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The Taming Archive: Dedicated to Ultima Online Taming Profession

Guide to Spawns (based off of JesDyr's faq)

Learning how pets spawn is very important to a tamer. Their livelihood depends on it. Once you understand the spawns, you can use them to your advantage. There are 3 types of spawns in UO. They are the camp spawn, pool spawn, and single spawn. There are advantages and uses to each spawn type.

Camp Spawn
A camp spawn only lasts a short time. When a camp spawn is formed, it is usually with similar creatures in multiples of 4 to 6. Most vanish within 10 minutes, since the monster camp spawns usually spawn with chests. They vanish to help keep the chests fresh. Camp spawn animals make poor pets, since even if they are tamed or stabled, they still vanish. Camp spawns include the animal spawns of Delucia, hind/great hart spawns of the plains near the orc fort of T2A, and the orc camps on arctic isle. The great harts that spawn in T2A seem to be an interesting spawn. Even though they spawn within a camp, they will respawn individually if killed. No other creature that I'm aware of will do this. This spawn type is impossible to block.
Pool Spawn
The pool spawn is random. For a spawn region, the server knows that there is supposed to be xxx many creatures there. It picks those creatures from a list of creatures. Most large animal spawns use this system, including arctic isle, Moonglow, and the northern woods, as well as some graveyards. While it is possible to block this type of spawn, it only lessens the number of creatures that appear on the server, it will not prevent certain types of creatures from being added to the spawn queue.
Single Spawn
Single spawns are the most common, particularly with the more powerful creatures. The server knows how many of a particular creature should appear in its dictated area. Creatures controlled by this type of spawn include lich lords, dragons of Destard, white wyrms, nightmares, and ogre lords. Tame or not, no more than a predetermined number (usually just one) of those creatures will get added to the spawn queue.

What is the "spawn queue"? The server knows exactly how many and what kind of creatures should spawn in a particular location. When the server sees that the appropriate number and type of creature is found on the server, it stops producing monsters or animals. If any particular creature dies or leaves the server, the server will pick up on this and add it to its "queue" of creatures to spawn. No one knows how often the server will check for missing creatures or how long it takes a creature to spawn once it is added to the queue.

Examples:

You kill a lich lord (single spawn). The server sees that a lich lord is missing and adds it to the spawn queue. A short time later, a new lich lord spawns.

You kill a cow (camp spawn) outside of Delucia. The server doesn't care about your cow. The rest of the members of its camp spawn will vanish shortly and a new camp spawn will form eventually. Player actions do not effect the camp spawn at all.

You tame a white wyrm (single spawn). If your tame wyrm does not leave the server, a new one will not get added to the spawn queue and a new one will not spawn. Once you remove your tamed white wyrm off of the server it spawned from, it is now removed from the spawn pool and it gets a new "spawn ID". You can watch wyrms respawn 'til your heart's content once you return your newly tamed wyrm back to the server it spawned from.

You kill a goat (pool spawn) outside of Moonglow. The server sees that there is a creature missing once the goat dies. The server adds a random creature to its queue from the pool spawn list for that area. A short time later, the random creature spawns.

Last modified on January 11, 2003 4:29 pm EST.
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