[paulgiamatti]

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

For example, i don't think it is fair to dismiss his tracking and description of the spawn timer and come to the conclusion that he "had no idea what he is talking about".

Well, I simply posit the possibility that he has no idea what he's talking about, which isn't as much of a slight against him as it sounds. I'd at least entertain that idea, because chances are this person, like myself, was of high school age in 2001 and nowhere near fully psychologically developed. If I attempted to decode Scout Charisa's spawn mechanics when I was a 16-year-old, the results would've been a horrorshow. It's certainly possible he was starting from the false premise of the spawn timer beginning at her spawn time, and then attempted to fit a window to the varying spawn times that followed.

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The info comes first hand from this guy who had clearly done the quest before, and by his own words has "made it his mission" to figure out the spawn timer. He is not repeating what he heard, clearly it is what he witnessed.

Right, anecdotal evidence is a good starting point to then develop a hypothesis from first principles. He stopped at anecdotal evidence, but anecdotal evidence is still better than no evidence. He probably did the quest an inordinate amount of times, as he claimed, but wasn't paying close enough attention to spawn mechanics to formulate a coherent hypothesis. Or, it's possible he was paying close attention while being misinformed as to when the timer begins, thus ending up with wonky and arbitrary numbers like 11.6 hours with a 0.9-hour long window. This could be wrong, of course - no other game is as notorious for its wonkiness and arbitrariness as EQ.

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Really, the alternative "evidence" I've seen is one post claiming she is 10 hours, another claiming 10-12. No details, no specifics, no claims that they personally witnessed it, etc. I think the monkly business post is the most reliable we have to work with (unless someone can show differently).

Apr 25 2001 at 3:35 PM [http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...98823093683675]:

Not sure if she is a triggered mob, think she is on more like a 12hour+ timer once server come up, or killed.

May 29 2001 at 2:10 AM [http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...99112023667883]:

She is on a 12 hour spawn clock.

Jul 01 2001 at 8:41 PM [http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...99403810580687]:

12 hours between quests.

Jul 24 2001 at 5:29 AM [http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...99597054222215]:

... scout is on 12 hrs respawn cloak,when shes holding a bag,this means someone has already done this,so come back 12 hrs later and do it.

Aug 10 2001 at 9:26 PM [http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...99749681331457]:

The spawn time on the scout is actually about 10-11 hours, you time it from the time you turn in the bag to the time she pops again.

Unrelated, but interesting:

Apr 23 2001 at 9:20 PM [http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...98807882037149]:

She is however not always up and takes awhile to spawn after patch.

Now slightly after Luclin's release.

Dec 26 2001 at 6:45 PM [http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...00941031116552]:

I have noted a 10 to 10.5 respawn time on the Scout.

Jan 31 2002 at 9:16 AM [http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...01248286637909]:

Spawn time is 11 hours ...

Feb 18 2002 at 9:38 PM [http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/q...01408626522893]:

It is 10 hours from depspawning of Charisa. Usually about 10 and a half hours after you hand toolkit in.

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I do agree that some of the respawn dynamics might be questionable about spawn vs hand-in, but history has shown there is a more than a few weird spawn dynamics in EQ (Pyzin, Raster of Guk, Stormfeather, Lodizal, etc).

Definitely - now that I'm thinking about it, there are tons of completely unique spawn cycles throughout EQ, although not a single one to my knowledge operates on its own spawn time as its respawn trigger. Even Zordak Ragefire, which is always in window while Nagafen isn't up, restarts its spawn cycle upon receiving the Shimmering Pearl. Butler Syncall and Maid Issis are also good examples of perpetual spawn cycles, but even those use the time of day as respawn triggers.

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Also not sure what you were talking about the half life of the window needing to be different, thought i wrote that out clearly showing he factored in the 30 minute variance. Where is my math off specifically? Maybe it is, and I'm just having a brain fart.

Your math was fine, I was merely pointing out the mismatch between Serack's 11.6-hour respawn time and 0.9-hour window, but I'm still not sure how to interpret his data being that it's so poorly described. When I posted before I was thinking "give or take about half an hour" was the 54-minute window, but after rereading it I'm thinking he means the window extends about 30 minutes beyond or before 54 minutes, which would give you a 114-minute (1 hour and 54 minutes) window with +/- 30 minutes factored in. So from 2:06 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., using your example.

The way he describes his findings is super confusing to me because I don't really distinguish a window from variance: the variance is the window, or rather the variance sets the parameters of the window. Following this logic, you can still make some amount of sense out of a 54-minute window, which would be a variance of +/- 27 minutes; "about half an hour". And following that rabbit hole even further, you'd subtract 27 minutes from 11.6 hours and get 11 hours and 9 minutes. Another possibility is that he was offering 11.6 hours as the half-time of the window, and figured his readers would know that his 54-minute window is what he meant when he said "give or take about half an hour".