DAT Mining Vana'Diel (for Fun)

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DAT Mining Vana'Diel (for fun)
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 Cerberus.Kylos
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By Cerberus.Kylos 2021-09-24 23:40:35
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Ever since I stumbled over Noesis the other year, it amazes me how much effort has been put in to this game. By using the program, it has allowed me to find things you wouldn't usually be able to see. I have no idea if we already have a thread like this somewhere (I tried searching), but it would be cool if we posted anything interesting here.

Here's just some of the things that have been pointed out before:

ROM-0 28.DAT: This big secret zone has no name, but there's an entrance to a town, which looks like it may be a reference to an early trailer. There are signposts here, one of them pointing to the "Chocobo Wood", and another pointing to the wood and "Sel Phiner". This is likely the name of the town, or an early name for Selbina, but who knows?

The coolest thing is a railway system with an upside down train. There's even detail inside, so perhaps we were meant to ride like we do the airships or boats. Across the map, there's a place showing a rusty section of track which is broken and placed over a canyon. Maybe there was an earthquake and it had to be left? It's clear this area was made very early in the games development. SE abandoned it and has done nothing with it since.

ROM-0 40.DAT: The big blue & white checkboard area is known as a GM area. Maybe someone can find a video, I can't remember where it is.

BCNM areas: SE uses several (usually three) of the exact same area miles away from each other to allow more than one party to enter battlefields.

In ROM-0 74.DAT, the three floating Throne Rooms away from the main spires have detail for a whole entrance outside of the battlefield, despite never being able to see it.

It's likely they originally intended you to zone in down the steps and make your way through another door to reach your battle, in a similar way you run up in other areas. Instead, you zone straight in to the room in front of your targets. They probably thought we'd already done enough running, and I can't blame them.

In ROM-1 6.DAT, the mountain range you can see after exiting from a Horlais Peak battlefield is HUGE! It's bigger than the three battle areas combined. SE were excessive, they would have got the same effect if it were half the size.

ROM-0 79.DAT: In the North section of Windurst Waters, you can see a low detail Heaven's Tower slightly away from the boundary. While it gives you the impression of its size, it's far too close compared to where it actually is in Windurst Walls.

ROM-1 4.DAT: FFXI has a prison area called "Mordion Gaol". It's a small area similar to the entry in Legion. They have 32 copies of Mordion Gaol, so there's plenty of room to keep people detained.

ROM-1 5.DAT: This strange little area is for the login screen. You can find little houses here, made up of three small villages, but you will never see them while logging in as you can't look around.

ROM-1 12.DAT: I was often told that the Legion zone shares an area with Ambuscade, but this DAT shows the five areas on their own. I'll have to find an Ambuscade zone first, though.

ROM-1 20-22, 45-47.DAT: There are small corridor's outside Mog House's with details for stairs and the other side of the door, like you were originally meant to walk through it to get to your Rent-A-Room.

ROM-1 24, 25, 29, 30.DAT: Shows the maps used for the boat trip between Selbina and Mhaura. Why are there four identical zones? Perhaps dependent on the type of ride you experience? I can't remember if there are two boats. If so, there are two zones for each.

ROM-1 26-28.DAT: The World Maps for airship rides are not very detailed and largely inaccurate, but you can spot some landmarks. For some reason, the airship begins in the floor, but you'll never notice because it rises up before the screen fades out.

ROM-1 48-127.DAT: There are many town areas which don't automatically load the interiors of buildings in one DAT, and instead bring in others for more detail. Most of the ROM2's are like this as well.

ROM-3 2.DAT: The first character model is an Orcish Overlord wielding a staff. I'm trying to remember where this comes from. Is it a NM or part of a cutscene? It's certainly not Overlord Bakgodek or a regular Orcish Overlord.

ROM-3 47.DAT: Either my memory sucks or I have never encountered this baby Soulflayer NPC before. What is it from?

ROM-4 67.DAT: A scantily clad Mithra playing around with a pot in very mysterious ways. This is one of the strangest things I have found.

ROM-5 67.DAT: A red Orcish Warmachine. Looks pretty cool! But I can't remember seeing it anywhere.

ROM-6 32-53.DAT: The line of Fomors have some really disturbing animations. Solid nightmare material.

ROM-7 80+81.DAT: Shadow Lord!

ROM-159 81.DAT: Bahamut!

That will do for now. If anyone has found anything interesting, please let us know!
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By Zubis 2021-09-25 00:08:27
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Some of these sound very interesting. Maybe post a few?
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 Fenrir.Skarwind
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By Fenrir.Skarwind 2021-09-25 00:48:43
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Not DAT viewing but:

-Kazham Roped off area beyond the no Entry Sign is just a cave that leads to no map and sky box. May be possible to fall off the map.
-Norg Air Ship Dock is just a small lake with an airship the takes off and lands repeatedly.
-Whitegate docks, it is possible to go to those off shore buildings you see across the ocean, but they are ultra low detail.
-Background/Skybox for Zitah is just a cube and if you go up high enough it was just lazily put there.
-Airship and Boat maps are ultra low res as mentioned.

How this was done was a secret ;)

If you want to play boundry break do it on a private server or something.
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 Cerberus.Kylos
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By Cerberus.Kylos 2021-09-25 00:52:37
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Or better yet, you can explore all of these yourself. Way better than still images!

>> Noesis <<
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 Fenrir.Skarwind
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By Fenrir.Skarwind 2021-09-25 01:24:47
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Oh one other random tidbit,

The Owl in Carpenters landing is actually just a sprite. It is Billboarding aka Doom/Wolfenstein Style. It gives you the illusion that it is constantly staring at you from all Angles.
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 Asura.Aeonova
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By Asura.Aeonova 2021-09-25 02:09:42
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Sel Phiner sign:

Upside-down train thing:

I want to go to the:


Archive of things you would probably wonder about this:

https://oculin.wordpress.com/2018/02/14/final-fantasy-xi-the-lost-town-sel-phiner/
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By Zubis 2021-09-25 03:58:52
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The train/monorail seems very FF8 to me. Probably too futuristic for FF11 though.
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By Asura.Aeonova 2021-09-25 04:02:24
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By RadialArcana 2021-09-25 06:39:12
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From what they have been saying in interviews recently, Square Enix threw the kitchen sink at FFXI to get it out faster than the competition. Games normally have 1 or 2 development team working on them and it takes 4-5 years, FFXI had 5 or 6 different dev teams at Square Enix (thousands of people) working on it at once and took 2-3.

Everquest came out and was a big success, and so other studios wanted to replicate this success on a bigger budget to do it better. It's pretty much a retelling of the story of PUBG I guess.

That initial zone posted above was supposedly created by the developers to test concepts and be a playpen for WIP activities, it was created before the designers had created the world and lore. Normally a game is fully designed and then the developers come in later, with FFXI they were doing both at once supposedly. The internal city that does not show up is also in the files too, although I'm not sure it loads properly in Noesis.

The first real zone they created, that was designed was Ronf forest.

Cerberus.Kylos said: »
ROM-1 5.DAT: This strange little area is for the login screen. You can find little houses here, made up of three small villages, but you will never see them while logging in as you can't look around.

This zone is the same one used in character creation, you can see far more there.

Cerberus.Kylos said: »
ROM-1 12.DAT: I was often told that the Legion zone shares an area with Ambuscade, but this DAT shows the five areas on their own. I'll have to find an Ambuscade zone first, though.

They do, but they also created a duplicate zone to help with congestion, so there are 2 of these zones now (very far apart in the file structure).

Cerberus.Kylos said: »
ROM-1 20-22, 45-47.DAT: There are small corridor's outside Mog House's with details for stairs and the other side of the door, like you were originally meant to walk through it to get to your Rent-A-Room.

A lot of things were made that you were never supposed to walk on, but just for visual. When you open the door of your mog house to leave and are in first person, it shows the corridor and stairs outside. It was made purely for that. Normally it would just be a blackness but they wanted to go that extra mile.

Cerberus.Kylos said: »
ROM-1 48-127.DAT: There are many town areas which don't automatically load the interiors of buildings in one DAT, and instead bring in others for more detail. Most of the ROM2's are like this as well.

This is really annoying when modding, they basically did this because of PS2 ram limitations. So all the little rooms in the major cities are blank and only load when you are right in-front of the doors and about to open them. Each little room is a totally seperate dat file.

Cerberus.Kylos said: »
ROM-3 47.DAT: Either my memory sucks or I have never encountered this baby Soulflayer NPC before. What is it from?

This is the bearer of darkness, it's from various missions including the later windurst ones.

YouTube Video Placeholder




Cerberus.Kylos said: »
ROM-4 67.DAT: A scantily clad Mithra playing around with a pot in very mysterious ways. This is one of the strangest things I have found.

How do you not know the most popular Mithra in Windurst?!

She is outside the fishing guild in port windurst, always bending over to feed the fish!

There are other things like a mock version of the ark angels, one being a normal white haired mithra with RSE and some axes they were using to test the mission cut-scenes I think. Before the artist and modeler had made the proper ark angel models.
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 Asura.Geriond
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By Asura.Geriond 2021-09-25 08:34:24
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That's the Bearer of Darkness, from the Windurst nation missions. It's a Karaha-Baruha fused with Fenrir's spirit, incompletely resurrected.

https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Bearer_of_Darkness
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By RadialArcana 2021-09-25 08:37:10
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Spent an hour rewatching cut-scenes, yeah it's the bearer of darkness.

Thanks.
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By Valefor.Kriz 2021-09-25 08:51:13
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Blow your mind with these areas found last year after some old (removed?) DATs were re-investigated with Noesis.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxi/comments/h7p9rg/sel_phiner_and_other_unused_areas/

Tons of pics, go check the post out.

This zone looks fascinating



And Sel Phiner zone pics:

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 Asura.Geriond
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By Asura.Geriond 2021-09-25 08:55:10
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Red Warmachine is this guy:

https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Cogtooth_Skagnogg

I'm unsure about the staff Warchief model. There are just so many orcs it's impossible to check them all in-game, and that's not even counting the cutscene ones in WotG. It might very well be used somewhere.
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By Draylo 2021-09-25 09:09:24
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Remember just before an expansion people would dat mine stuff and make crazy theories lol. I remember around WoTG people thought the meteor cratora in batallia downs were related to the expansion. And a bunch of crazy ones for adoulin
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By RadialArcana 2021-09-25 09:55:29
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Quote:
Sel Phiner:

https://imgur.com/a/C7EA7wp

Unknown Tower:

https://imgur.com/a/Tl25PHI

Unknown Castle/Crypt:

https://imgur.com/a/FuXAJJ2

Dat file near Sel Phiner's, potentially the "Chocobo Woods" that has been referenced before:

https://imgur.com/a/ohS5Zyp

Always found it weird they would goto the great expense of making these tower and dungeon zones and never find a way to implement them into the game.
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 Cerberus.Kylos
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By Cerberus.Kylos 2021-09-25 13:27:21
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Thanks for clarifying some of these things! I have done all the nation missions, but it has been so many years since I completed Windurst's, so I totally forgot about the Bearer of Darkness, lol. The Mithra thing is because I'm Bastokan and probably haven't hung around Windurst enough over the years to notice.

Where are the dats for Sel Phiner? I'd love to explore it. Had no idea it had been found.

The castle/crypt looks like it could connect San D'Oria with King Ranperre's Tomb, Ranguemont Pass, or both? There are similarities.

Does anyone else seriously want a Chocobo Wood in FFXI? It makes sense, you never see them out in the wild, so where did they come from? Would be awesome if we could get Chocobo's who go slightly faster than mounts if we raise them right. Chocobo's have been lost in this game ever since they introduced HP crystals, survival guide's and mounts. That makes my old slow Black Chocobo cross.

Cogtooth is one I don't remember fighting, but how many years has it been since we fought NMs in La Vaule (S), lol? Thanks for letting me know though, it looks cool. It's kind of sad we don't have ilvl Beastmen fights (Garrison/Campaign 2.0 anyone?). We've far outgrown these old enemies.
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By alzeerffxi 2021-09-25 17:33:15
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RadialArcana said: »
Quote:
Sel Phiner:

https://imgur.com/a/C7EA7wp

Unknown Tower:

https://imgur.com/a/Tl25PHI

Unknown Castle/Crypt:

https://imgur.com/a/FuXAJJ2

Dat file near Sel Phiner's, potentially the "Chocobo Woods" that has been referenced before:

https://imgur.com/a/ohS5Zyp

Always found it weird they would goto the great expense of making these tower and dungeon zones and never find a way to implement them into the game.
the unnkown castle/ crypt zone giving lots of vagrant story vibes design is cool, sel phiner looks like a lot like adoulin city maybe it was a prototype for adoulin?
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By Draylo 2021-09-25 19:45:29
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Cerberus.Kylos said: »
Thanks for clarifying some of these things! I have done all the nation missions, but it has been so many years since I completed Windurst's, so I totally forgot about the Bearer of Darkness, lol. The Mithra thing is because I'm Bastokan and probably haven't hung around Windurst enough over the years to notice.

Where are the dats for Sel Phiner? I'd love to explore it. Had no idea it had been found.

The castle/crypt looks like it could connect San D'Oria with King Ranperre's Tomb, Ranguemont Pass, or both? There are similarities.

Does anyone else seriously want a Chocobo Wood in FFXI? It makes sense, you never see them out in the wild, so where did they come from? Would be awesome if we could get Chocobo's who go slightly faster than mounts if we raise them right. Chocobo's have been lost in this game ever since they introduced HP crystals, survival guide's and mounts. That makes my old slow Black Chocobo cross.

Cogtooth is one I don't remember fighting, but how many years has it been since we fought NMs in La Vaule (S), lol? Thanks for letting me know though, it looks cool. It's kind of sad we don't have ilvl Beastmen fights (Garrison/Campaign 2.0 anyone?). We've far outgrown these old enemies.

I'd like one for Chocobo's, I wish they did more with that stuff. It still makes me bitter that everything I wanted for XI they pretty much did with XIV. They have actual chocobo races, you can fight actual chocobo's in the wild or as bosses and they use choco meteor etc. More fan service there I guess but it would be cool if they added that here, they have a moogle NM so it wouldn't be too far off to have a chocobo.
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 Cerberus.Kylos
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By Cerberus.Kylos 2021-09-26 00:01:02
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I found this DAT of an Alzadaal Table, and it has an animation where these purple towers come out of it and piece together like some kind of Transformer. Is this a thing in the game?
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By Phoenix.Dabackpack 2021-09-26 01:40:58
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Cerberus.Kylos said: »


I found this DAT of an Alzadaal Table, and it has an animation where these purple towers come out of it and piece together like some kind of Transformer. Is this a thing in the game?

That looks like Alexander--- don't think the Alzadaal Table does that in-game though
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 Cerberus.Kylos
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By Cerberus.Kylos 2021-09-26 02:13:46
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I was thinking the same. It seems the table has this graphic inside, or it's another table in a room I'm unaware of. Why SE would stick a purple, detachable Alexander in a table is anybody's guess.

On another note, I moved way ahead to see what the recent game looks like. It seems the entire Sheol zone, including A, B, C, and Gaol, all exist on the same .DAT file. This means whenever you enter Odyssey, it loads the whole thing. It's so big I can barely get it in one photo.

The area on the left with all the white boxes is where you fight Odyssey NMs, and just beyond that is the arena for T4 Bumba.

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By Zubis 2021-09-26 02:55:39
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That crypt screams under San d'Oria to me with the papel statue in the first pic.
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By RadialArcana 2021-09-26 05:53:22
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Cerberus.Kylos said: »
I found this DAT of an Alzadaal Table, and it has an animation where these purple towers come out of it and piece together like some kind of Transformer. Is this a thing in the game?

I think this is part of one of the cut-scenes.

It tells of a Ragnarock battle between Odin and Alexander in the past, Alexander of the past was far more massive than the one created and in the missions. In the past version, Alexander was defeated and his massive body fell to earth in chunks.

The remains of Alexander in present times are the Alzadaal Undersea Ruins, you see the cogs and mechanics in the walls etc.

Cerberus.Kylos said: »
I was thinking the same. It seems the table has this graphic inside, or it's another table in a room I'm unaware of. Why SE would stick a purple, detachable Alexander in a table is anybody's guess.

On another note, I moved way ahead to see what the recent game looks like. It seems the entire Sheol zone, including A, B, C, and Gaol, all exist on the same .DAT file. This means whenever you enter Odyssey, it loads the whole thing. It's so big I can barely get it in one photo.

The area on the left with all the white boxes is where you fight Odyssey NMs, and just beyond that is the arena for T4 Bumba.


If you zoom in on the correct spires, you can see the enclosed bcnm dungeon areas where you fight lillith and Odin. People fighting lillith are in the same zone at the same time as people doing gaol etc.
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 Shiva.Thorny
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By Shiva.Thorny 2021-09-26 07:33:02
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RadialArcana said: »
People fighting lillith are in the same zone at the same time as people doing gaol etc.

This isn't true, at least not in any verifiable manner. Even if you pos between the regions, there's never anyone else that will load in within your instance. You can't invite people cross instance, shouts or say won't load for other people, etc. To my best understanding, the server has a predecided limit to the amount of 'instances' it will allow, but you always receive your own.

Past that, it's a question of server architecture, but it's not like the server has any work to do with regards to the zone dat. It makes no sense to combine people into the same instance. Plus, they have totally different mob name dats they load for each instance, and overlap mob indexes:
WoE P2(htbc): ROM9\6\68.DAT
WoE P1(htbc): ROM\361\92.DAT
ROM\363\67.DAT and ROM\363\68.DAT are Sheol-A for P1 and P2
ROM\363\69.DAT and ROM\363\70.DAT are Sheol-B for P1 and P2
ROM\363\71.DAT and ROM\363\72.DAT are Sheol-C for P1 and P2
ROM\364\110.DAT and ROM\364\111.DAT are Sheol-Gaol for P1 and P2

To make this work in a way that people shared a zone, they'd need to be tracking multiple instances of the same mob index within the same zone, which they almost certainly don't do. They just give you your own instance, load you into the area you're meant to be in and direct you to the mob name dat you need to use, and load the mobset for the area you're meant to be in.
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By Asura.Sechs 2021-09-26 08:07:38
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There are people reporting that by poshacking they accidentally ended up in Lilith's Arena while someone else was fighting her.

Now I've seen no proof, so it could be a lie.
But I 100% know this was the case for the old vana'diel BC areas.
It's like the BC zone has the burning circle and 3-4 replicas of the same arena. Each player willing to do a BC fight gets warped to one of the available ones, but they're virtually in the "same zone". It's not an instance, at least not in the way modern MMO technology implements the "instancing" technology.
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By RadialArcana 2021-09-26 08:24:17
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One of the problems with posting stuff like this is there is a desire to find ways to take advantage of things.

However I would say they are well aware of all the things people can do with tools, and the reasons they might want to do it.
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By Shiva.Thorny 2021-09-26 08:36:47
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The old BC areas use a different system entirely, you don't zone when entering them and it's well known you can POS to them. They share the same entity dat, and each BC has 3 entries in it(one per potential arena it can spawn in). The BC status effect contains a param for the instance you're in, so anyone without the status effect can't interact with your monsters or players who do have it. This makes it relatively safe, even if it's crummy design. I believe at some point in time they didn't check the status effect properly for trove, as there were reports of people stealing chests, but it's likely been fixed by now.

The new 'instances' have multiple entity dats and load the one for the content you're going into. Lilith has mob index 4 in the dat loaded when doing lilith, but if you go into Gaol then mob index 4 is Sgili. If you go into Sheol, it's Nostos Hecteyes or Nostos Bat. Someone who POSed into Lilith with her up would've seen her named as one of those monsters, and obviously that would've been reported. So, I call bs there.

They almost certainly did not set up the server in a way that it can track multiple sets of indices in the same 'instance', it makes no sense to do that. They don't need to do anything special to create another instance, just copy the class(ideally it'd be dynamically generated, but as you've said it's not true instancing).

The processing goes up exponentially the more people are exposed, so it is potentially more expensive to combine people in the same zone because certain actions will have to be sent to and calculated for everyone in zone.
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By FaeQueenCory 2021-09-26 09:16:44
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Cerberus.Kylos said: »


I found this DAT of an Alzadaal Table, and it has an animation where these purple towers come out of it and piece together like some kind of Transformer. Is this a thing in the game?
It's one of the ToAU cutscenes. iirc the one where they tell you how the entire salvage/nyzule ruins were once a giant robot that summoned Alexander and that there was a big old war with their mecha v the then Odin avatar.

EDIT: Ah here it is:
YouTube Video Placeholder
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 Cerberus.Kylos
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By Cerberus.Kylos 2021-09-26 17:26:04
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That's cool about Alexander. Most of these missions I did so many years ago, so it's tough to remember all the little details.

Also, I agree about Lilith not being part of Odyssey. I always assumed the Selbina HTBs took place in Walk of Echoes, not the place where you would fight Bumba. Odyssey gives you your own instance, unlike regular WoE.
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By RadialArcana 2021-09-30 15:36:52
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FaeQueenCory said: »
Cerberus.Kylos said: »


I found this DAT of an Alzadaal Table, and it has an animation where these purple towers come out of it and piece together like some kind of Transformer. Is this a thing in the game?
It's one of the ToAU cutscenes. iirc the one where they tell you how the entire salvage/nyzule ruins were once a giant robot that summoned Alexander and that there was a big old war with their mecha v the then Odin avatar.

EDIT: Ah here it is:
YouTube Video Placeholder



If you look at the map of Alzadaal Undersea Ruins it does kind of look like an overheard view of Alexander, which is fitting since it is the remnants of his body.



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