Next patch items that will affect TLP

You keep using that term. "lava fast". Lava moves at many different speeds. Its viscosity varies and impacts its flow rate, the terrain also impacts its speed. Lava can flow as quickly as 40 km/hr or as slowly as <1km/hr. So if you are using that term to mean that people can move as quickly or as slowly as they would like through the content, I guess it would be accurate.

Hadn't thought about it, it's a saying used where I am from (nowhere near actual lava flow). I suppose heat is being equated with speed, but really it's vague/inaccurate. Maybe lightning fast is better for being more precise?

Really fast XP does not prevent a person slow-leveling if they want to, whereas slow xp is limiting (and in my view a negative that causes attrition).

Mercurial speeds would be a good one, as well. Plus, mercurial is just fun to say.

OMG, they fixed SK epic 1.0 bottleneck!!! I'm almost tempted to go see if I still have all the parts on my denuded Phinny SK.

I appreciate the clarification on this, but it actually made me more confused

In my many days of camping Marl and logging his exact spawn time via logs, it was very clear that he did not have a fixed spawn time before this new fix. Are there multiple respawn variance mechanics at play?

The takeaway is that it's going to be faster and more favorable to everyone that wants to complete the quest.

Be careful. We REDUCED (significantly) the bottleneck. IT will still be a bottleneck, but perhaps a wider opening...

Yep, there are other factors that could have affected his apparent respawn time.
There are two different versions of Marl Kastane. Handing in the Note to Marl despawns the normal one and spawns the second one. When this happens, it'll look like Marl Kastane is up, but the respawn timer for the real version is ticking.
Also, the zone's load can impact how quickly an NPC respawns.

yeah like you mention the issue with tightening the number of players is the game hasn't been balanced around those constraints. The meta game of minimal player raids is all about excluding non-optimal classes and players. So I think it would be really disruptive to many players gameplay if they made lower caps the only option from AoCs. It's just kind of a simple hack solution to offer a challenge for hardcore.

It's a complicated issue and just fun to theorycraft I think. I totally get why they just pick off little changes here and there because a systematic approach to rebalance years of old content would be an endless resource sink

Impact it how? Delaying the re-spawn or hastening it?

This is very interesting. I assume whatever the answer this applies to all mobs and not just Marl?

I was in Toxx forest yesterday on Phinigel (in TSS era).

Marl wasn't up

I really think if the Devs took a look at other epics, they would not have as much of a problem with making these types of fixes.

Example: Cleric Epic.

( ) Kill Lord Bergurgle (Lake Rathetear) and loot Lord Bergurgle's Crown
( ) Give Crown to Schmendrik Lavawalker -- (Natasha Whitewater spawns) -- Lavawalker respawns every 3 hours and is up when a new pick is popped (takes 20 toons)
( ) Kill Schmendrik Lavawalker (A spirit of flame spawns)
( ) Kill A Spirit of Flame
( ) Give Damaged Crown to Natasha Whitewater to receive Ornate Sea Shell(I)
( ) Give Ornate Sea Shell(I) to Omat Vastsea (Timorous Deep - Hidden Inn) to receive Coral Statue of Tarew -- Omat Vastsea is up 100% of the time.
( ) Give Coral Statue to a Seeker (Temple of Ro ) (Plasmatic Priest spawns) -- Has a window of half an in-game day. But, also respawns within 5 minutes. So, can be done LOTS of times during that half EQ day, by different clerics, so no one is fighting each other for the spawn.
( ) Kill Plasmatic Priest and loot Blood Soaked Plasmatic Priest Robe
( ) Kill Lord Gimblox (Solusek's Eye) and loot Lord Gimblox's Signet Ring
( ) Give Robe to Omat Vastsea to receive Orb of Frozen Water -- (Natasha spawns)
( ) Give Ring to Natasha Whitewater to receive Ornate Sea Shell(II)
========================
[ ] Orb of Clear Water
========================
( ) Give Ornate Sea Shell(II) to Naxot Deepwater (Burning Woods) to receive Message to Natasha (Ixiblat Fer spawns) -- The only actual annoying spawn. Naxot only spawns once per in-game day and some mobs do actually kill her. But, once every EQ day is not bad.
( ) Kill Ixiblat Fer and loot Sceptre of Ixiblat Fer
( ) Kill Overking Bathezoid (Chardok) and loot Singed Scroll
( ) Give Scroll and Sceptre to Omat Vastsea to receive Orb of Clear Water -- (Natasha Whitewater spawns)
( ) Give Message to Natasha to Natasha Whitewater to receive Shimmering Pearl
========================
[ ] Orb of Vapor
========================
( ) Give Shimmering Pearl to Zordak Ragefire (Solusek's Eye) to receive Swirling Pearl and Zordak's Box of Bindings -- Zordak has a long respawn, but he spawns on pick creation, 20 people, and is up in nagafen instance.
( ) Kill mobs (Skyfire Mountains) and loot 4 Pearlescent Fragments
( ) Combine 4 Pearlescent Fragments in Zordak's Box of Bindings to receive Assembled Pearlescent Shard
( ) Give Assembled Pearlescent Shard to Warder Cecilia (Skyfire Mountains) to receive Seal and spawn Zordak Ragefire (Skyfire Mountains) -- Warder Cecilia is roughly 30 minute repop. Never a problem finding up, and is up on a new pick
( ) Kill Zordak Ragefire (Skyfire Mountains) (Zordakalicus Ragefire spawns)
( ) Kill Zordakalicus Ragefire and loot Impure Heart of Zordak Ragefire (Container)
( ) Combine Seal and Swirling Pearl in Impure Heart of Zordak Ragefire to receive Zordak Ragefire's Heart
( ) Give Zordak Ragefire's Heart to Omat Vastsea to receive Orb of Vapor -- (Jhassad Oceanson spawns)
( ) Give Orb of Frozen Water, Orb of Clear Water and Orb of Vapors to Jhassad Oceanson to receive Orb of Triumverate (Avatar of Water spawns)
========================
[ ] Water Sprinkler of Nem Ankh!!
========================
( ) Give Orb of Triumverate to Avatar of Water to receive Water Sprinkler of Nem Ankh


I've added notes and blackened the important parts that have to do with turn in NPCs and NPCs spawning/despawning.

As you can see, the cleric epic doesn't have anyone complaining because of how well it is set up. There is no sitting days or weeks and competing with other clerics to do a turn in. Spawns are fast enough, or easy to get when making a new pick, or NPCs spawn when you do the previous part.

I really wish all epics were modeled after the cleric epic. Can you imagine if the cleric epic had anything close to a Marl in it? If anything, the cleric epic should be the one with some really annoying bottleneck, because it the best epic. Not even remotely close. I am definitely not saying to put a Marl in the cleric epic. I just cannot imagine being 2 weeks into Kunark and the entire server had maybe 4 cleric epics.

There is no reason that most classes have such easy access to their epic, and then they have those specific few epics where it just makes you wonder how they haven't had major changes made to make the epics more obtainable. I'm sure you could do a dozen cleric epics before 1 person could do their SK epic. Same with a couple of other Epics.

On a final note, I believe that if you look at all of the epics and imagined those hard bottlenecks being on something like a cleric epic. There is no reason that, just because it isn't the cleric epic, that it's okay to have a really lame bottleneck, for no reason. If a cleric has the ability to get their epic in 1 day, if they work hard and do all the fights and get all the items, then why can't every other class have the same type of access to their epics? There shouldn't be such a large difference in total possible number of (insert class here) epics can be completed in Era.

I imagine if we thought about the total possible number of epics that could be quested, in era, it would be like...

Monk: Multiples per day
Cleric: Multiples per day
Warrior: However fast green scales drop?
Rogue: Multiples per day
Shaman: Multiples per day
Bard: Multiples per day
Mage: Multiples per day

Those are the ones I am fairly confident 4 people per class could do their epic, every single day, during kunark. Then, you have ones like SK, wizard, enchanter. You'll be lucky if there is an average of 2 or 3 of these epics able to be completed per WEEK.

My friend was excited to get back into this game and he made an enchanter. Got him lvl 45+ and started talking to me about his epic. I had to tell him that he shouldn't even bother. It's not something he wants to even attempt. It's not worth doing. It's a waste of his time to camp the 3 open world spawns. It crushed him because he was willing to put in the effort that all of these other epics require. But, nope, he decided to play an enchanter, and for that, he is punished by not being able to reasonably do his epic like many of these other classes.

I am glad that these other epics are being looked at. I just hope that the Devs are willing to take a look at these easy epics, and use those as examples of how to fix the bottlenecks of these other epics. I would be sad if they spent all their time making changes to SK/chanter/wizard epics and the changes they made weren't enough. Because they are worried about making them too easy. But, maybe if shown that the other epics require about 5-10% of the time that these SK/chanter/wizard epics require, they might be more willing to reduce the other bottlenecks more than they were thinking of doing.

Wizard epic could be easily fixed by using the old route. Skin dropped by cazic thule.

Or making BG spawn in fear picks, same as wraith. Pop a pick with your guild, zip over and kill BG.

Pick popping may be a bit cheesy but it does effectively solve many bottlenecks in the game, both epic and non-epic. It wouldn't be the worst idea to take advantage of pick popping since it does encourage guilds to work together to help somebody out which is what the spirit of EQ is all about.

If the zone is running with no load, spawns are approximately 20% faster than what's specified in data.

Yes, exactly.

So game play at night with less players can net you more chances at a named ?

Side note on server load, are the changes to shaman alliance designed to reduce server load since I imagine the healing is mostly wasted and makes for a large amount of data that is constant through most events?

That was me. Been doing my SK's 1.0 so I can get that sweet, sweet ornament.

Isn't that the opposite of how it should be? I don't understand.

Makes sense. Most everything is script based, even spawns I assume. If there is no load on the zone the script and timers cycle faster Go execute a script on a server with 70% useage and one with 10%. which is going to complete first?

It does explain some strange things we've seen and why people claim different timers for certain things.

Does this include raid spawns?

It would be awfully funny if the fastest way to get Naggy to respawn was to forbid anyone from xping in solb!