Quote Originally Posted by Seif View Post
Fates appear like clockwork which means there's nothing special about them.

In XI you couldn't "camp" certain nms because their pop position and time was completely random. That's what made some of those fights memorable and especially the high spike in diffyculty.
Yeah - No. Time =/= Difficulty.

NMs were hella predictable - why do you think people programmed bots and grieved each other over them so often?
Many NMs had drops that also were disproportionately good for the level you could get them at and window of use for that drop was huge because there were no item levels or clever progression in any sense. You'd spend hours just trying to do the damn things.

EX: Valkurm Emperor - dropped an essential Evasion Item for a very long time that had no peer
- Lottery Spawn from Damselfly in the area spanning (D-8) to (F-8).
- Window opens 60 minutes from its last Time of Death, but can take several hours until it spawns on death of PH spawns.
- The placeholder appears on Widescan as the first Damselfly in the group of four between the second set of Snippers and Thread Leeches.
- Wide Scan II can reach all possible spawn points for both the placeholder and Valkurm Emperor if used by the palm trees in the lower-left corner of (F-8).
- The NM appears below the other three flies and before the Thread Leeches on Widescan.
- Damselfly respawns every 5 minutes (2 hours and 7 minutes Vana'diel time).
- Will link with other flies in the area, and the flies will link with Valkurm Emperor.
= Soloable by all jobs at level 35 and by most jobs at level 30, with some difficulty; Duoable by Beastmaster at level 25. Soloable by Beastmaster Lv24.

So yeah that shit was only as random as not knowing the ToD or not having a 3rd Party program telling you.