NPC Spawn Issue: decaying skeletons should be non-kos

[PabloEdvardo]

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

http://web.archive.org/web/200112020...=show&BID=1657


Aggressive Tendencies:
Attack On Sight
All

Sorry Uthgaard, as someone above noted: Wrong.

Referring again to the eqbestiary thread, see this post dated 2001 (shortly after kunark release):

in field of bone they aggro- what the heck- thats whole point of the monster- somethin you can see and say thank God its not somethin thats gonna aggro on me-- at least they drop shields thats pretty nifty.... just wonderin what the point of having a decayin skellie aggro... its a good reason to not play a iksar jkjk

Please fix this! They are SO FUCKING ANNOYING... when running through newb zones I get tons of them aggroing on me everywhere. This is definitely not how they used to be.

I don't understand why everyone's memory has gotten so bad :P

[nilbog]

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

see this post dated 2001 (shortly after kunark release):

I don't understand why everyone's memory has gotten so bad :P

Well, Kunark came out in 04/00. Velious was released in 12/00, making 01 shortly after Velious release?

There's documentation both ways, leading me to believe there were indifferent decaying skeletons, and kos ones, depending on your homeland.

I seem to remember when I needed to sit down and memorize a spell, on the way to town, decaying skeletons had no qualms with hitting me and interrupting them. Maybe that's faulty memory?

[PabloEdvardo]

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

Well, Kunark came out in 04/00. Velious was released in 12/00, making 01 shortly after Velious release?

There's documentation both ways, leading me to believe there were indifferent decaying skeletons, and kos ones, depending on your homeland.

I seem to remember when I needed to sit down and memorize a spell, on the way to town, decaying skeletons had no qualms with hitting me and interrupting them. Maybe that's faulty memory?

Apologies, you're correct regarding the dates (i was ballparking... badly! hah)

I do recall getting attacked randomly by SKELETONS... but not decaying.
My first character was a dark elf wizard and in addition to spending many hours in nektulos, I recall when porting to nek at the wiz spires one would often get attacked by zombies, mummies, and skeletons that surrounded the spires.

I had quit before they revamped nek, so I never saw them turn the nek skeletons KOS, but I do recall playing a few iksar characters and FoB decaying skeletons definitely did aggro (like pretty much everything in kunark did... although kunark was strange, everything scowled but not everything immediately attacked?) This led to the classic FoB skeleton trains towards the guards, and many newb corpses.

As I created a DE cleric here on p99, I immediately noticed how much more difficult it was to level up my newb dealing with the spiders assisting the fire beetles (and vice versa... something they never used to do) as well as decaying skeletons aggroing.

As someone noted above, the link posted by Uthgaard specifies the 'befallen' faction hit on the decaying skeleton, and it makes sense for decaying skeletons in befallen to be KOS.

The problem, as I see it, is that most people remember undead being KOS to everyone, and are merely accepting that decaying skeletons would be aggro as well.

[dali_lb]

Decaying skeletons was KOS to everyone in vanilla from the very start of EQ. No matter your lvl.

Not talking about any expansions or later changes. I know they were changed at some point to make life easier for newbies, so they could run around allmost everywhere in newbie zones without getting any agro

Most people that argue about this either didn't play at launch or have a very bad memory. They are by original design supposed to be a nuiscence to everyone, high or low lvl

[Rairun]

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

I do recall getting attacked randomly by SKELETONS... but not decaying.

This.

Sorry for resurrecting this thread. It's just that I started playing today, and I was quite surprised to see a decaying skeleton attack me. Skeletons were a nuisance (the level 6[?] ones, who would attack anyone in sight), but I'm 100% sure that decaying skeletons were harmless in all the zones I played (everywhere except the evil newbie zones). I played from August 1999 to December 2001.

I have vivid memories of chasing decaying skeletons that carried a cracked staff (1pp!), but it was hard to attack them when they were walking because my dial-up connection was horrible. If they were KoS, that would never have happened.

[maximum]

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

There's documentation both ways, leading me to believe there were indifferent decaying skeletons, and kos ones, depending on your homeland.

I guess their aggressiveness is based on skeleton geographic range?

[maximum]

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

There's documentation both ways, leading me to believe there were indifferent decaying skeletons, and kos ones, depending on your homeland.

I seem to remember when I needed to sit down and memorize a spell, on the way to town, decaying skeletons had no qualms with hitting me and interrupting them. Maybe that's faulty memory?

Sounds like the historical data needs to show GMs a starting zone-by-zone, race-by-race matrix... which will never happen.

[Valdain]

From what I remember, the ONLY decaying skeletons to be KOS other than the Kunark ones were the ones found in Nektulous. I started playing live in July of 2000, and between my two brothers and myself, we'd made characters spanning all 3 continents (deleted alts, etc). I am unsure of the ones (if there even are any) in the Feerrott and Innothule

[SirAlvarex]

Hm, interestingly conflicting reports. Sadly my web.archive skills fail me, as I am unable to view future posts that might mention a correction (if the original entry is wrong).

Just out of curiosity, is there any order the developers take on preference for source material? Like here, where alla has posts stating they are indifferent, but everlore says they're aggressive. Is the archived post considered more valid in this case?

[Dac321]

I'm 100% positive basic decaying skeletons throughout Norrath (excluding befallen, unrest) were indifferent.