Ambiguous bounty mission in Kaidan

The mission “Taking the Low Route” asks you to “Defeat Compromised Effigies” but is a little vague about exactly what counts - obviously compromised effigies are counted but when it comes to compromised drones, sky drones count but buckler drones do not. I’d like to suggest counting both since at lower levels of gear it can be quite a nuisance to clear your way past all the bucklers to get to the others.


There’s no sound on that video since I was listening to an audiobook as I played but you can see what does and doesn’t count.

The problem here is that the Sky Drones should not count but they are.

I think you’d be hard pressed to call it a problem but yes, that is why I used the word ambiguous and said “I’d like to suggest counting both” and not “this should be counting both” :v:

Running this again this morning, I noticed that it’s not actually the case that sky drones count and bucklers don’t, it seems to depend on spawn location instead, so I guess it’s just a straight up bug that some of them don’t count.

This feels more like an issue with the design and placement of bounty missions (and also some other “kill x” mission steps):

  • Bounties only count kills that occur within a specific area (marked on the mini map when you get the mission). If you drag a suitable mob into that area it’ll count, if you pull one out it won’t.
  • The kill area is usually slightly smaller than the mission area, and there’s a ten second protection on the mission when you leave the mission area. This reduces the chance of accidentally losing progress at the edge.
  • All the areas are circular, which is much easier to implement but has problems representing actual world geometry and mob positions. It is not uncommon to have some mobs not actually contained inside the mission boundaries.

This particular mission is actually targetting the small group of effigy drones north of the wall. The mission circle crosses over, but there’s very limited space to actually kill things and have them count on the south side.

That’s not true at all though? Mission areas are only ever displayed as circles on the map but that has no bearing on the actual location covered or else none of these mobs would count.
effigiesmap
(All the mobs I kill in the video that count towards this bounty are to the west of the anima well I’m standing at.)

Hmm, so they are… that’s really strange, wonder if they’ve tweaked the mission area something crazy on that one.