NPC Spawn Issue: Various NPC tweaks needed to early-days Toxx Forest

[Dolalin]

I've been levelling an Erud necro on Green for kicks, and as you can see over to the left, an Erud necro was my main on live. In fact, I spent New Year's Eve 1999 playing Dolalin in Toxx forest, and rung in the new millenium sitting on my ass at a kobold camp. I was a real winner.

So as I've been playing it's been jogging my memory a bit, and here are a few issues:

1) Kobolds in Toxx, pre-Warrens, gave one negative faction hit to "Kobold". Currently they give nothing. Source:

6/17/99

Another thing I noticed -- when you kill orcs, goblins, gnolls,
etc. in other areas of the game, you get a blast of faction
adjustments, some positive, some negative, perhaps 5 different
adjustments. In Tox, when you kill Kobolds, it says "Faction with
Kobolds decreases". That's it.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....w/5r6SKQ94JwQJ

2) There are WAY too many wandering mobs on the bottom half of the zone, heh. And the respawn timers all across the zone on wanderers are way too fast.

Here is commentary about how few roaming mobs there were in the south of the zone and how slowly they repopped:

1/9/00

2) Not enough mobs.

To me, #2 is the bigger problem--not enough to hunt. You can run around for
several minutes hitting F8 and the only things you'll target are guards,
merchants or stuff too far away to find (or cast on). While #1 is certainly an
incentive only to those who're looking for a challenge (and a potential
detriment to some), if #2 was resolved and there were more mobs, I think we'd
see Toxx become a *much* more popular place to hunt.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....s/Gzmza0TyU3sJ

6/17/00

Okay, I started an Erudite Enchanter recently, got her to 3rd level,
and just about went crazy trying to make it to 4th. I could deal with
the darkness, and I learned to navigate the zone. My problem? NO
MONSTERS TO KILL!

I swear, I wandered around for 15 minutes real time and saw nothing to
kill!

Then out of sheer boredom I went over the bridge to the "harder newbie
zone", figuring at least I'd run into something that would kill me. I
wandered around for a while, got a little bit lost, found my way back
to the bridge, and NEVER SAW A SINGLE LIVING THING!!

Now, obviously I found *some* monsters (I found some during this
session, just not many, with huge gaps between them), since I made it
to level 3. The only thing I can figure is that the spawn rate is
related to how many people are in the zone, and since there were no
more than a dozen people on that zone at this time, there were simply
very few monsters spawned?

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....w/5r6SKQ94JwQJ

8/20/99

Toxxulia Forest: Extremely limited visibility, especially
when it's nighttime and raining. (The other night-blind races have
newbie areas with excellent visibility at night.) Low spawn rate.
Low spawn density. If you look at a map of the zone, the extreme
southern portion of the landmass that's on the same side of the bridge
as the entrance to Erudin is *completely* unutilized. Almost nothing
spawns there. In fact, I'd say this is true for the extreme southern
portion of the zone on both sides of the river. The two static kobold
camps spawn slowly, and the highest level kobold that might spawn is
the 6th-7th level Kobold Sentry, which is rare compared to the lower
level Kobold Scouts, Watchers, and Shamans. So by 7th level, assuming
that you camp the Kobolds, you're only getting XP from about half the
ones that pop up (you'll get XP for about half the watchers and
shamans, and none at all for the scouts). All this for a race that is
reported to have a serious XP penalty. It's no wonder, then, that
most players once they learn the ropes, take their newbie Erudites
over to Qeynos where the spawn rate is significantly higher, more
dense, and easier to see.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....M/Dg4YAzd3_ooJ

4/11/99

Hey all,

I am now a Level 6 erudite necromancer, and before i was level 5. Well,
as i can tell, my level is going up by killing kobold sentries and
skeletons. But the problem is, there is maybe 1 or 2 of those creatures
roaming around toxx forest, and they respawn every 15-20 mins. And then you
have to worry about other people killing it. Well, my question is, where is
good place to level? Am I strong enough to go to kerra isle, solo? and what
monsters should I kill.

Thanx,
Mel
Coiel (Level 6 Erudite Necromancer)
The League of Swords Guild

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....Y/lneXKtUL8pwJ

Basically as it is on Green right now, you can level really quickly outside Paineel with all the wandering stuff. This isn't how it was in vanilla. The repop timers on the wandering stuff were quite long.. that 15-20min comment up above wasn't wrong. It was often the case that there would simply be no wandering mobs up at all on the southern section of the zone. This is why people camped the kobold camps. They were reliable, unlike the spread-out and slow-repopping wandering stuff.

It was a *struggle* to reach level 7, let alone 8, in Toxx. Right now you can do it in maybe an hour with all the wandering skeletons and briar snakes and kobolds...

3) Mob populations:

Not a 'bug' per se, just posting what the NPC-List-Level.xls has for Toxx in late 1999, to help with tuning. Here are all the mobs under level 20:

Zone	NPC Name			Count	Low HP	High HP	Low Level	High Level
tox	a_decaying_skeleton		21	16	16	1		1
tox	a_fish				40	16	16	1		1
tox	a_kobold_runt			24	16	16	1		1
tox	a_moss_snake			26	16	16	1		1
tox	a_thistle_snake			19	16	16	1		1
tox	a_spiderling			2	20	52	1		3
tox	a_fire_beetle			3	32	32	2		2
tox	a_kobold_scout			4	32	46	2		2
tox	a_piranha			3	32	32	2		2
tox	a_skunk				10	32	32	2		2
tox	a_widow_hatchling		7	32	32	2		2
tox	an_infected_rat			7	32	32	2		2
tox	a_kobold_watcher		3	48	63	3		3
tox	a_briar_snake			12	50	90	3		5
tox	a_kobold_sentry			7	50	105	3		5
tox	Elial_Brook_pet			0	50	50	3		3
tox	Elial_Brook00_pet		0	50	50	3		3
tox	Shintar_Vinlail			0	38	38	4		4
tox	Poacher_Dell			0	70	70	4		4
tox	a_skeleton			5	80	230	4		10
tox	a_kobold_shaman			3	84	84	4		4
tox	Rungupp				0	84	105	4		5
tox	Elial_Brook			0	87	87	7		7
tox	a_giant_piranha			0	190	190	8		8
tox	a_will-o-wisp			0	220	220	9		9
tox	Jonly_Smithin			0	240	240	10		10
tox	a_pixie				1	335	375	14		17

[Dolalin]

Basically Telin, you made a half decent newbie zone out of Tox. Unfortunately you are much better than Verant and you need to make it suck a lot more [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Dolalin]

Another follow-up on this newsgroup post:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....M/Dg4YAzd3_ooJ

Screenshot attached of the area he's talking about where 'no mobs spawn'. I can confirm from memory nothing ever spawned here, no roamers, nothing. It was empty.

He also mentions the southern half of the zone being spread out and slow pops. This is true. I believe it was only 2-4 a_kobold_sentry that roamed around, along with maybe 4 of a_skeleton (this npc name is shared with the two skeleton miners in the Paineel tunnel), and the ~13 a_briar_snakes. The zone only had two pixies in the above capture, I don't remember seeing these very often at all. One will-o-wisp in the capture. And that was *it* for the entire southern section of the zone. Oh and they were all on something like 15-20min timers. Beautiful eh? Toxx was absolute dogshit.

Lastly, from a careful reading of the above posts, the northern newbie area had slow respawn timers on the wandering newbie mobs also. There were a lot more of them, but the respawns were slow. A good newbie population would clear out the northern part of the zone fairly quickly:

since there were no more than a dozen people on that zone at this time, there were simply
very few monsters spawned?