question about old world raid mob availability

Hey fellow forum warriors,

I came back recently and one of the things I'm most interested in doing is getting up to high level and personally giving some well deserved payback to old "friends" like Venril Sathir or King Tormax or Inquisitor Seru. Unfortunately, most things I read here and see in general chat indicate that all my old buddies are pretty much permanently farmed by people who already had this idea first.

So I'm wondering:
Is the situation as bad as people make it sound? Are all these dudes really just as hotly contested now as they were 10 years ago?

Is there a server where this isn't a problem? (I don't really want to play on a progression server, but I would consider a new/low population server. As of right now, what I'm hearing is that this situation isn't really different on servers like Vox anyway. I might consider test or FV, but I don't want to rule myself out of getting back into end-game raiding eventually.)

Thanks for any information you can give

The problem is anyone can do exactly what you plan to do. Level to 100 and go smack around some old world epic mobs. So now those epic spawns are dead while many people want to "legitimately" kill those epic mobs for epic 1.0 pieces. Now you have those people trying to time the spawn and get the kill as well.

Do you see the problem now?

To answer you question, yes it is bad. I managed to do my Epic 1.0 recently but it took me about 6 months of checking spawns. All because of perma farmers. At least I did not have to kill one of the golems in Plane of Fear, that would have been almost impossible. This is on Vox as well, the "newest" server.

What about Trakanon?

I have no problem finding most of them up on Povar. People here don't seem to camp epic mobs, just KT/AoW and Fear golems (although I've seen them up regularly). There are people here who do what you plan on doing but I've seen enough of those old world mobs to say that they aren't on permanent lockdown like they apparently are on some servers.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:Respawn_Timers

Since SoE has stated they will be bringing new things to EQ every week - I thought one project they could work on is a push to change old world mobs to instanced versions one at a time to get rid of perma camping - this improves the game and stops plat farmers and such from keeping players from getting the spawns they need.

I think one of the devs already answered this and they said it would take too much work to instance these mobs. I could be wrong tho, just going off the top of my head atm.

Almost all of these mobs have +/- 12 spawn timers making it difficult to "perma-camp" them. The trick is, and always has been, figuring out their spawn time, showing up before the +/- timer and staying all the way through the timer. Does that require time on your part? Yep.

Even the golems in Fear can be done. It took me one spawn cycle to figure out the time of the last golems death, then it was just a matter of hanging out in the zone at the right time.

Patience is key.

They said it was too much work to alter old encounters, plus they threw in the fact that the changes would impact the progression servers as well. I think the honest balance would be to make alternate instanced versions of some of the epic kills that would only have a loot table consisting of epic drops. Though i'm sure they would have a concern around people farming those and impacting the market more. I do think that there is a way to make some sort of compromise though.

If they drastically reduced the spawn timer of these mobs, say one or two hours, it would prevent a single person from permanently camping them without bot'ing software. But it could also flood the market, dropping the price, giving these jerks less incentive of monopolizing a given target.

Probably one of the ones that could use an instance the most already has one ready to go. You go through Plane of Fear while doing Dragonsx3 to fight the Dracolich. The golems are up and have the chance for the iksar child to spawn. So shaman have a chance every year to get their Fear drop without having to deal with the spawn problems. Best thing they could do would be to make this zone availible year round, make sure all the different epic parts are available ( ie Golem/CT drops, Enchie mob, Berzerker mob, etc) and have them drop nothing else. Put a mob in Fear that will punt you to this zone and some of the biggest problems getting epic parts is solved.

I am also a big fan of dropping the spawn times on raid mobs through Luclin or so down to an hour or two. Would open them up to so many people.

In my experience it's pretty awful. I've been after a drop for one of my lower level guys for about a week now, and each time I check the thing is never around. I play on a normal server and on the FV server, and while I'm sure I'll eventually see the mob on the normal server I'm not sure I'll ever see it on FV because of farmers.

I love the idea of a instance mission like an LDON adventure/monster mission that can only hold your classes rare Epic 1.0 mobs. All the mechanics could be the same for things like Venril sathir (remains,spirit etc...). Leave all the hand ins as they are but allow people to atleast have a chance at things like quillmane.

I love the epic quests and still feel that my epic 1.0 on my Rogue was still my greatest accomplishment in the game but feel that maybe now it needs to be refined especially for some classes (mages get the shaft big time + others).

Also like the idea of changing all the spawn timers to something sensible like 2/3 hours instead of 3+ days.

I don't think Quill is on any sort of timer like what this topic is about. Quill is just a very annoying spawn, and if you don't kill stuff to spawn it you will probably never see it. I know I saw it twice within 30 minutes recently while trying to spawn Brother Qwinn for my monk epic, but I was just killing everything in sight since I have no idea what triggers Qwinn.

Not only do I think they should do something to make it a little easier to actually see mobs with epic drops, but I wish they would do something about farming in general. It gets annoying trying to get even a non epic drop for a character, only to never even see the mob because of farmers. I'm not desperate enough to sit and wait for hours and hours on a mob that I know is on a timer several hours long.

On xegony server these mobs not only appear to be still hottly contested but are wiped out within seconds of spawning. They have been done this way for years.. and will be untill spawn times are adjusted to stop with the long stupid spawn times. They need to adjust these guys down to a reasonable 4-6hours.. at max.. Wait till you try to do some progression old school and find entire old zones like VT dead.. and nothing up...

I'm still trying for the drop for my alt, yet I can't even catch the mob up. Every single time I walk into the zone there's either no one there at all and the mob is never up, or I see one of two anonymous people just sitting there because they're probably expecting a spawn. Even yesterday I went to check, same anonymous guy sitting there as I usually see, then I log out for a few hours and checked again and the guy was still sitting there. The mob is Fabled Faydedar, which to be honest I'm not sure I can even kill on my own at this point but I at least want to try. At this point I'm almost positive I'll never ever see the thing, because the people farming it seem willing to sit for hours until they get their spawn.

Lower the timers, create instanced versions, at least do something to help more people to actually have a chance at killing some of these things. I probably have higher odds of winning the lottery than seeing some of these mobs, it's pathetic.

There are too many times where I stop and think: hey that drop would be nice to have for an alt.... oh wait there's no chance that mob will even be up!

Yeah I feel your pain..... There will always be people who are bored or doing what you are doing.. but the big issue are the Permacampers that sell loot... Those guys have been making a killing ever since they could be soloed... I really wish we could get lower spawn times on these guys, Of course the argument has been that this will impact the dead progressions servers. which I feel would benefit from the decrease in spawn times.

The normal spawn of Faydedar is simply insanely rare, all the epics are done via a triggered spawn for him. The people who think that lowing the respawn time will change anything are fooling themselves. The people who are holding the camp will simply either log back in and farm it then or have someone they know do the same.

Honestly, randomly checking if the mobs are up has a much better chance of you getting your piece than reducing the respawn time to nothing.

lets see.... 3 day spawn I have 1 shot in 3days to get.. vs a spawn time set at 4 hours you get 18 chances to kill it... So thats 1 shot vs 18shots... This increases the average and chance of me finding them up drastically. Yes I may still have to struggle with farmers and peramcampers but having 18shots to find it vs 1 shot... how can people not see that I will eventually get the spawn. lets look at this in a years time.. right now barring server patches and resets the mobs spawns 118times (thats 1 time every 3days for a year).. changing it over to 4 hour spawn time would net you 2190 times it will spawn..... in 1 year. Now you tell me... do you think my odds at getting the spawn is going to be better or not? This is simple math... you change the spawn time you increase the chance of me getting to it and chance for others. Also those people farming it can not farm it 24/7 and even if they did they price of the items they farm would become worthless fast.. so there is no fear that somehow I will not get the mobs after the change... it will be better for the game as a whole if they went back and fixed spawn times on all pre POP mobs that are rare and bosses to be under 6hours.... this content should be fixed.

No, because as has been discussed many time before, the people who are camping them all the time now, will still be doing the same thing; all those people who "perma camp" them now will be doing it still they will just get them more often; the majority of the time it is not just one person doing all the camping. There are generally 5-8 people actually doing the "perma-camping" not a single person.

The price of the items they farm have been worthless for years now. How many items, that drop from mobs with Epic pieces, can you name that are worth anything still today? Not a one, the only things that might actually be worth anything would be the epic pieces and most of those are ooc'd/announced in general/given away with most kills. Will some people who are dedicated get their pieces a little sooner, sure, but not that much sooner.