Thread: Runekeeper BUG - FIX IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We've gotten reports of players having this impact them without the set active.

I am one of those who got it without the set. I can also debunk the idea that was mentioned saying it only happens in raids. Server lag is an interesting idea, but AFAIK Dwarrowdelf has a pretty small population most of the time. I also almost never use master of writs while healing, so I do not think that is a cause either. I doubt range issues with OFE is causing it as well, since I start screaming very loudly at people who leave my healing range, and they usually dont do it again. I will however actually start submitting bug reports now that I know what the devs are actually looking for.

I've gotten the bug in several different instances, with different gear, and while using different skills. The only constant is that every time I've been healing, which syncs up nicely with the similar WL bug. Idk how lotro is programmed, but is there some kind of RK/WL healing skill that executes exclusively to those classes? I can't think of why captains, defilers, and minstrels wouldn't be having the same issue.

IIRC, every time I've bugged, it's been in some kind of group that involved a captain. Possibly a healing+buff interaction bug? I'm still trying to link this to the WLs :P.

Originally Posted by braak1

I decided to try to add some damage. I clicked a keyboard macro that swaps in my damage stone and bag for my healing stone and bag. The macro has no delay between the steps - it just clicks the 0 and - keys where I have those items on my quickbars. Right after I hit the swap, I did the Fall to Flames debuff - this is what froze up. After this, every skill I tried just showed the dotted lines and never actually cast.

Personally I've had it happen 4 times. Each time happened in a situation when I was swapping stones in and out in the midst of skills.

Originally Posted by wadjay

Personally I've had it happen 4 times. Each time happened in a situation when I was swapping stones in and out in the midst of skills.

This is pretty much my story as well. I'm using AFE, pressing a macro that swaps stones and does Do not fall to X, then I lock before being able to finish it.

But where it happens? Well, only raids come to mind, but both skirmies and ToO, as well as OD back in the days.
So that includes Lightning, Saruman, Durin's Bane and Breaching the Necromancer's Gate. That's what I can remember anyway.

Both times I clearly remember this happening to me, I was also swapping equipment. The problem is, the second time it happened, I had swapped bags before we even started the encounter (Stand at Amon Sul, so talking to Candaith to start the fight.)

I will lend further anecdotal evidence that this is NOT tied to the tower healing set, I had 0 pieces the first time I experienced this.

I'd like to hear from some solo/small-fellowship type players, see if they are experiencing this with the same frequency as the rest of us.

EDIT: I'm thinking about running FRAPS when I raid now, see if I can't force this and collect some better evidence.

I can give proof that this isn't just end-game. A week or so ago got it when doing a forges run with my kin on my RK that was level 58 at the time. I was not using AFE or master of writs and the other RK in the group was not using AFE either. the fellowship included a 75 RK(got the perm rousing words from me but nothing else) 75 champ(same as the RK) 75 burg 66 lm and 66 champ. Went into rousing words during a trash fight before the speed contest for HM and got stuck in it.

So mine shows that you don't have to be 75, don't need to be in a raid, don't need a certain armour set, has nothing to do with captains being in the group, and doesn't even have to be a scalable instance. The bug seems to not want to be found at all. Maybe it has something to do with interaction with a champ, lm, or burg or maybe even another RK.

it happened to me tonight involving switching to a frost stone to put do not fall to winter up in the middle of saruman.
and of course i had a ring :/

it's happened twice before, neither of the previous two times involved switching stones but did involve rousing words (and also me being stunned). every time had all fates entwined.

/sigh

Here's a screenshot of my character in the Moors about two weeks ago when I got the bug.


Here is the link to the image since it gets resized when I post it: here.

I'm not sure how helpful it will be since you can't see all of my buffs and debuffs. I was stuck in a Mending Verse animation and the reason why I took this screenshot was because the wound I am looking at was staying at 0s and was not coming off.. I was stuck permanently disarmed. The only damage I was taking was from my fellowship via Our Fates Entwined.

I'll keep looking to see if I have anymore screenshots of the bug but no guarantees unfortunately.

Also now that I have (hopefully) a dev's attention since I posted a screenshot, when will there be talk of fixing the bug with our rune-stones going through the floor? Losing that 30% extra healing from Rousing Words in the new raid is really tough.

Originally Posted by Fin.

In my case, to captains and minstrels.

And I agree seems like it is tied to damage transfer, as I have heard about captains getting stuck using last stand(most probably in harms way was used as well).

I run things daily on my cappy using last stand/in harms way and i have never encountered something like this

I know this may sound stupid, but is it possible that the problem is also server-based?

I mean I have never encountered this bug and I use AFE often in Foundry runs. I did get the constant crashing bug (not Rk specific, fixed by changing graphics to dx9). But it seems it's widespread in this forum but I've never heard an RK complain about it in our server (maybe they know well enough to not use AFE or like me are the lucky ones).

Still, I'm reluctant to use AFE now because of this bug which is kind of a big deal since i'm also aiming for the OT set.

Originally Posted by HandOfMystra

I know this may sound stupid, but is it possible that the problem is also server-based?

I mean I have never encountered this bug and I use AFE often in Foundry runs. I did get the constant crashing bug (not Rk specific, fixed by changing graphics to dx9). But it seems it's widespread in this forum but I've never heard an RK complain about it in our server (maybe they know well enough to not use AFE or like me are the lucky ones).

Still, I'm reluctant to use AFE now because of this bug which is kind of a big deal since i'm also aiming for the OT set.

I am from your server and I get the bug all the time.
Fasin is from Elendilmir and has gotten it as well. It's definitely not server based.

Don't forget about falling rock bug. Significantly cutting down rk aoe healing. Can we have asnwer to this?

Back to the "stuck" bug, it is not related to any armor set. It is all about the rk skills and interaction between them. Myself I often get it when I swap stones. But not exclusively.

It goes like this:

Often swaping stones? Yes. (More likely then not it means the rk is healer, since he swaps stones for buffs). That leads to:
Playing as healer? Yes. (Now the rk is more likely then not geared for healing). Leads to:
Using best armor set for healing? Yes.

It is just correlation, and correlation does not imply causation.

In my opinion it has something to do with how auras and aura like skills work with each other. (OFE, Rousing words, Do not fall to x, blade/fang will not wound, skills like these that apply to whole fellowship for certain period )

FOR ZC:

I have actually had this bug for over a year, and it's definately not tied to server or AFE. I'm an EU player and I even used to get this bug when I was still playing on Codemasters servers.

I have managed to semi-reliably reproduce this using healing skills AND lightening skills, here is the deal:

It has to do with the lag that the swapping of weapons creates. Every time you swap an LI your skills grey out for half a second. If you do a skill using targetforwarding straight away again in that time it can cause problems.

How to recreate:
You need a 2nd player attacking a mob
Use a keyboard that can bind several keys under one button (or another way to swap LI's and do a skill in rapid succession).

For healing: Swap gear and use a skill (best is prelude) on the other player attacking a mob using target forwarding. So select the mob and heal the player. IF your LI swap and skill execution coincide EXACTLY with the time where the mob dies, you ALWAYS lock up.

For lightening: Do the same but the other way around. Dps the target with targetforwarding, so select the player and dps the mob. Swap gear and do something like scribe's spark at the EXACT moment the mob dies, and you lock up.

It's not easy to recreate it this way, as picking the exact moment the mob dies is not always easy. But definately targetforwarding has been the main culprit in the times I've had this problem.

If you're wondering why I havent spoken up sooner, I was away for a few months and I always thought I was the only one with this problem. :P Also, my problems seems to have gone away now that I dont use a keyboard anymore that combines keypresses for swapping LI AND doing the skill at the same time.

Sol

While it interesting that you found a way to produce a lockout, the bug itself does not require a weapon swap to trigger. It may however require the RK to have execute a skill at the same moment as something that could lock you out of your skills normally, such as an LI swap, stun, throw, disarm, defeat, being inside a certain cave that is know to be buggy anyway , etc. Thinking back, probably every place I have encountered the bug had events that could cause such a condition.

As to the skill target forwarding causing it, having a mob die at the same moment you use a DPS skill would lock you out of that skill, similarly to my thought above. Target forwarding would not explain why I was getting it though, since I never target the mob to heal.

Also, it mostly, if not exclusively, seems happen with induction-based steady and healing attuned skills, as I have yet to see anyone else claim to have locked up while DPSing, and fire should produce similar problems if it is based solely on perfectly wrong timing. Unless fire's inductions have some coding different from those two...which, as I am writing this, it occurs to me that they almost certainly WOULD have something slightly different, given that it is possible to remove the inductions. Unfortunately, that still doesn't explain why it only seems to happen to healing RKs, as it should still happen with SW and any steady attunement skills used while DPSing, using my logic at least.

It might also be worth adding that, given the large number of stuns, dazes, fears, etc. which can happen in the moors, it seems that my logic could also apply to WLs, however, it seems like it would also be a problem for hunters, lms, captains, BAs, weavers, minstrels, defilers, and any other class that would use a lot of inductions.

Applying another condition proposed in this thread (that it has to do with multiple auras interacting) would allow one to narrow the classes affected to those with auras, which would seem to mostly fit (from what I've seen and read at least), except that I have yet to hear of it spreading to a minstrel (admittedly that might be because most people likely dont have a minstrel and a healing RK in the same group). Also that does not explain why it would spread to a hunter, given that their aura is only active out of combat.

One potential reason that RKs (and possibly extends to WLs, not sure how their auras work) seem to start the bug, while others don't, might be that they are forced to drop their aura (OFE) when they are affected by disarms, stuns, etc., while minis, cappies, and lms do not. This does not seem to be a particularly likely cause to me (since our aura isnt dropped immediately), but it is something that struck me as interesting .

While I'm not sure if anything written in this wall will accomplish much more than showing people how I think, I have yet to see anyone else suggest that the cause may be what I proposed at the beginning of this wall, and I have a compulsive need to dissect my logic paths to find both holes and supporting evidence. Also...it seems to roughly fit what seems to be happening, at least from what I've experienced and read.

TL; DR: Stuns, dazes, throws, disarms, silences, bounces, fears (the running kind), LI swaps, defeat, and anything else that can potentially lock you out of using a skill, at the exact same time as a skill triggers (or possibly ends, at least for channeled skills: RW) might be a potential trigger, and adding some aura-interaction as a requirement seems to narrow down the classes it could potentially spread to to the classes that it is known to spread to (though with 2 exceptions).

While the problem has only happened once to me, overall it seems like this falls into a category of deadlock bugs. Some action is being held while waiting for another condition to clear and and that underlying condition can never clear (possibly because of the action taken - this would make a deadlock). It doesn't need to be only two things, it can be a circle of things each depending on the next thing in the circle. And there could be multiple ways to trigger the entry into this state.

These are frequently painful problems to fix.

But perhaps there's another option. I don't know what the longest theoretical period that any skill could be holding waiting to fire actually is, but let's say it's one minute. I wonder if it's possible to check for the same block to a skill firing to in existence for longer than a minute. This might be a real pain since it requires storing the state of the block or starting some timer.

As potentially a way to work around the worst part of this problem and also collect some data, I wonder if it might be possible to give a chat command (chat still worked for me in this state). If we could type /stopallskills and it had the effect of canceling every action given by the client, perhaps that would provide a way to get past the worst of this. And if it can dump a log file at the time it's typed, that would make troubleshooting the root causes potentially a lot easier.

I have absolutely no idea what the game code looks like and whether these suggestions are at all feasible (or if they could open up some nasty exploits if used incorrectly). But I would certainly be willing to give it a try if there was such a command.

Well, I just managed to get it for the first time in a year. Oddly enough using a fire skill...

I was full healing attuned in dannenglor skirmish on the boss, had fates entwined on, and after rousing words I did steady hands and FR, FR never completed...

Could the problem be linked to the writ of health applied at the end of RW?

It shouldn't be, or many more people would get the bug. Plus some people who have gotten it are lower level and do not have the improved version of the skill.

This just happenened to me << skills locked up and couldn't do anything or even get to options menu to log out -- had to crash client >> on my guard in Nan Curunir. Coordinates were 80.7 and 4.4 if I remember correctly. I was solo and overpowered with a 2hander simply killing mobs to finish deeds/hope for loot boxes. It happened before I killed the mob and it eventually died from my auto attacks. I was also unable to loot the body.

Oddly enough: when I relogged I wasn't stuck at cleaning up old connection as what happens with the RK/WL bug. I was back in right away.

Originally Posted by timmyloo22546

This just happenened to me << skills locked up and couldn't do anything or even get to options menu to log out -- had to crash client >> on my guard in Nan Curunir. Coordinates were 80.7 and 4.4 if I remember correctly. I was solo and overpowered with a 2hander simply killing mobs to finish deeds/hope for loot boxes. It happened before I killed the mob and it eventually died from my auto attacks. I was also unable to loot the body.

Oddly enough: when I relogged I wasn't stuck at cleaning up old connection as what happens with the RK/WL bug. I was back in right away.

Skills locking up with the options menu not letting you log out are only part of the bug and could be caused by any number of other client problems. I've gotten things like that and either they've cleared themselves up or I had to restart the client, but as you describe it doesn't prevent you from logging back in right away and it doesn't really show up as any particularly weird effects to other people in my fellowship. If you don't have all the symptoms described in the posts in this thread, I don't really think it's the same thing.

Question: Has anyone ever gotten it WITHOUT a cappy in the group?

Originally Posted by Ryssadis

Question: Has anyone ever gotten it WITHOUT a cappy in the group?

Yes. Very first post in the thread. RK, LM, Guard was the 3-man group I was in.

Originally Posted by Telcharan

Skills locking up with the options menu not letting you log out are only part of the bug and could be caused by any number of other client problems. I've gotten things like that and either they've cleared themselves up or I had to restart the client, but as you describe it doesn't prevent you from logging back in right away and it doesn't really show up as any particularly weird effects to other people in my fellowship. If you don't have all the symptoms described in the posts in this thread, I don't really think it's the same thing.

It still sounds highly related to the RK bug. It just happened to me again on my guard. I haven't bothered logging back into game this time. I did notice this last time that when it happened my say chat didn't work but private channels and kinship chat was still working. I wonder if certain chat channels don't work with the RK bug and others do.

Got it again tonight. Was swapping from fire stone for lightening stone and had just clicked on DNF to Storm in t2 lightening in the boss fight. first time I've gotten it during a stone swap.

Did manage to get SS's for the devs though

Got it today, for the second time. We are running a STH for grinding relics and it was just me and a burglar. In the first boss I usually start healing and then after adds were dead I switch to DPS. I had All Fates Entwined and Master of Writs on, and I think I was 6 healing attuned, then I switched to my lightning stone and at the same time used Calming Verse (2 Linnods traited) that is when I bugged. The stone was successfully exchanged but Calming Verse was endlessly "activating" and never took place; AFE was still active. Then it was the well known problem: skills that do not activate, gear that cannot be switched... I was at 50% health approximately and boss was still attacking me and I took no damage and the heals I got on myself prior the bug did no heal and not even expired! Luckily the burglar finished the boss, but I was still stuck.

I really think the cause jaridweese (hey Marvi!) pointed out is quite accurate for this case, since when I casted Calming Verse I would have lost AFE but it would have happened in the time I had my weapon switched. I still have some doubts though because I think AFE would remain some 1~2 seconds after we lose the 6 attunement and it would not fade away immediately, therefore not making me lose my "aura". Anyway I will try what Eluinril suggested in order to reproduce the bug.

Originally Posted by timmyloo22546

It still sounds highly related to the RK bug. It just happened to me again on my guard. I haven't bothered logging back into game this time. I did notice this last time that when it happened my say chat didn't work but private channels and kinship chat was still working. I wonder if certain chat channels don't work with the RK bug and others do.

What you are describing sounds to me more like the classic disconnect scenario. If you get into a situation where your skills start circling but not going off, you can't move, and you lose your connection to the chat server, that generally just means that you've lost your server connection. I don't know if such an event generally prevents you from logging off; I can't say that I can remember ever trying it. Usually your connection will either come back, or the client will eventually shut itself down. None of the above posts mention a loss of connection to the chat server (which to the best of my knowledge can only occur with a loss of connection to the game itself), and without the other issues they described being present I don't see any reason to see your problem as being anything other than a standard random disconnect. And if so that would be an ISP problem, not a problem with the game itself.

Originally Posted by Telcharan

What you are describing sounds to me more like the classic disconnect scenario. If you get into a situation where your skills start circling but not going off, you can't move, and you lose your connection to the chat server, that generally just means that you've lost your server connection. I don't know if such an event generally prevents you from logging off; I can't say that I can remember ever trying it. Usually your connection will either come back, or the client will eventually shut itself down. None of the above posts mention a loss of connection to the chat server (which to the best of my knowledge can only occur with a loss of connection to the game itself), and without the other issues they described being present I don't see any reason to see your problem as being anything other than a standard random disconnect. And if so that would be an ISP problem, not a problem with the game itself.

naa when losing connection to chat server it actually says you left the channels. This said nothing. Plus when actually losing connection to chat server it's still possible to play and use skills. This wasn't the case for me: no notice of losing connection to chat server and unable to use skills because they were locked up -- but I could still move.

All the issues i've described are very similar to the RK/WL bug so not sure why you're trying to dismiss my info as completely irrevelant to a nasty bug in the system.

When teh WL bug was discussed and people still did some research and tried out things in the German Codemasters forum, most agreed that it had to do with toggle skills + CC.

Also, see post #8 in http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...TILL-happening , pls.

Originally Posted by timmyloo22546

naa when losing connection to chat server it actually says you left the channels. This said nothing. Plus when actually losing connection to chat server it's still possible to play and use skills. This wasn't the case for me: no notice of losing connection to chat server and unable to use skills because they were locked up -- but I could still move.

All the issues i've described are very similar to the RK/WL bug so not sure why you're trying to dismiss my info as completely irrevelant to a nasty bug in the system.

None of the above posts discussed chat issues at all so let's just ignore that for a second. My point was that if you lose your connection to the server your skills won't work and you can't move. The only thing you said that happened to you that was not chat related was that your skills wouldn't work. Unless there was some other issue that was typical of the RK bug there is no reason to assume that your problem wasn't just a disconnect. Especially considering that you had no problem logging back in, and that the particular bug in question has by all accounts only ever been experienced by RKs and only while using skills that are unlike anything you have access to or would have been using while soloing.

In any case the reason I'm bothering to reply to you three times in a row is that if you're getting connection issues you should probably go figure out what's causing that and fix it so that you can play normally. I'm actually trying to help you, believe it or not.

He said he could still move, so definitly no disconnect

Originally Posted by Chris91

He said he could still move, so definitly no disconnect

Ah, didn't see that. That's rather strange then.

Now it happened for me for the first time in Draigoch while I was healing the tank, in first stage. Done it about 10 times before but this was my first time with Orthanc set bonus (had 6 pieces on). The only skills I used were predule of hope, writ of health, improved fates entwined, glorious foreshading and rousing words. Healing stone wasn't used at all.

Didn't switch switch legendary weapons/bags or moved when this happened. Took about 15mins to get back in.

My motivation of playing this class starts to get quite low..

Edit: Some extra info: My hands froze to praying stance and I could move when my skills were frozen AND others could see me moving too.

well apparently I need to stop healing in the moors. i am having this same problem on my minstrel . It seemed to happen only since the last patch. I dont know why but lately disconnect in the moors, then I can't clean up connection for 30 minutes or more. i have tried reinstalling lotro, updating drivers , any possible thing it could be my end we did. It is not my end. It is only my minstrel . No other characters are affected. I did think when it was first happening other then the skill affects that go w/ the warleader bug , I thought the connection issues resembled the warleader bug before someone suggested this thread to me. I am currently crashed btw least its 12am and i can go to bed.

Hmm all my skills locked up again on my guardian in the previous area I mentioned. Third time locking up in that area. I was farmin for hours in other spots. But once I went to that area again I locked up on guard win 15 minutes. Don't think it's a coincidence anymore that my guardian only locks up in just that area.

...and again my skills locked up while killing stuff in Nan Curunir on my guardian. Only took 25 minutes to stumble across the bug

Doesn't explain why RKs/minis will lock up in the Moors or my RK has locked up in an abundance of other areas, but for guard I swear it's isolated to Nan Curunir.

I didn't want to include this in the patch notes or dev diary, but we think we closed a loophole that might have been a cause of this. Please cleans your minds after Update 6 hits, and look again with fresh eyes. If you see another instance of the bug, file new reports and post your info. I'll be watching <3

Originally Posted by Zombie_Columbus

I didn't want to include this in the patch notes or dev diary, but we think we closed a loophole that might have been a cause of this. Please cleans your minds after Update 6 hits, and look again with fresh eyes. If you see another instance of the bug, file new reports and post your info. I'll be watching <3

Fantastic news! Very happy about this one.

Now about that rune-stone falling through the floor...

Letting you know, I think I may have found a connection w/ the rk/minstrel/wl bug. I was fighting a spider at gta. I skill locked and then lost connection after but noticed while my connection was breaking that an old spider pet was bugged on me and I noticed he had a spider pet out . there was an active pet that was moving with him and a glitched one. I was glad that he stopped attacking me or maybe he didnt have a choice. Although by me getting the skill lock part i was able to reconnect. I have never gotten skill locked just crashed with the bug before and couldnt clean connection. I used cry of the valar right before the crash . I wonder if the pet was bugged on the heal of the cry of the valar just a thought. I thought I got a screen shot of the two spider pets but I will have to see.

Was the runestone falling through floor bug fixed?

Originally Posted by Fin.

Was the runestone falling through floor bug fixed?

As far as I understand it the bug is not with the Runestone itself, but has to do with how landscape geometry interacts with the Runestone (i.e. it may very well be a landscape physics issue, like flying NPCs). I cannot for my life understand why they can get Captain banners to work but not Rune-Keeper Runestones. Perhaps it has something to do with the rock having morale/threat etc or that the Captain banners are "point objects" and the rock has a surface.

Irritating is what it is!

Originally Posted by Raven-EU

As far as I understand it the bug is not with the Runestone itself, but has to do with how landscape geometry interacts with the Runestone (i.e. it may very well be a landscape physics issue, like flying NPCs).

This is why it must become a toggle skill!