Don't mess with trolls: A cautionary tale

[broghk75]

there is a horse in the pic.
I would assume he was on it...

I don't see the horse, you sure?

[Karede]

Completely sure, take another look. It's unconscious right in the center of the image

[sMartins]

[iamahh]

I heard there's a "question mark" before the Troll spawn... maybe this because RES is downloading? I know I'll need that because I never saw one.

Wiki had some info already:
- They have about a 0.002% chance of spawning from each mining grid.
- They have a cave-in ranged attack , after gaining 3-4 ip it will cause a cave-in instakilling any character.
- Their level is dependent on the depth of the mine they are found in.
- Trolls will cause Cave-ins if they can't reach their target!
- Trolls will beat their chest for 5-10 seconds after spawning to give the player a chance to get away while they still can
- If a horse is in the range of the troll the troll will instantly attack the player.
- They have about 800 HP at mining level 1 (Caves) and about 5000 HP at mining level 5. They can kill new clear character (alt) in 1 hit dealing about 300-750 damage in 1 hit, at the same time knocking out our character, and in the next hit - killing character.
- To hit, Troll sometimes has to gain 2 IP; It's giving a little moment before hit.
- Raw Hide and Meat are softcapped by Survival and your carving tool. Bones are only softcapped by Survival.
http://ringofbrodgar.com/wiki/Troll

[Kaios]

I heard there's a "question mark" before the Troll spawn... maybe this because RES is downloading? I know I'll need that because I never saw one.

Yes exactly I had mentioned that earlier, you'll initiate combat with it but it won't actually appear right away which might cause some confusion for some people like it did for me. I waited for it to appear thinking "wtf is this... oh" which wasted precious seconds that are better used to run away.

I don't know if the cave-in ranged attack one is accurate, I got hit by it on my miner alt which has like 200 hp and it was just a knock out but it was also stuck and dropped aggro after that.

[Sardte]

Well, I've now learnt that maybe being on a horse whilst mining isn't as safe as I thought!

You can be on a horse while mining now? Is this a bug or a feature?

[reexar77]

Well, I've now learnt that maybe being on a horse whilst mining isn't as safe as I thought!

You can be on a horse while mining now? Is this a bug or a feature?

it's a bug , and also don't do it , trolls really hate the smell of horse in the morning

[Boas]

After my post last night, I got some sleep. I logged back in just now to see what the situation in my mine is. The troll is still there, and my corpse is gone. When I popped down, it was just in time to see my poor horse wake up and get clobbered again by the troll, this time fatally. That was kind of funny, because I guess I can blame the horse for being so fragrantly offensive to trolls that it got me killed.

While I appreciate the sentiment of my friend who tried to avenge me, we both should have known there was a possibility that the troll would trample and destroy my corpse. However, since the troll never despawns, and it's in such cramped quarters to begin with, we'd have to engage it in combat again at some point. So it's possible my corpse would have been destroyed in the process anyway.

A few questions were about the location and my stats. This was on level 2. My con was only 49. I had around 220 HP.

The biggest loss was that this was my main character with 4.7 million LP. I don't know if that's a lot for some of the more hardcore players out there, but it was a lot for me, especially since I can't recover the corpse. Another issue of course is that there's now a troll in my fucking mine who will never despawn and apparently causes massive cave-ins whenever it's engaged in combat. With my main dead and without the resources to arm myself for combat against such a foe, I don't have many options. I either have to pick up and move or just dig a new mine hole and never venture into that one again. Either way, as a relative hermit who plays fairly casually with just a couple friends, this is a setback that may just encourage me to quit the game. At least until W10.

Lessons learned:

1) Don't mine on a horse, or with a horse nearby. The convenience of mobility is not worth the risk. You can probably get away if you're just picking at cave walls for ore veins, but in cramped conditions I would not trust myself to be able to navigate away in time to avoid being caught and killed.

2) Use an alt for mining. Bear dicks and cheese are way less of a hassle than building LP for months and then losing it. You don't need much LP for mining, anyway. I hate using alts, but with a game like this, you're wise to mitigate such a loss by spreading your resources across multiple characters.

These are things I knew beforehand and should have taken into consideration. I didn't prepare, and I paid the price.

[reexar77]

After my post last night, I got some sleep. I logged back in just now to see what the situation in my mine is. The troll is still there, and my corpse is gone. When I popped down, it was just in time to see my poor horse wake up and get clobbered again by the troll, this time fatally. That was kind of funny, because I guess I can blame the horse for being so fragrantly offensive to trolls that it got me killed.

While I appreciate the sentiment of my friend who tried to avenge me, we both should have known there was a possibility that the troll would trample and destroy my corpse. However, since the troll never despawns, and it's in such cramped quarters to begin with, we'd have to engage it in again combat at some point. It is incredibly likely my corpse would have been destroyed in the process anyway.

A few questions were about the location and my stats. This was on level 2. My con was only 49. I had around 220 HP.

The biggest loss was that this was my main character with 4.7 million LP. I don't know if that's a lot for some of the more hardcore players out there, but it was a lot for me, especially since I can't recover the corpse. Another issue of course is that there's now a troll in my fucking mine who will never despawn and apparently causes massive cave-ins whenever it's engaged in combat. With my main dead and without the resources to arm myself for combat against such a foe, I don't have many options. I either have to pick up and move or just dig a new mine hole and never venture into that one again. Either way, as a relative hermit who plays fairly casually with just a couple friends, this is a setback that may just encourage me to quit the game. At least until W10.

Lessons learned:

1) Don't mine on a horse, or with a horse nearby. The convenience of mobility is not worth the risk. You can probably get away if you're just picking at cave walls for ore veins, but in cramped conditions I would not trust myself to be able to navigate away in time to avoid being caught and killed.

2) Use an alt for mining. Bear dicks and cheese are way less of a hassle than building LP for months and then losing it. You don't need much LP for mining, anyway. I hate using alts, but with a game like this, you're wise to mitigate such a loss by spreading your resources across multiple characters.

These are things I knew beforehand and should have taken into consideration. I didn't prepare, and I paid the price.

I've never used alts , getting away from trolls always does make me scream even now but killing one is kind of annoying but i'm sure you can get somebody to get rid of the beast for you , there skulls are valuable to some people

[VDZ]

These are things I knew beforehand and should have taken into consideration. I didn't prepare, and I paid the price.

No, this is bad game design. A game with permadeath should not force you to make throwaway helper characters. That defeats the whole point of permadeath in the first place. The game should just give you a decent chance at survival if you make the right decisions, and trolls apparently not despawning nowadays is just bullshit. In World 7 (back when trolls still despawned), I once mined out a troll right inside my cave home. What was I supposed to do if the troll hadn't despawned after I had logged out for a couple hours? Should I have just abandoned everything I had without even attempting to recover anything (as death in such a scenario would mean an infinite loop of deaths as I my successor would spawn too close to the troll)? I had a cave home in early w9 as well; I guess I should consider myself lucky I didn't get stuck in a situation that made by game unplayable by sheer chance.