When the Collector Role was first introduced, the collectables were always in the same locations. This made it very easy to collect all the items needed for a set and made a lot of players very rich. In an attempt to make it more difficult, Rockstar started to randomise the locations of each group of collectables. There are now 6 groups of locations any one type of collectables can be found in. These groups of locations are known as “cycles”. The cycles can be plugged into third party apps that provide maps of the locations of each collectable, assisting the player in completing collections to sell to Madam Nazar.
Each day at midnight UTC, the locations of the items change and the groups of collectables switch to a different cycle. The cycles seem to be random, however certain groups are always in the same cycle. The groups are…
- American Wild Flowers,
- Tarot Cards,
- Jewelry,
- Alcohol,
- Bird Eggs,
- Arrowheads,
- Heirlooms,
- Coins,
- Fossils,
The Naturalist Update further complicated things by randamising the actual item at each spot for some collectables. The randomised collections are Fossils, Jewelry, Arrowheads and Coins. You can read more about how the Naturalist Update changed things here
There is also a very useful (in fact it’s the BEST) collectors map.
