Guild Wars 2

So I’m trying to formalize how the patching mechanic exactly works. While there is some information already about it, most of it is pretty much useless. At least I have trouble fully understanding how it works.

1) Some enemies get an order to “Move to target” or “Move to location” when a player gets to a certain location.

• The first or the second player becomes the target (exact mechanic unknown).

• Enemies can only get an order once (unless they respawn).

• Orders break when enemy aggroes.

• If you waypoint, move too far or to unreachable location, order may break or enemies may teleport. Based on enemies/distance (exact mechanic unknown).

2) When an order ends, the enemy gets parked to its current location.

• Enemies stay there and will reset there when deaggroed.

• After a while (how long?), enemies return to their initial location.

• What happens if enemies get aggroed during their return?

Bonus:

List of enemies which can be pathed?

• Special tricks?

1) Some enemies get an order to “Move to target” or “Move to location” when a player gets to a certain location.

yes, there is some kind of trigger when you reach a certain distance (or its in the terrain, not sure!)

Does the first player become the target?

yes, the first player who triggers this action.

Does this occur only once? Can enemies “path” multiple times?

this occurs normaly only once, when the instance (like arah) is reloaded at certain points then it can happen twice, since the mobs respawn at their old points.

Does “Move to target” or “Move to location” break when enemies aggro? Or do you have to hit them?

it breaks when you aggro. they will go back at the point where you aggroed as this is their new “standing” point when you loose aggro again.

What exactly happens when you waypoint? Do enemies teleport or just follow?

i think it depends on how far the teleport was. the teleport thing mostly happens when you where invisible and you did not give them a “standing” point because you rushed by without “touching” them when you where invisible.
when they reach you while you are invisible, they get their “standing point” and u can walk save away, without them pursuiting you.

What happens if enemies can’t move to your location?

sometimes they teleport. when you are near and they can’t move to you, they can also get their “standing point”.

2) When enemies reach their target or location, that location becomes their base location.

Do enemies return to this base location when aggroed and deaggroed?

yes, like i wrote earlier. they never go back at their spawnlocation (execpt you “parked” them there.)

i think parking is the word the community uses when you stand invisible at a certain point to let the mob in this location if they where such a “patrol”.

Bonus:

List of enemies which can be pathed? How should they be pathed?

the first mobs i think of are the ones after the ooze at arah p1.
you can trigger their pathing and then go invis at the right wall somewhere in the back.
when they reach your location you can go save away (still invis).

in exp. groups you just run invis by them, but in non-exp pugs this often made it easier.

also the slimes / other mobs at arah p1 at the way to the ooze. you should park them invis, else they will follow you.

The most important information for people that only want to do casual dungeon runs is the following: Whenever you are stealthing past mobs and they start following you (even though the whole party is in stealth), then the person that is targeted by the mobs has to wait until all the mobs have reached him and stand still. Then this person can continue with running.
Since you usually don’t know, whom the mobs have targeted, the whole party should wait (while in stealth) until the mobs stopped walking.

For example the trashskip in arah p1 from the ooze to the crystal entities: If your party decides to stealth past the mobs and just runs without pathing them, the mobs will follow the party even though the party was in stealth. Usually this ends in a mess since one half of the party jumps down the cliff for loosing aggro and the other half starts fighting the mobs, which costs some time.
If the thief drops shadowrefuge at the place where the three drakes are (the place where the entities event gets triggered and the jotun spawns) and the whole party waits until all the mobs stand still, this mess can be completely avoided.

Wethospu.6437:

Some enemies get an order to “Move to target” or “Move to location” when a player gets to a certain location.

Does the first player become the target?
I’ll test this later in cm, I think it would be related to npc pathing for dungeons/fractals in terms of the allies. Braham chooses someone to follow at molten duo, detha chooses someone to follow in ac.

Does this occur only once? Can enemies “path” multiple times?
Enemies begin pathing when you first cross the threshold, after some period of time they reset their pathing back to the first place they spawned. See arah p1 oozes at the start, path them near the turrets, chill for a while and come back, they will be back at their original spawns. After they have been pathed once they will not path again.

Does “Move to target” or “Move to location” break when enemies aggro? Or do you have to hit them?
Gaining aggro will break ‘pathing’. If you punch an enemy in the face while stealthed you become revealed and the mob will set it’s new base aggro point at the location it was when hit. If stealth runs out, the same effect happens.

What exactly happens when you waypoint? Do enemies teleport or just follow?
I’ll have to test this more thoroughly, I would assume they teleport. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPHfO46i0js miku needed to bring all of the oozes to lupi, he probably has a better idea about long distance pathing.

What happens if enemies can’t move to your location?
They teleport, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUYhbQt5g7Y skip to 7:50 and you can see me path the mobs up to the rock. This was also brought up in the hotw p2 record someone submitted a couple weeks back, they brought 2 elite mobs through a door with pathing due to the teleport so they would be killed in the aoes on the boss.

What happens if you run too fast?
I’ll fiddle with this later, usually if I’m running fast I go without stealth so they break aggro quickly and return to their spawn point.

Why enemies sometimes walk through walls?
An enemy walking into a wall? Or an enemy on the far side of the wall teleporting to you?

When enemies reach their target or location, that location becomes their base location.

Do enemies return to this base location when aggroed and deaggroed?
The pathing for mobs is based on a player trigger(in this case, not pathing as in where a patrol walks). Yes, they will return to the place where they finished their pathing. However as mentioned above, after some set time period they will do a complete reset where they return to the first spawn point, not the place of pathing.

Or do enemies return to their initial position?

Or somewhere else?
Both answers listed above

Responses in italics, question in bold.

I think how they can be pathed is straight forward, you need to let them catch up to you if you remain in stealth, or leave stealth and let them gain aggro.
List of enemies should be relatively easy on the paths run every day, I’ll try to record relevant videos, depends on if I keep working overtime.

I asked in the General Discussion Thread a few days back if anybody would be interested in me making a video explaining the mechanics of pathing and showing all the groups of enemies that do it, and showing easy stealth strats to get past them. I didn’t really get too much of a response (I think), but if you think it’d be a good resource, I wouldn’t mind making a video on it. Hell, I could even do it tonight, if I can get a tour going >.<

Or if you’d rather make the video yourself, go right ahead, I won’t steal the thunder. I just thought I’d offer since you already do a ton of work for the dungeon community and figured it might make things easier for you.

Stompy.1387:

I wouldn’t mind making a video on it. Hell, I could even do it tonight, if I can get a tour going

Probably work out better than me, I’d either end up soloing the paths or hoping pugs didn’t run rampant.

Parts of the video will be solo, but on the other hand I’m not in the mood to solo CoE laser room

The top of the stairs after the defend the laser event in p2/3 is the only place I can think of off the top of my head where there is a path to location type of pathing. Are there any others that are notable?

I’m sure there are tons of instances of pathing in dungeons that we don’t really notice since they don’t matter (or simply can’t see because they happen behind walls) so to clarify this video would be displaying all the notable cases of pathing that would affect your dungeon run.

Speaking of things I don’t know, can someone impart some knowledge to me about the CM p2 barrel event pathing? I’ve never really understood that one too much, other than just don’t kitten it up the first time (that’s how I get through the path)

Edit: are the destroyer crabs after CoE p3 second Alpha path to player or path to location? or what are they. I always just kill them because they seemingly give me a t6 claw half of the time, so I’m not sure. If nobody knows I guess I could go test it.

Btw I did notice that it’s not usually the first player to trigger it or the first player to get to the location, but rather the second player. I often rush ahead on Thief and somebody else paths the mobs.

pranker.3748:

Btw I did notice that it’s not usually the first player to trigger it or the first player to get to the location, but rather the second player. I often rush ahead on Thief and somebody else paths the mobs.

Very true. I’ll test this in a party of three, to see if it is the second or last player that paths the mobs.

Edit: I just remembered another path to location type of pathing. SE p3, after the bridge.

Even though I agree that knowing how to path mobs is very useful there are certain cases where you can simply outrun the mobs, when im on my ele and I do arah p1 the starting part with the five (or four oozes) I can use consumables for stealth, fgs and ride the lightning and I get so far ahead of the oozes that they don’t even try to chase me anymore even though they initially started pathing to me. However the area that they gave up chasing me is where they remain they will not go back to their spawn point.

Another thing to add to the consumables section is that you can path mobs using ashlegion spykits and other stealth consumables and then quickly moving away or blinking.

I don’t think CoE has any mobs to path. The risen on the stairs of p2/3 are a simple pathing event unlike the ooze on arah p1. As soon as you pass the top of 2nd stairs, the risen will simply walk down the platform and stop. Their destination is the platform and not players so no real need to “path” them.

Stompy.1387:

pranker.3748:

Btw I did notice that it’s not usually the first player to trigger it or the first player to get to the location, but rather the second player. I often rush ahead on Thief and somebody else paths the mobs.

Very true. I’ll test this in a party of three, to see if it is the second or last player that paths the mobs.

Edit: I just remembered another path to location type of pathing. SE p3, after the bridge.

se 2/3 the bombers after the first blockade
3 after the 2nd bridge before the water fountains

You may want to try 4-5 members to see if it’s first, last, or random selection.

Hit me up if I’m on and I can fool around for a while.

frifox.5283:

I don’t think CoE has any mobs to path. The risen on the stairs of p2/3 are a simple pathing event unlike the ooze on arah p1. As soon as you pass the top of 2nd stairs, the risen will simply walk down the platform and stop. Their destination is the platform and not players so no real need to “path” them.

That’s what I meant by “path to location.” It’s not really normal pathing in a sense, where the mobs chase you. However, it is the same in the sense in the fact that you pass a boundary and it triggers mob movement. The difference is that the mobs are scripted to walk to a location, instead of walking to a player.

Whether or not we should refer to this as a type of pathing is up for debate though. The main reason I’m calling it “pathing to location” is that I have no idea what else to call this mechanic.

Added:

Even though I agree that knowing how to path mobs is very useful there are certain cases where you can simply outrun the mobs, when im on my ele and I do arah p1 the starting part with the five (or four oozes) I can use consumables for stealth, fgs and ride the lightning and I get so far ahead of the oozes that they don’t even try to chase me anymore even though they initially started pathing to me. However the area that they gave up chasing me is where they remain they will not go back to their spawn point.

Another thing to add to the consumables section is that you can path mobs using ashlegion spykits and other stealth consumables and then quickly moving away or blinking.

This is all very true. In the video, I’d be showing some example ways to deal with mob pathing in general, which sometimes involves simply killing the mobs (after Shoggroth/Berserker abom arah p1/2), and not necessarily using stealth to truly “path” every set of mobs.

Also, since this is going to be a video directed towards newer players who don’t know about these mechanics, I’m going to make the video assuming that they’re in a full party with a thief for stealth.

Thanks for helping me with getting some clips Sly Devil. We got a bit over half of them done.

Also Sly had the idea of calling “path to location” as “triggered patrol.” Sounds better?

Pathing is pretty essential in CM in a few parts unless you want to waste time killing elite mobs. Same with the ones at the start of Hotw p1, same with oozes and many other mobs in Arah.

I can’t say that I would be surprised for people not to know about it considering basically any pug run I’m in there are clueless people luring drakes/lesser oozes all over the place causing chaos. This is not something that’s commonly known about in pugs, but yeah it’s been widely known around these forums/in dungeon running guilds for years.

As for a few of your questions Weth…

Wethospu.6437:

What exactly happens when you waypoint? Do enemies teleport or just follow?

What happens if enemies can’t move to your location?

What happens if you run too fast?

Why enemies sometimes walk through walls?

It’s not really just waypointing that makes mobs teleport, it’s just that they are attempting to reach you but you go completely out of their line of sight and have no way to reach you. When this happens, they will teleport. It can be if you suddenly leap up onto unreachable terrain/out of the map, it can happen if you teleport. Something I’ve noticed is that if you let them path close enough to you they will not necessarily teleport to you, but instead will just stop moving abruptly. I think that it’s a distance thing maybe.

If you run too fast then depending on which mobs and where you run to, they should just stop coming.

I don’t think enemies walk through walls, can you give an example?

“Enemies walking through walls” was about arah p1/p2 after Shoggroth or Abomination. You just run through enemies without stealth. Then you jump down off the ledge in the room before Lupicus. Suddenly some risen enemies appear to come through walls. I guess they teleport nearby?

Since there is no stealth, shouldn’t the pathing break when you run through them?

If I understood you correctly:

• Gradually gaining distance makes them stop.
• Instantly gaining “not too much” distance makes them stop.
• Instantly gaining too much distance makes them teleport.
• Moving to an unreachable location may make them teleport or stop.

Stompy.1387:

—

Or if you’d rather make the video yourself, go right ahead, I won’t steal the thunder. I just thought I’d offer since you already do a ton of work for the dungeon community and figured it might make things easier for you.

Feel free. It’s always positive if I don’t have to log in.

Stompy.1387:

Thanks for helping me with getting some clips Sly Devil. We got a bit over half of them done.

Also Sly had the idea of calling “path to location” as “triggered patrol.” Sounds better?

I’m not native but at least for me “patrol” sounds more like a constant movement. Not going from location A to location B.

I updated the original post. Some remaining questions:

• Does the first or the second player become the target?
• Why enemies sometimes teleport and sometimes stop moving?
• How long it takes for an enemy to start returning from a parked location?
• What happens if enemy gets aggroed while its returning? Where does it reset?

Also one point of listing “pathing” enemies is to verify that the rules fit all of them.

Wethospu.6437:

“Enemies walking through walls” was about arah p1/p2 after Shoggroth or Abomination. You just run through enemies without stealth. Then you jump down off the ledge in the room before Lupicus. Suddenly some risen enemies appear to come through walls. I guess they teleport nearby?

Since there is no stealth, shouldn’t the pathing break when you run through them?

If I understood you correctly:

• Gradually gaining distance makes them stop.
• Instantly gaining “not too much” distance makes them stop.
• Instantly gaining too much distance makes them teleport.
• Moving to an unreachable location may make them teleport or stop.

Ahh forgot about those ones, yeah they are teleporting through the walls not walking through them. I guess this kind of refutes what I said in my previous post about it necessarily being a distance thing, but these patrol mobs seem to behave a lot differently than all the other mobs in Arah that path to you. For these ones they will immediately start pathing to you once you pass the area that Shoggroth dies, but for all the other mobs on this game that path to you they will start once you approach them but still out of their aggro range.

Also the weirder part about these patrol mobs is that they seem to walk right past you when you stealth by them, and will walk in a circle. But you can also lure them to Shoggroth’s spawn by slowly backtracing, making sure not to be too far out of reach to them but also making sure not to be too close in range for any of them to aggro.

And yeah, you’ve understood me. I think I will make a quick video demonstrating how to bomb the waypoint at the start to give you an idea :P

EDIT: Here you go, Weth. I sped up the part where I had to goat a little to get to some of the elite mobs, but slowed down right before I pathed them. It’s kinda tricky to get those ones to waypoint, because you need to wait like ~1 second for them to “trigger” their deathwalk/pathing but if you wait too long they’ll just port up onto the rock with you. If you waypoint too early, however, they will just do nothing and stay where they were. So you have to waypoint at the perfect time to get them to port.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhNDGqJe6iA

But you could see after I waypointed from the p3 mobs that as I was running away, they would all spawn like right under me, all scattered? It’s because as the mobs begin to walk, they don’t all start at the same time but as soon as you are detected out of their line of sight they teleport.

So I pathed the mobs in arah p1(oozes), after sitting here for around 70mins they still haven’t returned to their spawn. I think distance breaks their pathed aggro point allowing them to return to their spawn. I’ll have to try dying and running ridiculously far away later.

SlyDevil.3952:

So I pathed the mobs in arah p1(oozes), after sitting here for around 70mins they still haven’t returned to their spawn. I think distance breaks their pathed aggro point allowing them to return to their spawn. I’ll have to try dying and running ridiculously far away later.

If no one is in a given area for a long enough period of time, everything seems to change.

It’s why in Arah p1 for example, by the time the group is up to Lupicus you could waypoint back to the White Bears Waypoint, run into the area where Ancient Ooze used to spawn, and all the turrets will be back along with some spiders.

You will also notice that many times, the specific type of elite risen mobs can change. For example instead of getting 2x elite risen mages, 1x elite risen hunter, and 2x elite risen illusionists, you might end up with getting 2x elite risen hunters, 2x elite risen elementalists, and 1x elite risen illusionist.

Whenever this happens it seems that pathed mobs can reset too, but one thing I’m certain of is that elite mobs do not respawn after they’re killed, nor do any of those little lesser oozes. There are certain mobs and things that do respawn, like those spider hatchlings on the way to Ancient Ooze, but for the most part if you kill anything it won’t respawn.

What about the Champion Risen Knight in Arah p4? How does its AI work exactly? I don’t remember it “pathing” to players normally, but in goated p4 runs I remember seeing it port on players after they’ve done the orb events. How does that work?

Aleth.9630:

What about the Champion Risen Knight in Arah p4? How does its AI work exactly? I don’t remember it “pathing” to players normally, but in goated p4 runs I remember seeing it port on players after they’ve done the orb events. How does that work?

The Champion Risen Knight is a special enigma of its own.. few can escape his teleporting abilities, even fewer understand it.

LOL, that knight, once you hit the threshold for him, he will constantly teleport to you until he dies. He paths to you, then keeps pathing until you bury his corpse, light it on fire, kill zhaitan, kill traehearne and find an intelligent leader for the pact.

Logically there is just some scripting behind this behavior and it wouldn’t make much sense to create vastly different pathing behaviors for different enemies.

Looks like there are quite many different parameters though.

Purple Miku.7032:

—
Ahh forgot about those ones, yeah they are teleporting through the walls not walking through them. I guess this kind of refutes what I said in my previous post about it necessarily being a distance thing, but these patrol mobs seem to behave a lot differently than all the other mobs in Arah that path to you. For these ones they will immediately start pathing to you once you pass the area that Shoggroth dies, but for all the other mobs on this game that path to you they will start once you approach them but still out of their aggro range.

Also the weirder part about these patrol mobs is that they seem to walk right past you when you stealth by them, and will walk in a circle. But you can also lure them to Shoggroth’s spawn by slowly backtracing, making sure not to be too far out of reach to them but also making sure not to be too close in range for any of them to aggro.

IIRC, I have just stood at one spot and they have just walked past me (takes a while). So the whole thing seems really weird.

Btw Miku, do you mind if I link to your video on gw2dungeons?

I messed around with the mobs at the start of HoTW p1 and p2 and they don’t work like the risen from Miku’s video:

• Once you cross a trigger area they start walking to that location.
• If you instantly waypoint after triggering their movement they will just run to the location and stop there.
• If there are players nearby when they get to the location, they will move on them, I guess?
• Can confirm they walk back to their spawnpoint after a long while.

Also did some tests in SE p3, the Bombers only port with you if you agro 1-2 of them before waypointing (the ones that didn’t agro you and still had pathing AI will follow, the rest stays). Here’s a quick example: https://gfycat.com/ColossalOrangeAtlanticridleyturtle

Very very late, but I finally got around to uploading that video that I was talking about. I just haven’t really played GW2 or kept up with the forums for almost a month, so I lost the motivation to go out of my way and put the clips together. Anywho, here it is. If I missed something or need to change something, just tell me and I’ll actually get to it in a timely manner this time.

Stompy.1387:

Very very late, but I finally got around to uploading that video that I was talking about. I just haven’t really played GW2 or kept up with the forums for almost a month, so I lost the motivation to go out of my way and put the clips together. Anywho, here it is. If I missed something or need to change something, just tell me and I’ll actually get to it in a timely manner this time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOu8djV05g8

I wish every player would be forced to watch this before they enter a dungeon…
Really good job!

Soundtrack is too loud, have to really pay attention to hear the spoken instructions

I can’t really hear the explanation well over the loud music either.

frifox.5283:

Soundtrack is too loud, have to really pay attention to hear the spoken instructions

I knew I forgot to do something… Forgot to balance the audio =/

Will fix that in a few mins

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F7kgM52aus&feature=youtu.be

Still processing, but video/quality will be up soon.

You mentioned that the “move to target” triggers multiple times. Does it happen once per player or something like that? I don’t recall them pathing all the time.

I’m only about 80% sure of all this,(this is just me thinking about all my experiences in dungeons) but it seems like in every clip I looked at, the enemies always pathed to the last player who crossed the boundary. However, if another person crossed the boundary after somebody else successfully pathed the mobs, they wont start to move again. So, to summarize what sort of states the enemy AI is in:

1. Wait for player to cross boundary
2. Move towards player
3. (after they have been pathed) Standard mob aggro range AI

So since they just go into a standard after being pathed, they will only go through these mechanics once.

In regards to what I said about “moving to target” triggering multiple times, what I mean is that during step 2, the player that they are moving towards can be updated by another player crossing the boundary before step 3 happens.

(everything past this is just me rambling on thinking of random stuff atm, I may go test out later)
So what I said above holds true for normal dungeon runs (which is what I made the video for and why I didn’t bother to think about this beforehand), since everyone groups up for stealth and crosses the boundary within about a second of each other. But, in the cases I’ve experienced where someone else crossed the boundary significantly later (several seconds) but BEFORE the mobs have been pathed, I do not recall them ever just turning around to go after someone else. This would make my explanation about why it is always the last person incorrect, but it still seems as though they always path to the last person anyways.. My theory on why this happens is that after a short time, they “lock on” to a certain target? i don’t even know what I’m typing anymore, it’s late

Wethospu.6437:

You mentioned that the “move to target” triggers multiple times. Does it happen once per player or something like that? I don’t recall them pathing all the time.

He means the command is given another time when other players pass the same threshold. Ie. He passed the threshold in cm so the mobs got the command to move to him, but they hadn’t pathed for their first time, so each successive player got the same command over-writing the previous command until I was the last person to pass it, so they pathed to me(Tormented).

SlyDevil.3952:

Wethospu.6437:

You mentioned that the “move to target” triggers multiple times. Does it happen once per player or something like that? I don’t recall them pathing all the time.

He means the command is given another time when other players pass the same threshold. Ie. He passed the threshold in cm so the mobs got the command to move to him, but they hadn’t pathed for their first time, so each successive player got the same command over-writing the previous command until I was the last person to pass it, so they pathed to me(Tormented).

Except that clearly isn’t true for all cases as he explained above. So I’m curious where is the line.

Wethospu.6437:

Except that clearly isn’t true for all cases as he explained above. So I’m curious where is the line.

I don’t know, I’ll bang my head against it in a couple days when I have time.

I’d guess it would be similar to activating cutscenes and NPC triggers. Those can be triggered up to 5 times if each player hits the threshold a moment after each other. But why that happens, I have no idea.

The video is nice but it doesn’t really offer any insight on when and why the enemies teleport around sometimes. Like, when standing on the small rock after SE p3’s first boss.

I also believe that many pathing mobs are a bit more complex than described. What I noticed with at least the ones at the start of HoTW p1-3 and SE p3 is that they always first run to the exact same location and then they run at a nearby player. If you leave the instance or waypoint away early, they (still) run up to that “rally spot” and do nothing afterwards instead.

Aleth.9630:

The video is nice but it doesn’t really offer any insight on when and why the enemies teleport around sometimes. Like, when standing on the small rock after SE p3’s first boss.

I also believe that many pathing mobs are a bit more complex than described. What I noticed with at least the ones at the start of HoTW p1-3 and SE p3 is that they always first run to the exact same location and then they run at a nearby player. If you leave the instance or waypoint away early, they (still) run up to that “rally spot” and do nothing afterwards instead.

When you are inaccessible by path-to-player mobs they teleport to you instead, it was brought up in a hotw p2(?) record a while back.

We don’t completely understand pathing, there are variations of both path to player and to location, the video was recorded more as a how to thief in day to day dungeons rather than an extensive explanation of pathing.

I suppose it could be custom-made for all dungeons and not the same mechanic as we like to think it is, who knows, they were made ages ago.

One explanation is that orders have different strengths. In some dungeons developers have used a high strength so they won’t get overridden.