Hey,
I was wondering about the Shard Wolves in FoW.
Why in HM are they still level 20 ?
Are their table drop actually part of the HM one (do they drop tomes/lockpicks) ?
Do you think it's possible to drop req8 on them ?
Thanks 
Shard Wolf
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- Official Post
Shardwolves do in fact drop q8 swords as I was in a fowsc run where a q8 longsword dropped. I am not certain on them dropping tomes/lockpicks as I never paid that close of attention. It is also not confirmed if they drop shadow weapons.
The reason why they are level 20 is speculation but here is my theory based on analyzing the gw engine. HM is ran as a pass over all agents upon map load to adjust levels/skillbars. The mobs that don't change level all have one thing in common and that is they spawn post map load. A large amount of enemies are actually in the map that "spawn" out of no where for quests etc such as hidden under the map and are moved. That is the reason they are affected by HM. There are very few instances of enemies truly being new spawns post map load such as the slave spirits or shard wolves thus them retaining their NM levels.
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- Official Post
So those "news spawns" are not affected by the level up from HM,
but then do you think they are influenced by a higher drop rate due to HM ?
Is it foe related or instance related ?
No way to know for sure but my personal thought based on farming is that drops are increased with HM being active even for the mobs that don't level up. The logic behind that is go and farm a level 24 mob in normal mode and then again in hard mode. The drops are substantially increased. A fairly good example of this are stone summit mobs where you can find nearly the same mob in NM as level 24 as the northern shiverpeaks ones leveled up to 24 in HM.
The true best Apples to Apples comparison would be if someone decided to grind out many hours of the enslaved spirits in normal mode and then do the run a ton in hard mode while tracking gold drops. It would be a tiny sample that could skew but I bet it would be obvious that HM was active. I could be completely wrong but that is my gut feeling from farming over the years.
