Buried in Time - Where Are Those Damn Eggs?

I've mentioned in the past that I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the GSI dailies. In theory I like the concept of having more (mostly) non-combat missions, but with the way the GSI dailies work in practice, they are sadly often tedious to do. I still remember scouring three different instances of Alderaan for Big Red for example.

One mission I recalled being pretty pleasant though is Buried in Time on Tatooine. It requires you to dig up three "fossilised egg clusters" near some Krayt Dragon skeletons, and since the environment consists of sand dunes and there are almost no mobs around, it's easy enough to find them. Or at least it should be. I definitely remember it being that way for me in the past.

Having done the GSI weekly a couple of times for Galactic Seasons though, my experience was very different this time around, and I would easily spend half an hour or more driving in circles without finding more than a single egg cluster. I even took breaks and tried to switch instances, but to no avail.

I did some googling to find out whether this was a known issue that other people were having too, and while I could find some posts from players bemoaning that they were indeed having the same problem and wanted to blame it on some kind of bug or lack of respawns, there were always lots of replies along the lines of, "I don't know what you're talking about, it's as easy as ever for me!"

The best lead I found were multiple mentions about it potentially having something to do with graphics settings and view distance, and this seemed to align with some of my own experiences. For example there was one time I found an egg cluster next to a rock, thought "neat" and just went a few steps to the right to harvest an archaeology crystal... and when I turned around, the eggs were gone. I eventually got them to reappear by running back to the original spot and running around for a little bit. Another time I saw someone else doing the quest, and I could see that player successfully deploy their seeker droid and dig something up, but on my screen there was nothing there.

Eventually I managed to narrow it down to a problem with zoom, though it might also be tied to graphics settings. (I play with everything close to maxed out; I don't know if the problem also occurs on lower settings.) I play with the camera pretty far zoomed out nowadays, and as it turns out the fossilised egg clusters don't visually pop into existence until you're nearly on top of them when you play that way, which was what made them so impossibly hard to find.

When I finally did a test run with the camera closely zoomed in, I found four or five eggs within only a couple of minutes, and I noticed that if I stood still with an egg cluster in sight and then zoomed my camera out, it would disappear, and then come back once I zoomed back in. This creates a bit of a paradox as zooming further out usually allows you to see things further away from your character, but in this particular instance you'll see the eggs from further away when you're closely zoomed in. It's weird!

Anyway, as part of struggling with this whole process, I took some screenshots of known egg cluster spawn points to make it easier to find them again in the future, and I thought I might as well share them here. So if you're having the same problem as me, remember to zoom in closely and then just run around checking the spots below. (It's not a comprehensive list of all spawns, but it's a start.)

Near X -1141, Y -809, in the sand tracks leading away from the skull of the smaller Krayt Dragon skeleton.

At X -1155, Y -979 near the nose of the larger Krayt Dragon skull.

Around X -1162, Y -994, under the group of flappy birds near the larger Krayt Dragon skull.

Near X -1193, Y -756, next to the spine of the larger Krayt Dragon skeleton.

Around X - 211, Y -819, next to a large bone sticking out from the smaller Krayt Dragon skeleton.

At X -1223, Y -1016 where the larger skeleton's tail ends, close to the cave entrance with a class story phase.

Approximately X -1225, Y -861, a small distance away from the larger Krayt Dragon skeleton.

Around X -1226, Y -920, next to one of the bigger Krayt Dragon's ribs where there's also a Scyk spawn point.

At X -1286, Y -965 where the larger Krayt Dragon's tail loops down towards the cave entrance.

Around X -1340, Y -1104 above the cliff leading down to the bone pile below the cave.

Near X -1346, Y -820, some distance away from the larger Krayt Dragon skeleton and near where another Scyk spawns.

At X -1357, Y -977 next to a large rock.