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.