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Hi all, I seem to have become a dedicated gatherer in the last few weeks. I've been recording my gathering data in gathering logbooks over the last month at least (since late October). I've had a slightly different focus since I've been mainly interested in the 5 drop pattern I have observed and geographical distribution of spawn sites within a zone.

I'll leave the development of theories on how to adjust your depth meter to focus on certain drops and moon phases to the drop crazies. I'm more interested in the global patterns.

For example making use of the raw data from my own gathering logbooks of the Emerald Moss zone I've come up with the following map:



Has anyone else noted the 5 drop pattern of both mobs and site locations? Incidentally, you'd need to record positional information of the actual sites your harvesting to spot this. I've been using cropped screen shots to confirm re-visited or previously undiscovered sites like this:



(and before you ask - yep it can be annoying when someone else despawns the site while I'm editing the screencap...)

I've been using in-game screenshots (taken with fraps - as shown) of each site I gather from.

All current macroes can be found on the lodestone:

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com/pl/guide/macro01.html

Unfortunately a location macro parameter (a la '<' pos '>' does not exist..

And I just found 3 more loging sites on that map... (I swear it takes a good week in a zone to just get most sites but probably not all)

I'll see what I can do about getting the actual raw data (in the form of pdfs) hosted somewhere. So that I can provide download links to the log books themselves. So far the 5 drops per site is holding quite solidly. I've never (and when you see all the log books, you'll see what I mean) seen more. Although it is looking like a possibility that there are less for some sites (or SE is saving up some space for future drops that are not yet in the game...).

Just last night I got 3 more logging sites on the above map. I also firmed up the mining data (and dinged 20 miner - Yay!), so I have a mining map as well. If you want to see the updated Mining, Logging and Harvesting maps, follow the link to in the sig to my ffxiv blog.

Spearfishing... Does anyone know of a 5th drop in any of the spearfishing sites in emerald moss (Based on other zones I wonder if anyone has ever gotten some Azure Laq Bugs in Emerald Moss)?

Since we're poking for solid theories, I've been getting a feel for what the Notches in the trees change.

What I don't think it does:
- Determine item obtained.

What I think it does:
- Decides the %(percentage) chance that your axe lands successfully on your next swings.


Like, before you swing your hatchet, the spot that the item is in has not been determined yet 100%.

If you chose a good Notch in the tree, the item will change its position to where ever you swung into the tree, allowing for 1-swing successes. To reword it, the "sweet spot" moves to where your axe lands during the first chop.


To look at it graphically:

[] 80%
[] 10%
[] 45%
= 20%
[] 25%
[] 5%
[] 20%


The % for each turn changes into random values, kind of like playing roulette and watching where your ball will randomly land. If you picked the 80%, there's a high chance your next swing will get an item in 1 swing or get a "you need a final cut" message. If you chose 25% then you'd either get a success in the next swing or have a 75% chance of getting a "nothing promising here" message.

Basically if luck is on your side, then the "sweet spot" will follow your axe, and you'll have to take a couple more swings if luck isn't with you for that turn. Also, the percentage values are higher if the tree's level is lower than your rank. Your rank is like a seed value that determines the final random percentages for each notch.

A rank 19 will get drastically lower percentages than a rank 20 logger on a Grade 3 tree.

The items you get have a level as well. If you are about to receive a valuable log, there's a higher chance that the chop will damage it if your rank is lower than the log's level. Lower level items get damaged less and allow a higher chance for 1-swing success. The item you're going to get is determined before you start logging the tree and will help set the difficulty for the next few swings as well, changing the value of the notch percentages up or down. Valuable logs will make the percentage go down and useless walnuts will make them go up drastically.

Edited by user Thursday, November 25, 2010 10:23:26 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Yes, I read that recently and tried it out in-game. Too bad they made a mistake in this patch code-wise. It tells you "you sense x item" after you get that item.




If you remembered the fishing system in XI, the fish you're about to get is determined before the fishing process. Although things can be different for XIV. It's anyone's guess. But anyway it's not important for now.

Edited by user Friday, November 26, 2010 10:07:28 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I've been seeing the same thing in mining, but the direction doesn't necessarily mean that that is the item you will get either. In the above example, moving up a notch to get more sun lemons might equally give you an oak branch or some other item instead! I think it serves as a hint as to where different items appear on the bar, rather than as a definitive pointer to the actual item locations.

I've been digging into the network interface that yg.com uses (winpcap.org). It allows for the export of data directly from the network packets (so it is reading data on the public network, not in-game data and is therefore not against the TOS), but it might be just the ticket for recording gathering actions. In theory one could develop an application to "read" the outgoing data, and capture not only the map position and the position on the vertical bar, but the exact point chosen on the mining/logging "swing" too. Then by reading the incoming packets, obtain the results of that action. Given this level of data, it would be fairly easy to come up with the information for targeting specific items, for example (not real data): "For Zinc Ore, set the vertical bar to between +3 and -2, and restrict your swings to the outer part of the circle". OK, it's a bit hokey since there are several other items that could drop in this grouping, but I hope you can see what I'm trying to say :)

Please note, I did NOT say was going to write the application for this - I might furtle around with it for a while though - despite my name, most of my coding is done in either assembler, server side scripting (ASP, PHP, etc) or SQL. I need to brush up on my C a lot before tackling something like this!

On a related note, there is a post on ffevo.com in the ffxiv forums with a mod for the UI. The changes made there have been outdated by the recent patch, but the information is there on how to "mod" the UI. This means that it is relatively easy to take, for example, the miners "circle" display or the botanists "quadrant" display, and edit in markers for the 33% and 66% positions, possibly even removing the default marker at 50%. I think most will agree that the 50% marker doesn't really do anything! The only setback to this is that the mod would need to be removed for updates, and re-applied after the update (if it is still needed), so make sure to make a backup copy of the file before you start making changes!!