Are newbie monsters supposed to have kick?
 

I've been tweaking mobs to make it so my nekked low level character actually has a chance against the newbie area mobs. The default setup has the mobs much tougher than I remember from live. Way more hitpoints and they seem to hit more often and do more damage.

Anyway, I toned down their HPs and AC along with str, dex, and agi. This helped but by the time I got them to where I wasn't losing 3:4 times, they seemed to die easier than live and yet still do more damage.

After a while noticed that it wasn't the normal attacks that were doing the damage to my character, it was the kicking. I don't remember decayed skellies and wasps having kick in their arsenal!

Now, its been a long time since I played EQ so perhaps my memory is wrong - but should the lower level mobs have kick? And should a wasp ever have kick at all?

I was going to report this as a bug, but then I thought I should ask first since its been so long since I played live - I just might be remembering it wrong.

I believe it is a bug, to fix it on my server I changed all my newbie mobs to the Class Bard and gave them no spell list. Bard mobs wont kick but they still fight back.

Ahha!

Yes, fighter class gets kick at level one. This is probably not so much a bug as much as simply the wrong class chosen for the newbie mobs.


That'll be easy to fix. I figure I'll just do something like

UPDATE npc_types n SET n.class=8 WHERE n.class=1 AND n.level < 8;

Players should be able to handle mobs that kick by level 8 I think.

You know, funny memory, getting kicked by a warrior moss snake... Surreal.

Yes, that will work as well



simlified this sql

UPDATE npc_types SET class=8 WHERE class=1 AND level < 8;


GeorgeS

Yep, changing the newbie mobs to bard instead of warrior did the trick! This was without changing mob stats at all (I had just restored a "fresh" peq database).

I also quickly discovered that spiderlings have poison...

UPDATE npc_types SET spell_list_id=0 WHERE spell_list_id=44 AND level < 5;

Both my Barb war and the WE ranger are now rockin' their newbie zones by level 3 with just rusty weapons and a couple bits of cloth armour.

Thanks for the tips!

P.S. We should start a tips for newbie zones thread in the database forum just for those folks that don't want to start everyone twinked up the wazoo.

Yep, any warrior monster (including most newbie snakes) can kick.

If you pay attention to those cute little messages that flash by while you're loading in between connecting to world and getting character select, sometimes one of those messages is "Teaching snakes to kick..."
that little blurb came from everyone on eqlive joking about kicking snakes.

For some reason, I just thought snakes kicking was the funniest damn thing I'd ever seen in EQ, next to bards dying.

Hmmm, well then, perhaps kick is too deadly? It seems kick hits much harder and much more often than the regular melee attacks.

Oh well, I'll leave the newbie mobs as bards for now, it works pretty good.

I'm looking to put in some further changes to special attacks that should address most of the issues here, including a rule that lets server ops set at what level monsters can first kick/bash.

Shouldn't the NPCs just follow the same skills rules as player characters? If Warriors cannot kick until levl 6, neither should level 5 or lower NPCs? Wouldn't that be easier?

Mobs typically are able to bend the rules, you know this =P

But yeah I have the default set to 6.

This is true. :) I don't remember ever being kicked to death when I was a noob, either. But if the option's there, cool.