Much heat on this topic (in several threads, not just this one) and very little light. Now just watch me get burned ...
Homins, homins, you can't just speculate wildly on why, why, why, and then light your own fuse by accepting your own speculations as fact. Well, you can, but you will tend to blow yourself up.
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A couple of weeks ago, I spent many hours trying to make the Matis-Fyros run (unsuccessfully). I ended up knowing the position and habits of every animal between the Prime Roots portal and the Fyros portal, not to mention their parents, grandparents, favorite TV shows and favorite food (me, usually).
A couple of nights ago, I spent many hours trying again to make the run (unsuccessfully). I ended up knowing the position and habits of every animal etc etc etc. Some of the differences in position and quantity were quite dramatic. During this attempt, the server apparently went down for a while. When it came back, things had moved again. The next day I tried again (successfully at last) although again it took quite some time.
All of this information is background to my post. I want to be clear that what I will say is based on 4 separate observations (each over a period of many hours) in a particular stretch of territory, in a couple of different seasons.
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Here are *my* speculations, based on these actual observations:
-- Aggro mobs appear to "multiply" after a patch simply because the server has been down.
When the server comes up, with or without a patch, it starts with a full population of creatures. This includes a larger number of carnivores than you normally see because the population hasn't settled down yet.
-- There is randomness in the initial placement of mobs. Mostly the variation is small, but sometimes a pack is placed in quite an unexpected place. Sometimes an expected pack is gone completely till the next server restart.
-- At first, the carnivores go crazy chomping on the herbivores. This means that they do a lot of chasing, and so spend a lot of time outside their normal territory.
Eventually (many hours later), this calms down and the carnivore behavior starts to look normal again. But until this happens, the carnivores are much more dangerous to unsuspecting homins who make assumptions about how they "should" behave.
-- Herbivores do cull the carnivore population, as well as the reverse, but it takes time (many hours). For example, a pack of 5 torbaks can wipe out a pack of 10 armas every 15 minutes (or however often the armas respawn), but after a few hours of this, one of the torbaks might actually get killed. That's only one dead doggie, yes, but it actually represents a 20% decrease in the pack, which can make a difference to a poor defenceless homin who is just trying to get through it all.
-- Teleporters are surrounded by a safe zone. I don't know if many players just don't know this, or if everyone knows this and I just don't understand what they are complaining about.
If you enter the safe zone -- either by porting in or running to it before a nearby creature attacks you -- you won't be attacked. Once there, you can be seen by mobs, you can be targeted by them, but they won't attack you.
If they are already chasing you, the safe zone won't save you. If you attack them, the safe zone won't save you.
If you port in and find yourself surrounded by fangs and/or stingers, then the way to survive is ... to wait. Eventually your audience will disperse, usually within a minute or two, but occasionally it takes longer. This is no different from crossing dangerous territory elsewhere -- charge off and you die, bide your time and you live. This is only a major problem if you have no patience. (See above, under "lighting your own fuse and exploding".)
So, what is my point? Apart from "speculation isn't observation, opinion isn't fact" (including *my* speculation and opinion, of course) ...
After a server restart, the badlands are badder for the first 8 hours or so. If you want to be badder than the badlands, go away for a few hours, because otherwise the badder badlands are likely badder than you -- at least until things get bedder ... er, better. OK?
Adayl
Torbak feeder of Matis