Let's talk about Cazel (classic accuracy)

[Byrjun]

Cazel has never quite felt right to me on P99.

As a frequent alt roller in my youth I spent a lot of time in the Oasis of Marr. It was my favorite leveling zone back in the day. When I outleveled Oasis I'd usually make a new character since I didn't really know where to go next.

I never remember Cazel being nearly as dangerous as he is on P99.

My memory is that you would never really see Cazel unless you either actively went looking for him, or he was being trained around.

I remember Cazel mostly hanging out west / northwest of the docks, which is the one part of the zone where people normally don't camp / hunt mobs.

On P99 Cazel will frequently path right over the docks, and I just don't remember this ever happening on live. The docks are also just more dangerous than I remember in general (there's a zombie that wanders right up to the docks on P99 that I don't remember from live either).

I'm not bug reporting this because I'm going purely from memory and I have no evidence. I was just wondering if anyone else agrees that the spawns and pathing are a bit off in Oasis.

[Ooloo]

I also don't remember cazel pathing right along the docks like that, but like you I'm just going by memory.

I think in general, the locations\pathing of wandering mobs in outdoor zones on p99 was largely just kind of decided from scratch by the devs, because there was likely not specific information available from the original game about those type of spawns. Dungeons are easier to find info on exactly where the spawns should be, especially static spawns that don't roam. But with outdoor roamers I doubt that data was ever documented anywhere from the original game back in 1999.

Like I definitely don't remember there being a hill giant spawn in east karana that always spawns an HG in the same spot every time. I remember there being occasional HG's in east karana, but much more randomized.

[Swish]

Didn't they deep dive EQ Mac before it got shut down for infos? (granted it was PoP era and things might have been changed in classic zones by then)

[arc]

I also hung around Oasis alot in classic, and never saw him path within aggro range of the docks.

He wandered around the dunes in this area:

https://i.imgur.com/ayXvZHd.jpg

[Swish]

If you've got evidence using old sites (Wayback machine/archive.org) and comments and can submit it they might adjust him.

Similarly I don't remember Cazel killing people at the dock, and actually don't really remember seeing him that often at all. Yet on P99 he always around.

[Solist]

Didn't they deep dive EQ Mac before it got shut down for infos? (granted it was PoP era and things might have been changed in classic zones by then)

I think we vastly overestimate the competency of any mac data gathering. It simply did not happen, as evidenced by some of the really weird pathers on Al Kabor, and some of their stranger mechanics specifically hate and proc related. But they didn't recreate the beneficial hate on instaclicks either.

An incredible resource and almost a perfect server. We destroyed it with p99 toxicity :(

[Swish]

If P99 shuts down you know where a lot of people are going lol

[Zwieback]

It has to do with devs hating noobs.

[Keebz]

Meanwhile, I remember Lockjaw being an absolute menace back in the day, and I've almost never seen him here.

[Ooloo]

He's sharing a spawn with a sand giant, who also paths directly down to the dock, stands there for a while and then wanders back out. I remember on live it was a major fauxpa to train an SG anywhere near the docks or the shore in general, which wouldn't make sense if an SG was constantly roaming down there on it's own anyway.

This is kind of a unique problem with p99; sometimes there are things that essentially everyone identifies as being wrong, possibly even the devs, but because there's no specific information available about how it was any change they might make now would itself be arbitrary and just guesswork, so it's left as is.

[arc]

let's check alla!

love this lil gem
7 November 2000:
Me is a 16 barsher from da ogres... Me was huntin da swimming lizzies when suddenly SQUISH! I go splat in 2 seconds... He likes da water, and won't run from da docks like the udder big scaries.

He gonna taste my axe when i gets big and strong!

Stinkyfeet
ogre barsher of 16 battles, Da Rathe

7 November 2000:
Oh look- cazel. He is going to squash me for the 5th time. How nice. I'll lose a lvl and go back to 13. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

12th December 2000:
Was medding on the docks and Cazel came up on my blind side and double-attacked for 220 hit points a piece, needless to say my poor 16th druid was annihilated in an instant. Never have seen this fella attacked on Morell-Thule, and I have been hanging around the zone for a while now. His spawn seems to be pretty rapid on Morell-Thule, I will see him3 out of 5 times in the zone, everyone filling the text screen with his LOC.

3 March 2001:
Here's my experience with this brute. I am a 46 wizzie now. I am passing through Oasis looking for a SG to mug when I see this guy stomping on newbies by the dozen(exageration but sounds good) down close to the dock. Being the nice guy that I am, I tried to snare him to give them a better chance to get away. RESISTED!!!...well now it's Jbooties don't fail me now as he comes after me and i run like the girlie man I am for the zone. I took a lot of falling damage, but was otherwise unhurt. I am feeling good about myself then some lil 'troll' (don't mean to offend those of the trill race) starts sending me tels cussing me for training him on them at the docks. I think to myself "Sheesh you just can't do anything right in this game." I basically tried to explain what happened and if he had a problem with it to go bug a GM and leave me alone.

27 December 2001:
this guy spawned on me and another guy when we were kiling specs for fun hes a 60 shammy w/ epic and i was a 56 mage and we were able to kill him one we got a druid to snare him so hes not to bad but he does have some mad regen

19 July 2002:
Dont know where this site got its info from on Cazel, but i've camped Cazel for 3 days straight, only logged for when the server came down. It would seem that his spawn is a random timer of more than 24 hours. Whatever the case, I found the placeholders for the sand giants in Oasis. These ph's are: an asp, a madman, and a young ronin. I immagine that there are some other ph's that havent been found yet, but for the most part, these ph's spawn between 2 minutes and one hour. I figured that Cazel's spawn might be mized up in the timing of these spawns. Ive seen Cazel 3 times and they have all been during the day. Dont know if thats coinsidence or not. I'll leave that for u to figure out. Have fun =)

8 January 2003:
I bumped into him the other day on route to TD with my 45 BL, saw him near the docks which is where i see most of the SG's as well.

the current behavior of sharing spawns with SGs seems correct

[Dolalin]

Magelo has no pathing map for Cazel so they probably put him on the sand giant pathing grid.

This would benefit from some pathing research on Live. Although they redid those zones didn't they... so they won't be an exact match. Hmm.

[Ooloo]

the current behavior of sharing spawns with SGs seems correct

Hmm, it does, although the last few of those quotes are from luclin era (Dec 2001) or later.

It may be the case the cazel should occasionally wander by the docks, but I do still think it happens too often here. When he's up, he's at the docks every few minutes. Maybe just some more\randomized pathing locations would make it more classic?

[DeliciousHalflings]

I never saw Cazel by the docks on live. He was always wandering the desert out by the ruins toward the middle of the map. Sand Giant would be a rare occurrence at the docks, but it'd definitely happen. Like once or twice an hour and people would freak out.

[sinnycool]

From what i remember cazel and sg most of the reason people sit up on the pillars.

I had a 60 troll back in 1999-2001 ish

Just adding my 2 cents in that he for sure would hit the docks occasionally at least

[mcoy]

[Fri Dec 14 00:43:05 2001] Ryne says out of character, 'cazel near docks '

Missed era by a few days but /shrug.

-Mcoy

[PabloEdvardo]

Meanwhile, I remember Lockjaw being an absolute menace back in the day, and I've almost never seen him here.

he was up all the time during green launch. You need people regularly clearing the crocs for him to spawn, so it's probably less likely now that that the crocs aren't farmed as heavily

[Ooloo]

People still farm the crocs pretty heavily, and I haven't seen lockjaw while passing through oasis in probably a year. Meanwhile, I see cazel probably 70% of the time I'm in oasis running to the docks to get on the raft to TD.

[mcoy]

People still farm the crocs pretty heavily, and I haven't seen lockjaw while passing through oasis in probably a year. Meanwhile, I see cazel probably 70% of the time I'm in oasis running to the docks to get on the raft to TD.

Cazel rarely dies - LJ is dead as soon as someone high enough spots it.

-Mcoy

[Ooloo]

True cazel is much harder to kill. In which case, maybe he should be rarer because sand giants are extremely easy to kill compared to him, so he is up very frequently. If somebody needs to kill cazel they should have to clear a lot of sgs first and presumably have some buddies to help kill him if he spawns.

As it is, people just casually killing sg's when they're around seem to be very likely to spawn cazel by accident, who then terrorizes the zone for hours if not days, which doesn't seem classic to my memory.

[Ravager]

People still farm the crocs pretty heavily, and I haven't seen lockjaw while passing through oasis in probably a year. Meanwhile, I see cazel probably 70% of the time I'm in oasis running to the docks to get on the raft to TD.

I ran through a few days ago to take the raft to TD. He pathed by the dock.

[PatChapp]

People still farm the crocs pretty heavily, and I haven't seen lockjaw while passing through oasis in probably a year. Meanwhile, I see cazel probably 70% of the time I'm in oasis running to the docks to get on the raft to TD.

If you pull the Crocs from the water he usually comes along pretty quick
I try to spawn him at least once or twice while leveling there for the memories.