balanced equipment & mobs

Posted by Jjack on Tue 16 Oct 2007 09:38 PM — 4 posts, 13,996 views.

#0
I was wondering if someone could give me some advice on creating equipment and mobs.

I'm starting up a new smaug-based MUD and have been building areas. I think I'm getting pretty good as an area builder. I've got some great ideas mapped out on engineering paper, and I'm taking my time trying to add detailed descriptions, atmosphere, etc.

I'm getting to the point though where I want to start making mobs to kill and equipment to kill them with and I'm a little confused about how to make the game balanced. I understand that SMAUG autosets the levels based on the area an item is found in; the only thing is that I'm creating a main city area which is for all levels so just picking a random level between 1 and 65 is really counterintuitive. I want to specifically set the stats so that you go to a weapons shop and there would be, for example, a level 5 sword, a level 10 sword, a level 15 sword, so on and so forth.

So I was wondering if there was any way to specifically "target" a level by setting the weapon's (or armor's) stats to that level. I am using the standard SMAUG codebase with the exception that I recompiled it with the minimum equipment level being lv. 1 (the default is 5).

I'm just hoping there is a better way to approach this than trial and error since I'm building everything offline with area editor and trying to upload it as few times as possible.

Thanks!
USA #1
Quote:
I understand that SMAUG autosets the levels based on the area an item is found in;

Hmm... maybe things have changed (I haven't looked at stock SMAUG building in some time) but I thought that object levels were per-object, not per-area. This should solve your problem, right? (assuming I'm remembering correctly, of course)

As for a more scientific way than trial and error, well, let me just say this: if you figure something out, please let me know. :-P
#2
Yeah, if you create an item with a certain set of stats, and place it in an area, you can give it any level you want but it seems that whenever you reload it will reset the level of your item based on its stats and the area its found in.

In other words, if you set the item to a certain level it is only temporary (or so I've heard and experienced).
USA #3
Nope, it resets based on the index level set on it (prototype).