How exactly do people find out about where an A rank is?

So apparently, I'm in Coerthas Central Highlands because I wanted to see *spoiler* Haurchefant's grave.

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So, I find my old nemesis Marraco, who randomly attacked and killed me once when I was a lower level questing in the area. Being much stronger than I was back when he killed me, I decided to engage him in combat on the way to my destination.

I start fighting him with Eos standing away from me healing me when my health drops below 80%, then instantly people just start asking for a party, then instantly there's tons of people where I am who start killing the elite mob.

Erm, do people use radar hacks or something to find A ranks? I didn't see any scouts or anything, nor did anyone say "Hey there's an A rank here" in shout. Just people randomly asking for an invite to a party and a pack of people suddenly show up to where the site of where my revenge was supposed to be.

I dunno, I've never done hunts before.

A ranks spawn in random locations every few hours. I wanna say every 3 but am not sure of the time. S ranks are more involved and generally involve someone or a number of people actively doing things to spawn them. And hunt groups actually spread out and look for the hunts in order to find them.

People usually just wander around and search for them.

edit: If someone sees an A rank usually the call to arms goes out in a linkshell or party chat; not always in the shout channel, so that's probably why suddenly you had a million people on you.

When I'm busy and I find a hunt I'll just link it in /L chat and keep on running. So it very well may have been reported without you seeing anyone.

Linkshells. Some people share mark locations on linkshells before shouting them on the map so that people have some time to get there before someone in the vicinity pulls it right away.

Now, the location you described is near the way of the Svara chain of fates, so someone may have seen it and reported it. Or maybe someone who was on their way to the grave too.

http://i67.tinypic.com/2ef22qw.jpg

This wasn't the location, but this was the chat log.

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Originally Posted by Sicno

Linkshells. Some people share mark locations on linkshells before shouting them on the map so that people have some time to get there before someone in the vicinity pulls it right away.

Now, the location you described is near the way of the Svara chain of fates, so someone may have seen it and reported it. Or maybe someone who was on their way to the grave too.

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I noticed the svara fate but only after Marraco was dead and it was far away from the location.

Excalibur has a huge network of people that are pretty much constantly and consistently checking out the spawn points (which are widely known) of As and Ss. Bs also spawn at all the same locations that the As and Ss will spawn. Those people are in linkshells, who are in linkshells with others, who are in other linkshells all relaying information on hunts across each other.

They also use a website to know what mobs to look for based on their kill times (also widely known, thanks to the data collected by Excalibur's own players) and they update the website to keep the timers relatively accurate.

You could do the same if you made your own spreadsheet and had people reporting to you the kill times, or you can use the tools available to do the same.

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

....Erm, do people use radar hacks or something to find A ranks?....

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below is an old thread that may give you some idea ^^;

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post2264071

There are a number of preset spawn points (e.g. Hellsclaw is always somewhere on the Wineport side of Eastern La Noscea) that an A rank can randomly spawn in once their timer is up. Larger NA worlds use Guildwork pretty often to track hunts, but smaller worlds (from what I've seen) tend to have hunt groups that use a hunt timer like the one on Ariyala's site. I'm not sure what JP/EU worlds use.

Probably a combination of people actively hunting using a timer website and people using Guildworks.

Once while heading over the bridge east of Dry Bone I've noticed character models flying across the gorge below the bridge and through the cliff walls. They all looked the same and in the same cloths. Either I somehow noticed gill-bots speeding across the map in ways that shouldn't be possible or the same folks that are sending spam tells are camping zones and selling info/kills to clients as soon as they pop.

Otherwise you would be surprised how many hunt link shells use voice chat to communicate pops and estimated re-pops on A or spawn conditions for S along with locations. Like dragging a long fight with that one A rank in Sea of clouds until that bird pops, and usually other people are roaming around the area to see if and where. While spawn points are random some will always re appear in a specific section rather than the whole map. It's still a large area to search though and you could have an overlapping section. Likely they will quietly and quickly kill a hunt NM and those shouting are in the general area and ran into the NM. Most wont even <pos> let alone shout anymore due to how quickly they die.

Most of it is finding them, the other half. Cheating with 3rd party programs.

I'm on PS4 and absolutely LOVE hunts :) Being on PS I have no way to 'cheat' and just run around looking. I use Ariyala tracking although there a few few sites and different people use different sites. When I do find one my macro will tell my party, wait 5, tell Link Shells, wait 5 and then shout.

Basically the hunt mobs have higher visibility so they are seen farther away. Those that know what they are looking for will be able to spot them before you spot the scout. And yeah a lot of it is going on in linkshelss and party chat.

Yes, there're third party apps that give away the locations of the hunts as well as timer websites. There're also apps that automatically send the hunt call in linkshells for you, so you don't have to do it.

Infact, there's pretty much an app/bot script for just about anything in this game really. Enough that it could basically play it's self for you.

Most lame~ish hunters (read here, the leeches who don't have enough scouts to leech anymore) use guildwork now. Yoi just have to afk/roam the map and the app will signal the mob's position to everyone else using the app as soon as it enters your game's field of vision. Which means the distance necessary for the game to display the mob, not the fact that your camera is displaying it. For S rank mobs, you just have to be on the map, as they are displayed no matter the distance

Well the questionable thing is, if only the OP fought him, and nobody else spotted him, why the whole zergtrain ran loose...

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

S
Erm, do people use radar hacks or something to find A ranks?

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The answer is yes. They are cheating.

Funny enough that I scouted on reset day for my weekly B in old zones in Eastern Thanalan... ran around and into Maahes. Shared in 4 linkshells and FC, then shouted 2 times. Noone but FC mate bothered to come.... oookay after 5 mins we pulled with chocos out and this fight took us 7 + mins because of the stone skills and still noone joined us until we had it killed... like seriously and on other days they get killed within 30s after shouts/scouts >.<

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Originally Posted by Werhusky

Funny enough that I scouted on reset day for my weekly B in old zones in Eastern Thanalan... ran around and into Maahes. Shared in 4 linkshells and FC, then shouted 2 times. Noone but FC mate bothered to come.... oookay after 5 mins we pulled with chocos out and this fight took us 7 + mins because of the stone skills and still noone joined us until we had it killed... like seriously and on other days they get killed within 30s after shouts/scouts >.<

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Just make sure you have Silence for Stone Cold and he's easy to kill.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

Just make sure you have Silence for Stone Cold and he's easy to kill.

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We were war and whm so no silence ^^ I don't recall all the hunt mechanics and tbh rarely bothered with them because hunts usually are overfarmed... but it is really fun to killing hunts in 2-3 man groups where you experience the mechanics :)

Guildwork app is what people are using. It's something that needs to be addressed, and patched, and banned.

Well once time I accidently found Zanig'oh and want try to kill it alone. With a long time I could kill it thanks to SCH job :)

At least you didn't get flamed for it OP. I've tried to solo several level 50 A rank hunts I found when no one else was around and as soon as people started showing up I got the most disgusting hate in Shout. I got Maahes down to about 80% one time and then people showed up and started calling me a retard and such in chat, screaming at me and then started yelling for someone to reset it. A tank soon established hate on it and pulled it off me and reset it, which I'm pretty sure counts as griefing, along with all the flame in chat.

Well in 2.X people were actually using a tracker for hunts, perhaps this has not changed.

Considering that use of a third party tool that actively manipulates the game is used community wide for DPS checking it's really not that much of a stretch that there are players sad enough to use hacks to track hunts.

There are websites with timers. If the window was open chances are people were already looking for it and saw it near you then reported to the hunt LS. Just because you may not have seen anyone doesn't mean that they didn't see the A rank.

So much cheating thanks to Guildworks. I have no idea why they haven't addressed it yet when it puts players on PS3 and PS4 at a complete disadvantage.

I stopped caring about hunts and am much happier for it. No use in pulling your hair out trying to zerg rush the same mobs over and over again just for a reward you can get slightly faster.