Creature Mechanics

The Dyescape creature system allows friendly and hostile Creatures to spawn in the world around you. You may see friendly farm animals such as pigs, cows or chickens walking around, or you could find spiders, zombies, or even animated scarecrows. Even city guards protecting the city from poor players and aggressive monsters are considered Creatures.


Regional monsters
It is important that monsters spawn at a logical location and that they stay in the area they spawned in. We don't want monsters wandering off everywhere in the world, because it may involve you needing to interact with them in a quest, for example. Every creature spawned in Dyescape will have a specified spawn location, and an extra direct attacking margin. Creatures will never leave their spawn area unless they are directly attacking another entity. When the creature is attacking another entity but gets way too far away from its spawn location, it will be teleported back. When a creature leaves its spawn location without attacking another entity, it will simply walk back like normal.


Spawn waves
The world is filled with Creatures, and it should stay filled. Every area has a specified creature to spawn, and what quantity they should spawn in. If our server detects that an area has too few Creatures, it will spawn more. This, by default, happens every 5 seconds on your average creature. When an area specifies that it should have 5 piggies, but there are only 2 left because 3 are killed, it means the next spawn wave will spawn 3 more.

Some mobs may have their own customized spawn wave interval, for example, semi-bosses. Most semi-bosses will not spawn again right after they are killed, since they are (semi) bosses, they should be somewhat rare to find. A semi-boss could be configured to spawn once every minute, every 5 minutes, or even every few hours. Naturally, when a quest involves killing a semi-boss, we try to keep this "rare" spawn rate below a few minutes, to prevent people from having hard times completing their quest. When a semi-boss (or any other creature) has specified that it will spawn every hour, for example, it will spawn exactly one hour after death, not after it was spawned.


Rarities
Every mob has a specified rarity, just like Items. This rarity will be displayed in the mob's name in the form of a different color. Different mob rarities have different colors, just like the Items you can find. The rarity does not directly affect the interval a creature could spawn in, nor does it always directly affect how much damage a creature puts out. It does change what item the creature may drop upon being killed, as well as the amount of EXP points dropped. More about this is below.


EXP drops
Almost every creature in the world drops EXP points when killed, with the exception of protective Creatures such as a city guard. The amount of EXP given to the player(s) depends on how strong the mob is. A combination of the creature's max health, damage output, rarity, spawn interval and level difference is what dynamically determines the amount of EXP dropped. This means that weak, easy-to-fight passive Creatures such as friendly piggies will drop way less EXP than an aggressive creature.

As stated above, EXP points are calculated using the creature's max health, damage output, rarity, spawn interval, and level difference. The rarity of a creature may increase the amount of EXP dropped when killed, as a bonus. See the list below on how much EXP bonus you get for each creature rarity:


EXP points earned may also depend on the level difference between the player and the creature. We don't want high-level players to be killing low-level Creatures all day long, so to prevent that we have introduced a level difference bonus or penalty. Every level difference between you and the creature you killed will give you a 10% bonus or penalty. For example, we have a level 2 creature that drops 20 EXP by the base. When a level 2 player kills the creature, he will be rewarded with 20 EXP. However, when a level 1 player kills the level 2 creature, he will get a 10% bonus due to the one level difference, ending up with 22 EXP points. When a level 3 player kills the level 2 creature, it will get fewer EXP points due to the player being a higher level than the creature. The level 3 player would in this case receive 18 EXP. There is a maximum difference of 10 levels, meaning you will never get more than double EXP from a player, and a level 11 player killing a level 1 creature will result in zero EXP.


Item drops
The rarity of a creature also (usually, unless specified differently) drops an item with the same rarity. This means that Legendary Creatures are more likely to drop Legendary Items compared to Common Creatures for example. The strength of the mob also may determine how likely you are to receive a useful item instead of junk. Different Creatures drop different Items. For example, a Chicken may drop feathers and a Pig may drop raw pork.


Ganks (shared kill)
In the case of a ganked kill, which is when multiple players helped to kill a creature, the EXP points and Items are shared equally between players when multiple players kill a monster. For example, 2 people kill a 100 HP monster, in which player 1 deals 40 damage and player 2 deals 60 damage, then player 1 will get 40% of the EXP and player 2 will get 60% of the EXP. In case the creature drops any item, the Items will be given to the player who dealt the most damage. This is done to keep things fair for everyone, and to prevent people from stealing kills, EXP and Items by flying in and only doing the last tiny bit of damage.