Looking for goblin archeologist in Permafrost

[BornInOz]

I've been camped in Permafrost where the goblin archeologist supposedly spawns (421, 190 per the wiki entry). Per the wiki, he's a 20% spawn probability and I've been through at least 9 spawn cycles and he hasn't shown up yet. Since the spawn timer in permafrost is over 20 minutes, it's getting to be quite a grind. Am I just on a bad luck streak here or are there any known bugs with this spawn?

In case anyone is wondering, I was hoping to snag a dented brass mask as one of his drops, but at this point I'm looking at alternatives.

Thanks!

[DeathsSilkyMist]

If you just want a cheap mask with strength...

https://wiki.project1999.com/Platinum_Ruby_Veil

Or

https://wiki.project1999.com/Tribal_War_Mask

Work well. Cost will be between like 200 and 400 plat in green ec tunnel.

If you are doing a self found run, dented brass mask is probably one of the better options, as most of not all str masks with 4 STR or higher are dropped in higher level zones off mobs 40+.

[Trexller]

someone in KC will give you this for free or dirt cheap

https://wiki.project1999.com/Sarnak-Hide_Mask

[BornInOz]

Thanks for the replies, the alternatives you guys suggested are some of the exact ones I was looking at.

I strongly suspect the wiki entry on the archeologist spawn rate is wrong (20% seems way too high). With the low spawn rate x a low spawn rate on the dented brass mask, combined with the long spawn cycle timer in the zone, I'm pulling the plug on this adventure and pursuing just buying one of the other options (if anyone reading this has one for sale, DM me [yes, I've posted a WTB on the trade forum :) ]).

[Goregasmic]

Yo, I cleaned out a bunch of spawns in the area (king, scryer, alchemist) for a whole bunch of rounds and updated the wikis accordingly, I noticed a few seemed inaccurate.

I think I didn't touch the acheologist entry because i got him like 3 times in 9 rounds but I didn't consider that a big enough sample to update the wiki confidently. That was this winter so quite recently. Yeah he still spawns but the mask is rated as ultra rare and I was skeptical because that's rare for mobs this level. More of a kunark thing too.

By the way I got 1 mask and 2 packs and the mask is sitting in my monk's bank in cabilis, you can have it for free if you're in the area on green. I got him a better mask so this one is collecting dust.

[BornInOz]

That's a very generous offer. I do, in fact, have a character, Llais / necromancer in the cabilis area on green. When would be convenient to meet up?

[Goregasmic]

Are you on now?

[Goregasmic]

Sent you a private message.

[Videri]

0/9 is not unheard of. There are a lot of posts on this forums asking if some mob was removed from the game, or if the drop rate of an item got nerfed, and a few days later, they post saying they got the item. It's random. And nine is a very small sample size. 20% doesn't mean 2 out of every 10. It's more like 200 out of every 10,000, and even that is not guaranteed.

[cd288]

Yo, I cleaned out a bunch of spawns in the area (king, scryer, alchemist) for a whole bunch of rounds and updated the wikis accordingly, I noticed a few seemed inaccurate.

I think I didn't touch the acheologist entry because i got him like 3 times in 9 rounds but I didn't consider that a big enough sample to update the wiki confidently. That was this winter so quite recently. Yeah he still spawns but the mask is rated as ultra rare and I was skeptical because that's rare for mobs this level. More of a kunark thing too.

By the way I got 1 mask and 2 packs and the mask is sitting in my monk's bank in cabilis, you can have it for free if you're in the area on green. I got him a better mask so this one is collecting dust.

I know you're trying to be helpful, but with respect this is one of the ways things on the Wiki become inaccurate. I'm not saying the spawn chance for the mob(s) referenced was definitely accurate, but it could be.

There are a ton of examples of things with X% chance of happening taking an immense amount of cycles to occur. Just because you killed a PH 50-100 times and the other mob didn't spawn X% of the time doesn't mean you should change spawn percentages on the Wiki. That's anecdotal evidence that is completely explainable by really bad luck with RNG.

At best it should be a note to the spawn chance about your experience rather than changing percentage chances.

[zelld52]

Archaeologist the one found on the ledge behind the broken wall leading to the caverns? See him all the time

[Goregasmic]

I know you're trying to be helpful, but with respect this is one of the ways things on the Wiki become inaccurate. I'm not saying the spawn chance for the mob(s) referenced was definitely accurate, but it could be.

There are a ton of examples of things with X% chance of happening taking an immense amount of cycles to occur. Just because you killed a PH 50-100 times and the other mob didn't spawn X% of the time doesn't mean you should change spawn percentages on the Wiki. That's anecdotal evidence that is completely explainable by really bad luck with RNG.

At best it should be a note to the spawn chance about your experience rather than changing percentage chances.

As far as I know all percentages are set by players filling out the wiki? I was looking at a history of Lguk wiki changes and it seems a lot of mobs were entered with a base value of 3% which is flat out wrong. If I do 4 rounds of a mob and get him once I'm not going to change it to 25% but if I do 40 rounds and get it 4 times, 10% sounds good enough for a wiki.

Most wiki entries have no data to back up the spawn percentage so how are you supposed to know who's experience is the most accurate? I try leaving a justificative note in the discussion section or in the edit log when I make changes but it isn't realistic to expect those percentages to be perfect but "close enough" gives a good idea to people about what they're getting into. You'll never know if you had good/bad luck and no one else will either. I'm usually not going to bother modifying single digit discrepancies but when it says like 3% and I got the mob to pop 5 times in 15 spawns it seems more likely that 3% was off than I had 0,000001% occurence happen.

Like, people say 1% for the rotting skeleton but is there anyone who did like 5000 spawns to make sure it is accurate? Is there even a consensus on what constitutes accurate samples?

[Ciderpress]

All wiki values should be taken with a grain of salt because like all wikis anybody can change them. You're free to reference the change log but that won't really tell you much about spawn rates specifically.

I've definitely been here though; trying to farm some totally antiquated item to gear a new alt, usually because it's never for sale (because it's so old and nobody farms it), and then I consult the wiki and I'm not getting the mob and I start to get paranoid that maybe there's something bugged about it and it just hasn't been reported because nobody ever camps it anymore. It's a feedback loop of everquest.

[kjs86z2]

I XP'd around there on my twink paladin. Easy to find.

[cd288]

As far as I know all percentages are set by players filling out the wiki? I was looking at a history of Lguk wiki changes and it seems a lot of mobs were entered with a base value of 3% which is flat out wrong. If I do 4 rounds of a mob and get him once I'm not going to change it to 25% but if I do 40 rounds and get it 4 times, 10% sounds good enough for a wiki.

Most wiki entries have no data to back up the spawn percentage so how are you supposed to know who's experience is the most accurate? I try leaving a justificative note in the discussion section or in the edit log when I make changes but it isn't realistic to expect those percentages to be perfect but "close enough" gives a good idea to people about what they're getting into. You'll never know if you had good/bad luck and no one else will either. I'm usually not going to bother modifying single digit discrepancies but when it says like 3% and I got the mob to pop 5 times in 15 spawns it seems more likely that 3% was off than I had 0,000001% occurence happen.

Like, people say 1% for the rotting skeleton but is there anyone who did like 5000 spawns to make sure it is accurate? Is there even a consensus on what constitutes accurate samples?

IIRC in a lot of cases the original added percentage just the latest data mining that people could find. May not be classic or accurate, but we're not sure. So it's better to leave anecdotes of experiences than to flatly change the percentage.

[loramin]

As far as I know all percentages are set by players filling out the wiki? I was looking at a history of Lguk wiki changes and it seems a lot of mobs were entered with a base value of 3% which is flat out wrong. If I do 4 rounds of a mob and get him once I'm not going to change it to 25% but if I do 40 rounds and get it 4 times, 10% sounds good enough for a wiki.

Most wiki entries have no data to back up the spawn percentage so how are you supposed to know who's experience is the most accurate? I try leaving a justificative note in the discussion section or in the edit log when I make changes but it isn't realistic to expect those percentages to be perfect but "close enough" gives a good idea to people about what they're getting into. You'll never know if you had good/bad luck and no one else will either. I'm usually not going to bother modifying single digit discrepancies but when it says like 3% and I got the mob to pop 5 times in 15 spawns it seems more likely that 3% was off than I had 0,000001% occurence happen.

Like, people say 1% for the rotting skeleton but is there anyone who did like 5000 spawns to make sure it is accurate? Is there even a consensus on what constitutes accurate samples?

There are two sources of numbers in the wiki. The first set were entered automatically when the wiki was first created (from EQ Emulator data), and the second set were entered by players over time.

Presumably (this was long before my time), P99 began as an EQ Emu clone, and so the wiki started with EQ Emu data. It was a smart move, because a lot of EQ never got changed, so the live/EQ Emu data for a mob may well be the same as the P99 version.

But of course ... plenty did change, and it's not like Nilbog publishes a changelog. Thus, there's no way to keep the wiki up to date automatically. The best anyone can do is update it on a case-by-case basis.

[Goregasmic]

There are two sources of numbers in the wiki. The first set were entered automatically when the wiki was first created (from EQ Emulator data), and the second set were entered by players over time.

Presumably (this was long before my time), P99 began as an EQ Emu clone, and so the wiki started with EQ Emu data. It was a smart move, because a lot of EQ never got changed, so the live/EQ Emu data for a mob may well be the same as the P99 version.

But of course ... plenty did change, and it's not like Nilbog publishes a changelog. Thus, there's no way to keep the wiki up to date automatically. The best anyone can do is update it on a case-by-case basis.

CD288 says we shouldn't touch it basically and I understand his point but like, some entries don't even have spawn % to this day, there's a few entries that have a multiple spawn locs seem to have the spawn% divided by the number of locations. Also, nearly all entries that have a spawn% >5% seem to be a multiple of 5 but every now and then you'll find a 13% and wonder if someone got a 1/8 spawn and entered it as such. It's weird. I've seen too many inconsistencies to believe the DB export is flawless. I was looking at the loot table of the frenzied velium broodling and there's stuff in there I think it is impossible for it to drop and some other stuff with the percentages wayyyy off but after checking they're from the original upload.

And like I said, most people don't leave a note on where their data is from so it is hard to sort out.


I don't feel like we need to go into debating the designation
of acceptable sample sizes. There's mobs I've done nearly 100 cycles of, I think they're fair game for an edit if they're like 20%+ spawn rates. If your sample is big enough adding/substracting 1-2 named wouldn't move the percentage much I think its is solid data.

[cd288]

CD288 says we shouldn't touch it basically and I understand his point but like, some entries don't even have spawn % to this day, there's a few entries that have a multiple spawn locs seem to have the spawn% divided by the number of locations. Also, nearly all entries that have a spawn% >5% seem to be a multiple of 5 but every now and then you'll find a 13% and wonder if someone got a 1/8 spawn and entered it as such. It's weird. I've seen too many inconsistencies to believe the DB export is flawless. I was looking at the loot table of the frenzied velium broodling and there's stuff in there I think it is impossible for it to drop and some other stuff with the percentages wayyyy off but after checking they're from the original upload.

And like I said, most people don't leave a note on where their data is from so it is hard to sort out.


I don't feel like we need to go into debating the designation
of acceptable sample sizes. There's mobs I've done nearly 100 cycles of, I think they're fair game for an edit if they're like 20%+ spawn rates. If your sample is big enough adding/substracting 1-2 named wouldn't move the percentage much I think its is solid data.

To be clear, I'm not saying don't edit if there's no % data on the page. But if there's a % on the page, it may come from EQ emu data, which is the most accurate in theory data we have and likely more accurate than a playing experience. So in those cases, it's better to add a note saying "The wiki says this %, here was my experience killing 100+ cycles"

Quite frankly, with the way RNG is in this game I wouldn't even say that killing a mob 100 times provides a lot of clarity on spawn/drop chances. You only have to search these forums to see absurd variations in RNG...people taking like several hundred kills to get something and others getting it in less than 50 kills for instance. It's just all anecdotal so it should be noted as such if you edit the Wiki.

[cd288]

stuff in there I think

This is why it should be noted as anecdotal evidence

[Goregasmic]

To be clear, I'm not saying don't edit if there's no % data on the page. But if there's a % on the page, it may come from EQ emu data, which is the most accurate in theory data we have and likely more accurate than a playing experience. So in those cases, it's better to add a note saying "The wiki says this %, here was my experience killing 100+ cycles"

Quite frankly, with the way RNG is in this game I wouldn't even say that killing a mob 100 times provides a lot of clarity on spawn/drop chances. You only have to search these forums to see absurd variations in RNG...people taking like several hundred kills to get something and others getting it in less than 50 kills for instance. It's just all anecdotal so it should be noted as such if you edit the Wiki.

So what do you think is an accurate sample, what's an acceptable margin of error and do you think anyone in their sane mind would ever kill that many?

This is why it should be noted as anecdotal evidence

Which is exactly what I've done.

[cd288]

So what do you think is an accurate sample, what's an acceptable margin of error and do you think anyone in their sane mind would ever kill that many?

I guess it depends on what the original alleged % is, but in general I think it's tough to call any personal experience in EQ "accurate" regardless of how many mobs or cycles you've gone through.

Anyone who has played this game for a long time knows that whatever your experience will be with a camp, mob, etc. is impossible to predict since the RNG can be simply insane. Use the goblin ghazi ring as an easy example: I've had an experience where I killed like 20 PHs, had 4 couriers spawn, and one of them had the ring. I've also had another experience where I killed a few hundred PHs, probably saw 10 couriers, and none had the ring. Because of RNG every anecdotal experience is of very limited value when assessing percentages.

There was another post a few months ago where there was a great, detailed discussion on this. I'll see if I can find it.

[Goregasmic]

Story time: before I did the sarnak courier last year I tallied all the player submitted results on its page and ended up with an average of ~8 hours and 24 couriers for 1 ring. Took me 8.5h and 26 couriers heh, pretty close. People claim it is a 1% deal, seems more like 3% (but I didn't change it!). Granted, not many pages have that many player entries, if any.

A 100 coin flip will have about 4% variance either way, in the worst case. Most mobs are not 50% but more like 20-25% so more room for mistakes but I don't think anyone would sweat a 5% off spawn percentage, still gives you a good idea. Most camps I've done 40-80 mobs that I kept track of were within 3% of the wiki number so it was interesting to see the wiki being mostly accurate on that front. Of course, mobs with <10% spawn rate will require a lot more data to make an accurate statement.

I respect the wiki enough not to change anything willy nilly but that being said, a lot of the damage ranges are off, same for most AC values from what I understand. I've seen some mob HPs off and a lot of bogus loot tables so I don't view the wiki as a temple of accuracy that must be preserved in its pristine form either.

[loramin]

So what do you think is an accurate sample, what's an acceptable margin of error and do you think anyone in their sane mind would ever kill that many?

I'm not a stats geek, but as I understand it, the rule of thumb for a die is to have at least five times as many rolls as the die has sides (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/70802/how-can-i-test-whether-a-die-is-fair). In other words, if you wanted to check that a six-sided die rolled "6" one out of six times, you'd need to roll it at least thirty times (and see five "6" results).

If your theory is that A Sarnak Courier drops the ring 2% of the time, that equates to 1 out of 50 rolls of a fifty-sided die. Thus, you'd need to do about 250 (50 * 5) rolls (ie. 250 Courier kills), and see five rings drop, to be reasonably certain that the drop rate was 2%.

Obviously, no one is going to do 250 Courier kills, because no one needs five goblin rings. For cases like that, I think the best anyone can do is start a list on the wiki page, saying something like "Bob: 47 Courier kills until a ring dropped". Then Fred can add "Fred: 55 kills", and eventually, over time, the wiki will collect enough cases (250 for the courier) to be confident in changing a number.

[maddysinko]

It can definitely be frustrating when the spawn rate feels super low, but 9 cycles isn’t too bad when it comes to these kinds of drop chances. I haven’t heard of any bugs with the spawn, so it's likely just bad luck.

[Goregasmic]

I'm not a stats geek, but as I understand it, the rule of thumb for a die is to have at least five times as many rolls as the die has sides (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/70802/how-can-i-test-whether-a-die-is-fair). In other words, if you wanted to check that a six-sided die rolled "6" one out of six times, you'd need to roll it at least thirty times (and see five "6" results).

If your theory is that A Sarnak Courier drops the ring 2% of the time, that equates to 1 out of 50 rolls of a fifty-sided die. Thus, you'd need to do about 250 (50 * 5) rolls (ie. 250 Courier kills), and see five rings drop, to be reasonably certain that the drop rate was 2%.

Obviously, no one is going to do 250 Courier kills, because no one needs five goblin rings. For cases like that, I think the best anyone can do is start a list on the wiki page, saying something like "Bob: 47 Courier kills until a ring dropped". Then Fred can add "Fred: 55 kills", and eventually, over time, the wiki will collect enough cases (250 for the courier) to be confident in changing a number.

I was wondering if there was something like that, interesting read thank you!

Yeah I don't think most mobs are interesting enough to be worthy of such a list but there should be more. Real quick courier is the only one I can think of but I would have thought people doing pained soul/rotting skeleton or other such mobs would have kept a log.

It can definitely be frustrating when the spawn rate feels super low, but 9 cycles isn’t too bad when it comes to these kinds of drop chances. I haven’t heard of any bugs with the spawn, so it's likely just bad luck.

Yeah if 20% is accurate you have a 13% chance to not see it for 9 spawns, not incredibly wild.

[cd288]

What's the 13% from?

[loramin]

Yeah I don't think most mobs are interesting enough to be worthy of such a list but there should be more. Real quick courier is the only one I can think of but I would have thought people doing pained soul/rotting skeleton or other such mobs would have kept a log.

I just had to redo this page (someone deleted my previous report), but it gave me a chance to remake it as an example of how I think people should do "spawn reports" on the wiki:

https://wiki.project1999.com/Driftwood_Treasure_Chest

P.S. And yes, you read that right: I killed that stupid fish 700 times; I have the chests (https://wiki.project1999.com/Magelo_Blue:Loramin) to prove it ;)

[Goregasmic]

What's the 13% from?

0.8^9, which would be the probability of not getting one 9 times in a row at 20% spawn rate.

I just had to redo this page (someone deleted my previous report), but it gave me a chance to remake it as an example of how I think people should do "spawn reports" on the wiki:

https://wiki.project1999.com/Driftwood_Treasure_Chest

P.S. And yes, you read that right: I killed that stupid fish 700 times; I have the chests (https://wiki.project1999.com/Magelo_Blue:Loramin) to prove it ;)

Dayum that's some dedication, even afk farming that's a long time and still semi-involved as that shark can chew you up and he's not alone in the room. Your driftwood sample section is nice but on mobile it is a bit messed up due to the auction tracker taking so much real estate.

I looked it up again and the page with the courier data is actually on the Goblin Gazughi Ring (https://wiki.project1999.com/Goblin_Gazughi_Ring) page. That one is also clean, i should crunch the numbers again.

The cleanest example I've seen (could be a bit more minimalist) is the tables Frantz256255 (https://wiki.project1999.com/A_Siren_Enticer) did at the bottom of some mob pages. If everyone did a table it would be chaos but as a tally it pretty complete. A nice table for stuff like the goblin ring submissions would probably be the cleanest way to implement this. Might work on it next time I'm bored at work.

I think a forum admin worked a script to scrape logs for all the drop data as a project for the wiki but not sure what happened to that.

[WarpathEQ]

Quite frankly spawn percentage is about as useless of a metric to the person trying to consume it as it is to the person trying to determine it so. Its an RNG game so true results will vary massively for the same camp, exponentially so for rarer spawns.

IMO the only real valuable data around spawn frequency would be people recording the time it took between named spawns without leaving the camp and killing the PH consistently on spawn without gaps. Being able to triangulate a rough average of how many hours a camp takes for named to spawn would be actually useful.

[loramin]

Your driftwood sample section is nice but on mobile it is a bit messed up due to the auction tracker taking so much real estate.

Unfortunately, that section is inside a wiki template, and a table would require using another template ... but our wiki doesn't let you have a template inside a template (in this case, a table inside an "Itembox" template).

Also, different screen sizes can position things differently (eg. on my phone everything looks fine). However, I changed the styling and text a bit, so it should look better now.

The cleanest example I've seen (could be a bit more minimalist) is the tables Frantz256255 (https://wiki.project1999.com/A_Siren_Enticer) did at the bottom of some mob pages. If everyone did a table it would be chaos but as a tally it pretty complete. A nice table for stuff like the goblin ring submissions would probably be the cleanest way to implement this.

Yeah, he was able to use a table because he put it outside of the template, at the bottom of the page. The Driftwood Chest page (or any other) could be redone that way, but it might not look as good at the bottom (and people might miss it).

In theory, I think the best solution would be to add a bunch of new fields to the "Itembox" template, and then if those fields are present have the template add a table itself. It probably wouldn't be that hard (the existing template (https://wiki.project1999.com/index.php?title=Template:Itembox&action=edit) is very simple) ... but I have other wiki projects at the moment, so I'll leave that as a project for someone else.

I think a forum admin worked a script to scrape logs for all the drop data as a project for the wiki but not sure what happened to that.

I thought I heard about a log parser awhile back, but it was just from a regular player, for personal log parsing. I hadn't heard of any effort to collect people's data for the wiki (although that'd be cool!)

[loramin]

Quite frankly spawn percentage is about as useless of a metric to the person trying to consume it as it is to the person trying to determine it so. Its an RNG game so true results will vary massively for the same camp, exponentially so for rarer spawns.

IMO the only real valuable data around spawn frequency would be people recording the time it took between named spawns without leaving the camp and killing the PH consistently on spawn without gaps. Being able to triangulate a rough average of how many hours a camp takes for named to spawn would be actually useful.

The existing data can tell you this with just some basic arithmetic, by using the wiki's respawn rate. In the case of the Driftwood Chest, A Ferocious Hammerhead (https://wiki.project1999.com/A_ferocious_hammerhead) or its PH has a 22 minute respawn. The wiki reports that the named has a 5% (1/20) spawn chance, and that it has a 25% (1/4) drop rate.

Thus, on average it would take 22 minutes * 20 spawns per named * 4 named per chest = 1,760 minutes per chest (dear god what was I thinking doing six of these things?!?). I'm not against doing that math for people in the wiki, but I'm not sure it's necessary either, since it's just elementary-level math. Thoughts?

[WarpathEQ]

The existing data can tell you this with just some basic arithmetic, by using the wiki's respawn rate. In the case of the Driftwood Chest, A Ferocious Hammerhead (https://wiki.project1999.com/A_ferocious_hammerhead) or its PH has a 22 minute respawn. The wiki reports that the named has a 5% (1/20) spawn chance, and that it has a 25% (1/4) drop rate.

Thus, on average it would take 22 minutes * 20 spawns per named * 4 named per chest = 1,760 minutes per chest (dear god what was I thinking doing six of these things?!?). I'm not against doing that math for people in the wiki, but I'm not sure it's necessary either, since it's just elementary-level math. Thoughts?

That's the whole point of my comment, why is someone converting usable data into a form factor that isn't consumable only for the consumer to convert the data back. Every time a conversion happens data accuracy is reduced.

[Goregasmic]

Quite frankly spawn percentage is about as useless of a metric to the person trying to consume it as it is to the person trying to determine it so. Its an RNG game so true results will vary massively for the same camp, exponentially so for rarer spawns.

IMO the only real valuable data around spawn frequency would be people recording the time it took between named spawns without leaving the camp and killing the PH consistently on spawn without gaps. Being able to triangulate a rough average of how many hours a camp takes for named to spawn would be actually useful.

I like it. A mob with a 33% spawn rate and a 90% common will tell you it will most likely be a fast camp.

A mob with a 25% spawn rate and a 25% rare might be not too bad but you'll spend a while there.

A mob with a 10% spawn and 10% rare, at a 27mins timer for a 2000pp item is pretty much in "fuck that" territory unless the camp is AFK friendly.

And then you see the sarnak courier where you have to kill a mob every 30 seconds for 8 hours. So i guess it depends on the camp and it is all subjective but in my opinion it gives a good idea at a quick glance. If I saw an estimated 1760minutes I'd be wondering what's the spawn/drop rate.

Some notably long camps like the staff of dreaded gaze and the vp key 1% spawns have time estimates already though, no one is stopping anyone from putting them in.

..... aaaand if you put a time estimate you'll get someone like "REEEEEEEEEE THAT'S NOT HOW PROBABILITIES WORK".