Quillmane theory?

[Sneaky]

When I was a newb in SK killing aviaks and gnolls, more than one time quill spawned in the zone. This was long before the mage epic was around. I doub't anyone purposely sat in SK trying to make it spawn, but it did. If there are PHers now I feel that they have been changed in conjunction with the mage epic. Old coding, such as the SRO AC might not apply.

[Jobober]

Many moons ago my master dragged me through SK for about 15 hours before getting his cloak. In that time frame we wasted Quillmane 7 times. My observations are consistent with a theory posted on the magician message board quite some time ago. Supposedly there are three sets of wanderers. Each mob that spawns as a wanderer has a point value. Accordingly there are a maximum number of points that can be up in each of 3 wanderer zones. When a wanderer is due to pop a mob whose point value is less than the currently available points will pop. Naturally the rare spawns Grizzlenot, Mroon, Cyclops, will have higher point values with Quillmane naturally requiring lots of points.
In practice we spent the majority of our time running in a triangle from paw, KFC and the hermit killing everything. All of our 7 kills were to the south of paw with 2 directly south, 2 to the southwest, and one to the south of the shadowedmen on the zone boundry. Two spawns were directly to the west of KFC. Most spawns occurred within 1-2 hours of clearing in what we refer to as the triangle of death, formed by the KFC, hermit and paw. We have heard reports of Quill spawning to positions north of paw but we never witnessed it.
In one session we cleared for 5 hours without seeing Quill, however we firmly believe this was due to Brother Q spawning while we were clearing and using up all our points. On another note we aggressively killed the wandering shaman cycle and escaped splitpaw gnolls. We had Quill spawn on several occasions while an escaped gnoll was up. So don’t feel you need to run gangbusters across the zone to kill each one. We like the lion theory but prefer just to kill everything near the Triangle of Death.

Hope this saves you and your loyal elemental some time

Jobober
48 water pet

[AbaddonxXx69]

I've seen Brother Q and Quill up at the same time. As a matter of fact, when we went for Quillmane, I dont think I remember him ever not being up.

[Jobober]

Sorry if we were unclear. Brother Q was up for the majority of our time in SK as well. We were just saying he popped while we were there and I didn't see Quill for the rest of the night. Therefore we believe his spawn used up points. Not that his presence is linked to Quillmane in any direct manner.

Jobober

[AbaddonxXx69]

Ahh, gotcha



Edit * I hate typos, especially when only posting 2 words.

[Blade300]

Don't know if this works or just a fluke. But I killed all the escaped gnolls before they respawned. Usually 2 by N. Karana and 2 by the Aviaks. Once I killed the last gnoll, Quillmane popped. It wasn't even 2 seconds. I marched over to where he was. Luckily spawned real close to me or I woulnd't have make it before a druid tracked him down. Had the cloak on him. I had to go for a raid shortly after to try it out again but may do so again to see if he happens again.

[quester]

I always find it amusing to read all these theories. I've yet to see anyone who understood what really happens.

I'm going to tell you how the database USED to be set up when I worked there. You can choose to believe me or not, that's your choice. Also, bear in mind that i'm goign from very old memory here. I was on the Live team for a short time, before Kunark. In fact, I only ever added a few mobs to the game (I did the Mystic Cloak quest).

When adding a MOB to the DB, you have 2 steps. 1) You add a spawnpoint (or use an existing spawnpoint). 2) You add the mob, and link it to the spawn point. IIRC, a mob could only have 1 spawn point entry.

The spawnpoint has a timer value, in seconds IIRC, that specifies how long after its mob is killed before it pops a new one.

There is another setting that indicates the PERCENT CHANCE for each of the mobs on that spawn point to spawn. I don't recall exactly how that was set.. but its there. This is the reason that "theories" of, kill X mob 5 times, then wait 10 minutes, then .. blah blah.. not true. At least, never used to be true. I'm sure a lot of this has changed though.

The way it used to work though, is basiclly each time the mob for a spawn point is killed, when the timer counts down, another ranomd one is chosen, based on the percentages set. It is (or was) that simple.

Based on the way it used to be, Quill has only a single spawn point. Now that spawnpoint could be set up to spawn just about every common, or semi rare in the zone.. Mostl likely it is set up to spawn just about every common with a high percentage, and POSSIBLY a semi rare or 2. Semi-rares that can have multiples up are the more likely ones to be there. Quill will then have a very small percentage chance for each pop.

What this means is that there is no cycle to do (Those started with Kunark, and the system that I worked with did not have that capability. I'm assuming Quill is still set up old style, but I can't be certain). Basiclly you just need to find which spawn point is his, and kill everything that that point spawns, until Quill does. Now, the really hard part for something like Quill, is its whats called a "wide open". This means that the spawn point can spawn anywhere in a range of locations, totally random, totally unfixed. I doubt its set to the whole zone, but it COULD be.

What further makes it difficult, is .. well lets face it.. Finding which spawn point is not an easy task. Especially because SEQ simply logs the "spawn point" as where a mob spawned. Doesn't mean its the exact point, considering wide opens. You could see 3 spawn points in SEQ, that all technically are the same spawn point entry in the DB.

[kilsof]

Very interesting information. Thanks for posting it. It would explain the behavior of a lot of rare spawns. Like the guy who killed the lions. In the slaughter, he eventually killed the lion who had spawned from Quill's location and the next spawn was Quill. Or when the guy killed escaped gnolls, it just happened that a gnoll was what was spawned from Quill's spot. So does that mean if a gnoll is occuping the spawn spot, killing lions won't make Quill spawn?

When you say a spawn is "wide open", does that mean it can spawn absolutely anywhere within a certain rectangular region? Or are there a number of fixed spots within a region and it can spawn at any one of those fixed spots?

[quester]

"So does that mean if a gnoll is occuping the spawn spot, killing lions won't make Quill spawn? "

Right.. you'd have to kill the mob that spawned from that spawn point, which would be the gnoll.

"When you say a spawn is "wide open", does that mean it can spawn absolutely anywhere within a certain rectangular region? Or are there a number of fixed spots within a region and it can spawn at any one of those fixed spots?"

Absoltely anywhere in the specified region. IIRC, most all of SK is set up as Wide Opens. I know 99% of the pathing in that zone was done as Wide Opens for simplicity (Which is why the pathing sucks so bad around structures).

[tamasine]

My research consisted of logging spawns for a couple of days, then looking for patterns. The aviaks for example have a 120 second pop time (kill -> respawn) where lions and centaurs have the same 90 second time. I guessed this by graphing the number of times a particular death-respawn interval occurred with the mobs under consideration. ifi graphed aviaks and lions for example, there were two distinct peaks in the data. lions on their own gave just one peak. so i decided that aviaks and lions were on different spawn tables. centaurs matched up with lions, and quillmane matched up with the lions/centaurs. so back to SK i went, and slaughtered every lion and centaur in sight. quillmane popped in the hour. the previous day i'd killed far more aviaks because i came across them more, and no quillmane. (at the time of pop there were 3 undead cyclopses and all gnolls running around.)

so personally, i'd say that all this weighting stuff is malarky. the "there's always one rare up" is rubbish. any "pop instantly" stuff is hooey, and any "pop on engagement" is also wrong.

tams