Batmud has been struggling with tuning eq monsters to match the power of the
best players for years. Arches sometimes sell eq that is vastly overpowered
compared to any item that monsters drop. I propose the following idea, as a
way to "auto-tune" monsters against the top players of the game while not
making things very hard or almost impossible for the other 98% of the
playerbase:

The outright best topend item drops from monsters for which there is no
immediate substitute (i.e. sera twinkler and burgle crown, but not asmo ring)
would be flagged as "epic" equipment (or call it what you want). Any item
from a wish scroll or sold by an archwizard would also be included (i.e.
Aether, 20pr ring, 10spr ring, Usan voulge, black pearl, etc. everything).
Certain eq from one-shot events could also count if considered powerful
enough. The idea is to have everything that is "best of the best with no
appreciable substitute" included in the "epic" list.

Then, code would be added at the wizards discretion, to monsters of certain
difficulty, to have them "detect" these "epic" class items when in battle.
This would only apply to the most serious endgame monsters (burgle, asmo,
sera, etc) , and perhaps others when they randomly wear their best loot (such
as Stifsim).

Upon detecting 1 or more of these "epic" items worn by enemy mortals, monsters
could gain extra stats, levels, hitpoints, or other abilities, at the
discretion of the coding wizard.

If defeated, these monsters could be worth extra exp or money or have other
bonus rewards (even small amounts of tps or training points perhaps) - but the
idea is to not further increase the equipment drops even more.

This would allow the best eq monsters in the game to be automatically tuned
harder, and require better battle tactics if done properly, for the top
echelon of players while not making the game overly hard for everyone else.
Just a thought. I bet some folks out there would appreciate the extra
challenge.

-Jacen

But getting more powerful was the fun part of Bat. If the same mobs get harder
as you get stronger, why would you want to get yber lootz if they don't matter?
Have you ever played vanilla Oblivion?

-P