Minor Illusion Faction Modifier Bug

[Vermicelli]

http://i.imgur.com/2EIVAAJ.jpg

In the course of testing graphic bugs related to Minor Illusion, I transformed with Minor Illusion next to a Dark Elf guard to compare my model size to his. The guard then turned and attacked me! Surprising, since he had been friendly enough to take a picture with me just a moment before. After I came back to the scene of the misunderstanding, the guard was once again friendly to me. Transforming again from a safe distance, the guard began to glare at me threateningly, perhaps jealous of my shape-changing magic.

I created a noob Human/Enchanter/Agnostic and a noob Dark Elf/ENC/Agnostic to do a little digging. After some more casting and /conning, I have discovered that on P99 Minor Illusion unexpectedly changes a person's faction modifier to that of a Human, whereas in Kunark/Velious EQ it should make all things in the world indifferent to the Illusioned player.

Am: Amiable, I: Indifferent, (no Apprehensive), D: Dubious, T: Threatening, S: Scowling.

[U]Faction: ______________ Human ___ w/MI ___|__ Dark Elf ___ w/MI
Freeport Guards (FP Militia) ___Am _____ Am ____|____ T ______ Am
FP Paladins (Knights of Truth) _ Am _____ Am ____|____ T ______ Am
FP Casters (Arcane Scientists)__ K ______ K _____|____ D _______ K
The League of Antonican Bards _ I _______ I ____|_____ T _______ I
Dark Elf Guards (Dread Guard) __ T_______ T ____|____ Am ______ T
DE Clerics (Priests of Innoruuk) _ T _______ T ____|____ Am ______ T
DE Casters (The Spurned) _____ D _______ D ____|_____ K ______ D
(Seeing a pattern?)
Nektulos HFL (Various Rivervale) Am _____ Am ____|____ T ______ Am
RV Guards (Guardians of the Vale) Am ____ Am ____|____ T ______ Am
RV Clerics (Priests of Mischief) __ Am _____ Am ____|____ T ______ Am
Kithicor Bixies (Stonehive Bixies) __ D ______ D ____|____ S _______ D

Every piece of this /con data reflects that regardless of the base race, both the Human and the Dark Elf are affected by the Human faction modifier after casting Minor Illusion. Again, every NPC I /conned should have been indifferent to me under illusion.

Interestingly, Minor Illusion also grants the caster infravision. I don't believe it is supposed to change vision at all.

[Vermicelli]

Another strange thing about Minor Illusion is that, instead of transforming you into a nearby object to the delight of all, sometimes it simply adjusts your height to that of a human model. Bo~ring!

http://i.imgur.com/5F5jh4b.jpg

Jiffy-pop gnome! And sometimes, you will appear to different observers as different objects from each perspective.

You tell your party, "lol do I look like a hide rug to anyone else?"
Dhinnar tells the group, "you do"
You tell your party, "Excellent."
Dhinnar tells the group, "you look kinda like a wierd colored goo with lev on"
Zelvin tells the group, "a floating barrel"

http://i.imgur.com/5FNpSeO.jpg

Camping the ass/sup in lguk, where there are many barrels and hide rugs. You can see the white targeting ring sitting neatly upon me.

Probably the most troubling weirdness of Minor Illusion is that, when under its effect, if I am hit in combat I grunt like a burly man. If there were only one thing about Minor Illusion I could have fixed, it would be this.

[Uthgaard]

In the course of testing graphic bugs related to Minor Illusion, I transformed with Minor Illusion next to a Dark Elf guard to compare my model size to his. The guard then turned and attacked me! Surprising, since he had been friendly enough to take a picture with me just a moment before. After I came back to the scene of the misunderstanding, the guard was once again friendly to me. Transforming again from a safe distance, the guard began to glare at me threateningly, perhaps jealous of my shape-changing magic.

I created a noob Human/Enchanter/Agnostic and a noob Dark Elf/ENC/Agnostic to do a little digging. After some more casting and /conning, I have discovered that on P99 Minor Illusion unexpectedly changes a person's faction modifier to that of a Human, whereas in Kunark/Velious EQ it should make all things in the world indifferent to the Illusioned player.

Am: Amiable, I: Indifferent, (no Apprehensive), D: Dubious, T: Threatening, S: Scowling.

[U]Faction: ______________ Human ___ w/MI ___|__ Dark Elf ___ w/MI
Freeport Guards (FP Militia) ___Am _____ Am ____|____ T ______ Am
FP Paladins (Knights of Truth) _ Am _____ Am ____|____ T ______ Am
FP Casters (Arcane Scientists)__ K ______ K _____|____ D _______ K
The League of Antonican Bards _ I _______ I ____|_____ T _______ I
Dark Elf Guards (Dread Guard) __ T_______ T ____|____ Am ______ T
DE Clerics (Priests of Innoruuk) _ T _______ T ____|____ Am ______ T
DE Casters (The Spurned) _____ D _______ D ____|_____ K ______ D
(Seeing a pattern?)
Nektulos HFL (Various Rivervale) Am _____ Am ____|____ T ______ Am
RV Guards (Guardians of the Vale) Am ____ Am ____|____ T ______ Am
RV Clerics (Priests of Mischief) __ Am _____ Am ____|____ T ______ Am
Kithicor Bixies (Stonehive Bixies) __ D ______ D ____|____ S _______ D

Every piece of this /con data reflects that regardless of the base race, both the Human and the Dark Elf are affected by the Human faction modifier after casting Minor Illusion. Again, every NPC I /conned should have been indifferent to me under illusion.

Interestingly, Minor Illusion also grants the caster infravision. I don't believe it is supposed to change vision at all.

Minor illusion making someone indifferent was a very, very shortlived bug that we're already past on the timeline. But you did accidentally point out a different, valid bug with the spell. Will see about getting it fixed.

[BrandeX]

I seem to recall everyone seeing something different on live (at least for a time) too.

[Harrison]

And they never fixed the bug where you could move while minor illusioned, will check and test later on my enchanter if it's still possible.

Edit: by they I meant sony, and it should work here barring any "technical restraints" to be classic.

[Aadill]

And they never fixed the bug where you could move while minor illusioned, will check and test later on my enchanter if it's still possible.

Edit: by they I meant sony, and it should work here barring any "technical restraints" to be classic.

I thought you could only spin and jump.

Also I thought it put you dubious to kos mobs and indifferent to non kos mobs.

[Harrison]

You're not supposed to normally be able to move with it, but there was a bug (totally classic!) where you could run around in minor illusion. It was 100% able to be reproduced and not gamebreaking in any manner.

[Aadill]

I started a few months before Velious came out and tried an enchanter... but I don't recall being able to use minor illusion in the manner of which you speak. If minor illusion modified your faction to non-kos and you were able to move then that would be an exploit, wouldn't it? Uthgaard said it was a bug to make mobs indifferent to you but I remember conning mobs as a dresser or the pile of poop in WFP and remember dubious and/or indifferent. Maybe that was the short-lived time frame?

The most important question here is: what mob in their right mind would not swat at a moving table?

[Harrison]

The bug isn't working here.

You cast a different illusion, then minor illusion (or the other way around, but neither work on P99) and you click the different illusion off. BAM walking minor illusion.

This worked for a VERY long time.

[Vermicelli]

On Live EQ, people found a way to run around while under the effects of Minor Illusion. At the time, since Minor Illusion caused you to become indifferent to all mobs, this was a huge exploit that allowed enchanters to go anywhere in the world while perfectly visible and able to interact with NPC's without being attacked. Sony's solution to fixing this exploit was to make it so that Minor Illusion gives no faction modifier whatsoever, and instead mobs would view you thru your normal faction modifiers. What they should have done instead is simply fix the bug that makes it possible to travel while Minor Illusioned, but oh well.

I have scoured the internet for a day and a half to figure out when the changes to Minor Illusion's faction modifier were put in, and the earliest date I have been able to find is in early 2003, which would place it sometime soon after the release of Planes of Power.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/history/patches-2003-1.html


------------------------------
April 8, 2003 3:00 am
------------------------------

** Illusions/Shape Change **

We have changed the way that Illusions and Shape Changes work with
respect to faction. The new system is a lot easier to understand than
the old one, so we'll just explain the new one. When changed into the
form of a playable race, characters are treated as if they were a
member of that race. When changed into a non-playable race, characters
retain their own racial factions.

This is corroborated by a post (posted May 01, 2003) on Alla regarding clicky-effect Minor Illusion on an item, the Coral Shard.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=18685#m105182877965005

With the recent nerfs to non-racial illusion factions, minor illusion is now the same as your base factions, which is essentially KOS everywhere you might have wanted to use this.

In the spirit of becoming an unassuming, innocent inanimate object, I feel like a part of Minor Illusion's charm is to cause other beings to not think of you threateningly. If movement under Minor Illusion could be exploited on P99, I understand removing the faction modifier portion of the spell, but I have tested both methods I know of to engage the mobile Minor Illusion bug and neither allowed me to run around as an object because of the way P99 will not allow different illusions to stack.

TL;DR From what I can gather, Minor Illusion should still grant indifferent-to-all faction on P99 according to the EQ patch timeline. Also, it would not break the game since P99 will not allow you to bug Minor Illusion so you can move. Regardless, I look forward to seeing what change yall implement =)

[Vermicelli]

The Minor Illusion faction modifier stills gives me the faction of a human .. a few young dark elf chanters have complained to me about getting whacked by their own guards because of this!

[Vermicelli]

Checking it out again, Minor Illusion still gives the faction modifier of a human and infravision. To an agnostic dark elf chanter, dark elf guards inside and outside Neriak become dubious (indifferent without illusion), necro guild leaders become threateningly (apprehensive without illusion) and leatherfoot raiders become amiable (threateningly without illusion). Minor Illusion can grant indifferent faction plz?

[Galanteer]

Another way to move back in classic was to cast minour illusion and then root yourself. Back when you couldn't have two speed affecting spells at one time.

[Vermicelli]

On P99, roots break Minor Illusion, and if you try to cast Minor Illusion while rooted, it will not take hold.

[Splorf22]

Bump for coolness, I've also been kinda disappointed in minor illusion which is one of the fun spells in the game. As long as you are rooted I don't think its any more OP than hide.

[dali_lb]

As far as I remember they never changed the faction change on MI on live, but I maybe wrong. In case they actually changed it, I am pretty sure it must have been as late as 2004-2006 as they actually did fix a lot of long time bugs/exploits in that timeframe wich had been untouched in game, some since release.

I am pretty sure tho, that MI did not just make you "Indiff" to everything. It moved you a set amount on the con list, so dependent on how high your faction was it changed you 1-2 levels towards better faction.

The usual use of MI was to eg. be able to buy enchanter spells in LFay.

[Vermicelli]

I checked all the factions again, each with a human enchanter and then a dark elf enchanter. Minor Illusion is still granting the human faction modifier and also infravision. I still believe that, up to the year 2003, it would make anyone under the effects of Minor Illusion indifferent to all other /cons, and so, in this P99 timeline, we should be granted that indifference. I have tried to engage all of the moving-while-Minor-Illusioned bugs that I know of, and none have worked, so I don't think Minor Illusion making me indifferent would break any functions on our server. Can has Minor Illusion making me indifferent to all plz?

[Tecmos Deception]

Vermi's got some perseverance!

[Sundawg]

Ok Vermicelli, this is what I could figure out:

First of all, the enchanter minor illusion, illusion: tree and the druid treeform spell all do the same thing faction wise. So when this is slowly fixed and implemented, druids will see their treeform gain the same benefits.

As best as I could tell, these spells provided a large faction increase to a great many different factions. But, it was not a catch all "set to indifferent" deal. Also, many factions are not adjusted by these spells at all.

The neat thing about this line is that it DOES allow the shape changer the chance to become non-kos to a great many NPCs, even in dungeons.

For example, I was kos to the greater icebone skeletons in lower guk but when I used minor illusion I suddenly became apprehensive. To lesser kobolds in Innothule Swamp I went from kos to indifferent. To gnoll pups in the Qeynos noob yard I went from kos to apprehensive and to Nerissa Clothspinner who happened to be walking by at the time I went from apprehensively to indifferent.

Anyways, fixing this will take a lot of time as there is no catch all set way to implement the faction adjustments for these spells. It will have to be done faction by faction.

Does all of the above jive with you classic era enchanters/druids? I don't think these spells changed from 1999 to 2002.

[cyryllis]

you should definitely be able to root after minor illusion and then be able to move in the illusion. this later got nerfed to where it was a bit trickier. during luclin and PoP you had to move to an area that said you cannot illusion here, drop an item, cast minor illusion, pick the item up and cast minor illusion again (now there is nothing to turn into) - the spell would say there is nothing to turn into, but now you would stay in minor illusion and could move as whatever you dropped. walking around as a spear in plane of tranquility was funny

also, I remember moving in minor illusion in umbral plains and not being kos

[Vermicelli]

Thanks for the reply, Sundawg! Sorry for my assumption that Minor Illusion caused every mob to /con indifferent in Live classic. I never got an enchanter far out of the noob levels back then :o

Is there any way that I could help figure out which factions responded to Minor Illusion in classic? I've tried some Googling and working with the Wayback internet archive, but I haven't come up with anything about specific faction adjustments. Would testing on EQMac be worth anything?

[Sundawg]

Would testing on EQMac be worth anything?


That is to my knowledge, the only way.

[Vermicelli]

I rolled up a few guineapigs on EQMac, and the Minor Illusion faction adjustments I have recorded are very complicated indeed. I didn't really know how to get started, so I picked some race/deity combinations that were fairly diverse. I rolled a Human/Agnostic (beginning in Qeynos), Highelf/Tunare, Darkelf/Agnostic, and Darkelf/Innoruuk.

Something that further complicates Minor Illusion faction changes is that the game seems to take into account any faction work that you have done. For instance, when I brought the dark elves to Qeynos, I transformed and /conned a gnoll to find that it was indifferent to me. I killed 6 gnoll pups and tried transforming again, and now the pups are Apprehensive to me when I am affected by Minor Illusion. As some of the data in the loose table below suggests, even the faction gained by turning in your newbie note is enough to change how your guildmaster views your Minor Illusion-ed toon; at each of the characters' home guilds, I was taken Amiably, and after transforming, I remained Amiably.

W: Warmly, Am: Amiable, I: Indifferent, Ap: Apprehensive, D: Dubious, T: Threatening, S: Scowling

Race/Deity_________Hum/Ag_w/MI_|_HIE/Tun_w/MI_|_DE/Ag_w/MI_|_DE/In_w/MI
Freeport Militia___________I_____I___|__Ap_____Ap__|___D___ __I___|__D____Ap
Knights of Truth__________I_____I___|__I_______I___|___T_____ I___|__T____D
Arcane Scientists________Am____I___|__I_______I___|___D__ ___I___|__D____D
Freeport Monks__________I______I___|__I_______I___|___S____ _I___|__S____I
Qeynos Guards__________I_____I____|__Ap_____I___|___D____ _I___|__D____D
Temple of Life___________I_____I____|__Ap_____I___|___D_____ I___|__D____D
Order of Three__________Am___Am___|__I______I___|___D_____I ___|__T____D
Qeynos Monks__________I_____Ap___|__Ap____Ap___|__Ap___Ap ___|__D____D
Neriak Guards___________D_____I____|__S_____D___|___I____ __I___|_Am___I
The Dead______________D_____D____|__S_____S___|___D___ __D___|__D___D
The Spurned___________D_____I_____|__Not Avail.__|__Am___Am___|__Am__Am
Neriak Ghouls__________S_____I_____|__Not Avail.__|___W____I____|__W____I
Felwithe Guards_______Ap_____I_____|__Am____I___|___T____I_ ___|__S___D
Keepers of the Art______I_____I_____|__Am____Am__|___S____I____|_ _S___D

It may also be worth noting that the Qeynos Monk guild saw my Human/Agnostic Indifferently before transforming, but that dropped to Apprehensive after Minor Illusion-ing myself, so really, the faction adjustments are completely willy-nilly. The only way I can think of to refine my method is to roll a toon of each and every Enchanter race/deity combination and, while getting cash for the spell scroll, avoid killing any mobs that would give a faction change. Someone please tell me you can think of another way!

All bats, rats, and beetles who normally glower dubiously became Indifferent to all four of my test subjects. Deathfist Pawns changed from scowling to Indifferent. Gnoll pups /conned Indifferent for Minor Illusion until I killed a few, at which point they would become Apprehensive.

In regard to the infravision effect, yes on EQMac, Minor Illusion does grant infravision. It also caused me to grunt like a burly man while taking hits in combat, so I'm afraid that is indeed Classic.

[Tecmos Deception]

Lol. Those modifiers are ridiculous.

GL devs :p

[Elerion]

My understanding back then was always that Minor Illusion would set your racial faction modifier to 0. Any class modifiers, religion modifiers or personal faction modifiers (from kills/quests) would still be in effect. For an agnostic character, this generally translated to being indifferent to almost everything you hadn't specifically affected with kills/quests, since few NPCs care about your class.

That seems to match your tests on AlKabor. Your agnostic DE and agnostic Human have identical faction apart from their respective caster guilds (probably increased by turning in the newbie note).

[Sundawg]

I'm mostly interested in getting a record of what "kos" monsters are modified by minor illusion at this point. Those are the factions that will need a special entry/boost added to mimic what minor illusion does on the (soon to be going away) Al'kabor server.

So if you are bored and want to help, a list of before/after /cons with different groups/classes of monsters with an agnostic enchanter would be great.

No ETA when it will be added, but the EQmac resource which is the last place to get this info is being brought down so now is the time to get this stuff.

[Sundawg]

Also, speaking of non-human illusions, some people have mentioned to me that in Velious: werewolf illusion + bard faction song = non kos in Velketor's Labyrinth.

I'll check what I can to find out on EQmac but does anyone have FIRST hand experience with this from the old days?

Edit: Answered my own question. A combination of werewolf form and a strong faction raising spell will make one dubious to all of Velketor's Labyrinth. Interesting stuff.

[Vermicelli]

IT BEGINS.

Race/Deity_____________Human/Agnostic____________w/Minor_Illusion
Ice Giants_____________________S______________________ __I
Premafrost Goblins______________S________________________I
Icy Orcs______________________S_______________________ _I
Redwind______________________S____________________ ____I
Snow leopard__________________T________________________ I
Polar bear_____________________T________________________ I
Blackburrow Gnoll_______________S_________________________I
Gray wolf______________________T_______________________ _I
Brown bear____________________T_________________________ I
Dread corpse___________________S________________________ S
Warrens Kobolds (Clan Kolbok)_____S_________________________I
Toxxulia Kobolds_________________S________________________I
a wild tiger (Kerra Isle)___________S________________________S
Sand Shark (Erudin)_____________S_________________________I
Karana Bandits_________________T________________________T
a scarecrow (West Karana)_______S________________________S
Mist wolf______________________T_______________________ _I
Plains lioness___________________S_______________________ _I
Aviaks (SK and Lake Rathe)_______D________________________I
Splitpaw Gnolls_________________S_________________________I
Lake Rathe Orcs________________S_________________________I
Lake Rathe Bandits______________T________________________T
freshwater shark (Lake Rathe)_____S________________________S
a deepwater goblin (Lake Rathe)___S________________________I

Some anomalies: Karana bandits see through Minor Illusion, as do the more bloodthirsty animals!

[Suri]

-= First post! =-

Coming from EQMac, I know that Minor Illusion was pretty key (prenerf) to getting the Clarify Mana, etc. spells that were exclusively sold by the LFay Brownies.

My agnostic dark elf enchater would have to cast Benevolence on the guards to make them threateningly -> dubious so I could get close, then cast minor illusion next to the merchant to make it dubious -> amiable, then buy my spells. I assume the merchant would be indiff without the benevolence cast.

I wonder how enchanters bought their spells post nerf ... Charm, maybe? Still, you'd need to get past the guards.

If you like, I can help out with this. I have a 51 enchanter on eqmac. Of course I have been killing lots of stuff with faction hits, though.

[Vermicelli]

Cool stuff! How are your factions in deep Velious? As I am only rolling around with a level 4 chanter for being able to cast invis on myself, I don't expect to be able to get into the Wakening Land or the Plane of Growth or Plane of Mischief .. among other Velious factions I am not so familiar with. How comfortable are you with cold weather? I was able to get the name Vermicelli on EQMac, so say "Hi" sometime!

Also, I believe wolf form gets you above Dubious when dealing with the brownies =)

[Suri]

Cool, /friend'd. My chanter on Al'Kabor is Yeneldria. I'm also likely to be playing on Nusumi or Korff, so /friend those too if you want to chat.

As for velious factioning, I haven't done much, but it has been anti-giant. Maybe 200 kills in Kael, no bosses. A couple "accidental" kills in Skyshrine when a groupmates invis broke. No cobalt scar key (and good luck finding a port nowadays). Never been to PoG on this char, or PoM ever.

Please send me a /tell with how I can help.

[Grombar]

Minor illusion to brownies you are still dubious or worse and can not buy spells from the merchant. I know for a fact you could buy spells from them on live in the vellious or earlier game and this later got changed (and the spells moved to a merchant in HHK).

Any chance this could get fixed or the spells moved to the pet vendor in HHK?

[Vermicelli]

Quick recap: At retired P99 developer Sundawg's suggestion, I made a whirl-wind tour across Norrath on the Al`Kabor server (EQ Mac; hosted by Sony through 2013) to test how Minor Illusion adjusted one's faction against normally-hostile NPCs. For my test toon, I used an agnostic human to have as neutral starting faction as possible. After collecting the data, I emailed Sundawg a spreadsheet of my findings; however, the suggested programming changes were never implemented to bring Minor Illusion faction adjustments on P99 in line with those on EQ Mac (and, by association, classic EQ). Here is a google sheet of the data.

Al`Kabor/EQ Mac (2013) Minor Illusion Faction Adjustment Spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iclI361zGy6eyRollSmJaoR5sFJfw-Y3gyhS2lg4MJM/)

Sheet 2 (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iclI361zGy6eyRollSmJaoR5sFJfw-Y3gyhS2lg4MJM/edit#gid=250729565) shows faction adjustment data I collected on Project 1999 Blue on October 17, 2021. I tested using a dark elf noob and a human noob to discover that Minor Illusion adjusted my faction to that of a human, as discussed earlier in the thread.