing without providing any feedback. That said, this will be my last post to this thread as I have provided my report and details of what was observed and it is up to the developers to ultimately decide if/how they would like to act upon this feedback.

3 Likes
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The only way to know for sure is to look at the code. I’ve tried. There is an order, but it’s a pain in the butt to divine it and it can change any patch. It’s not the same as an offiicial, documented answer.

I’ll try and peek at it again tonight. Don’t take that as a promise. Times are rough and it’s mucking with my executive function.