Flask of Supreme Power

[oldmandennis]

I also noticed that those spots seem to be "connected" to your character, because the spawns often appear when you get close enough to the nodes. Your character seems to be set on a timer, i.e. "char has found last RTV 45 minutes ago", and when that time is over, a new RTV will spawn in one of the four locations if you get close enough. Otherwise, it wouldn't be possible to give players a fair number of resources in a world that is shared by hundreds of players.
[right][snapback]98316[/snapback][/right]

I _strongly_ suspect this is not the case. I would frankly be shocked if the spawning subroutine did anything like check the characters in range and how long it's been since they mined something. What if there are 10 characters near by, but 3 have mined recently and only 5 are miners?

[nobbie]

I _strongly_ suspect this is not the case.  I would frankly be shocked if the spawning subroutine did anything like check the characters in range and how long it's been since they mined something.  What if there are 10 characters near by, but 3 have mined recently and only 5 are miners?
[right][snapback]98330[/snapback][/right]

If, say, 3 (miner) characters are in range, the one whose timer shows "green" and who is approaching the node, will cause the RTV to spawn *IF* there hasn't been a spawn in that area within, say, the last 15 minutes. If the other two miners notice "your" spawn and are quicker at the vein, i.e. with a faster epic mount, then bad luck for you who has "activated" the node :)
As I've said, this is pure speculation, but I think that there is indeed some "subroutine" that checks your character against the potential spawn points. I think it works like this: Some "main routine" prevents that a new spawn can appear in less than i.e. 15 minutes on any RTV point within a certain area, and a "subroutine" checks if you have been mining there within the last i.e. 30 minutes. If there hasn't been a spawn within the last 15 minutes AND if you haven't mined there within the last 30 minutes, then a RTV will spawn at one spawn point in that area.

[Ruvanal]

If, say, 3 (miner) characters are in range, the one whose timer shows "green" and who is approaching the node, will cause the RTV to spawn *IF* there hasn't been a spawn in that area within, say, the last 15 minutes. If the other two miners notice "your"  spawn and are quicker at the vein, i.e. with a faster epic mount, then bad luck for you who has "activated" the node :)
As I've said, this is pure speculation, but I think that there is indeed some "subroutine" that checks your character against the potential spawn points. I think it works like this: Some "main routine" prevents that a new spawn can appear in less than i.e. 15 minutes on any RTV point within a certain area, and a "subroutine" checks if you have been mining there within the last i.e. 30 minutes. If there hasn't been a spawn within the last 15 minutes AND if you haven't mined there within the last 30 minutes, then a RTV will spawn at one spawn point in that area.
[right][snapback]98333[/snapback][/right]

Far too messy to code and bother with. During closed beta they had made a point near the end of mentioning how they were changing the (mob) spawning routine to change it from a fixed interval (typically 10 minutes in outdoor areas) to a dynamic system based on the number of players in the area (presumably an area would be say Darkshore or possibly one of the sub zones in that area like the southern highlords ruins). This dynamic spawning meant that they could put a respawn factor onto whatever and that would be used to set the effective rate based on the number of characters in the area.

To give an idea of this, on the first opening of the retail game and lot of the starting areas had some insane mob respawn rates due to the number of players all trying to get started at once. When one of my characters was doing the last quest in the starting area of the humans in Northridge Abby, I needed to collect a head from one of the Defias there. Now I had played that out a few times in beta and it was usually a pain to do if there were others around and they did not want to group. One player tagged and killed and you waited about 6 minutes for the corpse to despawn and then another 4 to have him reappear (and a tag race then to see who could get him and move on). Pretty rough to get done with competition. On that first day of retail though, with the massive number of players all in the starting areas, that named mob was repawning about once every 45 seconds. His corpses were littering the area since they still had the longer decay time unaffected. Similar things could be seen with some of the other named mobs players had to gao after the early days. It could be very dangerous even with some of the normal mobs around since they could at times end up respawning before you even had time to loot the one that they were replacing.

On the flip side of that, I have had some chance lately to be on doing some quests in some areas where there might be only 4-8 characters in the whole zone (Stonetalon for example). The respawns were slowed down enough that I could clear a large enough area around myself in the Charred Vale that it could take me ~20 seconds or more to run back to a mob that had finally respawned from what I killed earlier. Apparently the respawns were down to the 20+ minutes mark due to the low player counts there.

Now, although they did not specifically mention that the dynamic respawning would affect nodes like ore and herbs, it would make sense that they too were handled the same or skinning and cloth collection would be too far off kilter from mining and herb gathering if they were not scaled in the same manner. I have seen the effect of this with some of miners at various times. Mining in Tanaris when the area was effectively dead of players (13 players including mine and I could account for 9 of them as being in Zul Furrak at the time from various chats). The mining virtually sucked then, I could do full circut sweep and get a reasonable amount of ore, but after that there was only a trickle since the respawns were pretty slow and I had used up all the ones that had spawned prior to my logging on at that time. Compare that to more active times of day when I could do the same routes and pull in a fairly consistant amount of ore per circut. And that was with 2-4 other miners competing for the ore also. From my observation the ore and herb respawns are also set to be using this dynamic respawning. The best time to really make a haul on some of this is when there are a lot of players in the area, but almost none of them doing any active gathering of the item you are going for (ore/herbs). Skinning would go similar except for the need to kill the mobs in many cases, but then again there is the possibility of skinning the kills left by others from their questing.

From having looked at what I have run into in doing mining, not all the nodes are set to the same factor for respawning. There are some nodes in an area that seem to be the ones on the shorter factors; they come up often and at really busy times you can almost always find them on a collection curcuit (if you do not have too much competition in front of you). There are some other nodes that appear to be on very long respawn factors. These I have gone for many days (or weeks) without ever having a spawn at them, or only showing a spawn when the area is a major hotbed of activity.

This is most likely one the stronger factors in what some are seeing of the long respawn timer on the Black Lotus. They are set up as a replacement node for something else and are on a rather long respawn timer. Some of the zones that have this herb as a spawning point are not exactly the areas that have a strong reason for the players to stick around for extended periods of time. This in turn will leave those areas with a fairly slow respawn rate.

[nobbie]

From having looked at what I have run into in doing mining, not all the nodes are set to the same factor for respawning.  There are some nodes in an area that seem to be the ones on the shorter factors; they come up often and at really busy times you can almost always find them on a collection curcuit (if you do not have too much competition in front of you).  There are some other nodes that appear to be on very long respawn factors.  These I have gone for many days (or weeks) without ever having a spawn at them, or only showing a spawn when the area is a major hotbed of activity.

Thanks for the detailed answer, I was waiting for your technical comments in this regard ;)

The difference between respawn factors (shorter vs. longer) in the various areas would explain my observations with some particular nodes, and why I've drawn the probably false conclusion that there must be some "subroutine" that checks your char against the nodes.

[nobbie]

Some numbers using the flask (without flask / with flask):

Corruption: 156 Shadow per Tick (DoT) / 183 Shadow per Tick (DoT)
Curse of Agony: 66 Shadow per Tick (DoT) / 78 Shadow per Tick (DoT)
Immolate: 285 Fire Init. + 115 per Tick (DoT) / 315 Fire Init. + 134 per Tick (DoT)
Shadow Bolt: 718 Shadow / 824 Shadow (1736 Crit.)

First impression: Great buff that allows fast (solo) kills and up to 3 adds without problems, but VERY expensive :)

[redinter]

Thanks for the detailed answer, I was waiting for your technical comments in this regard ;)

The difference between respawn factors (shorter vs. longer) in the various areas would explain my observations with some particular nodes, and why I've drawn the probably false conclusion that there must be some "subroutine" that checks your char against the nodes.
[right][snapback]98392[/snapback][/right]

From what I have observed, I agree with Ruvanal, on that the respawns seem to work that way. But what I would like to add is that as Mongojerry commented, some nodes are interconnected, there seem to be given amount of spawn spots for a single node. If you fail to find all of them for a given node, it may well be that it appears not to respawn.

I have seen this behaviour with mobs too, as an example the panther boss, Bagh'tera in STV has 2 spawn points that I know of, one north and one south of the ogre mound. I noticed while waiting for a respawn, that it took ages, I went then searching and found her sitting on the other point. I have seen this behaviour with a lot of other unique mobs and am almost sure it applies to trade good nodes too.

With herbs as rare as a purple lotus, where there are maybe one or two per map, a failure to find a spawn point will seem like it is taking ages to respawn, meaning you will only find it again, once somebody else harvests the other spawn point.

edit: behaviour also seen on felwood plants.

[Kevin]

From what I have observed, I agree with Ruvanal, on that the respawns seem to work that way. But what I would like to add is that as Mongojerry commented, some nodes are interconnected, there seem to be  given amount of spawn spots for a single node. If you fail to find all of them for a given node, it may well be that it appears not to respawn.

I have seen this behaviour with mobs too, as an example the panther boss, Bagh'tera in STV has 2 spawn points that I know of, one north and one south of the ogre mound. I noticed while waiting for a respawn, that it took ages, I went then searching and found her sitting on the other point. I have seen this behaviour with a lot of other unique mobs and am almost sure it applies to trade good nodes too.

With herbs as rare as a purple lotus, where there are maybe one or two per map, a failure to find a spawn point will seem like it is taking ages to respawn, meaning you will only find it again, once somebody else harvests the other spawn point.

edit: behaviour also seen on felwood plants.
[right][snapback]99030[/snapback][/right]

I know for sure that nodes that spawn on the volcano in Un'Goro will spawn with nodes in Terror run as well. So I will often leave people to fight for the volcano node while I go and get other nodes that I know are up now too.