NPC Spawn Issue: Nektulos has too many decaying skeletons

[Dolalin]

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 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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

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:

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.

[Jimjam]

RIP