Hell wasn't consuming ammo and cannot understand why?!

[Artan]

Last night I was playing R1 in coop with a friend and I ran into some strange issue on the bird (Qing Yan) whereby I was not consuming any ammo and this prevented me being able to reload and to activate Hail of Bullets.

I was using a Hell and had no Scrolls that related to returning ammo to the mag, using ammo from reserves or not consuming ammo. The hell had no inscription that related to ammo back on kill or for any-other reason etc either. With 3/3 Hail of Bullets and using a 6 round hell - I was aiming to have this setup after a reload:

Reloading 1 round activates 3/3 Hail of Bullets and provide 5 stack. The first 5 rounds fired should not consume ammo and all benefit from the buff and have +damage and lucky shot. The 6th shot should not be buffed/free and consume 1 ammo from the Hell leaving 5/6 rounds in the mag and allowing 1 rounds to be reloaded - which activates Hail of Bullets again. I should have been getting 5 out of every 6 rounds to be "hail of bullets" and firing 1 round off and reloading to keep the buff up.

However this kept being prevented as for some reason, after I had fired my 5 stack of Hail of Bullets, the next shots would not use any ammo and were not buffed! I was for some reason able to keep firing and not consume any ammo from the mag or from reserves. This lack of being able to reload meant I was unable to activate Hail of Bullets.

Sometimes when first entering combat of a new "room" etc I would be able to consume ammo and would get 3x cycles off - activating Hail of Bullets, firing the 5x off and then a 6th consuming 1x ammo and allowing a reload to reactivate the cycle. But if this did happen and allow a reload briefly, it would once again stop consuming any ammo at all after 3 cycles.

I dropped all scrolls to try and identify the issue but never found anything.

At the time I also had a Wild Hunt albeit not as good of one as the Hell was - so I was eager to use the hell. However if I changed to the Wild-hunt - it was not impacted and I could fire off 5x hail Of Bullets, a 6th round that consumed ammo - and then cold reload the gun and re-activate the buff. It seemed to only be using the Hell!

My coop mate was playing "Ao Bai" whom I have not used and so I briefly wondered if they had an ascension that meant they would buff team mates with some ammo related thing but it seems not. My mate also did not have any scrolls that would be giving me ammo back to the mag either!

I spent some time frustrated trying to work out what was causing this and got nowhere and do not wish to be hit with the same issue again!

Anyone else had this or got any ideas what it might have been?

[Intra]

Hell will only activate Hail of Bullets on completion of the magazine, so you can use 1 bullet to get 5 free bullets but it must be when the gun is 5/6 bullets in the magazine for the reload to fill the mag completely.

Hail of Bullets also has an unlimited duration, so you can bring leftover charges with you after a fight.

There are so many Scrolls and weapon inscriptions that can trigger free shots that it's hard for me to know based on what you're telling me. Please link a screenshot to the run so I can look at your scrolls and highlight your Hell so I can read the Inscriptions.

[Artan]

Hi- thanks for getting back!!

I unfortunately did not finish the run with the hell - I abandoned it and stuck with the wild hunt as it was not suffering the infinite ammo issue and the Hell was useless with the issue. My run ended with the wild-hunt gemini-linked to a base 5.4 crit bow for high crit on the wwild-hunt and so cannot post any information on Hell I was using other than what i have already stated. Had I kept it to the end of the run I would have posted a screenshot rather than a description!

Escrito originalmente por Intra:

Hell will only activate Hail of Bullets on completion of the magazine, so you can use 1 bullet to get 5 free bullets but it must be when the gun is 5/6 bullets in the magazine for the reload to fill the mag completely.

This is exactly what I was doing in order to get 5x Hail of Bullet rounds followed by one non-hail of bullet rounds which would leave 5/6 in the mag and allow a single shell reload - refreshing hail of bullets.

Escrito originalmente por Intra:

Hail of Bullets also has an unlimited duration, so you can bring leftover charges with you after a fight.

Hail of bullets provides an on screen buff stack icon showing how many Hail of Bullets rounds you have left. I was firing off all 5 and then was still firing 30+ shots that were not consuming any of my ammo - not from the mag nor from reserves. Hail of bullets had been consumed and I was not using any stacks of free rounds from the ascension - nor were the rounds buffed from hail of bullets.

To be clear - I was firing off 30-50 rounds in row with the Hell without consuming any ammo at all. At no point was i using any ammo from reserves nor was the number of shells in my mag dropping from 6/6 to 5/6 to allow a single reload.

Escrito originalmente por Intra:

There are so many Scrolls and weapon inscriptions that can trigger free shots that it's hard for me to know based on what you're telling me. Please link a screenshot to the run so I can look at your scrolls and highlight your Hell so I can read the Inscriptions.

This is why I dropped all scrolls and tested and why i am so confused by it all. I could find no reason for the interaction and started wonder if I was being buffed with something from my coop mate but this also seemed to not be the case. I had no scrolls that gave back ammo for anything and none of the Hells inscriptions gave any ammo back either.

I am 175 hours played and rather familiar with the game - most of this playtime was pre the latest patch. I have never experienced this ammo issue at all until this run last night and so I wondered if it was a new bug and if anyone else had experienced it. In fact - I often play Crown prince and look out for scrolls that do give ammo back with things such as "Against the Flow" being scrolls I aim for. However I know as Qing Yan to avoid these to allow me to make most benefit from "hail of bullets". This is why I was so frustrated that i could not understand at all why I was not consuming ammo!

[Artan]

This is the end of run summary

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2711238534

It ruined the run as I ended up not upgrading the Hell (as I didn't want to keep it with the ammo issue) and without this and not being able to get extra weapon damage - I was outputting nothing!

With the Hell and hail of Bullets - I was used to counting 6 rounds fired and reloading but due to the infinite ammo - could not get into a rhythm. As such i took to running around like an idiot - firing constantly and not looking where I was going - looking solely at the bottom right corner and waiting to see if I would ever consume a round!

Eventually on the vendors before 3rd Act boss I got the bow from which to crit gemini pair and sold the hell and ended up with hardly any damage dealt and the setup above - carried by my team mate!

I am not used to doing next to no damage and being carried and am used to being able to carry!! As such I was really eager to work this out and not ever be in the scenario again!! :D

[Intra]

If I were to guess it's an interaction with Copycat changing magazine size while under the effect of Hail of Bullets.

[Artan]

Aha! I had suspected copy-cat but looked up the stolen enhanced effects "buffs" on the wiki and could not see one that would effect ammo or mag size! Maybe I need to look again as I did check last thing before bed! :D

Thank-you for getting back!! :)

[Artan]

This still is happening and I still have no explanation for it and what is causing it. My coop partner is always the Dog (Ao Bai) when I notice it and i only ever notice when i am playing the bird and am planning to use a shotgun and benefit from the "Hail of bullets" ascension. I notice specifically as I am counting my shots to reload as soon as it is possible to re-trigger "Hail of bullets". Whatever is happening means I consume no ammo from the mag or reserves for a considerable amount of time. I am able to fire of anywhere between 30 and 50 shots without consuming any ammo whatsoever. I have been unable to tie it into to any of these:

Weapon inscription
Held scroll
My picked ascension
Spiritual Blessing

The fact I only have only experienced this while my play-mate is the dog has made me start to consider the following: Could I be receiving ammo back and temporarily not be consuming any ammo as some bugged bleed over of the Dogs Ascensions "Ammo Expert" or "Lucky Ammo" while my mate is dual wielding?

I will have to try and get my coop mate to play another character while I go for a bird shotgun "Hail of bullets" build once more and to see if this scenario presents itself again without him using Ao Bai.

Has anyone else noticed anything similar with Ao Bai in their group?

Cheers!