There was some discussion on camping Anguish signets while I was having horrible luck with mine in the sewers. Zajeer-Dev recently posted on the main EQ boards about how the PH system actually works. For instances, it seems you're kinda screwed unless you have 1-2 hours to burn.
Zajeer-Dev wrote:
Good question. It's no different. We had this issue in the Barindu sewers in Gates of Discord. Rashere created a script that would disallow any rares from having a chance to spawn until an X% of the zone was killed. This prevented folks from chain spawning an instance to force a spawn.
I assumed the Dranik Sewers/Catacombs were using this same type of script to disallow chain instance launches. I guess that isn't the case.
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[in other places/instances] the rare has a chance to spawn off the PH after those X kills. Sure, you can wait and check to see if the PH spawns, and then restart the instance and try again, but really, you aren't saving yourself anytime. In fact, for the frequency that the rares are supposed to spawn if farmed normally, doing this method you mention loses you time.
Most rares in EverQuest are intended to spawn in 60-120 minutes of camping the PH or PHs. At 60-65 (which this zone was tuned for), I would imagine killing 20 NPCs would take you about 60 minutes to do with a full group. So killing 20 NPCs, finding out the rare isn't up, and then killing the instance and spawning it again would take more time than to kill the PH and just kill stuff in the zone while waiting for the respawn to occur.
I guess in the case of the sewers we should have re-upped the instance, might have been quicker.
When I was helping rollenaut, I did i did all the instances in under an hour, i just kept repoping the instance and running a druid in to track. The only part that took a while sometimes was haveing to drop it and get the right instance.
I assumed the Dranik Sewers/Catacombs were using this same type of script to disallow chain instance launches. I guess that isn't the case.
So is he saying he changed the OOW ones to be like the ones in Barindu? I did the sewers signet with Galivan and Monki Saturday night and we got our first signet after only killing one PH. We were killing some trash as well, but I didn't notice a message that the adds were spawning or anything. Not to say it didn't happen but in Barindu and Anguish it tells you when the named spawn or have a chance to. Got the second signet after maybe 2 more PH. I don't think we were there more than like 2 hours if you don't count wiping on the way in .
I have personally never done the thing where you keep getting new instances until one spawns with the named already up for either signet camp. Always just went in and camped the spot.
I think what he's saying is that you need to kill a certain number of mobs including the PH before the time when the zone checks to see if it should spawn the Named or not. He thought that the catacombs/sewers were using that functionality, but apparently not.
I think the mechanism goes like this:
No chance of Named being spawned on instance creation. PH is always up.
When it's time for PH/Name to spawn the zone scripts run and check to see if X number of mobs have been killed and if that number of killed exceeds X then the Named has a chance of spawning. Apparently the percentage chance is equalized so that you are most likely to only get 1 per 1-2 hours.
In other words, if the spawn time is 20 minutes then the percent chance of a Named would be 33% for 1 in 1 hour spawn of Named or a 16% chance for 1 in 2 hour spawn.
Again, for clarification, it appears that this mechanism isn't currently in for the Anguish signet zones.
But my guess is, that after seeing this and realizing that the signet instances don't have this functionality they're going to patch the zones to make it so repopping the instance isn't worth it.
Well, in our case, I think we might have been (statistically) better off. It took 6+ hours to get 2 signets. Or maybe it just felt that long. I just remember waking up, logging in, and getting the last signet and turnin done 30 minutes before the raid.
Have done more sig camps than I care to recall now. I guess RNG has been pretty kind to me upto now. It is rare for me not to get a PH pop within the first 2 or 3 ph kills.
In places like Catacombs, I don't kill anythng but the PH. I have no wish to kill other stuff there either - large aggro range + sucky pathing make it not a fun xp camp while awaiting a named.
Oh, if you have 6, you are much better off running two instances and killing the PH in both, for a statistically better chance of pops. I sometimes set one up and just run my necro, or bard in to kill the PH off, then bring the needed people in when the Sig mob pops.
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