Main Area's Needing Collection

[ZER0C00L73]

Looking here for the main area's for items that need pc'd. In previous post gear such as ToV era was mentioned, and semi-old content of that nature. This still whold true? As well as as many spacific name's of era's of gear would help a lot in collection. I understand there are pieces missing all over. But looking to fill in some of the big gaps.

A list i guess it what im looking for most. Individuel items could be posted i guess if people wanted, but looking more from those who work with the DB for the big gaps.

[Magick]

Help me out here, tbigg, because I know you're on top of this.

Since the last patch, you'll notice that a certain field was changed on many items. So realistically, to get back up-to-date, everything should be recollected. Note: Since the latest pcollector release, a shitload has been recollected with a ton added everyday.


In the past, from my experience, the majority of missing or incomplete item data was no drop items from zones that many of us raided on Live long, long ago (well okay, some still raid there).

If we broke it down into categories we'd end up with something like:

- Old World (Pre-RoK -most was tradeable except new newbie quest armor)
- Kunark (VP gear)
- Velious (PoG, Thurg, Kael and Skyshrine armor + NToV drops)
- Luclin (lots of areas)
- PoP (ornate armors, elemental, much of PoTime recollected and the remainer should be done this weekend)
- LoY (I think I zoned here twice, by accident, not sure what's needed or what drops)
- LDoN (mostly missing raid drops and hard adv. no-drop items. Tak, Mir, Ruj merchants recollected. 40% or so of MM and Guk recollected.)
- "No Longer Drops" (still existant but removed from loot table items)

I can't say I've taken the time lately to really look into it, but a quick skim revealed some of the velious era being recollected over the past few days. Here's just a sample from Thurg:

Resonant - Helm (Custom), Bracer, Vambs, Gaunts still needed.
Forbidden Rites - must be late, I'm forgetting patch date. Everything pre-Dec so needed I believe.
Rowyl's - Everything dated pre-Dec '03
Beguiler's - many recollected. Need sleeves, wristguard, gloves.



Again, with the latest changes on Live, I'd encourage everyone to load the PC up and collect anything and everything - at least until we get more of the everyday tradeable stuff back up-to-date. But if you really wanted a mission, I'd say pick an era and run with it. Worst case scenerio someone already beat you to it but odds are you'd end up completing a ton of updating using that method.

[tbigg]

I've been cranking on updates, but not finding a lot of new items lately. I am thinking the best way to add a lot of missing items would be to come up with a way to generate the in-game links for specific items we want. I have a list of close to 2000 item IDs and item names that are missing from the latest dumpeditems list.

I know that item links contain the item ID, item name and what looks like a 36-bit hash code. e.g. For Matchless Dragonhide Breastplate, which has an ID of 27159, the link is:

- 0027159-00001-00001-00001-00001-000014F90C7D3Matchless Dragonhide Breastplate -

If somone can give me some ideas/help on how to generate the hash that appears right before the name, I could grab a lot of new items, plus update all the older ones.

Any ideas?

[bloodkingg]

Yes, I have an idea. Put it in the guild motd using the guild manager. Or atleast try to. All you have to do is type it in then update it. Sometimes when you put a link in by clicking on the icon and using /guildmotd to set it, it sets the link right? But then you look into the guild manager and it shows the code and not the link. Not quite sure how you would get it there though.

If this is what you mean, okay. If your talking about doing it with run or something, sorry. Either way, the question was a tad hard to process, probably because it's like 7am here.

[Magick]

Is that still possible tbigg? I remember when PoP came out, people could mine the database like that. If you play on Live, you may recall seeing the PoTime bp links prior to anyone being time flagged (of course they buffed each one up afterward). SOE then claimed to have disabled that method and were quite stern about watching for people who were mining. I figured that was a dead-end. Maybe it's still possible?

[Edgar1898]

I remember people were able to do that with the ignore command :P

/ignore (Cloth cap item link here)

open wordpad, edit the number a poof! instant item link hehe

[tbigg]

The item links contain a Ctrl-R at the beginning and end of the string. It's possible to store and play back links, for example, by manually editting a character's .ini file to create a social button that sends the link along with the control characters.

However, the link has to contain the correct hash code in addition to the item ID. I don't know how item mining was happening before Sony changed it, but I would guess they added the hash code to prevent it. Without that, you could theoretically just try a link for each sequential item ID, since the server seems to ignore the item name text portion of the link.

Anyway, I've not had any luck yet with this idea on other boards where I asked, so it may be a dead end. If I were Sony, I would have generated a random number for the hash code as a secondary ID, rather than making it derivable from an algorithm, in which case, complete item mining this way is definitely prevented.

It's also possible that Sony has some non-existant items in their database that should never be linkable without some item mining technique, waiting to set off the alarms if anyone ever does link them. (item 70001, Noose of the Item Miner, Effect: Ban Your Ass) Not sure if this would be considered a violation of the license agreement, but it could be risky.

Here's another interesting note: Last week, one of the other item databases online displayed a field on their data page named EQHash. It was only on their page for a few days, then disappeared, and I didn't see any data populated in it for the 2 items I looked up. (Don't want to say which site, as I think it was unintended.) I'm pretty sure they are collecting data internally needed to build links.

So I think the concept of collecting the data that will allow construction of item links in game is out there, I just need to get/build those hash codes.

[tbigg]

One other note that makes the idea of creating/collecting item links appealing: When the next expansion comes out, it will include a new class (Berserker), which means many or most of the melee items in the game will be revised to reflect the new class.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just fire off 30,000 links and capture the revised item stats in a day instead of spreading the process out over months?

[tbigg]

More thoughts about the item link idea, and maybe the PacketCollector devs can clarify some of this:

The primary way that people display chat window item links in the game is by clicking on the icon while displaying the item details window. This pastes the link to your chat window. (There is also the new Link All button on the corpse window, but let's ignore that for now.)

If the pasted link comes from data already at the client (probably does, because it appears instantly and would be inefficient to make a server request just for that) this implies one of 2 things:

1. The entire link including the hash code may be sent along with the raw item data struct. If so, it may be possible to colledct it along with the rest of the item data. I don't think it is in the well-known item struct, or at least not in any of the unknown fields from the database. So it may be in another struct in the same packet stream or ??? (I don't know anything about packet structures or sniffing.)

2. Alternately, the hash code may be generated by the client using some algorithm based on item ID or name or ???. This would be great if we could figure out the algorithm. I'm stumped on trying to infer the algorithm from the link itself.

Either way, there may be something usable we could take advantage of. I'm just thinking out loud, hoping someone might be able to add ideas or explain more about the item packets.

Any thoughts?

[kathgar]

I'm 90% sure it is generated by the client. I'm not completely sure, but the other numbers (00001s) are the augment slots(even if they can't have augs). Someone's augs do show up on item links right? (I don't play live). The proper people to talk to really is the macroquest guys and see if they know of a hash/crc/whatever function that is called on the itemid+augs string or whatever. I never got an answer last time I asked.

[tbigg]

Wow, Kathgar, you just corrected one mistake I had made: if the middle fields are for augmentation slots, (which are visible on Live links), then the last field is the 5th aug followed immediately by a 32-bit hash code, not a 36-bit as I has assumed.

That makes more sense and might make it easier to figure out.

I posted a question on this at macroquest but got no response. I'll try again soon.

Thanks.

[hkTrox]

I was browsing through some old patch messages and came across this one.

JANUARY 15, 2003

*Item Links are once again creatable from Items and from other Item Links. Please do not attempt to "mine" the servers for undiscovered items. Links now have a built-in mechanism to prevent those who would go on fishing expeditions by sending up many bad links in an attempt to discover new items. These invalid links are logged, as are the accounts of those who create them.

This will limit the adding of new items to the database once we figure out the hash because your account time might be limited... :(

[tbigg]

I posted a detailed message on the MQ board asking for help. It seems to have been investigated quite a bit by others already. The consensus is that the hash code algorithm is not known outside Sony, and that it would probably have to be reverse engineered by disassembling the cient.

Unfortunately, disassembly of something like EQ is way beyond me. So I'll just have to hope that someday someone figures the algorithm out and shares it with others.

If anyone here wanted to try, I'd be glad to do some of the grunt work, like finding memory locations and offsets.

[Squiffy]

I haven't heard much about PC. Does it just collect mob spawns and items?

Does it capture mob hp/level stuff like that, too?

I mean, I'm in an Elemental guild atm, and I've noticed the eqemu db (at least the one I have) is wayyyy off-base for mob difficulty. Is this something packet collecting can remedy, or no?

Just offering to collect if there's anything I can help with.

Oh yeah, I'm also in the GoD beta, if there's anything you need collected from there.

[Edgar1898]

sony doesnt send the real stats of an npc anymore, hasnt for a while in fact, it just sends us the hp % ratio and the info the client needs to display a mob properly. Therefore the only thing about mobs pc could collect is the race/class, level, textures and its location.