Graphically invisible creatures

[Alatriel]

I don't know if this is happening to everyone, but frequently I will encounter creatures that attack me but I cannot graphically see them, nor can I attack them even when they attack.  I don't auto attack.  Today it was a giant.  But this happens on many different boards on both servers for me.  It says that I'm being attacked by "someone" and if I use the tab key I can see what is attacking me in floaty text, but still cannot target or defend or attack.  If there is another creature next to it, sometimes if I fight that one first and make sure not to touch anything it will auto reselect and I'll be able to fight the invisible one.  Things that I know this has happened with so far:

Spiders in the temple of Ca'duz
Spiders in the silkwood spider cave
Giants in both the forests and deserts of Dregar
Mummies in Storan's crypt

These are the ones that trigger in my mind at present, but there may be more.  I don't have the logs for them because they happen fairly frequently.  Often, others in the group will be able to see it and we'll end up having a conversation of "what are you fighting??"  "this guy, can't you see it?  it's right in front of you"  "nope, it's not there on my screen"

Anyways, like I said... I don't know what causes them not to load on occaision, but it is there, and it does occur semi-frequently.  Hope that helps.

[lonnarin]

This seems to happen often and though I don't know what causes it, I have found a few tricks to deal with it.  Hope these tips help.  They should also assist in fighting untargetable things like mosquito swarms.

1. If you try to attack a visible enemy nearby the untargetable one, once you kill them, your character usually turns around and starts pounding on the invisible one auto-targetting it next in succession.

2. Animal companions and summons tend to target these invisible critters when commanded to attack.

3. Area of effect spells like fireballs or blade barriers, divine hammers and the like will damage untargetable enemies caught int heir blast.

4. If you can manage to run a good distance away from the untargetable critter, and it charges up on you, sometimes it provokes an attack of opportunity onto it, which then sets your attack focus onto it so that you can strike them with auto-targeting  This can hurt though, since you usually incur an attack of opportunity upon yourself when you try to run back away from it.

5. Whirlwind attack is very effective in striking bugged critters, since its technically a 5ft radius area of effect.  Once the whirlwind attack completes, Bjorn usually automatically auto-targets back towards the missing creature, and focuses his attacks on them if they are nearby.

Hope it helps.  As far as I know, it's mostly a bioware issue that has persisted for years, and might have something to do with lag interfering with the targeting data being sent to your computer.  Don't think it is area specific beyond the possibility of high texture areas being more lag prone which results in an omission of targeting data being read properly on the client-side.  I've had it happen on other servers, though rarely in single player modules run at home.

[Hellblazer]

Spiders in the temple of Ca'duz
Spiders in the silkwood spider cave
Giants in both the forests and deserts of Dregar
Mummies in Storan's crypt

At one point or an other, I have found out that every thing can become bugged invisible. I had one of the npc vendor fall invisible on me once. I think it is a load error that make that happen. Wither it be while it spawns or enters the view range of your char. Most of the tricks that were proposed before this post works very well. On other hand you could always engage parry if you have some skills in it and it should start the sequence.

[Kenderfriend]

Luckily I only ever had this problem once, and it was that stinky skunk in Dapplegreen

[darkstorme]

I've seen it happen to all sorts of creatures.  It's a Bioware bug, to be sure - probably some sort of miscommunication between the server and the client.  Not something we have any sort of control over, unfortunately.

[Alatriel]

so what happens if we get killed by one of these and lose a ss and we have no control over it?  Just out of curiosity?  Just save the log?

[Hellblazer]

Take a pic of the situation while holding the tab button, to highlight the name of the npc that is attacking you. With that it will be the proof you need for the reinbursment, like it was done for Lex when that happened. And of course, save the log too.

[Spike]

so what happens if we get killed by one of these and lose a ss and we have no control over it?  Just out of curiosity?  Just save the log?

That's exactly what happened to me. The harpies on dragon isle killed Travie when I wasn't able to see them and then caused my client to crash meaning that I lost all my log data.

[Hellblazer]

when your client crash, use the debug options if you are using the glr 3.1. It will enable you to save the log.

[darkstorme]

That's exactly what happened to me. The harpies on dragon isle killed Travie when I wasn't able to see them and then caused my client to crash meaning that I lost all my log data.

I just tried crashing my client - I didn't lose my log data until I restarted it.  Any events that happen in-client are written more or less immediately to the log, rather than being held in some buffer, so if you went in to get your log before restarting the client, everything should've been there.  Similarly, if this happens again, go into the logs folder before restarting your client.

Now, that all being said, to quote from Grievances:

Yes, but they are rare out of the necessity for fairness and equality throughout. The most likely avenue for an exception is a death and loss due to a bug. Now, there are and will continue to be differences in opinion as to what does and does not constitute a bug that is acceptable to use in a Soul Strand return request without a GM or WL witnessing. In the case of things like the Invisibility bug, or the G. Sanc bug...things which are out of our control despite our best efforts (and yes, we have tried) and should work differently than they do, or more precisely, they should work correctly as intended but do not because of flaws in Bioware's code...in such cases, a Soul Strand or XP may be returnable if the circumstances are witnessed by a GM or WL. I gave an example of this in some other thread. Suppose a solo mage gets in over his head and tries to escape but dies and loses a Soul Strand. What's to stop him from claiming the Invisibility Bug to get out of the consequences for actions which were reckless on his part and completely avoidable? Nothing. How could we know the difference? We can't. Should we trust his word blindly? Would you? In fact, deaths due to problems like this are very prime examples of why witnessing is required as it is now. There are other known Bioware-related bugs, many of which cause situations that may result in death and loss. We require GM or WL witnesses to keep people from abusing the system and claiming things that did not actually contribute to the loss.

But the above example is not really an exception. Let me give you one, very similar to something that actually happened. After a recent spell change, it was found that certain immunities were either not being respected or effects were behaving in an unintended way due to the way Bioware coded things on their end. In this and similar cases, the bug in question is something we introduced and which could be tested for, verified and corrected. This is a case of "our fault" and since the problem that caused the loss could be reproduced and witnessed in a consistent manner, a return of a Soul Strand was eventually approved, even though the event was not directly witnessed by a GM or WL. This is the intent behind the clause which states that the GM Team will reserve the final judgement as to what does and does not constitute a bug.

This particular bug is even worse than the G.Sanc. or Invisibility bug because without a pertinent screenshot, there's no way to verify it without a GM witness having been present.  Best advice that can be offered is to grab screenshots as quickly as possible if this bug occurs, and send a quick shout out on the GM channel if you can.