Hortulanus Cryolex in Overthere

Any ETA on their return?

10 days off so plenty of time to run this mission and get some key peices and augs and they are now AWOL.

Only progression my group needs now is in VP and we all need keys.

Individual medallion droppers are going to be camped to death.

Didn't know the npc was gone, I did the OT-mission few days ago without any missing npc's.
Maybe it is a server specific problem?

[Sat Dec 23 15:31:29 2017] MESSAGE OF THE DAY: Hortulanus Cryolex is on a temporary vacation while the team looks into addressing an exploit with her mission.

Curious as to what the exploit was. I know I was in a group the other day that did the mission. Zoned in, planted, killed one trash, then killed name in about 10 seconds. Was a literal joke. I don't see how it can be exploited when it can be won in under 60 seconds total...

Uh, isn't this the raid NPC for OT?

Please disable the group mission and return the NPC so that guilds may continue raiding on their previously planned upon schedules.

Removing access to the group mission would fix the problem without punishing customers who want to raid.

The other 3 missions can be exploited in the same way, better remove those npcs to. Actually maybe its better to just remove the whole expansion and try again.

Quite sure that's not the exploit. What you're thinking has been around for 3 years.

Least put NPC back in and just make the group chest drop pieces of coal.

No, i know:
Put the NPC back, but instead of giving the mission that can be exploited (however that's done), simply award the reward right away!
That way everyone has something from it...

I heard a rumor that someone figured out how to bypass the lockout so it could be run over and over. If thats the case then I hope they got their ban.

If it's what I'm thinking it is, it's completely their fault for assigning the lockout where the lockout is assigned. The Lceanium mission could also be repeated over and over because they did stupid stuff like assigning the lockout when the chest is opened.

Anyone on the team that doesn't realize that the playerbase is going to figure that out fast and use it to their advantage shouldn't be working on the team.

Or maybe people should not try to exploit things. I hope a whole swath of people get banned for this.

Or they could just do something reasonable like adding an extra step to the task and locking it there instead of applying the lockout after spawning the loot, and the chest still be openable after the task gets dropped. Lceanium has been like that for over a year now, just Lcea has a moderately higher entry level of difficulty than Fell Foilage.

I just I didn't notice that, as I didn't think to try to exploit things.

So if I understand the exploit:
A team beats mission but doesn't open chest. They then taskadd 1 alt, and remove the rest. The 1 alt opens the chest, loots the spells. A team then regets the mission without a task timer and repeats with a different alt.

No, they drop the task and loot the chest. No need for alts, the chest is already there and can be opened and looted. The actual problem, such as it is, is that opening the chest is the mechanic that EQ uses to apply the lockout. Since they're not in the task, no lockout timer is applied.

simply change the lockout timer for 1 or 2 hours .... players will no longer try to exploit this bug ....

Just log who does it, ban them, done. Nice and easy and those of us that do the mission or raid correctly can keep doing it.

The raid is now unavailable too, which is garbage about some group cheaters.

Basically what I said in the live update bug forums. They need to return the NPC for raid purposes, right away.