From what I remember, the ONLY decaying skeletons to be KOS other than the Kunark ones were the ones found in Nektulous. I started playing live in July of 2000, and between my two brothers and myself, we'd made characters spanning all 3 continents (deleted alts, etc). I am unsure of the ones (if there even are any) in the Feerrott and Innothule

Apologies, you're correct regarding the dates (i was ballparking... badly! hah)

I do recall getting attacked randomly by SKELETONS... but not decaying.
My first character was a dark elf wizard and in addition to spending many hours in nektulos, I recall when porting to nek at the wiz spires one would often get attacked by zombies, mummies, and skeletons that surrounded the spires.

I had quit before they revamped nek, so I never saw them turn the nek skeletons KOS, but I do recall playing a few iksar characters and FoB decaying skeletons definitely did aggro (like pretty much everything in kunark did... although kunark was strange, everything scowled but not everything immediately attacked?) This led to the classic FoB skeleton trains towards the guards, and many newb corpses.

As I created a DE cleric here on p99, I immediately noticed how much more difficult it was to level up my newb dealing with the spiders assisting the fire beetles (and vice versa... something they never used to do) as well as decaying skeletons aggroing.

As someone noted above, the link posted by Uthgaard specifies the 'befallen' faction hit on the decaying skeleton, and it makes sense for decaying skeletons in befallen to be KOS.

The problem, as I see it, is that most people remember undead being KOS to everyone, and are merely accepting that decaying skeletons would be aggro as well.

Decaying skeletons was KOS to everyone in vanilla from the very start of EQ. No matter your lvl.

Not talking about any expansions or later changes. I know they were changed at some point to make life easier for newbies, so they could run around allmost everywhere in newbie zones without getting any agro

Most people that argue about this either didn't play at launch or have a very bad memory. They are by original design supposed to be a nuiscence to everyone, high or low lvl

This.

Sorry for resurrecting this thread. It's just that I started playing today, and I was quite surprised to see a decaying skeleton attack me. Skeletons were a nuisance (the level 6[?] ones, who would attack anyone in sight), but I'm 100% sure that decaying skeletons were harmless in all the zones I played (everywhere except the evil newbie zones). I played from August 1999 to December 2001.

I have vivid memories of chasing decaying skeletons that carried a cracked staff (1pp!), but it was hard to attack them when they were walking because my dial-up connection was horrible. If they were KoS, that would never have happened.

The truth is,


This is entirely wrong. They always attacked! Even at level 60. I would laugh so hard if you made these non kos. LOL

The truth is,

You stopped playing after Kunark then, because from late Kunark onwards all decaying skeletons (including those in Nektulos) were non-aggro.

So far we haven't found any solid evidence of them being non-KOS prior to that, however, so it's a bit hard to do any convincing.

Do just a tiny bit of digging though and you'll see plenty of evidence that supports them being non-kos after Kunark.

The best memory I have of decaying skeletons being non-aggressive would be paineel noob grounds. The only aggressive creature in that whole area was Noclins Pet.

KoS decaying skeletons are ruining my immersion.

I seem to remember Decaying Skeletons attacking me all of the time, no matter what level I was.....I remember how annoying it was.

http://web.archive.org/web/200004120...=show&BID=1657


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--Submited by: Salamandar, Wood Elf Ranger On: 10/08/1999 2:26:40 AM
Decaying skeletons does not attack
unprovoked in Greater Feydark.
But they support other skeletons in battle.