When battling environmental creatures in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (aka NOT actual players) you will need to understand how to determine their difficulty relative to your own level of ability.  Knowing this will allow you to pick your battles so that you have a much higher chance of winning and gaining the experience needed to move forward in your long xp journey.  Failing to understand these signs will have you nominated for the esteemed "Goober with the most tombstones laying around" award.

Now as you all know by simply targeting a non player character (AKA NPC or MOB) you are shown their name, level and health. The border around the name and bars of the enemy also indicates the difficulty of the mob.  The other obvious hint at difficulty is the word mini-boss or boss that you will see under their name when targeted in the main play area.

The most confusing area of this difficulty estimation is the color of the rings that light up at the feet of targeted enemies.  There are 6 color variations that indicate the varying diffculty of the mobs.  The colors of these rings and their general meaning are as follows:

• Grey : The mob is a extremely lower level than you, you will not receive XP.
  
  
• Green: The mob is a much lower level than you, you will receive a small amount of XP for killing it.
  
  
• Blue: The mob is only a little lower in level than you, the mob is still a challenge but you can probably handle more than one at a time easily.
  
  
• White: The mob is equal in level to you, This is a fairly even fight. As with all other fights where you gain xp, the harder the challenge the more xp you will gain from the kill. 

• Yellow: The mob is a slightly higher level than yourself.  This is a serious challenge and you can easily lose if things do not go in your favor (lucky crit, unlucky resist, etc).  The rewards may be worth the risk since you will get more xp and have a chance for better loot IF you live through the encounter.
  
  
• Red: This mob is considerably higher level than yourself so your abilities will be less likely to hit or affect the mob.  You are looking at freight train heading your way basically, get out of it's way or hold your ground as you choose.

Basically folks, look for these indicators and weigh your chances BEFORE you pop off that first arrow or ranged attack.  Nothing can be more embarrassing than being a big strong Cimmerian Barbarian and having to run away like a little girly man because you chose your fights poorly.