Iron Wolf kick attack

[Ruvanal]

Nope, thanks, he was almost certainly kicking!  Next time I will try to get a screen shot if I can.  I am pretty sure I have seen the sword attack, and this was not the same.

The animations that the Iron wolves have are
IWSC1HS (spell cast)*
IWDT1HS (dying and fall to ground)
IWRN1HS (run)
IWWL1HS (walk)
IWNU1HS (standing around in non combat pose)
IWA11HS (the sword attack)*
IWDD1HS (corpse on ground)
IWGH1HS (get hit or stun)

The ones with an asterisk are the only ones that have possible action event associated with them (spell launch or actual point of sword blow landing).

This also applies to the ones that you cannot hire as they use the same animations also. No other monsters/NPCs with similar graphics.

The only other graphic that has anything remotely looking like a 'kick' is the GH animation. About the middle of the sequence the Iron Wolf is balanced on one leg and the other is exended forward a short distance. There is not that many animation files for the Iron Wolves to look at, so it is easy to look at each in detail.

Note I am not saying that I believe he is necessarily the same kind of Iron Wolf as the ones that can be hired. Just like the barbarians in act five are not (I think) the same as the ones that can be hired.

Actually both sets of barbarians use the same set of graphics files, just different sets of sequences (2 handed weapon for the ones you hire and the others use the 1 handed weapon sequences). From some of the inforamtion in the files it looks like orginally there had been plans to allow the hireing of either type, but this was abonded for some reason prior to the release of the LoD expansion (both types of act 5 merc were set to use 2 handed swords).

But while I have a chance to ask the question, under what conditions, if you know, does the normal Iron Wolf use his A1 attack?

The Iron Wolf will need to be standing within weapon range of the closest target and at the same time have the combat desicion choice pick the default combat action. Because their positioning AI is to try to keep their distance from the enemy, they rarely are in range. The chance that the default action is chosen varies from 10/100 for fireghtning to 10/310 or 10/1310 for the ice version (depends on if the frozen armor is active or not). This second part makes it very rare to see them doing this unless you try to force them into a situation in which they are getting mobbed.

In 1.09 it was unrealistic to expect them to hit anything due to their comparativly low dex and no bonus AR rating. This has changed in 1.10, so they might actually be able to hit something if they ever do make the attempt.