Drops in Tier 1 and 2

[Firecaller]

I've been kiting the worgs for faction quests in Loping Plains and I've not seen any tradeskill drops from them yet. They are flagged as animals (because as a druid I can charm them), so I would suppose they could drop animal pelts.

The reason this puzzles me is that I can take my alt mage over to dragonscale and maul panthers, snakes, and wolves and get an okay smattering of superb/excellent hides etc...

The worgs are higher level so I would at least expect them to drop something tradeskill related.

Is there some issue with the fact that a ton of mobs in Loping Plains drop the Silver-Plated Gizmatic Modulator for the "Modulation!" quest that is supposed to update in the Mechamatic Guardian?

Not ranting about it, just wondering if I am missing something or if others are pondering the same thing.

[Bobaten]

Ngreth mentioned in a different thread that it's not animals in general that drop animal pelts, just the traditional 3 (bear, cat, wolf).

[Ngreth Thergn]

yup. So bears in loping plains *should* drop pelts... They may not, but they should.

[Aldier]

I thought worgs were dog like creatures that the orcs had as pets.

[Unapuma]

Worg may look like a dog on steroid but they are not cat, bear, or wolf in general so they don't drop pelt.

[Aldier]

dog =! wolf in general?

[Aaneras]

Worg may look like a dog on steroid but they are not cat, bear, or wolf in general so they don't drop pelt.

This is a silly distinction. Mammoths and worgs should drop pelts. I'd go for "furry things yield pelts and skins" over "arbitrary classes of things yield pelts and skins", especially given the limited suite of high level animals.

[cibby]

before patch I got a superb marrow off the bears in loping plains....was rare but well worth it.

Thats lvl 75 drop and so I think it is appropriate.

[Aldier]

No one is disagreeing that the bears should drop them in the loping plains. And superb marrow sounds like the appropriate drop. The question is why do the worgs (dog/wolf like creatures) drop nothing.

One possibility is the number of worgs in the game could be too many and would give leather a much larger number of mobs capable of dropping a marrow compared to spiders for fluids or golems for loams.

[Ngreth Thergn]

This is a silly distinction. Mammoths and worgs should drop pelts. I'd go for "furry things yield pelts and skins" over "arbitrary classes of things yield pelts and skins", especially given the limited suite of high level animals.

currently...

we do not have a way for me to define "pelt bearing animals" except by including every possible race.

at the same time, including every possible race gets cumbersome not only for maintenance but for the system itself, it makes larger and larger logic statements for it to have to go through every time an NPC spawns, putting more load on the server.

So I compromise with only including a select set of races that fit the classic pelt bearing races: wolf, cat and bear. That still ended up being about 18 races, and this a 72 comparison conditional statement that has to be done everytime an NPC spawns. (if greater than or equal to level x and less than or equal to level y and race aaa and (a condition I forget here at home) or if greater than or equal to level x and less than or equal to level y and race bbb and (a condition I forget here at home) ... etc for every race...) There are 3 bear races, 5 wolf races, and I think 10 cat races... (those numbers may not be exact... I am trying to remember a large set of data here at home...)

I would like to add more, but current limitations limit me. I do not want the comparison statements getting way out of hand.

[Ngreth Thergn]

And worgs are a separate race... I chose not to include them for the simple size matter.

[KyrosKrane]

Sounds like that IF statement could use a little optimization. Assuming the level ranges are constant across races, you could do something like:

if (level < x and level > y and some_other_condition) and (race=wolf1 or race=wolf2 or... or race=cat3 ... or race=bear ...) then ...

Depending on your parsing/compiling engine, that would likely speed up the execution time significantly and reduce the server load to boot.

[Unapuma]

You're talking of changing a code that may depend on an 8 year old spaghetti core that is EQ. It may not be as easy to optimize some things without breaking old quests, existing drop rules, etc.

If recoding EQ was easy, we'd have 20 slot bags long ago

[KyrosKrane]

Possibly, but I got the impression that these world-drops were new scripts that ran each time a mob was about to pop. To me, that suggests they use some of the newer tools, not the old spaghetti code. Though of course, not having seen EQ's code, there's not much I can say with any sort of authority.

[Aldier]

What would have been the harm in having "animals" drop the pelts? Are there many non-pelt bearing animals in the game?

I guess some snakes and birds, but can't think of many others.