Rare mob spawn rate

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Ozon, Dec 29, 2022.

  1. Act of Valor The Newest Member

    That isn't out of the ordinary at all.
    Nennius likes this.
  2. Vumad Cape Wearer

    We camped the skeleton in Shadeweaver for a few hours with no luck while keeping most of the PHs down. A few days later, our guild did a hunter raid. All the PHs were down for numerous hours with no luck. Other groups in the raid were changing named as they got them and I think most all of the T1 zone named were killed without the skeleton or the Fowl Matriarch ever popping. These have popped so they are not bugged, some people have gotten them, but these two named were shockingly rare.

    Maybe it's just bad luck with the RNG but when people seem to have the same issue with the same mobs over and over, it sort of makes you wonder.

    I wonder if the issue has to do with the number of PHs. The skeleton has 8 PHs. I believe the Dev said before that they calculate pop rate based on a number of spawns per hour. In my mind, the way this works, is that if a camp with 4 PHs has a 1% chance to pop, then 8 PHs would have a 0.5% chance to pop. I suspect with the way killing mobs work, that often a setup like that doesn't work out to the same spawn rate. I probably don't understand how it works.
  3. Windance Augur

    Update on the Matriarch in FF.

    Had a nice fast guild group this morning and we were able to keep the entire north section of Firefall cleared for a good 2-3 hour run.

    During this time we had the Matriarch pop twice.

    I think part of the reason it seems so rare is the number of PH's vs trash in the area. IF the spawn rates are set by design to be ~ 72 min when all PH's are down, but you are only able to keep 1/3 - 2/3 of the PH's cleared the time between rare sightings shoots way up.
    Vumad likes this.
  4. Svann2 The Magnificent

    We were there with 3 group raid mass killing everything in the Shadeweaver graveyard for 4 hours and didnt get it. Then went back with 1 group and got it in 45min. I think its random^ʳᵃⁿᵈᵒᵐ
    Yinla likes this.
  5. Andarriel Everquest player since 2000

    Yes its called RNG its a eq thing :p
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  6. Silias McKendrick Augur

    Which Dev f'd up the named mob spawn rate? I went back to play on Mangler (yes it is a prog), either way, killing mobs forever in Argath and no named at bottom of ramp in like 5hrs killing phs down there. During live when VoA first hit I could get a name in 15 to 30 phs.
    Joules_Bianchi likes this.
  7. Tucoh Augur

    So did they ever change the Shak Dathor Overlord or the bird spawn? 7.5x over the 72minute spawn target is pretty egregious.
  8. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    People always assume that the new spawn rates are worse than in the past, but they aren't usually. Spent 12 hours clearing Stillmoon Temple and then 8 doing the same in the Ascent. Stillmoon had 2 mobs that I just sat for 2 hours each killing that ph to get a single spawn. Meanwhile, in the Ascent I cleared it for 8 hours and got 1 named which spawned like every other clearing, but the rest never spawned. Wtih the time for the clear and me running back to the zi being right at the respawn rate. Unless you are doing multi-day camps your numbers are meaningless.
  9. Natal Augur


    Well, commenting on my experience camping Molten Wildfire in Shadeweavers I disagree. I am currently in my 4th week camping this mob, 3-4 sessions a week, each session 2-3 hours. I don't have full numbers, but the first two sessions were 26 and 36 PH killed respectively. I did not keep track after that, but since I am in my 4th week I started again. Because, well, it is FOUR WEEKS. The longest I have ever taken previously to get a named to spawn is 8 days, so this is way, way past that mark now. On April 3rd, ~2.5h, 32 PH killed, On April 4th, ~2h, 27 PH killed is the latest data.

    My crew is shaman/rogue/warrior, with 2 healer mercs and 1 rogue merc. All real players are either in full raid or mostly raid gear, with the alts in ToL raid gear and my warrior main in mostly NoS raid gear and some ToL raid gear. I can kill 3 PH per spawn cycle, if I take it comfortably, 4PH if I spam abilities like a deranged monkey (that is too stressfull, so I generally take the more relaxed approach). The mobs are easy, I can pull doubles or triples no problem, but they take the same amount of time to kill. The issue is they have a crazy amount of hp, so they take 2-3 minutes to kill. This group composition is probably fairly average for the typical group. No doubt there are some 6 real player groups of raiders who can kill a lot faster, but even in raiding guilds these are not typical, let alone the regular player base, so that should not be used as a baseline.

    I am a raider, I don't give a rats *ss about the drops (which in any case are far easier to get from the missions even if I did want them), what I care about is the hunter kill update.

    Now, a sensible approach to named design is for them to pop every 1-2 hours if you kill all the PH. There are 11 PH for this particular named, so by my calculation the named should pop around every 3-7 hours at the rate I am killing, This is clearly NOT happening. not rocket science. If you want to regulate the rate at which items enter the game, just adjust the probability of an item dropping, NOT the spawn rate of the named. Not like that should be a consideration anyway since they drop like rain in the mission chests.

    You want the nameds to pop regularly enough that the players get an occasional adrenalin boost while they are camping, otherwise general dissatisfaction sets in because they start to feel they have been wasting their time.

    The issues are as follows:
    A) The mob hp is too high. It should be reduced so that more of the PH can be killed per spawn cycle, OR the pop rate should be increased to compensate for the fact that most groups can't realistically clear all of the PH present.
    B) The probability of a named spawning is way out of whack. I realize RNG is a thing, but seriously, 4 weeks is kind of ridiculous.
    C) The spawn rate is too high for you to realistically clear all the PH and all of the extra mobs wandering around (fortunately THEIR hp is normal, so they can be killed quickly)

    The problem is basically a combination of those three things. I personally need to get this done so I can continue progression of my cloak, but at the rate these nameds (this one at any rate, but I suspect the others in the zone have similar issues) are spawning it is going to take years to get past the checkpoint. I got a whole bunch of updates from some hunter raids earlier in the year, but I still have about half to do.

    This is not a difficulty thing, it is a mobs failing to spawn thing. I can understand the named being challenging and maybe needing some sort of strat rather than simple whacking away, but you can't do that if it doesn't spawn.

    I can't describe the level of frustration I am feeling about this, sitting at the same place for going on a month killing the same three mobs. It is mind numbingly boring and I find it hard to believe that this is actually the devs intention. There has to be some issue with the spawn tables and how the spawn rate probability for the nameds has been calculated. I don't know, maybe the guy who originally set it up was laid off and decided to give the player base a FU as a parting gift. But whatever, it needs to be adjusted.

    Another point about this is that casual players might want to farm these nameds for things like gear, spells or augs, but the low spawn rate combined with the low probability of the more desirable items on the loot table actually dropping even if the named spawns means that this is basically a no go. I would argue they are better off doing missions if that is what they wanted...they can get most everything they might want in a week as opposed to the months or years of farming it would take to get this stuff from nameds. This makes absolutely no sense from a game design point of view IMO. I mean seriously, are you going to farm an aug that is a 10% drop probability off a mob that might take a month to spawn????? No.

    The other thing that kind of bugs me is how do you communicate this to the devs? Do they read these boards? Or do they rely on a clique of high end raiding players who say there is no problem when there clearly IS a problem from a general players practical point of view. Giving feedback is fine, but when there is no response or acknowledgement or explanation of why things are a certain way it leaves people frustrated, not knowing whether these concerns are even being heard by the devs at all.
  10. Tucoh Augur

    I agree. I'd state this differently and say there are three things that should be done:
    • Whatever method they have for configuring named spawn rate is probably manual and prone to human error. A script that generates it based on PH count and spawn rate and targets 72m per spawn is conceptually easy, but might be programmatically difficult. For 11 ph and 10m respawn (I don't remember actual Shadeweaver respawn time) that should be 10 minutes / 72 minutes / 11 PH or 1.3% per spawn or one out of every 76 mobs. If you kill 3 of those PH, it should be 4ish hours like you say. If such a script exists it's definitely broken.
    • A task to examine spawn rates across all hunter mobs in an expansion a month after release (or during beta if time permits) to spot any outliers like Shak Dathor Overlord, the hawk thing or Molten Wildfire
    • A new system that examines whether the named mob hasn't spawned from recent kills and begin increasing the spawn chance up to some cap like 10x
    The last part is important because even with a true 72m average spawn period, doing hunter on ~40 mobs is statistically likely to result in at least one mob that just. will. not. spawn. That one mob where you spend 12 hours over 4 weeks to finallllly get to spawn feels worse than the entire previous zone that provided reasonable spawns within a bell curve.
  11. Smokezz The Bane Crew

    I'm quite convinced the Shadeweaver spawn rates aren't working as intended. I often camp mobs in there for the augs, and the named are far more rare even killing all of the PH's than in zones that I don't kill all of the PH's.
  12. Xellen Lorekeeper

    The rates in NoS were modified, they had to be, the numbers support it. Anyone saying otherwise, saying it's always been like this is not actually logging the numbers. My channel is getting close to my hunter kills for Firefall and Shadeweaver and they are the worst zones for rare spawn I've dealt with in all 24 years of EverQuest. When the videos go out you'll hear the slow and painful death that is going on in my life in my voice because of the spawn rate. The formula was tweaked for rare spawn chance and it is garbage and needs to be looked at.

    I had multiple named take over 100, some over 200 and I think 2 in Shadeweaver that were just under 300 placeholders before the named spawned. I spent weeks after finishing hunter doing nothing but Overseer on my shaman box to level it as I legit was angry with the game. It's terrible, and if I wasn't doing it to make EQ content I would never have bothered with it.
  13. Cuuthbert Augur

    Lot typing to just say... they are called RARE spawns for a reason
  14. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    I am talking continuous. The problem with spreading out over multiple sessions even over multiple weeks is that someone can have gotten the named immediately before you started the camp and again immediately after you left. Having bad luck and the spawn rates being low are not the same thing. Several older spawns required 80+ hours consecutive hours of camping to get the named to spawn. People have spent multiple months getting older named to spawn for them using the method that you outline. 4 weeks is just bad luck. I've helped people farm stuff and spent a year never seeing the specific named they were after but maybe 4 times with it not dropping the item they were after.

    Once an hour, then they are not rare, they are just uncommon. The intent is not that you will get all the named you are after in a play session, just that you'll probably get 1 or maybe 2 in one. When you are focusing on just 1, then yes it is going to take a while to get it.
  15. Svann2 The Magnificent

    tinfoil theory:
    Invisible GM monitoring zone controlling spawns.
    "F this guy, he complains on the forums too much"
    Nennius likes this.
  16. Nennius Curmudgeon

    "Get out of my head!!!"
  17. Zarkdon Augur

    I spent 6 hours camping a mob I needed for the RZ earring and didn't get it. But I swear to God every other named mob in zone spawned 4 times. Everquest is sentient, and will develop into skynet.
    Nennius likes this.
  18. Nennius Curmudgeon

    AI will triumph!

    Can krono be used to select a preferred spot in The Matrix?
  19. Svann2 The Magnificent

    Yea thats one of the pains of having track. You always see how many times the other camp spawns.
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  20. Eaedyilye More stonehive bixies.

    I finished hunter with my 3 mages quickly when the expansion was released. The Shak Dathor Overlord was the only one that took a while. Three sessions and it spawned.

    I created a fourth mage for my team and completed the NOS hunter tonight. Only 1 rare was a problem. The skeleton in Shadeweaver's Tangle. I killed around 1000 mobs before it spawned.

    The last one which I finished today was the Igneous Insect in FF. I was there about 5 hours and I killed over 300 mobs. (mostly ph's). Ig Insect didn't spawn. I went there today and it spawned quite quickly. (38 minutes according to my logs)

    For me anyway, hunter in this expansion wasn't really any different spawn wise as any of the modern expansions. Most were reasonable and few were a test of patients. Typical EQ.