Same mobs, same cons, different ass wooping.

[Renad]

Just curious if this is my imagination or something different. So currently hunting out in the swamp in front of Guk. Been killing frogloks, fisherman, and fungus man trackers. I stick to mainly blue cons, but will take on an even if I'm topped off on health and have some spare mana. Anyway, every few mobs, I seem to get one that does much more damage to me than the others. They're same mibs same con, but just wreck me and I usually have to blow my load to stay alive. What gives?

[Gamkek]

Random number generator. Every attack is a roll of the dice. Most of the time, it all evens out and your fights are pretty predictable. But every once in a while a single NPC gets really lucky with their attacks and slams you for major damage and sends you skittering back to the Bashas! It's the nature of the beast. It's doubly true at levels below 10, because you have low HP but relatively high damage vs. your HP/mobs HP. So a couple of bad rolls can be really devastating to either party in combat.

I'm sure there are some fights against relatively tough mobs where you just wreck the crap out of them in abnormally quick fashion... you just don't notice it!

For me, this is what makes EQ fun... if we knew how every fight was going to play out, and didn't have death penalties, it wouldn't be as exciting. Having things go sideways in EQ is fun, just like in D&D.

[Ravager]

Blue can be a spread of levels. If you're level 9, blue could be a level 8 mob, it could be a level 6 mob. One will hit you for 12, the other will hit you for 16.

With the RNG in my experience there's a lot more streakiness when mobs are closer to you in level. An even con mob could be a cakewalk one fight, then 6 minutes later on the repop it whoops your ass without you even hitting it.

Also it makes a difference right after you ding a level and your stats aren't capped. A mob that was blue before the ding gets harder right after the ding it seems, though I don't know how that math actually works.

[Brut]

Combination of RNG and the NPC level.
Generally the closer to your level the mob is, the better hit rate it'll have. Like if you're lvl9 fighting a lvl5 blue con, you're probably gonna see them miss alot of swings. But fighting a lvl7-8 blue cons they're gonna land alot more attacks for max damage.

Generally it's a good idea to fight mobs that are on the lower end of the blue con list, rather than ones that are one or two levels below you. Less resists, easier time meleeing, etc.

[Renad]

Make sense. Now that I think about it, it does go the other way too, as mentioned above. Sometime i just slaughter with ease. Rngesus strikes again.

[Dolalin]

Some mobs could have an innate str/atk bonus that will skew their average hit to the high side, all things being equal. Correct me if I'm wrong.