Game Mechanics: NPCs casting spells that they shouldn't until a certain era

[nilbog]

Originally Posted by pasi [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Hey Nilberg, this is tangentially related at best, but was NPCs having a level-appropriate spellbook something that just came with the stock client or was that intended by the original p1999 developers?

On live, generic high-level NPCs seemed to cap out at 29-34 spells with a few exceptions. Clerics would wrath you, wizards thunder strike, necros venom of the snake, etc. Even a lot of the notable NPCs like Vox would spam wrath.

I kinda remember the same thing, but there is just not enough evidence of what was cast. Now, there's no way to check :[

p99 started with each npc class having essentially every spell, which we've limited over the years. It's not a client thing, just a db table.

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nilbog, I started compiling a list but wonder how to flag the original example (i.e. Grim Aura). For instance, Grim Aura is a 'Classic' spell for a Necromancer, but a Shadowknight only gets that spell in 'Velious'.

So how should that spell be categorized, do you need to add classes to the era tag? Such as:

346    Grim Aura    Velious(Shadow Knight)
or
346    Grim Aura    Classic(Necromancer)     Velious(Shadow Knight)
or
?

I'm not sure how many other cases of this there are, but that one just jumped out at me.

Any spells that should be limited per class per era, either notation from above will work. There shouldn't be that many overlapping ones, and they will be treated as one-offs for query updates.