Morph Spawning
Morph Spawning is a new term we heard in the last stream, and it was described as getting a named to spawn by a place holder living for a long enough time. I think people have jumped to the conclusion that this means some sort of boring “wait three hours” for the bandit to become the Dread Bandit.
I don’t see it this way at all, in fact I can come up with a few ways this Morph Spawning might work.
1) Body Guarding : You need to guard a mob (something friendly) for a long enough time which eventually spawns the named.
Examples:
A merchant traveling between locations gets attacked by bandits several different times. If no one is around to guard him he simply dies. If he is protected along his journey the Dread Bandit spawns on the last location and attacks giving the loot.
A fawn spawns in the forest and naturally wanders around walking through roaming wolfs and giant spiders areas. If you keep it alive long enough a Majestic Stag rare spawns
Once a week the city has a public execution. If you intervene and kill the executioner the prisoner will run for the city gate. If you protect him from the guards and he makes it to the forest, he will lead you back to his hideout which spawns the Crime Lord. You could be evil and kill all the guards or maybe CC / kite them all to aid in his escape.
2) Battles: Two or more competing faction periodically have battles. Whomever wins changes the future spawns in the area.
Examples:
The gnolls raid the kobolds den every third day at midnight. If left alone all the kobolds die and the gnolls return home victoriously leaving an empty kobold den for three days. If you kill the gnolls before they wipe out the kobolds then the den remains intact and the continue to respawn with the chance for the rare.
After killing the bandit camps leader his three son’s spawn. They each want control of the camp, helping one son (keeping him alive) wipe out the others respawns the son as the rare named.
What other ideas can people come up with for Morph Spawning.
Shadeweaver on Luclin in EQ had 3 factions that fought for control of the zone with different bosses spawning in each camp depending which faction was in charge. Other zones had it too to some degree. In many cases not the most loved system, especially if people wanted different results and messed up the spawns for the other person.
I had the same reaction to the video, that it was about not killing a mob, or not letting other kill a mob for long enough. I'm hoping it's not 3+ hours in popular as area as that just doesn't sound like fun.
Borderlands also comes to mind actually.
There was a certain type of mutant enemy that had a huge body but a tiny head they protected with a helmet. If you knocked off their helmet they hulked out and starting attacking everything indiscriminately. If they killed an enemy they would "level up" and even heal up and everything. If you let them do this enough times they would become a boss level enemy and would drop a massive amount of loot (as well as giving huge amounts of xp.) I don't recall for certain but I believe it was the only way to get certain kinds of rare items.
What if there's a pit with like an injured bear at the bottom. You could jump down and get the easy kill or you could kick animals into the pit for it to kill and eat. Feed it enough animals and it becomes strong enough to climb up out of the pit on its own but instead of being grateful it attacks you!
That sounds a bit basic. Maybe instead there's an area with lots of competing carnivores of some description. They wander around and get into fights with the prey and each other. They can easily handle the prey but they often get badly injured by their own kind and can then die to the prey or to a second predator showing up. If you carefully cull all but a few of the predators, then they can kill the prey without competition and then fight each other to become the only one in the area, and they could level up a bit as they go such that future fights against other predators are easier (but makes it more difficult for you to take them down) until they reach some boss level and power up into a rare spawn.
Xonth said:Morph Spawning
Once a week the city has a public execution. If you intervene and kill the executioner {Eli Wallach} will run for the city gate. If you protect him from the guards and he makes it to the forest, he will lead you back to his hideout which spawns {Lee Van Cleef}. You could be evil and kill all the guards or maybe CC / kite them all to aid in his escape.
What other ideas can people come up with for Morph Spawning.
Love it- sry couldn't help myself.