Curse

Arduin · May 18, 2009, 02:53 PM // 14:53

Let's go full circle: Gifts of the Huntsman

doomfodder · May 19, 2009, 03:40 PM // 15:40

MayB this reply is better off in sardelac... but...

a prediction system for what the traveler will want next & where he'll be. 5 gifts for guessing item correctly, 5 gifts for guessing where (ZONE only) correctly, + 10 bonus gifts for guessing both correctly

bursta91 · May 19, 2009, 04:03 PM // 16:03

Wind jade orbs

Deadshot Seven · May 19, 2009, 04:17 PM // 16:17

vabbian wine.

Shadow Slave · May 19, 2009, 06:11 PM // 18:11

Almost definitely, at some point, Dark Remains.

cataphract · May 19, 2009, 09:10 PM // 21:10

I'm pretty sure he won't be collecting Warden Horns until I merch both stacks.

ebstjohn · May 19, 2009, 11:37 PM // 23:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daesu

Next one would be in EOTN and either Destroyer cores or Superior Charr Carvings.

This was amazingly close.

There doesn't appear to be a logical path or trend to his locations.

Hyper Cutter · May 20, 2009, 01:40 AM // 01:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by ebstjohn

This was amazingly close.

There doesn't appear to be a logical path or trend to his locations.

He does seem to be going from one campaign to the next in order (he started in Tyria, jumped to Cantha, then to Elona, and now he's in the Far Shiverpeaks). Maybe he'll circle back around to Prophecies next...

doomfodder · May 26, 2009, 08:43 PM // 20:43

... for at least guessing an FOW collectable item (not dark remains tho SRY)

Still, I've noticed that no one is predicting where he'll B, just the collectable.

HMMM, must B cause of the thread title ????

Oh well, appearance location should b part of this thread too IMO.

Esprit · May 26, 2009, 10:08 PM // 22:08

If the vanquishing page on wiki is correct, there are a total of 136 explorable areas, which means is less than a 1% chance to guess correctly. Of course your chances go up each week. But, you would not see a full 1% chance until almost 3/4's of a year later. And your chances only go up assuming Anet removes the area from a list for a full rotation or throws it in later (because he could show up in the same area, just different location).

As for guessing items, there are probably hundreds of items that could be the collectable each week.

So good luck, and congrats to whomever gets the lucky guess each week.

Divine Ashes · May 27, 2009, 07:32 AM // 07:32

So it looks like he's been going from Tyria to Cantha to Elona to GWEN...since this week is Tyria again, I'm guessing he'll end up somewhere in Cantha. Guessing what he wants is far more difficult, since last he was in Cantha he wanted an Elonian item (Juni berries). It really could be anything, but I'm gonna guess Gold Crimson Skull Coins as a present to Togo :P, and that he'll be in the mountainous area outside of Shing Jea

.

BrettM · May 27, 2009, 01:25 PM // 13:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divine Ashes

So it looks like he's been going from Tyria to Cantha to Elona to GWEN...since this week is Tyria again, I'm guessing he'll end up somewhere in Cantha.

But, if it's a random selection among all possible explorables, there is a much greater chance he will end up in Tyria. Tyria has nearly twice as many explorable areas as NF or Factions. (He started out with two sequential appearances in Tyria, remember.) And, given the nature of random selections, there is nothing stopping him from appearing in Elona or GWEN again, or even twice in a row.

I don't think it's a simple rotation. But I do wonder how fancy they got with the selection algorithm. It could be a simple random selection from among all candidate spawning points. However they might weight the chances according to such factors as the most recent appearance on a continent. I would hope they at least include code so that he doesn't spawn twice in the same location or even the same explorable (assuming there are 2 or more possible spawning points in at least some of the bigger explorables).

We have far too little data to figure anything out at this point. It's still just an assumption that there is even any programmed randomness involved at all. Perhaps each week Linsey decides where he will go, giggling gleefully as she avoids any area that has been the subject of speculation here. Or maybe some intern throws a dart at a map of the Tyria world.

tmakinen · May 27, 2009, 01:51 PM // 13:51

I don't think that the chosen location + collectable is (algorithmically) random at all. There are several pieces of evidence suggesting that the weekly pair is hand picked. There is always a small story concerning the collectable that ties it to the surroundings - it would take more effort to design a 'random story generator' with enough data on local lore than just fix the pair by hand. Also, Nicholas is right now standing in front of a statue of Balthazar and asking for collectables from FoW. I don't believe that random quest generators are that good.

Shasgaliel · May 27, 2009, 02:14 PM // 14:14

my bet for the next collectible item is: encrypted charr battle plans....

Tom Swift · May 27, 2009, 02:18 PM // 14:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shasgaliel

my bet for the next collectible item is: encrypted charr battle plans....

I wish....

got 20 of them in storage because i can't be bothered to do the quest (already have max rep) and I don't like throwing them away.

But it will probably be....

geodes.

Malice Black · May 27, 2009, 02:22 PM // 14:22

A copy of Playboy and a box of tissues.

Olof · May 27, 2009, 02:33 PM // 14:33

Black Pearls next week.

Longasc · May 27, 2009, 02:52 PM // 14:52

I wonder if we cannot derive this information from the GW.DAT.

gw_poster · May 27, 2009, 03:36 PM // 15:36

It seems as though the last two weeks' items have been harder to collect for average players, so methinks anet might come back round to something easier (but not as easy as linen, lol). My picks for next week, sorted by campaign:

Proph - Dessicated Hydra Claws
Factions - Oni Claw
NF - Diamond Djinn Essence
EOTN - Patch of Simian Fur

Disclaimer: I've got 8 Oni Claws

BrettM · May 27, 2009, 03:37 PM // 15:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmakinen

I don't think that the chosen location + collectable is (algorithmically) random at all. There are several pieces of evidence suggesting that the weekly pair is hand picked. There is always a small story concerning the collectable that ties it to the surroundings - it would take more effort to design a 'random story generator' with enough data on local lore than just fix the pair by hand. Also, Nicholas is right now standing in front of a statue of Balthazar and asking for collectables from FoW. I don't believe that random quest generators are that good.

I was thinking more along the lines of a table with each record containing spawn point, story, and collectable as a unit. The random selection would be made from that table. I.e., "Temple of Balthazar in The Falls, Going to see Zinn, Gloom Seed" is one record, while "Gwen's Garden, Need gift for Gwen, Chromatic Scale" is another. It wouldn't be a matter of randomly selecting a location from a list, then randomly selecting a collectable from another list, then somehow generating an appropriate story to explain the pairing. The mind boggles at the difficulty of that!

I suspect they have many of these location-story-collectable sets already made up. Dialog takes time to localize, and I would be surprised to learn that they are doing this on the fly each week, where one minor flub in the schedule could throw everything off. (The translator for Italian was out sick. The boss who needs to approve this is on vacation. Oops, the dog ate the script.) It would make more sense to have created and localized enough scenarios in advance to last several months, or longer, before Nick the Traveler made his first appearance.

Given a pre-defined list of scenarios, then they have a choice of putting them in a fixed rotation, hand-selecting which one to use each week, or randomly selecting among them.

Pre-Searing Nick has a list of stories tied to collectables, and it appears that there is a more-or-less random selection made among these each day. There is probably some weighting involved based on the last time an item was requested, so he won't ask for the same thing two days in a row. There may be some weighting based on the difficulty in obtaining the item, so he asks for Red Iris Flowers less frequently than Spider Legs, but it's too soon to be sure.

Post-Searing Nick could work about the same way, with the minor added complexity of tying the story/collectable to a location. All that you would need to do is move him to the appropriate location whenever you selected the next story/collectable.