Quide to Spawning Quillmane August 2013

[zanderklocke]

Hello Everyone,

Reasons for Creating this Guide and Credentials
I have decided to create a guide that relates to spawning Quillmane, as I feel like the current wiki on Quillmane is not sufficient and partially inaccurate. Any trade secret or tip I have, I will provide as I am hardly ever playing Project 1999 anymore, and I have no desire to sell cloaks in the future. Take this guide as my giving back to the community for all the fun I had on the server. If anyone wants to update the wiki with use of this guide, feel free; I am not much for editing wikis.

For my credibility, you can see the following thread:
http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...ad.php?t=88675
I provided my service for about 8-9 months and sold 60+ cloaks and gave away probably 15-20 more to friends, guild members, or people I just wanted to get out of the camp so I could sell another cloak [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.].

In creating this guide, I used my own experience as well as information from the following links:
http://wiki.project1999.org/Quillmane
http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...ad.php?t=26731
http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=21138 (Not 100% positive the spawn information is true on this website compared to P99, but it seems very probable that Quillmane has a 15% chance to spawn after its triggers are killed.)


Quillmane's pathing.
The image you see below is the map of Quillmane's pathing that currently exists on the wiki.
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The boxes on the map on each line are where Quillmane spawns. Each circle is where Quillmane stops for a second before moving again. When Quillmane reaches the end of her route, she turns around and travels the route in reverse.
This map looks good, but it's slightly wrong.

From my experience this is a more correct map.
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These red marks indicate that Quillmane sometimes immediately goes north after spawning in the south west spawn point; the old map indicates she takes a very eastern route once spawning. I have never seen her go as far north as the shadow men, but sometimes she will go north and then east before resuming what the southwest spawn location path shows. Furthermore, sometimes she is found north of the shadow men but farther south than the first map's path would indicate. While the lines I drew may not be 100% accurate to scale in game, one should check just north and just south of the shadow men as well. The old map does not indicate that.

After finding and killing Quillmane, there is no guarantee a cloak will drop. The median number of Quillmanes it took for me to see a cloak drop was around 6. Many times it dropped off the first Quillmane I spawned, and one horrific experience took 19 Quillmanes.

Placeholders
There are two placeholder triggers for Quillmane. An elephant calf and a lioness; both are wanderers, and as indicated earlier, upon death, each placeholder has a low (possibly 15%) chance to spawn Quillmane in one of her three locations. Both placeholders will always be up and continue to spawn regardless of whether or not Quillmane is up and pathing around. The wiki quotes the lioness as having a respawn time of 15 seconds and the calf having a respawn time of 45 seconds. Both of these seem reasonable, but I have seen placeholders, specifically the lioness, repop almost instantly.

Lioness spawn locations
Here is a map of the lioness path locations.
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The lioness likes to path on top of Splitpaw fairly often and on and just behind a hill south of Splitpaw and just a bit northwest of the Aviak Village. Often the lioness will spawn just north of the Aviak Village and move south towards the village, or it will spawn just southeast of the village and begin to move northwest. However, it seems like the lioness always seems to like to go west eventually and end up near Splitpaw and sometimes just a tad bit northeast of Splitpaw.

Note: There should always be a lioness pathing back and forth going east or west just south of the Aviak Village; this is not a placeholder. There is usually a lioness pathing back and forth going north and south just west of Splitpaw; this is not a placeholder. Also any lionesses too far northeast or east of the Aviak Village in general are usually not placeholders.

Calf spawn locations
My guide is incomplete here because I have not tested all the possible spawn locations of the elephant calf. It used to be a static spawn, but now it has a random spawn location. From my messing around in South Karana for about 15 minutes after the most recent patch, it appears that the elephant calf can be found in similar locations to the lioness. Therefore, it seems plausible that just searching for the lioness will allow for one to find the calf as well. Someone else should do some testing and draw up a map so I can update the guide.

How to identify the right placeholders
This is the most useful portion of the guide, and from what I know, this information is not posted anywhere on the wiki or forums. To identify/verify whether or not a lioness or calf is a placeholder, which can be confusing because there are many calves and lionesses pathing around, make a hotkey with the macro "/target #". This macro (Do not include quotes.), which others may be able to expand on why it works based on the EQ client, will automatically target the correct lioness and calf. It will not target calves and lionesses that are not Quillmane placeholders. It will also target the named gnolls in the area if they path by, but ignore this as they are on a different spawn cycle. I'm told this macro works on placeholders for mobs, but for all intents and purposes, all that is necessary to know is that this hotkey will target your Quillmane placeholders that trigger Quillmane.

Advice
Quillmane Easy Mode (4-5 people required):
By far, the easiest way to ensure you get Quillmane and don't waste time killing placeholders when she is up. Bring enough people to put one person on each spawn point keeping their eyes peeled and have at least one person near the Aviak Village hunting placeholders.

Quillmane More Difficult Minimalist Mode (2 people required):
Have some sort of tracker, bard is probably the easiest because they can move the fastest, running around killing the correct placeholders near the Aviak Village; alternatively, someone who is SoWed and knows the random pathing of the calf and lioness well could accomplish this. While placeholders are being killed, have a bard constantly circling the zone and following all of Quillmane's spawn paths.

Quillmane Luckiest Day in your Life Method (1 person required and method not recommended)
Sit at Splitpaw and kill any placeholders that path over Splitpaw while hoping that Quillmane paths by on one of the two paths that go by Splitpaw. Alternatively, kill placeholders at the Aviak Village and then run around the zone looking for Quillmane on her spawn paths.

Last Thoughts
Quillmane is a majestic beast and possibly one of the most unique/rare mobs one can encounter without taking part in high level content, so I ask that you treat her and those looking for her with respect. If you do stumble upon her, check and see if anyone else in the zone is killing placeholders to spawn her. For the difficulty of getting her to spawn and drop a cloak, it's a pretty lousy thing to kill her if someone else is putting in the work to obtain a cloak. Numerous times, she spawned while I was looping the zone, and by the time I reached her, her health was down to 30% due to some other player finding her first. Furthermore, if someone gives you a tip on the location that Quillmane is pathing by while you are busy killing placeholders or looking for her, always tip the person some platinum and feathered leggings for their help. You would tip someone who ports you, so you better tip someone who helps you find a rare mob.

Play nice, have fun, and good luck!

Zanderr Locke

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September 13, 2013 Edit
Information quoted from Kronika later in thread.

"Post patch, the 'golden calf', as it was termed before, no longer spawns in the same place every time. Now, it roams in the same areas and on the same paths as the lioness spawn. I have identified eight paths that these placeholders can take. The black shape in this image represents the hill between the Aviak Tree and Splitpaw. The placeholders can spawn on any of these paths and path in any direction along them. They may jump from one path to another after spawning, but these are all the routes they can take.

[Basically, the] elephant calf follows same spawn pathing as lioness.

...One thing to note with the hermit house spawn is that QM can path OVER the hill to the hermit house, or AROUND the hill to the hermit house. If you've been killing placeholders for over an hour and you still haven't seen a QM spawn, the people you have sitting on the spawns probably missed one."

Kronika's Map showing elephant calf pathing
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