Been sitting on actually recording this for a while, because OBS makes everything lag straight to high hell for me, and recent updates have made CO significantly laggier for me for whatever reason, but I decided to finally get around to this. A compilation, in order of appearance based on how I do them, of (most) of the jank I regularly encounter doing the Serial missions. Hopefully, at least the more egregious issues are an easy fix here. To clarify, when I spit out number-number, I'm referring to which arc of the Serial it is, and then the number the mission is. For example, a mission that I didn't report anything about here (I don't think there's actually anything wrong with it that I've encountered) would be By The Books, which is the third arc's second mission, which would be 3-2. Now, as follows...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5gp-A6UITw
Serial mission 2-1. Still getting used to the chunky, chugging FPS while recording, but as seen: Talisman likes to attack while "inactive" a lot. Seen at 2/3 health, she goes inactive but still summons her supercharged Ebon Rift. Seen at 1/3 health, she goes inactive and then launches the first hit of her basic one-two-three since she'd just burnt out her other abilities with cooldowns (sometimes she'll use all three hits when this happens.) Seen at 0/3 health, she once again uses the first hit of her basic one-two-three while "dead" and trapped in her death animation. In all of these situations, she can use any of her abilities, whatever she was going to use next, and can sometimes double-down (such as using her supercharged Dimensional Collapse and then her supercharged Ebon Rift while inside her invulnerability bubble or while at zero health playing her death animation.) While not an issue for even a half-kitted-out FF, many weaker ATs, poorer-built FFs, and those who just can't afford jack diddly get to enjoy losing stars for playing the game correctly, which is... fun, yes, let's go with fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InRAM6x6nAM
Serial mission 1-1. Another issue with NPCs playing death animations in the Serials. Much more negligible here but still noteworthy, this Thunderbird can use an attack while already dead, just like seen here, in which the enemy in question is killed before their sigil spawning animation finishes, but they then spawn their sigils anyways
while dead, and
then use their charged-up magic blast, which they
started after having already died.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aPtyOwisWw
Serial mission 3-1. The same issue returns: the NPC in question is able to continue attacking after death, though it's mostly negligible here since Graknash/Zorran only ever seems to pop off any one attack from his roster while dead, instead of chaining multiple of them together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDOSgZFjTdM
Serial mission 3-3. This one is arguably even worse than 2-1 Talisman, depending on how you look at it. Zorran dies at the 20-second mark. Zorran continues attacking up until around the 40-second mark. He tends to attack, in my experience, from 10 to 20 extra seconds
after dying/while playing his death animation, and just as with Talisman, while a decently kitted-out character can handle this, weaker builds and builds with poorer gear can struggle, or even take a very, very undeserved loss-and-respawn-and-loss-of-stars by just being brute-forced by an immortal corpse-Zorran, whether they were weak enough to die to it no matter what, or whether they just weren't expecting it and ate too much damage... like seen in the video, actually, where I ate an energy-draining magic-Gigabolt to the face because I was paying attention to the Ice Burst... that he spawned after hitting zero health, where he should technically already be dead/no longer casting anything. (Except as you can see, he keeps going for that extra twenty seconds.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSD-V4Nga68
Serial mission 1-3. Now, this is more a case of minor annoyances. The Grizzly enemies? I was killing them too fast, the same build in poorer gear would encounter it much more readily, but specifically,
not seen here, they have an issue in which if Stunned or otherwise CC'd at a specific instant when they're
JUST starting to cast their bootleg Invocation of Storm Calling that stacks charge-speed debuffs, they'll gain the Stun status effect but maintain their not-Invocation-of-Storm-Calling for up to two extra ticks. I might try and capture it again, but with the FPS chugging as bad as it was during recording, I gave up trying to farm for it early on and just proceeded with the mission. At the end, I was also trying to capture that Hydrophis also has a habit of attacking for a moment after death, including spawning sigils, though that isn't too important since the player is Immune to damage during the cutscene and the sigils tend to, you know, go away before the cutscene ends and they nuke unsuspecting players.
What I did manage to encounter, however, after freeing the scientist that unlocks the door at 1:30, starting at 1:47, was that the scientist tends to cower and refuse to open the door for 10 to 15 seconds if the patrolling Cobra Lords happen to be close enough to the door at the time... as seen there. A tiny little time-waster, but annoying just for throwing off the pacing of the mission that little extra bit there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cICrIPvoJA
Serial mission 2-3. Another case of minor annoyances, but the Sanguinarians' hybrid-Interrupt-and-Paralyze attack has the annoying habit of penetrating walls if it has less than a second left to finish charging and you duck behind cover to try and reset them, where most other New Shadows attacks (and mob attacks in general, outside of other "TT punish powers" like Vargulf grenades which behave the same way and penetrate walls, though they have some other issues I should write a much smaller post about some time) do not. I'm not sure how much of this is spaghetti inherent to all mobs, and how much of it is spaghetti specific to the reworked New Shadows moves kitted up for full TT suffering, so I'm raising it anyways just in case. It's also worth noting that dealing damage to anything on the same tick that the Interrupt-and-Paralyze is applied breaks the effect instantly, but that's more intended game mechanics, and even a split second too late results in any damage that would have been done being Interrupted instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOExftX-dzI
Serial mission 1-4. Hydrophis is allowed to get off one to two attacks after dying, depending on when he's killed. This is a minor example, the worst cases I've had would be him dropping his supercharged Dimensional Collapse mid-death while having already dropped his Whirlpool, having already dropped his Ball Lightning prior, which detonates mid-Dim-Collapse blockbreak (because yes, it has a 50/50 of doing that) and quickly being blitzed to uncomfortably low health on squishier/more poorly-geared builds. Still a negligible issue compared to how horrific it is with 2-1 Talisman and 3-3 Zorran, but I felt it worth raising anyways just to be safe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t47RaZn3RB4
Serial mission 2-4. Charbydis here's by far the least irksome or troublesome example of the lot, he can't really kill even the squishiest of builds while already dead slash playing his death anim, only able to attack one time, and only really proving a nuisance with things like his cooler-looking-but-weaker tornado-Whirlpool (please, I beg you, make that the animation for rank 3 Whirlpool, it looks sick) pulling players back slightly. For the sake of completion, I'm bringing it up here, though.
There are a few others I run into frequently that both A. I didn't record this run around despite keeping an eye out for it (but not wanting to bother farming to get it on camera with the annoying FPS lag I was having while recording, like with the Grizzlys) and B. I didn't actually think to record until realizing after the fact "I should have recorded that, come to think of it." These issues are the following:
During Serial mission 2-4, when investigating the house for notes, if the player quickly leaves Ladyhawke's side to travel into the house and find the five notes, Ladyhawke doesn't play her "oh no, oh no, they said they'd be here! Please tell me we didn't lead Graknash here!" line, instead waiting stock-still for the player to return to her for her to start. This can burn a decent one or two dozen seconds of emotional torment before she gets it over with and starts her "It's another code... but not one I'm familiar with." line, which completes the instance and lets you exit to go fight Charbydis in the warehouse by the docks. Attempting to leave with all five notes but without Ladyhawke finishing her initial "they said they'd be here" spiel results in no completion of that segment, forcing the player to enter and repeat it again. This... tends to happen reasonably often when you've done the Serials dozens or hundreds of times and just want to clock in and clock out as quickly as possible.
During Serial mission 3-1, if you kill Graknash/Zorran
too quickly, before he even has a chance to aggro properly, if you've interacted with the terminal at the start to skip cutscenes, he'll sometimes break completely, and won't summon the Unknowable One to banish Dr. Ka to the zero-health Family-Guy-death-pose dimension, resulting in having to leave and re-enter the instance to do it all over, wasting a minute or two of time. This is only an issue with builds that have very, very high alpha, like, and I didn't attempt it in that video, but going in in stealth charging a Dragon Kick and IMMEDIATELY following it up with a Vorpal Strike; if the Vorpal crit those together would have been enough to zero out Graknash/Zorran before he could aggro properly, and chance the bug. I've only had it happen a grand total of three times over my... way, way too many Serial runs, and in all of them, that's what happened, which is why I'm
assuming it's an issue of being alpha'd down so fast it breaks his AI somehow. If that's not it, then I've either just run the serials so bloody much that I've encountered some one-tenth-of-a-percent-activation-chance funky-bug, or it hinges on something else I'm not aware of... which is more reasonable.
During Serial mission 2-2, the New Shadows that spawn from the ominous red-and-black energy clouds floating around various spots around the city (and let's be honest, everyone out there only bothers with the five spots around Club Caprice unless this issue happens to them) have a habit of despawning at random if they get more than 15 to 20 feet away from the player and/or their spawn point. Particularly noticeable on knock-heavy builds, and Sanguinarians (who love to fly up into the air and back away more than 20ft) have a habit of despawning themselves on the occasion as well. Not exactly a deal-killer, but since each location spawns 3 enemies and the mission requires 15 for completion, missing even one forces visiting an extra location (which is generally at a different building entirely, especially if you're going for the 5 groups of 3 around Club Caprice, and as a result you'll wind up losing an extra few moments running from spot to spot. Another tiny nuisance that adds up over dozens of Serial runs.)
During any of the Serials that involve enemies spawning exploding sigils, these sigils
endlessly rapidly explode if up against geometry and the player comes within touching distance of them. It's a niche issue that's silly enough to be laughable when it happens, but it's still a little annoying. Most of the time, I've encountered it during mission 1-3, in the enclosed area where you free the scientist with the keycard from one Vulture, two Grizzlys, and a Thunderbird. Any character with a decent PBAoE can prevent it, and any character with even a tolerable single-target attack can usually focus the Thunderbird first, but if the Thunderbird spawns their sigils, there's a likelihood they'll spawn too close to geometry and start endlessly exploding until they expire. Once, running this on a basic-geared Soldier and not thinking to prioritize which of them I was gunning for, I got juggled to death in one of the corners by endless knocks (the sigils weren't applying knock resist stacks on each explosion) and that's what clued me in that this is something that can potentially happen.
It's worth raising though, that any and all exploding sigils that NPCs have can do this, not just the ones the magic-imbued Thunderbirds have. This includes the ones that Lemurian Archmaguses (Archmagi? That sounds more correct) use, both in the Serials and elsewhere, such as the ones that appear in the overworld, and those that appear in Andrithal/Vikorin's Lair, where I've also seen this happen on occasion. I have not bothered attempting to test it with player exploding sigils, but those automatically explode once when an enemy is close, rather than JUST exploding on expiring (or on this buggy effect), so I don't think they'd do it themselves.
And that makes a decent helping of issues I've encountered with the Serials! There's probably more tiny issues that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head, but those were the ones at the forefront of my mind, and I figured I'd record at least some of them while doing a batch of Serials today on one of my characters (working towards finally,
finally polishing off those old Cinsular Mechanon unlocks I never bothered getting that now take SCR to get.)
Updated on 7/24/2023: another few hiccups to name!
The magic-wielding Cobra Lords encountered throughout the entire first arc of the Serials do not count for any Cobra Lords related kill-perks (Moped/Street Racer/Easy Rider) and do not appear to share their loot table of mustaches and brass knuckles either.
Some of the New Shadows count for perks but others do not (for example, the ones that appear outside during 2-2 count but the ones inside during 2-3 do not, though the ones inside during 2-3 do still have the natural New Shadows loot table. Weird.) All the Lemurians
appear to count for perks though I haven't been paying outrageously close attention, while out of the Bleak Minions,
most of them count for kill-perks but a few do not? I only just recently noticed this but haven't bothered paying attention or running on a fresh character to keep track of EXACTLY what counts for what, but I might if I actually remember to do it some time in the near future, and if so, I'll put it up as an update here. In the meanwhile though, I'll at least point it out here. All I'm saying is that the character I'm on right now as of writing this has right under 5k New Shadows and right under 5k Bleak Minions but doesn't even have the 100 Cobra Lords perk (only 19 killed as of writing this to be exact) and noticing that tipped me off.
The doors on the moon (Serial mission 1-4) tend to spaz out, sucking in/absorbing the player character if they're too close and instantly teleporting them either inside the closest of the two side-rooms where the battery objects that need to be destroyed are, or back into the central dome. I'm not sure how much this could be fixed, if it could even be fixed at all, as it's the same problem the Penthouse Hideout elevator doors (as well as the interactable swinging double-doors that lead out onto the balcony) have had since... well, since I started playing the game almost a decade ago at
least.
Sometimes, the magic pool you jump into at the end of the underwater temple-looking area in Serial mission 1-4 bugs out and doesn't immediately warp you to the next area when you jump in, forcing you to use the prompt to manually move to the next area. This isn't some horrible deal-breaker or anything, but it always takes away from a little bit of the "coolness" of just jumping in right after the cutscene ends in hot pursuit.
Comments
Hydrophis’s attacks generally don’t require him to have line of sight, so it’s run or die when it happens.