Stray Mary / Duplicate .dat NMs

[Wulfgang]

Definitely glad the newbie section was added...

I recently wanted to pick up a Mary's Horn for my BRD. The fact that I am a competent 75 RNG who farmed Rams and VE prolifically during my earlier years has made me want to get the horn myself despite being able to easily to afford it.

Im not very good at dat mining, etc; but I found this post on Alla concerning Mary:

The zone object name file for Konschtat Highlands is ROM\26\45.DAT. View this file (I prefer to use a hex editor set to 28 bytes per row) and search for Stray Mary; you will find that there are, indeed, two of them. The first one is located at hex offset 16DC, the second at hex 25F4. So not only can Stray Mary spawn twice quickly back-to-back, but it might even be possible for two of them to spawn at the same time. I'm curious as to whether this was changed to be this way in an update, or whether there were always two. My guess is the former, but I can't check because I can't seem to locate my installation CDs at the moment.

My question is this: What does the duplicate NM dats imply? Is it theoretically possible to have two Stray Mary's up at once? I've personally killed Mary in the north to have it pop in the south about 15 minutes later.

Also a question for my own benefit: Can you tell in the .dats where an NM might pop in the widescan list? Or some correlation to its neighboring mobs? Ive seen the dat lists for remnants areas, and the mobs seem to be listed in a specific order.

PS: If anyone knows where on the widescan list Mary appears from experience, Id love a PM or response, widescan list is getting burned in my retinas at this point.

[Kaylia]

Zone .dats simply consist of a list on name, no way to tell where they are from. However, mobs next to each other usually pop close to each other since they were added at the same time. That's how people figured certain NM in salvages or khimairai location, simply by looking at the location of mobs next to it.



Stray mary from what I know is one of the oldest NM added to the game, so it's not impossible they had duplicated entry for something that shouldnt have 2 entry. In any case, that doesnt mean 2 can be up at the same time, since they could easily program something that prevent 2nd from popping if first one is up.

[Bagel]

Leaping Lizzy is supposed to be the same way, and is known to pop back to back on occasion, but I've never heard of two copies being up at the same time.

[Khamsin]

If 2 Leaping Lizzys or Stray Marys pop back to back, does this mean it'll be a couple hours before the next one since both instances of the NM popped and both are on their "cooldown" period?

[Kaylia]

If 2 Leaping Lizzys or Stray Marys pop back to back, does this mean it'll be a couple hours before the next one since both instances of the NM popped and both are on their "cooldown" period?

It depend how long the cooldown period is, and it's probably hard to say unless someone compilled lizzie poptime for a long period. Who know, it might be 15min cooldown minimum for both

[souleman]

I camped lizzy for about 7 hours before server reset once. He popped back to back (west then east) 3 times in that time. After the server reset, he poped in west, then about an hour later popped in the east.

Aparently each instance is on a seperate timer. I started to hold one, just to see if I could force both instances to pop at the same time, but I had real life things to take care of, and never got back around to testing it.

[Raylinn]

Also a question for my own benefit: Can you tell in the .dats where an NM might pop in the widescan list? Or some correlation to its neighboring mobs? Ive seen the dat lists for remnants areas, and the mobs seem to be listed in a specific order.

PS: If anyone knows where on the widescan list Mary appears from experience, Id love a PM or response, widescan list is getting burned in my retinas at this point.

Absolutely!

Looking at the dat files, there are 5 sheep preceding each of the copies of Stray Mary. If you are able to locate this set of sheep in widescan somehow (memorizing what surrounds/changing list name in the dat file) mary will always be right under them.
In addition, only these 5 sheep are possible to be placeholders for their copy of mary, and a common belief is that only the top sheep is a true placeholder.

This holds true for nearly all lottery spawn NMs. Only the base monsters that appear just above the NM in widescan are placeholders.

[qatsi2]

This holds true for nearly all lottery spawn NMs. Only the base monsters that appear just above the NM in widescan are placeholders.

Not only can you narrow it down to that, but most times you can narrow it down to the mob just before the NM. In Lizzy's case, the two Rock Lizards that precede Lizzy's name are the placeholders. If you were into editing your DAT's, you could hex-edit those regular mob names to something distinct, a common tactic used by RMT and hardcore campers. The benefit, of course, is limiting the ToD's to keep track of to the single placeholder.

[Jeryhn]

Also a question for my own benefit: Can you tell in the .dats where an NM might pop in the widescan list? Or some correlation to its neighboring mobs? Ive seen the dat lists for remnants areas, and the mobs seem to be listed in a specific order.

The .DAT file is the widescan list, only it accounts for the MobIDs as well. Everything you can widescan will be found in the same order as it appears on the .DAT file.

[Dakana]

Where can I get a good FFXI .dat editor? I'd like to try out these theories on VE.

[Bununyunu]

Where can I get a good FFXI .dat editor? I'd like to try out these theories on VE.

I like hex workshop but its not free. There is a 30 day trial before you have to enter in a registration code. That should be long enough for you to try it out.
http://www.bpsoft.com/

Most of the NM's with placeholders have their placeholder name(s) immediately above the NM's name. VE is among the few that aren't. In the group of damselflys which are immediately above VE, the first damselfly is the PH.

Keep a backup of the zone. The last thing you want is to mess up and have every mob in the zone named the default "npc".

...
Damselfly <--- Placeholder (1st Damselfly in group)
Damselfly
Damselfly
Damselfly
Damselfly
Valkurm Emperor
...


The area in which the damselflys pop is large and the placeholder can pop and be killed before you are aware of it. Widescan is helpful in this case. Iirc, The Damselflies have a 5 minute timer. Once you have a ToD for the placeholder, keep a timer on it and around 5 minutes later (its not exact, it will vary by plus or minus 20 seconds) you should expect the PH or VE to pop.

[Dakana]

thanks

[Jeryhn]

XVI32 is the hex editor I use:
http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/f ... /xvi32.htm

Just seems to have a better interface for me than Hex Workshop, and its freeware.

[Everlasting]

From a KI thread about Stray Mary:

Mary has 2 spawn areas as you all know to the North and the South. At F-9 and G-6 you will notice there is always a flock of 4-5 sheep all huddled together. There will always be 4 at one location and 5 at the other but which is which can change everytime you slaughter them all at both locations. If you stay at the one with 4 and just keep killing them eventually she will pop with them because she seems to be the "stray" 5th pop to make it equal to the other flock. As for a pop timer, she has NO wait time. I have seen her pop within 2 minutes of her last pop. This occurred when I was at the North camp with 4 but a guy was killing the 5 set to the south which kept messing me up cause my 5th would keep popping when he did that. Anyway, once he popped my 5th and Mary popped as his 5th because of it a few minutes later and he killed her and I had killed my 5th a few minutes previous. My next 5th popped 2 minutes later and it was Mary again. Only I got the drop though.

This from a KI thread about LL:

There are 3 groups of lizards, but the ones that are the western most group (bottom of the hill) never seemed to have the ph.

Seems like some mobs have two groups of placeholder mobs.

Which others are duplicated like LL and Stray Mary?[/quote]

[Bununyunu]

From a KI thread about Stray Mary:

Mary has 2 spawn areas as you all know to the North and the South. At F-9 and G-6 you will notice there is always a flock of 4-5 sheep all huddled together. There will always be 4 at one location and 5 at the other but which is which can change everytime you slaughter them all at both locations. If you stay at the one with 4 and just keep killing them eventually she will pop with them because she seems to be the "stray" 5th pop to make it equal to the other flock. As for a pop timer, she has NO wait time. I have seen her pop within 2 minutes of her last pop. This occurred when I was at the North camp with 4 but a guy was killing the 5 set to the south which kept messing me up cause my 5th would keep popping when he did that. Anyway, once he popped my 5th and Mary popped as his 5th because of it a few minutes later and he killed her and I had killed my 5th a few minutes previous. My next 5th popped 2 minutes later and it was Mary again. Only I got the drop though.

This from a KI thread about LL:

[quote:3c8f4]There are 3 groups of lizards, but the ones that are the western most group (bottom of the hill) never seemed to have the ph.

Seems like some mobs have two groups of placeholder mobs.

Which others are duplicated like LL and Stray Mary?[/quote:3c8f4]


These are the ones I can remember

Maighdean Uaine (optical earring)
Serpopard Ishtar (cerulean pendant)
Spiny Spipi (mist silk cape)
Sharp-Eared Ropipi (entrancing ribbon)