The Clan Lord Sentinel

Some of you older clickers may remember that I had a fairly comprehensive bestiary of Clan Lord's critters, back in the day (June 2000->July 2002).

Anyway, I've recently been working on restoring it. It's mostly restored now, there are a few missing things that I can fix myself, but mostly the areas that are incomplete are because I simply do not know about them. (The plants section is missing several, I believe, and I do not know what the different Van Gara look like, or a few other things.)

You can see it here:

http://bestiary.puddleby.net/beast.html

Changes for people who knew it before:
1. Major restructuring -- the organization actually makes sense now.
2. Ranger families included, but I don't really know much about these; they're mostly guesses. I have seen the (very incomplete) record of these the Rangers keep public on their forum, but I know little beyond that.
3. Live sketches! I only have a few of these, but I have sort of an example set up here: http://bestiary.puddleby.net/beast/mammal_vermine.html --> http://bestiary.puddleby.net/beast/mamm ... on_Rat.png
4. Invasion-only, one-time monsters have been relegated to their special, hidden section. If a monster is used a lot but is invasion only (like many of the Darshak) I'll keep it in, though. But not, say, the "Beer Bear."
5. The bestiary will all be in character for now on (although the news and home page may not be). It was not in character before, so there may still be a few slip-ups that I need to edit.

Also:
1. I have included all creatures I know about, including Sulran and deep Metzelti. These areas have been explored by several groups now, so I feel it is fair to publish the findings. For future areas, I will probably wait a little while before publishing the discoveries.
2. I need a lot of help on the Darshak, Orga Stronghold, and Plant sections
3. There are a few broken images throughout. In almost all the cases, it's because I don't know what it looks like (a few I have had difficulty finding 'clean' images of, like the Striped Azurite Noid or the Mud Golem). A description (or better yet, a live sketch) would help me fill in those blanks. (e.g. Silverback Wendecka)
4. Live sketches! Take one of yourself with your favorite monster(s) and send them in and I'll add it to the 'live sketch' part! Please! (I'll probably only put up one sketch per monster, so act now!)


In the future I plan on adding:
1. Search by area, rather than by clade (I will have to rewrite the whole code for the bestiary to do this, so that will be a while.)
2. Rough monster stats, like Drablak has on his Orga bestiary. I'm not sure about this, since CL has its whole no number um... "policy". Right now all the strengths are relative to other monsters, so if you don't know how strong, say, an Orga Fury is, you probably won't get anything out of the bestiary.


Feedback / comments / suggestions? Pictures? Either PM/reply here, ICQ at 16639713, or email at orgdulac@puddleby.net

Thoom!

[Edit: Err, wow, thanks Elenis.]

http://bestiary.puddleby.net/bestiary/index.html
is a busted link.
I think you want
http://bestiary.puddleby.net/beast.html

Very nice job Org!

Couple things I noticed: it looks like you're missing Curators (and their twins I can't recall the names of), and some of the page heading don't match the names on the index page (e.g., Elementals versus Ethereal Plane).

One thing I'd love to see would be a few comparative rankings to put the various families in context. For example, one ranking would be based on critter detha/balance, another would be accuracy, another for damage. I'm not thinking of a complete top-to-bottom ranking, just maybe ten or 20 critters listed to represent various strata. The descriptions tend to be relative within each family (Fury is tougher than Rage, Wrath is tougher than Fury, Hatred is...), so I'm looking for something that compares across families. For example, how would hatred, liche, greymyr, jade noid, green tok'han, landew and haremau rank in terms of how much damage they do when they him, how well they hit and how hard they are to hit? A few lists like that would provide a lot of additional information without having to deal with actual or guestimated statistics.

Rieger

rieger wrote:Very nice job Org!

Couple things I noticed: it looks like you're missing Curators (and their twins I can't recall the names of), and some of the page heading don't match the names on the index page (e.g., Elementals versus Ethereal Plane).

[Multiple ranking suggestions.]

Rieger

Oops. Fixed the Elementals one. I think they should all match now. I'd forgotten about the curators, and I'll add that--thanks. (Guardian of the X is the twin you're thinking of, for the EP items?)

The multiple ranking suggestion is a good idea. It'll take me a while to restructure the bestiary so that queries like that can be done (i.e. what does similar damage to a haremau? what has similar histia?). Everything's written in ugly, basic HTML right now, so I have to put it all into mySQL first. "Soon!"

Holy cow, there are a lot of critter types! Great work!

I have trouble evaluating the "difficulty" entries, because they read a lot like general "comments" or"info," instead of some kind of metric (like, low- , mid- high-level).

Not that I have a handy metric to suggest

Thanks for the resource!

Org du Lac wrote:

rieger wrote:Very nice job Org!

Couple things I noticed: it looks like you're missing Curators (and their twins I can't recall the names of), and some of the page heading don't match the names on the index page (e.g., Elementals versus Ethereal Plane).

[Multiple ranking suggestions.]

Rieger

Oops. Fixed the Elementals one. I think they should all match now. I'd forgotten about the curators, and I'll add that--thanks. (Guardian of the X is the twin you're thinking of, for the EP items?)

The multiple ranking suggestion is a good idea. It'll take me a while to restructure the bestiary so that queries like that can be done (i.e. what does similar damage to a haremau? what has similar histia?). Everything's written in ugly, basic HTML right now, so I have to put it all into mySQL first. "Soon!"

Cool. I wasn't really proposing a wholesale you-can-compare-anything-to-anything feature, more like a few samples to give people some context. At least those are always that questions I ask when I'm exposed to types of critters--what better known critters are similar. Of course what makes the critters interesting is the mix of stats, so it's not just a matter of saying "a haremau is as tough as a hatred."

Regarding the curator question, I haven't been to TI in a while but outside the keep aren't there two critters that use the curator icon? I remember the first time I feel to a curator thinking "didn't these used to be called _____s." But it's been so long I can't even remember what curators look like.

Anyway, thanks ago for reviving this.
Rieger

Curators look like banshees, but are much tougher.

Lots of stuff I don't agree with in it, but it's always been my favorite bestiary. Thanks for bringing it back.

I looked it over after your initial post and this sort of thing just screams (media)wiki so everyone could keep it updated. But that's just me and my current pet project, which has over 40 pages now BTW. (not including discussion or personal pages.) With a system like media wiki Daimoth could voice his dissent in a constructive and informative manner and people could trade notes and have them available for others in the future. Just look at the weapon's page discussion as an example. If not a wiki, you're both welcome to discuss the ratings you and Dai disagree on in Coffee and Donutshere. It's been repurposed for this sort of thing.

BTW, Nice work.

noivad wrote:I looked it over after your initial post and this sort of thing just screams (media)wiki so everyone could keep it updated. But that's just me and my current pet project, which has over 40 pages now BTW. (not including discussion or personal pages.) With a system like media wiki Daimoth could voice his dissent in a constructive and informative manner and people could trade notes and have them available for others in the future. Just look at the weapon's page discussion as an example. If not a wiki, you're both welcome to discuss the ratings you and Dai disagree on in Coffee and Donutshere. It's been repurposed for this sort of thing.

BTW, Nice work.

I disagree.. The wikipedia is good for what you are doing, but I would hate to have to read through a bunch of stuff just to find out the basics of a critter.. That is what I use the bestiary for.. I like the comparison idea, that could be useful... Great job Mr. Org - Very well done so far, and I look forward to the improvements.

noivad wrote:[Wikizing]

There's already a wiki'd bestiary, at puddleopedia, so I plan on keeping mine mostly in-house. It's a good idea to add a discussion section of sorts though, so I guess I should figure out how to do that (or at least put up a board... which I'm afraid to do, because I don't want it to be populated with CH34P VI1GRRA ads within the first like, 3 days of adding one).

(CLUMP is fun to play with, though, if you'll notice the edits I just did... I hadn't looked at it since you first created it.)

Rieger wrote:List more creatures that are comparable, under "difficulty"

It's a good idea, but one of the biggest reasons I didn't do your suggestion is that it's mentally taxing for me to look at each creature, and then think of everything else that may be similar to it, which is why, in general, they're only compared to one or two other creatures within the same family.

When I get around to adding stats (which I will do, although I may use them just behind-the-scenes for sorting), it will be a lot easier, and automatic, to show other creatures that are within, say, 0-300 "ranks" of the selected critter.

Brune wrote: I have trouble evaluating the "difficulty" entries, because they read a lot like general "comments" or"info," instead of some kind of metric (like, low- , mid- high-level).

Not that I have a handy metric to suggest

Hmm, yeah. "Difficulty" now definitely reads like "comparison".

"Low mid high" is how I originally had the bestiary. I spent the last couple weeks rewriting all of the difficulties, and instead comparing each creature to one or two others. The problem with "low mid high" instead of numbers is that "low mid high" changes. For example, I think I had the Orga Hatred as something listed that "should be kudzued in and avoided at all costs, a terrible, fearsome, rampaging beast." Although it's still pretty tough, it's nowhere nearly as high level as it was 6 years ago. The AMS is no longer the toughest kid on the block, etc.

I could re-do a metric like that, since I'd only have to change it like every um, 6 years (apparently), but I'm hoping I can think of a better solution.

Just some un-arranged thoughts.


Instead of comparison for difficulty, how about a tier system? Set it up based on a cloaked individual then set up some stats for how often hit, etc.

Always do %to be hit on a character with either pure detha or pure balthus training, plus x amount of 1st circle trainer amounts

First tier would be 0 stats
2nd tier would be 100's
3rd tier would be 200's
4th tier would be 300's
etc.

(but certainly mess around with those numbers depending?)

Always round up to the higher tier, for like 90% hit rate, after the creature swings and 5 or 10% luck hit rate. Histia would be different, would have to do something more like how many hits for a 100 darkus character to kill on average?

I'd love to do some testing with this if people are interested, or not worried about the whole system being too "spoilerish", or not fitting in with Clan Lord.

Soulmaster wrote:Just some un-arranged thoughts.

[Acquiring creature stats]

I'd love to do some testing with this if people are interested, or not worried about the whole system being too "spoilerish", or not fitting in with Clan Lord.

I do have that concern about showing any numbered stats (besides coin worth).

I'm thinking the amount of Atkus needed might be useful enough to override my concern for showing that one stat, though. Either way, it'll be pretty long down the line. Or all my concerns may be assuaged.

http://drablak.pucks.org/dhw/gd/orga/orga.php


I'd certainly be interested in any data you get, if you end up doing it.

Thanks for the additions BTW Org. Much Appreciated.

I'm adding a link to your Bestiary on my pages.

Yeah I thought about how it would benefit not being on a wiki (like being able to lay the pages out exactly as you want.) but I think with oversight it could work where you take wiki contributions and add them to the static site.

As far as adding a BB system to your site to discuss things, you could always just use Coffee and Donuts and I could have you deputized. oh wait I said that already....

noivad wrote: As far as adding a BB system to your site to discuss things, you could always just use Coffee and Donuts and I could have you deputized. oh wait I said that already....

You did not say I could be deputized! . Hmm, that would require every reader to have a Sentinel account if they wanted to comment, but now that account creation works again (I think), that actually sounds good.