New insight on Almighty Apkallu (and other NMs)

[Bozo]

I'm curious, have people that have camped AA for longer periods of time actually leave the dock and purchase a new ticket or did they just reboard the boat?

[Corrderio]

When I camped him with my LS we set our HPs in Nashmau, D2ed ppl and ran back to the boat.

[Draggy]

When that AA thread was first made i HP'd in Nashmau and rode the boat for hours and hours day after day then gave up after a couple weeks :/ and i know other ppl on my server like Pergo were doing the same thing but at different times of the day still none of us saw it

[Pergo]

yeah, i also maxed hate in mt.zhayolm and in arrapago and tried immediately heading for the boat... both times my hate didn't carry over. I also tried experimenting with ways to cap hate over the course of a boat ride, but nothing really happened. i know a few of the people who've seen it just rode the boat and did nothing in terms of apkallu hate, so i don't think thats a factor

[Eanae]

Would lol if: "Spawns when no Apakulu have been killed on either boat ride after 24 hours." He'd certainly be lonely if people were killing his friends.

[Spekkio]

wasn't there tremendous research into apkallu hate done by some guy a while back while we were grinding out a prior AA thread? also, wasn't it shown that apkallu hate was not shared between zones?

[Pergo]

that was I... i'm trying to find the post where i listed all the stuff i tested but i think it got lost in server hop, although i could've sworn i saw it recently.

edit: found it!

Just to recap everything i've tried and learned:

Taken the boat Sunday,Monday, Tuesday nights: 12am - 6am EST.
Taken the boat Wednesday night: 10pm - 9am EST.
Taken the boat Thursday day: 2pm - 6:40pm EST.

There are 2 Apkallu in the dats:
NPC/Monster List Entry 0103B007 Apkallu
NPC/Monster List Entry 0103B008 Apkallu

With the NM being:
NPC/Monster List Entry 0103B011 Almighty Apkallu

--I've seen both Apkallu on Carbuncle fairly regularly. There is one Apkallu that is sometimes already up when the boat loads, and any other Apkallu that pop later on jump on the boat.
--The Apkallu range from Too Weak - Easy Prey to a Lv75.
--Killed both Apkallu several times.
--Left both Apkallu untouched several times.
--Emoted both Apkallu several times.
--Fished in front of both Apkallu several times.
--Fished(Lv.0 Skill): Caught some fish, ESC some fish, Caught some monsters: Crab, Pugil, Kraken.
----Knowing little about Fishing, I received the "!!!" (meaning monster on hook) a few times, trying weakening it, but it's HP bar hardly moved.
----Mellema join the boat rides for awhile and fished(Lv.50 Skill) with Peeled Lobster(made from Istakoz).
------When receiving "!!!" he broke rod once, then fished up several fish. Turns out "!!!" can also mean unstackable fish.
--Claimed and held both Apkallu through the duration of the boat ride.
-----Kited the claimed Apkallu throughout the entire boat.
-----Kited the claimed Apkallu at low, high, and full health.
-----Kited the claimed Apkallu with low,high, and full health.
--Let the Apkallu kill me.
--Quested and ate Nashmau stew before boarding.
--Quested and ate Nashmau stew while Apkallu was on board.
--Purchased and ate Seafood Stew before boarding.
--Ate an Apkallu egg in front of the Apkallu.
--Received almost max hate off of Arrapago Apkallu in Arrapago Reef. (Was hitting for 1, but not 0). Escaped and took boat, no Apkallu popped.
--Received max hate off of Zhayolm Apkallu in Mount Zhayolm. (Everyone hit for 0). Warped to Nashmau and took boat, normal Apkallu popped, took full damage and used Yawn only.
--Had 2 NPC Zhayolm Apkallu in Mount Zhayolm follow me. I zoned and came back to see if they remembered me, and they did. Warped to Nashmau and took boat. Nothing popped.
--I've yet to see 2 Apkallu up at the same time.
--Stayed below deck with wireframe on to check abovedeck twice, nothing popped.
--The Apkallu randomly pop and depop with no obvious pattern.
----They can stay up the duration of the boat ride, or as little as 30 seconds.
----This pattern is the same for all monsters on the boat, not just Apkallu.
----If an Apkallu is up at the end of a boat ride, it will not necesarily pop at the start of the next boat ride.
--Holding the starting Apkallu for the duration of the boat ride (until completely docked) seemed to make it spawn on the next ride. This happened 6 times in a row. On the 6th ride, I didn't immeadietly claim the starting Apkallu, and he depopped within 30 seconds.
----On the times where I've held the Apkallu, but warped before the boat docked, he did not repop on the next boat.

At this point I have no clue wether it would be a lottery of the starting Apkallu or the ones that jump on.

at the top i say i've seen both apkallu and then at the bottom i say i've never seen both up. apparently the same one can repop almost instantly. khamsin checked the memory lots of times and found that the one apkallu was never up on his server, so it's probably that I actually didn't see both apkallu, just the same one over again.

[Sylvrdragon]

Or that a shit ton of people started looking for it again, thus increasing the number of boat rides, thus increasing the amount of times it popped. The season/day/weather thing has been beat to death pretty bad.

Is there a "Pretty good" way to be beat to death? Actually... I can think of a couple... brb, writing my Will.

[LordshadowRagnarok]

I'm going to suggest something and I'm going to get laughed at:
What if the luck aspect is what server he's going to spawn on? What if when the conditions are met, he spawns on one of the servers randomly?

This could explain something in the other thread about him spawning but having 0% HP. He just didn't spawn on your server.

Now, let the flaming of my stupidity begin.

[Rainesong]

a few comments:

The "millionth customer theory" I think is virtually impossible at this point. If this was the case, even if a proteus spawn resets the counters for both NMs, more people would have gotten lucky and seen AA spawn going nash -> wg. Drwaffles kind of said this already, but applied it more generally to the entire "quota theory." A quota is still possible, just in a different sense. The counter could work in a couple ways:

1) AA and Prot could have seperate counters of people riding the ship/buying tickets w/e, and when either of those counters hits say 500, the appropriate NM spawns and resets both counters.

2) Both NMs could share a counter, and a passenger from wg -> nash could give a +1, and nash -> wg could be -1. Whenever the corresponding positive or negative number is hit, the appropriate NM is spawned and the counter is set to 0. Note that in this case it is possible that a server could go a long time w/o either NM spawning since the -1's could counter the +1's if enough people were going nash -> wg.

Both of these fit the model of proteus spawning >>> AA but are not the same as the "millionth customer theory." Both of these do require some sort of cross-zone communication but I don't think this is a problem at all. There are plenty of examples of cross-zone in the game already: ixion + sandworm (already pointed out), weather (as soon as it rains in rolanberry, it is highly likely ((or maybe guaranteed idk)) to start raining in CN as well), and conquest, besieged, and campaign all involve cross-zone communication, so it's not like the FFXI software can't handle it. I still find it at least quite plausible that Proteus and AA share spawn conditions, though, I am not, of course, saying that they do.

The fact that Proteus can spawn multiple times on a single trip is an interesting point, but doesn't tell us alllll that much. It seems to disprove the idea that a person buying a ticket would immediately cause proteus to spawn because i doubt that after a single proteus pop, 100 or 500 or w/e people would buy enough tickets to cause proteus to spawn in just a few minutes. however, what it DOES seem to heavily imply is that the spawn conditions are similar to ramparts in bhaflau remnants. that is, the zone is either 'on or off'. at the start of the boat ride, the conditions have either been met for a possible spawn or they haven't. this also means that the conditions could be met for a spawn, and just through bad luck the NM may not spawn, since there does seem to be a random factor to it. (keep in mind that it is theoretically possible that with bhaflau ramparts the door could be "on" but by having bad luck with each individual chig/bird spawn, one might not see an NM spawn at all, despite the door being on). this could suck, because the conditions could be met for AA, but because of bad luck, it might not spawn, and i would assume that if a counter is involved this could reset the counter without AA having ever been seen.

sorry, long post
to sum up:

1) "Quota theory" is still highly possible, just not the "millionth customer theory."

2) It seems as though the zone has to meet certain conditions at the start of the boat ride, and the corresponding NM may or may not spawn even if those conditions are met.

[Eticket]

I'm curious, have people that have camped AA for longer periods of time actually leave the dock and purchase a new ticket or did they just reboard the boat?

There are two ferries in operation so in order to make sure you never miss one, you need to set your hp in Nashmau, warp back and buy another ticket. If you just got back on and went back to Nashmau, you would miss half of your opportunities.

[fantasticdan]

If proteus and AA are linked, and based on the number of people that ride the boat, what if it wasn't based on a specific quota, but rather simply the number of people that have ridden each way compared to each other, or the # of tickets bought in nashmau vs. whitegate? It could explain why AA has only been seen shortly after server resets, since that's the only time the tally could really ever lean in the favor of nashmau->whitegate.

I really doubt SE would add something like that in specific to one set of mobs, but just throwing it out there.

[Pendas]

If proteus and AA are linked, and based on the number of people that ride the boat, what if it wasn't based on a specific quota, but rather simply the number of people that have ridden each way compared to each other, or the # of tickets bought in nashmau vs. whitegate? It could explain why AA has only been seen shortly after server resets, since that's the only time the tally could really ever lean in the favor of nashmau->whitegate.

I really doubt SE would add something like that in specific to one set of mobs, but just throwing it out there.

There could be some validity to this. The server could tally the amount of tickets purchased within the 21-24 Hour spawn cycle, and when the window opens, it either spawns Proteus or AA depending on which ferry sold the most tickets during that time frame. This would both account for Proteus spawning more than usual and AA being seen shortly after server resets by people who ride the Nashmau boat in an attempt to pop AA.

[fantasticdan]

Proteus can spawn back to back as shown in this thread, so I doubt there's any type of 'spawn cycle' or window if they're linked like that. Knowing SE, if there was a ticket tally, it might not even reset at all except when the server goes down.

[randomized]

i'm sorry if this has been mentioned before but to me it seems proteus' spawn conditions sound very similar to Sea Horror. I'm sure fishermen or hardcore pirates NM campers can attest to the fact that Sea Horror can spawn multiple times on the same ship ride and also as the previous posters stated has the same "bhaflau remnants" pattern... sometimes it's on and you can see it very frequently (ive seen sea horror as much as 5 times in a few hours) and other times you wont see it all day.

Anyways to sum it up i think its very possible proteus could be linked to AA in some way but to me it seems more likely proteus just shares a similar pop pattern to sea horror and doesn't have anything to do with AA.

[Demonic]

If proteus and AA are linked, and based on the number of people that ride the boat, what if it wasn't based on a specific quota, but rather simply the number of people that have ridden each way compared to each other, or the # of tickets bought in nashmau vs. whitegate? It could explain why AA has only been seen shortly after server resets, since that's the only time the tally could really ever lean in the favor of nashmau->whitegate.

I really doubt SE would add something like that in specific to one set of mobs, but just throwing it out there.

We already went over this

[fantasticdan]

We already went over this

No? Like ten people (including you) in this thread suggested they shared a counter, after it hit a certain point one would spawn, and the counter would reset. This is invalidated by the fact that proteus can spawn back to back. I suggested there might be counters that don't reset on spawn, that are simply compared to see which can spawn. IE: If 10 people have taken the nashmau boat, and more than 10 people have taken the whitegate boat since reset, only proteus can spawn.

[Spira]

following on fantasticdan's idea.. if Proteus and AA share some kind of counter that determines mutual exclusivity, then the appearance rate for AA (as opposed to Prot) could be the percentage of the boat-ride counts that are taken from Nashmau side.. and Proteus the % taken from WG ie. 100-AA's%.

If this is so, it'd also explain why AA is never seen because theres a whole lot more people who ride from WG to Nashmau than the other way round. It'd probably easily be pushing the appearance rate of AA to <0.001%.

And if this is so, there are a few things to consider:

1) what counts towards increasing the boat ride ratio? I'm thinking ticket sales, because that is easily trackable through the game.

2) does this counter reset? It probably should, otherwise AA will become increasingly harder and harder to pop as time goes by. It's been said that Proteus can spawn back to back, but if after he spawns, someone buys a ticket at Whitegate, that puts Proteus at 100% relative probability of appearance

3) The ratio probably caps at some point. Maybe 1%... but if AA's pop probability is set at 10%, that would make his overall probability of appearing become 0.01%, that kind of thing...

4) Alternatively instead of scaling by percentage it could just be who has majority boat rides.. AA or Proteus. Since Proteus always has majority, you get to see him all the time.

I suppose the next thing people should start doing is mass buy tickets at Nashmau.. like.. buy, exit, buy, exit, buy, exit.. repeat until the boat arrives... and probably get like 10 people to do it at once, to greatly drive up the boat ride count from Nashmau's side..

not sure if people have tried this.. if already did then ignore what i said.

[Freewill]

"First of all, luck plays a big role in whether he appears or not. "


hmmm Corsairs?
don't mind my horrible suggestion and lack of reading in case this was posted.

[freddiepines]

Has anyone checked the zone id when Proteus appears?

That is, does it share the same characteristics as the Mhaura/Selbina ship when pirates appear?

Just wondering.