Hi! I have been reading these forums for quite some time now (though I don't always post very often) and I don't think I've read any threads about this.
Also yesterday I read back about 10 pages or so and didn't see anything, Im not a premium member so no forum search for me.
Does anyone know how long it takes for a node (such as herb/mine/fish) to respawn in that spot again.
I have never paid too much attention but here recently I've had alot more competition for nodes and knowing the respawns would be a big help.
So I've been trying to calculate the respawn. However it seems random of sorts.
If you look at maps that show node spawn locations, you will see that there are nodes of the same thing that apparently spawn very close to each other. However I have never seen these spawn at the same time.
For example... This allakhazam map shows that there are some spots where mithril can spawn right next to each other. However some of the boxes are filled in where as in other spots on the map there are 2 boxes next to each other one filled in white the other blank.
Anyone knows what this means? Alternate spawn points?
From my experience nodes eventually always spawn in the same spot, so I don't understand why it shows the multiple nodes next to each other, yet I've never seen them both there at the same time.
Also this morning as I was timing nodes I had a node re-spawn in 30 minutes give or take 5-10 minutes. It was the same node in the exact same spot I made sure of this. Then also timed another node that did not re-spawn in the hour and a half I was farming nodes.
So I'm beginning to think that the game does have a certain respawn rate for nodes however It might not be the same node to spawn. What do I mean? Well lets say you break down the map I linked into sub categories or camps. It seems the game takes into account how much of that node is in the mini zone or camp and then when someone farms them to 0 nodes it begins re-spawning them on a timer, but randomly choosing which node in the mini zone or camp gets re-spawned.
Any way I will allow for more experienced players to perhaps fill me in on how this works before I make this long post an epic.
Edited, Feb 15th 2007 2:06pm by Vallock
Edited, Feb 15th 2007 2:08pm by Vallock
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That number is hidden from us, it prevents botters from making scipts to find nodes, I have had a node respawn in 15 min or take up to 45 min, some nodes take even longer. As a general rule of thumb nodes spawn faster in caves(underground)usualy about half the time of a regular node with a minimum of 5-10 min.
Ok thanks. I had not thought about the botting part of it. But yea I suppose if I could easily figure out what nodes are gonna re-spawn when and where, then yea the botters would have a field day.
Thanks a lot, saves me from doing the research I was thinking of doing to figure it out better.
Thanks a lot, saves me from doing the research I was thinking of doing to figure it out better.
I haven't really used the Alla maps for finding nodes but if the boxes showing the nodes are generated by the mining player's location then it is possible that multiple boxes could be generated by people mining a single node from different sides?
As far as respawn times go, one of my favorate places to mine during my climb from level 30 to 40+ has been the Charred Vale. I have done the loop around the edges enough times to know pretty much where the spawn points are. It seldom takes me longer than 10 minutes to do a complete lap around the edge and there are times that a node will respawn by the time I get back to it. I will get some respawns with two laps but often by three laps I am finding no nodes at all. I have seen nodes very close to each other at the same time but not for the same ore.
One side note - I have seen copper nodes show up on my minimap with the 'copper' listed twice. When I mine them, I generally get double the yield and on starting miners I can get two skill points on these. I have seen herbs do this as well. I have only seen these double spawns on really low level stuff though and they always look like a normal single node.
My guess is that the nodes of a zone (or perhaps sections of a zone) are tied together somehow and as nodes are mined, others in the zone have a chance to respawn. I'm not sure if the nodes are all lumped together or if they are further grouped by type. I'm pretty sure they aren't on a fixed timer though because I can take several laps (and am pretty sure I'm the only miner in Charred Vale at the time) and mine one node twice and not see a single spawn in another known location and yet mine that same location twice in a session on another day.
I haven't spent as much time on Herbalism but I have seen herb nodes respawn immediately after picking them.
As far as respawn times go, one of my favorate places to mine during my climb from level 30 to 40+ has been the Charred Vale. I have done the loop around the edges enough times to know pretty much where the spawn points are. It seldom takes me longer than 10 minutes to do a complete lap around the edge and there are times that a node will respawn by the time I get back to it. I will get some respawns with two laps but often by three laps I am finding no nodes at all. I have seen nodes very close to each other at the same time but not for the same ore.
One side note - I have seen copper nodes show up on my minimap with the 'copper' listed twice. When I mine them, I generally get double the yield and on starting miners I can get two skill points on these. I have seen herbs do this as well. I have only seen these double spawns on really low level stuff though and they always look like a normal single node.
My guess is that the nodes of a zone (or perhaps sections of a zone) are tied together somehow and as nodes are mined, others in the zone have a chance to respawn. I'm not sure if the nodes are all lumped together or if they are further grouped by type. I'm pretty sure they aren't on a fixed timer though because I can take several laps (and am pretty sure I'm the only miner in Charred Vale at the time) and mine one node twice and not see a single spawn in another known location and yet mine that same location twice in a session on another day.
I haven't spent as much time on Herbalism but I have seen herb nodes respawn immediately after picking them.
As it was mentioned, the exact algorythm is not known, so we can only make observations. One of mine is that there is a limit of nodes in a certain area, so even though a respawn rate is say 30min, you may sit on the spot for days and not see it respawn, because it already popped up in another place, and the limit was reached.
Another oveservation is that some places seem to have a higher probability of spawning a vein. I am constantly digging fel iron in one area, and I have places where I mine every days several times, but there are also NEW spots I discover still, where I never saw anything before. That is why the maps you see have so many possible locations, but some of them you may not ever see spawning a vein. My own map has like 30 possible spots, and I will see 2-3 when I make a tour over them.
Another oveservation is that some places seem to have a higher probability of spawning a vein. I am constantly digging fel iron in one area, and I have places where I mine every days several times, but there are also NEW spots I discover still, where I never saw anything before. That is why the maps you see have so many possible locations, but some of them you may not ever see spawning a vein. My own map has like 30 possible spots, and I will see 2-3 when I make a tour over them.
There's not a single rule for all world objects, but for most veins and herbs it appears that Blizzard uses a 'cluster' system where they create X number of possible spawn spots with a relatively small geographical dispersion and assign several timers to the cluster. Mapping out clusters is fairly easy, timers are a lot more obscure and provide the real obstacle to efficient farming (thus presumably making botting harder).
Using mineral veins as an example, Copper is usually 2 nodes in each cluster and Tin is 2 or 3 nodes. Mithril is 3 or 4 nodes, usually over a slightly bigger area. Thorium Veins seem to have 4 to 8 nodes.
The zone I'm most familiar with is Burning Steppes, I do 90% or more of my Thorium gathering there. The Steppes has 5 clusters with Thorium Veins:
- Flame Crest (7 nodes, includes Slither Rock and Ruins of Thaurissian)
- Pillar of Ash (4 nodes)
- Western Draco'dar (4 nodes, one is at Altar of Storms)
- Southern Draco'dar (4 nodes)
- Blackrock Stronghold (5 nodes)
This basically means that if you are the only miner in Burning Steppes and you check all possible spawn locations, you will typically find 5 nodes up (one in each cluster). If you check the Allakhazam map for Rich Thorium Veins in Burning Steppes you should be able to see the geographical clusters quite clearly (especially Blackrock Stronghold).
The same system is used in Outlands, for example in Zangarmarsh you can clearly observe that there is one Adamantite Deposit cluster in the Dead Mire and another in Ango'rosh Grounds. There appears to be one cluster around Sporeggar, one in Serpent Lake and one around Lagoon / Umbrafen.
Note: Do not try to apply the cluster system to uncommon spawns. Silver, gold, truesilver and khorium are all uncommon spawns that appear in the same location as a common spawn. I've never tried to gather any statistics on it, but basically there's a small chance of an uncommon ore vein being spawned instead of the common ore vein.
I mentioned that there seems to be several timers. The one you will usually be able to observe is the short timer, which seems be be at least 10 minutes plus a random number of minutes. After mining the active node in a cluster, the short timer will start and in 10+x minutes a new node in the cluster will spawn. I do not believe short timer ever exceeds 30 minutes. The short timer is never active if nobody is harvesting the cluster.
There appears to be a despawn timer. This seems to be a mechanism to counter bad spawns (ie underground, in the air, inside an object) that are unreachable. If nobody harvests a node in a cluster for that amount of time, the active node is despawned and the short respawn timer started. This accounts for nodes disappearing in the time between observing a bad node, opening a ticket and having a GM respond with 'can not observe problem node'.
Finally there also seems to be a long timer. When the long timer expires a random node in the cluster is spawned without any check for which node is active (if any). Interestingly, it seems that after each maintenance Blizzard has both the short and long timer trigger as the servers are brought up and this creates a fair number of 'double spawns' (the double tooltip effect). This is most easily observed by going to a starting zone like Teldrassil and farming herbs after maintenance. The clusters are small (low level herbs) so you will find multiple double-spawned herbs. As a single gathering actions empties out a herb node completely you can immediately observe that it's 2 identical plants spawned in the exact same x/y/z co-ordinate.
Based on how the timers and clusters seem to work, the best harvest in terms of active nodes found is obtained by carrying out a methodical check on each cluster in a geographical area that you can cover in around 15 to 25 minutes before returning to the start point and repeating the run. Ideally this should be done with little or no competition, ie the early hours of the morning.
If you prefer to minimise time investment, you can limit yourself to a single cluster. This is the approach I've personally used for certain herbs like Grave Moss (Kodo Graveyard in Desolace) and Ghost Mushroom (Skulk Rock in Hinterlands). If memory serves the Kodo Graveyard has 2 clusters with 3 nodes each and Skulk Rock has 1 cluster with 6 nodes. By parking an alt herbalist in one of these locations I was able to log on every 30 minutes, harvest 2 Grave Moss nodes or 1 Ghost Mushroom node within a minute and log off again. With travel time being almost non-existent, the amount of herbs gathered over a few days of using this method while actively playing some other character was excellent.
Black Lotus deserves special notice. This herb can spawn in 4 different zones, each zone has 1 cluster of 10 nodes. The 'short' timer appears to be 1 hour and I've never found a 'double' spawn. It would appear that the maximum yield possible is 96 per day.
Fishing also works on a cluster system with multiple timers but it's subtly different from herbs and ore. The two most easily studied clusters are in Azshara (Elemental Water) and Nagrand Elemental Plateau (Pure Water). Each zone has a six-node cluster which can only spawn it's specific type of node. A maximum of two nodes can be up at the same time (some say 3 nodes, I've only seen 2). Emptying a node causes a new node in the set to spawn immediately, however once the entire cluster has been fished out there's a considerable delay (60 minutes average, up to 90 minutes possible) before any node respawns. A hard-working fisherman in Nagrand can empty 6 nodes in 10 minutes, come back an hour later and repeat with an expected yield of approximately 25 Mote of Water per visit or around 500 motes per day (50 Primal Water or 1500g on my server for about 4 hours active fishing). Personally I prefer to get some sleep and keep my day job so never exceeded 500g per day. The Elemental Plateau requires 380 fishing to cast a line (at that skill almost every catch gets away so it's very inefficient), so bring the best lure you can make or buy.
Highland Mixed School only exist in Terokkar. There's at least 17 possible spawn locations in 3 different geographical areas (all flying-only) but it does not appear to be one cluster per area. I've seen 4 pools active at the same time but others claim up to 6 can be active, so possibly it's 6 clusters of 3 nodes each with one undiscovered pool location. Similar to Pure Water, it appears a new pool will immediately spawn if an active pool is emptied but once the whole set is fished there's a long timer delay (60 minutes average, maybe up to 90 minutes) before respawn.
Mixed-type clusters also exist but I can't comment extensively on them. For example Serpent Lake in Azshara has both Sporefish School and Steam Pump Flotsam in the same cluster but I couldn't tell you the exact spawn times or chance to get either type of school as I've not spent much time fishing there.
Using mineral veins as an example, Copper is usually 2 nodes in each cluster and Tin is 2 or 3 nodes. Mithril is 3 or 4 nodes, usually over a slightly bigger area. Thorium Veins seem to have 4 to 8 nodes.
The zone I'm most familiar with is Burning Steppes, I do 90% or more of my Thorium gathering there. The Steppes has 5 clusters with Thorium Veins:
- Flame Crest (7 nodes, includes Slither Rock and Ruins of Thaurissian)
- Pillar of Ash (4 nodes)
- Western Draco'dar (4 nodes, one is at Altar of Storms)
- Southern Draco'dar (4 nodes)
- Blackrock Stronghold (5 nodes)
This basically means that if you are the only miner in Burning Steppes and you check all possible spawn locations, you will typically find 5 nodes up (one in each cluster). If you check the Allakhazam map for Rich Thorium Veins in Burning Steppes you should be able to see the geographical clusters quite clearly (especially Blackrock Stronghold).
The same system is used in Outlands, for example in Zangarmarsh you can clearly observe that there is one Adamantite Deposit cluster in the Dead Mire and another in Ango'rosh Grounds. There appears to be one cluster around Sporeggar, one in Serpent Lake and one around Lagoon / Umbrafen.
Note: Do not try to apply the cluster system to uncommon spawns. Silver, gold, truesilver and khorium are all uncommon spawns that appear in the same location as a common spawn. I've never tried to gather any statistics on it, but basically there's a small chance of an uncommon ore vein being spawned instead of the common ore vein.
I mentioned that there seems to be several timers. The one you will usually be able to observe is the short timer, which seems be be at least 10 minutes plus a random number of minutes. After mining the active node in a cluster, the short timer will start and in 10+x minutes a new node in the cluster will spawn. I do not believe short timer ever exceeds 30 minutes. The short timer is never active if nobody is harvesting the cluster.
There appears to be a despawn timer. This seems to be a mechanism to counter bad spawns (ie underground, in the air, inside an object) that are unreachable. If nobody harvests a node in a cluster for that amount of time, the active node is despawned and the short respawn timer started. This accounts for nodes disappearing in the time between observing a bad node, opening a ticket and having a GM respond with 'can not observe problem node'.
Finally there also seems to be a long timer. When the long timer expires a random node in the cluster is spawned without any check for which node is active (if any). Interestingly, it seems that after each maintenance Blizzard has both the short and long timer trigger as the servers are brought up and this creates a fair number of 'double spawns' (the double tooltip effect). This is most easily observed by going to a starting zone like Teldrassil and farming herbs after maintenance. The clusters are small (low level herbs) so you will find multiple double-spawned herbs. As a single gathering actions empties out a herb node completely you can immediately observe that it's 2 identical plants spawned in the exact same x/y/z co-ordinate.
Based on how the timers and clusters seem to work, the best harvest in terms of active nodes found is obtained by carrying out a methodical check on each cluster in a geographical area that you can cover in around 15 to 25 minutes before returning to the start point and repeating the run. Ideally this should be done with little or no competition, ie the early hours of the morning.
If you prefer to minimise time investment, you can limit yourself to a single cluster. This is the approach I've personally used for certain herbs like Grave Moss (Kodo Graveyard in Desolace) and Ghost Mushroom (Skulk Rock in Hinterlands). If memory serves the Kodo Graveyard has 2 clusters with 3 nodes each and Skulk Rock has 1 cluster with 6 nodes. By parking an alt herbalist in one of these locations I was able to log on every 30 minutes, harvest 2 Grave Moss nodes or 1 Ghost Mushroom node within a minute and log off again. With travel time being almost non-existent, the amount of herbs gathered over a few days of using this method while actively playing some other character was excellent.
Black Lotus deserves special notice. This herb can spawn in 4 different zones, each zone has 1 cluster of 10 nodes. The 'short' timer appears to be 1 hour and I've never found a 'double' spawn. It would appear that the maximum yield possible is 96 per day.
Fishing also works on a cluster system with multiple timers but it's subtly different from herbs and ore. The two most easily studied clusters are in Azshara (Elemental Water) and Nagrand Elemental Plateau (Pure Water). Each zone has a six-node cluster which can only spawn it's specific type of node. A maximum of two nodes can be up at the same time (some say 3 nodes, I've only seen 2). Emptying a node causes a new node in the set to spawn immediately, however once the entire cluster has been fished out there's a considerable delay (60 minutes average, up to 90 minutes possible) before any node respawns. A hard-working fisherman in Nagrand can empty 6 nodes in 10 minutes, come back an hour later and repeat with an expected yield of approximately 25 Mote of Water per visit or around 500 motes per day (50 Primal Water or 1500g on my server for about 4 hours active fishing). Personally I prefer to get some sleep and keep my day job so never exceeded 500g per day. The Elemental Plateau requires 380 fishing to cast a line (at that skill almost every catch gets away so it's very inefficient), so bring the best lure you can make or buy.
Highland Mixed School only exist in Terokkar. There's at least 17 possible spawn locations in 3 different geographical areas (all flying-only) but it does not appear to be one cluster per area. I've seen 4 pools active at the same time but others claim up to 6 can be active, so possibly it's 6 clusters of 3 nodes each with one undiscovered pool location. Similar to Pure Water, it appears a new pool will immediately spawn if an active pool is emptied but once the whole set is fished there's a long timer delay (60 minutes average, maybe up to 90 minutes) before respawn.
Mixed-type clusters also exist but I can't comment extensively on them. For example Serpent Lake in Azshara has both Sporefish School and Steam Pump Flotsam in the same cluster but I couldn't tell you the exact spawn times or chance to get either type of school as I've not spent much time fishing there.
Thanks for the further input. Im finding the cluster theory along with my "clusters linked in Mini areas of the zone" type theory to be fairly true from what you're saying.
I too have now gotten my mithril farming down pretty well and have now found a few nodes that spawned that appear to more rare as I can farm for a day or so and not see them, then bam it finally is there.
I too have now gotten my mithril farming down pretty well and have now found a few nodes that spawned that appear to more rare as I can farm for a day or so and not see them, then bam it finally is there.
Very nice writeup, worthy of putting in some more permanent place.
I have learned some new things about fishing schools here, some observations match mine, but I don't see explanation why some of the veins I see are much more common than the others.
I have learned some new things about fishing schools here, some observations match mine, but I don't see explanation why some of the veins I see are much more common than the others.
Excellent post, Morthandeus.
I'm gonna start paying attention to that aspect.
I'm gonna start paying attention to that aspect.
Quote:
I have learned some new things about fishing schools here, some observations match mine, but I don't see explanation why some of the veins I see are much more common than the others.
Sounds like you mean that one time you farm a node and then it does not respawn for a really long time, and other nodes respawn in 10-15 mins in the same spot.
If that is what you mean then the cluster explanation is what you're looking for.
Basicly it seems the game takes an area and decides this area will spawn mithril for instance along with a small amount of tin and iron.
Here is your area
--------------------------
A
.........B
..C
--------------------------
These three nodes are all right next to each other. You arrive and get node A and then move on. You come back 15 mins later and A is back. You repeat this many times and notice A spawns the most while sometimes C spawns instead, and rarely B spawns. They could all spawn as mithril lets say not the iron or tin.
Well it seems the game has A B and C linked. The game notices nodes are being taken and then needs to respwan a certain amount in the area you took nodes from so that there is enough ore in the game.
However they dont want to just have A and have it spawn every 15 mins like clock work. If they did then a botter could easily have a path that took him to the same nodes over and over on a loop that is timed so that the node would always be there for his bot program to gather.
So they have many clusters linked together and when a respawn is needed the game randomly (or does so through some kind of system) spawns a node that you took that is linked. However it appears that for some reason one or two links in the cluster spawn more rarely.
Hope I didnt confuse anyone, Im not the best at explanations.
Edited, Feb 20th 2007 10:00am by Vallock
Double post sorry!
Edited, Feb 20th 2007 9:59am by Vallock
Edited, Feb 20th 2007 9:59am by Vallock
I am actually a little confused. The thing that is puzzling me now is if there are nodes with different chance of appearing, or is it part of some different mechanism - for example clusters of nodes which are really far apart, and when I check a given area I just don't see that remote spawn which stays up for a long time, hidden, and prevents the other node from appearing?
For example, I have been digging around Dark Portal for several days, and checking the map on Allakhazam I see spots where I have never seen anything pop up.
For example, I have been digging around Dark Portal for several days, and checking the map on Allakhazam I see spots where I have never seen anything pop up.
First Im not 100% sure on how to read the maps here, I use them more for reference than exact location.
If they are part of the same cluster then yes. No matter how long you wait to farm a spot it will always have the same amount of nodes spawned at a single time (assuming no one else is taking any nodes). So you could wait days and a single spot will only ever have 4 nodes within its cluster or mini-zone.
That way there is always nodes (unless someone just got them all) but never too many nodes.
Yea I ran into the same thing. I thought that maybe the maps here showed places that had nodes spawn in the past. So I thought maybe each push (gap of time before blizz changes things in game) the node would spawn in a different location.
But then it happened one of the nodes I had never seen and never gathered spawned, and this was after days of farming the same spot. So the marks on the map do seem current for the most part and are not showing seperate pushs or cycles in the game.
Quote:
for example clusters of nodes which are really far apart, and when I check a given area I just don't see that remote spawn which stays up for a long time, hidden, and prevents the other node from appearing?
If they are part of the same cluster then yes. No matter how long you wait to farm a spot it will always have the same amount of nodes spawned at a single time (assuming no one else is taking any nodes). So you could wait days and a single spot will only ever have 4 nodes within its cluster or mini-zone.
That way there is always nodes (unless someone just got them all) but never too many nodes.
Quote:
For example, I have been digging around Dark Portal for several days, and checking the map on Allakhazam I see spots where I have never seen anything pop up.
Yea I ran into the same thing. I thought that maybe the maps here showed places that had nodes spawn in the past. So I thought maybe each push (gap of time before blizz changes things in game) the node would spawn in a different location.
But then it happened one of the nodes I had never seen and never gathered spawned, and this was after days of farming the same spot. So the marks on the map do seem current for the most part and are not showing seperate pushs or cycles in the game.
Excellent post Morthandeus. I never knew there was that much depth to the system.
Another thing that might need thinking about is the max number of nodes.
If the max number has spawned you'll have to wait for one to time out or for someone to harvest one before it will appear at that node, even then it will be a chance as there are other free nodes that could spawn, thus reaching the max again.
Another thing that might need thinking about is the max number of nodes.
If the max number has spawned you'll have to wait for one to time out or for someone to harvest one before it will appear at that node, even then it will be a chance as there are other free nodes that could spawn, thus reaching the max again.
12 posts
on my pally one time i found a copper node in dun morogh that respawned around every 30 seconds it was sunday morning when i found it i kept mining it for a long time but on tuesday after the server maintanance it was gone so they must of found it on me
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