Alter Aeon FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

FAQ Section 25 - [builder] Mob building - obscure questions

Question 25.1  - What is the dancer estimate I keep seeing on my mobs?

The dancer estimate is named after the ancient builder Dancer, who had
difficulty determining how much exp to put on his mobs and wanted a better
way to judge it.  This was not just a problem for Dancer - all builders
had this problem.  He was just the first to really complain about it.

So, the Dancer estimate was born.  It is a rough estimate of how much exp
the mob will be worth, based on its hitpoints, damage rolls, alignment, and
a few other factors.  It is a _very_ crude estimate, and does not take into
account any special procedures or other special characteristics.

For the most part, you can ignore this estimate.  But, if you need to know
roughly how powerful a given mob will be, you can compare the estimates of
various mobs to get a rough idea.

Do not count on the Dancer estimate to be reliable.  It is not.

Question 25.2  - Why does the dancer estimate go down when I raise the level of my mob?

[Note - this page might be obsolete.  There have been a lot of improvements
 to the Dancer estimate over the years.]

Situation:  you have just built a mob and set its experience.  You then
change the mob, and do nothing more than raise its primary level.  The dancer
estimate drops, even though the mob now appears to be harder to kill.

This isn't a bug.  It is by design, and there are two reasons it works this
way.

The first reason this happens is hitroll.  A higher level mob needs a higher
hitroll to be competitive against the players that attack it.  Simply making
a level 20 mob level 30 usually means the mob won't have enough hitroll to
be dangerous to the kinds of players that would kill it for exp.

The second reason has to do with the tapering off of exp when a player is
higher level than the mob.  As an example, a level 25 mob will give full exp
to a total 100 player - but a level 20 mob will only give full exp to total
85 or less.  This effect makes it possible to make low level exp mobs that
aren't worthwhile for higher levels. If you make a level 20 mob with 250k
exp, it would easily split between two lower level characters and max them
both.  If you make that same mob level 25, it becomes pitifully easy for a
total 100 to kill - and it will become nothing but an easy exp mob for higher
levels.

To summarize: A higher level mob needs a higher hitroll for it to be
dangerous to the people who would kill it for exp.  And by setting a mob to a
lower level, the rise in exp means that you can make a good exp mob for low
level characters without having high level characters nuke it constantly.

(I have to admit that when I first started playing with the dancer
 estimate, I knew what I wanted it to do and just plugged in the equations
 I had developed for it.  I noticed this same issue not long thereafter,
 and it confused me also until I actually dug into it and figured out
 that there really was no mistake - it was just a non-intuitive result
 of the rules I picked.  -dentin)

(note - this faq is depreciated due to changes in exp calculations)