Updated Solo Server Package

[djeryv]

I made a series of solo server changes a few years ago, and I still use them today. I recently setup a Windows 7 virtual machine using VM Workstation so I did the quick install and it worked pretty flawlessly. There is always some tweaking needing done if you do your own private login server, but it went well. With that, I had to update my solo server settings to accomodate the new task_activities table (and a few others) so here is my updated stuff in case anyone wants to run a solo server of their own. The Prophetess of Norrath is a new feature that can come in handy.

LINK

This was setup with database version 9125.

This entire package changes an Everquest server to be more solo-friendly. It is meant for servers with very low populations, or servers you play in single player mode.

This does quite a few different things. It will scale monsters back to a level where you can fight them alone, meaning the ones where a group is meant to combat them. Due to this, you should not need any bots to play here. This should then allow you to play a race and class unique to its abilities and not have the cookie-cutter group doing the same tactics. Monsters should not readily help their comrades, and they will have a smaller radius of noticing you. This lets you fight monsters one at a time and avoid getting ganged up on. The spawn times have been increased for those that spawned quickly. This lets you clear out dungeons easier since you will be in the area alone. NOTE: These affect creatures level 20 or over, as this is where the balance shifts toward more group oriented battles.

The Bazaar will also be filled with merchants with tons of wares and unique items. It gives you a place to spend your mountains of gold later on. This is to help you acquire items that better aid playing alone, and also give the Bazaar some life. There will also be spell merchants there that sell unusual spells that are really hard to get. This should exclude things like research spells and spells you get from monsters.

If you use all of the included features, then the starting cities will not have any Plane of Knowledge books. This is to bring back the classic mode of play where you had to begin in your starting city, and travel far across the land to get to other locations. The other books will remain, but in places where you would get to them at a much higher level.

Within the Plane of Knowledge are 2 unique NPCs. One is a barbarian that will freely cast Spirit of Wolf on folks. The other is a witch that will teleport you to almost any zone you want to go. This is another reason that the Plane of Knowledge should not be discovered until a character has adventured for awhile.

The Priests of Discord are replaced with Teachers of Norrath. These teachers will help you spend your skill points on skills you may have learned from your guildmaster. This was added to fix a flaw in the skill distribution system, so although that may be fixed, these teachers are here just in case.

Each city will have a Prophetess of Norrath. If you tell these sages a name of a spell, song, etc, they will try and tell you who in the world sells that scroll and where they are located. Since it queries the database doing this, it can take up to 20 seconds to get a response. They will explain to you that you should wait while they think about your request, to warn players of the delay.

There are some rule settings for item and experience loss on death, along with drop and lore flags being removed. Many items have their prices set or set to a lower amount. This is because of the quests added to the system and because the Bazaar sells some of these items and there was no price set for them originally. Quest rewards would make a character rich very quickly, so these prices were greatly lowered at times. Mounts have had their prices reduced, so one can purchase them without needing a small fortune. The mana and health regenerate faster while resting, so you can get back into the action.

Brother Dremel is in the Bazaar, and he will trade rare items used in crafting, for various items that the witches give for quest rewards. So if you need a rare ingredient, Dremel may have it. He would tell you the exact item he wants in trade and which of the witches gives that item as a reward. This is to help solo characters actually craft items, without needing a high population of players to make the ingredients for you.

The last part, and probably the biggest part, is the quest system included with this. There are about 447 tasks that are available. Each starting city will have a Witch of the Velvet Order nearby. They will give quests to adventurers, and these quests have some purpose/goal in the area the witch is in. So each witch will have unique tasks for each starting city area. They are far enough away from guards, so hostile races can get quests from them as well without having the local guards kill them. The Plane of Knowledge has such a witch as well, and she will give higher level quests that can be anywhere in the world. These quests give no experience points, but they do have various rewards that could help an adventurer. The witch will be clear on the task you need to do, along with the choice of items you can get if you finish the task. Since it uses the newer task system, your progress will be tracked for you. The witches give you plenty to do and you can do these tasks as many times as you want. Each one indicates a recommended level as well.

[jpyou127]

In the README you mention a file "solo_knowledge.sql", but it is not in the google drive files.

Very cool stuff btw!

[djeryv]

Originally Posted by jpyou127

In the README you mention a file "solo_knowledge.sql", but it is not in the google drive files.

Very cool stuff btw!

I fixed the README. It was a typo as everything is in one SQL file.

Thanks for the catch.

[djeryv]

i did a slight update on this today. I was playing yesterday and I forgot I wanted to incorporate links instead of the old fashion [type the word]. So now my included NPCs do that for their offerings. For the Prophetess, she will now search for spells and items and tell you what merchant sells them and what zone they are in. You can click on the links of the search results and inspect the items. She will even explain to you how to do a wildcard search as well, because you may want to find both Cloth Cap and Cloth Cape so you can search for Cloth Cap*.

[djeryv]

I did another update today where there are no longer any SQL delays when you talk to the Prophetess. I should have known to avoid using the views and make a search table with primary keys set. Anyway, the Prophetess will also tell you what spells you can go out and buy for whatever level you ask about for your class.

[djeryv]

I think I will see if the Prophetess can tell of monsters that carry items, like she does with the merchants. I'll mess with that today as it requires more table joins. It is mainly because I don't care for wikis (or using web pages to look up this stuff) and would rather be able to do it in-game. We'll see what I can come up with.

[dagulus2]

In terms of the SQL Data you ave to add to get the Prophetess working, does this only have to be done once or will it need updating if I add merchants or items?

[djeryv]

Originally Posted by dagulus2

In terms of the SQL Data you ave to add to get the Prophetess working, does this only have to be done once or will it need updating if I add merchants or items?

Well, I did have to make tables instead of views because views cannot have primary keys set. When I moved to the table format, and set primary keys, the queries she ran were really quick.

So the SQL would need to be ran each time you add to merchants, but there is a command to drop the table if it exists and recreate it so it is a quick matter...but you would need to remember to run it.

Views would avoid this step, but the Prophetess took about 20 seconds to return results and I would rather it be instant. I think I will setup the Prophetess as a separate package for people to get, in case they don't want the other solo server stuff...of course leaving her in the solo server package as well.

[djeryv]

Well, I failed to get the Prophetess to tell players where items can be looted from. The issue is that if your server is on the low power end, querying through a table with over 600,000 records (the loot table is very big) takes too much time. During this time of the query, the server is pretty much non-responsive until it is done. So although not a big deal with single player environments, adding a few more players will ruin the experience.

I did make an SQL query to create one single table, however, that will allow for the searches I already implemented. And since I made the separate table, searches take a second or less to do. When I queried the database tables, and the joins I needed, it would take 15 or more seconds.

I also learned during this process that MySQL views just aren't very efficient. They took even longer to query than the multiple table joins.

So the Prophetess is still very useful. You can search for items for sale and she will tell you who sells it and what zone they are in. You can do wildcard searches as well. If you tell her a level, she will tell you where you can go buy your spells from for that level. So, for example, if you are a Necromancer...and say "3" to her...she will tell you where you can go buy your level 3 necromancer spells from.

[GlassDeviant]

Originally Posted by djeryv

Well, I did have to make tables instead of views because views cannot have primary keys set. When I moved to the table format, and set primary keys, the queries she ran were really quick.

So the SQL would need to be ran each time you add to merchants, but there is a command to drop the table if it exists and recreate it so it is a quick matter...but you would need to remember to run it.

Here's a thought. Would it be possible to add the ability to say to her something like, "have you met any new merchants?", and have her do a live table drop and rebuild while in the server playing? With some sort of limit on how often the drop/rebuild could happen, like...no more than once per hour or only once per server restart.

Also, when I want to use HeidiSQL to access the EQ tables to mess with stuff, or add the stuff from your EQEmuSoloSettings.zip archive, do I start the EQ server first? And should I start it without the login server via t_start_server.bat, as opposed to t_start_server_with_login_server.bat?

[djeryv]

If a query cannot run super-quick, then players will notice when the server stops responding. So your idea would cause that temporary freeze as tables are dropped and rebuilt. My final solution works fine on my system so I will leave it as is.

You should have your server off before adding this package.

[John C]

djeryv -
I might have an older version as I downloaded it a few days ago. Great work. Some amazing ideas in here. I did find two minor typos though that I wanted to ensure you are aware of...

Line 7927...

LOCK TABLES `spawn2` WRITE;
INSERT INTO spawn2 (spawngroupID, zone, x, y, z, respawntime) VALUES
('800088', 'poknowledge', '386.227', '67.6062', '-107.834', '300'),
UNLOCK TABLES;

Note the comma at the end of the insert statement. Should be a semicolon.

Line 9380...

LOCK TABLES `spawn2` WRITE;
INSERT INTO spawn2 (spawngroupID, zone, x, y, z, respawntime) VALUES
('800016', 'poknowledge', '858.639', '18.5724', '67.127', '300');
('800016', 'akanon', '60.8742', '602.831', '-22.373', '300'),
('800016', 'cabwest', '546.094', '-59.7544', '3.752', '300'),

Note the semicolon at the end of the first insert values. Should be a comma.

Thanks again.

[djeryv]

Fixed. Thanks for the catch.

What happened was I swapped the 2 sisters around with a cut and paste. I wanted the sage to be in the library and the teleporting witch out in the open more.

[ward3]

Awesome. I have been having the itch to startup another personal server. This might tip the scales for me to mess with.

[Element D]

Just setup a server for my wife and I to play on, and I saw this post. It sounds perfect as we will be the only two on the server.

That being said, my server is up and running and I don't want to mess it up. When you say "Source the following SQL file into your database" is there a command to do so, or a guide here explaining how to do this type of thing?