Con System - or "Will this thing kick my behind?"Follow

Hiyas folks :)

Still waiting for my copy to arrive here in Scotland, so thought I'd spend a few minutes typing up a brief description of the "Con" system in EQ2 as compared to EQ1.

I think that the biggest change between EQ1/2 is that the base 'unit' that monsters come in is no longer the single 'mob', rather EQ2's base unit of monster is the 'encounter'.

Its this that seems to throw some folks when the see the additional flags associated with an encounter (solo/group/^/^^ etc), but if you start to think in terms of encounters it becomes very natural.

Color-Con

EQ2 uses a very similar con-color system to eq1:

Grey = beneath your skills (no major loot/xps - tho certain loots can still be had, and quest flags can be obtained)
Green = Easy fight
Blue = Fairly easy fight
White = Even 50/50 fight (allegedly)
Yellow = Hardish fight
Orange = HARD fight
Red = Kick yer behind for sure

this color-con is based totally on level(which you will see displayed in your targeting windows mouse-over)

Now, this color-con applies to the ENCONTER - not the individual creatures within the encounter, for example,

a)An encounter comprising a single Gnoll could con Green to you.
b)An encounter comprising 5 Gnolls could also con Green to you.

Since its the ENCOUNTER that cons green, not the individual creature - both of the above should be equally hard/easy.

In engaging either alone, in a) you would fight the Gnoll one-on-one, wheras in b) you would engage all 5 simultaniously - but each individual gnoll in b) would be far, far weaker than the single gnoll in a), the total difficulty of encounter b) being roughly equal to that of encounter a).

Group/Solo

In the same way that every encounter has a color-con, each also have a flag indictaing thier 'target audience' - 'solo' means that the ENCOUNTER was tailored to an individual wheras 'group' indicates that the encounter was designed to be engaged by a group of adventurers. There also exists further flags '2xGroup' etc. for 'Raid' level encounters.

This leads to some odd(kinda) looking situations, where a Single Creature is flagged as 'Group' or 6 creatures flagged as 'Solo'. When you realise that the group/solo flag is in regard to the folks meant to engage the creatures, not the creatures themselves it becomes clear.

This isnt to say that a lone individual is prevented from engaging creatures flagged 'group' or bunches of folks cant engage 'solo' mobs, but if an individual expects a 'group' green-con to be as easy as a 'solo'-green, theyre in for a nasty suprise (but also a hefty bonus to thier xps if they win through)



Difficulty Modifiers
(or why does this green-con fight like a Red cos he has ^^ next to his name)

In addition to being color-conned and 'target-audience' flagged, encounters may also have small Arrows next to thier names (up or down), the direction and number of these arrows indicates difference in difficulty of the encounter away from the standard 'no-arrow' baseline.

Essentially, the more up arrows, the tougher, the more down arrows, the weaker.

"eh?" i hear you cry..."why the heck should there be more modifiers to encounter difficulty?" - well there seems to be a fairly straightforward reason...levels. For instance:

Your Slaightering your way through a dungeon laying waste to oodles of green con beasties, lo! you reach the bosses chamber and there he stands clutching all the phat lewts youve been coveting.

Without the Arrow system, the only way he could be made 'boss-like' compared to his minions would be to, naturally, make him a higher level. Here lies the problem, if that was the case someone to whom the boss was not grey-conned (grey mobs will not attack even if aggro) could waltz by all the lesser mobs(which would be grey) and sit on the boss with relative impunity, whereas with the arrows the boss could maintain level with his minions but present a suitable boss-like challenge to those daring enough to seek him out.

So this gives the designers a lot of flexibility when it comes to tailoring encounters - and also gives as players a much more varied hunting expereince (along with much more clearly defined hunting areas via the level-based color-cons)

Aggro

The last indicator an encounter may have is the 'aggro' flag (Scowls at you ready to attack, sort of thing) - basically if an encounetrs name has a red 'glow' around the text, it is aggressive and will attack if you get too close, those without the glow you can walk all over (or through).

The only exception to this is 'grey' cons, these will not normally attack under any circumstances (there are some occassions when they will however, as an budding Mystics amongst you are bound to find out :P ).

In fact certain Humanoid creatures will actually cower away from you as you pass if they con grey :) wonderful feel it is to see them cringe in terror as you pass hehe.

Ok, so that about sums up all the descriptors, modifiers etc associated with encounter conning.

To give you a very rough feel as to what these means to you,

As beta ended I was a pretty well-equipped 23 Mystic, 1200hp, 1000ac, 800ish power Full buffed, 2 Master I spells, 4 Adept III spells etc.

Soloing I could kill (with relative ease) Yellow/Orange solo-flagged mobs up to about 27ish - netting about just udner 0.5% xp from each.

Or i could take down an encounter comprising 2-3 green+ mobs, or 1 green++ mob for approximatly 1.25% each encounter.

Some named green++ group enocunters i tried to solo were tough-as-heck (Darkpaw Fanglord springs to mind) but i did it all the same :)

kk enough wittering on my part, 4am here and time for bed, hope that anyone who takes the time to read this comes away with some useful info, if not -ill do better next time if there is one :)

[and next time ill write it up better, this was very spur-of-the-momment]

Take Care and see you folks in game, eventually :)

'Kringar' 23 Mystic/30 Armourer, Qeynos, Beta 2 - Retired.



Edited, Tue Nov 9 18:35:57 2004 by Xebec

Actually you forgot to put the BLUE cons between green and white, good writeup apart from that tho ;)

Thanks for the info!

A very HELPFUL thing to do is change the con color of grey mobs to another color in options. I made mine barbie pink. Then you won't ever have a problem guessing if that mob really cons white or grey.

Thats a population issue. You should /bug it.

if I remember, you can get regular loot all the same from grey-con mobs, but you can only get CHEST loot (the better loot) from green and above mobs.

Oops, aye blues are between green and white as you would expect :)

Supose the only other bit i can think of is to remember that mobs have classes too, and will use thier spells skills fairly well - watch for shammy mobs, nasty things at times hehe

Thanks for good info