ZONETREND
Zone Trending introduces a dynamic element to zone difficulty. This
feature assigns a cyclic difficulty value to each zone, which gradually
rises and falls over time, with a slightly unique cycle for every zone.

This fluctuation encourages players to strategically choose where and
when to adventure, providing varied experiences in the same areas over
time. High-level players can seek the greater challenge of a max
difficulty trending zone, while lower-level players can attempt zones
that are typically harder when their trending difficulty is low.

LOOK AROUND in a zone that is trending shows needed information.

As a zones trend value decreases, you will find that mobs gradually
become easier, and conversely when a trend value approaches maximum
mobiles will become more difficult. These values range from -1.0 at
minimum to 1.0 at maximum.

Additionally, modifiers may be applied to zones depending on how close
to minimum or maximum the zone currently is. You will get different
modifiers each repop of the zone. Internally, each modifier is assigned
a relative difficulty, and the game will try to balance multiple
modifiers so a zone whose value is < 0 will pick modifiers in such a way
to have the total difficulty score be less than 0 (easier). The opposite
is true for zones whose value is above 0. Certain modifiers are
prevented from being used in XP vs EQ zones.

As a zone approaches its maximum or minimum, the number of possible
modifiers increases, with a maximum of 3 modifiers at the +/- 90th
percentile of the trend. Zones in the band roughly between the +/- 30th
percentile will have no modifiers and only be affected by the strength
of mobiles determined by the trend value.

There have been rumors of special imps that may tinker with items looted
in trending zones. The chance they will do so is proportional to the
current zone difficulty shown in the ZT command.

Marious has been doing his due diligence on the topic of zone trending
and players may be able to glimpse some additional information from him!
(Hint: use the glimpse command at Marious, he should be able to tell
you what modifiers a zone has, in his own way)

Mortals have access to the zt command, which shows them a list of
zones currently trending as well as information about each trend.

The columns contain data as follows:
Z#: Zone Number
Value: The current difficulty percentile of the zone. 100 being max,
-100 being the minimum.
Trend: The direction the trend is moving, UP means it is getting
more difficult, DOWN means it is getting easier.
Max/Min In: The time until the next maximum or minimum value is reached.
Zone Name: The name of the zone.

You can specify a sort argument as listed at the bottom of the zt
command output. For example: zt d will sort the output by the # of
days until the next extreme.

What does all of this mean?
Looking at the first line at the time this help file was written:
27     90  UP      <= 1 Month  Elysium

This means that zone 27, Elysium, is at the 90th difficulty percentile.
It is trending upward, and will reach maximum difficulty in less than 1
Month. When that happens, the zone will switch to trending downward, and
the time indicator will show <= 3 Months, indicating that it will then
reach minimum difficulty of -100 eventually. The value will start
gradually decreasing from 100 to 90, 80, etc depending on the
pre-programmed cyclic parameters for that zone.

Remember, each zone has different cyclic parameters - Phase and Period if
youre so inclined to understand a plot of a sine wave. While it may seem
that many zones are in sync, this is only temporally true and they will
move out of sync as time progresses!

Additionally a chart of the trend value may be viewed for a zone by
using the chart or c argument followed by the zone number.

Example: zt chart 57 will show you a chart of Zone 57 - The Temple
of Bloodstone, which details the cyclic value of the zone over the next
60 weeks.

See ann 1014 for additional information.

See also:  ZONEINFO EXPLORE "LOOK AROUND"