Hey guys! This thread is about locations of spawning rares, but other topics relevant to rares are okay as well. 1. First I just wonder how exactly rares spawn. Telamon have told me on IRC that rares spawn in the same area but with a variation as to which specific spot. However from reading the rares guide thread I get the impression they spawn at the exact same spot/container. Perhaps this varies between rares though which makes both options true. Anyhow, I dont like that rares spawn at predictible locations. 2. I like the idea of spawning rares, it adds even further to the variety of UO and yet another feature that makes the world interesting. However, when the rares spawn in such a way that we can predict, quite specifically, and mechanize a rares collecting business that excitement disappears. We have then, just like the Uruk-Hai did to Isengaard's fair gardens, let our land fall into despair and turned them into a filthy industrial landscape. Therefore I would like to suggest the rare spawn locations would be more randomized. Perhaps totally or as far as possible. I suppose rare hunters would disagree, but maybe there could be a discussion about it. Perhaps there are other suggestions?
It's a tradeoff... on the one hand, you have the ability to figure out where a spawn is, and check it frequently to try to get a few copies of the item, to use yourself or to sell. But, you'd rarely be surprised. Under the proposal in this thread, you'd have some occasional pleasant surprises, but you'd have virtually no ability to find items you were looking for on your own. I think both options have merits. Given that this shard has solved most of the commonly perceived rare problems, through programming and community - that is, unattended gathering and hoarding - I'm rather excited to pursue these thanks to the Guides thread and runebooks some players have helpfully marked and left public. I like that I can be somewhat self-sufficient. If I want a pot of wax, but do not want to pay exorbitant prices for it, I can roll up my sleeves and try to find it myself. Under a randomized system, I would have essentially no chance at that.
You have a point Dalavar. Maybe we can find a middle ground of Uruk-Hai and the fair gardens of Isengaard. As the system seems to be now it makes the rares hunter profession possible (in an effective way) which is pretty cool, and any class that is not mainly about fighting is interesting to me. Maybe there's no other way, I dunno, but I like the idea that anyone could just stumble upon a rare somewhere, without making that particular location into a hotspot for the rare hunting machinery. And personally I just find it fun to wander about searching for small treasures that could be anywhere (within certain limits of course: containers, special places in the wilderness etc, maybe not totally random on any grass tile anywhere for example), without having to think "No it's probably no idea, every spot is already found, and it's camped by professionals already, no way I'll find one".
These are good points. If there were ever to be any new spawning rares, perhaps they could have completely random locations, while the existing rares list stays as-is. A little bit of both worlds.
Yeah, I agree with the fun of stumbling upon stuff. That said, ...I don't think this applies, yet at least. The professionals are better able to camp when they're the only ones who know about a spot. I try to stay on the straight and narrow here, but if I am looking for a Pot of Wax, and recall in and happen to notice a player AFK hidden nearby, I'd have no qualms about revealing them and letting the nearby wildlife take care of them for the moment. I think one place that would make sense for "random" rares might be the prisoner camp spawns. I think they're relatively random in timing and location, they have a nice flavor to them, and can encourage all playstyle types, since mages, fighters, bards, tamers and rogues can all handle them.
I like this idea -- and we have a bit of this in place already, as I understand it, in the form of the spawning mage towers in T2A. Pretty sure these have a chance to spawn rares as well -- something like an extension of this would be a good way to make approachable, and unpredictable, availability to some rare items.
Good point, you're right about the mage towers. Of course, I've never found one, and I spend a fair amount of time over there (seeking frenzies, nightmares). I think that's why the rares from those are pretty valuable. The original lands prisoner camps would presumably be more common, and easier to vanquish, thus would potentially have lower-end stuff.
I don't know if its been discussed elsewhere or not but the town crate spawn differs greatly from the production shards as far as the semi's go. Moonglow herb shop spawned herbs quite frequently. Serps Smith for wires, etc. Vesper cards for chisels. Various provisioners spawned food semi's. Several think shops spawned the square tool kit. Etc and so forth. A crate thief was a viable occupation back then for those that felt like doing it and while the relative "abundance" of these items devalued them somewhat, it made for a ton of cheap deco stuff.
I like this idea a lot but I'd hate to ruin all the hard work that others have put in creating our UOR rares guide and selflessly divulging information that would otherwise benefit themselves if kept secret. Rares hunting is one of the only things I've never gotten into in all my years of UO but I'm recently finding inspiration in that thread. I haven't acted on this inspiration yet but if all that information were made obsolete I'd likely lose one more thing on my UOR to-do list.
We're definitely thinking in the same way here mr Blaise! Peculiar I know, but it's true. This obviously points to the objectivity of our case when even cA and A^T can agree. A new patch is now inevitable!
One big different in this shard, compared to others I have seen, is that the spawning rares info has been publicly posted by the community, rather than horded and kept secret. (Not that there aren't folks out there who know spots and don't share the info - but that is up to them. If they found it and want to enjoy their treasures, part of me doesn't blame them for it. :lol: ) Folks here are praised and credited for sharing the info, instead of chastised and threatened. So, most of the fun (for me anyway) is the hunt. Finding the locations is a blast. Will it still be fun when everything is found? A little, but not the same. I think changing things now would be a sturdy kick in the teeth to the folks who have put a lot of time and effort into tracking these spots down. I believe more rares will be added in the future, and I have no opposition if future rare spots have a bit more randomness to them. But in all honesty, I like the system the way it is. I think Tela said that ~50% of the spawning rares spawn in a random area, but yes, those areas are mostly in the same room and just require a CTRL+Shift to find. The timers however, are a lot more random. Nothing has a static timer (IE, you're not going to pick up a gold ingot in Occlo every Sunday at noon) - something might take 22 days to spawn and pop up at 10 AM one month, and 26 days at 9PM the next. So while the location may be known, the timer is not. If you're interested in a challenge, there are still a good handful of rares out there with unknown locations. Feel free to contribute to the rares guide (instead of stealing stuff from people on my steps ). You sure don't! And I commend you for it. Just remember, AFK does not necessarily equal AFK resource gathering.
Oh yeah, don't mess with ReZon's gig. He is my favorite purveyor of pretty pixels. All my plat are belong to him.
I see your point of not destroying all the work some have put into mapping out the various locations of rares, but I'm not sure of how much that (principally) should matter, wont a nerf always have that problem? Anyways, the community and staff mustnt be obliged to follow any certian principal guidelines of course, we do as we wish after weighing the options. But adding even more rares that would spawn more randomly still doesnt solve the point Blaise is making, make rares actually rare.
I hear you, but let me say this: I have been hunting spawning rares since August 2013 and there are still items that I have yet to collect in spots where I know something spawns. 5 months and not finding something sounds pretty rare to me. There are also folks out there who have been at it a lot longer than me and have had the same results. There are a stack of 5 gold ingots and likely a skull candle sitting out there somewhere waiting to be picked up. The large vase and one of the rocks apparently decayed last spawn because no one picked it up. I think the current system works pretty well to be honest.
