looting EM items and rares

[Gemviper]

Scenario: You are at an idoc and you don't know it yet but the house owner was an EM and rare item collector. Not only that but he locked down said collection all around his house for everyone to see.

Problem: Your looting script doesn't look for individual EM items because A)there are so many different ones and B) there is no one itemID to scan for, they borrow the itemID's of a lot of other generic items. How do you handle it?

I don't afk idoc, my script makes a sound when a house falls to alert me, and so I grab these if/when I see them, manually. Using "finditem * G" is problematic because you are literally going to run around like a chicken without a head, into neighbors houses etc, etc. You need to name them within the script but the names are weird, the list is long and... you get the idea.

There has to be a way to include EM items and rares in an efficient way, right?

[manwinc]

You can set a priority list if the items are visible before hand, then loot those items first before grabbing random things.

[cybercasper]

that is true i have seen a idoc pritority list that will allow u to add items. but here is the thing with that you need to know someone with a bunch of em items and rares. i know there are a couple of places on atl and in fact someone is selling off over 600 em items and many rares maybe u can get in contact and take a tour and just collect a list

[The Ghost]

If I recall , to not said all, but most of the EM items have the same patern  xxxxx xxx From Em xxxxxxx  you can do a quick search with event property.  Like you mention before, use one guy to search the area.  

[BobOzarius]

Event property is too slow when there are others at an idoc. Probly the best bet is to have 10+ accounts all grabbing items as fast as they can. Or as many as you can afford to field. Trial accounts work in some areas also.

[manwinc]

The problem with event property is that only one client can actually use the command effectively at a time. Once you start having multiple accounts trying to pull Properties of different items simultaneously they don't all get values.

Priority List if the house is public is good, Then you need to relay data to the other looters of what they are trying to grab/is being grabbed.

I hate idocs.

[Gemviper]

It's a love hate thing 

My motivation has been to see if I can match what the elites are using, speedwise I'm very pleased. Loot-list wise... meh! Work in progress there.

[The Ghost]

At the pace you are going, your build  might be better because you are doing IDOC more often them most of us.

[Gemviper]

We'll have to compare sometime. I have a dozen builds of my version that I switch between depending on tram/fel, number of people, any visible items I might want, too many packhorse around etc... and I'm STILL trying to get more out of it.

I've found some interesting things while testing that don't jive with the documentation too. I was able to do away with things like reading the journal or performing extra finditems to check for range or other items. The documentation says it should not work as intended without throwing in game errors but, well, it works. Less is more(speed!).

I've tested a sub in my script that runs after everything else is done to just scoop up *anything* until I'm full. These items would likely be junk 99% of the time, or cleanup pts at best, but occasionally might be something fun I could not have anticipated like an EM item maybe!. If there's weight or free item slots left... why not?

So far that part is exploding hilariously, finditem * G produces all kinds of weird results. It literally made my toon run into the neighbors house, used his teleporter tile and tried to bag something unseen that was on the ground outside his other house(ie: part of the game map). There has to be a *safer* way to do a final "grab whatever" cleanup, lol. Grabbing known items is one thing, effectively looting the unknown... yikes!

Too much potential for abuse too, someone throwing down some junk might realize that I'm launching at "anything" and make my toon do crazy things if I'm away at all.... not a good thing. It's turning into a bigger than expected challenge to grab em items with weird names that share itemID with generic stuff, there's just so many of them. There's probably more different EM items than there are players at this point, if they keep it up by adding a handful per week like they are now people will get bored.

I'm working on a way to actually itemize all EM items by breaking them down by common values but even with common values it's going to be a huge undertaking that might just be too slow to process to be of any use. Example: EM items tend not to be blessed so if you find a statuette ID that is usually blessed but is not blessed = grab it. There just isn't enough things in common between EM items to make this fast, at least I haven't found it yet.

I'm thinking an item database on a desktop SQL server to handle EM item search might be the way to go due to sheer size of the EM item pool. That would be overkill for most idocs though.

[Gemviper]

I've been testing but still haven't reached something that works efficiently enough for actual use. I have compiled a list of thousands of "rare" items, including the actual itemID for most(for testing)...

Code: [Select]

ID YQYTQPD PXCB Golden Shimmering Sun-Dried Roses Of A Lost Love$Insured$Weight: 1 Stone
ID DRYTQPD DWE A Passionate Rosebush Augmented With True Beauty: "Omnia Vincit Amor Et Nos Cedamus Amori"$Insured$Weight: 1 Stone
ID KIWTQPD KTL Christmas Elf's Toolkit$Uses Remaining: 69$Weight: 1 Stone
ID WVAUPPD EWH You Find A Note Written In BLOOD, A Horizontal Line Running On The Top:  Devil's Bond$Weight: 1 Stone
etc...
Commonalities:
- The length of text for rares tends to be longer than the default amount of text
- The rares share an item type with a non-rare generic item most of the time(which is the main problem)

Scanning for * G (anything on the ground) is problematic because you find game tiles hidden bellow the map all over the place. You also find player ID's and other fun things. For that reason you really need to specify actual item types.

WHat to do... If I find an answer I'll share it.

[BobOzarius]

Vacuuming up items as quickly and efficiently as possible is always going to be your best bet, unless you specifically know there is an item worth picking up, even then, 3 other people are probably vying for that item also. Just loot as fast and as much as you can. Don't do even property or things that slow down searches.

[Gemviper]

I agree about speed but overall results suffer because of the sheer amount of junk, plants etc at idoc. For that reason I prioritize a few semi-common expensive items and then focus on chests. A sub in between to quickly scan for rares would probably be ideal, I don't want to just vacuum stuff like normal plants, benches etc and leave a davie's locker on the table...

Mass accounts would make it efficient to take everything, because you could. Unfortunately that's not me.

Either way, a sub to check for EM items is my current challenge and given the fact that they share item types with generic items it's not easy. Most people display those types of items too so you can't count on them being in a chest.

[BobOzarius]

Use a whitelist. Hard code types you don't want to loot. Same with things you want to loot. And prioritize them based on want. One finditem and you can try to loot everything one after another. Without doing any other finditems.  And just crank your lpc up to find and prioritize things by type that are found.

[Gemviper]

That's what I do, but you can't with EM items very easily. They share types with common items but their text is different. I thought I was onto a winning solution when I went by color(findcol) because EM items tend not to share the same hue as their generic counterpart but that doesn't work either because people dye stuff, lol. Or plants, same type ID but varied colors etc. If I blacklist plants by type that removes any chance of getting an EM item that shares type with plants.

Round and round we go, lol.