Tracking collectibles

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Stageguy, Oct 24, 2020.

  1. Stageguy Lorekeeper

    If there is a way in game to track collectibles, like you do with active quests, I have not found it yet. It would be nice to have a "Collectible Overlay" window you could open that displays the progress of collectibles... and of course a button on each collectible achievement that you could click to activate it to track progress just like we do with quests.
  2. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    The achievement window does this?
    Zaray likes this.
  3. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    Honestly, if they ever change anything about collections, they need to make it so that the red/green collected/not collected thing isn't just on text you have to inspect the item for, but is a foreground shader that applies to the icon in your bag, like the clicky reuse shader.
  4. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    And, add a filter for Bazaar, so I only see the ones I don't have. Or at least only show collects from a certain expac.
    Gyurika Godofwar, Skuz, Fuzzy and 4 others like this.
  5. Nadisia Augur

    With the insane number of collections and collectibles we do have now, I guess a new /outputfile collections, with maybe a couple of arguments and filters , would be a huge help.

    The txt format is not perfect, and JSON would be way better, but I'd be happy with it :)
    Gyurika Godofwar and Vumad like this.
  6. Nennius Curmudgeon

    When I saw the title I thought of there being a way for a ranger, or some other class, to track the location of shinies. :)
    Zaray likes this.
  7. Nadisia Augur

    Hehe Nennius, or a pet/familiar, the shiny sniffer, with a fetch ability :p
    Skuz, Jennre, Yinla and 2 others like this.
  8. Zynt Augur


    Yes, please.
    Skuz and Stageguy like this.
  9. SubEffect An Original Lord of Fizzle and Whiff

    This isn't exactly what you are looking for, of course.. but I will share this with the community.

    Here is a link to a publicized version my tracking spreasheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/192hx_57c4NNpNJ_oWiKoM_6JPQs-cay_Jcpv_WuBK3Y/edit?usp=sharing

    Warning - It's incomplete for RoF/TBL/GMM collections. I mostly used it for the shoulder chase item unlock from TBL and then later for ToV tracking for my Rallos earring quest. It can be easily expanded for extra characters (I used it for our guild, so we had a lot more columns in there).

    How it works:
    - Each tab has a different expansion, with the sets listed mostly how they are in-game. Note some are alphabetized (many names were cut/pasted from ZAM - I did not want to spend hundreds of hours re-ordering them to match in-game, so sorry for that).
    - The character column has a conditional format on it. Basically, put an "X" to show you have the collection item, and the total below adds it to the sum.
    - Summary page is a nice way to see your progress (again, GMM/RoF wasn't completed)

    So - sorry for the incompleteness, however I wanted to share this so at least there's a template someone could use for their own tracking purposes. It's extremely basic. No, I will not be supporting this - it's "as is".

    I made a similar sheet for the Hero AA's

    Hope someone finds some use out of this.
    Zaray and Zynt like this.
  10. CatsPaws No response to your post cause your on ignore

    I just go thru my /ach to each expansion and then click on collectable and look for those in baz. Or Overseer.

    It might be something in the coding that would interfere with the ability to differentiate between say the "Glowing Lena Fete Rune
    collects, Easter Eggs or the "Hate Letters" collects etc or the normal zone collects. I even have a separate house for non lore Quest Collects.
  11. Captain Video Augur

    Maybe the Dragon Hoard will have a Collections tab? We can but dream.
  12. SubEffect An Original Lord of Fizzle and Whiff

    This.

    Unless I'm mistaken, items have a "SKU" attribute on them, that aligns with the expansion they are a part of. So, perhaps this sort of thing isn't a tall order as a future filter (for collections, or any other item).
  13. Bard to the Bone New Member

    The idea of just adding a "only show items I can use" to the bazaar window would make searching for collections in the bazaar a ton easier, along with other things.

    If you are out actually collecting, then a "collectibles overlay" could instantly update as soon as you right clicked the item, like a quest item.
    Yinla likes this.
  14. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Variations on this have been asked for. The basic issue is with database searches. It would simply cost too much in database performance to support any sort of graphic status on every collectible.
  15. Nennius Curmudgeon

    You are quite likely correct. But, I do also remember the refrain from various and sundry Devs. offering reasons why bag sizes couldn't be increased. A solution was found for that and I hope that the sort of thing requested in this thread and in other threads could happen. I don't expect it to happen soon though.
  16. ptah Augur

    This is system I use for 12 alts I have finished collections on. Starting at Cotf, focus on Hero AA. Get what I can as I go. Visit the baz market daily, get what I can for under 10k, if thats 1 copy or 5 or 11 w/e.

    Once a week like on sunday, I look for copies 50k plus and look em up and adjust a farm day or 2. and sell them for 25k.

    Repeat Repeat Repeat.

    Now that was all before Overseer. I use same system, I do use overseer, focus on daily tasks for collects, x4 for future fill ins. I just stack stack stack and once a month fill what I cant find, dont wanta pay for, unlucky factor.

    Ideally crossing up names, zones etc along the way. Bit off topic but for me I found Ring eok/Ros stuff pretty easy. 3 box set up, never more than 2 hours grind, but maybe sometimes 2 sessions a day.

    Again, my filter was cost. I just toggle lowest to highest, and compare with arch window, one line at time.
  17. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Which is why I mentioned the "limit to one expac" filtering. That would avoid the nasty CPU hogging. And could be used for any searches, not just collectibles.
  18. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Databases aren't just a 'throw more compute' at it kind of problem. There's network. There's latency. There's DB structure. There's Apps - Backups - Monitoring. The speed at which a database query can be answered depends on lots of factors. Conducting real-time searches of collections (in an extremely simplified manner) "Yes/No" status means pulling data from the player DB, pulling data from the item DB, then comparing the two, then generating the report, then updating the server, then updating the game engine to finally display the result. Take this times the number of players and traders every single time a collectible appears on screen. Whether that be in your loot window, bag inventory, bank inventory, merchant, baz trader, ground spawn, etc.

    It's a monumental task. Not impossible - but resource-intensive and that's just taking the collectible question into account. There's all the unknown/unforeseen/unintended consequences of such a task. When you start mucking around with 23 year old databases (EQ coding and DB warehousing goes back that far) lots of things can and do go wrong.

    Highly improbable that we'll see this AWESOME idea implemented.
  19. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    As I understand it a lot of databases have been or are in the process of being updated & upgraded from their old format to a much faster one, something that was necessarry for the game's future so the robustness of these should be up to modern standards already or fairly soon. This paired with newer hardware is partly why we have had so many problems this year as those migrations bed in & the transitions get the kinks worked out.

    Queries of course are still subject to processing cost overheads so we are not likely to see something that queries big chunks of the database at a time accessing small chunks (such as singular expansions) could be feasible perhaps, it all depends what the expected usage is and what the real world usage ends up being for those.

    The outputfile & 3rd party parser method (such as some EverQuest players have created for tradeskillers aiming to hit 350) would be the most cost effective for Darkpaw to impliment I imagine & would likely be the best way to reduce any drag on the servers.
    Captain Video likes this.
  20. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Per the poster earlier in the thread, items have a SKU attached for the expac they're from.

    So, while you are correct in general, I don't think you are correct in this particular instance.
  21. Rasper Helpdesk The Original Helpdesk

    Is achievement information stored locally once accessed? If so there would be no need for a server DB hit to check.