Zanderr, i hope you dont mind me updating this thread.
Ive farmed approximately 30 cloaks post patch and I have a pretty good handle on what the deal is with the placeholders. You can check my EC tunnel forum thread for verification that I know what im doing.
Post patch, the "golden calf", as it was termed before, no longer spawns in the same place every time. Now, it roams in the same areas and on the same paths as the lioness spawn. I have identified eight paths that these placeholders can take. The black shape in this image represents the hill between the aviak tree and splitpaw. The placeholders can spawn on any of these paths and path in any direction along them. They may jump from one path to another after spawning, but these are all the routes they can take.
TL;DR elephant calf follows same spawn pathing as lioness
In my experience farming cloaks, it takes approximately 30 minutes of killing placeholders for one QM spawn. It takes approximately 4-6 QM spawns to get a cloak. I have had it drop on the first time, and on one horrible occasion, it took 18 spawns. The most common spawn has been the one near the lake ZL. The second most common spawn has been the centaur stables. The hermit house spawn is pretty rare. One thing to note with the hermit house spawn is that QM can path OVER the hill to the hermit house, or AROUND the hill to the hermit house. If you've been killing placeholders for over an hour and you still havent seen a QM spawn, the people you have sitting on the spawns probably missed one. It is honestly pointless to go with less than four people, three for spawns and one for killing placeholders. If anyone has any questions about QM, let me know.
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