Misc feedback requests

From a good post on Zam by redemptionvv:
"Fancy robes that look like Shei pop a plain robe on their death on the exact spot they died. The resulting plain robe is always equal to or lower on the mob difficulty list. The thing to note is that caster versions of the spawned plain robes do not Gate as their "bind" point is the place you killed their parent fancy robe. "

 

Does anybody recall how large Grieg's (the boss) faction adjustments were? The positive hits in particular. On Live right now, they're massive. The zone was revamped not long after PoP, so I'm wondering if they were changed. Seems dumb that you can merely kill him twice and become indifferent with most of SSeru from max KoS.

 

I can't say I have any useful information on Grieg as I never killed him on AK.

But 2 kills to non-KoS doesn't seem too far out of the ordinary. A single Statue+AoW chain is also +1000. So 2 clears of the Statue cycle results in the same +2000 faction.

Plus practically anyone who will be kill big faction hit mobs in Seru (Praesertum/Seru), will be Raiders in the rotation for these mobs meaning every time it's their rotation they'll be tanking their faction again. So it's not really of practical value since Grieg himself is a several day respawn and takes a raid. Except maybe to reset a Mage CotH bot or something... but I think people on this server have enough spare mages it doesn't matter.

 

I don't have logs to back this up but the faction hit you're describing sounds like what I recall from AK.

 

Did named spawns in grieg's ever depop or warp across the map on their own?

What were the respawn timers in there?

Anybody confident in knowing any of the spawn chances and drop rates for the rares in there?

 

Vague memories that the named (alchemist valrona etc) stayed up once spawned. She was the only one I recall caring about, since she dropped the knockback broom <3 (common but not always?) and alchemy mod (uncommon to rare??). Hoping other folks have better ideas for this one.

 

Was it possible for Prast Ianitor to not be up even when nobody had killed him? Does anybody recall anything about his spawn behavior?

 

I recall klage in destiny soloing him a few times, I can’t recall spawn times or anything like that but I remember him doing it for the rgc clickys to pass out in guild

It’s a bit hazy but I believe klage knew the repop time and would just go and kill him, I don’t recall him ever complaining he wasn’t up or anything

 

I recall he was just up often - I never went there and he wasn't up. Which could easily be due to lack of killing.

 

Anybody have any idea what 'A_Shadow_dream' invis men did?

 

Anybody know which mob dropped 'Medic's Pouch'? Alla comment said 'Dark Image' but I see no evidence of an 'image' mob. He may have meant to say Vision or Visage. Illicit apparently got one of these.

 

Is Bronus supposed to spawn inside this Cauldron thing?

 

Hopefully this one is easy: what's the precise variance on Seru?

 

I am pretty sure that he's 0-24 hours on a reset, and then 6-7 days.

 

Thought he was a 6(days)- 24(hour spawn window) type guy. He can take a full week but never more.

 

Anybody happen to remember what Seru's building trash respawn timers were?

 

Looks like 10:30 to me.

[Sun Mar 7 21:08:07 2010] Wookie tells the raid, 'Need to pull and kill door pop.'
[Sun Mar 7 21:08:36 2010] Wookie tells the raid, '~~~ INC: A Praetorian Pius and pack of wild beagles'

[Sun Mar 7 21:09:35 2010] A Praetorian Pius has been slain by Nazule!

[Sun Mar 7 21:20:08 2010] Thiklan tells the raid, 'door pop'

Edit: Since there's the potential for confusion here with multiple door spawns, I checked this against a few more logs and it seems accurate.

 

I may make a big experience mechanics thread later, but for now I'll just ask here.

If anybody has any old posts or logs that note specific experience gains over time or per kill with knowable: group size, group levels, zone and killed NPC levels, then I'd appreciate that kind of information.

Preferably without mixing NPCs with different levels together.

For example, Zamiel listed some:

Spoiler

1)

a level 55 gets 5% AAXP per kill from a level 55 mob in nightmare solo
a level 58 gets 8% AAXP per kill from a level 58 mob in nightmare solo

this proves that AAXP is not calculated directly based on the mob level differential, since in both of these cases, the differential should be 0 and therefore give the same amount of AAXP.

2)

while soloing gargs in PoN (who are level 57):

24 kills per AA @ level 52
21 kills per AA @ level 53
19 kills per AA @ level 54
18 kills per AA @ level 55
17 kills per AA @ level 56
16 kills per AA @ level 57 (with 2% AA left over)
16 kills per AA @ level 58 (with 5% AA left over)
16 kills per AA @ level 59 (with 6% AA left over)
15 kills per AA @ level 60
16 kills per AA @ level 61 (with 0% AA left over)

in this case the optimal level to kill level 57 mobs is actually level 60 (a +3 differential), which seems counter-intuitive.

3)

testing on frogs in the plane of storms gives different results.

while soloing frogs (who are level 60) with 4 OOR group members (test repeated twice):

27% AAXP per kill @ level 55
...
32% AAXP per kill @ level 58
33% AAXP per kill @ level 59
34% AAXP per kill @ level 60
33% AAXP per kill @ level 61
31% AAXP per kill @ level 62

in this case the optimal level to kill level 60 mobs is actually level 60 (a 0 differential).

is level 60 is always the best level to get AA, no matter what the mob level is?

4)

killing even-cons in PoN with 4 OOR group members:

5 kills per AA @ level 59 (with 2% AA left over)
5 kills per AA @ level 60 (with 12% AA left over)
5 kills per AA @ level 61 (with 16% AA left over)

 

PoStorms, group of six level 65s, level 62 NPC:

[Thu Oct 28 22:59:45 2004] You have slain an irmin fannsk!
[Thu Oct 28 22:59:55 2004] You tell your party, '3% AA per kill in group is nice'

PoStorms, one level 65 character, level 60 NPC:

ToSR, group of six level 65s, level 65 NPCs:

[Thu Feb 15 20:36:24 2007] Sassis tells the guild, 'btw, how's the GROUP exp in SolRo?'
[Thu Feb 15 20:36:24 2007] Chakarsis tells the guild, '4% per kill'

PoFire, one level 65 toon with four OOR bots, level 68 NPC:

PoFire, one level 65 toon with two OOR bots, level 68 NPC:

PoFire, one level 65 toon solo, level 68 NPC:

PoFire, one level 65 toon solo, level 66-67 NPCs (a bit speculative, but maybe a useful comparand):

PoWater, three level 65 toons, level 68 NPCs:

 

Looking these over, the PoFire numbers all seem to add up neatly, but the level the 60 frog in PoStorms seems to be yielding more exp than the level 62 giant. Possibly one of the reports is mistaken.

On the other hand, I do remember thinking that exp yield on those frogs in particular seemed weirdly high compared to similar NPCs both in storms and elsewhere.

 

Storms ZEM is 170. Fire is 150. Water is 160. Nightmare is 145. FG and VP and many non-PoP zones are 75. Ssratemple is 100. These came from packet data, according to Rob. Of course it's possible the data sent to the client was wrong or overridden by server code in some circumstances.

In my calculations, ZEM 170 mobs award less exp than the Storms observations even accounting for the ZEM. I also have a 2002 log I made of me killing rancor in VP, which was also more exp than the math says it should be after factoring in the ZEM. The exp bonus code I pushed was mostly modeled after the Nightmare data Zamiel collected, because that's the place he was using as a measuring stick and I have much less data on other zones. I can't figure out why the other zones ended up with more exp.

Exp for an AA is (supposedly, and what we use) a hair under 24 million. Exp from a kill is (also supposedly) NPCLevel * NPCLevel * ZEM; and then further multiplied and divided by all the usual modifiers.

I'm working with a lot of assumptions that are probably true but not certainly true with no way to verify. It's possible-- even likely-- that at least one of them is incorrect.

 

I can't personally vouch for the accuracy of the Storms reports. Going by memory, the ToSR numbers seem plausible.

The number I'm most certain of is that level 68 flameheads in PoFire were worth a little north of 21% of an AA per kill solo. All three reports I quoted above agree with that, accounting for the group bonus and OOR bot situations. It was flamehead exp that Cabot and I used in the first place to figure out that the intended group experience bonus was doubled at 4+ toons.

So I must be missing an important piece of the formula. If an AA point is 24 million, 68^2*150 falls far short of the expected 5 million exp, even throwing in the 20% Al'Kabonus. Is there another multiplier missing?

 

Storms frogs were crazy good exp - far better than other mobs in the zone in a notable way.

 

The/A multiplier you're missing is the one we just patched in. Of course it could have been one or a combination of several multipliers on Sony's server, but they were probably added around the same time. The code I just pushed won't grant that much exp from that NPC however.

Sounds like Sony may have had some sort of experience modifier for individual NPCs. No idea why frogs would warrant this bonus however. Level 68 flameheads innate quad, so they at least have a reason for it. PoP devs could have been smarter and granted bonuses to unkitable NPCs instead of NPCs you can kill so safely, but Sony was Sony.

 

[Wed Jun 13 18:56:06 2012] You have gained a level! Welcome to level 61!
[Fri Jun 15 14:06:22 2012] You have gained a level! Welcome to level 62!
[Fri Jun 15 14:41:37 2012] There are 5 players in Plane of Storms.
[Fri Jun 15 14:42:35 2012] You tell your party, 'its 10% of an AA per kill solo'
[Fri Jun 15 15:54:50 2012] You tell your party, 'its about 10% of an AA per frog solo or 2-3% of a level iirc'
[Fri Jun 15 20:15:49 2012] You have gained a level! Welcome to level 63!

 

I miss the days of people keeping their characters locked at level 62 for the sweet AA exp bonus.

 

Yes I remember 62 was a weird sweet spot in places like POV caves and some older world dungeons. I guess certain NPCs were still blue at 62 but not 65?

 

Any clues as to how much exp was required for levels 62-65 is also desirable