There's More Than Just the Dead Roaming Around Dead Hills

Adventurers have identified the magic that brought the invasion from Ethernere to Qeynos. As things begin to settle down in Qeynos, terrible temporal disturbances begin happening in Dead Hills, as the creatures from Ethernere are drawn toward the Tower of Rot.

Gahlith Wrannstad, master of the wizard guild of Qeynos, has sent his apprentice Erron Ailspoc to Dead Hills where the turmoil intensifies. Huge creatures have broken down a barrier here, revealing an entry way to an ancient tower. Erron is enlisting help to learn more about these creatures.

“It seems that that old tower is the source of the magical resonance here. From what the Guildmaster tells me, that might be the Tower of Rot, which was built a long time ago by people from Qeynos.” - Erron Ailspoc

Starting Saturday, May 17, 2014 the next phase of the Tower of Rot launch event begins. What do the creatures in Dead Hills have to do with the trouble experienced by the citizens of Qeynos? Quest for Erron and find out! The quests offered by Erron and the special NPCs in Dead Hills will be available until Monday, July 7, 2014.


This content is tuned for players that are level 85 and higher. Players may need a small group to complete these quests.

The Tower of Rot zone becomes available on Wednesday, May 21, 2014.

Just curious. Someday, perhaps in the next few years does Sony have any intentions of actually providing content that people of all levels can join in?

Just have to go back thru all the previous expansions to get to various levels of content. They can barely release content for level 100 toons atm, they don't have the time to do it for all levels every expansion.

I believe one of the 14th Anniversary quests were available for all levels, Big Gnomes Big Problems or something like that.

I think what Shios ment
" Just curious. Someday, perhaps in the next few years does Sony have any intentions of actually providing content that people of all levels can join in? "

is that this ' Special NPC's ' and creating this pre-launch event.. should be for ALL ages / levels. :^)
Something in Butcher Block Perhaps Shios :^) /snicker. Just kidding.. But yes, on that note, those zones to be beefed up on some ' event ' for all levels.

Ya but, I'm going to check into this information from Roshen's post and find these NPC's !
I can't wait.. sounds really fun to me :^D

I agree. I really enjoy taking my time going thru the lower levels and they never have new quests for the lower levels, only for the higher 65 plus toons.

I agree 100% that there should be a little content for levels below 100, sigh. I went to Qeynos with my highest level, most powerful character, and found the quest critters there red as anything. Now I was hoping at least a few of them might be within my level range, so I could have some fun too, but it was not to be. This tends to be rather off putting and annoying that I can't really enjoy the last three expansions. Why do I keep buying them? I ask myself that question a lot lately.

I remember in years past when lower levels were involved in events like this. For example skeletons and werewolves invading west commons. The result? High end players clearing the zone to get the drops for low level alts. And to be honest some were there just to be disruptive. Without a way to prevent this I don't see much point in having zone events for lower levels beyond the anniversary events we do still have.

From what I understand, the reward for completing the 4 Pre-ToR tasks is suffix "Defender of Qeynos." Not game-changing at all and rather nice recognition of playing during an expansion era (made special by limited-time offering). This should be available for all levels. Not just due to disparity in levels, but many players like to molo and/or lack good gear.

You've been playing for awhile I take it, bought the last 3 expansions and not have any level 100 toons? For but the most casual of players, is so easy to get to 100 nowadays. The devs will cater to what most people can / will do, not what only a few can / will do. Now most players may have a level 100 toon but is a AA / gear level difference. Now they have been doing more with chase items for people in more casual guilds to get at least some raid level items. But only so much they can do then rather to make this game to easy and is WAAAAAAY easier then it used to be 10+ years ago. Is diffently some things to complain about the game now a days, just IMO this isn't one of them. Is already things and missions to do from like 20+, They not need to do something like that every expansion.

You can still do the qeynos quests, you just need to tag a mob a higher level char is killing to get credit.

From what I've seen pets can't hold agro on the mobs in the Beyond the Barrier... seems similar to PoW named mobs (though I'm not sure it's 100% identical since I died too quickly to be sure). Is this supposed to happen? I can understand the rationale on named in the PoW (even though I dislike the mechanic) since it's designed to be a difficult zone with large rewards (a one-off thing), but is this going to be the new standard? If this is intentional, it seems like a rather poor solution. No effort to balance anything was made, you just negated a significant aspect of three classes.

Not negated at all. You just need to figure out how to work with it, like any other "special" situation in EQ. Find ways to boost your pet's (or merc's) agro, while dropping your own. You said it yourself, it's a difficult zone with large rewards. Enjoy it as a puzzle and as the challenge it is instead of complaining about it.

(OK, that probably came out more harshly than I intended, but I'm not really sure how else to phrase it...)

My usual group is cloth and chain, no plate except on the cleric. Our first fight was over in about 30 seconds and resulted in all of us (except that cowardly necro who was feigned and laughing their skeletal butt off) running back to our corpses. We got over the initial shock of wiping miserably and changed our play style to match the zone. It's actually kind of fun because it's SO different, but the tools that we (and you...) have had for umpty-squat levels still work there. You just have to use them a bit differently. Our necro's pet (or mage's pet, depending on which toon is played) tanks there and holds agro fine now, we just need to be a touch slower than we normally are because of the need to watch agro.

Actually I completely agree with you here, and it's my fault for not being clear. In the plane of war, I'm happy for there to be special rules that make it more of a challenge. My problem with mechanic is that rather than making it difficult to use pets as tanks, they flat out make it impossible. Regardless, as long as the mechanic stays in the PoW (which has gear to match the difficulty), I'm happy. I mentioned it only to say that it seemed that a mechanic developed for a specialty zone is now leaking out into other forms of content.

Not sure I understand you here... Are you talking about PoW trash? I think the agro buff some of them have is pretty cool. But if a pet tanks on a named the named immediately comes and kills the player, and to my knowledge (haven't gone back yet) this is the same mechanic being used in this quest. It seemed (when I tried and I've heard similar reports from friends) that if the pet was on the top of the agro list the mob would simply refuse to fight him and move onto someone else (not sure if it's the next person on agro or the pet's owner). So the mechanic doesn't say "you have to be careful/skillful and you can do it" it just says "there is no way you can do this." If this mechanic stays in PoW and this quest I guess I'm fine, but I worry this is going to start becoming the standard rather than the exception. So if this finds its way into current content pets will have been fundamentally changed from how they have been since their inception 15 years ago.

To some extent, though, pets have been fundamentally changed every expansion since, oh, Velious or so. I remember mage pets used to be the king, then all pets got wimpy, then along about TSS or so mage pets became god-like (watching a mage SOLO in Crystallos - when it was current content! - was eye-opening...), then mage pets were bonked with the nerfbat and necro pets became uber-powered, then - you get the idea. Through all of that pet owners have adapted and changed the way they do things - and have thrown curses (or blessings) in varying amounts at Sony along the way.

Bear in mind that I play an enchanter (my "pet" is named "Speedbump" for a reason...), and I don't play alts much at all. I'm definitely not a pet authority. My wife, though, has a small country of alts that she plays, and I've been watching her adapt the way she plays her pet classes and the varying capability that they've had (and the varying amounts of invective toward Sony) over time. We've done virtually all the content since about TSS with pet tanks in one form or another. Sometimes more successfully/easily than others, mind you, but it's been a lot of fun figuring out ways to do it.

(and by the way, thank you for your post. I kind of expected to need asbestos underwear like I usually do when I post out here, and it was nice not to need it for a change)

Mages soloing in Crystallos (SoF not TSS) was because swarm (rage) pets prioritized agro and would enrage on low hp effectively tanking the mobs. This has worked for a long time. But I guess if we're just making blanket false statements can beastlords get some buffs? We're so far ahead of wizards it's silly.

i don't feel you can call a summon mechanic a "special situation", since it's always going to happen if your pet has too much agro, so the only thing you can do is not let your pet attack. The question that was asked was "is this the new standard, the inability to solo mobs at that high of level of content", so the answer I believe he deserved is, yes, some mobs now will be constantly unable to be pet tanked while this is current, maybe they will implement new named that wont be as difficult, but, as for special situational pet tanking or tactic, that answer is bogus, PoWar ( or any red con pet summoner) you will need to get a solid group or raid depending on target and don't use pets, it's not situational, this tactic will not change for these targets for quite a while I'm sure, this was the intention.

I made the suggestion to my guild before posting and they thought it a brilliant idea and wondered why SoE never thought of it(i gave a few reasons for that), we have even young kids playing so why not create a "kiddie zone" for lower levels and young kids to play in that they can eventually grow out of and move into the Norrath land, im sorry but some things i see said in general and zone chats should never be seen by young children's eyes and keep it for them only rather than having them invaded by hugs monsters. Making it more diffifcult for young children to play.

Not younger than 13 I would hope. "Young children" shouldn't be playing EQ per the eula. That's what facebook games are for.