One and two star spawns - returning player

[Edgemoor]

Last time I played I don't recall encountering so many one and two star enemies, as well as draugr elites in the swamp. Was this changed or am I remembering wrong?

[Nerevar]

entirely RNG. 1 and 2 star spawnrates are the same on defaults. they only increase if you play on hard or very hard.

[coslie]

I've suspected the same thing actually. I play for long periods, then go away for a while, then come back and restart. I could've sworn Draugr Elites didn't get stars at all on my first few runs. Also spawns of everything seem larger or more frequent the last few times. On the bright side that Includes berries, deer and boars.

At first I thought it'd might've just been random chance with the world spawn (for example one world I found ~12-15 beehives before leaving the meadows but that was just luck) but other stuff does actually seem to have changed. I just started another world the other day, and noticed a lot more skeletons (2X as much) in the forest crypts, and I could've sworn I triggered an ambush.

I never saw a Fuling Shaman the first couple times I hit the plains either, so I'm guessing they didn't exist. Also some mobs seem a bit better at climbing than they used to be, but that may be subjective.

Also, when I started Eikthyr was way more metal, now the music is utterly unmemorable. Lame.

Anyways, I'm pretty sure all sorts of stuff is constantly getting tweaked.

[jonnin]

nighttime has more stars, and distance from spawn point also increases them, supposedly (this may be urban legend or something)
but they seem rare to me, about 5% of enemy or lower? If that?

there are mods that star nearly every enemy, if you did that to yourself.

shaman are pretty old mobs. At least from before the tar pit update.

[Zep Tepi]

From personal experience, I've seen elites and starred draugr pop out of spawners more than just wandering around. Do you have a lot of stone circles and old ruins in your swamp? Though lately I haven't bothered destroying them. I just note where they are and give them plenty of space so they don't activate.

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by jonnin:

nighttime has more stars, and distance from spawn point also increases them, supposedly (this may be urban legend or something)
but they seem rare to me, about 5% of enemy or lower? If that?

there are mods that star nearly every enemy, if you did that to yourself.

shaman are pretty old mobs. At least from before the tar pit update.

the distance to spawn only applys to boars and some meadows tier creatures. nothing else is affected by this rule. the wiki has the precise values on this. this is mainly to prevent a new player from getting spawn ganked by a 2 star whatever creature.

nighttime does not increase starred chance. but night has simply MORE TOTAL enemy spawns in generel. and some creatures can only with stars at night as a rule (wolves and gjall for example)

its 10% chance for 1 star and 1% for 2 star enemies. unless world settings got changed. this is for the default game.

[Edgemoor]

Originally posted by Zep Tepi:

From personal experience, I've seen elites and starred draugr pop out of spawners more than just wandering around. Do you have a lot of stone circles and old ruins in your swamp? Though lately I haven't bothered destroying them. I just note where they are and give them plenty of space so they don't activate.

I seemed to have more circles than I remember. I got 2 draugr elite spawn in a ruin. Luckily they were trapped by water and couldn't get me, so I was able to shoot them with arrows.

In one of the crypts I got a two star draughr archer and an elite spawn. The archer was at the beginning. Even blocking while in fully upgraded bronze armour and shield took about 75% of my health. Block skill was 20.

In short as soon as I entered the swamps I was encountering no win sitruations. One crypt had a 1 star draugr archer embedded into a mud pile. I couldn't shoot him, but he could certainly shoot me. He was essentially at the end of a long straight corridor.

Guessing the last is a bug, problem is I seem to remember this happening last time I was playing.

EDIT: I almost abandoned the swamps to focus on brewing frost resist meads and take my chances with the wolves.

[TheGreatDruid]

Its interesting that you mention the Draugr Elite being more common, as I ran into that yesterday when I went to the Swamp for the first time since Ashlands dropped. I ran into a two-star Draugr Elite at one of the above-ground spawners right off the bat. And when I killed him, I picked up a trophy and immediately got the noticification that I had now unlocked the ability to craft the Ironbreaker. I was laughing, as on this character I've already finished the Mistlands was just in the Swamp to stock up on iron for some supplies to make more chests and things at my main base. I mean, I've already done more than two dozen Sunken Crypts with this character previously.

So figuring that was getting spectacularly lucky, I went into the Crypts. And was soon fighting another Draugr Elite, just a lowly 1 star this time. And got another trophy!

Not sure if this is a specific change or just RNG going wild. It did occur to me that maybe also the Devs added a mechanism where it ups the difficulty of biomes based on how far in the game you've gone. So since the toon I was on has finished the Mistlands, maye the game now spawns the harder versions of things intentionally, whereas if one was on a toon that was just entering the Swamp for the first time it would suppress the star ones to a large extent and mostly spawn the easier ones? Not sure.

Also, along these lines, it seems like Sunken Crypts seem to on average have more rooms than a year ago. It used to be one would occasionally find ones that only had one or two chambers and that was it. Now they seem to have on average at least a dozen rooms. I am assuming the Devs tweaked the Crypt design engine.

[Tangoblue]

Yes, I'm seeing more 1 and 2 star mobs on my world. I figure it was just RNG.

Entered a Fuling village that had three 2* Fulings and a 2* Berserker. In a Mistland dungeon, I ran into two 2* seekers (I died rather quickly since I was cornered). Running into several 1* mobs in Ashland...

[UncleAcidic]

completely anecdotal, but I experience this in the Mistlands only. I've gone fresh into the mist twice and each time it was very regular one-star seekers right from the get. to this day, I still see them constantly. like, WAY more than I see one-star fulings, for example. My most recent game had a * and a ** guarding the first mine I found, and another pair of * inside with ANOTHER **. if this was my very first mine experience, I probably would have walked away for a while.
again, completely anecdotal. just how it rolls out sometimes.

[Edgemoor]

Without specific data on the rng used or any changes made it's difficult to be certain. But observation suggests something has changed to ramp up the difficiculty.

I did meadows and black forest and it was great. No real issues other than my own fault really. Get to the swamp and er well it was like it had turned up a difficulty level.

Looking at the ashlands debate thats ongoing I am wondering if it is a learning issue or whether it is an issue.

I've been playing with the world settings to see if I can get a happy compromise.

[Xyngrr]

I got merc'd by a one star skelly archer on day 18 in normal, a few hundred meters from the sacrificial stones. The tomb he and his one star pals were guarding had 5 spawners and roughly half the skellies were one star including a ghost off in one corner, with a 2 star rancid to top it off. There were 10 cores in it, so I put it down to just being a harder tomb to stumble onto initially, but the increased starred enemies have proven to be par up to Bonemass so far.
Something must have changed, but I'm sticking with it though slowing my solo advance to be prepped with extra just in case it gets worse.
Vikings don't quit, they adapt and persevere.

[knighttemplar1960]

I've found draugr elites tend to spawn from body piles. If you are getting a lot of them, there may be a body pile nearby.

[Tangoblue]

Originally posted by Edgemoor:

Looking at the ashlands debate thats ongoing I am wondering if it is a learning issue or whether it is an issue.

I'm thinking it's a little of both.

The non-skill issue I'm having in Ashland is the sudden spawning of mobs almost right on top of me (almost 10 seconds after clearing an area). I clear, I look to see if I missed anything. I get to a Flametal node in the middle of a lava lake, I start mining and all of a sudden I've got mobs attacking me, no way to manuver, then a Valkyrie appeared right above me. WTF! For the first time ever, I had to do a "killall" command or die and lose everything...not happy about it, not happy at all.

And yes, I've gotten most of my metal from the fortresses.

[SertanDoom]

Originally posted by Tangoblue:

Originally posted by Edgemoor:

Looking at the ashlands debate thats ongoing I am wondering if it is a learning issue or whether it is an issue.

I'm thinking it's a little of both.

The non-skill issue I'm having in Ashland is the sudden spawning of mobs almost right on top of me (almost 10 seconds after clearing an area). I clear, I look to see if I missed anything. I get to a Flametal node in the middle of a lava lake, I start mining and all of a sudden I've got mobs attacking me, no way to manuver, then a Valkyrie appeared right above me. WTF! For the first time ever, I had to do a "killall" command or die and lose everything...not happy about it, not happy at all.

And yes, I've gotten most of my metal from the fortresses.

My current plan is to set up a fortified area, bang on stuff to pull everything in range, deal with them all(most don't climb or jump...just need to deal with blobs, archers, and of course fallen valkerie), repeat until nothing new shows up, then start mining flametal. Have already had mobs stop showing up in a test spot, next, I'll be moving close as I can to flametal for mining test. also plan to see if things like stagbreaker, iron sledge pull stuff just by swinging away.

[JP_Russell]

Originally posted by Tangoblue:

Originally posted by Edgemoor:

Looking at the ashlands debate thats ongoing I am wondering if it is a learning issue or whether it is an issue.

I'm thinking it's a little of both.

The non-skill issue I'm having in Ashland is the sudden spawning of mobs almost right on top of me (almost 10 seconds after clearing an area). I clear, I look to see if I missed anything. I get to a Flametal node in the middle of a lava lake, I start mining and all of a sudden I've got mobs attacking me, no way to manuver, then a Valkyrie appeared right above me. WTF! For the first time ever, I had to do a "killall" command or die and lose everything...not happy about it, not happy at all.

And yes, I've gotten most of my metal from the fortresses.

If you already have flametal from the fortresses, I believe you can set up a bunch of catapults all aimed at the flametal pillar to mine it far faster and more safely than you could with a pickaxe. Then you could take your time picking up the flametal from the lava surface with basalt bombs. At least, I saw a video of someone demonstrating that this could work on the public test branch.