Gultask
commented
5 months ago Tin/Silver Iron/Silver/Gold Mithril/Gold/Truesilver Ooze Mithril/Ooze Gold/Ooze Truesilver/Ooze Silver* (In Thousand Needles only) Small Thorium/Truesilver Ooze Thorium/Ooze Truesilver Rich Thorium/Truesilver Ooze Rich Thorium/Ooze Truesilver Dark Iron can spawn in any node in any zone that allows for it
Nodes can share spawns with other IDs.
Tin shares with Silver, Saronite shares with Rich Saronite, All Outland nodes share with Khorium, Ragveil shares with Flame Cap. They each have a different chance to spawn. Around 30% for Rich Adamantite and 4% for Khorium, for example. I can prove at least 3 different IDs can be available for each spawn.
Proof
Easiest proof is checking Gathermate or Wowhead and noting how the spawns share IDs. Other than that it's sniffing each pool.
Node Spawns are separated into individual pools, not master pools.
Each spawn point shares a pool with around 2-8 spawns. With a limit of 1 spawn at a time, therefore creating individual pools. The average seems to be 4. Instances also use individual pools.
We can use the individual pool feature to discern a realistic respawn timer for nodes, by predicting where each node will spawn.
Proof
Many hours in Retail. This section in Terokkar Forest is certainly correct like this:
Go there and you'll see at least 1 in each of the outlined pools.
Implementation
Perfect Implementation
A perfect implementation would be checking every single node in Retail one at a time, waiting for the ~5 min respawn timer every time you pick one up, and checking where it spawned again. After doing this for every single spawn point for every single pool you'll have the perfect implementation.
Another easier method, granted that there aren't any others farming nearby, would be a staggered or checkered one where you skip possible pools so that you can keep in check those that are already spawned vs just recently spawned. This way you'll double/triple productivity.
Approximate Implementation
Another one that I'll outline is the one I used implemented in under 1 month for AzerothCore, which is extrapolating pools from one sample from Classic:
The benefit of this method is that it grants a fairly close match while only taking about 1 hour of research work per zone.
Example: Full zone gathered from Gathermate with imported data
First pass gathering all nodes
Extrapolated Copper Pools
Extrapolated Tin/Silver Pools
