Project 1999 - NPC Spawn Issue: Nektulos has too many decaying skeletons

So, a few months ago I dug up a very cool spreadsheet from January 2000 with mob counts and levels/hp in each vanilla zone. I suspected at the time this may prove very handy for determining what the relative population of each area's newbie zones should be.

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=348523

https://web.archive.org/web/20010614...List-Level.zip

The sheet was released here on January 15th 2000:

http://web.archive.org/web/200006210...2.org/main.htm

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In summary, Nek forest has way too many decaying skeletons. There must be dozens roaming around. It also probably has too few regular skeletons, it does not seem like there are 20 of them up at a time, but I also don't have ShowEQ running so I can't be sure :)

The spreadsheet's newbie mob counts are the following for nektulos (count is 0-based):

Code:

Zone                NPC                                #        hp-        hp+        lvl-        lvl+



nektulos        a_black_wolf                        8        16        16        1        1

nektulos        a_decaying_skeleton                6        16        16        1        1

nektulos        a_moss_snake                        12        16        16        1        1

nektulos        a_spiderling                        27        20        52        1        3

nektulos        a_large_spider                        10        28        68        2        4

nektulos        a_fire_beetle                        19        32        32        2        2

nektulos        a_black_bear                        8        50        90        3        5

nektulos        a_shadow_wolf                        12        50        90        3        5

nektulos        a_skeleton                        19        80        120        4        6

nektulos        a_tree_snake                        17        80        120        4        6

nektulos        Neophyte_Edel                        0        85        85        4        4

nektulos        Neophyte_Hazel                        0        85        85        4        4

nektulos        Initiate_Rambel                        0        115        115        5        5

nektulos        Bink                                0        195        195        6        6

nektulos        Himmel                                0        170        235        7        8

nektulos        Initiate_Umbra                        0        187        189        7        7

nektulos        Snitch                                0        146        146        8        8

nektulos        Initiate_Pool                        0        209        209        8        8

nektulos        Quester_Dunden                        0        162        162        9        9

nektulos        Initiate_Guanin                        0        229        229        9        9

nektulos        Klimmer                                0        208        208        10        10

nektulos        Gollee                                0        230        275        10        10

nektulos        a_will_o_wisp                        0        240        240        10        10

nektulos        a_young_kodiak                        1        240        240        10        10

It shows there were only 7 decaying skeletons up when the ShowEQ dump was taken.

Now I don't want to rely too much on this spreadsheet to prove this, and fortunately I don't have to. We also have this extract from EQAtlas as of November 1999:

Quote:

The last problem with this area, which isn't really a danger, is that this is, in my opinion, one of the worst designed areas in the game. I've started a character in every newbie area of the game and got to 5th level or so everywhere, and this area is by far the worst. The reasons are plenty, but basically the newbie area is very small, and wandering outside of it is very dangerous as 4th level wolves will attack and kill you. Therefore, if there are a large number of newbies there is very little to kill in this area. Also, once you reach 4th or 5th and start wandering a little bit further, Guardians are around you all the time. It's very frustrating to almost die in a battle with a skeleton, feel that you're going to win, and then have some stupid Guardian come up and kill it. Tada, no experience, no loot, 5 minutes of resting to recover. Another problem is that the creatures in this area don't give any significant loot. Unlike many other areas, it is difficult to find bags or boxes, rusty weapons, cash, bits of armor, etc on any of the monsters that you can hunt. Instead you get spiderling silks, ruined pelts, and fire beetle eyes. Note that none of these stack, so you'll be running back into town (and be zoning at least twice to get the best prices) about every 5 minutes. Needless to say, when I hit 4th level, I packed my bags and relocated to the swamps of the ogres and trolls. At least there I could get cash, maybe a cracked staff, and some netted armor for my enchanter...

http://web.archive.org/web/200005100...losforest.html

Now if you've been to Nek on P99 you can safely say there are no problems getting such items because there seem to be dozens of decaying skeletons up at any given time.

Given the evidence I don't think the current decaying skeleton population can be supported. Perhaps the numbers of other newbie mobs are equally out of balance and there just need to be some adjustment to the spawn tables to vary the likelihoods.