Talk:Boilerplate:Creature

Where do I find all the resistances?

I know I sound like a complete noob, but how can I find out the specific resistances, mitigations, and so on, of a particular mob? I've seen references to Lore-Master tooltips - is that the only character who can view that info, or is it something that I (my only 65 is a Minstrel) can do, too? I'd love to be able to fill in this info. Adelas (talk) 16:00, 18 August 2011 (EDT)

Lore-masters are, indeed, the only class that can gather this information - the skill Knowledge of the Lore-master is what gets you the good stuff. And no worries. When you've been away raising kids for three years, a lot of stuff becomes confusing. :) Sethladan 16:40, 18 August 2011 (EDT)

Involved in Quests

The boilerplate recommends a section on quests simply called "Quests" with a small line underneath before the bulleted list, but most of the creatures pages I see out in the wild instead either call it "Quest Involvement" or "Involved in Quests". Is one of these preferred? -- Elinnea (talk) 22:58, 16 November 2011 (EST)

I have no idea but for locations the shorter "Quest" is used, but then also "Starting" and "Involving" in bold (not as headers), and NPCs has "Involved in Quests" and no starting or involving groups (with some exceptions for `popular´ NPCs who have very many quests). It seems that back in time "Quest Involvement" has been used but is being phased out.

For conformity with NPCs I guess "Involved in Quests" is preferred. However, then the next line seem superfluous. Maybe Ravanel has better feedback. Zimoon 02:16, 17 November 2011 (EST)

Zimoon is right. It used to be "Quest Involvement", a version which I like more, especially since some people don't include the sentence, and then it just looks a bit weird. I wasn't even aware that this was changed. But it was, at the end of summer this year, by Rogue. So perhaps we should ask her. :P

In the end it doesn't really matter much what we use. It would be best if it is the same thing for all creature pages, I guess. I'm just not too motivated to go change all those old creature headers. ;-) --Ravanel (talk) 03:11, 17 November 2011 (EST)

I don't particularly want to go through every creature in the database either. I'm not sure it matters too much - the different headings all seem clear enough to me. I know next to nothing about creature pages though, so I will defer to any of you on this question. /kowtow -- Elinnea (talk) 10:14, 17 November 2011 (EST)

Just 2 cents from a native English speaker, "Involved in Quests" has a strange feel to it, grammatically. Someone took the sentence

This ___ is involved in these/the following quests

and shortened it to a [telegraphic] form - in other words, the section title "Involved in Quests" is trying to convey an entire sentence in as few words as can still get the point across. In addition to the grammatical "discomfort" that it causes, that form bothers me as a title because it isn't describing the section, it's describing the NPC (or creature, or NPC, or whatever)

In contrast, "Quest Involvement" is actually one fewer character, and as a title it more accurately describes the contents of the section.

And, just for the record, if we could come to a group consensus, we do have people around here that could create a bot to look for "==Involved in Quests==" on ANY page, NPC, mob, location or otherwise, and change it to the other form, saving all of us from having to do the work. -Adelas (talk) 23:13, 17 November 2011 (EST)

I am unbiased when it comes to the exact wording and grammar, this is not "my baby" so to say.

If "Quest Involvement" is better grammatically it also has the bigger (?) advantage that the chief word comes first, in a TOC that is valuable.

I guess the very best would be just "Quests" but that also implies people (at least some, and mentally) to write a sentence somewhere rather than a dotted list of quests. Usually, for facts written sentences are down the list while one-or-few-words lists are high up. The reason is that a sentence must be read in full and not seldom deciphered, and while skimming pages for some facts many of these "operations" are discarded until the correct one is found. Yes, engineers write boring texts (usually) but in the end of the day they are efficient, and a wiki is facts-firsts, lore-last, if any. And this also means that sometimes such sentences are not exactly Shakespeare poetry but perhaps "* Required in quest ...."

As said, I am unbiased. And bots are good. There are more things on my wish-list for them then ;)

Zimoon 02:05, 18 November 2011 (EST)

For Creatures: "Quest Involvement" is pretty old. A lot of the Creature pages have not been updated. I am updating them as I find them to "Involved in Quests." I am ok with using bots to change them to something else wholesale. "Involved in Quests" is short, concise, and easy to skim.

For NPCs: A lot of the quests in NPC pages have not been split yet into 'Starting' 'Involving'. It goes from (random smattering of quests) > (making sure the quests are there and are updated) > "Involved in Quests" > (splitting present quests to Starting/Involving) I am at the "Involved in Quests" part since I want to make sure that the quests are there first before going back and splitting them as Zimoon had done. There are still a lot of NPCs that aren't in the wiki, have missing quests, or are unlinked to quests they are in. -- Starbursty (talk) 06:53, 18 November 2011 (EST)

Before launching your bot, what is the general consensus?

a) Involved in Quests? ... or

b) Quest Involvement? ... or simply

c) Quests?

I guess that was the questio to begin with :)

Summing it up it right now it seems a) has 1 vote (Star), b) has 2½ (Rav, Adelas, and ½ from me), and c) has 1½ (if we count Rogue, plus my other half). Whatever, we just don't have to be rash ;)

Zimoon 13:42, 18 November 2011 (EST)

I generally use (and prefer) Quest Involvement for NPCs, Locations and Creatures. That keeps it simple and easy to remember. RingTailCat (talk) 14:15, 18 November 2011 (EST)

Hmm, did this topic die?

With RTC's comment the score weighs in advantage of b), using "Quest Involvement". Considering Adelas' grammar comment, is consensus that we want a bot run over the place and change from "== Involved in Quests ==" -> " == Quest Involvement =="? And are there more combinations we should fix the same way? Item pages? Any cases where we do not want any change?

Zimoon 10:49, 10 December 2011 (EST)

Thanks for waking this up again. Adelas' artistic comment is also for me the reason I strongly feel for that title, although I could not find words for it myself. Kudos for writing it down so clearly, Adelas! Making a bot change all these seems fine to me, if you can get someone with a bot to do it. :D I strongly advice against changing anything into "Involved in Quests" for Adelas' clear reason. It is a half sentence, not a title. This also counts for NPCs, but I don't feel in a position to say much about those, being more "Involved with Creatures" myself. ;-) --Ravanel (talk) 11:26, 10 December 2011 (EST)

I will also add my support for "Quest Involvement." If I say to myself, "Driftclaw's Quest Involvement," it makes more sense - similarly for "Drops," "Location," "Effects," and so on. This is in addition to Adelas' well-phrased summary above, naturally, heh. I can understand WHY Rogue would have changed the header to the shorter "Quests" version (it's more similar to the other one-word section headers) but if enough people prefer something else, then we shall just have to override her. :D Sethladan 11:33, 10 December 2011 (EST)

With a title of "==Quests==", I think there seems to be a stronger need to elaborate on the relationship between the quest and the subject article. Right then and there you need to explain why the quest is listed in the section.

With a title of "==Quest Involvement==", I get the sense that the quest is related to the subject of the article. If I need more information about the relationship between the subject article and the quest, I will go to the quest page.

Part of this may be a result of my browsing style - I regularly have several tabs and/or windows open. Rather than visit a page, and use the back button to return to the current one, I open a new tab or window. Following a link to get more information is a very natural thing to do. Using a Ctrl-click or Shift-click to follow grants much greater browsing freedom than a simple click. I browse like Cris Johnson (Nicholas Cage) searching the boat in the Next - following many paths at once. RingTailCat (talk) 12:28, 10 December 2011 (EST)

Only one small comment. The only page type where Quest Involvement does not apply is any kind of location. At these pages the boilerplate suggests a split into sub-sections "Starting:" and "Involving:" but not as headers. That was suggested before I arrived and I kind stuck to it, maybe mindlessly. So whatever bot you run must avoid running on location pages, and these are not in a namespace so .. hehe.

Adding: It does not really matter as long as the bot does not bother with ==Quests==, any other location page is fine as it is probably not made-over yet. Zimoon 19:02, 10 December 2011 (EST)

Resurrecting this topic.

I have often wondered when to add a quest to a creature or mob. And that kind of pokes the original topic of this section. Yes, when? So let me explain.

The natural case is when the quest reads "kill X" or "obtain K from X" so that X is indeed required for the quest.
Another case is when the quests reads "kill 20 X" or "kill 20 of type Q" or "obtain 20 K" and we know that only X, Y, and Z are of type Q or they drop K. However, here it also implies that we update all pages of X, Y, and Z, and not just one or two of the alternatives. For completeness.
Another case is when mobs of a certain type appear only within certain quest instance(s) but nowhere else in the worlds.
The less obvious case is when the quest does not at all mention any of X, Y, or Z but is about obtaining object K from a location. It so happens that X, Y, and Z are found patrolling the area, but they are neither required nor have anything to do with the quest as such; one could say they are "hostile scenery". Not seldom it is possible to avoid them just by being cautious.
A very similar case is when the quest is about finding and killing mob E, but pressing forward through a structure (often inside an instance) all sorts of mobs appear. Sometimes they are possible to avoid but it could be quicker to just fight through them. Either way, they are "hostile scenery" or perhaps "enemy combat crew" but definitely not essential for the quest.

For 1), 2), and 3) I see no questions, those creature/mob pages should be updated.

For 4) and 5) I am not at all that certain that quest information on their pages fills any purpose whatsoever. Yes, they happen to be there, almost as of a coincidence, but they are definitely not required for the quest.

Hence, this post is more of a "laziness" question: are editors supposed to track down all mobs that happen to appear at a quest scene and add a line about the quest to their pages? Or can we skip the "scenery mobs" and concentrate on the essential? This is, of course, in those cases when it is not interesting to add some trivia comment to the creature/mob page.

For example Quest:Chapter 3: The High Fortress, how interesting is it to add this quest to the Gabilazan Guard? Sorry guards, you just happen to stand there but you are not required for the quest, are you?

Or the instance Quest:Instance: The Last Refuge. Yes, together with Gimli the player(s) has/have to fight through waves of mobs (certainly so as Gimli is in the mood for combat exercise) but none of them except at the end are "interesting" or required for the quest. However, a few of the mobs appear only in this instance (and a few in a following instance), thus those are in case 3). But others are just more of "enemy combat crew", how important is it to bother with those?

Personally I would suggest that we change the header to "Required for Quests". And that we skip the trivial quest involvement when they just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Except in case 3).

Otherwise change the header to "Quest Involvement" and remove the superfluous line from the boilerplate. That text carry no valuable information whatsoever, it is actually false at it implies that they are 'required' to be involved in the quest.

Thoughts, feedback, ideas, suggestions?

-- Zimoon 03:30, 28 August 2012 (EDT)

Deed Involvement Suggestion

Currently the boilerplate reads "Achievements" and we are supposed to list the rewards from related deeds. In short, or usual policy is to include the most important information that relates to any page, whether creatures or what. Slayer deeds are furthered by killing creatures of the proper kind and thus "deed information" is important, however, the rewards are important at the deed pages. We all understand the "convenience" by displaying the rewards, especially Virtue Traits. But why not be convenient at many other pages too then, such as merging info from crafting and item pages onto related recipe pages? Or listing quest rewards at NPC pages?

Suggestion: Change the boilerplate to read

== Deed Involvement ==
 * [[Name of the deed]] - ''Kill X [species]''
 * [[Name of the deed (Advanced)]] - ''Kill Y [species]''

Benefits, beyond keeping relevant data where it belongs and nowhere else:

Convenience for editors ;)
Smaller footprint (the current sections take at least the space shown above and they usually do not list all rewards)
Currently nothing at all connects creature pages with the deeds (except some editors who are already using my formal suggestion.

Losses: One extra mouse-click to see what the deed rewards --- unless also deeds can be equipped with tooltips which display only the basics: objective, rewards, and maybe something more.

Your thoughts and ideas please :) --Zimoon 06:19, 18 October 2012 (EDT)

I don't do much with Creature pages, but this proposal sounds reasonable to me. I would much rather have a link to the relevant deed (which can easily display all of the rewards) than trying to link the significant rewards from every creature page. Honestly, as a premium player I complete deeds for the TPs more than any other reason, so I would rather look at the deed page for that anyhow.

The main reason I see for including the deeds at creature pages at all is to let you know that this one will count for a certain deed. In some cases it's not entirely obvious what exact species are included, or over how big an area will kills still count, and having a single line with the link to the deed would be sufficient to get that across. Besides, then it would create a link from the creature to the deed, so I could look at What-Links-Here from the deed page to check which bad guys are relevant for me. -- Elinnea (talk) 13:41, 18 October 2012 (EDT)

Ambiguity-question about Abilities

From time to time I run into the ambiguity in "Abilities" ... does that term mean the "skills" a creature/mob has? Or does it mean the "effects" that are applied on the attacker? Or is it ambiguous on purpose and we could use whatever we like? At least it is not documented whichever to list, or if both may be used.

Of course a "skill" is interesting if it for example makes the target invulnerable for damage, or for certain damage, or if it protects or heals adds or masters in the vicinity. From that perspective I guess "skills" could sometimes be useful, but perhaps such info is better kept under "Tactics", is it not?

I guess "effects" is meant to go under "Abilities" as those are what most often are applied on the attacking characters. Hence those are what a player may prepare for by bringing certain potions, or eat certain food.

What made me write this is Curr-olog Murderer. Many Trolls have a Stomp skill, which in turn affects the player as Knocked Out (but with another icon) and Susceptibility to Wounds (which right now is an effect listed under Stomp). Yes, he has the skill (hence an "ability") to stomp, a powerful 600+ damage with the two effect of "8 seconds knock-out" and sometimes the "susceptibility to wounds". But what of those are interesting for the player? Perhaps all three, but then we should perhaps line up the three such as (notice that all links goes to Stomp because those effects do not yet have individual pages):

Degrading Wound

Stomp AoE Skill: 689 Common Damage; causes:

Knocked Out For 8 seconds

Susceptibility to Wounds 10% lowered Wound Resistance for 1 minute

Sorry for long texts but I am quite confused what is the best and/or the proper approach here. Perhaps I am alone ;) But if not we should perhaps jot downs a section somewhere and put a link to it at the Boilerplate.
-- Zimoon 04:27, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

Hey Zimoon. It's a good question you ask here, and I've thought about it in the past. So far, "Abilities" has included both Skills and Effects. As you already mentioned, Effects are more obvious to notice than Skills, and are much better documented on this wiki. I don't think this is really a problem, but indeed we should include Skills if we know them.

I think you made a good solution here: from the way it is organized, it's obvious that the two effects are a result of the Stomp skill. (On a side note: I would link directly to the effect pages, e.g. Knocked Out and Susceptibility to Wounds in this case. Otherwise you get three links to the same page. It is obvious that the effects are a result of Stomp anyway, and if you click Knocked Out, you might actually do so because you want to know more of that specific effect.)
In some cases, you might want to use a different solution. I most often ran into these problems dealing with raid bosses. They usually both have very distinct skills as well as effects, and might even have different abilities depending on the tier. For complicated boss fights, I think it's better to separate skills and effects to keep it understandable. An example of this is Crisiant.
We could separate Effects and Skills everywhere to keep things clear. On most creature pages, there will only be a few effects and we won't have to change anything about that (no title needed when there is no need to separate anything). For the more complicated creatures, we can link to Crisiant as an example.
If there are specific directions needed in order to deal with either Effects or Skills, that's what we'll want to put under "Tactics".

Hope that was of any help, am curious to hear your thoughts. --Ravanel (talk) 08:04, 30 October 2012 (EDT)

Maybe I'm confused, but with most creatures we don't know what skills they use, do we? The ones that summon allies are clear, I guess. And I can see that a guy has an induction circle, and then afterwards something happens, and maybe I can fetch its name from the combat log, but I don't have an icon or tooltip to put with it. That Stomp skill is a skill in Troll session play for PvMP, and I'd be cautious using it on regular troll pages, even if it's clear that they use an attack that does the same thing. I've always only added Effects because they're clearly observable. More skills could be added just as a short text explaining what happens, without a link to any other wiki page, but for ordinary landscape mobs that doesn't seem all that interesting and not worth the effort involved, in my opinion. But if someone wanted to add such a thing, I see no problem with including it under Abilities as well.

Raid bosses and other unique and complex enemies are another story, and I willingly profess ignorance in those matters, hehe. I think the approach at Crisiant looks pretty good, and it would be worth linking to him from the boilerplate as an example. -- Elinnea (talk) 11:06, 30 October 2012 (EDT)

You are of course correct, and it's my fault for not looking deeper into the Stomp specifics in Zimoon's example. Each mob we encounter has a set of skills, but most of them are invisible to us, apart from their name in the combat log. This is only logical, as part of the fun of this game, especially in instances and raids, is to find out 'what the enemies actually do'. E.g. I got hit by this really damaging frost attack, how did that happen? Was it because I was in front of the boss / was it a frontal AoE attack? What tactic will we have to use to avoid this? Etc.

This also means we will never have as much information about these skills as we do about our own class skills. Looking at the usage of the Monster Play skill Stomp meant for the Curr-olog Murderer page, I think we can better not do that, because we are basically guessing (plus, it is a bit confusing to link to a monster player skill). Perhaps it's better to do it as on the Crisiant page: the name of the skill written down with a description of what it does without any links (e.g. "Shadow Crush: Distributed shadow damage attack, available when there is a Shadow Grim add "). If we don't know the official name of the skill, but we do know that something happens, a description will suffice (e.g. "Summons Shadow Grim").

What I do like about Zimoon's example, and what I actually was meant to be applauding, was the use of indentations to imply the relationship between the effects and the skill that causes them. I did a similar thing for Crisiant (but with an effect that causes another effect in case something specific happens):

Effects:

Frost Wreath Attacks made against this creature will cause you to take greater damage from fire.

Applies to player upon attack:

Weakness to Fire You take more damage from frost. -10% Fire Mitigation. (Tiering up, adding -10% Fire Mitigation each tier)

--Ravanel (talk) 12:15, 30 October 2012 (EDT)

OK. If we look at it from a visitors point of view, what are they interested in? I believe that matters the most in the end, right? I would guess that Effects in most cases tell the most, not the origin of them: if I am stunned I am stunned and I would have liked to know about that risk. However, in some cases I believe Skills are good to know about, if the effect helps the creature itself or its allies in some way, or if the Skill is in itself a more harmful Attack than usual, which also may have side Effects.

So, in the end of the day I wonder if we do not end up with: "If we know the Skill, should we tell it? Why?"

The completionists in us say "yes" and "because" and both are valid. For completionists.

The informants and usability-editors in us say "perhaps" and "it depends on its degree of value" and the fuzzy answers are still valid. However, this latter group allow even information of lesser value, but below any information of higher value. Not being "over-informative" is indeed hard, right?

Crisiant is a good example where a mix of Skills and Effects may be used. But what is a Skill and what is an Effect in that list? And does it matter? Either way, only a few creatures will cause this problem, exactly as Elin says, and I was more interested in what the meaning of "Abilities" was. And I was also a bit confused over a page which has Skill and Effects mixed at same page, making it impossible to transclude but one of them from it. I see now that the idea was to be able to use both. If needed. But agree with Elin, we must use caution. Thanks for your comments :)
-- Zimoon 14:29, 30 October 2012 (EDT)

Reputation and Faction gained from Creatures

I noticed the wiki has no location or place for faction reputation earned from killing a creature. I have added the reputation gain to the Drop section up till now but a more permanent solution should be in order. Suggestions? Matthew.zellmer (talk) 03:01, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I made Template:Creature Rep a while ago for certain creatures in Lothlórien. It functions exactly as Template:Quest Rep but is adapted for creatures. While not the best implementation, it should be able to serve this purpose and is, of course, open for modifications. Neum (talk) 08:22, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Turbine only added creature killing reputation recently, and as I recall, it is NOT widely true. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 17:58, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Change to the Deeds section to remove requirement to record Deed object and kill numbers

The administrators have agreed to remove the requirement to record deed object and/or kill numbers. Anyone wanting such information and data on good locations can follow the link. This will reduce workload at creation, and also remove requirement for later changes when deed numbers are again changed.

The boilerplate has been updated. Noddi (talk) 10:55, 20 September 2018 (UTC)