Orb/summons

Obviously you guys fixed the monster summoning bug. This is good, because it was pretty much stupid the way it was working. It was working almost 100% of the time, and was allowing you to summon multiple copies of some pretty big singular monsters -- Like Dragon Queen. Now, however it appears that it may have swung a bit too drastically
the other direction. It fails A LOT. On 15, it fails more often than it works, And when it does work, it produces some really crappy monsters. I used an entire 9 charge orb resulting in many failures and the best I finally got was 2 Eidolans.

I don't know what the formula you came up with is -- but most stuff down on 15 doesn't charm. So to find buddies is a grueling experience that most likely results in killing off buddies while you are trying to grab some more. Returning to 14 to look for charmables is pretty tough as well. It just isn't very easy to walk back to 14.

My suggestion is to give the orb a little better odds of pulling a monster-- and if there is nothing available on level 15 when it is cast-- give it have a chance to pull from say 13 before it just fails. As it is currently implemented -- I either had really bad luck, or it is almost useless. I can't imagine running thru 9 charges of Orb to get two crappy buddies that will be dead in 3 encounters.

Jude worked on this yesterday. Let's give it a few days of testing before we declare it "less than optimal."

My goal with the orb was to fix it rather than nerf it. My attempt to fix it tied the orb's summon ability to how charmable a given monster is... this puts us in a bit of a pickle, for as you have noted, very few monsters on 15 are charmable. It looks around a bit, but if it can't find anything charmable it gives up. We are working on a more sophisticated fix to this, where some monsters that are not charmable could become summonable..

In the interim, I have given each charge of orb several more swings before it 'gives up'. I have also taken your suggestion to heart, and will provide you with this insight: If the orb can't find something charmable on 15, it will start looking on 14..

Anyway, please give it another try and let me know how it works for you. 'Back in the day', orb of summoning was (to me anyway) more of a fun curiosity than a real staple of finding buddies.. sometimes you got crap, sometimes you go something good/interesting. The charges never went unused (unless I was saving a few for quests). I have no problem with orb of summoning being a bit more useful/dependable/valuable here in Javatar. Hopefully we're on the path to finding the sweet spot.

P.S. when I see you in the game sometime I will return the orb you burned up after the initial fix.