Runaway Slave scenario - running away success rate

[ineedcords]

I've been playing Runaway Slave scenario today, I gave it 13 tries and about 1/3 of them were near insta-death.

One-shot one-kill or similar quick end games were particularly annoying, such as getting a serious cut in the leg in the first hit or second, which then prevented me from standing & resulted in getting surrounded by 3 Njerps & got fast-killed and so on.

Focusing on the luckier rounds: a few of the attempts lasted longer in the form of 1v1 in a single-internal-tile Kota but ultimately I never got out of the Kota in any attempt. Managed to kill the 1st Njerp about 2 times but the next Njerp quickly steps in and being relatively fresh, well armoured etc..

I have never managed to slip away as each one of the 13 games. I spawned in very close to Njerps a couple of times & in all games except one, I was in 'detected-by-next-turn' state by the time of spawn. This screenshot below is a typical starting setup although in some rounds Njerps were either half screen away or at the edge of the screen; in the final analysis distance did not seem to make any difference though, they insta detect & start closing in:


I wonder if I have been really unlucky with RNG tonight or have I been trying wrong tactics by running to a Kota?
I would like to ask, on the more recent versions of the game, what is your running away success rate in Runaway Slave scenario?

Edit: Gave it 3 more tries, 1st and 2nd the same result. Latest attempt though, my luck finally turned. Used the same tacti just got much much luckier with RNG!

[Plotinus]

I haven't tried it in a recent version, but that sounds about what I remember.

It can help to max out your fighting stats, especialy knife because you're guaranteed to have one but if you're doing too easy then max out the others as well, and stealth too in case you get lucky and can slip away. I have succeeded before but I doubt I succeed more than 1 in a 100 times. But I'm not the best fighter either.

I'm sure someone who spends more time on the fighting parts of the game has a better strategy than me. The main thing I know is that if you can't escape then try to get surrounded by walls so you can take them one at a time and don't get surrounded, like you're doing in that screenshot.

[PALU]

It was a while since I played that scenario, but I'm not aware of any major changes.

The success rate is lousy, maybe 5% or so (but still 5 times 1%). The tactic I've use has been to immediately hide and go prone to try to sneak away, and then run when detected (with the crawling hopefully gaining a few precious tiles of distance). When out of sight, hide again and try to sneak away. I've seen that some people have been able to crawl away into a building and hide there until night time to slip away, but haven't done that myself.

It can be noted that with a bit of a head start, you do have some chance to get away because the Njerps tend to be weighted down by equipment and thus tire quickly, and they are also in total disregard of the risks of friendly fire (just like companions...), and so happily fire their arrows into the backs of the melee fighters chasing you (but obviously it's better if they don't get in a position to fire at all).

Fighting to escape seems to be a lost proposition. In a number of cases I've killed them slowly after escaping by whittling away at them with hit and run tactics with missiles (typically rocks) in the dead of night (early on to get some equipment and food, and later to finish them off after having gotten up to a basic level of subsistence). Each kill can give you some equipment (a precious axe, or bow and arrows for exhaust and kill tactics).

[ineedcords]

Thank you both.

Yes, I did focus on rolling high combat skills & invested a skill point into knife.
I never invest skills in Physical Skills (because as you know those are easy to increase later in the game) but this is one case that justifies investing point to the Stealth skill so I should do that in future attempts, thank you.
Also prone/hiding is a good idea which occurred to me also after a few deaths so I did try prone+hide a few times (when nearest Njerp wasn't 2 tiles away and prone/hide looked like a possibility) but in my attempts it didn't work, I still got detected next turn or so. These guys are like iron age radars. I will try this some more, with the stealth-skill-investment it should have a better chance.
Fighting is a lost cause: yes, thank you, I learned that last night as in some games there were maybe 7-8 Njerps. I can't imagine being lucky 8 times in 1v1 especially when they arrive almost fresh, pretty much one after another. I will try not fighting early on in future attempts and will focus on hiding/sneaking away.

@PALU when you roll a character to play this scenario, most of the time, did you invest skill point into Stealth?

As reported earlier overall my attempts newer ended well but there were a few hopeful rounds listing here to get your ideas:
* My very first attempt, I had several kotas very close to me, closest was 2-3 tiles away and another one was maybe 6-7 tiles away. As kotas block field of vision, I tried to play the vision game to stay undetected and it actually did work for a few turns raising my hopes. Unfortunately due to high number of walking-radars around, eventually it became impossible to hide from multiple vision fields at the same time. In another game however I guess it can work when stars align and Njerp vision fields leave a weak side perhaps...

* In another attempt I got into the Kota that was very close and got only one guy, eventually killed him no other Njerp arrived during the fight and didn't have anyone else jump into the Kota for hours after that single 1v1 fight. I used - key to pass a lot of time while waiting for night fall. Just before night, when I was dreaming of freedom, a Njerp walked in! He actually swore before getting in so perhaps they "sense" when they randomly walk a few tiles away or perhaps Kotas lack doors so he could easily see me although in real world every Kota in Spring (cold weather) should have a closed 'door' as far as I can imagine to retain the little heat they have inside.

I actually video recorded every single session as I was testing some recording software settings so I might watch them for further analysis at some point in case I spot something I didn't in the heat of battle. Playing many more rounds to collect more data is also another idea I have. I took away the underlined bits from your comments, thanks again.

Overall though, this probably should be renamed 'Died while attempting to run away' scenario   

[Plotinus]

One thing I recommend, if you don't like your ancestors getting overwritten with a bunch of failed attempts, is to look at lastentry.txt. Mine says "10" right now, which means that ancestor 11 is the next to be overwritten (the last 50 ancestors are saved normally). My shortest lived character was Birki, who lived only 1 day. I'd rather Birki get overwritten than some beloved character who lived 2 years, so I can look in those folders for to see which folder is BIRKI's, and then set lastentry.txt to be the number before Birki's folder (or 49, if Birki is in folder 0).

[ineedcords]

One thing I recommend, if you don't like your ancestors getting overwritten with a bunch of failed attempts, is to look at lastentry.txt. Mine says "10" right now, which means that ancestor 11 is the next to be overwritten (the last 50 ancestors are saved normally). My shortest lived character was Birki, who lived only 1 day. I'd rather Birki get overwritten than some beloved character who lived 2 years, so I can look in those folders for to see which folder is BIRKI's, and then set lastentry.txt to be the number before Birki's folder (or 49, if Birki is in folder 0).

Thanks, I am aware of that and added it to the recent tips & tricks thread here: https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=6459.0

In this particular case however after starting with your tip above (initially) I realised it is more hassle than worth so I took a backup of "ancestors" directory and then deleted all subdirectories inside, i.e.: wiped out all ancestors (for the duration of testing).
Once I am done with Runaway Slave scenario, I will simply delete the ancestors directory and bring it back in, from the backed up copy.

[PALU]

I generally invest all my skill points in weapon related skills, as they are hard to train and training takes a lot of time. I definitely didn't invest in stealth. However, it might be worth it for this particular scenario.

Given the low success rate with the scenario, I didn't invest much into the characters, but just generated them, slapped on the point, and proceeded to their (almost) inevitable failure, rinse, repeat...

Running when detected and hope their higher load will slow them down faster than the PC, plus the hope that the archers are at the other end of the camp are probably the biggest factors that can lead to success. This would imply a high speed is important (if you reroll you character characteristics).

[ineedcords]

In my experience some other skills are more difficult to improve in-game, such as Carpentry and Weatherlore (even though latter is not useful in any way).
I would prefer to invest a skill point into Carpentry rather than weapons. (Edit: because I find weapon improvement relatively straightforward; it's boring but works OK)
Hideworking is easy to improve in-game but it has a cost which I prefer not to pay, thus another skill point from weapons go into this one (usually).

Well put, 'Rinse & Repeat' could be another good name for this scenario.

I actually did reroll and focus on weapon skills just for this scenario (i.e.: Knife) & tried to get a high speed just for later game (for active hunting, in case I escape) but did not use speed to run away. I will also try that, thank you.

And here's an update from the trenches: in attempt #15, I invested in Stealth and this is the spawn I got right after



Edit: Success! Finally managed to escape on 16th attempt. Looking back rather than bad RNG I guess the problem was attempting to fight it out in a kota.
In the future, for this scenario start, for me there is no reason to focus on any Personal Attribute other than Speed which should be 85-90% or above probably.
No reason to waste initial skill point on stealth or any particular weapon (knife) but instead just "Run, Forest, Run!".
I need to test this another 10-20 times to get a better feel but I'm satisfied for now.
If anyone is interested here is the 16th attempt video without commentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE-Gd6vE8tE

In the video, skip to 1m40s for the action.



Edit1: Fix typo.
Edit2: Add clarification note to the weapon section above.
Edit3: Add success report.
Edit4: Replaced original Vimeo video link with YouTube one.

[PALU]

Congratulations on your escape! Use your newfound freedom wisely...

Weatherlore takes time to master, but it's technically easy: Whenever you need to wait to catch your breath, check the weather and examine the unknown plants you've brought for that purpose (i.e. herb lore training). Start each morning with a check of the weather, and repeat before each meal. The uses I have for it is to determine whether it's a good time to try to perform a particular weather dependent quest, as well as to determine whether I should build a shelter while traveling or gaze at the stars during the night. It could also be used to try to decide whether traveling on ice might remain safe, but I want larger safety margins than that. A rather limited use currently, but I expect it to expand eventually when things like snow storms become a thing.

I agree carpentry is very slow to increase, and there's no real in-game reason to perform the grinding required, which is a pity.

I don't engage in the throwing of weapons not intended for it as a training method, both because it's boring and because it doesn't sit well with me from a role playing perspective (while, on the other hand, I strike captured animals to death with the shaft of spears to both train the spear skill and to preserve the skin of the animal, and, even less realistic, use disabled Njerps for bow target practice, aiming for the limbs to get as much training out of them as possible. Not exactly consistent from an RP perspective).

[ineedcords]

Congratulations on your escape! Use your newfound freedom wisely...

Thanks

Weatherlore takes time to master, but it's technically easy: Whenever you need to wait to catch your breath, check the weather and examine the unknown plants you've brought for that purpose (i.e. herb lore training).

Well, that is pretty much all skills "use it to improve it". In practice though, after hitting that button hundreds if not thousands times, I have seen it increase only once.
In my current listing, amongst skills I tried to improve, Weatherlore is not only the most useless but also the only one I failed to ever improve (other than one single exception as mentioned above). I read a similar comment somewhere most likely in this forum although don't have it in hand to quote below now.

I don't engage in the throwing of weapons not intended for it as a training method, both because it's boring and because it doesn't sit well with me from a role playing perspective (while, on the other hand, I strike captured animals to death with the shaft of spears to both train the spear skill and to preserve the skin of the animal, and, even less realistic, use disabled Njerps for bow target practice, aiming for the limbs to get as much training out of them as possible. Not exactly consistent from an RP perspective).

I understand everybody have their own house rules. I think of throwing the weapon as a simple way of "spending time in this art/skill" which is exactly what we do in real life; only the first week in a dojo is magical rest is constant hard work and practice. Throwing is hard work and practice in that <weapon> skill. At least that's the way I see it...


Edit1: I am testing this scenario some more and sharing the results in the form of game session captures/video recordings -so far, without commentary-.
I intend to do 10 attempts, I have already recorded and uploaded 5 of it.
In case anyone is interested, here is the playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkr2bHghkM5rDv9jOZvFBQMeobouVkNNj


Edit2: I have completed my test run on this: in this 10-round test, I ended up with a 70% successful escape rate. All test sessions are available in the YouTube playlist referenced above. I was unable to upload the 10th video today due to daily limit on uploads but hoping to do so ASAP; this 10th test was a quick successful flight, exactly a recurrence of video #7...

The test confirms what PALU posted earlier. One just needs three things to successfully escape in this scenario:
1) A character with high SPEED,
2) A standard RNG and not an unlucky RNG (only in test #6 was I cursed by RNG gods and failed to escape even though I was using the same flight tactic which based on data below clearly is a winning method in general),
3) An iron will to press CTRL+<one-of-the-direction-indicator-NumPad-keys> about 30 times while restraining yourself from any unproductive thoughts such as "fighting it like a man!".

Unreal World 3.70b Runaway Slave Scenario Test Results:

• Test #1 of 10: Flight & Success
• Test #2 of 10: Battle & Failure
• Test #3 of 10: Flight & Success
• Test #4 of 10: Battle & Failure
• Test #5 of 10: Flight & Success
• Test #6 of 10: Flight & Failure   << unlucky, single arrow hit & heavy bleeding.
• Test #7 of 10: Flight & Success
• Test #8 of 10: Flight & Success
• Test #9 of 10: Flight & Success
• Test #10 of 10: Flight & Success

Thanks for your inputs again, @PALU & @Plotinus

[PALU]

I've actually managed to get Weatherlore up to 100%, although that was in my longest living character (about 10 years), who, ironically, died a month before my intended retirement date. Most of the characters I manage to keep alive for some time increase Weatherlore a fair bit, though.

[Bert Preast]

I have had two tries at this, both with really fast Kaumos and both successful.  The first Kaumo just legged it and picked up a couple of arrows on his way, but he made it to the treeline.  The second got even luckier; he heard swearing and fighting behind him as he scarpered so he lurked in the woods for an hour or so then snurgled back.

I think it was eight Njerps, all dead or dying.  He finished off the survivors then looted everything.  I think the internet calls that "winning".

He didn't survive to enjoy his new found wealth for very long, as he was using Palu's method of lugging around unknown plants to train up herblore.  One day he was feeling peckish, and confused an unknown mushroom for a nice roast fish, and that was that