Technically he's still there. They changed the way it spawns (used to be spawned by killing the snakes, or the pathing gnoll through the pit). Now, random gnolls just spawn and despawn in Elgnub's location, so it's completely random and lame. Don't know why they changed it, but they did. Your best bet instead of killing the gnolls which spawn there (which cause a 7min respawn timer) is to let them just spawn and despawn (4min spawn time, 60-90 seconds later the gnoll despawns). Be careful though, because how they borked his spawn, Elgnub will spawn and then despawn 60-90 seconds later. Ask me how I know? I opened a ticket about it, but the person who checked the ticket said Elgnub was spawning just fine (the ticket wasn't about him not spawning, necessarily, if the person reviewing the ticket read it, but you know, it's whatever). So, the new normal on Elgnub from what I understand is that it's a completely random spawn that has no trigger other than a timer. Good luck on your casino slots for Elgnub.
Was this recently? AFAIK the patch that caused this happened a long time ago, sometime around the release of Velious on Ragefire...that I remember...could be a little variance in time.
Yeah it was like a month ago. Thought there were hunter achievements for Blackburrow, but that hunter achievement seems to conflict with the Seeds of Destruction version. So yeah, he does pop. I was killing a lot throughout the zone but always made sure to lock that Gnoll Pup down as I read from Zam and it eventually worked.
But reading your theories, I could have been lucky and just hit his timer. I was there for roughly 12 hours total over 3 days.
I can't say for sure, because I'm not on the Dev side of things, but it certainly seems completely random (I spent five days early on totaling about 60 hours over them, then gave up, then went back and got lucky in 4 hours). It does not appear that killing the original known PHers have any effect whatsoever, anymore. When he spawned for me, I had completely stopped killing the previously known mobs and the ones that spawned in his place, because they would despawn and respawn faster than they would respawn if I had killed them.
Oh, I forgot, I was camping the spawn on 2 characters in two pickzones.....so....I guess it took a combined 120ish hours?
I've posted in the DBG Issue Tracker on this a few times, but it doesn't look like I've commented on these forums. Lord Elgnub spawns, but he is rare. Checked the Mac server data for Lord Elgnub's spawn data. The encounter table is identical. The spawn point is identical. The NCDs are identical. One odd difference is that the spawn time on the Mac server was 25% faster.
This is on my short-term to-do list on Agnarr and I'm not looking forward to it. Not sure how the PC and Mac tables can be the same if PC has been changed to eliminate the use of PHs. Not sure why it would ever be changed to begin with, it's a low-level zone. But I certainly don't think any of the devs would ever bungle Elgnub.
So it's normal for that particular PH mob/Elgnub to rapidly spawn/despawn in the way it does? If that's what it was intended to be, that's cool, I just never had an answer on the Tracker. When I first camped it (on Ragefire), there was no gnoll that ever spawned where Elgnub spawns until it was actually him (assuming it was linked to the Patrolling Gnoll through the pit and/or the snakes). I spent a couple of days doing the camp, then helped some random people we were hunting with in Splitpaw get their Gnoll Slayers doing the same method of spawning. It just seemed like a weird change, but if that's what it was intended to be, so be it.
Fun Easter Egg facts! One of the developers that worked on early EverQuest inserted references to his favorite bands and musicians. Nottap Ekim in the Plane of Sky is an obvious nod to the multi-talented musician Mike Patton. Mike Patton was the founder and lead singer of Mr. Bungle. Lord Elgnub is a slightly less obvious nod to that band. Fun game mechanic facts! NCD is short for "NPC Command." A spawn has a list of sequential NCDs that determine their out of combat behavior. This behavior is the same regardless of what creature(s) are rolled up on the encounter for that spawn. For most modern spawns, their NCDs are 1. Go home, 2. Wait. or 1. Wander route, 2. Wait. These commands loop in most cases, unless an NCD is a goto NCD X or other edge cases, but I digress... Lord Elgnub's spawn's NCDs are 1. Go home, 2. Wait, 3. Despawn. I see no evidence that the spawn or the encounter or the NCDs have ever changed. Change logs show no adjustments to the behavior and the data is the same on the Mac server. If anything was changed, it pre-dates change logs so in the year 2000 or earlier.
That's amazing. Pretty consistent on what i've seen regarding Lord Elgnub's spawn. I believe you are absolutely correct regarding Elgnub. His spawn has worked the same for ages.
Specifically, we don't have tech to allow for multiple different melee damage tables on a per server basis. Generally speaking, there are 16 years of differences in the code base and data structures between the Mac server and a Live server. The Mac server is a great reference, but porting over what's there is akin to jamming a square peg into a round hole.
I'm not even sure you guys are using "dmg/melee tables" to refer to the same things But I'm not sure what else they could be but the "combat tables" referenced in October 8, 2001 patch ... Which AFAIK haven't really changed (since EQ Mac) much besides stuff tacked on for higher levels
I've spent multiple days there myself. It's not worth it at this point, let them get the spawn rate fixed.