Miscellaneous: Potential Bug with No Manastones Dropping

[Telin]

We need more substantial evidence to consider any changes.

[Sunderfury]

Started looking into this, first hit thus far, can edit as more is discovered:
1/23/00:

that is the type of thing they are trying to stop.....
its such an overpowered item its pathetic...it makes the people who own one
soo powerfull that others are willing to spen hours upon hours getting that
one item just to have it....
it is getting to the point that you arent a good caster without it...you need
it to keep up with others who have it....and so everyone camps for countless
hours just to get one..... and really..... is it *that* much fun to camp for
20+hours.... they are trying to make the game more balanced and fun....

I'm sure many people right now would pay 3000p or camp for 20 hours for
like some people said they did for their old Manastones

Mention here of a severely nerfed drop rate 'a few patches ago', not sure of exact date stone was removed.
11/9/99:

The Bag of Tinkerers now holds extra large items, as of two patches ago.
Additionally, although I am not sure about the box (conflicting reports...it
may now be very rare, or it may have been removed altogether), I do know
manastones are still dropping. However, the drop rate has been nerfed
*badly*; expect no more than a couple per day of camping.

11/23/99:

From the EQ_Clerics site..
http://www.kmrcs.com/eqcleric/

Last weekend I received a reply from GZ on a few questions I asked him. To
paraphrase:

a.. Manastones have been removed from the drop table and will return as a quest (I
did not ask him when).
b.. The conversion rate on Manastones is 60 Hit Points for 20 Mana (not the widely
reported 60-30).

manastone isnt gone. its just so F___KING rare now because poor and unplanned
verant finally realized how badly necros can take advantage of them (skilled 50
necros that can utilize their manastones can solo some of the toughest MOB's
such as ice giants and ambassadors and vampires in MM and also the frenzied
ghoul and most of the other named ghouls in lower guk )

8/31/99:

Manastone is dropped by an Evil eye in lower guk. the common drop on
this eye is the bag of sewn evil eye, rare drop is the manastone.

10/6/99:

My suggestion would be to head down to Lower Guk and find people
camping the eye and ask them if you can have a bag when it drops.
Most of the people there are for the manastone, and by the time
anyone is done with a camping session, let alone the four or five
that's frequently necessary to get the stone, they have more bags
than they know what to do with. When we were camping the stone we
would typically just /shout that we had yet another bag and it was
up for grabs if someone could come get it before the corpse decayed.

10/20/99:

Dear Brad, Verant, John, anyone [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
Is the stoppage of manastone spawn (1) a bug? (2) an
intentional change? (3) a temporary change? Since Wednesday the 13ths
patch nobody on any server that I have friends on has seen a manastone
drop off the Evil Eye in live side lower Guk. I personally camped the
EE for 24 real-time hours, going through 30+ evil eyes (not including
placeholders) and not one single stone was dropped. Everyone I've
talked to has said for the longest time the ratio is about 1 in 8.
Would somebody address this situation, because manastones at my level
(46) are very necessary. And by stopping the spawn, be it voluntary or
bug you encourage those who've camped and harvested and now allow them
to reap insane rewards and punish those who just never got the chance
to adventure and get the item.

12/1/99:

Manastones still occasionally spawn on the Evil Eye in Lower Guk. A group
got one the other day while we were down there.

Some spawn rate mentions:
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/i...5&p=1#comments

Jul 15 2001
All you have to do is sit on the lil island in the middle of the water. I could take this solo at level fourty or so. A group could easily take at thirty-five. Place holder is a froggy shaman with pet (if you let him summon it). Bag always drops. EE spawn is pretty common...Maybe two or three frogs before it spawns. Around a seventeen minute spawntime I believe.

Sep 25 2001
The eye itself is rather easy, getting to the spawn is harder than the eye itself. If not done properly a host of green mobs can be a rather frustrating end to your journey. These green mobs can grow like ants on a piece of dried fruit. Dont recall what lvl i did this at again but maybe around the low forties and the mino's loved to gang lynch, but after getting to the spawn every eye dropped the bag with maybe a 15 or 20 minute spawn rate. Everyone left with a bag and a few others who were there did also

Oct 23 2001
I took this guy out yesterday. 1 35 bard 1 45 pally and a 40 shadow knight! the spawn time was 29 minutes exactly(give or take a few seconds)we all 3 got bags the ee always drops them...good to get a cold restistance buff... hope you get it..its CAKE

Oct 26 2001
Falc is right we were in the EE room last night and killed him 3 time and all 3 times the bag dropped and the spawn time was 29 mins...

[Daldaen]

All the quotes about drop rate appear to be after the removal.

The one guy who talks about spending 24 hours after nerf to find it not dropping there said he was told 1 in 8 was the worst rate he heard before removal.

I still don’t believe that this one item was unique compared to the rest of the 100s of classic named mobs in vanilla EQ. Every other classic named mob from Dvinn to Magi Rokyl that has a common/rare drop table varies between a 80/20 to a 60/40 ratio, with 75/25 being a common value accepted to be the likely value if you had large enough data samples to remove RNG skewing present in the small data samples available in posts or magelo data.

There really aren’t any examples of Uber rare drops in vanilla EQ. That was a Kunark Innovation.

I think finding anything definitive on a drop from a 35 mob removed 6 months into EQ beyond the common/rare indicator is unlikely. Which is why I think it following the pattern of every other named mob from classic makes sense.

[BurtMacklinFBI]

Keep it rare if this is going to be selectively classic anyway

[Endonde]

Dear Brad, Verant, John, anyone
Is the stoppage of manastone spawn (1) a bug? (2) an
intentional change? (3) a temporary change? Since Wednesday the 13ths
patch nobody on any server that I have friends on has seen a manastone
drop off the Evil Eye in live side lower Guk. I personally camped the
EE for 24 real-time hours, going through 30+ evil eyes (not including
placeholders) and not one single stone was dropped. Everyone I've
talked to has said for the longest time the ratio is about 1 in 8.
Would somebody address this situation, because manastones at my level
(46) are very necessary. And by stopping the spawn, be it voluntary or
bug you encourage those who've camped and harvested and now allow them
to reap insane rewards and punish those who just never got the chance
to adventure and get the item.

This seems to be about as conclusive as you can get.

Also agree with what Dald is saying, It seems that the "ultra rare" classification was added to manastone, but ultra rare items aren't around until Kunark, and they are found on mobs that drop 3 or more items I believe.

[Daldaen]

Can Devs or content update people who have access to the database share with us what the current drop rate is for the Manastone?

I’m curious what it’s set to currently. Sounds like it’s around 5% from all reports coming out of the Manastone camp.

Coincidentally I’d also be curious to know what the next lowest drop rate from a named mob with 2 items is from classic in our database. Perhaps Arch Magus SMR or Frenzied FBSS? Going off Magelo both of these items are 20% drop rate (it’s important to understand when looking at Magelo drop percentages, these include kills from the updated live level 85-110 versions of the zone which have different drops with the same mob name so it compiles them all under the same mob. So you have to take the total of the two classic items and divide by the count of each to get an accurate drop chance).

Manastone should be set to 20% to match the other rare items from LGuk. Classic while on its face seems very unique with the quests available and zonewide rare spawns, the drop rate for named mobs seems very consistent across the entirety of vanilla EQ. The only exceptions are for mobs that drop 3 items (Skarlorn, Estrella, Ishva Mal, maybe one more I’m forgetting?). But every mob with 2 drops has the chance for each set to around 80-60% common and 40-20% rare. Even in the case of mobs like ghoul cavalier, ghoul assassin, or shin lord, where one of the drops is a class specific item, usable by only a single class, those rare weapons are 20% drop chance.

[Sunderfury]

Telin was pretty clear that he wanted more evidence to implement change, just saying 'it makes sense that it isn't ultra rare' isn't evidence. Knowing what the drop rate is set to right now won't do you any good.

I dug through some newsgroup queries and found 1 piece of 2nd hand evidence for a 1:8 ratio, which is basically a 12.5% drop rate (still very rare by all accounts). It does seem like there was a period based on accounts that it was made more rare, but not sure if they would consider this evidence enough for an increased drop rate.

There's probably more evidence out there, maybe a farm guide or zone guide from early on. Get to searching. Perhaps you want to make a case for a less rare chance of Evil Eye spawn to speed up the drop rate.

It's tough to find a lot of info in era, but give it a shot.

[skorge]

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

Telin was pretty clear that he wanted more evidence to implement change, just saying 'it makes sense that it isn't ultra rare' isn't evidence. Knowing what the drop rate is set to right now won't do you any good.

Can you ask him what evidence he had to change it to start with? The drop rate was higher on Red, which was P99's last manastone occurrence. I camped and witnessed several manastones dropping a day on Red which featured no line or wait list at times.

Here's what I think, someone on the dev team purposely reduced the drop rate for Green to this super low number without having evidence to do so.

In the end, all these people are suffering. I am only level 23 so this does not currently affect me but I have a friend who has been there 30+ hours already and he's like the 3rd one on the list...it's unhealthy and insane, the list system combined with the super low drop rate.

So, Sunderfury, can you find out who dev'd the Red launch and ask them what P99 had the drop rate then and use that number? I mean if he is saying he needs more evidence to change things, where was the evidence he received to adjust it to the % rate it is now?

Summary: change the drop rate to what it was on Red launch.

[Daldaen]

For things in the first 6 months of everquest finding anything at all is rare because fan sites were just then cropping up. Finding something as specific as drop rates which take hundreds if not thousands of entries to confirm you’ve done a good job at shaking potential RNG skewing effects, is just not feasible for this type of legacy item. Trust me, I’ve done a lot of EverQuest research in my day. Finding something this specific this early from EQs lifespan just isn’t feasible.

As evidence of this, all the quotes you pulled from the google group are from dates after the item removal was confirmed via patch note. So all of those people who are claiming the item is now uber rare are mistaken and it actually got removed. Brad has a post confirming the removal of the item and later planar Nerf.

I think the fact that literally every other analogous rare creature from vanilla has a similar drop rate distribution of their common and rare drops is extremely telling. If there were some outliers that would be one thing. We are talking about the hundreds of named across 30+ zones that follow this pattern. Common 80-60%, Rare 20-40%. I get that the item is unique and was removed but when they originally launched with all of these unique items like JBoots, Quillmane Cloak, Guise, FBSS/Mithril 2hs (only group haste items prior to kedge revamp) etc. you find that even those items also follow the above drop distribution.

I would think in the absence of specific evidence this should be set to match the norm for all the other items which is what I’m suggesting. Rather than setting the item to the extremely rare chance it is currently.

[Sunderfury]

So, I'm not even saying you're wrong. Just that a dev had asked for more evidence to increase the drop rate. I do not believe there is no additional evidence out there personally, especially considering how valuable this item was to classes. Bound to be some old guides / guild pages out there somewhere.

I searched maybe 30 to 40 mins in one resource and found some decent evidence. Not even sure if different key words could yield better results (noticed people referred to this as "mana stone" early on).