I don't know of any script that spawned Sand Giants. I do, however, recall some trouble makers training giants around once in awhile in Oasis.

I found one screenshot from the archives showing all the Sand Giants during one of these events. This is in North Ro, and the screenshot is from May 2002, so Luclin timeframe, but I'm fairly certain this wasn't the first time it happened:




As I said, these events were great for me because I could get a ton of a rare ingredient involved in making smithed armor, in this case essence of sunlight. I'm not sure who the "general" that is being discussed in the screenshot is, probably a boss sand giant.

So probably not coincidentally, I found another screenshot from a couple days later of the stats of some armor I smithed for a friend's paladin:



Which I ended up submitting to Allakhazam's: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=12557 .

GM event maybe? The only events that were ever really scripted to do things like that, that I know of, were to Coldain Ring quests. Kerafyrm as well, I imagine....although that was less of multiple version of something spawning, and more of an enraged filled blood bath spread across multiple zones.

Could be. But it happened many times, probably at least five that I saw personally. The Dragon Ring was most likely a GM-triggered scripted event, which pretty much means a GM pushes a button (who knows what criteria they used to decide it was a good time to do it?) and the script runs. That's probably what the sand giant thing was too, but I think it would be pretty cool if it happened any time a rare event happened, such as a rare spawn killing another rare spawn that it is KoS to and slightly less powerful (on average) than. An example of this latter type of event might be the way the various camps in the Grimling Forest changed hands in the Luclin expansion, except without players knowing of its existence and being able to manipulate it.

Harm, you just reminded me of the Terrorantula. Scared the shit out of me the first time I saw a picture of it. Sadly, never got to see it myself. I've never really been sure if that was a script or not either...and my, my, have we gone off topic. lol

When I played on Fippy there was almost always a Terrorantula up. I remembered reading all of the talk about that spider here and on Allakhazam and its rarity and whatnot so I was shocked to see it up all the time. Clearly they changed its spawn rate over the years. I figured it was for Erudite cultural armor because the Terrorantula and Terrorantulings that spawned after it died all dropped terrorantula silk which was used in that armor.

I think I may have seen Terrorantula once (whilst trying to spawn the AC for my JBoots quest), but definitely saw Terrorantulings fairly frequently. I think the one time I saw Terrorantula, he conned yellow, while the others were probably blue or something - I imagine I may have been in my 40s, or maybe upper 30s or something - I recall SGs conning blue at the time, and I think they were about level 35?

Terrorantula was on a cycle just like the Ancient Cyclops, so its likely the little terrors were the same way, although I didn't have a erudite tailor so I wasn't motivated to ever farm them and find out. So that would be a spawn cycle and not a GM-triggered event.

Yeah, I saw the Terrorantulings fairly often whilst waiting for the AC - I always assumed they and Terrorantula were normal (if perhaps less-than-common) spawns, like the AC, and never considered that they might be otherwise, as there was no reason to do so.

I know the Terrorantula was on the same spawn table as other spiders, just as the Ancient Cyclops was on the Giants' spawn table, but I've never read anything about a cycle.

Did the terrorantuling spawn with the Terrorantula? I always assumed they spawned after she/it had died.

AC wasn't on the same spawn table as the Sand Giants.

In my experience Terrorantula was just a semi-rare spawn with a spider PH. No special cycle or anything like that. I've camped the AC many times, and when you are completely clearing the desert area it pops pretty frequently. When it dies a whole bunch of the little terrorantulings spawn at its corpse. It drops a few unique items bearing its name, but I don't think anyone ever actually figured out what they were for.

Hmm weird, so that would imply that in all my time of camping the AC, I repeatedly missed Terrorantula by presumably not-very-long, since I saw Terrorantulings quite often. I know I only saw Terrorantula the once but I can't remember whether he was being killed by someone else at the time, or conned yellow and so I just left him alone...

I remember the Terrorantula always being up because it wasn't worth killing. By the time Erudite cultural armor had come out, most people could get easier obtainable stuff like Ry'Gorr. No one really hunted the terrorantula for the silks.

The ancient cyclops actually only had once place holder. There was a random chance what the place holder would spawn as. It could be any undead unit in the sand region, or a sand giant. It's place holder could spawn in about 4 or 5 different places. The cyclops could only spawn at night time. It's exactly the same as the Quillimaine in south karana, except it had a broader range of place holders and only spawns at night as opposed to all hours.

All the rumors and theories you may have heard back in the day - there was some truth to most of them, but none of them were completely correct. The closes theory I heard back in the day was killing undead and giants would cause the AC to spawn.

According to the original Everquest developers, it was exactly this:



It wasn't any sand giant spawn or any undead unit. It was a specific spawn with a unique name ( "a <something>" ) that had to spawn at night to have a chance to be the AC.

And don't forget the fact that the spawn timer on the daytime PH was like 30 minutes, so you could only get a few chances at him each night. However, once the mobs in the night cycle started spawning I think it would respawn pretty fast. Might be a little off on that but I camped him a year or so ago on EQ Mac and that's what it was like. Definitely not trivial to spawn him even if you know the above script.

I just ran round the zone killing everything on the sand (didn't bother with the grass area 'cause I knew he could never spawn there) except, I think, the stuff in camps (eg Dervs). I saw him twice - once when someone else was already on him, and again when I finally got the bugger myself .

Worst place to grind was Permafrost and stay there mostly from level 14-26 or so. Not much competition back in Spring of 1999 but exp was slow and it was a dangerous zone. There were a lot of Corpse runs from Halas.

BlackBurrow
East/West Commons, North Ro, Oasis Camps
Aviaks in South Karana
Temple of Cazic-Thule
Mistmoore
Highhold
Rathe Mountains
Sol B