Question about hill giant population

[Kalamurv]

I haven't run over to rathe to check this, but have the numbers of hill giants been put back to normal on green / teal, or is it stupidly sparse like blue was. I vividly remember on live quadding hill giants on live, while there were groups of varying size on both sides of the mountain pulling and killing giants as well as others quadding as well, and there was rarely ever a time when there were none up. It used to be anything that pathed on or around the hill was a ph (not the static spawns, and basilisks and drakes also having chance to spawn their associated named). On blue there were like 6 or 7 spawns and killing the pathing trash had no effect on them.

[loramin]

Find some proof, file a bug, and we'll have more hill giants.

[Dolalin]

02/19/02

In article <fn757uggetf7m2044vu52vvu5arfuir6c4@4ax.com>,
bizbee <tub...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Yn erthygl <Wvpc8.6$0C1...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
>sgrifenws "Max" <max...@portvista.com>:
- show quoted text -
>The spawn rate seems to be related to the number of people hunting
>them... when there's no one around, there don't seem to be many
>giants, when the area is crowded, they're all over the place. I don't
>know if this is true, just an observation.

Basically everything that wanders around on the top of the hill in the
middle of the Hill Giant valley (Rathe Mountains) is a Hill Giant
Placeholder. Basilisks, lizards, giant skels, cyclops... If somebody
kills those, there will be plenty of Hill Giants spawning. If nobody
is killing those, then the Hill Giant spawns will peter out.

I spent some time there with my level 60 ranger leveling my low-40's
druid. I just wandered around on the top of the hill killing
everything that moved, and plenty of HG's spawned. Plenty for me and
for the other hunters in the zone.

As I recall when we used to hunt there in my 30's-40's, it was a real
pain to try to kill the basilisks and lizard men, because they would
run and randomly teleport around the zone. I think the pathing in
that zone has been fixed since then, though, since I didn't have any
trouble (granted now they don't really have time to run, since they go
down in a couple swings ;-P

Anyway, the HG spawn rate isn't really a function of how many people are
hunting them, it's a function of how many people are killing the
PH's....

Nancy

--
---
Nancy Durgin
Stanford University
n...@cs.stanford.edu


https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/kPW_MaXgA-g/tw-ZcQJMDzsJ

This next one is somewhat out of era but it's a lot more specific:


11/16/04

Hill Giant Placeholder Theory *PROVEN*

Ok, so I logged into EQ and lo, me and an idle bazaar bot are my guild,
nobody is anywhere... things to do on a VERY quiet day?
I couldn't resist! Having not been there in almost a year, I galloped to the
rathe mountains, and naturally found myself the only person in the zone. I
was able to make the following unhindered observations:

* About 6 HG's were up
* After killing these, and not killing any placeholders, the number soon
went down to one spawning every few minutes.
* A small amount of PHer death resulted from the guards and from the
occasional stumbling of myself onto a KOS mob.
* This respawn rate was maintained for about 30 minutes until another player
logged in, a 41 ranger who I will subsequently refer to as 'the noob'

I explained the plan to the noob, who was most appreciative of being awarded
loot rights on all the fallen HG's and happy to contribute. At first we
avoided killing any PHers and the spawn rate remained low. Then we changed
to whacking everything in sight.

* within perhaps two minutes of this behavioral change, I was fighting 3
hill giants and could see another on my screen.
* Continuing to slay PHer's and HG's, I observed that I was continually
fighting more than one hill giant for about 10 minutes, at which point I
realised I had slacked off on the PHer's and the noob wasn't killing any.

At this point I communicated to the noob my plan to cease PH killing

* Within minutes there were no HG's up. After a little while 3 spawned and
were killed, then 2 a few minutes later, then 3 a few minutes later, then 2,
etc

The only weird part seemed to be that with two of us in there, neither
killing PHers, we seemed to get HG's in pairs more than the singles I had
been seeing, however I think this is more likely an illusion due to the fact
that the ranger had track, and so I became a aware of giants that I might
ordinarily have missed.

The reason, I imagine, why if you go to this zone you will see a couple of
hill giants up even if nobody's been there for days, is that a certain
amount of spawns will pathe through the guards, who will kill anything
except basilisks (non kos to them), hill giants and cyclops, (they are
killed by these). So that after a period of time all the spawns that pathe
through the guards will be basilisks, hill giants, or cyclops.

So anyway, for those of you who argued with dickheads for hours on end that
killing PHer's was the right thing to do, YOU WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG. No
surprise there.

The staggering thing is that those of us who did slay placeholders were,
with 100% certainty, lining the pockets of those who did not.

This completely irrelevant study has been brought to you by Kuloth -
answering the questions nobody is asking!

Cheers,
Kul


https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/iSCXjLLN8s8/OKImgXkq0ykJ

[Telin]

This has been on my to do list, but I needed more evidence first.

I found this comment a few years ago:

I was running around with my level 49 enchanter pet killing all the basilisks, lizards, cyclopses, and skeletons to spawn more hill giants. I can generally get as many as 12 hill giants running around at one time by killing all the place holders

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=3545#m99306951786629

[Kalamurv]

Thank you Dol for finding evidence....on blue someone had told me that the spawn rate had been nerfed the same way seafury gems were so I just accepted it, although its driven me nuts because I know Ive leveled many chars there quadding and grouping

[Kalamurv]

While not definitive proof, there a tons of posts about how there are way more hill giants up than blue has ever had.
https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zones.html?zstrat=26&p=3#comments
RE: Basilisks


Quote

Reply
# Jun 14 2001 at 5:19 PM Rating: Good

paugod

Scholar

28 posts


The Hill Giant Valley in the South West corner of the zone is where most Basilisks hang out. I have heard reports that Basilisks are placeholders for the HGs but do not know this for a fact. I do know that when there are a lot of HGs around there are few Basilisks and when there are a lot of Basilisks there a few HGs. I have heard that Giant Skellys are also placeholders for HGs. The very best place to hunt is the North West corner of this Valley. You usually see the Basilisks on top of the Hill, near the tower and they sometimes wander down the side of the hill.

On the East side of this valley area there are also a lot of Bailisks but this area is very dangerous as HGs get bunched up from various pulls and you can become trained on very quickly with HGs, cyclopses, Giant Skellies and what not. The drake also roams this area. The reason for these trains is that Druids are very effective against HGs and they like to train them, dot them and kill them in packs. Sometimes they pull more than they can handle and they clear out leaving wandering problems for other groups. The North West area of this valley is the least vulnerable to this and there are pockets inside where you will not agro wanderings Mobs.



____________________________
Alarick
Paladin Lvl 45
Forbringers of Fate

Also quite a few people mentioning how they are in full groups killing giants....that would just be straight up stupid to do if there were only the 5 or 6 spawns we currently have.

[Crovax]

Glad to see this getting some attention. I went there killing everything for an hour and was sad it didn't help and then stopped lol.

[apeBits]

If I am not mistaken, there should be six spawns of HGs that then wander. Basilisks were then able to spawn HGs in addition to the six that are currently spawning on P99. However, I have no idea what the PH/HG ratios were. I did know that we tended to slaughter everything we could find to get more HGs to spawn. That area used to be able to support 2.5ish groups.

[Kalamurv]

Ive seen more than 15 hill giants up at once, there used to be 2 or 3 full groups on each side of mountain on vaz, plus usually 1 or 2 (or more) druids / wizzies quadding them. Anything that moves on or around the hill was a ph, basilisks, bears, giants skellys, cyclops, lizards drakes....everything except static spawns were ph's

[DMN]

Can't add much from my memory banks other than on test server there were plenty of times where no hill giants were in RM at all. So there are certainly no HG only spawn points. It was common knowledge at the time that the basilisks spawned them near that hill area.

[astuce999]

As a bard, I've hunted HG's many many times over the years and servers, and it feels like on Teal it's just the same.

I don't recall specifically live in early 1999, but the first TLP server they ever released, "Combine", I was the first bard in RM hunting HG's and there was never more than 7 HG's up at once.

On blue, hunting alone in zone in 2010, no more than 7 HG's at once.

On Green beta, hunting alone in zone, 7 max.

On Teal, when alone in zone early mornings, 7 max as well.

As a bard, I'll charm one HG and kill all the ph'ers, and by the time i'm done HG's have started to repop.

It feels like it's easier to spawn them at night than in the daytime, but this may be purely anecdotal.

cheers,

Astuce

[Faxi]

i have no proof to add other than clearly - vividly - remembering that players would actually form GROUPS for HG's on my server (Prexus). the zone supported like 4 full groups - we had acronym names for the 4 camps. It wasnt just a few HG's for a few solo'ers. there were approx 10-15 spawns - with a few clops sprinkled in.

Always puzzled me about p99 that nobody LFG's in Rathe Mts. Did nobody else's server regularly group there?

[mittens69]

I think it used to be like Oasis where a ton of different mobs could be PH for the giants.

i have no proof to add other than clearly - vividly - remembering that players would actually form GROUPS for HG's on my server (Prexus). the zone supported like 4 full groups - we had acronym names for the 4 camps. It wasnt just a few HG's for a few solo'ers. there were approx 10-15 spawns - with a few clops sprinkled in.

Always puzzled me about p99 that nobody LFG's in Rathe Mts. Did nobody else's server regularly group there?


On Inny we did sides usually, like north / south / west of the hill for the group.

[DMN]

Rathe mountains was indeed a very happening place back in classic. You had the hill giant area where the basilisks spawn, nice plat camp. You had a vendor you could convert your coins into gems. you had a bunch of nice items dropping from rares who appear in the zone, Eventually you had people llooking for hasten and brother z,and you had the bugged sphinxes which people could exploit since they would not aggro if you attacked their pets.

I wasn't a big fan of doing Hgs there personally but recall usually 2 groups splitting that hill area with the basilisks up into two camps generally.

[Kalamurv]

on vazaelle it was far more than 2 groups a lot of times, if all ph's are kept down, you can have easily enough giants for 6 full groups of low to mid 30's groups with some higher level solo / duos as well. think of every single bear, basilisk, lizardman, drake, giant skelly and cyclops on top of, and around that hill (excluding the few static mobs....guards etc). Every single one of those should be a place holder for a hill giant. I remember times from vanilla to velious and beyond, (and you can go log onto eq live, although they've moved shit around, the spawn numbers and ph's are the same), where I literally had to scroll my tracking to count the number of giants up. When I got my little baby bear on my druid, I would non stop quad hill giants while having my bear clear place holders for me (while groups were killing at the same time), I rarely if ever ran out of giants to kill.

[Dolalin]

Telin: that spawn log I found today shows there were 12 Hill Giants up in rathe mountains.

(Remember that the count field starts at 0, not 1)

[dareo]

It always seemed like you got more HGs if everything else was killed

[Kalamurv]

You did get more when place holders were killed on live, but on p99 they have 6 (or 7?) static spawn locations and place holders have nothing to do with them spawning where every bear basilisk lizard giant skelly cyclops....if it paths on or around that hill it should be a place holder for any of those mobs or a hill giant, or rarely the respective named (lizards can spawn mortif guy, basilisks petrifin, drakes....forget named but drake named)

[Doktoor]

I'll tell you what isn't classic about the HGs for sure: There used to be a lot more giant skelly spawns. I did 2 lvls there on my Teal druid and saw 1 total giant skelly. I spent months there on classic leveling my bard and I was killing skellies with charmed HGs constantly.

[Dolalin]

I'll tell you what isn't classic about the HGs for sure: There used to be a lot more giant skelly spawns. I did 2 lvls there on my Teal druid and saw 1 total giant skelly. I spent months there on classic leveling my bard and I was killing skellies with charmed HGs constantly.

Confirmed, spawn log had 8 giant skellies up.

[AgentEpilot]

I have been leaving food laced with viagra all over rathe and dropping pamphlets saying that condoms are carcinogens but it still isn’t working. Maybe if we can find a mythical female HG it would help.

Otherwise we are going to have to have a very frank and awkward discussion with the ogres about taking one for the team. Or maybe taking a solid 12.

[Albane]

The last thing this servers economy needs is more plat flooding into the market. Keep the Hill Giants how they are.

[Glasken]

According to a dump posted here: https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=348523

Seems there can be at least 12 giants up at any given time, easily twice as many as we currently have with static spawns.

I have vivid memories of groups(plural) killing basilisks to spawn giants, and the giants spawning on and following any basilisk path track, not just the mesa they currently frequent.

With seafuries nerfed as they are, lets get HGs back to classic!

[Kalamurv]

not just basilisks, drakes, bears, lizards, cyclops, giant skellys and hill giants (plus respective named) are all on the same spawn tables so killing any of these can / should spawn one of those

[Dolalin]

I don't remember HGs spawning near the gypsies by the LR zoneline though, just giant skellies and cyclopes. HGs only spawned in their little valley didn't they? Or am I wrong?

[douglas1999]

I don't remember HGs spawning near the gypsies by the LR zoneline though, just giant skellies and cyclopes. HGs only spawned in their little valley didn't they? Or am I wrong?

Yes unless somebody pulled one out of that one valley where they roam, it was only giant skels and cyclopses in the adjascent area

[DMN]

I only remember them spawning in area with all the with the hill in the middle of the valley, also usually the only place you'd see full groups hanging out back then -- not counting the period of time people exploited the sphinx pets and you'd usually have groups over there killing those, too.

[Kalamurv]

you rarely get giant skeles and cyclops spawning around hill giant area as well....sorry guess I should have clarified....I only mean the ones around hill giant area (pathing mobs on / around the hill, not the static spawns)

[Kalamurv]

also of note, ancient cyclops could spawn either at hill giants or over at gypsies / lake rathe. On live I leveled my druid, warrior enchanter and rogue on hill giants from classic through velious, and many years later (although they moved locations of stuff), I boxed a druid + 3 wizzies while messing around with isboxer. My druid quadded them from 34 onward to 40 ish, and many times afterwards when I needed plat. AC at hill giants was where I managed to get my warriors jboots.

[TripSin]

Easy solution. Create a hill giant /list. Can only kill HG/cyclops if you're on the list and the rate of HG spawns increases proportionally to how big the list is. If you don't get a HG or cyclops kill in 13 minutes you get kicked off the list for a half hour.

Now you're thinking with /lists. You're welcome.

[DMN]

Confirmed, spawn log had 8 giant skellies up.

Are you sure you know all the nuances that regarding data? you can clearly see some of the pets are being counted twice for some reason.

[DMN]

People are saying on P99 that there are hill giant spawn points that only spawn hill giants. I concur with the other testimony offered in earlier in this thread, that none of the HGs had guaranteed spawn spot. They shared their spawn chances with a bunch other stuff and never had their own "HG only" spawn points. If you killed only the HGs, after half an hour to an hour, you'd have no HGs left in the zone at all.

[Doktoor]

People are saying on P99 that there are hill giant spawn points that only spawn hill giants. I concur with the other testimony offered in earlier in this thread, that none of the HGs had guaranteed spawn spot. They shared their spawn chances with a bunch other stuff and never had their own "HG only" spawn points. If you killed only the HGs, after half an hour to an hour, you'd have no HGs left in the zone at all.

On the server i played on during live, as a bard that leveled there from the late 30s till the late 40s exclusively, and seeing as it was a PvP server, I generally had the zone to myself during the hours after primetime as I was in a Western timezone and since Selos broke root/snare in those days, everyone would leave the zone when I showed up because dispells + HG pet + snare on a caster was a quick kill and no one solo caster was going to fight to low health while exping with that risk around.

So anyways, I spent months in RM killing HGs on live and had the HGs to myself for many hours at a time on dozens and dozens of occasions.

What I remember, is that I would kill nothing but HGs and the only PHs that I had to clear were giant skellies - although I had to kill a fair amount of them compared to how many I see on Green. (I did also kill the cyclops if I couldn't find a HG quickly or if it was close to my pet).

I never ever killed basalisks or any other ph besides the giant skellies. And I never ran out of HGs kiting there for hours with just KoSing giant skellies.

It really seemed that the basalisks and lizards were on one spawn and the HGs/giant skells were on another.

I literally killed thousands of HGs and I never ever killed basalisks or lizard men.

And at least certain HGs definitely spawned on exact locations, similarly to how they do on Green.

The only differences I can tell on Green from live, is that there are hardly any giant skellies that spawn.

Now, I'm not saying that on live, that killing basalisks and lizard men didn't spawn HGs, but that was not the understanding at the time. I remember a human druid that used to kill HGs sometimes at the same time as me who would always /ooc that I needed to kill skellies because I was hogging all the HGs. No one was farming basalisks/lizard men though.

[Telin]

Are you sure you know all the nuances that regarding data? you can clearly see some of the pets are being counted twice for some reason.

I'm curious about these duplicate pets?

Also this would be counting giant skeletons from the entire zone, correct? So the HG area wouldn't necessarily have that many up at one time.

[Dolalin]

(as mentioned to Telin in a PM before thread unlock: )

Not sure about the duplicate pets sometimes in the excel sheet. It's not a perfectly clean source.

But I do think the pet dupes are an isolated anomaly.

A way to check the sanity of the count numbers for a zone, that I have done, is to look at mobs in a zone for which you know what the exact count should be (eg static spawns), and correlate them with the count on the sheet.

For rathe mountains, I see there are counts of orc warriors and orc priests, etc. Does that line up with expected numbers given the known orc camp spawns? Barbed bone and skeletal monk spawns? Etc.

I found for other zones like old Paw, the sheet said there were exactly 2 skeletons and 2 zombies in zone, and sure enough I found a newsgroup post saying that the Ghanex Drah room had exactly 2 skeletons and 2 zombies. So I know the numbers can be accurate. Whether they always are? Just have to use our best judgment.