Exploit in experience gain ??

[GRUMPY]

Just curious if this is intentional in current development. I was using source code that was available from gitpull this month (Jan 13th)

I was doing some experience testing with a level 1 halfling in misty. I noticed that if I get the mob below 50%, then run for the guards
and let the guards kill the mob, not only do I get full experience for the kill, but can also loot the mob. I tried this out on several mobs.

I updated the source code from git last night (jan 25) and recompiled, but still getting same behavior. I personally don't have a preference
for that, as it creates an exploit for experience gain.

[cannon]

From what I remember is you only got the experience and loot if you get the last hit and have over 50% of the damage inflicted.

[GRUMPY]

Originally Posted by cannon

From what I remember is you only got the experience and loot if you get the last hit and have over 50% of the damage inflicted.

Back when I played on live (2004), that applied to player/player dps balance, but never did I ever get experience or loot from a guard kill,
no matter how much damage I did to the mob. But in this case, I stopped attacking and run past the guards and wait.
"Time to die, a large bat" ....no experience, no corpse, no loot.
If this was normal all the way through EQ's existance, nobody would have ever needed to actually drop a mob, just get it below 50% and
stand back and let the guards do the rest.

[cannon]

I remember doing something similar to this in North Karana on live, run the griffons to the guards at the tower the griffon kills the guard and the griffon was left at 10 pct, you finish of the griffon and get full exp plus loot.

[GRUMPY]

Originally Posted by cannon

I remember doing something similar to this in North Karana on live, run the griffons to the guards at the tower the griffon kills the guard and the griffon was left at 10 pct, you finish of the griffon and get full exp plus loot.

Funny you mention that strategy. Not long ago, I increased the stats and dmg on those same guards in karana, so that can't happen

[cannon]

Ok from what I see on my server, If I get the most damage on a mob then I get the exp for the mob if i kill or guard kills. Say mob has 100 hp and i do 51 pts of damage and the guard finishes it off with 49 damage, i get the exp. if the mob has 100 hp and i do 51 damage and the guard finishes it off with a 100 damage hit then he gets the kill. just from what i am observing. not sure if this the way it is.

[GRUMPY]

I am not sure if that is intentional in the code, but I think of it as a "too easy" exploit for power leveling a toon.

[cannon]

Originally Posted by GRUMPY

I am not sure if that is intentional in the code, but I think of it as a "too easy" exploit for power leveling a toon.

I agree, I think if a guard gets involved the mob should be a wash.

[Maze_EQ]

We exploited this seriously hard on p99 lolol.

Bard AOE everything to 40% and just have guards picking them off.

Was funny to watch.

[Apocal]

Anyone figure out a fix for this? Looking into a resolution.

[Shin Noir]

If you're pulling from source and building your own,
your answer is inside zone/attack.cpp NPC:eath() function, you'll see experience giving is based on the function hate_list.GetDamageTopOnHateList()
At a glance, it appears who gets credit is based on whoever does "top" damage, this is determined by the minimum of >50% of damage. It determines it with raid and grouping in mind. If you want to change this behavior, you'll need to edit either the NPC:eath logic when it sets the killer *mob from damagetop, or change the GetDamageTopOnHateList function to return whatever whimsical determination you want to customize this to.

It's not really a fix or exploit, since this has been the behavior since ages. I recall a similar behavior on live at one point or another, who knows what it does now or what it did back during DoN. So coding it would require someone to determine what's "right" vs what it is now. So there's the areas to edit above, and you can change it to whatever you like.

As an example though, if you want to code in cannon's "have to be last hit + >50 dmg" logic, you can add after the line

Mob* killer = GetHateDamageTop(this);

Something like this

Mob* killer = GetHateDamageTop(this);
if (killer && killer_mob && killer->GetID() != killer_mob->GetID() && killer_mob->IsNPC()) killer = killer_mob;

This way, if the last hitter was an npc, and the top damage mob is not them, then the killer is now whoever last hit (aka an npc), meaning you would lose your exp/loot rights in cannon's logic not being matched.

[Apocal]

Great post, thank you Shin. Coding it in now.

To start I'm working on creating a custom function in hate_list that will be called by attack.cpp around the NPC:eath function.

Though the above with a check for being a pet might work by itself.