Miscellaneous: How do I research?

[nilbog]

After many, many questions in regard to the best way of researching classic information, I'll show you how I do it.

Some of this tutorial will be basic google searching skills. The first thing to remember is the fact that most of what you are looking for no longer exists in a current google search.

For example.. if I was wanting to find the npc "body guard" that used to exist in high hold keep, how can I find this? I know it used to exist, but I can't prove it. I'll be looking for it's race, class, hp, locs and any comments about its unique characteristics.

Most people's first instinct would be .. a google search. If I want to find only text in the order of "body guard", and I want to guarantee that highkeep is mentioned. The quotes indicate what order something should be in, and the + guarantees it will be included in your search.

+"body guard" +highkeep

First link is Illia's Bestiary. Cool. Now let's look at its entry. The oldest entry is someone spamming dick in 2001, to continued conversations in 2005. So it shows it existed at some point, but not much else. This is not helpful to me. Obviously you could replace +highkeep with variations of the zone name.. like "high keep", or "high hold keep", or "highhold keep", or "highpass keep", ad nauseam. Another example would be your google search looking similiar to the above, i.e.

 +"body guard" +"high hold keep"

Reviewing the rest of the google hits, there isn't a lot of information gained that I didn't already know.

Next stop.. the way back machine. http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

It's continuing mission.. to archive webpages. Since 1996, if a certain website was public, and it was archived, this is the place to find it.

If you like allakhazams, then you can do a search for an Illias bestiary that was archived. http://everquest.allakhazam.com/ is the address that we will be looking for. After entering it in the waybackmachine, it should produce a page similiar to this

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://...allakhazam.com

So this shows the dates between May 11, 2000 and and August 22, 2008. Not all links within the archived pages will be archived, so its hit-and-miss on what was gathered. So let's try the first entry, May, 11, 2000.

Clicking on the link, if I then try the archived Bestiary and scroll down to Highpass Keep, choosing it results in an error that it wasn't saved in the archive. Ok, that's fine. Moving on. If I return to the original archived allakhazam's page, if I were to choose.. Antonica, under Zones, then choose Highpass Keep, then Highkeep bestiary list, it displays properly. After that effort, there was still no valuable information on the page. This is the hit-and-miss I referred to earlier.

Moving on.. There are saved showeq spawn logs on various places on the internet. In this example, I'll be using a german-made one accessible via browser. Doing some random searches for "body guard" and variations of highkeep eventually produced this. http://www.adminpage.net/eq.nsf/NPC%...enPage&Start=1

So, that page listed all types of npcs and their zones, wuwu. It provided this information:


body guard, a45[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]4540[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]Rogue(-89,-305)
So.. if I went back to a google search, using their address.. I could do a search for +"body guard" and only use their site. quotes and + to make sure its listed and in the right order, and whatever follows site: will be where it looks.

+"body guard" site:www.adminpage.net/

Okay, now we have the correct name, "a body guard", its level (45), its hitpoints (4540), class (rogue), and a Y/X loc in highkeep.

Lets take 1 more trip.. over to Everlore.com. It used to be great for information... prior to 2002 or so? Don't remember exactly, but now its just adspace.

waybackmachine search for. http://everlore.com

Let's try.. August 15th, 2000.

Using the same methods we used to find the old allakhazam page, let's search for the body guard. :P

Bestiary, High Hold Keep. And there we go, a body guard, with comments and general loot information

There is plenty of information available online; you just have to find it. Using those methods for the common npc research is generally fruitful.

Hope this helps someone!

[kanras]

Here's a list of the links that I use pretty frequently when doing research:

Patch notes: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/19992002.php
Skill caps: http://replay.web.archive.org/200007...u/creation.asp
Old newsgroup (searchable): http://groups.google.com/group/alt.g...topics?lnk=srg
Cleric class forums (only easily searchable class forum that has lots of posts from classic/kunark/velious era): http://www.eqclerics.org/

[maximum]

Bumping this thread (the OP needs to be cleaned up, nilbog)

Kind of redundant, but I find these Wayback links useful:

* http://web.archive.org/web/200108150...allakhazam.com (Illia's Beastiary)

* http://www.tessmage.com/AllaClone/ (Tessmage's Allakhazam Clone)

* http://web.archive.org/web/200105150...vault.ign.com/ (IGN)

* http://web.archive.org/web/200103150...w.everlore.com (Everlore)

* http://web.archive.org/web/200107150...meznet.com/eq/ (Gameznet)

* http://web.archive.org/web/200106010...s/eqlinks.html (Corky from Life Goes On)

* http://web.archive.org/web/199911170...eq-online.com/ (EQ-Online)

Posting for quick and easy access here.

[nilbog]

Originally Posted by maximum [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Bumping this thread (the OP needs to be cleaned up, nilbog)

Sigh, yes it does. Google changed their operands since it was written.

[EQSleuth]

What do you need when it comes to drop rates percentages and quest reward percentages (for those quests that sometimes give more than one item)?

[Mazoku]

This is all great information. However, keep in mind that data on the Internet has been HEAVILY edited, deleted and otherwise omitted from the public. DARPA parses through billions of URLs per second with drones. They search for any information that does not meet public standards of this timeline and any information that is classified. ALL of it gets deleted or moved. That being said, Sharkskin gloves are an EQ 1 item and yet they're not found anywhere. I've met a few other players that say they have seen them on Eq1, how can we search for an item that "doesn't exist"? And yes they do exist, I had them on live and it was not EQ2, those advanced gloves are based off EQ1 Sharkskin Gloves. (+4AC +5sv magic gloves they were from Odus, it was a similar questline to the Sharkskin Shield but Erudites got magical gloves. You also did not have to be an erudite to wear them. I was a human I believe when I had my gloves.) And just because your "database" doesn't have the information for the gloves does not mean they never existed. There are rooms in EQ that "don't exist" and I have been inside of them on p99 blue. (The Highkeep hidden room with a door you can only open in first person and highkeep vaults for example.)

[loramin]

I have tried to "wiki-fy" this thread, in the hopes that the community can help build the best possible "on-ramp" for classic research! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nilbog's great tutorial has been revamped and posted here: https://wiki.project1999.com/Classic...ch_Walkthrough. Nilbog, please forgive me for the editorial liberties taken.

All of the links to classic research sources have been added to: https://wiki.project1999.com/Classic_Research.

[Encroaching Death]

Do we still need to research?

I figured everything was known already.

[nilbog]

If each person researched a mob and found needed classic changes, I'd spend my time implementing fixes instead of researching (content would be finished sooner).

Imagine the possibilities :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_AP3SGMxxM&feature=fvst

[Bayleo]

Nil, I'd be all about helping you do this. I love datamining on the internet, and I work from my office, so time is my friend. Could you give me an idea of a few specific things you're looking for?