Getting Besieged Down to a Science

[BRP]

Though Besieged isn't taking seriously by many of the population, I think it should be explored to see exactly how it works(it's never stopped us before). If a method could be found that would allow a smaller group of people(30-80) to carry their (non-Siren) server on their shoulders. I'd like to think... oh, I pray, if such a method is found, it can be taught to general public of Besieged goers through BG, KI, and Allah.

I'm trying to create a list of Besieged commandments that will lead any server into victory. That would be the best solution. Being able just to find out how it really works out also be fine. I'm just one person, so others lending a hand would be great. Unlike AV this wouldn't just help 1% of the game's population, figuring out this mystery could effect 90%. (all previous numbers are made up on the spot).

Now, if you are here to express your disdain for Besieged, this isn't the thread for it. And actually doing so would be against the rules(the BRP rule, ohohoho).


I've this strong theory which alone is impossible to prove. The idea is that those taller modeled versions of normal monsters are the key to making the invading forces retreat. This isn't an entirely original idea, as these guys were around for day 1. You can also identify them by how they do /cheer and have access to NM only WSes(like Groundburst). The theory isn't 100% and I'd like to see it proven true or wrong(which goes for anything I say here).

The reason I suspect them is:
1. Always have been apart of the system. This isn't the case with NMs.
2. The obvious enhancements: NM WSes, usually are a bit stronger, and are bigger and do /cheer.
3. I've noted very, very often Besieged will end with a death of this type of monster. I now only target them and the level boss(for exp bonus). Since I've started doing this, I can honestly say about 6/8 times, several seconds after the death of an unnamed NM lead to them retreating. 1 time I didn't see the last monster die and another it ended when the level boss was killed.*

*- This could mean NMs, or perhaps just the level boss, occupy the same spot as unnamed NMs.

Something I'd like proved or disproved: (I need a second opinion or dozen)
-Mamool unnamed NMs are the only unnamed beastmen who can use Flameburst.
-Troll " Healing Stomp.
-Lamia " Belly Dance. Merrow " Rising Swell.
(This I don't think is true, but Mamool Ja Hussar unnamed NMs using Flame Angon)


For people not familiar with unnamed NMs, they can be identified with the traits I mentioned above. Usually, it is very tricky as you'll usually be depending on just size... this method becomes difficult when you can't compare it to any other monsters of the same model(as in, none are nearby). I have been using a makeshift ruler out of my character's own height(a taru). You could probably also use hallways and just be able to compare them by memory. If anyone else has any tips on this matter, I would be interested in hearing.


There also seems to be larger versions of non-Beastmen monsters. I'm not sure of their importance. They do not do /cheer and do not have special WSes.


I've been loosely counting the number unnamed NMs that appear in a wave. I have yet to come to a solid number. I also wouldn't be surprised if the number of unnamed NMs increases based on level. I noticed more on a level 7 than a level 6. But again, nothing solid.


Besieged's length seems to depend a lot on the number of Serpent Generals alive. When the Hall of Binding has opened up, it seems Besieged's length will reach an insanely high amount(3+ hours compared to 1 hour~). I've never ever seen anything that would give me the idea that Besieged is time based though. I'm a firm believer in that it's length is decided by how many/what monsters you defeat.


Now, this is a wild theory... but here is what I imagine what the Besieged system might be like. It's sort of inspired by Assault and it's numbers are just placeholders to give an example.

For the Beastmen to retreat you need reach "x" points, this is the goal. "x" is based on the amount of living Serpent Generals, and "x" greatly increases when all five are defeated. "x" base amount is also based on the level of the Besieged and to make up for this, there are more unnamed NMs.

Defeating a normal monster equals 1 point.
Defeating an unnamed NM equals 5-10 points.
Defeating a NM would either equal 5-10 points or work similar to Serpent Generals in lowering the total amount points needed for their retreat.

Ideally, something like this can be tested by a Ranger who keeps track of a battle through widescan and is able to keep track of which monster is an unnamed NM and which is normal(through other players I would imagine).

Please post your thoughts, opinions, or speculate on the matter. Again, no bitching.

[Wintermute]

If time varies according to Generals alive, and Besieged does in fact work on a pseudo-points system like you speculate then you could assume that Generals provide a multiplier, %-age, or pre-set bonus to the number of points per mob killed. Could also be the case that the death of a General, and maybe the opening of the Hall of Candy, results in a pre-set reduction of points.

It would aslo suggest that there would be Point Tiers according to mobs, i.e:
Beastmen Kings
King Guards
NMs
Unnamed NMs
Regular beastmen
And then the mob pets/raptors/puks/skeles etc

Could also be the case that X-Amount of points checked at pre-set time intervals are required to prevent a time extension. Could even be that killing NMs prevents a time-extension.
Could also be the case that the death of a General could act as a time extension.

The only problem testing your theory would be that in the lag-heavy environment that is Besieged it would be difficult to pinpoint when mobs die accross the whole map unless you track them with Widescan, in which case you'd only be able to track an NM if you're working off the list. You'd also need a good group of players to quickly pinpoint and follow NM/Unnamed-NM without losing sight of them if they have no Widescan.

Widescan would also not differentiate between regular mobs and Unnamed-NM unless they are always placed in a certain part of the mob list like many NM PH elsewhere in the game. And again, trying to verify something like this could prove troublesome.

A good start would be to take a pt/alliance in for a few besieged and see how many Unnamed/NM die before it ends and then work on the effect the death of regular mobs has on Besieged.

Only problem is getting people to participate in such a study. Most avoid Besieged due to the insane lag of higher tiers and the frequency of Besieged itself works against you somewhat.

Decent theory though.

[Max™]

Well damn, lag spike post deletion ftw.

Basically, killing Fodder mobs is the key to a smooth easy win.

They die fast, having fourty of them chewing on a General (especially wussy bitches like Gadalar, without fail the first pussy to go down, hate that guy) is never a good thing, and I am quite sure Besieged operates on a point system as you mentioned.

Though the Mega Boss might be worth a bunch of points, there are always more fodder worth a couple of points than you will ever make up with the Mega Boss.

Only time Ive seen a Mega Boss death was when we had people focusing on them, and just a token effort to keep the Fodder beat down and the Generals a live.

When people murderize the fodder mobs, they retreat fast.

[Deadmeat]

Probably a little off topic, something I've noticed lately on Caitsith is some players (usually JP) start destroying Archaic Mirrors once a group starts preparing. It effectively delays Besieged for a while.

Last night, the Trolls started prepping around 8pm. They didn't arrive until close to 1am.

Couple of reasons that I can think of for why they do it:
-- JP on Caitsith are hardcore about Besieged (they are always capacity) and are sick of the AC being lost during NA hours, so they try to delay it to get it into JP hours.
-- Buy some time for prisoners to be rescued and/or return.

The latter has happened before. We've had a back to back where on the first, all but 1 general were captured. I noticed during the first besieged, there was a group destroying the archaic mirrors of the next wave (we had lost all generals already) and that force's build up was at a crawl. When the first ended, the second was at level 8 and they took about an hour and a half to reach Aht Urgan. All prisoners and generals were rescued and returned before they arrived. I'm pretty sure if all the mirrors weren't destroyed, they'd have arrived before some of the generals returned.

Back on topic, both times I've seen Mega Bosses be defeated (Medusa and Gurfurlur), Besieged ended right away. I can't say the same about the Hydra/Cerb/Khim NM.

[Max™]

I've seen Medusa and Gulool killed.

Besieged didn't end immediately, but within a couple more monsters it was over.

I think what happened that time was we had people outside killing mobs, so we had less fodder to deal with in town, combined with 700 people, about half of them murdering the megaboss.

[Ashky]

I think BRP makes some valid points, especially to the "unnamed NM" part of his element. The reason Midgardsormr sucks SOOOO bad at Besieged is the fact that we have a few hundred morons who see a named monster and thing "OMG! IT WOULD BE SO 1337 IF WE COULD KILL HIM!" all the while, the other 40 normal mobs you can actually kill pretty efficiently are mowing down everything in sight while 600 people all concentrate on a undamagable Medusa.


If people would actually listen to people who actually care how Besieged turns out, then I think it would go much faster. Perhaps BRP, we should make posts on our server forums (or via shout before it starts) that designate a few "Main /assist" people who everyone who actually has a mind goes to when they shout out "Defeat this one first! (H-9)." If we could get 200 of the 800 total people on board, I think we could win pretty easily. Especially more than we do now, which isn't often. Midgard sucks at the team work aspect of the Besieged game.


Great post, I'd like to see some definite proof.

[Max™]

800 people!

(kidding, but man, would simplify things)

[Nekio]

I've been under the assumption of a point system as well, but I feel like the entire cadre of NPCs present in Besieged affects how badly the beastmen army must be beaten before they retreat. Obviously the loss of a general would be much more detrimental than losing a merc, but it seems that the loss of any NPC raises the threshold at which the beastmen army will bounce. It makes sense in terms of how an actual battle would unfold, and when Besieged is going REALLY badly, you can get to a point where all that's left is a couple NMs, the Mega Boss, and the HNM, and they're still not leaving.

Basically, I agree with Max. Sure the NMs and unnamed-NMs give more "points", but by not focusing on fodder mobs, you invariably will lose NPCs, which increases the number of mobs you have to kill to win. If you're going for the fastest win, with the least losses, the ideal strategy would be to separate the player base into 5-10 units that each have a main /assist, that go around and decimate normal mobs in a minute or two. There will always be players that will be distracting the NMs and cure-bombing the Generals, who will probably be on the NMs anyway.

If you're going for maximum points, firstly, you need close to the max number of players. The best bet would be to follow the strat above, but not wipe out all the fodder mobs. Once you get them to a controllable level, then consolidate your units onto single NMs/Mega Boss/HNM for added points.

The key is to get somebody on your server who attends nearly every Besieged and can get enough recognition that they might coordinate such a thing.

[panzerfox]

This is hard to quantify. Here are my observations.

1) Some un-named NMs have a higher acc/eva than their counterparts. The best example I can give would be the Ravagers. Almost always a group of Ravagers head to Najaleith. I can usually get a decent hit rate on Ravagers but just one particular Ravager I always miss alot more and subsequently, it takes alot longer to kill. I have noticed this trend amongst other group monsters throughout different besieged.

2) Besieged length almost always varies for me. JP prime time seem to *ALWAYS* be the shortest. The shortest I've been was a 45 min for a level 8 (200) attack. No generals died and there were 5 mobs standing before they retreated. The longest have always been during NA time. The longest have been 2.5 hours ending with a win.

In many of the short Besieged, all the "easier" mobs are killed first. Normal (Ravagers, Draugers, etc) mobs > Lesser NMs > Major NMs (the hydra/cerb/khim clones, gulool, medusa, gurfur). Always ends with the Major NMs standing and some lesser NMs. There have been times where the Major ones were killed but its almost always at the expense of either some generals or at the expesne of leaving some lesser NMs out.

3) Regarding monsters themselves, I too am part of the camp that believes in "killing as many monsters" as possible in order to end it. I also believe it is possible to kill the Major NMs while leaving all the Lesser NMs standing. The best case in my opinion is to kill all the non-NMs then focus on the Big NMs. Usually the amount of lesser NMs is manageable to handle than instead of going at the Major NMs at the start. Coordination however can never be done only since there are idiots who only think of themselves and do stuff that they want to do because "hey i pay $xx.xx a month I can do whatever I want" and pull monsters to where people are resting/healing etc in order to try and not die.

There seems to be approximately 4 waves. The last waves bring on the most annoying as well as any Major NMs. Each wave has on average 20 enemies which split into two group (one towards east to AC, one towards south to AH). I've counted roughly 4-6 mobs per group. I'll double check this since Im now leveling RNG and have Widescan.

4) Was there a "rumor" that went around saying how if the real counterpart to the besieged clones (hydra, cerberus, khimara) were killed, their besieged clones wouldn't spawn? I think it is false since I know recently a few people have killed hydra but I still see it during Besieged. Is there any confirmation affirming/denying this rumor?



Aside: Did you know that Mihli and her group of 4-6 other soldiers (2-3 troopers, 2-3 volunteers4-6) can take down a monster faster than a group of god knows how many of us pounding on the same monster? CURE THOSE NPCs!! They are super buff.

[Taylorman]

I know on Alexander i've seen Gere (cerb) taken down, and that did not result in an immediate win. But i think we got somthin like 1870xp or somthing close to 2000xp for all the nm's we droped including cerb.

Also, a couple weeks ago we won a lvl8 besiged in under 20 min, i remember because i had poped a 15min JA after buffing and waiting to "See" the first mob pop up, and i had just finished using it again right after it had become availible. I thought it was very strange for them to lose so fast, i still had a ton of mobs on screen, and we kept the candy.

Im not sure how that fits into the points system >_>

[Gwynplaine]

Going to mention a few things I've heard during besieged on Siren. I don't know how true they are.

Eidolic Qufeel Ja multiplies into several when he casts an utsusemi spell early on. Some people with widescan will mention in shout which was the original. I think the idea is that killing the original will kill the others, but this might be a myth. Any besieged I've been to they're always running around raping, and I've never witnessed them all just suddenly die due to the original being killed. So I don't entirely get the idea behind this, but if it's true or if killing the original weakens the rest it might be worth it, since several of them are a pain in the ass to say the least.

For the Tier 8 HNM, I've heard that one specific NM among the beastmen has the capability to summon the HNM. And that there is a way to keep them from doing so. I don't know which NM's specifically though or how to stop them from doing it. There have definitely been times where a 200 force besieged didn't have the corresponding HNM, or it showed up extremely late into the event.

It's also commonly encouraged that people target the normal enemies first before the NM's. For the obvious reasons of thinning their numbers out.

Another thing I remember hearing in passing is that generals who are still fighting near the end have to have their target defeated for besieged to end. Pretty hard to say if this is true but I have seen retreats right after a generals mob was killed. Maybe just a coincidence.

The part about the length of besieged lasting sounds like it at least fits a loose idea of what happens. Back when Tier 8 was released I had read many reports of other servers doing besieged for hours on end and I thought they were just crazy exaggeration's. Besieged on Siren never lasts for more than an hour. At least until Undead Swarm killed all our generals one day. There were quite a few NM's left, and it took much longer (over an hour) than before to get them to retreat.

[Max™]

Yeah, it does seem as though the NPC's kidnapped/fighting versus the Mobs remaining is a factor.

Still, raping the lesser mobs immediately gets rid of them pretty quick.

I've seen the original Eidolic die with clones around him, that is not true.

I wanna say Fafool Ja is the Mamool Bst, Lamia No 13 or 16 is the Undead, and I can't remember which Troll summons.

[Gwynplaine]

4) Was there a "rumor" that went around saying how if the real counterpart to the besieged clones (hydra, cerberus, khimara) were killed, their besieged clones wouldn't spawn? I think it is false since I know recently a few people have killed hydra but I still see it during Besieged. Is there any confirmation affirming/denying this rumor?

Aside: Did you know that Mihli and her group of 4-6 other soldiers (2-3 troopers, 2-3 volunteers4-6) can take down a monster faster than a group of god knows how many of us pounding on the same monster? CURE THOSE NPCs!! They are super buff.

No their HNM doppelgangers definitely have nothing to do with them. I think that's the whole reason they are a separate mob with a separate name. Unlike the 3 beastmen leaders, you can't kill one to have an effect on the other showing up.

And yeah NPC's can fend for themselves pretty well. The goblin npcs in particular hit pretty hard.

[razorcat]

Another thing I remember hearing in passing is that generals who are still fighting near the end have to have their target defeated for besieged to end. Pretty hard to say if this is true but I have seen retreats right after a generals mob was killed. Maybe just a coincidence.

I think this is false. Probably pure coincidence.

[BRP]

(Hmmm, I'm having lagging problems with BG)

I'd say let fodder deal with fodder. I would think having an alliance or two or three(mostly TP burn built) rush to bastion very quickly and pick out the unnamed NMs as they come in. Usually there seems to be 2-3 in waves. Take out those targets as soon as possible and hopefully before the next wave can enter.

[Nekio]

I'd say let fodder deal with fodder.

The problem is, when you leave the masses to their own devices, you have 400 people spread out amongst 20 mobs that don't kill anything at all until an hour in when half the NPCs have died, instead of 4 groups of 100 people slash-and-burning mob after mob.

[BRP]

Of course, if the method I mention works well enough, people wouldn't even have to deal with anything but distracting left-over of waves. This is why testing need to be done, on many things.

Also, I wouldn't mind seeing some real numbers counting each wave, what type, and the different between levels.

[Metah]

From what I've noticed, Beseiged seems to end immediately after certain trigger NMs are defeated. I've come to believe that it is definately multiple trigger NMs, I've seen times where Brontobugard was defeated and instantly after they retreated, and times where the Beastmen keep fighting even though he just died. Although they never seem to retreat when the HNMs or Beastmen leaders fall. Its probably limited to the lesser NMs, probably the ones that don't show up normally in Beastmen strongholds like Wordorbor the Artificier.

You probably have to kill all the triggers from them to escape. It figured it was obvious.

Regardless, taking out the small guys first and then working on the NMs seems to work best, excluding Phantasmal Puk who's White Wind is simply horrifying. Most people on my server follow this strategy, although its always good to have fodder holding off the NMs.

[Max™]

You kill the small guys because having hordes of them screws everyone if they're just ignored.

Yes, they are wussy compared to the bosses, but they are still Exp level+ in most cases, and enough of them WILL rape a General.

I however don't believe killing the Triggers is key, I think they are just worth a good chunk of points.

[Thistle]

I'm trying to create a list of Besieged commandments that will lead any server into victory.

I now only target them and the level boss(for exp bonus).

Pleased to be leaving 'kill a NM for XP bonus' off your list of commandments.