Monster aggresion, teleport spell and you!

[Excretious]

Hi again, i remember back in the day, one tactic i would use for griefing/luring was if you teleported within site of a group of monsters that were not aggroed on anyone yet, they would all instantly attack/follow you. That doesnt work here though. Was this pre or post UOR?

[Kaivan]

Do we have any information supporting the existence of this behavior?

[Excretious]

I can only speak from experience. I can remember using this trick to manipulate spawn around. Mostly used in Hyloth, i would tele all over the place to get all that spawn around the balron on me and then lure it to the west stair case leading down to the bottom floor. Then i would run back to the balron and lure him to that room to the south that would spawn two daemons and provoke him onto them.

I would also use the tele trick to get everything in the lichlord room onto me (on greatlakes there were two silver serps, 3 liches and a lich lord) and drag them up into the main room where all the newbies would be fighting liches. This was back when we all had dial up and i remember how funny it would be watching ppl on foot trying to out run the silver serps lol

[Kaivan]

Without any concrete information, we cannot make any change to the behavior of creatures.

[RoadKill]

At one point in time, if you "showed up" (came out of hiding, recalled in, logged in, gated in, etc) next to any spell casting monster, it wouldn't cast a single spell on you until you either auto-swung back, or double-click (attacked) it. I'm pretty sure this was pre-T2A, as I remember doing it with liches in Shame, before they were replaced by Air elementals.

[Populus]

At one point in time, if you "showed up" (came out of hiding, recalled in, logged in, gated in, etc) next to any spell casting monster, it wouldn't cast a single spell on you until you either auto-swung back, or double-click (attacked) it. I'm pretty sure this was pre-T2A, as I remember doing it with liches in Shame, before they were replaced by Air elementals.

I think we have this.

[Freight Elevator]

If we do, fire breath and melee do not count. I recalled into Destard last night and was redlined before it even loaded. I couldn't even tell you if any spells were casted yet, tbh.

[nightshark]

the behaviour roadkill mentioned is how it works here. firebreath doesn't count though, drags/drakes/etc will still firebreath you regardless.

i think it takes 2 minutes (and full health) for a monster to reset to "non aggressive" status regarding spellcasting, during that time it will cast on anyone it agros.

[Excretious]

I actually brought this up in IRC and was told that stuff with monster aggro is messed up. What Roadkill said is exactly how it was in '99.

But that is NOT how it is here.... try it, recall into lich lord room hidden... Come out of hide and instantly you will get whacked with spells. So not only is the spellcasting not right, on osi, monsters didnt insta aggro on you either. There is supposed to be a random 10 second or so timer from the time you are within sight of a monster, to when he actually aggros on to you.

I kinda just laugh at it now because you cant even come out of hide to provoke without taking some kind of spell damage no matter how fast you are!

I also can confirm that this also happens with balrons, the second i came within sight of one, it insta aggroed and also instantly dropped spells on me.


I can recount a story that i actually posted on UO stratics with screen shots and everything. There was this guy in full plate in the covetous wrong dungeon with like 4 or five liches surrounding him and he was like 'oh yea, i got this' he had a silver vanq mace of some sort which i wanted. None of the liches were casting on him EXCEPT the one he was attacking. I casted a spell like mass curse or something and once all of them got hit, they all started dumping on him and he was insta-dead.

That is the way i remember it and i believe that is what roadkill was explaining above.

[Kaivan]

Regarding monster aggression and spellcasting, we currently have it set up so that creatures will not start casting unless they are actively attacked or have damage done to them. Also, if a creature begins casting on one player and loses that target and acquires a new target, the creature will continue casting if they acquire their new target in a short period of time. This is because the creature still has someone on its list of players that attacked it. Beyond that, we currently have it set up so that when an aggressive creature spawns, it takes a few moments before it attacks a player. Finally, it should be noted that much of this behavior is only attributed to non fire-breathing creatures. Fire breathers have chaotic aggression that allows them to attack anyone who as stepped within a certain range of their character.

This information was tested just a few moments ago on UOSA, and lines up as best as is possible with demo information without rewriting the entire monster AI scripts.

[Halbu]

That's why destard is so awesome, thanks for posting Kaivan.

[Ulfrigg]

Regarding Monster aggro with spells, easy to try it in the LL room.
Right now if you attack one of them, then the other will start casting spells about 6 or 7 seconds later even if you havent targeted or attacked it.

[Kaivan]

The issue probably isn't related to spellcasters just randomly deciding to cast on you. It's likely related to our problematic implementation which causes creatures to re-attack you, even after they've already attacked you. This effectively causes an auto-defend which can cause them to start casting on you if you hit them. Also, things like reactive armor will trigger damage on the creature, causing it to begin casting spells. Admittedly, our current AI is pretty buggy and has lots of problems with it. Derrick has told me that it really needs to be rewritten from the ground up to get it to behave properly.

[Ulfrigg]

Its not reactive armor or anthing since i stand on the ledge fiering arrows. And i never use reactive armor.

[Ulfrigg]

Oh a side note but how come we cant item id on blessed cloth anymore? its not accurate to not be able to do it!