Kickin' it up a notch....

Outdoor random spawns.... lets have more of them. Not a TON more.... but increased frequency.... I just walked from the Vale to Calithia... and encounters were sparse at best.... used to love battling bandits galore along the trade routes.... why not up their appearance rate? Also, is the bridge troll in the forest before tradeholm still around? He wasnt there for me... I did get a couple dragons though so it was still nice

League Hirelings - for the prices they charge.... these folks just arent well equipped or powerful enough to hack it with an adventurer who can actually afford to pay them. Have you ever seen anybody rolling with one of these? How about more than one? I didnt think so. Reason is, because at the levels where they would be good to have, you cant afford them... and once you can afford them... they arent useful... at least not compared to sinking that gold into your own gear. A rate reduction and level bumpage would be good... maybe minor gear upgrades. It would be nice to see these in more common usage.

daveyeisley wrote:Outdoor random spawns.... lets have more of them. Not a TON more.... but increased frequency.... I just walked from the Vale to Calithia... and encounters were sparse at best.... used to love battling bandits galore along the trade routes.... why not up their appearance rate? Also, is the bridge troll in the forest before tradeholm still around? He wasnt there for me... I did get a couple dragons though so it was still nice

Have you tried it w/ a lowbie PC? Dunno if it's just me, but I swear the spawns for my low-level characters are quite a bit more hair-raising than for my higher level ones. And not just because I'm low level... the 'proportion of danger' seems, well, disproportionate.

Other than that, yes, I'd like more bad guys to shoot at too. It really seems like there are *fewer* spawns than I remember in a lot of areas.

Many of the spawns are now scattered around the areas, rather than clumped at spawn points placed right near roads.

Also, continued feedback is good.

The League henchmen will be getting a makeover eventually...they're around number 12 on my running todo list.

I must say that for my higher level PC's the world seems .. well.. "empty".... ... Jay and Shouri can both get from The Vale to Calithia with nothing more then mice and bat spawning (both lv40 Ascended)... yet Wanda (lv26) is consistently being plagued by goblins, vampire bats, gnolls, trolls, wolfs, worgs in the 20-30 at a time option..(( and in once instance today, enough goblins on the NW road spawning at once(in one spot ~the bridge~ to make the server go boom!))....

I'm not sure why but I think/feel that the spawn table is somewhat "upside down"... ie loads and loads of "easy enemies" at low level, and very very few "hard enemies" at higher level.... which sounds good... but.... actually just leads to higher levels playing more "monster hide and seek", then "monster kill" .....

Another thing I found with sparky (but have no real justification for)...is I no longer really see the point in AoE's... without going on an "area-wide" monster collection tour (saying that auto-retaliation aoo don't kill them), not enough monsters seem to be gathered in one spot for me to justify using an AoE, when I can just go to each one singularly and kill them ?..or is that just me ((maybe also somethingto do with the fact some enemies in the area's just "don't care" if thier mates are being attacked..) .....

Did that make sense?

After my 2nd level PC suffered a terrible beating at the hands of a mob of bandits on the road to Macedone (one transition beyond the mountainholm crossroad), I logged in as DM and went back to see if I could rain righteous damnation upon the bandits. No dice. I did notice, however, that in the area previous to the mountainhold crossroad, the sparky spawner was listed as being set at level three. On the crossroads, and said road beyond that, the sparky spawner is set at level 12. What does this mean? I must say, I don't enjoy the idea of my low level getting spanked every time she ventures out of her comfort zone ...

For areas with a spawn level set at something other than 0, that level is a general target level for the spawns that are set with that area. If the average party level of the PC entering that area (triggering the spawns) is lower than that number, the number of creatures spawned may be reduced. If the average party level is higher than that number, the number of creatures spawned may be higher.

I have those spawns set at different levels to alter the number of critters created. The area set at level 3 will only really have increasing spawns from higher level characters (since new characters start at 2nd or 3rd level). The area set at level 12 will have fewer spawns for lower level characters and more spawns for higher level characters. The number isn't necessarily a suggested level for playing in that area, it's supposed to be the base average party level from which to adjust number spawned.

Some areas that are showing higher and lower level creatures are due to using random encounter tables for those areas. There's always a chance that something more powerful will be spawned against a lower level character, and a chance lower power critters will be spawned for a higher level character (the party level does not influence which creatures get spawned, just how many get spawned).

A agree about the Aoe point. With spawns all spread out, you can rarely if ever catch more than 2-3 enemies in an area spell. And if the enemies are ranged attackers, you cant "draw" them into an area, either. This is extremely apparent in the beholder caves... but applicable pretty much every where else, too.

It can be a bummer at lower levels since you cant memorize many aoes and because of the rest timer/non-restable areas. You end up going through more aoe spells at a faster rate with less gain per cast... and when you run out... if you dont have a renewal potion (or cant afford one)... tough luck. If you want to be able to keep fighting you either need to stock lots of renewals and guzzle them(if this is even an option)... or you have to go melee... which is bad, sorta pigeonholes caster builds. Its nice that casters CAN melee well in Aenea(at least at mid to high level), but it would be bad to force casters to melee on a regular basis.

In areas with tougher enemies, because multiple casts are needed to kill the enemies, so you go thru aoes with even less gain per cast.

And then we have the issue that, in theory we want to encourage party play, but the list of party friendly arcane aoe spells is short already (only 14 before sunburst got nerfed, now only 13, some of which are heavily situational) and becoming shorter

I can add more "groups" to the spawn system, making some spawn closer together. Of course, once they're spawned they may start to wander, but some of them would start out closer together.

sunburst will be fixed soon. When I recoded it, I was looking at the spell description rather than the code of the original.

I agree the sunburst description is/was lacking... it should specify that from the point of the sunburst, individual shafts of sunlight streak out to strike enemies only.

I'm really starting to wonder if the spawns are "upside down" as it were. Had a bad bit of luck tonight... My second level bard, solo, was spawning stuff that is just way over his head. A bandit chief at the Mtholm crossroads, a rather larged mixed bandit group the next transition over from that (several archers, rogues, regular bandits, a cleric, and at least 1 mage)... then he gets 5 skeleton warriors in the vale graveyard. Earlier this evening, taking him into the goblin caves, he was getting almost all female goblins and goblin shamans. He came across only 2 youths, and 4 regular goblins.... unlike my other new character who at I think was level 4 at the time, in the company of an 11th level character.... just wasn't spawning as many gobbie shamans or females as the solo 2nd level bard.