Let's talk about Hunts - a detailed rundown of their assumed mechanics

[Stumpedify]

I still don't understand why Brontes and Agrippa are paired, almost anything falls under "player action", including fishing, gathering, fates, item acquisition and leves. The treasure map system and food buffs are not even close to be related, even leves are a better pair with maps than food, as both run on a timer, and still then they are different systems, it seems a bit far fetched imo.

imo Player action is not the correct label for this pairing. It's item use that pairs them, not action. The use of treasure map items spawns Agrippa, the use of food items spawns Brontos. NOTE: you do not have to complete the map to spawn Agrippa, only decipher it.

[Runeth]

And I'd agree that Garlok could be a good example, but whatever happens with Garlok means nothing for Nandi.

I think the most qualified people for testing any of this are those in low population servers, you can reduce drastically the amount of coincidences and, if the server is organized, could even control some tests with little external influence.

I think someone from Zalera posted earlier, perhaps they could help. Mateus is also a low pop server, if Steve Uk learns that correlation does not equal causation and perform many tests instead of quickly jumping to conclusions he could also be a valuable help here.

I just wanted to update this post on some of my findings on Zalera for a few different hunts marks. There have been a number of different theories flying around and I wanted to update some information on my own personal findings on some of these thoeries. Also, please note that while my information I have gathered is factual, the theories inferred from the data is just that, theories.

First off, and one of the most thrown around that I think some people are missing the mark on is Nandi. From my own personal experience, of the last 6 finds of Nandi, I have found 5 of them, and a fellow LS buddy found the remaining 1. In the sake of gathering information, before using any method to try to spawn Nandi I scout the entire area before trying to spawn him. (This is to help reduce inaccurate spawn information as I don't want to assume something caused him to spawn if he in fact already was up before I found him)

Of the 5 times I discovered him only 1 of the 5 was he up before I attempted to spawn him. During the time I have attempted to spawn him in the remaining 4 times, people in the zone have ranged from 2-17 though it has never been just me. Also, of the 4 times I presumably spawned him, 3 have spawned on me (One time actually killing me! Jerk.)

Bases off of the consistency I've been able to spawn him, and the fact that others don't stumble upon him (only people looking for him find him) I personally believe that he is indeed spawned by minions alone. (Walking has no effect as I've never needed to do this for these spawns)

As for Nuny, I still suspect that a large number of people in the zone is a factor for him to spawn. Looking at our past 4 recorded kills of Nuny 3 have been on Tuesday afternoon, and the remaining 1 was on a thursday afternoon while we had a giant group doing A rank hunts while waiting for me along with some hunt LS friends to trigger S ranks. At the time of this Thursday spawn, Zanig'oh was killed within 10 minutes of Nuny spawning. This gathered information supports zone population having some sort of factor as Tuesday is when we get the largest groups for A ranks as people are doing Soldiery capping, and as for the thursday instance I was able to verify firsthand a high zone pop just prior to the spawn.

That being said, Tuesday would also be the highest number of times Alben the Ashen would die as these weekly hunts are reset. I thought this may have a factor, but I have now killed him 5 times in the past few days, but Nuny is still at 17d 4 hr as I write this post, so I am still unconvinced.

As for the rest of Vandesann's findings, I have had success with the remaining of these theories. I will have to start paying attention to the new Garlok theory as this would make more sense, and I would not be surprised that this is a auto spawn mechanic. I'll continue to pay attention to this post, and if anyone has ideas on anything that would be best tested on a lower pop server I might be able to assist.

(We also did just get some people who jumped ship from Excal to come over to the Zalera family! :P )

Happy hunting,
Runeth

(P.S. Just an edited note to Vandesann as this might be something you did not realize. A good amount of information inferred from server down time where the server did not go down can probably be safely ignored. Fact is while they flipped off the authentication servers they did not shutdown the servers themselves. When I don't play I AFK in my FC's house. During the time the servers were "Down" I was still logged in and could still move between zones. Meaning that if all servers were treated the same way, others were most likely still logged into the game at the time these servers were "Down". Just once you were disconnected, you were unable to log back in. Hopefully this information is insightful!)

[Vandesaan]

What do you need for me to submit in order to help with your data gathering?

It is extremely hard to verify that a leve triggers the spawn for Lampalagua, which is why I am doubting it. Also because of the pairing theory that I am putting such a big question mark on it. It might well be that Lampalagua is the odd one out and we've missed something completely.

Nunyunuwi

Let's talk about translation. You know about Slycer's translations, the ones that have been considered true for the original Japanese flavour text for all the S ranks? Well, I went back and looked at Nunyunuwi's translation and the original Japanese text and found a glaring error.

When he isn't moving, he blends into the surrounding landscape, but, being imprinted with a defensive instinct, he will wake up and begin to move when a large-scale battle takes place."

The original text for this section of the translation is this

普段は動かず、荒野の大岩にしか見えないが、大規模な戦闘が多発すると、目覚めて動き出すという。

Now, most of this is correctly translated. Apart from the bit that matters, "a large-scale battle". 大規模な戦闘が多発すると refers to large-scale battles that occur... FREQUENTLY. Not "a large-scale battle", but FREQUENT OCCURRENCE of them.

I believe this is what we've been missing and what needs to be tested. I can see on the site I linked previously that every. single. Japanese server. have killed Nunyunuwi twice since the last maintenance. Go out there. Do the FATEs in the bottom half of Southern Thanalan with large masses of people, preferably at least two parties of 8, the more the better. Makes sure you do the FATEs one by one, not separately. Don't stop till Nunyunuwi shows up and tell me your stories about it.

[Stumpedify]

(P.S. Just an edited note to Vandesann as this might be something you did not realize. A good amount of information inferred from server down time where the server did not go down can probably be safely ignored. Fact is while they flipped off the authentication servers they did not shutdown the servers themselves. When I don't play I AFK in my FC's house. During the time the servers were "Down" I was still logged in and could still move between zones. Meaning that if all servers were treated the same way, others were most likely still logged into the game at the time these servers were "Down". Just once you were disconnected, you were unable to log back in. Hopefully this information is insightful!)

Just going to throw my 2 cents in here. Unless we are thinking about different maintenances, I don't know how you stayed on. I was still logged in and playing to the very last moment, and got booted off once the maintenance started message showed up -- just like what happens with normal maintenance. When I logged back in the instant maintenance finished -- was spamming the launcher until it went green -- there was barely anyone else online, which suggests to me that I wasn't the only one who got booted, and I was one of the very first back on. Garlok was waiting for us. If there were people still online through the maintenance, every single A rank wouldn't have been waiting for us either as there is no way one or two wouldn't have been killed during that time... what was it, 3hrs?

[Runeth]

There has only been one maintenance that I'm aware of that the servers were not actually shutdown. I very rarely log out of the game. As a matter of fact I'm currently AFK in the game at my FC, while I'm in fact actually at work right now. During this maintenance I'm speaking of, I got back on my PC (Which was still logged in) and proceeded to do my Ixali dailies. I had forgotten about the maintenance and only remembered when I logged into our mumble server and a friend whom was playing payday 2 asked what I was up too. I said I was doing my Ixali dailies, and he proceeded to not believing me. It was at this point that I realized there was nearly no one online save me.

That being said, I would not be surprised if others did get kicked, and I wouldn't be surprised if maybe the housing wards are kept in a different server that people weren't booted from. That being said, as I stated, I was able to freely move when I got back online without being disconnected. This was during server maintenance and others from my FC were unable to log in at this time.

While you may not believe me and, honestly that is your own prerogative, this is in fact what I experienced during the said maintenance. I will also note that during the maintenance I only ventured between Lavender Beds, Gridana, North Shroud, and Coerthas. I also did not use teleport as I was afraid this might boot me and I wanted to finish my dailies if possible.

[Vandesaan]

A little over 60 minutes until S rank in Central Shroud will pop.

[HiryoRandgris]

So going back to Garlok, Vandes
Do you have any data that shows the same weather cycles but for Garloks that spawn <5 hours into his "window"?

Wish i knew about that gcgame site sooner.

[Vandesaan]

So going back to Garlok, Vandes
Do you have any data that shows the same weather cycles but for Garloks that spawn <5 hours into his "window"?

Wish i knew about that gcgame site sooner.

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand the question? You want weather data from when he spawns a shorter while into his spawn window?

[Budi]

I failed to catch a Glimmerscale (Got away) and Zona Seeker still popped. I asked in Shout if anyone else was fishing and found a Glimmerscale but I got no reply. Someone was looking for the S before the Glimmerscalse appeared, and it didn't pop yet.

So maybe you don't have to catch it. It just needs to bite (?)

[Vandesaan]

Mindflayer should have spawned on most servers now.