Looking for a better timer.

zoiks100

In my map, NW-DK4MO4NW6, I'm using trap timers to release waves of mobs from their prisons. And in order to compensate for the level scaling effects I had to add dialog prompts to ask the player to give a general approximation of their character's level, which causes more traps to spawn.

I'm wondering if anyone has come up with a better way of doing this?

I've also tried:

Friendly guards timer, more consistent with level scaling than traps (but still doesn't scale well), eats up more encounters, and it had other issues with agro timing.

Falling mob timer, consistent across all levels, but I don't see anyway to get greater than a few second timer per encounter with it.

Patrol timer, also consistent like falling mobs, can be a very long timer, but requires the pc interact with the patroller.


Anyway, if anyone knows a better way please post it.

Also if you want to see a trap timer and patrol timer in action, they're in my map. Don't feel obligated to finish the quest or review. Just choose "play football" from the starting quest dialogue then choose your options, go to the "bouncer pig" in the nearby corner and use the password "sow" which will open up the portal to where the trap timer is. The patrol timer is the final quest objective and you'll see it moving back and forth on the edge of the map.

zoiks100

Okay, I think I've found one.

A patrol -> falling mob timer, the only down side is the same down side all timers have. The pc has to stay in range for it to continue to work, and I did some testing and it seems as though that range is ~250'. I'm not sure if it's a 500x500x500 cube or a 500 diameter sphere with the pc at the center, but I'm guessing it's one or the other.

The way it works is simple:

Put a room with a invalid location, such as some of the large cave/crypt rooms with deadfalls, near the area you want to use a timer.
Spawn a mob in a valid location in that room and set a patrol around the room to take as long as you need.
Then have the final patrol point cause them to jump into the deadfall and you have a brand new timer.
Use component complete with that mob as the target to trigger other things off your timer.

I don't take credit for "inventing" this timer, anyone who came up with it before me or just wants the credit can have it as far as I'm concerned. I just wanted to share something I think is very useful, and personally plan on using quite a bit until real timers are added in the foundry.

visigoth18

yeah, thanks for sharing

silithas97

Here's a theory, what if you did a patrolling monster in the distance, whose patrol ended in a pack of guards. Set the monster toappear when the timer starts and the doors to open when it dies. Then you could set the speed of the monster to determine the time it takes to walk the hallway where ever it is at.
(I haven't tested this, just theorizing)

mosby1

zoiks100 wrote: »

Put a room with a invalid location, such as some of the large cave/crypt rooms with deadfalls, near the area you want to use a timer.
Spawn a mob in a valid location in that room and set a patrol around the room to take as long as you need.
Then have the final patrol point cause them to jump into the deadfall and you have a brand new timer.
Use component complete with that mob as the target to trigger other things off your timer.

I can't wait to try this out, thanks for sharing! I've been struggling with timer consistency for days now.. this should help a lot.

zahinder

Does spellplague damage scale better than regular traps?

mosby1

zoiks100 wrote: »

Put a room with a invalid location, such as some of the large cave/crypt rooms with deadfalls...

Okay, I've looked at every room under the Rooms assets with Type - Crypt. None seems to have deadfalls. I must be missing something, can someone tell me which room I should use? Thanks!

mataris1911

Large caves have dead falls on the sides of most tiles

zoiks100

mosby1 wrote: »

Okay, I've looked at every room under the Rooms assets with Type - Crypt. None seems to have deadfalls. I must be missing something, can someone tell me which room I should use? Thanks!

The Royal Crypt rooms generally have a deadfall, there are two "Crypt" types in the Rooms list, the second in the list has the Royal Crypt rooms.

aggropotato

Ah the falling mob timer is far more elegant and easier to set up than the combat timer, imho. Bookmarked as well, thanks!

mosby1

Thanks. I got it working. Used the pit in the center of the Cave Intersection room, works great. I'll publish a new version of DM's Studio with this trick soon.

zuviele

Since I have a timer on an outdoor map, I had to improvise with this solution.

I too needed a better solution for my timers, so I used a hybrid of the patrol and spike trap timers. Essentially, I stacked all 50 spike traps and had my timer-mobs patrol up a ramp and fall onto the traps (they won't walk directly onto them, so I had to trick them into doing it). With 50 traps stacked up, and an easy mob, the extra time for higher levels is pretty marginal; a few seconds on average.

I found that using a single drow worked best for me. A group of easy mobs would die faster on the spikes, but they walk in formation, so they are a little tougher to corral up a ramp. I decided I'd rather have it be less error prone, but have a little more variation between levels

mosby1

Did you try just dropping them onto the traps? I had pretty good luck with that. I found the max height was ~300; the mobs would take about 80% damage from the fall, and the traps would quickly finish the job.

zuviele

I didn't even think to try to make them walk up high. I'm using one of the pre-made maps (tower district), so I would have to build scaffolds. I basically only have one short ramp that gets them high enough so they will fall on the trap and stay there.

eldarth

I believe Y=-81 is instadeath. So far I've tested it using Cave Room L shaped and built path ramps leading down. As soon as I "walked" down the path, at Y=-80, boom, you have died. Just walking. Haven't tried dropping NPCs/encounters thru there yet.