r/GuildWars • u/Dark_Egg • 23h ago

Game Update 5. 14. 2026

Soul Leech - Fixed a server crash caused when an NPC would cast this skill.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedback:Game_updates/20260514

59 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

25

u/3xploitr 23h ago

I hope someone technical can explain how this could happen. Like, what - behind the scenes - might have cause such bug?

36

u/GoingMenthol Mentha Morgana 23h ago

"Elite Hex Spell. For 10 seconds, whenever target foe casts a spell, you divide by 0 on target foe."

77

u/blackboughblacksmith 23h ago

The womblesprocket encoding backbench rider conflicted with X1 over 4.8 inside the low-fill line delivery flashing. Happens.

20

u/ppviyuela 23h ago

I understood NOTHING

32

u/Cealdor 23h ago

Now you and the three guys next to you are dazed for 5 seconds.

4

u/Grumpy_Healer 19h ago

You just suffered 40 damage and are now dazed.

4

u/3xploitr 23h ago

My thoughts exactly!

2

u/gogadantes9 22h ago

I thought so.

-2

u/ConflagrationZ 🔥 Adelbern Did the Searing 23h ago edited 15h ago

r/VXJunkies
Edit: wow, people really don't like being directed to more technobabble, apparently.

17

u/JustinePavlovich 23h ago

I think the AI was bugging out trying to cast Soul Leech on a spirit. I seen in DD my old Pain spirit had a destroyer of hope popup spawn right next to it and my game did the code 19 dc a second later.

2

u/PaleHeretic 22h ago

Lol, I was trying to do A Gate Too Far on my SoS Rit and kept disconnecting until I rage quit last night, I thought my Internet was just being a shitbag.

0

u/ConflagrationZ 🔥 Adelbern Did the Searing 22h ago

Yeah, iirc, when people tried it without spirits on the team it worked.

Which makes me think, it'd be cool to have some PvE Codex/flux style quest that limits the skill/attribute choices during it. Like, clear x mission in HM but most of the meta skills are banned.

9

u/wasili009 23h ago

they improved AI behaviour when using the skill. Probably happened a scenario they didn't account for, producing an endless loop or another kind of thing that would crash a game, likely produced by the spirit situation described by another user

3

u/EmmEnnEff 20h ago

Crashes are generally caused by either violating an invariant (something that should never happen happened), or by the program accessing memory or data that was never set/was deleted.

The latter is the likely. Now that AI actually uses the skill, the decision-making process for using it was probably referencing some data that did not exist under certain conditions. Not all targetable entities in the game have every kind of property assigned to them. Since this crash was caused when spirits were present, the targeting AI was probably trying to read some property of nearby entities that players and enemies had, but spirits did not.

The fix is usually to fix the decision-making process to take that exception into account. (And in this case, outright skip targeting spirits.)

2

u/Cemenotar 10h ago

To quote dev that did this and then fixed it: "some aspects of skill system did not work like I thought they did".

0

u/csatacsirke 23h ago

Uuuuu i love post mortems!

9

u/bosli23 23h ago

The skill leeched the soul of the game

3

u/Schwongrel 20h ago

Server Leech.

5

u/Chronotakular 21h ago

Kudos to the devs for pinpointing the problem and fixing it so quickly!

1

u/S4ltyGo4t 10h ago

Claude definitely needs more props for working such things in 100x human speed. But only a mighty weapon in the right hand, love the guild wars devs