NPC Spawn Issue: A Kromzek Captain/warrior should be on CoV faction

[Baugi]

A Kromzek Captain and A Kromzek warrior from Leuz's Task should assist/be assisted by CoV mobs, but give no faction hit (likely KoS to everyone?).

They were changed in late Velious to curtail faction war strategies. -

Originally Posted by https://web.archive.org/web/20011225052139/http://pub35.ezboard.com/fthesafehousefrm13.showMessage?topicID=3203.topic

(11/2/01 10:35:11 am)

Dragons assisting Kromzek Captain in scout quest Does this seem retarted to anyone else?
Just got killed trying to do capt, twice. Pulled to the beach near the rock like we have many times. Nothing in sight, fight going along nicely. Von warps right on our head out of nowhere and fluxes us all nicely raping us. Fairly annoyed at this we have a warrior kite the capt around for a bit while we get ressed and buffed. He runs near us and we tag off him and he runs off to zone the adds to DN. He had 2 dogs and a wurm on him I believe. Were fighting capt again, fight going along fine and wham... out of nowhere Glati warps on our heads and kills our clerics, captain poofs and dragons go on their marry way.
Lovely...

Now... this faction is for dragon alligned people. Quest gives you a positive +CoV hit when compelting it. You kill a bad giant which is on giant faction. So... why in the hell would dragons attack YOU when you're doing their quest? If anything, they should assist and attack the giants.
Now, I understand. Adds challenge or whatever. But its not very challenging when random screwed up pathing causes dragons to warp right on top of you. Not only am I annoyed at screwy pathing but made me wonder why the hell dragons would assist captain in the first place. Done it before when there was a dragon pathing nearby, know how to harmony to avoid agro.

Bleh, this capt attempt sucked bigtime :/

Originally Posted by https://web.archive.org/web/20011225052139/http://pub35.ezboard.com/fthesafehousefrm13.showMessage?topicID=3203.topic

Re: Dragons assisting Kromzek Captain in scout quest The giants for Scout do not give faction anymore when killed and dragons will help them out when pulled. I used to be on giant faction and was top aligned with giants, they still conned ready to attack. I did the quest a short while ago with max ally to CoV now, and dragons assist him.

Go figure... Verant's way of fixing things is to make a Dragon help a Giant...

Alternative source -

Originally Posted by https://web.archive.org/web/20020208155431/http://pub42.ezboard.com/fayonaerofrm6.showMessageRange?topicID=609.topic&s tart=21&stop=40

(11/20/01 7:37:02 pm)

Re: Pulling boss type mobs to zone - Valid tactic or ??

Quote: "how do you do Sontalak...and Klandicar??"



I'm fairly sure the Charissa giants have been friendly with their dragon neighbors for the last few patches.

Originally Posted by https://web.archive.org/web/20020208155431/http://pub42.ezboard.com/fayonaerofrm6.showMessageRange?topicID=609.topic&s tart=21&stop=40

Actually,

Palimax is correct about Scout Charissa's Giant Friends...they assist dragons, not hunt them for you. (And I know this from helping with the Benevelence Quests.)

Tangentially, another post in that thread claims that "big corpses" aren't supposed to poof when NPC killed -

Originally Posted by https://web.archive.org/web/20020208155431/http://pub42.ezboard.com/fayonaerofrm6.showMessageRange?topicID=609.topic&s tart=21&stop=40

I'm sure there is. I watched my "zek friends" kill Sontalak before the Charissa patch with a single group to give aid to the giants. They had already been farming Wuoshi in similar fashion since they day people learned big corpses didn't poof on MOB kills. Heck, I even rammed a few D0rfs into Abbyot to test it out. It took a Shaman and a feigner to kill Abbyot in reverse fashion... [But I'm max-XP, +D0rf, and already have a Circlet of Falinkind so it ceased to be interesting pretty quickly.]

Is this a known thing? It would certainly explain a lot of the the seemingly badly designed encounters in the Coldain Ring quests. For example, I can't find any in-era warnings about Boridain Glacierbane getting the killing blow on the Rabid Tundra Kodiak.

[Rygar]

So this is venturing into exploit territory. Common knowledge you could train giants onto CoV faction mobs to kill giants or even Klandicar.

This was called "mob fight" tactics. It was a cheesy way to get NPCs down to 5 or 10% by training differently aligned faction mobs together, FDing to drop agro, then killing them when weak (often fleeing when engaged <20%) and essentially getting free rewards/exp.

Classic, bth don't see them implementing as this seems like a counter measure to avoid an exploit (which won't exist on p99)

[Baugi]

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So this is venturing into exploit territory. Common knowledge you could train giants onto CoV faction mobs to kill giants or even Klandicar.

This was called "mob fight" tactics. It was a cheesy way to get NPCs down to 5 or 10% by training differently aligned faction mobs together, FDing to drop agro, then killing them when weak (often fleeing when engaged <20%) and essentially getting free rewards/exp.

It's never officially been considered an exploit on Live or P99 as far as I know. So much of Velious scripts mobs fighting that it'd be pretty silly to penalize players for exploring that instead of just patching unintended strategies out.

I'm really interested in the claim that at least some Velious mobs didn't poof when NPC killed. I've always been confused by the in-era anecdotes of using faction wars because they never talk about actually securing the kill, which takes a lot of finesse if you need to secure last hit and most damage like you do on P99. If corpses just didn't poof, it would explain an awful lot. For example -

Originally Posted by Raije1000 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Back when Velious first came out Klandicar dropped CoF, i remember being 14 in 2000 when velious came out and i found out mobs would assist me in Western Wastes if i was on their shared faction. Sont would attack ice burrowers attacking me, and as long as i dealt 1 dmg i could loot. So i found out sont would kill Klandicar, so fires of heaven was prepping to kill Klandicar and i trained him into Sont, landed a stinging swarm (druid) and looted a CoF and Old Brood Talisman which is still on that char now. It was hot fixed a week later to where other factions wouldnt assist. Its something ill never forget, that shit kept me out of Fires of Heaven, lol rip

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Classic, bth don't see them implementing as this seems like a counter measure to avoid an exploit (which won't exist on p99)

Again, I hesitate to call it an exploit, but it was (is?) used fairly commonly Red. Beyond the obvious Klandicar dump, you can also use it for soloing Captain or a six-neck dragon or Tranala, ect. I know the Klandicar/Sont dump been tried at least a couple times on Blue/Green as well. If it was patched out before the end of the timeline, it should probably be addressed.

[CrazyPro]

Couldn't you still get exp/loot from mobs that other NPCs got the killing blow on well past Velious? I recall a lot of mentions of a specific exploit in Plane of Tactics where you'd get all of the NPCs in the pit to fight each other for super fast exp, but I don't really know the specifics of how that worked. Someone who played on EQMac would definitely know, you could do it there.

There'd probably be a million archived posts warning not to use the Coldain to fight Narandi if mobs really did poof if an NPC got the killing blow.

[Defo]

Originally Posted by CrazyPro [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Couldn't you still get exp/loot from mobs that other NPCs got the killing blow on well past Velious? I recall a lot of mentions of a specific exploit in Plane of Tactics where you'd get all of the NPCs in the pit to fight each other for super fast exp, but I don't really know the specifics of how that worked. Someone who played on EQMac would definitely know, you could do it there.

There'd probably be a million archived posts warning not to use the Coldain to fight Narandi if mobs really did poof if an NPC got the killing blow.

No, if a mob got the killing blow the corpse poofed. the reason there aren't a million posts saying not to use the Coldain is because Ring Wars happened very infrequently - especially past Velious.

[Rygar]

Originally Posted by Defo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No, if a mob got the killing blow the corpse poofed. the reason there aren't a million posts saying not to use the Coldain is because Ring Wars happened very infrequently - especially past Velious.

Just a complete guess here, but I suspect original devs flagged the coldain you command as charmed pets somehow, or some kind of hybrid flag to prevent poofing