Summoning

Summoned creatures can now sometimes follow you between maps. They can follow you anywhere you go, as long as the target map has space for them. They will even follow you into no-summon areas if you are a VIP (as a perk).

However, your summons may not respect you enough to follow you. The general rule is that more powerful, intelligent monsters should refuse to follow weaker players.

Every time your summon has to decide what it should do next, we compute a Respect Score, which is a measure of how much the summoned beastie respects you. You can do various things to boost your respect.

This formula will change over time, but here is how we compute it today. Note that we use the same formula regardless of whether you use a wand, rod, scroll or spell.

Respect Score:

Score starts as your player's level (i.e. 1 to 50)

Add triple your Zoology skill (capped at 25), so score gets +0 to +50

Add double your Conjuration skill (capped at 50), so score gets +0 to +100

Subtract the summon's level (e.g., for a Demon Lord, score gets -30)

Subtract the monster's intelligence (for a DL, score gets -20)

Subtract 1/100th of the difference in alignments (yours and summon's)

If the total score is positive, the monster will follow you around by teleporting to you whenever you are out of range. It will do this as soon as it completes whatever action it was performing the instant you got out of range, which is usually under 1 second.

If the monster chooses to follow you, then as soon as you are out of range, and as long as you remain out of range, the monster will repeatedly attempt to teleport before trying anything else. If it cannot teleport, it will continue fighting nearby opponents or wandering, etc.

"Out of range" is currently defined as either (a) you are in a different map, (b) you are more than 10 squares away from your summon, in any direction, or (c) the summon is stuck in a trap.

Note that the Respect Score is heavily biased towards true Summoners; that is, Mages Guild members or talented non-Mage amateurs who specialize in Conjuration. Your score is padded with double your Conjuration skill, which means much stronger summons will follow you around.

Alignment contributes strongly towards Respect -- but only ever to lower it. The more your alignment differs from that of your summon, the less it will respect you. If your alignment is very close to the summon's alignment, the Respect Score is unaffected by alignment.

Typically, alignments range from -1000 (pure evil) to +1000 (pure good). That translates to a Respect Score modifier ranging from 0 to -20.

There are a few monsters in the game whose alignment is outside of that range, but it's comparatively rare, and I don't think any of them are summonable. If you were able to summon an archangel, which I admit would be pretty cool, you'll need to command massive respect for it to follow you. They are level 30 and alignment +10000, which gives them a total respect score of -120. Even a lvl50 would need Conj 35 or Zoology 24.

Even a Demigod player would need Conjuration 35 (a large investment) or Zoology 24 (can we welcome Zoology back into the fold of reasonably useful skills?). That said, maybe we should make them summonable, since they don't seem to break the Respect formula?

Hopefully old-timers will welcome the return of Zoology as at least a marginally useful skill. I have more plans for it down the road, such as having it make animals fight for you, extra find-weakness against animals, etc.

Potential future Respect Score changes include: * For now, you must be at least 10 squares away for the monster to try following you, though that's easy for me to tweak based on playtesting. * You could lose (say) -10 respect for every map-hop away you get. Probably only an issue if you are private-jetting around, but if you got more than a few hops away the monster might lose interest until you return.