From 4435223353378332046 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fb739,3c702a498e94ff5f,start X-Google-Attributes: gidfb739,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-02-14 03:30:56 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!rcn!dca6-feed2.news.digex.net!intermedia!newsfeed1.cidera.com!Cidera!cyclone.tampabay.rr.com!cyclone.austin.rr.com!typhoon.austin.rr.com.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail From: dcd@firstnethou.com (Dan Day) Newsgroups: alt.games.everquest Subject: The *real* corpse decay times Message-ID: <3c6f94bb.126198853@news-server.houston.rr.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.01/32.397 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 152 Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 11:28:58 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.25.13.184 X-Complaints-To: abuse@rr.com X-Trace: typhoon.austin.rr.com 1013686138 66.25.13.184 (Thu, 14 Feb 2002 05:28:58 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 05:28:58 CST Organization: Road Runner - Texas Xref: archiver1.google.com alt.games.everquest:166639 Now that the game will display corpse rez and decay timers if you /con a corpse, I was able to finally settle the issue of exactly how long player corpses of different levels last... The manual claims (for decay times): 30 minutes if the corpse is level 1-5, or 24 hours online/7 days offline. As is often the case, the manual is wrong. Here are the results of my actual tests: Level 1 PC: 30 minutes to rez, 30 minutes to decay. Level 2 PC: 2 hours to rez, 2 hours to decay. Level 3 PC: 2 hours to rez, 2 hours to decay. Level 4 PC: 2 hours to rez, 2 hours to decay. Level 5 PC: 3 hours to rez, 7 days to decay. Above level 5: Same as 5 (3h/7d). So the manual was right only for level 1, and wrong for levels 2-5. The easy rule of thumb is: Decay is 30 minutes for level 1, 2 hours for 2-4, 7 days for 5 and above. Rez timer is a flat 3 hours, or until the corpse decays, whichever comes first. (Yes, it's possible that they altered the decay times for level 2-5 corpses in this recent patch, as long as they were fiddling with the decay/rez display, and changing high-level corpse decay times to be a flat 7 days instead of a mix of 24h/7d, but the 2 hour figure fits well with my prior tests and experiences for low-level corpses.) Note that the patch message is a bit wrong too -- it says that the decay timer for corpses "over level 5" is now a flat seven days. However, in truth that's the case for corpses "level 5 or over" (or if you prefer, "over level 4"), not strictly "over level 5". Additional fun with the decay/rez timer display: 1. As my previous tests had indicated, *mob* corpse decay times are 8 minutes if the corpse has any loot, 30 seconds if it doesn't. (I didn't have access to any 55+ mob corpses, which are coded to last longer.) 2. Since mob corpses go to "general loot" after two minutes, you can now /con a corpse which someone else has killed and abandoned, and not bother attempting to loot it until the decay timer hits 6 minutes or less. It used to be annoying wondering how long you'd have to wait, now you'll know. 3. As previously suspected, the rez timer halts *completely* when you're offline. I did tests across two hours, and checked the timers of several player corpses which were lying around. Across two hours, the corpses of people who were offline had "frozen" rez timers, which did not change by even a second over two hours, even though their decay timers continued to tick away. 4. Note: The decay timer, at least, is not entirely in synch with the actual "poof time" of the corpse. Several mob corpses stuck around for up to 10 seconds after their displayed decay timer had already counted down to zero (and beyond!). In fact, here's a section of my log as I frequently /conned a mob corpse that was counting down to poofage: This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 05 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 04 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 03 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 02 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 01 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 0 minute(s) 00 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 15 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 14 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 13 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 12 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 11 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 10 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 09 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 08 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 07 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 1193046 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 06 seconds.. Consider whom? You no longer have a target. What's wrong with this picture? :-) As a programmer, I had assumed that "1193046" was going to be "-1" in some number of bits, wrongly converted to an unsigned integer, but it's not. The really strange thing is that it turns out to be "123456(hexadecimal)" -- that's bizarre. 5. While traipsing around Greater Faydark, I found a PC corpse that conned thusly: This corpse is too old to be resurrected. This corpse will decay in 151 hour(s) 28 minute(s) 09 seconds.. Umm... "151 hours"? Why wasn't that converted to "6 days, 7 hours"? I have no idea -- all other corpses I checked displayed in days/hours format when appropriate. On the other hand, it was the only corpse I had discovered which was "too old to be resurrected", maybe that had something to do with it. 6. There was a thread on this newsgroup a few weeks ago in which many people asserted that the rez timer for corpses killed in /duels with other players was only 10 minutes (or so). I stated that in my experience, it was far longer than that. Well, I found cooperative players and /dueled my test characters to death, and the displayed rez timers for each one were *identical* to the times listed above (which were produced by attacking guards to cause death) -- even for the 5+ characters, wherein a /dueled death produced a corpse that indicated a full 3-hour rez time. So... Either /dueled corpses actually do have a full 3-hour rez timer, or: a) the 10-minute limit is only for much higher level corpses than I had tested, or b) the 10-minute limit is only for /dueled corpses in dungeons (or perhaps indoor zones) -- my tests were done in N.FP, W.FP, and GFay. c) the /con rez indicator is wrong. Further testing may be required. But so far, the results match my own experience with /dueled corpses, which is that they don't have extremely short rez timers. 7. Here's the /con of a totally naked (no items, no coin) corpse I had just produced from a level 5 character: This corpse's resurrection time will expire in 2 hour(s) 59 minute(s) 16 seconds.. This corpse will decay in 6 day(s) 23 hour(s) 59 minute(s) 16 seconds.. The odd thing is that naked corpses, even high-level ones, poof as soon as the rez timer runs out (because there's nothing "left" on the corpse worth recovering any longer). And yet, this /con shows that the naked corpse would last for a full 7 days. This is probably just a display bug, I'm sure that the server will clean up the corpse as soon as its rez timer expires and it sees that there are no items/coins on the corpse. But the misleading display for the decay time is annoying.