What do the #'s mean in mob names?
 

I noticed a lot of mobs have # before their name in the npc_types table but I don't really know what it means. I thought perhaps it denoted a boss mob, but then I noticed non-boss type mobs in there as well.

I don't believe anyone is really sure what they are there for. It is just something copied over from live when they parsed. Certain npcs showed up with them, and the designers kept it, incase they ever figured out what it was intended for, for easy reference to whatever coding they might need for it.

When you are sorting npc's in a zone, the # helps to identify mobs you're working with and puts them up top the list. also, the # is invisible, so if you're doing perl quest for a specific npc that has more with his name in the zone, you can specify one like that (Perl still sees the character). Certain other characters work as well also.
If you'll notice, the special mobs or named ones usually are the ones that start with #.

I think you're correct, bufferofnewbies. The # came over from live logs. What they mean for Sony I have no clue. They could be used to distinguish two similar mobs, like you said Angelox, but I am certain Sony uses their numeric IDs to reference them. Using names in quests instead of ID is a EQEmu thing, to make it much easier to write quests due to human readability.

seems on live, velious+ era's is to denote a special mob.. either named or something else..

Actually, I've noticed that mobs with a # in the name do not respawn until everyone leaves the zone - regardless of the spawn timer.

I set the goblin lord in runnyeye to a 3 minute spawn then went down and killed him. 15 minutes later, still no spawn. zoned out and came back, there he was. Killed him again and immediately zoned/came back and he spawned three minutes after death.

Now, there might be something else causing this and its pure coincidence...

Static or Dynamic zone?

Both I think.

I did have it static but when the mobs wouldn't respawn I changed it to dynamic - same result.

Oh and I checked the spawnlimit value - it was zero same as the other mobs that did respawn.

Another thing to review after your kill is the field in spawn2: timeleft. I believe that is a millisecond-til-respawn counter. It should match to the amount of time you expect your mob to respawn... but I've seen some problems here while working out the spawnevents stuff. Unexpected results sometimes, which could all boil down to my lack of understanding.

Welcome to the club! I usually just "blunder" around for hours, until something works.

Lol, methree!

I believe that the timeleft variable is maintained by the server itself. When creating SpawnGroups you should not have to set this variable.
You can read more about this table at:

http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka...DBSchemaspawn2

You are correct, it is maintained by the server. I was telling him to just review it, see what it's set to. Also, if you use PEQEditor (or any table editor) you can in fact manually manipulate this value to speed things up. I don't like waiting 15 million milliseconds for Naggy to repop. :)

# in a mob name means there can be only one of that mob up at a time.

For example: A named mob could spawn in multiple places if hes part of multiple spawn groups, however if he has a # in his name, if he spawns at one of those places he can't spawn at any of the others until he is killed.

You mean for Live? because I have seen named mob #spawns duped in zones, and have resorted to other methods for avoiding this.



In my own defense, I never asked what # was for, because I always thought the answer was so obvious - and I didn't know, because I didn't look for it.
I really thought one of the Devs made/used it at one time.
Anyway's, regardless the real use for it, I've found many more.