Npc spawning

[Lustra1]

question. on your bandit NPC mod i was wondering how long would it take for them to start spawning ?

like starting on X day ?. since that i been playing i have seen mostly Harley and nurse and the chef. 

the survivors and the bandit mod. i been getting nothing in the way. i dont have any other mods to conflict with these mods. but if i use a X2 zombie increase mod then i can now see them start spawning on the map. 

[meganoth]

Please use the "Discussion and Requests" section for questions. Questions about a specific mod would better be asked directly on the mod authors thread

 

Topic moved.

Edited February 11, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[khzmusik]

In the future, your question would probably get answered quicker if you posted it in the forum thread about the NPCs in question.

 

Can you tell us which "bandit NPC mod" you're talking about? There are several:

• Raiderz Pack (by DarkStar Dragon)
• RaiderGurlz Pack (by DarkStar Dragon)
• PitFighterz Pack (by DarkStar Dragon)
• Rogues and Psychos (by me, khzmusik)

Also, it would help if you told us what other mods you installed.

 

As background, the NPC Core characters are spawned into vanilla (unmodified) biome spawning groups. Those are the same groups used to spawn zombies. They spawn the same entities regardless of gamestage (they don't "scale up" as you gain levels).

 

There are different groups that spawn in different situations (biome, day/night, city/non-city). Without any modifications, the NPC Core and DarkStar Dragon NPCs spawn into these groups:

• "ZombiesAll" (used during the day, everywhere except downtown, all biomes except the wasteland)
• "ZombiesNight" (used during the night, everywhere except downtown, all biomes except the wasteland)
• "SnowZombies" (used during the day, everywhere except downtown, snow biome only)
• "ZombiesWasteland" (used during the day, everywhere except downtown, wasteland biome only)
• "ZombiesWastelandNight" (used during the night, everywhere except downtown, wasteland biome only)

Notice that none of these groups cover the downtown areas of any biome - so NPCs will not spawn downtown. But NPCs should spawn anywhere other than that.

 

Furthermore, each character has exactly the same chance to spawn into these groups. So you're equally likely to encounter an NPC with a club in the wasteland at night, as you would that same NPC with an M60 in the forest during the day.

 

The number of characters in each pack will also affect spawn groups. The more characters in a pack, the greater chance one of those characters will spawn in. This is relative to vanilla entities (zombies) and to other NPC packs.

 

They don't only start spawning after a particular day, nor at a particular level - because there's no way to do that (at least, not without rewriting vast swaths of the game's C# code).

 

Now, this does not apply to any of my NPC packs, including my Rogues and Psychos pack. I consider all of the above to be drawbacks, so I adjusted my own spawn rates accordingly:

• Harder biomes will spawn in more difficult characters (forest < desert < snow < wasteland)
• The nighttime will spawn more difficult characters than the daytime (but at lower rates)
• Downtown areas will spawn more difficult characters than other areas

Rogues and Psychos also spawn into different biomes:

• Rogues spawn into all downtown areas (day and night), most spawn into the snow biome during the day, some spawn into the desert biome during the day
• Psychos spawn into the desert during the day, and into the wasteland (in or outside cities, at day and at night)

But also, in general, my pack will spawn far fewer NPCs than the others.

 

Otherwise, you will usually encounter two or three NPCs immediately, even before you've completed the "Whiteriver Citizen" quest to find a trader. At that point you have nothing but a club and bow. Any kind of ranged NPC will usually one-shot you, and even an NPC with a club will have a 50/50 chance to kill you. Encountering more than one is usually a death sentence, and I don't particularly like always dying before noon on the first day.

 

If that's the pack you're talking about, then maybe I went overboard with the reduced spawn rates. You will want to go into the entitygroups.xml file in that pack, and adjust the probabilities as you see fit.

 

Also keep in mind that these are all vanilla entity groups. If you're playing with an overhaul mod (War of the Walkers, Darkness Falls, whatever), then the overhaul probably created their own biome spawn groups. There's no way for NPC Pack authors to target those, so without you doing work to make them compatible, they probably won't spawn at all.

 

[Lustra1]

@meganothi will keep that in mind. thanks 

 

@khzmusik

thanks again for the detailed information