| Hi folks.
I have news on something that's come up a few times recently! While the Tuesday hunting area updates have led to people asking about this, I didn't want the release tied to the Tuesday updates. Thanks to Javac for the QC, we're pushing this out now!
The TEST verb has been updated with a new player-friendly version of our creature evaluation tool that so many of you have been asking about since we started updating and releasing new hunting areas. It does not reveal actual skills or stats, only the estimated levels derived from such. Now, the community can start seeing the information we've been sharing with the hunting area updates for yourselves -- in the Test instance only. For the live games, you have APPRAISE for your characters to have an idea of how a creature compares to your own skills. This TEST update is OOC info for the players and community, and thus restricted to DR:Test. This is not something that will change -- no Prime/Plat/TF release.
With that covered, here's a few quick grabs of what you'll see:
A blue-belly crocodile:
FOR NATURAL ATTACKS:
Estimated Creature Level = 22
FOR WEAPON ATTACKS:
Estimated Creature Level = 0
FOR DEFENSE:
Estimated Creature Level = 22
Overall estimated creature level = 22
A cross-eyed libger:
FOR NATURAL ATTACKS:
Estimated Creature Level = 3
FOR WEAPON ATTACKS:
Estimated Creature Level = 3
FOR DEFENSE:
Estimated Creature Level = 3
Overall estimated creature level = 3
A young ogre:
FOR NATURAL ATTACKS:
Estimated Creature Level = 18
FOR WEAPON ATTACKS:
Estimated Creature Level = 21
FOR DEFENSE:
Estimated Creature Level = 20
Overall estimated creature level = 20
Here are some notes/tips for those who embark on the adventure of info gathering:
- It will evaluate all creatures in the room with you at the time. This should help identify areas that +/- levels to the creature, where as someone evaluating such an area with only a single result may not notice the range. For best results, grab multiple snapshots while dancing with multiple creatures over time.
- All scoring assumes a fresh creature.
- This tool excludes befriended creatures.
- Flex creatures will score unreliably if others are present and if they haven't attacked you or been attacked by you. The last person to attack or be attacked will set its skills/stats. Results with flexing creatures (such as quests) can change for an individual from run-to-run -- there's some +/- on the scoring they use that happens at the start of each run, so you may see 121 on one run and 119 on another run, for example. Different quests handle this differnetly, so, bottom line -- results from flex creatures can/will vary.
- Overall estimation is an average of the highest attack (natural or weapon) and defense estimated levels.
- As noted above, this reports estimated levels based on skills and stats of the spawned creatures. Not all creatures use a standard format -- particularly older creatures will have custom set stats. For example, a creature may be more agile and a higher weapon skill than standard for their level, but have less stamina to counter that. The different evaluations (for weapon types / defense) should help spot these, but no guarantees. Old creatures can be really weird.
- Different spawns areas can spawn creatures with different levels/skills/stats. Quick examples that come to mind are rock trolls and crocodiles. Both of their Shard counterparts are considered harder than their Zoluren entries. Checking a particular area and assuming all of X creature are the same can lead to confusion.
Using this tool to update Elanthipedia to help refine the ladders is a big project, and it will take some time. If you're eager to see and use the results, I encourage you to join the effort in filling in the gaps. We have some of the best documenters and documentation of any game out there, and it's all because of players like yourselves joining together to create and maintain that quality.
Zadraes
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