farming Shak Dratha

[Bartox]

I have a question which I was uable to find answered already but perhaps someone knows. I have been "farming" shak dratha in shadowreaver thicket for a few days and im trying to determine what their "spawn" is.

From my own experience, I have cleared the other alien tribe in the caves whom drop nothing but an occassional weapon and sometimes a shak dratha type will respawn in their place.

Is there a link (ala, the HSM WAR) to how to get them to spawn more? like a day/night routine? or it is totally random.

thanks for any help.

[Moonlilly]

I got some good info about it here.

[Bartox]

i read that post.. but all it says was to kill all the other tribe, was just wondering if there is a better/faster way that will automatically generate more spawns of the right type of aliens.

[cattywumpus]

I have heard that it is a day/night thing but with no way to tell time on Luclin I have never gone through the trouble to verify it.

Unless you want to bug a guildie with "what time is it?" every 5 minutes you would be better to just methodically slay everything in the cave until the Shak Dratha start spawning. That's the way I do it.

When will the gnomes invent a clockwork clock?

[Bartox]

well im going to test the "day/night" spawn theory.
i have a 2nd pc.. and will just kill all spawns before dawn/sunset and see what happens.

[splunge]

I can confirm that is IS a day/night thing. I farmed the shadow myself.

All spawns in the caves are static. When a spawn point is up for spawning a mob, it checks the time. If its 'day' its one type. If its 'night' its the other.

I didnt do any more math than that. Feel free to post more scientific findings when ya figure it out =)

[Morani]

There is sorta a "cheat" for some characters to tell if it's day or night on the moon: try casting Dance of the Fireflies (or other time dependant spell if there are others). If it's in the day cycle you can not cast the spell and it'll tell you it's due to the time. I would guess that it's a bug since day/night aren't suppose to matter on the moon so i would be careful with it; might be considered an exploit.

[lonewylfe]

I've tried that before, but always got the message that I couldn't tell if it was day or night, therefore it didn't allow me to cast.
Though off topic, I think that it should allow you cast it if you're on the dark side.
I just always bug people

[Bartox]

verified day/night spawn.

cleared spawns in the caves at roughly ~6pm game time.. and respawn will be shak dratha.

if you clear fast enough.. will have about 2-3 respawns to farm before day spawns take over.

[Morani]

I've chain cast Fireflies in Luclin before until I ran out of time. I can't rememeber what zone I was in though... <shurg>

[Cigarskunk]

Pre-PoP my ranger always tried to cast that spell in the Nexus to kill time while waiting for the Scions - always got a "you can't tell time so stop trying to cast this spell" type message.

[Morani]

You all are making me question my memory. I'm going to have to test it now and figure out what I'm rememebring (and hope I've not put my foot in my mouth again.) ops:

[Anthalia]

I too have been farming these guys for the Condensed Shadows. But I have not had any experience proving the day/night theory that a few folks are confirming. I have not hunted the caves so maybe they are different.

However, I have found 4 spawn spots in the Southwestern part of the zone that no one has mentioned and are random as far as which mob type spawns when.

The spawn spots I have found are the Gor Taku Camp, then west to the southern most cave entrance (there is a camp in the rocks to the north and south of that entrance), and the 4th camp is again in a bunch of rocks south and west of the cave entrance.

[lonewylfe]

I was farming these guys the other day and found that if the aliens (either) respawned (not killed, but when they respawned) between about 9pm and midnight game time, the shak would be the ones who spawned.
Is it really this narrow a time frame for them to spawn? or did I just have really bad luck?

[Cigarskunk]

Confirmed the day/night thing yesterday - kept pestering the guild in chat what time it was and after having cleared an entire cave as game time night hit, the cave respawned 100% the black aliens.