I have a room where the player has to perform an action quickly or 6 bosses spawn on him. So I needed to make a timer. The only thing I could think of is to create a sand hourglass. But using mobs and guards.
In a secret, inaccessible room, I place guards on one side of a wall, and mobs on the other. The player triggers the removal of the wall, when the mob encounter is defeated, the boss spawns are triggered.
You can adjust the time base on the number of mob vs guards. Just thought I would share.
That is a brilliant solution. Any chance that the guards can fail? Is the mob annihilation rate pretty consistent?
- Nymbleshanks
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mhaerMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited April 2013
Nice idea!
Could you do something similar with some sort of ground AoE damage? So you "cook" the mob and its heal is the timer?
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zovyaMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited April 2013
The guards can fail, if you don't put enough of them. Just experiment with ratios to get the time you want. Test at different levels too, because they scale to player level.
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zovyaMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited April 2013
You can also stage the triggers, have one encounter defeated by the guards, remove another wall with more mobs, and etc. But be sure you have enough guards. If the guards fail, the timer fails.
If you setup the behavior on the Guards, there is one that doesn't let them be killed I forget what it is called offhand but one of them lists that the npc cannot die. I don't know if it's part of the cowers when entering combat or not though.
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zovyaMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited April 2013
I'll check that. I thought only the non-combating NPCs couldn't die. But all guards are mortal.
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drakedge2Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited April 2013
Hmm, I couldn't find where to make NPC's fight last time I was looking. This would be useful for later chapters in my story. What asset are you using to make NPCs fight mobs and can you make it so that say one of the characters in your story follows the player and acts like a companion? IE fighting alongside, or healing the player?
Note that anything attacked by a Guard is zeroed for xp gain, from what I last saw. For the stated mechanism that is fine as its a subset of mobs that your players never see; however that could really irk players unless they are just out for a good story regarding a companion.
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drakedge2Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited April 2013
Oh okay cool, that is a nifty trick then, I will need to play with that some.
AMAZING idea. So much so that I started playing around with it and I think I've found the most optimal way to use this.
Above I've set up an alleyway with invisible walls off the main area of the map. The guards I'm using are ranged (Easy) and when the trigger is set a one way patrol (melee) appears and wanders into the "Kill Zone" where the guards can attack him over the lowered invisible wall, but he can't get to them or attack them, so just stand there and gets killed. When he dies the next mob appears and patrols into the kill zone.
The beauty with this is that:
Your guards wont die as the mobs cant reach them
There's a pretty consistent kill speed, which can be increased/decreased by the number of guards you you add (and you can just stack them on top of each other so they wont run out of room)
It's resource light, instead of having lots and lots of walls, after your initial setup each "tick" just costs one mob.
To get advanced you're better of not having a patrol (I was using one just so I could watch them, as this adds unnecessary time to your ticker, instead the mobs can just appear in the kill zone when triggered).
Also, you could have different speed of ticks, when a mob appears have extra guards appear for that tick, then they disappear when that mob is (set of mobs) is killed.
I've put in the height on the y axis for the walls so people dont need to mess around. Just try and get your guards as far away from the kill zone as possible as the melee guys have a ranged melee (que?!).
Instead of guards, has anyone tried spellplague decals? [I will once I get a chance]
Create MOB, patrol into spellplague, when MOB dies, spawn next MOB, rinse, repeat.
Instead of guards, has anyone tried spellplague decals? [I will once I get a chance]
Create MOB, patrol into spellplague, when MOB dies, spawn next MOB, rinse, repeat.
This is a guess, I haven't tested it and with the server down I won't get to till after maintenance but.. won't they just stand at the edge like they do with traps? I mean that was the original exploit that lead to people being banned and the change to the TOS for the Foundry. You can't "modify" the mob AI which would be set to avoid environmental damage. Now if it does work to avoid this you could create the "death zone" and just spawn them in it. They slowly die from the effect and it would be more consistent than a scaling encounter where you still have to worry about the Combat RNG HAMSTER things up.
It's an ingenious work around but it sure would be nice if they just gave us monologue controls, timers, and a bit of scripting so that we didn't need to go through all of this.
Do you crave a good old fashioned dungeon crawl? One where the dungeon tells it's own story? The Dungeon Delves campaign is just for you! Start with my first release: NW-DQF4T7QYH Any cave can lead to adventure!
Has anyone tried placing an NPC with the MOBs? Ie, the MOBs attack the NPC instead of the Guards shooting at the MOBs? Or will the Guards pull aggro like players?
Has anyone tried placing an NPC with the MOBs? Ie, the MOBs attack the NPC instead of the Guards shooting at the MOBs? Or will the Guards pull aggro like players?
1) Guards would indeed pull aggro.
2) Yospeck's setup above precludes the need as the guards are inaccessible to the mob and both are inaccessible to the player.
Do you crave a good old fashioned dungeon crawl? One where the dungeon tells it's own story? The Dungeon Delves campaign is just for you! Start with my first release: NW-DQF4T7QYH Any cave can lead to adventure!
1) Guards would indeed pull aggro.
2) Yospeck's setup above precludes the need as the guards are inaccessible to the mob and both are inaccessible to the player.
AMAZING idea. So much so that I started playing around with it and I think I've found the most optimal way to use this.
Above I've set up an alleyway with invisible walls off the main area of the map. The guards I'm using are ranged (Easy) and when the trigger is set a one way patrol (melee) appears and wanders into the "Kill Zone" where the guards can attack him over the lowered invisible wall, but he can't get to them or attack them, so just stand there and gets killed. When he dies the next mob appears and patrols into the kill zone.
The beauty with this is that:
Your guards wont die as the mobs cant reach them
There's a pretty consistent kill speed, which can be increased/decreased by the number of guards you you add (and you can just stack them on top of each other so they wont run out of room)
It's resource light, instead of having lots and lots of walls, after your initial setup each "tick" just costs one mob.
To get advanced you're better of not having a patrol (I was using one just so I could watch them, as this adds unnecessary time to your ticker, instead the mobs can just appear in the kill zone when triggered).
Also, you could have different speed of ticks, when a mob appears have extra guards appear for that tick, then they disappear when that mob is (set of mobs) is killed.
I've put in the height on the y axis for the walls so people dont need to mess around. Just try and get your guards as far away from the kill zone as possible as the melee guys have a ranged melee (que?!).
Massive respect Zovya
That would work up until, if and/or when they implement mob evade.
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kamaliiciousMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 0Arc User
1) Guards would indeed pull aggro.
2) Yospeck's setup above precludes the need as the guards are inaccessible to the mob and both are inaccessible to the player.
It takes a LOT of aggro to pull a creature attacking an npc, like damaging them for 80-90% of their health, before they will turn on their attacker. It's why some Foundry featured quests are dressed up exploit quests, there's quests that use this behavior all over the place.
As for spawning a mob into a deathzone (spellplague cracks surrounded by walls for instance), that's exactly one of the exploits Cryptic forbids.
That would work up until, if and/or when they implement mob evade.
There will always be ways around it, like raised platforms, shooting over a large gap where there's no way they can reach you as these are fundamental mechanics to the game
There will always be ways around it, like raised platforms, shooting over a large gap where there's no way they can reach you as these are fundamental mechanics to the game
Evade is when a mob cannot attack back, it goes into evade mode making them untargetable, therefore undefeatable.
Though I've had no problem with hard guards defeating waves of easy minions.
I've been trying to get a version of this to work faster. I've experimented with a few other options:
- I tried spawning mobs on traps. That's still fairly slow.
- I tried dropping them from a height. That kind of works. The highest I could get to work was 300. I used the weakest mobs I could find. They took about 80% damage, which is pretty good. I dropped them onto a trap to finish them off.
Neither of these is really fast enough for what I want though.
As for spawning a mob into a deathzone (spellplague cracks surrounded by walls for instance), that's exactly one of the exploits Cryptic forbids.
I know it's forbidden as "an exploit" where the PC would gain XP, but if they've "fixed" that exploit by zeroing XP from mobs killed by the environment (as they have mobs killed by guards), then that might simplify things by being able to spawn them directly over a spellplague filled room. Might allow for a bit finer grained, or more consistent timings.
It takes a LOT of aggro to pull a creature attacking an npc, like damaging them for 80-90% of their health, before they will turn on their attacker. It's why some Foundry featured quests are dressed up exploit quests, there's quests that use this behavior all over the place.
As for spawning a mob into a deathzone (spellplague cracks surrounded by walls for instance), that's exactly one of the exploits Cryptic forbids.
Hence the fact it MUST be inaccessible to the player and unable to reward XP. It would be nice to hear from Cryptic on the issue as it is really due to their inability to provide us timers and scripting that we have to resort to such things.
Evade is when a mob cannot attack back, it goes into evade mode making them untargetable, therefore undefeatable.
Though I've had no problem with hard guards defeating waves of easy minions.
I think we all know Evade is coming at some point and will totally destroy about half the foundry missions currently published or more. But you are certainly right that this only works up to the point that evade is added at which point the better solution might be to spawn HARD guards, Easy Mobs, despawn both at completion of the mob encounter and spawn fresh for each additional "tick".
Do you crave a good old fashioned dungeon crawl? One where the dungeon tells it's own story? The Dungeon Delves campaign is just for you! Start with my first release: NW-DQF4T7QYH Any cave can lead to adventure!
0
ahkronnemesisMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
I imagine you can also use a very small hidden room with space only for a trap and a mob (or 4 traps and a mob) an make the trap(s) spawn under the mob when going through a trigger.
Not sure how traps vs mobs scale tho.
[Campaign] Into the Heart of Time (NWS-DLSK763NH) by @ahkronnemesis
Chapter I - The Cult of Kairos (NW-DJFINX9KB)
Chapter II - The Halls of Mortality (NW-DOE3ZC671)
Chapter III - Paradox ( Soon )
I imagine you can also use a very small hidden room with space only for a trap and a mob (or 4 traps and a mob) an make the trap(s) spawn under the mob when going through a trigger.
Not sure how traps vs mobs scale tho.
In the Foundry traps vs players don't even scale right. The same trap in 'Live' will do 9 or 10 times the damage it does in the foundry at the higher levels. No I think in the end yospeck and zovya have come up with the most effective methods UNTIL we are given scripting tools to make timers.
Do you crave a good old fashioned dungeon crawl? One where the dungeon tells it's own story? The Dungeon Delves campaign is just for you! Start with my first release: NW-DQF4T7QYH Any cave can lead to adventure!
0
zovyaMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
My hardest guard encounter which is 2 brutes and 3 minions if I remember correctly. They can take down an easy melee of 3 skeletons in 5 to 7 seconds. That's quick enough for anything I need... for now anyway. And that only uses 2 encounter slots.
Comments
- Nymbleshanks
Could you do something similar with some sort of ground AoE damage? So you "cook" the mob and its heal is the timer?
Search @Longshire for 12 Foundry Quests, all are story driven adventures
Story -- Medium/Heavy, Combat -- Light/Medium, Lore -- Medium/Heavy
Above I've set up an alleyway with invisible walls off the main area of the map. The guards I'm using are ranged (Easy) and when the trigger is set a one way patrol (melee) appears and wanders into the "Kill Zone" where the guards can attack him over the lowered invisible wall, but he can't get to them or attack them, so just stand there and gets killed. When he dies the next mob appears and patrols into the kill zone.
The beauty with this is that:
To get advanced you're better of not having a patrol (I was using one just so I could watch them, as this adds unnecessary time to your ticker, instead the mobs can just appear in the kill zone when triggered).
Also, you could have different speed of ticks, when a mob appears have extra guards appear for that tick, then they disappear when that mob is (set of mobs) is killed.
I've put in the height on the y axis for the walls so people dont need to mess around. Just try and get your guards as far away from the kill zone as possible as the melee guys have a ranged melee (que?!).
Massive respect Zovya
Create MOB, patrol into spellplague, when MOB dies, spawn next MOB, rinse, repeat.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
This is a guess, I haven't tested it and with the server down I won't get to till after maintenance but.. won't they just stand at the edge like they do with traps? I mean that was the original exploit that lead to people being banned and the change to the TOS for the Foundry. You can't "modify" the mob AI which would be set to avoid environmental damage. Now if it does work to avoid this you could create the "death zone" and just spawn them in it. They slowly die from the effect and it would be more consistent than a scaling encounter where you still have to worry about the Combat RNG HAMSTER things up.
It's an ingenious work around but it sure would be nice if they just gave us monologue controls, timers, and a bit of scripting so that we didn't need to go through all of this.
NW-DSEGBOHCC & NW-DKSTDEHFF @lunchtimenow
1) Guards would indeed pull aggro.
2) Yospeck's setup above precludes the need as the guards are inaccessible to the mob and both are inaccessible to the player.
Sounds good.
NW-DSEGBOHCC & NW-DKSTDEHFF @lunchtimenow
That would work up until, if and/or when they implement mob evade.
As for spawning a mob into a deathzone (spellplague cracks surrounded by walls for instance), that's exactly one of the exploits Cryptic forbids.
There will always be ways around it, like raised platforms, shooting over a large gap where there's no way they can reach you as these are fundamental mechanics to the game
Evade is when a mob cannot attack back, it goes into evade mode making them untargetable, therefore undefeatable.
Though I've had no problem with hard guards defeating waves of easy minions.
- I tried spawning mobs on traps. That's still fairly slow.
- I tried dropping them from a height. That kind of works. The highest I could get to work was 300. I used the weakest mobs I could find. They took about 80% damage, which is pretty good. I dropped them onto a trap to finish them off.
Neither of these is really fast enough for what I want though.
The Cursed Emerald:
I know it's forbidden as "an exploit" where the PC would gain XP, but if they've "fixed" that exploit by zeroing XP from mobs killed by the environment (as they have mobs killed by guards), then that might simplify things by being able to spawn them directly over a spellplague filled room. Might allow for a bit finer grained, or more consistent timings.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
Hence the fact it MUST be inaccessible to the player and unable to reward XP. It would be nice to hear from Cryptic on the issue as it is really due to their inability to provide us timers and scripting that we have to resort to such things.
I think we all know Evade is coming at some point and will totally destroy about half the foundry missions currently published or more. But you are certainly right that this only works up to the point that evade is added at which point the better solution might be to spawn HARD guards, Easy Mobs, despawn both at completion of the mob encounter and spawn fresh for each additional "tick".
Not sure how traps vs mobs scale tho.
Chapter I - The Cult of Kairos (NW-DJFINX9KB)
Chapter II - The Halls of Mortality (NW-DOE3ZC671)
Chapter III - Paradox ( Soon )
In the Foundry traps vs players don't even scale right. The same trap in 'Live' will do 9 or 10 times the damage it does in the foundry at the higher levels. No I think in the end yospeck and zovya have come up with the most effective methods UNTIL we are given scripting tools to make timers.