Where Is NM - A Limbus NM & ??? Tracker

For the lay people it comes down to it using widescan when it should not be able to, correct?

Yes, in part. There's two layers:
1) using Widescan functions when the client should not be able to (can't open map at all in either Limbus zone)
2) being able to go much beyond widescan range, to request updates about any arbitrary mob that exists in zone, whether it's dead or alive, at any distance, and whether it appears on widescan or not.

Putting aside 1 for a moment, the packet used in 2 is normally only sent by the game client when you use the Track function of Widescan - so you can only select a mob that has already appeared in your Widescan, limiting range to w/e range your job has. Mobs beyond that range are inaccessible, and you're rate limited, the client doesn't let you spam that request (need to cancel the previous one). And certain entities, like ???s and homepoints and many more, do not appear on widescans at all in the first place!

This is nowhere near close to gearswap injecting equipset packets faster/more precisely than the game can, or using weaponskills while not engaged[*], it's a couple of orders of magnitude more exploit-y. And detectable. And will very likely be patched if it becomes too widespread, like warping to locked homepoints was, but that's just my prediction that could be wrong.

My issue, which do note that I bring here personally and not as voice of the windower team, is not with the function itself (other very common addons do much worse), it's with a disclaimer that only says "inject packets", sounding innocent like a million other addons that also inject packets and are very, very much innocent (dunno, the temps addon, or MAGA for Oseem augments, or the already mentioned superwarp). It is not. It's a full on exploit.

EDIT: see Thorny's post below, the packet involved in this is a lot more exploit-y than I was describing in this post.

_{[*] which for the record only happened as a bug and is only still there for legacy reasons, it's been debated a million times if it should be removed}

My understanding is yes, and its especially egregious in limbus because

well, instead of telling you
go try to use wide scan in limbus


Ok so I just tried this. It scans the area, detects all NM's that are up and reports what floors they are on. You really dont need this to run every 30 seconds. This is literally a one-time scan option. MAYBE two-times if theres other people in the area and you need confirmation the other group killed the NM that should be up and you're unable to find it.

And yes, I accept the risk I took doing this.

The amount of people that still don't understand that vanilla client can't simply ranged WS without engaging first..

"But why are you engaging that mob before you leaden it?! Just fffff leaden it!"

Then someone has to explain that (a) that's a GS thing and (b) that player is vanilla they can't do that.

Also the screams will be heard.. very far.. if that ever gets removed.

Is this "Update packets (0x00E)" similar to just coming within the 50 range of a mob?
That seems to be a much better alternative

the zonewide check seems like it'd be good for getting kupopowers.

Not to nitpick, but 0x016 isn't widescan related. It's used by the client during cutscenes and menu interactions when an entity is expected to be visible and isn't, to request an 0x0E packet. As far as I know, it will never be legitimately sent for any monster. I doubt it's ever legitimately sent for many of the other things it's used for, either.

The gist of the post is accurate though, it's just worse than described.

Auto-reporting any NMs that appear within 50 yalms is plenty sufficient for helping a server kill all the respawns before the month period is over.

Has this been updated since the discussion over widescan in places you can't?

Does it still use widescan?

And has it been made clear?

I'd like to start using this again as well as see the whereisnm site start working again but it's kinda come to a dead stop because there hasn't been much communication.

You need to DL whereiswhereisnm to find out where the add on went.

If you’re not sure where to find it, look up whereiswhereiswhereisnm

https://whereisnm.com/addon

Best way is looking at the website, but yes it was updated almost 2 weeks ago.

It was reverted back to the method before I added logic from the limbus addon mentioned in this thread. So it will not scan zone-wide and just detect if a NM or ??? is close to your position.

When the addon detects a ???, it could check whether it is set to be visible or not, and if not visible can report the ??? as having despawned.

While the addon is not doing that perfectly, a Cronjob is running every night and removes ??? that has 72hr+ since last update, so they become stale.

I have played around with the mob array and the visible value wasn't always reliable. It would sometime detect NM or ??? on floors you weren't on and would make it as active/visible.

If you manually compute and check the XYZ distance is < 50, that should eliminate things on different floors. The distance stored in memory is only XY distance, and that value can become stale when it is no longer visible so cannot be relied upon. Also for ??? specifically, since it doesn't move, if a reported not visible ??? has the same coordinates as the last reported visible ???, then should be able to be pretty sure it truly despawned.

Honestly the coordinate check is probably overkill, once you filter out invalid entries in the mob array, if ??? marked as not visible then should be able to conclude it despawned, the same should be true for NMs as well (based on their respective alive/dead status).

When I think back it was probably NMs I saw this issue since they are/can moving around and between floors in some cases, and it was the main goal with the addon when I was designing the MVP.

Yeah for anything, you must compare its XYZ coordinates to player's and check XYZ distance is < 50. If it's > 50 then it's stale/invalid and should be ignored.

Looks like the website has recorded a despawned ??? I was spying on, you will need to check the packet isn't injected or modified before reporting it.

Doing some server patching today, this includes changes to letsencrypt so in the meantime the website might display out of date certs until the services is back online.

Addon should work as normal.

Edit: Patching done. If no data is displayed, you might have to clear your cookies/cache.

What is new to the limbus update that would be nice to have for the tracker?

So far I played around with collecting info on the conditions and semi-automate the /check for monsters in close proximity of the player if they’re the NM.

If you're adding condition data, a summary block with a countdown to the end of the tally period and a list of what still needs to be done would be cool.

It's readily available information when you're in limbus, but it would be nice to be able to check it outside the game.

Is it tied to the weekly conquest tally or you meant the monthly one? Maybe a silly question.

Every four weeks, according to SE, so 13 tally periods per year. The five chest weekly limit resets at the same time as conquest tally, so I assume that's when the Limbus tally happens.

You can confirm the exact number of days remaining in the current period with the "treasure chest timings" menu option at the limbus operator.

-- Version updated to v1.0.0 --

Addon:
- Capture and send objective/conditions from Temenos/Apollyon Operator.

Website:
- Display objective data
- Added new datapoints to /stats
- Added a reminder to monthly reset with countdown.
- Minor UX changes and bugfixes

API:
- Created new endpoints for objectives

Download v1.0.0

With objectives/conditions being so new, there is a chance I got some things wrong and will revise it as we learn more (this applies to the website as it submits whatever the operators mentions).

Is there a way to either only send things on zone or send in parts rather than all at once?

Sending reports murders my ffxi - a giant stutter for like half a second. I literally entered the wrong floor of Temenos today because I was doing it by hand and I dropped a down-arrow-key because the addon decided to send the Operator conditions right when I was in the menu. Previously it was just obnoxious, but now that it's doing something at a time when it might actually affect me I'm asking. (yeah yeah I should have used superwarp I know)

(checking for player status = idle might work if you don't want to do on zone, but on zone would be better I think?)

It is possible, its not difficult to add (it was even the original implementation) but consensus at the time was wanting quick updates for ToD and when found NMs.

I don't think the distance to the server is the issue but limitations in lua running single threaded (I'm sure someone can correct me in that).

You're not the first person bringing this up (though most people aren't running into this problem, or accepts it) and I have plans to sit down and look into this issue over Christmas when I have little more time on my hands. Probably just add a toggle setting.

Sat down this morning and wired in a batch feature that I hope should improve the stutter some users experience.

It's enabled by default and will submit up to 3 reports when you move between floors or send all when leaving the area.
Both setting and the limit amount can be edited in the settings.xml file.

Since I can't replicate the stutter on my end its not 100% tested but I have managed to test the batch feature that it sends limited report between floors.

v1.0.1 can be downloaded as always on https://whereisnm.com/addon

Objective list isn't staying accurate - showing 2/2 ??? and 19/22 NM in Temenos - Ragnarok, actual is 1/2 ??? and 18/22 NM

Edit: noticed also that Apollyon is correctly 2/2 ??? and 19/22 NM, site maybe showing identical progress for Apollyon and Temenos?

I won't rule out I forgot some typescript wiring in the frontend. There isn't any good way I've figured out to make the data stale, I haven't personally been able to do the new Limbus for the decemeber update so I just put something quick together based on 3rd person info.
Currently I've just set if the data haven't been refreshed in a week it will be made stale, and obviously can be tweaked.

If you think something is wrong, send me a DM, I don't want this thread to become a support thread.

This is the data that Ragnarok users submitted thus far (timestamps is in UTC).