Improve meg spawns

I set out with one major goal in this game: Complete all commendations

Life time goal, look forward to you finishing it. Go on.

I currently have 1 (2) commendations left in the game to complete, I state it that way because there is no chance that I will ever find 5 Shrouded Ghosts.

Yup like most of us...

I have killed the following number of megs:

Checks out image Very cool.

Must be in deep/open waters.

There are far few yes, but still a large bit of open water. Some will even spawn between two islands with only 3 squares apart.

Must be on your server for at least an hour.

Or like me...one catches you right off the Port xD

Once you've killed your meg, it will be another hour+ for one to spawn

Hour ingame (real time) isn't much. You can do a lot before you realized...Omg it been 6 hours!

The meg does not care about how little or much loot you have aboard.

I think the reason this myth started was many players would start, 0 loot. Go and collect a legendary chest and Athena loot, twice within "that hour" and boom Meg. Without realizing how long they been actually playing xD

There are no set of actions in game that you can perform to summon a meg, no shanty, no fishing, no yelling out into the void in the hopes that it yells back

Tell that to one crew mate of mine...I swear when they say "It be bad if a Meg shows up about now" One always spawns xD

There is no specific area in the map where a meg is more likely to spawn, you just have to fit the above criteria

Better chances are the areas of the map with open water :/

It feels incredibly bad when the servers are so dead that you merge just before your meg timer is up.

Im still doubting this. I want a Dev to confirm it.

and how often do you merge? What time of day/ day of the week? I can't recall the last time Ive seen a merge and Ive played a full 12 hours sometimes. (random days off)

@burnbacon

That depends entirely on your region.

I play US West servers anywhere from 4pm to 12am, depending on the day. When I was on medical leave (up until last week) I was playing 10-12 hour days because I literally could only sit in a chair or lay down in bed. Now I would say my average session is between 4-6 hours. Both today and yesterday alone I have merged 3 times per session, yesterday after playing for 4 hours I ended up with a single meg. Today I have been online since 4:30pm (nearly 4 hours) and have also spawned only a single meg. There are days where I can play where I do not merge at all, but it feels incredibly bad when you've played for that many hours with a primary goal in mind and have made no progress toward it.

I'm not basing any of this off of feeling or circumstance, and while yes a Dev confirming/denying that behavior would be amazing; I'm not holding my breath. I'm basing all of this off of data and observation: YOU do not spawn a meg immediately after leaving port, you aggro another crews meg. I don't know specifically at what point the meg spawn timers changed so dramatically, but they are in dire need of review.

Aye! It was improved in Season 7 but it still hasn’t been back to what it was before the Shrouded Deep. Same can be said for Skelly ships spawning on the boat.

@im-ltr
You can avoid the merge by sailing in a circle.

@sarjentstupid said in Improve meg spawns:

Fun fact, I speed ran the 5 Shores of Gold quests today taking about an hour each, and after the quest was finished, and I departed the Shores of Gold... EACH TIME a meg spawned and chased me all the way to Galleon's Grave Outpost. So I guess if you want to create a meg you could just farm Shores of Gold, the most fun thing in the world sarcasm. Man am I glad I never have to go back to that island...or get chased back into town by a meg each time.

You spawned one because you spent over an hour doing the tall tale, so when you returned from the area you passed through deep water and a meg spawned. You didn't spawn one because the area inherently spawns more megs. To prove this, you can log into a new server and speed run over to the area and then leave it; you will not spawn a meg. This was one of the first things I tested in great abundance because it's one of the most widespread pieces of misinformation regarding megs.

Am I the only one who wants to drag the Meg behind my ship? Just to show other ships, “Oi, look what I just caught” Maybe sell to the Hunter’s Call?

13 days since my last post, the meg spawns seem worse; I'm averaging one spawn every 1.5-2 hours instead of around the 1hr 15 minute mark. I need 3 more Ancient Terrors until I'm done, but I'm pretty sure I'm losing my mind hunting these things.

Remember when meg music was still scary? Bring that back lol.

I agree. Megs have likely been hunted to near endangered status. Maybe Rare could work on a breeding program lol.

TL/DR: More megs. Make them vicious too!

@im-ltr

Wow, Good stats! nice work.. good info for Shrouded Meg Hunting

I believe the Meg firework will spawn a Meg if all the criteria you listed above is met.
The number of times ive lit one only to be meg'd right after is far too many to be coincidence.

and..
i kinda feel like the Shores of gold Meg is a thing too..
Ive been going to the SOG alot lately and i seem to get Meg'd alot about 1 square away from entering the red.
Not always.. but again.. maybe if your criteria is met.. in the right situation, it does spawn. i dunno.

seems like they both happen alot to me for it just to be coincidence.
but you definently seem to know your stuff..

@li-jratt-li said in Improve meg spawns:

@im-ltr
I believe the Meg firework will spawn a Meg if all the criteria you listed above is met.
The number of times ive lit one only to be meg'd right after is far too many to be coincidence.
and..
i kinda feel like the Shores of gold Meg is a thing too..
Ive been going to the SOG alot lately and i seem to get Meg'd alot about 1 square away from entering the red.

Neither of those things will cause a meg to spawn on their own: The firework thing is pure coincidence (but certainly worth further testing) and the Shores of Gold spawn occurs because the area leading up to entering it is considered deep/open water, so as long as you've fit the criteria of having been on the server for at least an hour, you would spawn your meg in any open water area including the area around the entry to the Shores of Gold. I've tested loading in to a fresh server 100 times, going to the shores of gold and touching ground, getting back on my boat and leaving the shores of gold. Out of my 100 attempts, I spawned 0 megs.

I want to dispel rumors when it comes to this mechanic, because there's a lot amount of misinformation floating around out there.

@wolfmanbush said in Improve meg spawns:

you moving on to something else after you hit your goal?

Likely my plan will be to take a break until the next season. I don't have a huge interest in Milestones: fishing up 1,000 of each type of fish is a fools errand, I can't imagine farming 100 Ancient Terrors when even getting the 11 I've achieved so far has taken so much time. I may just meet new pirates and teach them the game, that's usually what I'm doing if I'm not meg hunting or PvP'ing.

@im-ltr
i havnt done the research you have.. or at all..
But ive probably have about a 50% spawn rate when headed to the SOG.. (via checkpoint) not from.
Its besides the point.. but ive had skeleton galleons spawn on my sloop when headed in aswell.. (only 2x tho)

It almost seems like they increase the spawn of either when headed that way..
i thought it might have been to detour people from running there for protection from Reapers..
Not that ive done that :/

You are wondering why Meg spawns are completely awful? I’ll tell you why.
You’ve been killing all the megaladons
IN FACT
IT WOULD BE MORE REALISTIC TO DECREASE THE SPAWN RATE OF MEGALADONS! HONESTLY! YOU HUNTERS DISGUST ME! WONDERING WHY NO MEGALADONS ARE SPAWNING, WHILE YOU KILL EVERYTHING IN SIGHT! YOU’RE LUCKY THAT THEY AREN’T EXTINCT YET! SOME OF THE MEGALADONS YOU KILLED WERE PROBABLY INNOCENT! JUST SWIMMING AROUND WHILE YOU JERKS SHOOT AT THEM FOR NO REASON! SOME OF THEM HAD A FAMILY!!!!
And yet…hunters get their own outfit. Hunters get their own ship cosmetics. Hunters get their name in a trading company, while the fishers and the cooks are roped in with these cruel, cruel beasts…
Edit:I am now 4.2% less disgusted by hunters. Don’t ask why. Still don’t like them though.

@wolfmanbush said in Improve meg spawns:

Did you end up getting the megs you wanted?

I'm invested in your success story here.

I took a couple of days off, but in the last 9 days I have seen 0 Ancient Terrors. I've only killed 23 megs since then though, but the ratio feels pretty bad.

Spawn times still seem pretty clockwork: I can get a spawn usually every 1hr 15mins, with the latest average time I need to wait being 1hr 30 mins. I've had a couple of outliers where the spawn time was closer to 1hr 45-2hrs, but that was two instances and doesn't really affect the average of the whole dataset of over 180 meg kills since the season launch.

@wolfmanbush

I'm certainly hoping so. I've been watching your progress as well, it's incredibly impressive. Do you have an existing goal in mind or are you just living it out on the seas and hunting whatever you find?

Two more ancient terrors in the last few days, now just a final one remaining. 31 total meg kills in the last 4 days.

Fair play, you've clearly put a lot of effort into this. Makes me sad to see how many people have started reading your post and disputed it clearly without actually finishing reading it. Like yes when I first saw your shores of gold point I thought I've had them consistent, but finishing reading you're right and sitting at any island for long periods then heading to open water has spawned megs. I admire your persistence to reply to every person saying the same thing.

I did have one point a few updates ago where I only ever encountered megs (including my one shrouded ghost) South of sea dogs arena but if it was a thing it was temporary and I now get them all over. Wonder if it was an intentional thing, a bug post shrouded deep or just coincidence.

@wolfmanbush they stopped after a patch

@hiradc said in Improve meg spawns:

Fair play, you've clearly put a lot of effort into this. Makes me sad to see how many people have started reading your post and disputed it clearly without actually finishing reading it. Like yes when I first saw your shores of gold point I thought I've had them consistent, but finishing reading you're right and sitting at any island for long periods then heading to open water has spawned megs. I admire your persistence to reply to every person saying the same thing.

I appreciate it! I think it's really important for those that come after me to be able to have a resource which is backed by data instead of circumstance. You can google information about meg spawns in SoT and you'll be pointed toward topics on these forums and on reddit where you'll see all sorts of claims about how megs spawn, what causes it and the variation of megs simply based on a specific persons single encounter. I know at some point my data will become outdated when I eventually stop doing this an time passes, because as WolfManbush said, each patch changes things a bit: spawn times and spawn locations being the biggest two factors. I recall before the introduction of Sea Forts and Shrines/Treasuries that I'd encounter megs with more frequency and back when my play sessions were shorter, I would run into more megs than I do in my current longer sessions.

My biggest regret is not stopping to kill Ancient Terrors when I was chasing Reaper runners, I have probably passed up 5-10 during those times before I was more hardset on my goal

Done! I've completed all (realistic) commendations in the game, for now.

I say realistic because the last remaining commendation is 5/5 Shrouded Ghosts and completing that just isn't going to happen. I'll probably either take a break until next Season, or chip away periodically at some Milestones that interest me and continue to log in to interact with new pirates and show them the game.