Data and extensive research? On Zam?!?!?!?!?! (Apkallu)

[Gere]

Some interesting stuff here:

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?f ... =18;page=1

For about half a year or so (off and on a lot) I have been trying to research the mysterious Apkallus and their hate systems. For those who do not know the penguins (Apkallus) have a strange hate system that builds up an immunity to your attacks (both physical and magical) It gets so bad that a bird you could once solo with ease will now be almost unstoppable. From once when your hits would be 100, it will dwindle down to 10... sometimes lower.


One of my in-game goals from the first day I started was to find and solve at least one mystery in FF11. I got pretty far in this dream but sadly I can't go any further and wish to share the information I gathered. Maybe one day someone can take it the steps further I can not.

It's a lot of info so I'll break it up a tad:

The NPC's (Green named Apkallus)

Misconception: It is possible to trade certain fish to the Apkallu NPCs, which makes them follow you around.
Ahtapot
Veydal Wrasse

Facts: More fishes than these two will be excepted. Definitely Giant Catfish and istavrit can also be traded.

Opinion: I believe trading the NPC penguins fish is not dependent on type of fish but by weight. I fished up some Veydals and found that fish weighted under about 70 or less would not be accepted. Same went for the catfish, though at a higher weight.

Mystery: istavrit are light weighted large fish. I think 14 was a standard compared to the others that went to 100 or higher. These light weight fish are accepted by the penguins but I have no idea why. Maybe the fishes eaten are picked by weight percentage?... seems far fetched.

Neat fact: You can steal a NPC away from another player if you trade it a higher weight fish. True example: I traded a npc one fish weighted at 77. My friend Jinky then traded the same npc one weighted at 75... nothing. She then traded one weighted at 82 and lo and behold it fallowed her and her alone. We tried this many times just to be sure.

Misconception: I've heard that you have to drag apkallu to a certain spot to pop an NM

Opinion: At least for the penguins in mount Z I can say I dragged a npc all over while mining and exploring. Never once did I pop a NM. I don't believe this to be true.

Opinion 2: It's my strong belief that the npc penguins are there to negate the accumulations of hate... but more on that later.

Player question: WTF where did the npc penguins go ><?

Opinion: The green named npc's seem to have place holders, at least they seem to pop in the same place on a consistent basis. It could be you have to get rid of the normal penguin mobs here in order to get the green named npc's... it could also be they just pop after killing a few in the zone. I personally believe the first.

New Fact: You can zone the place holders and the npc's penguins can pop in thier place. It's good fun as these guys are real slow and your chances of getting hit are pretty slim even with multiple ones after you.

Player question: umm... why is this white named bird fallowing me O.o ?

Answer: no idea at all. but.....

Fact: The green named npc's penguins can turn white named as a normal Mob would and still fallow you around. While testing, me and Jinky saw the change a few times.

Opinion: I believe the Green named birds turning white is directly connected to hate accumulation. We saw a significant jump in hate after one of our npc's turned white.

Far fetched Opinion: It could be the NPC's penguins are the keepers of hate. When they turn from green to white and you kill them, it could be you just killed a bird that stored all that hate before. When I was duo'ing on them we had some hate accumulate but nothing really bad, also Yawn was still their only tp attack. Once we killed the white npc we had a huge jump in hate and an added tp move happened.

Also when solo The green named npc's stayed around for a long long time. In a duo the time they stayed green was limited. This may be due to the hate being accumulated by more than one person.

Apkallu (The Mob)

Sadly I do not have a lot of facts here, but a whole lot of speculations from what I tested. Don't take the fallowing as fact please.

Player based Information: Apkallu will indeed gain hate over time. As they do, their range of special attacks increases (up to Frigid Shuffle, a brutal AoE Paralyze), their damage resistance increases (on magic and physical) and their ability to Counter (as per a monk) or multiple attack increases.

Thoughts: Penguins indeed will gain hate over time, but I am very confused on the consistants with what kind of hate is gathered. When solo'ing the Penguins in mount Z (the lower lvl ones near leeches) I can accumulate large amounts of hate without ever seeing any TP attack aside from Yawn (aoe Sleep) The damage immunity and counters will be at an unstoppable high... but never have I seen more than one aoe solo.

Opinion: I believe highly that the additional TP moves are dictated by not only penguin hate, but by the number of people in your party. On the same penguins I have solo'd on numerous times I had a duo to test party hate. In a duo we saw Yawn, and Frigid Shuffle. Our hate also seemed to accumulate a lot quicker... though that could be because we were killing them quicker.

Player based information: Apkallu hate resets over time.

Opinion: Seems to be very true. At first I just waited a tally week to make sure all hate reset, and that seemed safe to do. The last times I was there I killed until hate accumulated then logged. A few hours later I logged back in and my hate already seemed to have reset to a normal killing amount. I did this 3 times during one day. I believe hate resets quicker than we think, but this could also be dictated on if you have a NPC penguin with you or not... I really have no idea.

Beastmaster Info: I heard that if you let your pet do all the damage you will never get penguin hate.

Answer: I tried this and it seemed to have failed really bad. The leeches do great and I stayed as far away as possible and made sure I didn't cast anything... still the damage immunity the penguins have built pretty quick.

Side answer 2: I ever tried switching pet types to see if maybe hate was dictated by what kind of mob you used..... no go. Apkallu hate never left.


The experience points party (Can we kill these)


That was my ultimate quest. I really wanted to know if there was a way to xp off these birds and control the hate. This is where I stumbled. The info I got does not add up to any actual facts. Also I get weary of asking 6 people to go xp off a mob that no one touches for good reasons. I have some great finds... but no hard evidence.

Things that did not work:

1. First of all The NPC Apkallus do not act like a normal pet class. They will not attack what you attack and they will watch you die without a sympathetic wing flap.

2. Just having a npc with you does not negate hate. I tried it with one npc, then two, even 3 npcs. It may sound strange but hate even seemed to accumulate faster at the times I tried this... I have a theory on this in a bit.

3. Stuffing an Apkallu full of fish after a few kills will not work. I was really hoping this one was a winner but... no go.


My solo experience:
For solo I have been successful in being able to kill these and keep my hate way down. I've been able to kill them for hours without having to stop. Here's what I did and I believe the same facts may hold true for a 6 person party... to an extent.

Previously when I solo'd here and payed the npc's no mind my hate built up somewhat slow. I think maybe a few hours before I had to stop because my hits were getting pathetic. When I had npc's with me on my first tests my hate seemed to accumulate quicker... alot quicker. I think 30 minutes or so before I had to get out. This really boggled my mind but I think the answer is this:

I believe the accumulation of hate is based on if the NPC Apkallus (or the place holders) are facing the battle.

On that thinking it made sense why when I had no npc's with me, hate built up kinda slow. The npc's moved at their own random areas and at random times could be facing the other directions. But when I had NPC's with me they were always facing the battle, so that's why hate was built up a lot quicker.

For solo this worked out absolutely great. With nps's with me I let the pet do almost all the work just so I knew for sure the NPC Apkallus were facing away. I was able to solo them for the better part of a day without hate building to insane lvl's. I have done this on a couple occasions with the same results.
For parties it gets a bit more complicated, and this is where I get stumped. I don't have 5 people to test things on a whim so it's my major barrier.

We tried the higher lvl Penguins in mount Z that range vt to 75. At first I was under the impression that if the green npc's aren't there, you will not accumulate hate.... this was wrong. We stayed near the zone and tried to merit. About 30 minutes in we noticed the amount of counters were high and our damage went to about half from when we started. The green npc's never did show up so we had to stop.

We ended our party but I logged there. The next morning I went to see if I could get the green npc's to show up by despawning them. Took a good long while but I managed to find 3 green npc's after despawning the zone with diaga and charm.

My time on is very limited and I honestly think it would be a long time before I had a chance to try out the penguins again. I know other have expressed an interest on cracking this mystery and I really hope this information can be added to and used.

I feel I was inches away from finding what makes these birds hate, but I can not do it alone anymore. Killing these birds in a 6 person party seems to be a lot different by the means of hate accumulation and penguin feeding. I really have no idea yet on what to do when they turn white, and I really have no clue on whether tp additions and damage counters are linked on the same hate line... or if they can be nullified the same way.

I never meant to keep this a secret for so long... I just wanted to find the answer before letting everyone know, but I ran as far as I could with it.... for now.

[Zhais]

Opinion: the setup of the post makes me cry

Fact: I am crying

Misconception: Crying is manly

Mystery: Who the fuck organizes their posts like this?

thoughts: It is really fucking annoying, regardless of the information in such posts

Neat Fact: The evil dark side robot (HK-47) from Knights of the Old Republic always talks like this, always announcing what kind of statement he's about to say.

Statement: Only robots should talk like this.

[MisterBob]

Interesting, but I wish he ran it through a spell checker. (Fallowing! lol)

[The Blackrose]

http://webpages.charter.net/ltship/b...ages/hk-47.jpg

Statement: Excuse me Master, but I wish to seek out and exterminate the original meatbag for mocking my habits as a protocol droid.

However, this is relatively amusing, if not interesting.

[Grey Jorildyn]

This guy must be a zoologist.

and HK-47 was the first thing that popped into my mind as well... lol

[Lordwafik]

Very interesting post.

Btw I thought flaming in the newbie section for the sake of flaming was a no no now?

[lotmorning]

Flaming someone that took all this time to try to find out this info is kind of retarded, at lest he trying to figure out what these Apkallu are for instead of bashing other people's work. But anyhow nice job taking the time to try and figure out the secret behind these things (if there is any and it not some sadistic joke of SE) i can see it now (GM: lets put a mob that has no point in game see how many players waste hours trying to find out what they for)

[evilpaul]

No backseat modding either!

I thought it was pretty interesting. I haven't even seen theories on how Apkallu hate works much beyond "maybe fish decrease it?!" elsewhere.

Definitely a strange post formatting though.

[Spekkio]

while the compilation method for the data, as well as the spelling leaves a bit to be desired, much of the information contained in the jumble is actually very interesting, despite much of it being theories and observations unsupported by specific, scientific numbers. the part about the fish weight is definitely new, and might yield some interesting information regarding this enigmatic species. in addition, i could easily see the part about NPC's seeing you fight being correct, since there's already examples of mob behavior other than just aggro/linking when you are detected by mobs. the two that come to mind are the diabolos NPCs in dyna tavnazia and the gears in salvage that port upon aggro. the downside to this research coming out will be that now it might be possible to xp on apkallus, and how can you kill something SOOOO cute? ><

[Septimus]

Interesting stuff, formatting and spelling notwithstanding.

P.S. I am working very hard to make "too long; didn't read" into a bannable offense.

[Yutuyu]

I actually liked the format, made it very entertaining to read.

[Thistle]

I liked the way he formatted the information, and it's good that someone spent so much time testing these things. Just a shame he didn't spellcheck it after doing all that work...

If he had added a picture of the cute NPC birds watching at a HNM fight, the post would have been perfect!

Edit:

P.S. I am working very hard to make "too long; didn't read" into a bannable offense.

Yes, please do.

[Tajin]

interesting info, but why xp off penguins when you can rape tigers, shades, qutrubs, etc, etc. penguins are cute

[downwiththesickness]

Oh! I was excited to see my post linked to another great FF11 board... till I started reading the responses. Not really what i was expecting here.

It was a lot of information I had and I had no idea how to post it without it looking like a jumble of chaotic word. I am sorry if it makes your eyes bleed.

In any case, thank you to those who found the information helpful.

[Yutuyu]

Oh! I was excited to see my post linked to another great FF11 board... till I started reading the responses. Not really what i was expecting here.

It was a lot of information I had and I had no idea how to post it without it looking like a jumble of chaotic word. I am sorry if it makes your eyes bleed.

In any case, thank you to those who found the information helpful.

Don't take it so hard. A lot of people criticize thoughtlessly without any intention of helping you become a better writer/tester, merely just to pick at you for their own amusement. No one thought the content of your post was bad, and that's what is really important.

Only thing you can really take from this is, in the future spellcheck stuff before you post it, so that you won't end up with such criticisms. But the format was unique and entertaining, and I certainly enjoyed reading it.

[evilpaul]

interesting info, but why xp off penguins when you can rape tigers, shades, qutrubs, etc, etc. penguins have an annoying AoE Sleep move

fixed

[Shuemue]

Interesting stuff, formatting and spelling notwithstanding.

P.S. I am working very hard to make "too long; didn't read" into a bannable offense.

It should be, it's a fucking arrogant +1

[Thistle]

Oh! I was excited to see my post linked to another great FF11 board... till I started reading the responses. Not really what i was expecting here.

It was a lot of information I had and I had no idea how to post it without it looking like a jumble of chaotic word. I am sorry if it makes your eyes bleed.

In any case, thank you to those who found the information helpful.

You have to have a really thick skin around here, sorry. I liked the formatting, it seemed like a good way to get all the various ideas/info out in an organized way.

Don't let the negative responses scare you off.

[Talisien]

Oh! I was excited to see my post linked to another great FF11 board... till I started reading the responses. Not really what i was expecting here.

It was a lot of information I had and I had no idea how to post it without it looking like a jumble of chaotic word. I am sorry if it makes your eyes bleed.

In any case, thank you to those who found the information helpful.

For every one flame there are dozens of us here that read it with interest and curiosity.

Thank you very much for taking the time to do this, it is appreciated.

-Tal

[Zhais]

Don't worry, I thought it was interesting info...

Just despised the formatting greatly :D