Quillmane theory?

[loki6767]

Looking for new theory to test....
1. killed all the name gnolls
2. killed the bull
3. killed the cyclops both of them
4. clean the areas that he pops in
5. killed all of the shadow men

Did all of these. Is there a point level that pops Quillmane? New theory on the block. Kill enough of something and it pops?
If anyone has a new theory it would help out a great deal.
thank you

[lostpacket]

I've found he spawns when 1 of the following happens:

1. 30 seconds before you zone in.
2. 1.7 minutes after you give up and zone out or camp.
3. a level 55+ druid/ranger has a 2 second lead on you.


There really seems to be no rhyme or reason to his spawning. Everyone has different theories and have tried everything.

My theory is - Quillmane is a rare random spawn. So nothing works :)

[Zeppo]

Sounds about like the SRo Ancient Cyclops.
Many, many theories.
NONE are proven, and repeatable on demand.

[loki6767]

Hehehe not with ShowEq... dam those ranger/druids

[LordCrush]

Has anybody logged the quilmane spawn over a longer time ?

It would be interesting.

Regards

- Lord Crush

[loki6767]

Timed it last week....!!!!
39 hours of showeq running and me running in a circle.. nothing not one pop....Grizzy popped 2 times and Lord (living) once....

[fryfrog]

Originally posted by lostpacket
I've found he spawns when 1 of the following happens:
1. 30 seconds before you zone in.
2. 1.7 minutes after you give up and zone out or camp.
3. a level 55+ druid/ranger has a 2 second lead on you.


okay, i think that is the funnies thing i have read in a long time. thanks :)

[crazdefool]

He most likely has a very common PH. I would really doubt shadowed men would be involved.. Anyhow good luck finding him..

[Xalpus]

i would be inclined to think he has one placeholder.. I havnt done alot of study on him but i have seen him pop 3 times in a row at what i believe was about a 15 min interval leading me to believe that there is just 1 ph.. now what is it.. i have no clue

[link129]

I was doing my tailoring in Sk with the regex filter with lions in it. I was killing all of the lions and quillimane pop'd twice within 40 mins.

[lostpacket]

Come to think of it, I was killing lions too when he popped.

*hrm*

[crazdefool]

time to kill lions.. I know a few mages paying very well for a multi muhahahaha

[evilshorty]

From over 80 hours of camp time so far... I've seen Quillmane spawn *immediately* after I killed her 3 times in a row. Yes, thats 3 times in about 5 min.

/auction WTS a backpack full of feathered leggings!

[crazdefool]

So her ph must have a short spawn time too.. interesting...

[tristanbfg]

ROFL.. i have some interesting information gathered on quillmane. I got my cloak long before I ever learned of SEQ...

(some of this applies to the SRo AC too)

Think about this... Who ever said there was just one rotation of mobs for quillmane to spawn in Sro? I've seen 2 quillmanes up at the same time. I killed one and another mage in zone was fighting at the same time.. (or very close.) However, I was over by the shadowed men where I killed mine (or was it aviaks) and he wasin the SE corner of the zone. At one point (with the limited track of a level 14 ranger) I was killing every Named I could find and never got Quillmane.

There is alot to be said about the escaped splitpaw theory... my advice.. go kill all named and escaped you can find on track. THEN, go to a single quadrant and lawnmower.. He will spawn... (could be the lion theory).

[crazdefool]

I killed every lion last night for over an hour.. Tons of named stuff was poping (coincidental?) but no Quillmane.. I will keep to it and see whats up... On my server there is generally nobody in SK so if it is lions i will figure it out..

[loki6767]

Lion theory is being tested now. I found out that when you kill lions, Escape and bulls pop. I have popped Grizzy 6 times now! No quillmane but. Need to do more testing. I found that you should not kill escape or bull first. Kill the lions and have all of the escape and bull spawn then hunt them.
Escape kill first spawn timed 20 minutes after the last one was killed...(testing)
Bull spawn timed is random ?!?!? testing
but when kill lions spawn after spawn of both. I had 4 Bulls and 7 Escape at one time. Also spawn after spawn Cyclops and undead. Well also try the lawn cleaning area!!
Man people just think about this. If we find the spawn time/pop of Quillmane....MONEY. For me a lonely Mage the cloak is better then money. But for others hehe

By the way Thanks VI for the increase in the rate of the hate Staff can you work on this one...PLEASE

[lostpacket]

With my luck, I'll kill nothing but lions, a GM will show up and "ha! I read SEQ boards too! You're outta here!"

[yyz]

Originally posted by lostpacket
With my luck, I'll kill nothing but lions, a GM will show up and "ha! I read SEQ boards too! You're outta here!"

/chuckle :)

[crazdefool]

Just because you read these boards dosn't mean you use SEQ..

Anyhow you will notice the GM in the zone and act accordingly. :)

[pha|con]

I still hold steadfast to my belief that quillmain is linked to the AC, Shissar, all VP key quest spawns, lodizal, stormfeather, and Zorak Ragefire in some wierd EQ spawn love triangle.

(Honestly, I think the only way to figure it out for sure is to log every spawn point and kill each spawn continiously for a signifigantly long time, recording spawns that spawn within 1 sec of a minute incriment after a spawn from that spawnpoint died.

Doing this for each spawn should yield a relatively good understanding of the zone. other than that, it's basically going to be speculation till the vin diagram only has one common attribute in the center.

[angryguy]

I killed Quillmane 3 times in a row one time. I would kill Quillmane and he re-spawned within a minute each time. (this was well over 6 months ago and was the last time that I attempted to find Quillmane). I got the pants all 3 times, no cloak. My experience leads me to believe that there is a single PH for this guy.

[se7en]

fuck it, im just going to train the entire zone and unleash jyll's over and over... would be funny to see like 4 spawns up in SK.. muahaha, get an enchanter to lock them down while I go get more. /own

[YAN]

After 4 days of camping by just clearing an area...I tried killing lions. I killed assloads of lions, and many escaped gnolls popped. Also, Sentry A, the named shammy gnoll, undead cyclopses and bull elephants popped. After killing all of those for a few cycles, quill popped 2x in 5 minutes. Grats me on cloak.

So

lions ---> semi-rares --> Quill

Where semi-rares are escaped gnolls, Sentry A, named gnoll shammies, bull elephants.

It would be interesting to see how quickly others can pop Quill with this technique.

YAN
(Yet Another Newbie)

[Cryonic]

The only problem with these theories is that they can't be tested unless you (or your group) are the ONLY ones hunting in SK. If there are 50 people there killing things then you can't be sure that what you killed was the reason for the Rare pop (like Quillmane).

This is because there is a time lag between you killing something and the Rare popping. So unless they share the same spawn point then you can't guarantee that you have it figured out.

[loki6767]

1. KILL THE LIONS
2. KILL THE BULL
3. KILL THE NAMES GNOLLS!!!!

TO COUNT 47 QUILLMANE. THERE IS A TIMERS ON HIM. AFTER FIRST POP 5-15 MINUTES FIRST ONE LUCKY ON THAT!!!!

IF YOU CHECK THE TIMER ON BULL ..KILL THEM FIRST TIMER IS RANDOM. CHECK THE NAME(ESCAPE) GNOLLS RANDOM AGAIN.
WHICH THEM POP AFTER KILLING LIONS!!!

I HAVE KILLED ALL NAMES IN THE ZONE. GOING TO TEST SOME MORE. HAVE 2ND CHAR. IN THE ZONE FOR THE CLOAK ONLY IF THERE ARE NO LVL 46 MAGE AROUND FOR A PICKUP!!! I GOT THE CLOAK ON THE SECOND POP OF QUILLMANE ABOUT 7 MINUTES FROM KILLING THE FIRST ONE....HEHE

GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY HUNTING...

[Cryonic]

Try not to shout next time loki.

[Sneaky]

There is a semi rare gnoll spawn, it is called A SPLITPAW GNOLL....(no escaped) it is the key to Quills spawn. I have kill him as many as 12 times before quill pops BUT quill HAS popped 7 times for me in 10 tries over the last 7-8 months. I have made nearly 40,000 pp selling looting rights to 4 cloaks....

[crazdefool]

you could easily get 40,000 for ONE Cloak..

[Just_A_Nut]

Hey Sneaky, I am trying to translate your post, lemme know if I got it right and if you could, answer My questions :)

1) You have deduced that "A SPLITPAW GNOLL" is the PH for Quillmane.
2) Quill has popped 7 out of 10 tries using the A SPLITPAW GNOLL theory?
My question on your post:
You have killed Quillmane 12 times?
Or you have killed A SPLITPAW GNOLL 12 times?
------ snippet------
I have kill him as many as 12 times before quill pops BUT quill HAS popped 7 times for me in 10 tries over the last 7-8 months.
-------end snippet-------

Laterz,
Just A Nut

[Burnereq]

He is saying, he has killed up to 12 gnolls in a row before QUill spawned.

[tmiss]

Ok, I'll give my theory. This theory was developed late one night after an emergency patch when I was the only one in the zone and Quillmane was up on the zone reset. This was many months ago so if they changed it then *shrug*.

There is a SINGLE placeholder spawn for Quillmane. It can be one of many different things. It is on approximately an 80 second spawn time from the time it is killed. I'd estimate that you have a 20-30% shot of getting a Quillmane pop if you kill the PH. I was able to get Quillmane to spawn about 8 times (got one cloak).

As I recall every time Quillmane spawned is was in the southern half of the zone. Of course once spawned it could go anywhere. I think (tho don't recall for sure) that the same was true for the PH.

At first I started writing down what spawned as PH but there were so many I finally said forget it. The list included lion, elephant, splitpaw gnoll, aviak darter, and much more.

So if I wanted to do it again I'd kill anything that moved with as many friends as I could get to help. Then (ideally, heh) after Quillmane spawned then stop all killing in the zone. And after QM dies wait 80 sec and kill what spawns for respawn. Twice I got QM to spawn twice in a row.

Anyway, that's my theory. :)

TMiss

[RSB]

Hmmm I'm up for your theory tmiss.

Most of the time when I see quillimaine (all the ones from memory) pop it has been in a triangle area from Paw to the
hermit (bit north west actually) down to druid ruined ring and back. Seen Quill roam everywhere but never remember him/her poping anywhere else. Don't quote me on it. Would be good to see spawn locations...i don't doubt he can spawn anywhere.
And after concideration my killing stratergy may be completely wrong as if they where placeholders I must be missing one because I've had the zone clear of my theory PH for over a half hour before with no new ones popping.

RSB

[fgay trader]

Yesterday a friend spotted "A Cyclops" near Paw. He figure "why not" and killed the thing. 10 sec later - the flying horsey pops and drops the cloak. He didn't get it to spawn again, but I'm beginning to think tmiss's theory about a single PH is closer to the truth than any other.

One other thing, you all realize that as soon as someone hits the answer on the noze, VI will change it when one of their peeps reads that post :)


-FGay Trader er... GFay :D

[Zeppo]

Anything new on this subject?
Looks like Loki may have had a good idea.

[Latigid]

Originally posted by lostpacket
I've found he spawns when 1 of the following happens:
1. 30 seconds before you zone in.
2. 1.7 minutes after you give up and zone out or camp.
3. a level 55+ druid/ranger has a 2 second lead on you.

Actually, all it really takes is a clueless level 38 halfling druid for him to spawn. Was running through SK one evening and came upon Quillmane and, not seeing anyone around and not knowing the importance of the spawn, I attacked.

I won and just then a couple guys ran up and asked if the cloak had dropped. I said that it had and offered it to them, and then realized I had looted a no drop item.

I think one of them was really crying.

:confused:

[Sneaky]

OK I have killed the "split paw gnoll" up to 12 times in row before quill popped. The escaped split paws need to be killed for the "split paw" to spawn so this takes time, I have tried this maybe 12 times now over about a year and I have spawned Quill 7 or 8 times. I have not always killed Quill because sometimes others beat me to it. I try to do this very early in teh morning (EST) so the population of SK is at minimal. I have killed Quill maybe 6 times while doing this ( and a a few times just by coincidince) and 4 cloaks have dropped. On my server the cloak isn't worth so much, So I have avearged about 10k plat per kill.

[JustACoder]

Lets anylize this a little bit...
Rare Spawn - Verants way to piss you off.
Rare Drop - One step above the rare spawn method.
"Rare" Placeholder - The way things are going why not?

Normally Rare would be random am I correct? What's to stop verant from having a different PH for Quill for every pop? It would most definately seem to be of a higher way to piss you off. it's bad enough it's a rare drop on a rare spawn, how about a pain in the ass to find it's ph?

[Sneaky]

Different possibly, completely random probably not. Although the coding for randomizing PH existed when EQ was originally coded, it is doubtful that any MoB in SK could be the PHer. In other zones, such as OOT, the PHer for the AC could be a number of different creatures, all spawning at the same point. While it is "random" it is not completley random. The PHers are programed to spawn and when enough have been killed the rare pops.

In South Karana, there are a number of rare spawns, and a few semi rare spawns, like the UDC. Everyone knows to get the UDC to pop, you kill the regular cyclops. The Regular clops is also the PHer for the 2 named clops that spawn in that zone. To get the named Centaur to spawn, you kill centaur chargers. To get the named Aviak to spawn you kill Avocets, and to get the named elephant to spawn you kill Bull Elephants.
I don;t think it is any different with Quill, or any other rare. It just takes more time because there are layers of PHers. To get quill to pop I had to kill "A Splitpaw Gnoll" to get the gnoll to spawn I had to kill "an escaped split paw gnoll" It took most of a day to get quillmane to pop. If I had managed to do this once or twice I would call it coincedence, but now have done it around 10 times in about a year ( I have only tried it about once a month because it is SO boring) I can say I am convinced that this is the correct method.

[kaos057]

I have got Quill 3 times in 24 hours. All I did was go to the SE corner of zone (lots of roaming spawns there) and just keep killing anything that moves. Quill is just a rare spawn that can spawn at any roamers spawn point.

[Sneaky]

I have heard that theroy too. I have also heard the same thing about keeping the area south and west of the gnoll spires clear of everything. I only know what I have tried, and I am not ruling out the possibilty that it won't work, after all, the escaped split paw gnolls seem to roam anywhere and there are a LOT of yard trash in that zone. (in fact it is one of the best outdoor zones for PLing from level 10-20. I did it multiple times in about 5 hours. Made a lot of plat about 2 years ago...)

[EnvyEyes]

I'd have to follow along with the 'lions' theory. I was also farming the poor kitties for a while (and leaving quivers all over the place) when Quill popped. This happened on at least 2 of my trips to Karana to kill da kitties.
Yes, could be a simple coincedence, but what discovery didn't start with simple experimentation...

[AbaddonxXx69]

I believe the lion theory is correct. While helping get a mage her epic, we killed all the lions in the south west corner. After trying many different things (Escaped Splitpaws, Names, etc...) This provided the best results with getting Quill to pop. Sorry I dont have precise numbers, this was a few months ago.

[kilsof]

The previous mention of 80 seconds made me think of the SRo cycle of rares for the AC. They pop in 80 seconds too. Some of the rares are:

an asp
a rattlesnake
a madman
a skeleton
a jackel
a zombie (looks like a male zombie)
an orc raider
a dervish cutthroat (dervish with a lowercase 'd')

80 seconds after you kill one, another one from the list will pop. Unfortunately there are either some common spawns on the list or they skip a few cycles. Often I'll be doing the rares and then nothing special will pop. There'll be common things like a desert tarantula, a puma, a crypt mummy, etc. that pop instead. So I clear the most recent pops and then the rares start showing up again. I don't know if the rares start up again because I cleared the trash or because of some timer.

The fact that it's 80 seconds in both cases leads me to believe it might be the same code.

[SomeNecro]

I hate to spread misinformation, but I remember a post from long ago about the sro undead cyclops.

Someone had a VERY believable post about the spawn cycle, in that some of the spawns in the cycle were groups of mobs, all the same type. Was using old style tracking so new mobs spawned at top, and when the 'group' was killed a new mob or group would spawn.

Maybe Quillmane is coded the same way. Just an idea, and I can't prove it, but I feel it's worthy of noting.

[Sneaky]

When I was a newb in SK killing aviaks and gnolls, more than one time quill spawned in the zone. This was long before the mage epic was around. I doub't anyone purposely sat in SK trying to make it spawn, but it did. If there are PHers now I feel that they have been changed in conjunction with the mage epic. Old coding, such as the SRO AC might not apply.

[Jobober]

Many moons ago my master dragged me through SK for about 15 hours before getting his cloak. In that time frame we wasted Quillmane 7 times. My observations are consistent with a theory posted on the magician message board quite some time ago. Supposedly there are three sets of wanderers. Each mob that spawns as a wanderer has a point value. Accordingly there are a maximum number of points that can be up in each of 3 wanderer zones. When a wanderer is due to pop a mob whose point value is less than the currently available points will pop. Naturally the rare spawns Grizzlenot, Mroon, Cyclops, will have higher point values with Quillmane naturally requiring lots of points.
In practice we spent the majority of our time running in a triangle from paw, KFC and the hermit killing everything. All of our 7 kills were to the south of paw with 2 directly south, 2 to the southwest, and one to the south of the shadowedmen on the zone boundry. Two spawns were directly to the west of KFC. Most spawns occurred within 1-2 hours of clearing in what we refer to as the triangle of death, formed by the KFC, hermit and paw. We have heard reports of Quill spawning to positions north of paw but we never witnessed it.
In one session we cleared for 5 hours without seeing Quill, however we firmly believe this was due to Brother Q spawning while we were clearing and using up all our points. On another note we aggressively killed the wandering shaman cycle and escaped splitpaw gnolls. We had Quill spawn on several occasions while an escaped gnoll was up. So don’t feel you need to run gangbusters across the zone to kill each one. We like the lion theory but prefer just to kill everything near the Triangle of Death.

Hope this saves you and your loyal elemental some time

Jobober
48 water pet

[AbaddonxXx69]

I've seen Brother Q and Quill up at the same time. As a matter of fact, when we went for Quillmane, I dont think I remember him ever not being up.

[Jobober]

Sorry if we were unclear. Brother Q was up for the majority of our time in SK as well. We were just saying he popped while we were there and I didn't see Quill for the rest of the night. Therefore we believe his spawn used up points. Not that his presence is linked to Quillmane in any direct manner.

Jobober

[AbaddonxXx69]

Ahh, gotcha



Edit * I hate typos, especially when only posting 2 words.

[Blade300]

Don't know if this works or just a fluke. But I killed all the escaped gnolls before they respawned. Usually 2 by N. Karana and 2 by the Aviaks. Once I killed the last gnoll, Quillmane popped. It wasn't even 2 seconds. I marched over to where he was. Luckily spawned real close to me or I woulnd't have make it before a druid tracked him down. Had the cloak on him. I had to go for a raid shortly after to try it out again but may do so again to see if he happens again.

[quester]

I always find it amusing to read all these theories. I've yet to see anyone who understood what really happens.

I'm going to tell you how the database USED to be set up when I worked there. You can choose to believe me or not, that's your choice. Also, bear in mind that i'm goign from very old memory here. I was on the Live team for a short time, before Kunark. In fact, I only ever added a few mobs to the game (I did the Mystic Cloak quest).

When adding a MOB to the DB, you have 2 steps. 1) You add a spawnpoint (or use an existing spawnpoint). 2) You add the mob, and link it to the spawn point. IIRC, a mob could only have 1 spawn point entry.

The spawnpoint has a timer value, in seconds IIRC, that specifies how long after its mob is killed before it pops a new one.

There is another setting that indicates the PERCENT CHANCE for each of the mobs on that spawn point to spawn. I don't recall exactly how that was set.. but its there. This is the reason that "theories" of, kill X mob 5 times, then wait 10 minutes, then .. blah blah.. not true. At least, never used to be true. I'm sure a lot of this has changed though.

The way it used to work though, is basiclly each time the mob for a spawn point is killed, when the timer counts down, another ranomd one is chosen, based on the percentages set. It is (or was) that simple.

Based on the way it used to be, Quill has only a single spawn point. Now that spawnpoint could be set up to spawn just about every common, or semi rare in the zone.. Mostl likely it is set up to spawn just about every common with a high percentage, and POSSIBLY a semi rare or 2. Semi-rares that can have multiples up are the more likely ones to be there. Quill will then have a very small percentage chance for each pop.

What this means is that there is no cycle to do (Those started with Kunark, and the system that I worked with did not have that capability. I'm assuming Quill is still set up old style, but I can't be certain). Basiclly you just need to find which spawn point is his, and kill everything that that point spawns, until Quill does. Now, the really hard part for something like Quill, is its whats called a "wide open". This means that the spawn point can spawn anywhere in a range of locations, totally random, totally unfixed. I doubt its set to the whole zone, but it COULD be.

What further makes it difficult, is .. well lets face it.. Finding which spawn point is not an easy task. Especially because SEQ simply logs the "spawn point" as where a mob spawned. Doesn't mean its the exact point, considering wide opens. You could see 3 spawn points in SEQ, that all technically are the same spawn point entry in the DB.

[kilsof]

Very interesting information. Thanks for posting it. It would explain the behavior of a lot of rare spawns. Like the guy who killed the lions. In the slaughter, he eventually killed the lion who had spawned from Quill's location and the next spawn was Quill. Or when the guy killed escaped gnolls, it just happened that a gnoll was what was spawned from Quill's spot. So does that mean if a gnoll is occuping the spawn spot, killing lions won't make Quill spawn?

When you say a spawn is "wide open", does that mean it can spawn absolutely anywhere within a certain rectangular region? Or are there a number of fixed spots within a region and it can spawn at any one of those fixed spots?

[quester]

"So does that mean if a gnoll is occuping the spawn spot, killing lions won't make Quill spawn? "

Right.. you'd have to kill the mob that spawned from that spawn point, which would be the gnoll.

"When you say a spawn is "wide open", does that mean it can spawn absolutely anywhere within a certain rectangular region? Or are there a number of fixed spots within a region and it can spawn at any one of those fixed spots?"

Absoltely anywhere in the specified region. IIRC, most all of SK is set up as Wide Opens. I know 99% of the pathing in that zone was done as Wide Opens for simplicity (Which is why the pathing sucks so bad around structures).

[tamasine]

My research consisted of logging spawns for a couple of days, then looking for patterns. The aviaks for example have a 120 second pop time (kill -> respawn) where lions and centaurs have the same 90 second time. I guessed this by graphing the number of times a particular death-respawn interval occurred with the mobs under consideration. ifi graphed aviaks and lions for example, there were two distinct peaks in the data. lions on their own gave just one peak. so i decided that aviaks and lions were on different spawn tables. centaurs matched up with lions, and quillmane matched up with the lions/centaurs. so back to SK i went, and slaughtered every lion and centaur in sight. quillmane popped in the hour. the previous day i'd killed far more aviaks because i came across them more, and no quillmane. (at the time of pop there were 3 undead cyclopses and all gnolls running around.)

so personally, i'd say that all this weighting stuff is malarky. the "there's always one rare up" is rubbish. any "pop instantly" stuff is hooey, and any "pop on engagement" is also wrong.

tams