Planar Protector
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: UK
Posts: 2,542
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I think these are unclassic to reduce CSR workload, or at least that's the impression I got.
Lots of examples of actual timings of corpse rot (here's one from Feb 2002 after a patch in which they'd changed it):
Quote:
Now that the game will display corpse rez
and decay timers if you /con a corpse, I was
able to finally settle the issue of exactly
how long player corpses of different levels last...
The manual claims (for decay times): 30 minutes if
the corpse is level 1-5, or 24 hours online/7 days offline.
As is often the case, the manual is wrong. Here
are the results of my actual tests:
Level 1 PC: 30 minutes to rez, 30 minutes to decay.
Level 2 PC: 2 hours to rez, 2 hours to decay.
Level 3 PC: 2 hours to rez, 2 hours to decay.
Level 4 PC: 2 hours to rez, 2 hours to decay.
Level 5 PC: 3 hours to rez, 7 days to decay.
Above level 5: Same as 5 (3h/7d).
So the manual was right only for level 1, and wrong
for levels 2-5.
The easy rule of thumb is: Decay is 30 minutes for
level 1, 2 hours for 2-4, 7 days for 5 and above.
Rez timer is a flat 3 hours, or until the corpse decays,
whichever comes first.
(Yes, it's possible that they altered the decay times
for level 2-5 corpses in this recent patch, as long
as they were fiddling with the decay/rez display, and
changing high-level corpse decay times to be a flat
7 days instead of a mix of 24h/7d, but the 2 hour
figure fits well with my prior tests and experiences
for low-level corpses.)
Note that the patch message is a bit wrong too -- it
says that the decay timer for corpses "over level 5"
is now a flat seven days. However, in truth that's
the case for corpses "level 5 or over" (or if you prefer,
"over level 4"), not strictly "over level 5".
Additional fun with the decay/rez timer display:
1. As my previous tests had indicated, *mob* corpse decay
times are 8 minutes if the corpse has any loot, 30 seconds
if it doesn't. (I didn't have access to any 55+ mob
corpses, which are coded to last longer.)
2. Since mob corpses go to "general loot" after two minutes,
you can now /con a corpse which someone else has killed
and abandoned, and not bother attempting to loot it
until the decay timer hits 6 minutes or less. It used
to be annoying wondering how long you'd have to wait,
now you'll know.
3. As previously suspected, the rez timer halts *completely*
when you're offline. I did tests across two hours,
and checked the timers of several player corpses which
were lying around. Across two hours, the corpses of
people who were offline had "frozen" rez timers, which
did not change by even a second over two hours, even
though their decay timers continued to tick away.
4. Note: The decay timer, at least, is not entirely
in synch with the actual "poof time" of the corpse.
Several mob corpses stuck around for up to 10 seconds
after their displayed decay timer had already counted
down to zero (and beyond!). In fact, here's a section of
my log as I frequently /conned a mob corpse that was counting
down to poofage:
This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 05 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 04 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 03 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 02 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 01 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 00 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 15 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 14 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 13 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 12 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 11 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 10 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 09 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 08 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 07 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 06 seconds..
Consider whom?
You no longer have a target.
What's wrong with this picture? :-)
As a programmer, I had assumed that "1193046" was going to
be "-1" in some number of bits, wrongly converted to an unsigned
integer, but it's not. The really strange thing is that it
turns out to be "123456(hexadecimal)" -- that's bizarre.
5. While traipsing around Greater Faydark, I found a PC corpse
that conned thusly:
This corpse is too old to be resurrected.
This corpse will decay in 151 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 09 seconds..
Umm... "151 hours"? Why wasn't that converted to "6 days,
7 hours"? I have no idea -- all other corpses I checked displayed
in days/hours format when appropriate. On the other hand, it
was the only corpse I had discovered which was "too old to be
resurrected", maybe that had something to do with it.
6. There was a thread on this newsgroup a few weeks ago
in which many people asserted that the rez timer for corpses
killed in /duels with other players was only 10 minutes (or
so). I stated that in my experience, it was far longer than
that. Well, I found cooperative players and /dueled my
test characters to death, and the displayed rez timers for
each one were *identical* to the times listed above (which
were produced by attacking guards to cause death) -- even
for the 5+ characters, wherein a /dueled death produced a
corpse that indicated a full 3-hour rez time.
So... Either /dueled corpses actually do have a full 3-hour
rez timer, or:
a) the 10-minute limit is only for much higher level
corpses than I had tested, or
b) the 10-minute limit is only for /dueled corpses
in dungeons (or perhaps indoor zones) -- my tests
were done in N.FP, W.FP, and GFay.
c) the /con rez indicator is wrong.
Further testing may be required. But so far, the results
match my own experience with /dueled corpses, which is that
they don't have extremely short rez timers.
7. Here's the /con of a totally naked (no items, no coin)
corpse I had just produced from a level 5 character:
This corpse's resurrection time will expire in 2 hour(s)
59 minute(s) 16 seconds..
This corpse will decay in 6 day(s) 23 hour(s)
59 minute(s) 16 seconds..
The odd thing is that naked corpses, even high-level ones,
poof as soon as the rez timer runs out (because there's
nothing "left" on the corpse worth recovering any longer).
And yet, this /con shows that the naked corpse would last
for a full 7 days.
This is probably just a display bug, I'm sure that the
server will clean up the corpse as soon as its rez timer
expires and it sees that there are no items/coins on the
corpse. But the misleading display for the decay time is
annoying.
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.game...m/jt2hHSQUjT0J
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And from end of Dec 2001:
Quote:
On Mon, 31 Dec 2001 06:39:57 -0500, jaZZmanian Devil <js...@stny.rr.com> wrote:
>Nee wrote:
><snip tale of corpse lost and found>
>> So the point of this little ramble is, that I thought that the decay time
>> for under level 6 was about 5 mins, I wonder if this has been changed?
>
>Not five minutes. Thirty minutes for a pre-level 6 corpse with anything
>on it, IIRC. And I believe that's 30 minutes of online time, with
>considerably more offline.
That's what the manual says, but it lies.
I did some tests. They weren't very comprehensive, but I found
that while level 1 corpses do poof pretty fast, level 3-4-5
corpses with stuff on them last FAR, FAR longer than the 30
minutes promised by the manual. I had one level 4 corpse last
24 hours online.
---
dstep <ds...@babaloo.com> wrote:
>5 and below its supposed to be 30 minutes off or online. This is why
>when twinking you don't do it until you are level 6.
>It does seem to vary though for some odd reason, like sometimes you'll
>have one last a long time. I don't know why.
>I've been 5 before and had one last exactly a half hour and not get to
>it also.
In the nearly two years I've played, the actual behaviour of corpses
and the documented behaviour have *never* matched. Verant has even
noticed this on occasion and updated the documentation...but they've
never managed to update it in a way that matches reality.
--Tim Smith
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.game...m/DUU3rHM0SCUJ
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