A detailed look at hunter critical hit chances in various dungeons

[mreed2]

I’m the author of this guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1492900036

Which contains, in part, the following statement:

Originally posted by mreed2:

Special abilities (the rogue’s new abilities and the hunter’s original abilities) are also adjusted depending on the location where the party is currently at. Even though the character sheet may show 100 for a Hunter’s critical strike ability, you won’t always critically strike in late game areas (or even mid-game areas). The exact details of this adjustment are unknown and may be subject to further revision as the current adjustment renders the special abilities of the Hunter and Rogue useless in late game areas.

In regards to this statement, I received the following feedback:

Originally posted by GodHand_OrHan:

Hunter's crit hit ability is useless to you because you are under leveled in later dungeons. Monster level affects crit hit chance, which maxxed at 255 should always hit all enemies in game.

And

Originally posted by GodHand_OrHan:

I will have my Hunter's Crit Ability capped at level 28. Rogue can never disarm 100% of the time. 95% is the best they ever can do[...]

I was pretty confident that the guide was correct, but… My curiosity was roused – is the problem real and how big is it? So, I setup some tests…

I created a new (female, for the record) hunter and ground out enough experience to get her to level 23, which was fairly painless -- I sent my new hunter along with my experienced wizard with 5 wind dragons leading the party to bounce between the two Samurai on the first two floors of Mangars Tower. Each round I would simply defend with my two PCs and one of the dragons would make a breath attack and kill all the foes, leading to 100k+ XP for each iteration. It added up quickly… :)

Next, I saved the game outside of the review board and leveled her up 20 times. The worst critical hit score I received was a 63 and the best was 127 (which is the maximum possible value, I believe) with an average of 89. I then tested the two extremes (henceforth identified as “63” and “127”) to see how often they would actually critical hit in two different situations.

For the trials, I used a party of 3 – a wizard, a bard, and my hunter. Each had specific roles:

1. Bard: Sing the “Traveler’s Tune” on the first floor of Magnor’s Castle (to get a large, long lasting, AC bonus), then to sing “Traveler’s Tune” again at the start of each combat (to get another, stacking, AC bonus). Otherwise, he defended.
   
2. Wizard: Cast APAR as required to reach the desired encounters, cast the full stack of adventuring spells, and defend in combat. If necessary, I was prepared to cast combat AC boosts and / or spells to increase the chance to hit foes, but this turned out not to be necessary.
   
3. Hunter: Attack each turn in combat.

As far as equipment, the only relevant equipment on the hunter was a diamond sword, selected for the to-hit bonus as I didn’t really want to damage the foes, just see if I received a critical hit or not. I probably should have used a diamond dagger (to increase the number of trials by avoiding killing foes via normal damage), but it wouldn’t have mattered much.

Two fixed encounters were used for testing:

• 49 Wrights located on the second floor of the catacombs (@ N 11 E 6)
  
• 67 Samurai located on the second floor of Magnor’s Tower (@ N 5 E 15)

These two encounters were selected for a large, but not too large, number of foes, and their locations nicely bracket the range of possibilities that a hunter might experience.

The results:

Hunter with 63 critical hit chance:

• Vs. Wrights: 24 Critical hits, 43 hits, 0 misses for a critical hit rate of 35.8%
  
• Vs. Samurai: 2 critical hits, 86 hits, 0 misses for a critical hit rate of 2.27%

Hunter with a 127 critical hit chance:

• Vs. Wrights: 99 critical hits, 0 hits, 0 misses for a critical hit rate of 100.0% (I ran this twice without reloading, just to get more trials – every hit was a critical)
  
• Vs. Samurai: 53 critical hits, 21 hits, 0 misses for a critical hit rate of 71.6%

Obviously, there were some recording errors – 127 vs. Wrights should have only had 98 trials and I recorded 99. But assuming the results are basically reliable… It looks like the number shown on the character sheet is a critical hit chance – but a flat penalty is applied depending on what map you are on.

At a guess, the penalty in the catacombs is 30% (producing expected results vs the wrights of 33% and 97%, which aligns with the data above) and 60% for Magnor’s Tower (expected results of 3% and 67%). Further guessing wildly, the penalty is increase by 10% for each dungeon in sequence (20% for the wine cellar, 30% for the catacombs, 40% for Harkyn’s Castle, 50% for Kylearn’s Tower, and 60% for Mangar’s Tower). Further testing (which I don’t plan on doing) is required to determine if the penalty is flat for all floors within a dungeon or varies as you move through the dungeon.

Given that an “average” hunter (not re-rolling to max out stats at level up) would have a critical hit chance of ~85%, we would expect a critical hit rate of ~25% in Mangar’s Tower which is low enough to explain the complaints recorded elsewhere in the forum.

So, yeah... :)

[noblesse_oblige]

63 is 2**6 - 1 and 127 is 2**7 - 1. Could be coincidence, I suppose.

Wrt the originals, the hunter ability could go to 255 (2**8 -1), which would give close to 100% chance and would usually be achieved around level 18 or so. However, the remaster is intended to scale across all three games. During prerelease testing, I saw values higher than 255. But, Krome may have reworked the system since last time I looked, since we mentioned some issues with the way it was scaling then.

[Nevron]

The exception being when your Hunter is possessed and attacks a party member. Then his critical hit chance is always 100%

[mreed2]

@noblesse_oblige: Nothing signficant about the 63 or 127, as it turns out -- I had a level up unclaimed after testing, and after leveling up my critical chance increased to 138. During prevous testing, I received critical chances ranging from 63 to 127, so nothing special about the 63 either.

@Nevron: I'm not going to test it, but... It is entirely possible that the location specific penalty isn't applied when a party member attacks another party member. It depends on how it is implemented under the hood, but if party on party has its own resolution process then...

[Master_OrHan]

If you started with 18 dex (possible with hobbit), you should have gained a max of 220 crit ability with rerolls. I never experienced this "penalty" you mentioned. I'm in Kylearan's Tower and do NOT miss 50% of the time there, not even close. If you arent leveling as you go from dungeon to dungeon, character level is measured against monster level, hence this "penalty". This effects rougues as well. Google "Bard's Tale I Hunter Crit", people have already figured out what the formula is years ago.

[Master_OrHan]

Just saw your other comment in your guide. I don't agree Hunters are useless in later dungeons/towers but you will have to grind levels a LOT to make them hit consistently if you don't save/reload outside the Review Board. To me, it is fun having a Hunter that actually hits almost always, but you play how you want.

[Aurarion]

Thx for the detailed look!

I retired the hunter as soon as I was able to summon greater Demons and needed the slot. :(