After playing Gem of Fate yesterday, I bothered to look at the logs and do some quick statistics on Call Lightning build-up time. My motivation was simple curiosity wondering how useful Spirit Summoning is just for playing games in River's Rest, and I didn't expect any relevant result to come out.

For anyone curious, there were 16 successful casts of 125 that I saw, with these durations between the initial cast and the lightning strike (in seconds): 41, 37, 40, 40, 40, 36, 40, 39, 40, 39, 36, 37, 35, 40, 39, 41. The take away point is that the average is 38.75 seconds (and 16 casts is a decent enough sample size).

The official documents, however, state:

This spell only works outdoors and requires about 20 seconds for the storm cloud to form before the attack will take place.

There is also the 1 second duration decrease per 10 ranks Spirit Summoning Lore, which if we want to pin down the corrected no-lore average for these data, Malisai (as the caster for last night's game) would need to reveal his training, but I didn't ask him.

We have a few things going on here. The first is that the official documentation appears to be dead wrong on the standard build up time. Knowing this can we trust the lore benefit of 1 second reduction per 10 ranks? I can go test myself tonight if needed, since Kaldonis has 22 ranks of Spirit Summoning. Now, if my tabulation is correct, and the initial wait is around 40 seconds, the maximum lore training benefit is not powerful enough (less than 20% gain for 70 ranks when it caps out). I also tend to think 40 seconds is far too long, so if there's a correction I'd rather that the documentation is unchanged but the game mechanics are put in line with the documentation.

Did I miss anything? Was there an overhaul to cloud spells which pushed their formation time upward, and there was just an oversight to update the documents?

~daid (player of Kaldonis)

<< For anyone curious, there were 16 successful casts of 125 that I saw, with these durations between the initial cast and the lightning strike (in seconds): 41, 37, 40, 40, 40, 36, 40, 39, 40, 39, 36, 37, 35, 40, 39, 41. The take away point is that the average is 38.75 seconds (and 16 casts is a decent enough sample size). >>

Did you time this in person, or are you relying on time stamps in your log? I have never seen it take that long.

>> Did you time this in person, or are you relying on time stamps in your log? I have never seen it take that long.

>Log time stamps.

Here are the data for my blowing up boxes, twelve boxes across two days (but also this month): 25, 29, 27, 28, 22, 33, 31, 32, 34, 32, 32.

I can say that I play from Japan on about the crappiest wifi ever, and I use Warlock in GNU/Linux. That being said, my computer clock, if anything, is fast like 5 minutes per year (do you need to ask?). I logged in and sent the time verb repeatedly just now for two minutes, and I get perfect agreement to the second level of accuracy from the game time and my log time (nothing like a factor of two). I also pulled up some hunting logs when I am pounding spell casting macros, and the time of registered spell cast versus "wait X seconds" and next successful cast matches up as expected.

As far as my connection and distance, when I get lag I know it. During Gem of Fate I didn't notice any, and lots of people are doing stuff, and it felt all like real time. I wouldn't include a number that was a couple standard deviations away in my calculation if it was obviously lag; that didn't come up in this case, but I wouldn't post statistics with obvious and significant internal issues.

A systematic delay could not explain this, given the small spread in data compared to the distance of my mean from the expected value. Let's even just say I am delayed 20 seconds (which is nonsense, it's real time for the most part). The spell cast is delayed. The lightning bolt is delayed. The separation between the two is constant! If my lag was variable, the data points could never be so closely spaced (again, relative to the difference of the observed time from the documented time). Now, if you compare your logs to mine, and mine have a slightly larger spread on the one or two second level, which leans to larger times, that is lag. I can't see that it covers this issue, however.

Now, if we rule out lag, and we accept that my computer clock is as good as any other one, the log time stamps should be good enough for this test. If I got 21 seconds when I expect 20 seconds, that's one thing. When I get 39 seconds and I expect 20 seconds, it's a different story.

If I can accumulate more data for verification, either from my logs, by making new tests, or casting Call Lightning while it is timed by some other means, please let me know.

~daid (player of Kaldonis)

> Here are the data for my blowing up boxes, twelve boxes across two days (but also this month): 25, 29, 27, 28, 22, 33, 31, 32, 34, 32, 32.

Sorry tack another 32 on to the end.

It takes 4 rounds for the cloud to form. Each round is about 10 seconds, with every 10 ranks of Spiritual Lore - Summoning removing 1 second per round. I've updated the documentation.

GameMaster Estild

He said every 10 ranks takes off 1 second per round, with 4 rounds. While the base duration is 2x as high as we thought it was, the lore benefits are effectively 4x as good as we thought they were. Instead of a 20 second build up with 7 seconds removed for 13 minimum, its a 40 second build up with up to 28 seconds removed for 12 minimum. Weird.

I guess the end result is that the lore training is way more useful than previously thought, but the baseline spell is less useful than previously thought.

You probably dont need it anymore but Malisai has no spirit lore.

Player of Malisai

Droit

I just timed a few 125's. With 101 summoning lore, I'm seeing times around 16-18 seconds. Shouldn't it be 12?

Each round is about 10 seconds. In most casts, players will probably see the cloud form and attack in about 15 seconds with the maximum lore benefit.

GameMaster Estild