I’ve been suspecting that NPC outfits and their builds are correlated somehow for a while now. Since I don’t have too much to do in AO right now, I figured I’d set up a spreadsheet for tracking this data.
The first sheet tracks which specific builds have been encountered for specific outfits. Green squares are confirmed sightings, yellow squares are suspected due to indistinguishability (notably vit builds), and grey squares have not been sighted so far yet. The data is a bit lacking because I haven’t had time to go through photo backlogs, so there’s probably a lot that can be filled out.
The second sheet tracks which specific stats can be used by which outfits. Only green and grey squares here. This does not distinguish between builds, just stats.
This applies to both wanted criminals/rivals/heroes as well as deckhands, since both are assumed to operate under a similar generation system based on observations. Outfit changed deckhands are invalid for the purposes of the document, as they have been changed from their original outfit and thus are not accurately representing their outfit’s natural generation settings.
You may submit your own rival or any wanted criminal you come across for data here. Deckhands are also fine if they are low loyalty or ones found in towns and not hired. For unhired deckhands, you may use magic sensing to help determine if they have magic and identify the number of weapons on their body, though FS cannot be determined unless they have boxing gloves.
For all NPC submissions, you must identify their build and outfit. For the outfit, simply send a photo or use my deckhand outfits guide to determine it. As for the build, I’ll provide a few quick tips here, but you may read my build identification tips post for a more detailed information.
- NPCs with three weapons are warrior build
- NPCs with two or one weapon and no other attacking type are knight
- NPCs with magic, weapons, and fighting styles are counted as savants. Vitality savants cannot be distinguished from a hybrid build and will not be counted for this.
- For magic only and FS only NPCs with their second awakening (lv 250+), if they have three magics/FS, they are purely that stat (mage/berserker) and if they have two, they are a vitality hybrid (paladin/juggernaut)
- Any NPC that shows two of three attacking types (magic, FS, and weapons) will be counted as their respective hybrid build. Weapons hybrids always have one or two weapons, but never three.
- Magic-only and FS-only NPCs below lv 250 cannot be distinguished between the full stat and vit hybrid types, and will be marked as yellow for both.
The sheet should not be private, even if it says it is in the description
My current hypotheses so far, based on observations prior to sheet setup:
- Mage outfit can only generate as mage or paladin builds. I have never seen one generate with FS or weapons.
- Wealthy outfit cannot generate with FS
- Knight outfit seems to generate with a tendency for vitality hybrids
- Fighter must generate with a build that uses FS
- Mafia does not generate with weapons