Mabinogi World Wiki is brought to you by Coty C., 808idiotz, our other patrons, and contributors like you!!
Want to make the wiki better? Contribute towards getting larger projects done on our Patreon!

User profile:Ivy

Friends
3 of 3
Gifts
2 of 2
giftgift
Personal information
Hometown

Canada

Birthday

September 19th

Occupation

Library Technician

About me
Soll(2023).png
Grandmaster Music Icon.png Soll
Guild Guild OfficerIncubus
Home Nearyn
Gender NB
Race Elf100
Age 30
Part-Time Job {{{Part-Time}}}
Repair {{{Repair}}}
Server Ruairi100
Total Level 40k+
Location(s)
Occupation
Current Arcana Harmonic Saint
Talent
Current Talent Chain Slasher Magic
Favorite Skill Shyllien Ecology.png100
Transformations Fury of Connous.png100Awakening of Light.png100Nascent Divinity.png100
Demigod Support Neamhain Skill Icon.png
Neamhain
100
Mainstream Quests
1 2 3 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25
The Saga: Iria
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
The Saga: Iria II
P 1 2 3 4 5 6
Board
4 of 4
You must be logged in to post messages to other users
posted 294 days ago
avatar

Thanks Ivy.

Yes - I completely agree with you that the game itself it not great when it comes to clearly and consistently naming things. We know that when new generations are released, there's often some really dodgy English in the NPCs dialog. I suspect the problem is often not with the initial name chosen in Korean but rather with the translators responsible for the English localisation. Keeping consistency through translation can be challenging.

Reminds of a time in another game I used to play where a quest was telling me that I had to visit "Night Desert Remains". Took me weeks to figure out that I had to go to a dungeon named "Relics of Arid Moonlight". I guess whoever translated the quest text hadn't looked up the table of official English translations of the dungeon names. Fun times!

OK. So we're looking for a good term for different dungeons at a particular geographic location. "Instance" makes sense for people who don't do object-oriented programming and irritates those who do. I used to like "Level", but the more I think about it, the less I like it, because it can be confused with "Floor", as in "Alby Normal has 3 floors/levels." "Version" sounds too time based. If someone said "Alby Basic version" I'd think of the current version implemented in 2020(?) which reduced it from 2 floors to 1 floor. Same problem for "Edition".

I often struggle with finding good labels for stuff. I usually end up scouring www.thesaurus.com. So after 15 minutes with that, here's what I've got.

My preferred solution is to distinguish between:

"Location" such as "Alby Lobby"

"Dungeon" such as "Alby Basic" or "Alby Intermediate".

I would actually rename the current page: "Category:Alby_Dungeon" to "Category:Alby_Lobby".

Some alternatives for "Lobby" are "Entrance", "Foyer", "Portal" and "Vestibule". I don't like "foyer" since that word is used already to describe the first room on a floor where we touch the statue to give us a recovery point if we die. "Portal" has overtones of "Teleport" which I guess does sort of fit with the idea that dropping a different passes magically zaps you to different dungeons. "Vestibule" sounds too pretentious.

Now while that's my preferred option, I realise that for a lot of people, that will clash with their current understanding, so it's a hard sell. The thing that I want too call Location is what they want to call Dungeon. So my fallback alternative suggestion that fits better with that existing usage is:

"Dungeon" such as "Alby Dungeon"

"Dungeon Variant" such as "Alby Basic".

Anyway, that's all I've got. Happy to go with whatever the Discord group collectively decides. I don't do Discord. Partially it's due to concerns with their Privacy Policy, possibly outdated since I haven't rechecked it for many years. Mostly it's due to being on Australian time, which means I'd probably never be on when the interesting discussions happen.

And I'm an imposter rather than a real Librarian. The Librarian is one of my favourite Discworld characters, and "Librarian" just seemed a sensible account name for a wiki-editor, given the evolving meaning of librarian as a curator of information rather than only a curator of paper-based books.

posted 296 days ago
avatar

Hi Ivy.

I created the Dungeon Overview page, and then lost enthusiasm for it. Got distracted into investigating how dungeon layouts are generated, stuff I've been documenting at https://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/view/User:Librarian/How_Dungeons_Are_Generated which I will hopefully eventually get to the quality that will allow it to be added to the Guides category.

So I haven't been actively working on the Dungeon Overview page and so I don't feel I have a right to object if you want to put in the time to improve on it by moving it elsewhere. So I'll just throw some suggestions at you and you can ignore them if you see fit.

I like the idea of moving stuff to the Dungeon category page, but then I started wondering if we've got the categories right. Currently that category contains two very different types of pages. Pages describing general features of how dungeons work and pages describing the actual dungeons. Maybe we need 2 separate categories: Dungeon Mechanics and Dungeon Data. (Or maybe these are two subcategories of the Dungeon category, though I worry that might be making the category structure a little too deep.) The Dungeon Mechanics category page could contain the overview you constructed, and would contain pages like the existing Dungeon Altar, Dungeon Fountains, Dungeon Room Types. It probably should also contain the Dungeon Keys page which isn't currently in the Dungeon category at all. The Dungeon Data cateogry would contain the dungeon pages like Alby Normal, Alby Advanced, etc, split into subcategories as appropriate.

The stuff I wrote in the Dungeon Floor Detail section is way too detailed for that page's purpose, so I don't mind that you haven't added all that to Dungeon Category. That can go. I've kept a copy of the source in case it's useful for me to add to my "How_Dungeons_Are_Generated" page.

(I really wish Nexon would bite the bullet and cut ALL dungeons to one floor. It would make the dungeon structure so much easier to explain. There's lots of psych research into what makes computer games fun, and none of that supports making dungeons so long that they need more than one floor!)

Generally I like the shorter versions of my verbose prose that you added to the Dungeon Category page. The only major issue is that we don't agree on what "Dungeon Instance" means. I'm coming at this from a programming background. So to me Alby Basic and Alby Advanced are NOT two different instances of Alby Dungeon. They are two different dungeons that just happen to share the same geographical entry point. I won't complain if someone wants to describe them as two LEVELS of Alby Dungeon rather than calling them two different Dungeons as I would, but to me it's wrong to call them two INSTANCES of Alby Dungeon. Dungeon instances are where the server is tracking say two different active copies of Alby Basic because there are currently two different parties running Alby Basic.

The Alby Basic Dungeon is a permanent concept that spells out properties like how many zones the dungeon contains and what mobs (monsters) can appear in each zone. It's like a Template. That template is used to generate instances of Alby Basic. An instance of Alby Basic is a temporary thing which is created when a party enters the dungeon and is destroyed when the last party member exits. (Well. Not quite true. If you complete a normal level dungeon exit via the final statute, then immediately re-enter with the same drop item you find yourself back in the same instance with all the doors open and all the mobs killed. The instance actually seems to live on for a minute or so after you exit, so I'm guessing instances are destoyed by a garbage collection routine that only runs every minute or so.) An Alby Basic instance is tracking a particular parites progress through the dungeon, including the current location of every part member and every monster.

What I'm not sure of is whether the typical wiki user believes my usage of "instance" or yours. Most players don't have any sort of programming background so maybe your usage makes more sense to them. But that's changing. These days even high school computing subjects are teaching students about object oriented programming so even some kids playing the game would be familiar with my usage of "instance". Also, I have worked on wikis for a couple of other games that did seem to use the phrase "dungeon instance" consistent with my usage.

As an afterthought, I just went back and reread some discussions I had with Lint to see what usage they used, but the term "instance" didn't crop up at all. Looks like my memory was dodgy - I was sure we'd used the term instance, but apparently not.

posted 781 days ago
avatar

Thanks Ivy. I have now copied my data on Alby and Ciar to the new pages, to the extent that they weren't already there. Well - except for mimic rooms and mimic corridor clusters, which are amalgamated in the new pages.

It only just struck me since the 7-Oct-2021 dungeon update that, in the dungeons where Tiro can appear, he doesn't ALWAYS appear. I thought he used to be certain to appear in those dungeons, but I may have been not paying attention. Anyway, in Alby Advanced he is now only appearing on some runs. I haven't seen him in Ciar Advanced, but from the new page it seems that others have, so it seems he only appears on some runs there too. (Apparently I haven't run Ciar Advanced much since the update, because according to my notes I also haven't encountered fountains or herb patches yet, where others have.)

I'm wondering if there are any dungeons where he is certain to appear since 7-Oct-2021. If so, that could be worth recording. Maybe the flag for Tiro, which is currently set to yes or no, should be a 3-way option: Yes/No/Maybe. If so, Alby Advanced and Ciar Advanced are apparently maybe.

posted 783 days ago
avatar

Hi Ivy.

I've finally found time to work through my dungeon data collected since the 7-Oct-21 update, and started copying it to the new format pages. I've done Alby Basic. Here's a few questions arising from that.

Spawn pattern order: Within each section, such as trapped chest, the spawn patterns don't seem to be in any clear order. This makes it harder to check whether a spawn pattern I encounter is already in the list. Personally I prefer to list the single wave patterns first, followed by the 3-wave patterns, and within each of those sections, order alphabetically. Should I go ahead and sort them that way, or would you like to discuss with your design team colleagues. (I also see the justification for ignoring the 1,3 wave split and just sorting alphabetically overall.)

For Ulaid Dungeons, one of your room types is "Orb Switches". Presumably when you get to Iria Dungeons you'll need to change that since they use other types of switches. Maybe "Pillar Switches". Minor issue: It seems odd to me, to put the comsetic appearance (orb) before the function (switch). I might have used labels like "Switch Room - Orb", "Switch Room - Stone Pillar" and "Switch Room - Ice Pillar". More important issue: once you start reformatting the pages for Iria dungeons, there's also two instrinsically different types of switch room: the "4 Switch Room" and the "Roulette One Switch Room", which is different to the "Roulette Chest Room". (Though now that I've seen your nice clear new label of "Trapped Chest", I'd probably label that as "One Switch Roulette Room" and "Trapped Chest Roulette Room".) So for clarity, I suggest "using "4 Switch" rather than just "Switch" for Ulaid Dungeons too.

Anyway, putting those ideas together, you might like to consider whether to change the "Orb Switch" label to something like "4 Switch Room - Orb" which will leave obviously consistent label choicess when dealing with the other Iria variations.

Mimic Pits: These come in two different forms that I think of as "Mimic Rooms" and "Mimic Corridor Clusters". The question is whether those two forms use two different lists of possible spawn patterns or whether they use the same single list. Has anyone ever convincingly proved the correct answer to this question? For example, I understand some people have managed to unpack parts of the program data and managed to find the official stats of monsters, including stuff like the health points of each monster. Do you know whether anyone managed to do the same trick for spawn patterns? I'm guessing not since I'm still finding spawn patterns that aren't yet listed on the wiki. But if they had done this, that could prove convincingly prove whether there are 2 separate spawn patterns lists for mimic pits.

My guess, based on collecting separate data for "mimic rooms" and "mimic corridor clusters", is that they do select from different lists, though in most dungeons there is some overlap between the lists. The difference seem to be more noticeable in dungeons with few mimic rooms, such as Alby Basic. In Alby Basic, it seems to me that Mimic Rooms only ever use a Blue Grizzly Bear pattern and Mimic Corridor Clusters only ever use a Giant Bat pattern.

One other issue with Mimic Rooms: Some years back, when I was running Fiodh Normal repeatedly for a Rest Skill book, I decided to start collecting spawn pattern for that dungeon and comparing to the data on the wiki, which was sparse for that dungeon. I found some apparent errors in the Mimic Pit data on the wiki. The errors arose due to contributors being inconsistent in how they listed the data. If a room had say a treasure chest and 4 sleeping mimics, it seemed that some contributors would describe this as "4 mimics", and not mention the treasure chest, but others would list it as "5 mimics", with the intended meaning that one of those things that look like sleeping mimics was really a treasure chest. I suggest the easy way to stop this confusion from arising it to ALWAYS explicitly list the treasure chest in mimic room spawn patterns. For example, in Alby basic which currently lists "Old Mimic x4 Giant Bat x3", I'd suggest listing this as "Treasure Chest Old Mimic x4 Giant Bat x3".

Anyway, you've clearly done a lot of thinking about issues like to design your wonderfully clear new dungeon page format, so I'm interested to read your response to the above ideas.

- Librarian.