Sorting Options

[cory571]

Hello,

Sorry for my lack of understanding on how SEQ works as what I'm about to ask may not be possible due to that. I'm camping Quillmane and if there were more sorting or filter options it would be a great help (I've done some searching and can't find the answer). Is there a way to sort by what recently spawned, show how long something has been spawned, or clear the SEQ map so you only see new spawns? Thank you!

[BlueAdept]

With use of filters, you can alert you when the mob you are looking for spawns. I believe in the filters file, it tells you the options. I have an old filter list that has some of the rares from about 10 years ago. It should be in the SF file section.

I am pretty sure there is an option that will put the alert at the top of the list, but not 100% sure.

[Newby]

Quillmane and a lot of the original game, outdoor mobs have a somewhat complicated spawn cycle. Doing this from memory, might be wrong. The spawn cycle for most of the mobs in the zone respawn after about 6 minutes after death. Quillmane and other nameds respawn about a minute after death. So if you kill a mob and _something_ spawns a minute later, you know you've found a spawn cycle for one of the nameds. The PHs are common mobs, so you can't tell by their names. The spawn locations are somewhat random too, so no help there. You just have to watch the time carefully and having the zone entirely to yourself is a must.

In showeq's mob list window, the columns at the top of the table are clickable and set the sort order. You can set it to sort by spawn time and that helps a little.

[cory571]

I checked the filters and I didn't have any luck finding what would help. Quillmane has a list of PH's that are on 65-72s timers. I believe one or two of the PHs are unique to the Quillmane cycle. The strategy is to kill things on the cycle one at a time and check the timer. If nothing repops in that time move on to the next. If you get a unique mob you know you've found the cycle. They did change how Quillmane spawns. Below is the post describing what someone found:

Here is some fresh info about Quillmane from Live EQ. I recently hunted him for his cloak both for myself and another player, and in the process, I spawned and killed close to 15 Quillmanes.

Here are the facts:

1) Quillmane is on a spawn cycle of mobs that includes:

a lion (very common)
a lioness (very common)
a mist wolf
a shadow wolf
a treant (rare)
an elephant (unique to Quill's cycle)
an escaped Splitpaw gnoll
aviak avocet
aviak darter
aviak egret
aviak rook
centaur archer
centaur foal
centaur sheltie
CrackTusk (very rare)
Quillmane

A "spawn cycle" in EQ means a set of mobs that randomly spawn in a chain, meaning that when you kill one mob on the cycle, a new mob from the above list will spawn after a fixed amount of time. All mobs on the same cycle typically behave in the same way with regards to where and how they path and wander, despawn/respawn, etc.

This list should be close to 100% complete, although maybe there could one or two more variants of aviaks and centaurs on the list.

Note the "an elephant", which is unique to Quill's spawn cycle. This means that if you find an elephant (not adult, not bull, not calf) that matches the rest of the rules, you have found the cycle for sure!

2) The re-spawn for the cycle is approximately 65 seconds. Older guides say 74 seconds, this has been changed to about 65. within the past few years. Note that due to Tracking not getting updated in real-time, and due to EQ's wonky 6-second tick timing mechanic, the respawn will appear to be between 60 and 70 seconds to you.

3) All mobs on the cycle spawn in the southern half of the zone, south of Paw. They can spawn as south as the Aviak village, as west as the grey cliffs, and as east as almost by the water.

4) After a mob on the cycle spawns, it will face north and stand still for approximately 20 seconds, after which it will begin walking straight north. I haven't followed a mob to the end of its path, but I assume that after walking as far north as it can, it will walk back south, then north again and so on. You should be catching new spawns before they reach the middle of the zone.

5) The cloak is a rare drop, but not super-rare, which I estimate is about 20%. The first round I hunted Quill, it took 12 kills to get the cloak, the second round (for another player), we got it on the first kill.

To properly spawn Quill, a tracker is a must, and I would say about 200-250 Tracking skill is minimum in order to be able to cover the entire southern part of SK. A high level Ranger has 300 Tracking and is perfect for this. Another bonus is to have a character to follow you around with a run speed buff, such as a high level Bard (best) or Druid/Shaman with Cheetah. However, this is optional.

To find the spawn cycle (the hard part), you use the Tracking-capable character to hunt. Set the track sort to Normal, which sorts mob by recently spawned mobs first. Run around the south part of the zone and look for mobs on the list that are wandering either straight north or south. When you find one, kill it, and don't kill anything else. Start a stopwatch (you can use your phone, I use a little stopwatch program on my computer) set to 1 minute, and after the 1 minute countdown, see if anything new pops on top of your track list within the next 5 seconds or so. Note that the respawn is not precisely 60 seconds, it is between 60 and 70 seconds. If nothing spawns after ~65 seconds, you didn't hit the cycle; start over and find another mob, and wait again. If a new mob from the list spawns after ~65 seconds, hunt it down and simply repeat this, hopefully until Quillmane pops.

If you suddenly don't get a new spawn, you probably didn't hit the cycle correctly, or your Tracking is not high enough to catch whiff of the new spawn. If two mobs seem to spawn at the same time, one of them is probably on the cycle, and the other just happened to respawn from being killed by you, another player or an NPC. This is where it gets hard; hunt down both mobs, keep timing after killing one of them, and see if you can get your way back on the proper ~65 second cycle.

Between killing each mob, I usually run to the center part of the southern part of the zone, so I'm equally far from all possible spawn points. The PH's actually have a set of fixed spawn points (you'll begin to see corpses pile up), but since there are so many, it's pointless to map.

I estimate the chance of having Quillmane pop is about 5-10%. I've had her spawn back-to-back a few times, which is nice of course.