How do the mechanics that allow monsters to kill other monsters work?

Question

Walking through the world of Tibia, we will sometimes come across a situation where a monster kills another monster. Take a look at the image below. It shows an Orc Berserker killing a Orc Warrior.

(Orc Berserker kills Orc Warrior and gains experience points)

It might seem like nothing out of the ordinary.  But during one of my explorations, I noticed something that caught my attention.  Take a look at the image below. The crocodile killed the Lizard Sentinel.

(Crocodile kills Lizard Sentinel and gains experience points)

Now let's compare the basic statistics of these monsters.

Crocodile	Lizard Sentinel
Health : 105	Health: 265
Experience: 40	Experience: 110

From the above stats, the Crocodile is at least twice as weak a monster as the Lizard Sentinel. How is it possible that the crocodile killed this monster? On top of that, he killed the monster with one hit! So, I found this to be a very intriguing situation, and I would be very interested to know how the mechanics work to allow the monster to kill another monster? What powerful force allows monsters to do this with one shot?

Comments

basically what trigger this mechanism is something similar to a "stomp", pushable mobs can be crushed if there's no way to push such mobs aside, so the "crusher" mob run a check for the most avaliable path, if a mob is pushable is likely an avaliable path otherwise is a blocked path,  so when the easiest path is through a pushable mob and this mob has its 4 cardinal sqm occupied, then it wil be "crushed" disregard its hp.

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Good comment. My answer is still in the process of in-depth research. Perhaps the regular monster takes the closest path to the target as you write. But I have noticed that summoned monsters behave quite differently. They look for any available path. Interestingly, a regular orc berserker kills other regular monsters with ease. But the summoned snakes (by the Orc Shaman) Orc Berserker tries to spare them by going around or pushing them. When I am still sure of something, I will supplement my answer.

Answer 1

To begin with, I will write that in the game there are situations in which monsters fight each other. They simply attack each other on their own. 

(Marids and Efreets fight each other) 

These phenomena were well described by user Pochwalona here:

What creatures attack other creatures

But in my answer, I will try to describe how the mechanics that allow one monster to kill another monster with one hit work. I tried looking for information on fansites and Google at first. There is not much information on the subject. As a rule, there are brief mentions of the fact that a particular monster can kill other monsters.

 

But I have not found information on how this mechanic works. At first, thanks to the monster entries on the Tibia Wiki and observation of the in-game environment, I was able to determine that a monster can attack another monster if that monster stands in its path to its target. For example, if an Orc Berserker attacks us and a weak monster (such as an Orc) stands in its way, it will kill it. The situation described above happens very often in a game where there are weaker monsters that are killed by just the stronger ones.

But what about the situation I described in my question? In which the weaker monster killed the stronger one? 

Explaining this situation has become difficult for me. I tried to figure out what monsters attack other weaker monsters. Unfortunately, I did not come to any constructive conclusions. Therefore, I started looking for monsters that can be killed in this way. I began to look for common characteristics of these monsters. After a long time, I managed to determine what factor all such monsters have in common.

It turns out that any pushable monster is susceptible to being killed by another monster with a single hit. Yes, it turned out that Lizard Sentinel is pushable   So I decided to look for such monsters. Moments later, I noticed that the Lizard Snakecharmer is also pushable. So, I provoked a situation in which he was also killed by a well-known crocodile

(Crocodile kills Lizard Snakecharmer and gains experience points)

That's basically where I could have ended my research, but the mechanics seemed interesting enough that I decided to investigate it further...

I began to wonder if the Orc Berserker uses the mechanic described above, how will an Orc Berserker summoned using the "Summon Creature" spell behave? Will he kill pushable monsters in the same way? The answer to this question has proven to be quite complicated and requires explanation...

The best way I can demonstrate this is with a single example. Take a look at the animation below.

(Orc Berserker pushes Wasp through instead of killing him)

What is going on here!? Orc berserker doesn't kill Wasp just push him over? It seems that the monsters we summon behave in a more pacifistic manner. It turns out that the reuglar monster also pushes other regular monsters but does so much less frequently than the summon. I was already about to finish my research when I noticed a strange thing…

(Summoned Orc Berserker kills Bug)

I noticed that Orc Berserker killed the monster. Now I had to determine how it happened. I have made several attempts to trigger this situation again. It turns out that the summoned Orc Berserker will only kill a pushable monster if it stands in its path, there is no other way to reach the target and it cannot push the monster through. 

Wow, this is really interesting. Right? This situation led me to check a few more things.  First of all, I began to wonder if a summoned monster could kill another summoned monster. Here is the result:

(My summon kills other player's summon.)

Mine summon killed colleagues summon. A very interesting and yet strange situation.

I began to wonder if a summoned monster can kill an immortal monster using the above mechanics. We are talking about a monster that cannot be injured by any damage. So, I started looking for immortal monsters that are pushable.

The first attempt to kill such a monster was successful. I used the monsters from Repenters Quest here.

(Summoned Orc Berserker kills immortal monster)

A weird situation. The monsters died but didn't even leave bodies. But you have to admit that it was a unique experience. I also sent my summoned Orc Berserker to fight Spectral Scums.

(Summoned Orc Berserker kills Spectral Scum)

The impossible has become possible. It worked! The monster also left his body which was a big surprise to me. 

(Spectral Scum's body is empty)

Keep in mind that this only works on immortal monsters that are pushable. It took me a long time to figure out if this was a bug. But I came to the conclusion that it is not a bug. Certainly, immortal and pushable monsters are only a few in the game. Immortal monsters do not have bodies or their bodies are empty. They were simply designed to not give any loot to players. In addition, the player does not get experience by killing such an immortal monster with a summon. In simple terms, knowledge of these mechanics does not lead to any advantage over other players. This is just such curiosity.

After publishing my reply on TibiaQA, I noticed that players tested the above method of killing immortal monsters on Deathslicer and Celebrating Orger. It turns out that this method works on these monsters. They were killed. Interestingly, Celebrating Orger leaves the body however, it is empty. After killing a Deathslicer at the time of its death, another Deathslicer immediately appears. This only confirms the fact that such monsters are well-designed and it is possible that the developers of the game foresaw the possibility of their death under some unexpected circumstances.

I hope that I have presented the mechanics to you in an understandable way and that you have learned interesting things from my answer. Now it's time to finally answer the question.

In order for a regular monster to kill another regular monster, the following factors must occur:

• The attacking monster must be special able to kill other monsters. Otherwise, it will not kill a monster standing in its way. An example of such a monster is the Orc Berserker.

• The monster that is being killed must stand in the way of the monster killing it.

• The killing monster must have a chosen target, e.g., the player

• Monster that is killed must be pushable

Finally, here are some more little titbits connected to my answer:

Curiosity 1 - If you are interested in how monsters find their way to their destination, I recommend reading up on pathfinding algorithms.

Curiosity 2 - When a regular monster or summon kills another monster it gains experience points just like a player. 

Curiosity 3 - During Double Exp Weekend, monsters just like players gain double experience points.

Curiosity 5 - If your summon or regular monster kills a some monster standing in its way then in the kill statistics the next day there will be no entry for this kill. This is because it is not the player who killed the monster..

Curiosity 6 - When killing immortal monsters from the Repenters Quest, I used the Flower Bowl for blocking. This item when it comes to blocking works similarly to Parcel but is noticeably lighter.

Curiosity 7 - At the moment a monster kills another monster standing in its way then a cloud/puff effect appears. 

Curiosity 8 - There was a bug on one of the Test Servers that allowed players to kill immortal monsters. The admin of Tibia Wiki Hunter of Dragoes mentions it in this answer.

Sources:

https://www.tibiaqa.com/14283/what-creatures-attack-other-creatures

https://tibia.fandom.com/wiki/Crocodile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinding

https://tibia.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Pushable_Creatures

https://tibia.fandom.com/wiki/Lizard_Sentinel

Comments

Amazing answer! Very interesting! Thank you very much for your detailed research and for taking your time to write it down.