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Old 06-20-2006, 01:47 AM
TekNoir
Fire Beetle
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 3
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My account on Live is no longer active so I cannot possibly test any of this, but from memory as a necro...

When I would snare and then FD, mobs with a static spawn point would linger a moment (a predictable amount of time according to the specific mob involved) and then return. Occasionally there are specific mobs that want to "hold hands" for a little (or a lot) longer before they give up.

A relevant instance of this, from memory, was hunting the guards in Felwithe, specifically the first split. Snare one (with Dooming Darkness). Both guards always came. FD in the entrance hall once they were nearly on top of you. They both linger a moment and then they both turn to leave, but one of them moves far faster then the other. (Note: Occasionally the snared mob would stay just a little longer than the unsnared mob before attempting to return to spawn.) This enabled one to be back at spawn before the other ever reaches halfway back. Stand. Kill the snared one who immediately comes back for you and you've got your mobs split.

Having said all of that, I have also had instances where static spawn mobs still taking damage would refuse to go back at all. They wouldn't attack me, but they'd just stand there for quite some time after their buddies had all gone back home. They would usually return to spawn after my snare ran out. I believe (and have absolutely no facts to back this hypothesis up) that this phenomenon is related to the fact that our snares are also DOTs and that they stick around because of the damage and not because of the snare itself. Or maybe a combination of the two? But this was a rare occurrence on static spawned mobs. Nearly all of them after a period of time give up and go back home.

The same cannot be said for "roaming" mobs. Don't confuse this with "patrolling" mobs. Roaming mobs nearly always stayed right on top of me after a snare followed by a FD. This was useful for soloing in places like the Grey where most of the mobs around the perimeter of the zone roam around. I could snare one and it (usually a few) would come running. I could FD and whichever mob I had snared would stay put while after a few moments its friends would begin to roam around again. The bad thing is that the roaming mobs don't like to forget you as easily as patrolling or static spawned mobs, so I usually had to wait until my snare had worn off to stand back up and even then the mob's friends would sometimes come back to haunt me, seemingly from clear across the zone even!

Patrolling mobs would sometimes stay with me, but most often not and they tended to be a little slower than the other types of mobs about returning to their patrol when snared. They behaved much like statically spawned mobs.

From memory, there were also entire zones (or segments of a zone) that seemed to behave just a little different from what I would expect. Mobs that took significantly longer to forget about me or mobs that liked to cuddle longer than what I would expect. There are places where "mob mentality" rules and no matter what you do, you're coming home with multiples. It was all very complex and involved character level, pathing in that location, terrain (or line-of-sight), mob assist, and so on and so forth. There have been a million guides written up about the nuances of leveling whichever character in this or that particular place.

Anyhow. This is all from memory and having not played in a couple years that memory could be a little rusty. It will nonetheless give those who still have live accounts something more substantial to test on, rather than testing on a few mobs in very specific (unique) locations and calling it the night.
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