Each vanguard drops one shield and one sword, plus one horse - Careful - they bite.
Looting rights are determined by damage, but I've had some problems with this.. I use a bushido swordsman and if I can, I honor them - so I dish out a lot of damage. Even without honor, I usually get a shield or sword more than 75% of the time.
I think the shields and swords go to the top damagers. Twice now, I've done a lot of damage to a VC, died, ressed, and came back to hit it; but by then, other people would almost had it finished. I go to loot, but get a "you didnt earn the right to loot this" message. So I come back later when the corpse is public, and I find a shield. The other attackers have all looted the corpse, so no way they'd have left it behind. I confirmed this the next time I died after damaging the VC, gotten the no rights message, waited for corpse to go public, and there was my shield.
So this is actually kind of buggy, it awards the items based on damage, however it doesn't award you looting rights if you happen to take a dirt nap before the VC dies.

Rumor has it that they always strike at midnight Sosarian time. So check your holiday time piece for the time....and wait and watch.

Perhaps this will assist some in their timing. Good luck!

looks like the spawn every hour or two!

Every respawn is at midnight UO time. One UO day is 2 hours in Real Life.

Haha, yeah, that would about sum it up! Imagine my confusion as to why I kept getting 'not enough reagents to cast this spell' messages upon ressing and re-equipping after a badly timed lich-brigade assault.

To my dismay, I had accidentally put my Holiday Timepiece in the bracelet slot my LRC/FC jewelry normally occupies.

Self-humor is priceless in these events. Everyone scrambles to get back in the fight and has a little spazz-moment.

I seem to be finding it easier to get shields than the swords... and from the sounds of the FoF sounds like we will be seeing somthing spawning at the other cities here soon.... could be interesting.... kinda waiting to see how that pans out as to if it's the same things spawning or somthing new. But I certainly do like the new dread warhorse's....

I can confirm, on catskills, Nu'jelm is currently under siege. The area everything is in only has one entrance or exit, and there's demon beserkers pushing through now.

It's getting rough guys! We need backup!

I can confirm that reports tell me Papua and Nu'Jelm on GL are under siege by the Vanguard.... however when I tried to muster forces to draw them back into a retreat....... I got few to no takers. Was met with frustration from mages over inability to effect damage, irritation by dexers as to lag and aboundance of spawn.... certain death.... and tamers who only cared if there were Dread Warhorses to tame..... Sad.
Someone asked about a rumored robe but no one has yet come forth and acknowledged anything more substantial than rumor.

by far the worst aspects of these spawns are:

1. not being able to damage restless souls, pirates, brigands, but they can still interrupt your spells and generally annoy you.

2. monsters spawning stuck. this includes the vanguard controllers.

3. not being able to cast area effect spells.

That pretty much sums it up. Imagine the moonglow rift, without any area effect spells, and that's what we've got. Cats has several people fighting, but I can assure you they won't be dragging all of those restless souls out from the cracks inside of the walls anytime soon.

Unless we're forced to page gm's to unstick the vanguards, the spawn will theoretically stack ontop of itself, correct?

i found a strange red npc at vanguard spawn, i never seen one like him
name was "black order mage of ....." (dont remember all the exact name, but was reaaaally long).

I killed him, and all i got was junks,golds and his clothes.
Clothes looks like old dark blue zog clothes, but are not the same color, so nothing
special and a pair of WaraJi Tabi that looks interesting...
have to check if tailor can do it, i never crafted it lol!

BBWalker. Where were you when you saw the Black order mage??? Cove or another City?

You can inspire some townsfolk to go after the restless dead you cant seem to harm. Hire someone, walk them around a bit at let them learn the ways of warfare. Dismiss them and they'll be so inspired they'll go after the stubborn invaders on their own recognizance.

Though the best method is just to fix the dang code already...