---
title: Mob Respawn Timers
description: Proposed overworld mob respawn delays in Fractara, compared against the timers currently shipping in the server catalog.
---

<div className="prose">
  The <strong>Current</strong> column is the <code>respawn_time_ms</code> value
  each species ships with in the server mob catalog. The
  <strong>Proposed</strong> column is the target. Ordinary fodder stays quick
  enough to keep encounters flowing; anything rare, valuable, or already scarce
  moves onto a much longer clock.
</div>

<RespawnTimers />

## How the tiers were drawn

<div className="prose">
  ### Ten to fifteen minutes — common fodder

Goblins, Crawlers, Gyronts and Giant Crabs are the encounters a player is
expected to meet constantly. They stay on the shortest clock so that
travelling through a populated region still produces fights. Goblins in
particular are held at ten minutes because Goblin Vengeance depends on a
camp being repopulated within a session.

### Thirty to forty-five minutes — packs and game animals

Wolves and Frost Bats arrive several at a time, so each respawn returns three
to six bodies rather than one. Elk and Boar are the hunting supply, and at
three to five minutes they were the cheapest route to sustained income. Half
an hour makes a hunting ground something to move between rather than stand
in, while forty-five minutes for Boar keeps them meaningfully scarcer than
Elk without stripping a region bare.

### One hour — guardians

The Shard-Hulk guards Cairns and other fixed points. An hour makes clearing
one a decision about route and timing instead of a loop.

### Five to seven hours — rare encounters

Basilisk, Jotunn, Phase Skitterer and Dragon are meant to be found, not
farmed. A window averaging six hours means a given spawn point yields roughly
two kills a day, and the jitter stops the return time from being memorised
down to the minute. The Phase Skitterer takes the largest jump because it is
both valuable and trackable — at ten minutes, a known spawn is effectively an
income tap.

</div>

## Implementation notes

<div className="callout callout-rift">
  <div className="callout-title">Jitter is not implemented yet</div>

The catalog stores a single fixed <code>respawn_time_ms</code> per species,
and the zone lifecycle schedules a respawn at exactly

  <span className="mono">death&nbsp;+&nbsp;delay</span>. The four five-to-seven-hour
  entries therefore need a randomised window added to the respawn scheduler
  before they can ship as written; without it they would land as a flat six
  hours.
</div>

<div className="prose">
  Everything else in the table is a data-only change to the mob catalog.
  Respawn delay resolves per species at runtime and falls back to five minutes
  when a species does not author one, so a species omitted from the change
  keeps its current behaviour.

The proposal covers overworld spawns. Dungeon population is governed
separately and is unaffected.

</div>

## Sources

<div className="prose">
  Current values are read from the server mob catalog at
  <code>server/internal/world/mobs/catalog/data/catalog.json</code>, field
  <code>respawn_time_ms</code>. Pack sizes are the <code>min_pack_size</code>
  and <code>max_pack_size</code> fields from the same records. Respawn
  scheduling lives in <code>server/internal/world/zone/mob_lifecycle.go</code>.
</div>