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Understanding the Basics of EliteMobs

Here you will find described as briefly as I can the intended gameplay loop for EliteMobs. This guide is aimed at new admins who want to get a grasp of what EliteMobs can do.

Step 1: Player's first encounter

With natural elite spawning enabled in a valid world, players can encounter Elite Mobs around them. Their levels normally follow nearby players' combat levels, which come from weapon and armor skills; configured distance scaling and regional limits can change the result.

The default nearby-player bonus adds two levels per detected player, including the first player. It does not require a party.

Eligible Elite Mobs can drop the following rewards, depending on loot settings, drop rolls, contribution and anti-exploit checks:

  • Procedurally generated loot
  • Custom loot - authored items with configured drop behavior and levels
  • Elite Coins

(Note: You can read more about Elite Mob spawning and rewards here)

Introduce players to the Adventurer's Guild, where they can spend coins and sell eligible loot.

Step 2: Discovering the economy

Install the Adventurer's Guild through the content setup workflow so players can visit its shops and service NPCs.

EliteMobs uses its own currency by default; optional Vault integration can connect an outside economy. Progression also uses 11 independent skills: Swords, Axes, Bows, Crossbows, Tridents, Hoes, Maces, Spears, Staves, Wands, and Armor. Combat level is the average of the two highest weapon skills and Armor, rounded down. When gear restrictions are enabled, each item uses its matching skill requirement, not the overall combat level.

They will also be able to find out about the quest system, and start fulfilling quests to get extra currency, which will naturally lead them to seek opponents they would otherwise avoid. They may also find the Combat Instructor NPC, which will give them tips about the combat system. NPCs feature dynamic dialogue with greetings, conversations, and farewells, providing immersive interactions throughout the Adventurer's Guild and giving players important advice as they interact with them.

Step 3: Progression

Now that the players have an idea of what's ahead of them, they will fight against increasingly stronger Elite Mobs as they progress through item tiers.

As players fight with a particular weapon type, the corresponding skill levels up. Every skill, including Staves and Wands, unlocks selectable bonuses at levels 10, 25, 50, and 75. Players can select up to three bonuses per skill.
When enabled, timed events start checking five minutes after initialization and then once a minute. An online player and an expired global cooldown allow an attempt, but an eligible event, valid configuration and a valid spawn are still required. Moon-phase encounters follow their configured time, moon and spawn conditions; they are not necessarily tied to fixed locations. Events introduce additional mechanics and rewards, including custom enchantments such as Flamethrower, Grappling Hook, Meteor Shower, Lightning and Critical Strikes.

Step 4: High Tiers

Around item level 80, players approach the top of the default item progression. maximumItemLevel in ItemSettings.yml defaults to 100. Skill progression has no hard level-100 cap: the cubic XP cost gains an additional quadratic multiplier above 100, making further levels increasingly expensive. At mob level 80, natural power allocation allows up to eight powers: two each from defensive, offensive, miscellaneous and major pools. The actual count depends on the mob's eligible pools and successful power creation. Custom bosses use their authored powers instead.

They will be able to tell which loot they want to keep and which they want to discard, and will have a good idea of which are their favorite custom items. I highly recommend you make a lot of custom items as these are currently the main focus of mid to top tier players of EliteMobs.

At this stage, players will also have unlocked high-tier skill bonuses (tier 3 at skill level 50, tier 4 at skill level 75) which provide powerful abilities and further differentiate weapon playstyles.

(Mini)Dungeoneering

Assuming you installed the recommended Minidungeons & Lairs at some point - possibly even rather early on - players will probably be drawn to challenge Lairs, Minidungeons and Adventures.

These locations bring together authored encounters. Open-world regional bosses can respawn on configured timers; instanced content has a separate match lifecycle.

Dungeons come in multiple categories:

  • Instanced Dungeons - Separate world created per group
  • Open Dungeons - Persistent world, multiple groups can participate
  • Dynamic Dungeons - An authored world cloned for a group, with mobs scaled to the selected level
  • Hub Worlds - Central areas connecting to other content

Within these categories, you'll find Lairs, Minidungeons, and Adventures.

Here are the main selling points of the minidungeons:

  • Authored terrain, protection and boss mechanics reduce common terrain exploits. They do not guarantee that every encounter is exploit-proof.
  • Since it centralizes combat, you can have lower spawn rates for natural mobs and end up with a lower overall performance impact.
  • Since the loot is premade, it is usually quite special, and players learn to go to certain places to farm for specific gear that they might like.
  • Since the bosses are premade, the battles are manually balanced and it results in far more interesting & challenging but fair fights.
  • In the case of adventures, these are full-on massive adventure maps with vast questlines, sidequests and sometimes even arenas and dungeons inside of dungeons!
  • It looks great and players love spending days in them.
  • Treasure chests can use SINGLE mode, where the first player consumes the chest, or GROUP mode, where each player has separate loot eligibility. Restocking differs inside and outside instances; see Treasure Chests. Chests can also spawn mimics instead of loot.

More about minidungeons!

Instanced Dungeoneering

Some dungeons are instanced challenges. EliteMobs creates a separate world for the group. Once the match starts, new active participants cannot join; spectating depends on the dungeon's spectator settings.
There is a dedicated system for respawning which gives players 3 lives each before being struck out. That three-life behavior depends on allowSpectatorsInInstancedContent being true in dungeons.yml (the default): with spectator revives disabled, each player instead gets a single life, so the run itself is the only chance.

Players who want to run one together should create a party before selecting the dungeon. EliteMobs asks every member to confirm the exact dungeon and difficulty, then admits the roster as one group. Nearby party members also share matching kill-objective progress and roll on eligible gear through the Need / Greed menu.

Dungeons are the most balanced and developed content in EliteMobs, as they are significantly harder to exploit than any other content.

Dungeons have difficulties players can pick from, and the highest difficulties are the hardest challenges in EliteMobs but also the most rewarding!

More about dungeons!

Arenas

EliteMobs also has arenas which players can challenge. These are wave-based challenges which players must overcome for a preset amount of waves. They reward players for reaching specific arena waves.

Arenas run matches in their configured world and region. They do not create a new world for each group. Their player limits, start conditions, waves and rewards come from the arena configuration.

Arenas can be quite hard to beat, so they make for a fun and rewarding challenge!