NPC_METAMORPHOSIS exploit

This is a great opportunity to present my detailed analysis of the process/situation.  :evil:

The monster Increase Soil or Mi Gao has a skill entry in the mob_skill_db.txt of


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1516,Increase Soil@NPC_METAMORPHOSIS,attack,193,2,50,5000,5000,no,self,always,0,1516,,,,,,


I originally disabled it, so I could review it and discuss it, but this wasn't acceptable to the people who were benefitting from this skill, so I re-enabled it soon after changed to:


Code: Select all
1516,Increase Soil@NPC_METAMORPHOSIS,attack,193,2,50,5000,5000,no,self,slavele,3,1516,,,,,,


During last maintenance, I wasn't able to finish coding my limitation of monsters per map, so I changed it again, to


Code: Select all
1516,Increase Soil@NPC_METAMORPHOSIS,attack,193,2,50,5000,5000,no,self,slavele,2,1516,,,,,,




NPC_METAMORPHOSIS level 2 causes an additional soil to spawn.

This originally meant that the monster had a .5% chance per attack of casting NPC_METAMORPHOSIS level 2. Effectively making the number of soils at any one time generated by the function x^x, with x depending on time.
It was changed so that the monster has a .5% chance per attack of casting NPC_METAMORPHOSIS level 2, but only up to a maximum of 3 slave soils per parent soil. Effectively making the number of soils at any one time generated by the function 4^x, with x depending on time.
And lastly it was changed so that they only spawned up to 2 slaves per soil, making the function 3^x based on time.

Now some analysis of how much experience is this, really?

Let's start with analyzing other uber leveling setups:
Bio3 instant respawn
Let's see... if we kill a bio3 instant respawn every 15 seconds, that's...
1,000,000 exp ... let's give some Mental Sensing / Mr. Kim A Rich Man... x1.8 = 1,800,000 exp per kill
4 kills per minute =
7,200,000 exp per minute.

Kasas
If we kill a kasa every 5 seconds, that's...
490,000 exp... we're probably not going to have Mental Sensing / Mr. Kim A Rich Man here...
12 kills per minute =
5,880,000 exp per minute.

Necromancers
If we kill a Necromancer every 10 seconds, that's...
450,000 exp... again, no Mental Sensing / Mr. Kim A Rich Man...
6 kills per minute =
2,700,000 exp per minute. This one could be a low estimate, because there are other monsters around that give exp.


What we're really after now, is a comparison to these leveling setups:
Increase Soils
Well, there's no limit to the initial count of increase soils, really, since they split up to whatever "seed" value one wants to use. The way I will present this is:
"tanking x number of Increase Soils, the exp gain from killing the spawned soils per minute is y"
I'm also listing the approximate number of minutes to generate this many soils, assuming one doesn't kill any of the split soils and just tanks them.

these numbers include Mental Sensing / Mr. Kim A Rich Man, as the monsters are quite localized
10 soils
233,720 exp per minute
Time = 0 minutes
25 soils
584,300 exp per minute
Time = 3 minutes
50 soils
1,168,600 exp per minute
Time = 5.2 minutes
100 soils
2,337,201 exp per minute
Time = 7.8 minutes
250 soils
5,843,002 exp per minute
Time = 10.8 minutes
500 soils
11,686,004 exp per minute
Time = 13.4 minutes
1000 soils
23,372,009 exp per minute
Time = 15.5 minutes
1500 soils
35,058,013 exp per minute
Time = 16.7 minutes
2000 soils
46,744,018 exp per minute
Time = 17.6 minutes
5000 soils
116,860,044 exp per minute
Time = 20.8 minutes