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Game Mechanics

Lair Types

• Mission Lairs
• Wild Lairs
• Invisible Lairs

Lair Behavior Types

• Active Behaviors
• Passive Behaviors

Parts of a Lair

• Creature Type Selection
• Spawn Size
• Condition
• Boss Spawns

Lair Types

There are three types of lairs, mission lairs, wild lairs and invisible lairs. Mission lairs are lairs that are spawned into the game world through the acquisition of a mission. These are identified by having specific names given to the lair such as "a quenker lair" or "a hurton pack lair." Wild lairs are lairs that spawn naturally in the game world and are usually indistinguishable from one another with names such as "a pile of leaves" or "a pile of rocks." Invisible lairs are what is more commonly known as spawn points where groupings of creatures will be created at without a physical lair to defend.

Lair Behaviors

Creatures are stored inside of a lair and will spawn out into the game world based on what type of lair behavior is occuring. The 2 types of behavior for a lair are Active and Passive. Most are acquainted with Active behavior. If you hit a lair, critters will pop out. During active behavior, the initial creature to spawn from the lair after it has been hit will take 10 seconds. After this creature spawns, a new creature will appear every 15 seconds until the wave amount has been reached. Both mission lairs and wild lairs allow for the active behavior to occur. Passive behavior is seen only in invisible lairs and wild lairs and can be thought of as spawning creatures that are kept in a hidden reserve. Each creature in in the initial wave of a wild or invisible lair has 3 replacements kept in queue. Whenever a creature is killed, its replacement is automatically set to spawn based on a 3 minute timer. This can be observed on the NGE where if a player kills the entire initial spawn, each mob killed will have its replacement spawned almost exactly 3 minutes after the previous creature died. In the case of invisible lair; if a player singles out one enemy in a spawn to kill 4 times in a row (the initial wave and the 3 replacements) the spawn will despawn after the other remaining mobs are killed since the server thinks that 4 waves have been killed as all 3 replacements and the initial spawn for that particular mob were used up.

The parts of a lair

• Creature Type Selection
• Spawn Size
• Condition
• Boss Spawns

Creature Type Selection

The creatures that spawn at lairs are dependant on creature family tables. Creature family tables are unique categorizations of creatures and npcs organized to produce a more diverse game world environment. Each type of lair gets its source from this system. In this system combinations of creatures such as Hurtons, Hurton matrons and Hurton pups come together to form a creature family table which can then be added to the world spawner which will allow these creatures to spawn together as part of a lair in the wild or on the mission terminal to be picked by a player and later spawned. The importance of being aware of creature type categories is that all missions exist as creature family tables but all creature family tables don't necessarily end up as missions. Some creature groupings are wild or invisible lair spawns only and are not available to players as missions and not all wild spawns are available as lairs. For example Grauls and ancient grauls are wild and invisible lair spawns only. To throw another cog in the wheel, the process is further complicated in that spawns can be created with any number of potential creatures at the lair. Missions, wild spawns and invisible spawns can be any mix of the creatures in the creature family table selected for that particular lair. For example, even though the hurton, hurton matron and hurton pup family table was selected and all 3 of these creatures could spawn at the lair at once; there is no guarantee of this due to the randomization of the process. Any combination of these creatures could theoretically spawn at the lair such as 3 hurtons, 3 hurton matrons , 3 pups etc. Once the lair has been created in this fashion it will always spawn these creatures on every wave.

Another element to creature family tables is that they possibly were given a challenge level as well. The challenge level set for the lair is presumably the highest CL of the creature within the creature family table selected. In the previous example used with the hurtons; of those hurtons the matron has the highest CL, so the CL of the hurton family table in this case would be 26. It is suspected that the spawning mechanics uses challenge levels in determining what can spawn in an area and as such, Challenge levels being associated with lairs allows for its possibility to be spawned in the game world. Lair Challenge levels also plays a role in calculating experience gain since players earn experience based on a CL calculation using the amount of damage dealt to the lair compared with an fixed experience value. Presumably the lair also shares the same base experience value of the highest CL mob in the lair. One more important aspect of the CL mechanics of the creature family table system is how it relates to missions. Players receive the listings based on the pool of creature family tables linked to the terminal. If a player or their group's challenge level matches or is higher than the CL associated with a creature family grouping then that grouping shows up on the terminal as a mission lair (if the family grouping is flagged as being able to allowed as a mission and not wild spawns only).

Spawn Size

There is a maximum number of creatures that any lair spawns. This set of critters is called a "wave". I will define the "wave amount" as this maximum number. The number of critters you see when you first encounter the lair is this "wave amount". This set of critters is the initial wave.

Once a creature grouping is selected, then the spawn size of the grouping is determined. Spawn ranges can be anywhere from 1 up to 5 mobs total in a wave. The spawn size creation process is based on randomization.

Note: I have two theories or proposals for how the lair spawn size can be determined:

• 1. Randomization of the lair spawn size between 1 and 5.

• 2. Assign a Randomized Challenge Level to the lair with the min CL being the highest cl mob from the creature grouping selected. The challenge level would use the same spawn size multiplier that missions use: 1.0-1.27 x cl for 1 mob, 1.28-1.67 x cl for 2 mob, 1.68-1.97 x cl for 3 mobs, 1.98-2.23 x cl for 4 mobs, 2.23(onward) x cl for 5 mobs.

Condition

Lair condition represents the amount of damage that a lair can take before it is destroyed. Condition on a lair lowers as it takes damage through either being attacked or by creatures exiting the lair. Every lair with a spawn size between 1-3 creatures will take a 10% loss from its maximum condition per creature spawned during the active spawn cycles. Lairs with a spawn size of 4-5 will take 5% condition loss per creature spawned during the active spawn cycles.

Lair condition was long thought to be a variable based on the challenge level of the creatures or the spawn size. Under this proposal, condition has a base value for each challenge level which is given a multiplier based on what the spawn size calculation is for that lair. The way it works is that the more mobs there are that spawn from the lair, and the higher the lair's Challenge level is, the more condition the lair has.

When a lair's 1st active wave is complete, the lair will then take 3 x damage from attacks made against it. This was SOE's way of making it easier to take down lairs with high hitpoints. After all creatures in a lair have been destroyed (including passive spawns), it is presumed that the lair has another damage bonus made against it between 4-10x damage (Note: data on this is sketchy).

Note: Due to the nge changing the way condition values work, an alternate proposal has had to be constructed since it is no longer possible to obtain useful information comparative to pre-cu from lair conditions.

Boss Spawns

At 20% of the lair's maximum condition, certain lairs will spawn Boss Spawns. Boss spawns are a spawn of a single creature (or single creature with a group of linked mobs) that will rush the lair's attackers. Lairs that spawn boss mobs are linked to the creature family tables. Boss mobs are linked to particular creature family groups and appear when that grouping has spawned with at least 3 or more creatures per wave.

Part III: Summary If you do it right, you should see the following yields: Mission Lair: Initial wave + 2 Active waves = 3 x wave amount. Invisible Lair: Initial wave + 3 Passive waves = 4 x wave amount. Natural Lair: Initial wave + 2 Active waves + 3 passive = 6 x wave amount.

Wave amounts I can verify:

6: Have seen them but cannot verify

5: Durni, Crazed Durni, Paralope, Murra, Tabbage, Krahbu, Violent Krahbu, Slice Hounds, Dire Cats (yes, I have hunted on Corellia a LOT)

4: There are some, but none I can say for certain. I think regular Rancors... but those might also come in wave amounts of 5.

3: Tortons and Ravinous Tortons. Maaaaaaybe Mutant Rancors... or was that another type? Waves amounts of 2 and 1 exist, I cannot be certain which, however.

Conclusion on wave amounts: they seem to be a function of difficulty level.

Safe hunting out there and remember n00bs: DON'T HIT THE LAIR IF CRITTERS ARE OUT

Source References