NPC Difficulty Rating
All NPC’s you encounter will have a tooltip information-window, in here you will see their: Name, Power Rating and Wards
The difficulty rating is a simple information of the overall stats and skills of the NPC, it is not measured up against your individual character. It is merely an indicator to see if you dare to engage in combat against this foe, or rather steer clear of them.
So in the above picture, the Barbarian has a Power Rating of 361,8 and the player only of 203,9. So an engagement into combat here would only be advisable if the player had potions and maybe some pets ready to assist him/her.
NPC Wards
When encountering a hostile NPC you will often see that many of them have “Wards” shown on the tooltips, followed by two numbers. One number shown in a light yellow’ish color and one number in a light purple’ish color.
The yellow number is the NPC’s ward for physical damage, the purple number is the NPC’s ward for magic damage.
Before a NPC actively will take life-damage one of the two wards need to break. If you attack the NPC with magic damage, the magic ward will slowly decrease with every spell cast upon the monster, once the Magic Ward is depleted the remaining damage from the cast spell will be applied to the monsters life, and from here on every spell will be able to damage the monster.
Everytime either of the wards block damage you will be able to see it in your lower left corner.
Please note that if you break the magic ward using magic spells and then shift to meele, the NPC will once again take no direct life-damage, untill you break its physical ward as well.
“Some monsters have the ability to replenish some or all of their wards during battle.“
Wards are calculated based on the monsters stats and skills that correspond with the ward-segments, for example the Physical ward is calculated based on the monsters strength, hitpoints, wrestling, macefighting, swordsmanship, fencing, dexterity and so on, while the magic ward is calculated based on the monsters magery skill, intelligence, mana and so forth.
Special NPC Ranks
When you go adventuring you may also encounter special NPC’s who hold special ranks, like: Elite, Event Boss, Region Boss, Dungeon Boss or even World Boss.
These foes do not show their Power Ranking, they merely state the text “Elite” or “Dungeon Boss” etc. so engagement is very risky, the foe could be much stronger than you, or maybe you are evenly matched? There is only one way to find out.
Needless to say that theese special ranked NPC’s are much more of a challenge to fight than your average NPC.
Ranked NPC’s are the mobs to slay if you wish to aquire artifacts and rares. Each Ranked NPC has its own unique Artifact and Relic to drop. Recipes may however be shared amongst many ranked NPC’s.
You can track all your monster slaying via the Orb Of Truth’s which can be found in every major city, here you will have a good overview of your monster hunting achievemnts.