Post LDoN Zone info here

[Angelox]

I don't have much memory on how LDoN zones (once you're in), work. I never really played there that much.
I know that the first player in decided what levels the mobs would be (according to PC Level). What I'm not sure of are things like;
Does the same mob spawn (in the same dungeon) and have an adjusted level according to your group? or is it a different mob?
Do all drops change, or just the named?
How many level-groups of NPCs are there in a dungeon?
Any info you can remember on this or anything else you think important, would be helpful for me, and save much time researching.

[WildcardX]

Here are the facts I remember:

* only a single group of 6 players can enter any ldon zone instance.

* Once the group leader requests and accepts an ldon mission, a timer begins and they have x amount of time to enter the ldon zone instance or they need to go back and request a new ldon mission.

* Once a group enters a ldon zone instance, they have x amount of time to complete the mission goals before they are forcibly zoned out of the instance and placed at the zone instance entrance and the zone instance is destroyed.

* the minimum level to enter an ldon mission was level 19. You could only have members in your group that were in the same level range where all members of the group could earn exp. ldon requires a minimum of 3 players to create a zone instance. (although I can tell you right now I am going to code a rule to override this requirement).

* after a group completes their mission goals, they have x amount of time added they can remain in the zone until the instance is destroyed and they are forcibly ejected.

* if you camp out in the zone instance and log in AFTER the zone instance is destroyed, you will enter the world at the zone instance entrance.

[sfisque]

they must have changed some of that stuff.

from what i remember (this goes back to about 1 year after ldon went live, when i retired from eq).

if you camped out, and came back in after the timer expired, you were placed into a "faked" instance. no mobs, no traps, no chests, no nothing.

similar if you died and logged out or went LD. you were placed into a "faked" instance where you could run up and loot your body, but there were no chests, mobs, traps, or anything. just an empty instance with your corpse.

also, if the timer expired, it was extended by 30min and you were able to complete the quest for a reduced bounty (it was usually something like 20-30% of the points you got if you succeeded).

for "kill the boss" or "rescue the friend" quests, the target mob wasn't spawned until about 60% of the zone was cleared. this prevented an exploit early on where people would invis/pacify/feign-flop upto the boss and gank them or avoid wrong turns on the rescue mission.

hope this helps.

== sfisque

[Angelox]

How about the NPC's , what changes with the higher level groups?
Example; a level 20 spider becomes a level 40 spider? What drops change?

[RangerDown]

LDoN didn't make use of true instancing as we know it in other games and later expansions of EQ. What most unaware players saw as an "instance" of their LDoN dungeon was actually a different zone -- each LDoN adventure zone had 10 clones of it. Example: Mistmore Catacombs had zone ID's "mmca" thru "mmcj". The LDoN system mimicked instancing by keeping up with which zones were allocated for active adventures at any given moment.

As an example, an adventure party might be getting a level 45 spawn in mmcd while you're getting a level 55 spawn in mmca. Nobody else's adventure party will be able to enter mmca while your adventure is active (barring any bugs).

similar if you died and logged out or went LD. you were placed into a "faked" instance where you could run up and loot your body, but there were no chests, mobs, traps, or anything. just an empty instance with your corpse.

I'm not sure that I ever LD'd long enough to stay offline past my adventure's expiration, but if it put you back inside the dungeon as opposed to outside near the entrance, that would be a serious bug and I'm certain not what SOE intended. If you found yourself inside the dungeon, most likely you were in the same zone that was used for your adventure, and were fortunate that the zone was idle at that time. The zone could have just as easily been reallocated to another adventure party and you log into a full spawn :o

What the game was supposed to do (and always did for me) was that if you died and left a corpse that you didn't loot, after the adventure was done and you were all ejected from the dungeon, your corpse would be moved out of the dungeon and placed near the dungeon's entrance in the outside zone. This was the first time EQ saw the ability to move a corpse across zones... and shortly thereafter Shadowrest was born.

[WildcardX]

So not so really zone instancing, just a subsystem to manage entry to specific zones based upon dynamic conditions. That doesn't sound so bad

The other thing I seem to recall was the importance of the average level in your adventure party. I cant remember all the "tiers" but there was a way to calculate how many ldon points you were going to get based on the average level of the group.. or was it that the average level of the group determined the levels of the mobs the zone loaded for you.. actually, i think that was what the average level of the group determined...

There was another calculation i recall we had figured out as players.. something along the lines of whoever was the highest level in the group got slightly more ldon points than the rest of us.. wish I could recall these numbers... I just vaguely remember thinking of them.

[unknownhost]

seeing conflicting info on how the level range is figured.

i can assure everyone wihout doubt that right now on live (and as far back as two years ago for SURE) ldons calculate dungeon npc levels based on average group level definately NOT the first person to zone in. i routinely 4 boxed ldons very often on live progression server (as of two months ago my characters are 10th in MM catacombs rankings & somthing like 80th overall rankings). there DID seem to be "tiers" you would hit based on that average level however. like for prime example once all of my characters broke lvl60 the mobs took a huge jump in difficulty and it became extremely difficult to three box before the timer expired and then ONLY collection missions were even remotely doable. It was when i first discovered this that i added my fourth box to compensate. ALSO! you may enter a LDON as long as your group is with in 10 levels of each other, highest to lowest. as my fourth box came closer and closer to my other characters levels i watched the npcs very slowly get stronger, then as soon as that fourth box broke 60 BOOM the npc's hit that next "tier" and levels jumped noticably again. however 4 boxing these was very repetative and LDONs at this point typically took 30mins to complete collection missions. again, the other mission types all take significantly longer and while "possibly doable" are definately more targeted for multiple players.

common mobs drop almost nothing. still find newbie items like spider silk, mummy bandages etc on many of them. (odd note things like spider silk barely exist on live now as the tradeskills have been completely redone and the items required drop off ANY mob in the game now by level. ( varying quality pelts,ores,etc). only about 25-50% of the mobs in MMcats even dropped coinage. all common mobs seemed to have a chance to drop "plat items". which were usless weird little items (like bloody mummy wrappings, idols, bone segments,etc,etc weirdness) that often sold for 10-20plat.

Named mobs were rare, i never cleared the zones but even just hacking through i would finda named about 1 out of 3 dungeons. i strongly suspect had i cleared the entire dungeon there would have been at least one named mob in every dungeon.

many times i would get multiples of the same items per level range even off completely different named mobs.

got good bit more LDON knowledge but i gotta get back to work before somone releazies im gone.

[John Adams]

Thank you, trevius. Your posts are always insightful. Not to dwell on anything, but the "lack of acknowledgement" does not mean the devs pick up and run with anything - not at all. I knew they were busy with other things, or more accurately back a year ago, not interested in anything EQEmu really. So I took it upon myself to try and figure things out. When WildcardX posted that it's almost a done deal, there was not a word about the months of my life I spent sorting through that shit. THAT is what pissed me off. Goes for about a dozen other things I have contributed to the emulator over the years that never got even an honorable mention. If it weren't for players/admins expressing their gratitude, it would be for naught. =)

Now, to address roadblocks - I think I more than clearly addressed all issues with the current code by Cofruben in the post I linked. From the time that code was first implemented (and I believe working then), the player structs changed over time and eventually one value "adventure_id" went missing. that stops the show immediately... as you cannot even start having a conversation if you do not have reference to this ID. I've tried hacking it to work, but never figured it out (I am DB, not C++). KLS gave me a good direction to try by using the extended_profile to store the value, which I also could not get to work due to a lack of experience. I'd come here asking questions, and aside from KLS, got nothing.

The next issue was of course the lack of actual adventure information in the tables, which I went out and built myself. But since someone else has this all under control, I figured my info was not necessary. So if you want to see the blockage, start in client.cpp, "Client::SendAdventureRequest()", and follow the GetAdventureID() to nowhere. That's the roadblock.

Had I known as much about C++ and these emulators then as I do now, I probably could have rewritten the entire thing and tossed the old code, rather than try to fix what was already there.