Before I start, I’m just going to define what exactly I mean by NPC Combat. I’m referring to, as the name suggests, gathering up NPCs and making them battle other ones, with little to no player interference. It can last minutes, with just a singular battle, or hours, if you decide to lead the NPCs across the whole map.
First up, general tips on starting and setting up the whole process. The best way to do that is to go to an area with a decent amount of structures or regular spawn points. These include the areas surrounding Ironport and Riverville, near the Ancient Coliseum, and the left part of the Bronze Grassland. These areas contain a decent amount of NPCs to recruit, and even 5 or 6 are capable of defeating the few enemy NPCs in the area if you choose to fight them.
Before gathering the NPCs though, there’s a few tips to have in mind just to make things easier.
- If you are gathering a large amount of NPCs, such as 20 or 30, you may want to consider equipping a more defensive set, especially a hard iron chestpiece and hard defense amulet (dull), as well as equipping a shield, to minimize damage taken from the NPCs you have chasing you. This is especially important to consider for magic users, as they can severely dent your hp if you get hit enough times.
- Speaking of which, the best way to get NPCs to aggro to one another is to have one hit the other. More often than not, NPCs from your group will make the first move, as the target NPC is more than likely to be ‘blind’ and won’t notice the other NPC. To get them to fight, simply stand behind or on top of the target NPC, and they will likely get hit by splash damage when NPCs attempt to hit you.
- Watch out for players, and try to avoid them, unless you know they will not interfere. Random people will likely hit the NPCs, especially new players, and you’ll have to either restart or chase down the NPCs.
- Choose target npcs wisely. Avoid level 30+ magic users, as they will likely have a spam move, which can be devastating due to npcs’ lack of knowledge of dodging spells. Explosions are somewhat risky too, if you’re using a fragile team that overwhelms other NPCs through sheer numbers alone. Wind explosions can be particularly troublesome for melee attackers like bandits. Obviously, don’t attack bosses or David. Whatever ragtag team of npcs cobbled together from camps and random spawns will have no chance of taking them down.
- If you’re using negative rep NPCs, don’t start threats. The soldiers will kill not only the one who started the threat, but probably also other NPCs in a process. The general rule of thumb is to just stay away from towns, with the only one that “needs” to be crossed being Riverville.
- Remember to consider lag when selecting servers. Lots of NPCs means quite a bit of lag, especially as they are client-sided with their functions. Avoid large servers, as they have a higher chance of, say, someone deciding to knock down the Silent Tower, which can immensely lag out your game.
Environment Considerations:
As you probably know, NPCs’ pathfinding is terrible sometimes. Here’s a list of some of the things you should avoid, unless you want your NPCs getting stuck for possibly ten minutes or more.
- Shorelines
Shorelines are quite obviously dangerous. If an NPC falls into the ocean, there is no recovering them, as they will instantly despawn. While they try to avoid falling in, they often still do when casting abilities, particularly melee NPCs. - Ashen Volcano and the Ruins of Charon
NPCs may be immune to lava, but that doesn’t mean they won’t get stuck in the lava lakes and rivers. And it’s risky for players too, as one misstep could mean instant death. And when you die, sometimes the aggroed NPCs with you may despawn, which just messes plans up. - Towns (Negative rep only)
Towns are dangerous for obvious reasons. Hostile NPCs inside may cause the risk of threat, and even accidentally breaking a window summons six soldiers, or more if you’re using villains or the Minotaur. - Beaches
While this may seem odd, and even counterintuitive, as beaches often have high amounts of spawn areas and two structure locations on both Seawatch and Castilian Beach, they are simply too much effort. They are separated from the mainland by tall ledges, which, of course, NPCs will ahve trouble getting over. It may take five, ten, fifteen, or more minutes trying to get most, or even all, your NPCs back up. You can gather the NPCs near beaches, just don’t go onto the beaches themselves. - Water
Rivers, lakes, and all that sort are prime locations for your NPCs to get stuck. The medium height ledges aren’t easy for the NPCs to climb over, especially due to the wide area, and NPCs are often tempted to jump in. They also don’t contain many NPCs, with even large lakes like Argestes containing only around 5 positive rep spawns on the edge, and one or two negative rep spawns in the center. - Occupied PvP arenas
I don’t think I need to explain these. Random players are best avoided.
Crossing the map:
The map is effectively divided into two halves by the main river that runs through it. There are only three bridges on this river: The Silent Tower, Riverville, and a wooden bridge in the Southern Riverland region. Obviously, the third is safest for negative rep teams, while the other two are suitable for positive rep ones. Do not let the NPCs fall off the bridge. The best way to do that is to cross quickly, and wait a short distance after the end. If you linger at the end or on the bridge itself, NPCs may attack you and fall into the river. This is especially true for the Southern Riverland bridge.
Knowing when to ignore NPCs is fairly important as well. If there is an NPC that may take too much effort to reach, and unlikely to make a large contribution, you shouldn’t attempt to get it. For example, the NPCs on the Argestes island or within the Ruins of Charon are best left alone, as I mentioned earlier. You should also remove any NPCs that may cause harm to your team , like environmental DoT NPCs, who act as a double-edged sword in many cases, or NPC that are doing too much damage to you to continue bringing across the continent.
With that, I think I’ve covered most of the basics of NPC combat. It’s pretty fun, except for the parts where you’re waiting for your NPCs to not get stuck. Unfortunately, that does happen quite a lot sometimes.
I’d be interested to see if anyone actually wants to do this, or if it’s jsut me. If anyone does, you can post your gathered NPCs or even a video of a run in the comments if you would like. Raw footage is fine.
