Please add Undead Dragongut Strings back to Trakanon

The current situation for bards to complete their epic on Phinigel is horrendous. Let me explain why.

1) Trakanon cannot be up in order for UDB to spawn. Once Trak is killed, there's enough room for one, maybe two UDB spawns (if you're fast on the first one) before Trak respawns.

2) Almost nobody kills Trakanon in OW anymore. I've been keeping track of it lately and on average he dies once a month. That's 1-2 bard epics PER MONTH on the ENTIRE SERVER.

3) Once UDB does show up, he's going to be contested. Due to it being a 3-hour window, you're unlikely to get a full raid to sit around waiting for it to pop with you, so everyone rushes over there and mages start COTH'ing folks once it does pop. If people think they have enough they trigger it, and anyone who's there rushes in to attempt to killsteal, or, as happened to us today, train whoever's doing it.

4) Once deaggro'd, "fake trak" despawns after about 10 minutes. You're stuck waiting for the respawn of UDB (again, roughly 13 hours).

This could all be resolved by adding the sinews back to real Trak. A guild could setup a Trak raid, do it instanced and be done.

As I said last time this topic came up, the UDB makes no sense at this point.

For this one part of the bard epic, you have to not only put together a bigger raid than any other fight for any other epic in the game, for real Trakanon, but you then have to come back 14 or so hours later with a similarly large raid force to fight off all the people who show up contesting the UDB. A guild that does not have people ready and able to log in and poopsock for hours has very little chance to complete it, even if their guild is more than powerful enough to defeat Trakanon. The chanter epic has similar ridiculous bottlenecks, but at least a single group is more than enough to beat their Cabilis and Neriak mobs. You have to pull together two fairly significant raid forces for one piece of the bard epic about twelve to fourteen hours apart.

Two weeks ago my guild sat 24+ people in Trak's lair for 6 or 7 hours waiting for the UDB, more than twice as many as necessary to kill the mob, for the sole reason that there were two other guilds present who were contesting the spawn. And although my guild won the DPS race, 1) that's a long time for that many people to sit in one room, 2) nobody wants to do that for every single bard in their guild and 3) the guilds who lost spent all that time for nothing. It engenders real bitterness and hurts the game as a whole when people lose something like that through no fault of theirs.

It's stupid. Put them back on Trakanon. It would be an extremely simple fix.

It was bad in kunark. It is near impossible in velious. I've been waiting months for Daybreak to acknowledge this issue. I feel I will be waiting forever unfortunately. The bard epic quest was made significantly harder due to mechanics they put in on the server. So many solutions have been suggested to them, yet all we hear are crickets.

Can this get changed already please? It can't be that hard to add an item to a mob, especially since the server mechanics made this harder in the first place. Or make undead bard spawn in picks, would be much easier. You're taking away the drops in velks can you add gutstrings or something during that patch?

Last post about this had over 220 replies with no word from DBG, I wouldn't hold my breath for a response =(

Before naysayers chime in with 'it's an epic quest for a reason!' and 'other epic quests have similar camps,' please keep in mind the contrast here. The cleric epic, for example, has at least three fairly long, drawn out camps, but two of them are easily solo'able, and another is solo'able by 60 or at least a solid group can explode the zone for you while you hope for the right drops (yes, I am talking about Skyfire). This topic is talking about an epic that involves an above-and-beyond epic camp requiring a solid group to keep the area clear as well as a raid force pretty much on-call to descend upon a heavily contested spawn. I presume this topic is also compassionate towards other epic quests that face similar issues.

Given the advent of Agents of Change allowing instanced raid targets, and high zone population spawning additional picks of the zone, I feel the aforementioned solution would benefit the server and its community greatly by taking away the pressures of contesting particular camps. There are already other more modern touches in play designed to relieve some of the inherent tedium that came with old school EverQuest, such as proc augmentations for melee characters, allowing the modern spell research system to be in play, and so on and so forth. Also, keep in mind that some epic quests have been altered over time in light of zone changes causing certain old methods of obtainment impossible. Given that there is only so much of a window of time to take advantage of epic questline weapons versus the length of time one had in old school EverQuest ... I mean, these were weapons that were relevant for years whereas at best we'll see most of these relevant for a year or two as by the time Omens of War and Gates of Discord come around we'll be replacing them with new weapons and the 2.0 epics.

It is my hope that you will consider altering some of the questlines that involve camps such as the Undead Dragongut Strings to be played out differently while still maintaining the epic value of the fights that once were. Allow more of these classes' players to obtain their epics without resorting to underhanded tactics. Champion community values. As much as we enjoy the nostalgia that comes with this type of server modern touches need to be in play given the timeframes we're given to enjoy such a walk down memory lane. This needs to happen. Thank you.

The irony here is that the UDB was added to make it easier for Bards to get their epics. Back in the day Trak was a long spawn, but still had good enough loot to be killed regularly - people ran out of stuff in Velious and even Luclin to kill so still did old stuff.

But now Trak hardly ever gets killed. So effectively a bard needs to kill Trak twice to get their epic done. Oh, and because of MotM the real Trak isn't even particularly easy either.

How tough is the Trak spawned by UDB?

He's not that hard, 2 groups maybe. The problem is motm Trakanon in open world.

If you were allowed to be alone with him, sure. You'd need two tanks, a mage and a couple of clerics (and dps).

But you're not. Bring two groups and the other groups will killsteal it from you. Bring more and they'll train you.

Signed. This bottleneck is ridiculous, and should be fixed on top priority.

I don't see the point of saying no to this. Bards epic benefits everyone, not just the bard who has it.

Agree. Even as an already epic'd bard, I agree that this bottleneck is unnecessary. Bard epic is already more complex than many others.

I see two options:

• Add Undead Dragongut Strings to open world Trakanon starting in Velious
• Revert the MOTM buff on Trakanon, slowing his open world spawn rate

The amount of drama, socking, and training that goes on when the UDB spawns is absurd.

But weren't you the one suggesting that everyone shouldn't have access to high end items? it dosent make it rare for you then... I mean that was your reasoning for your recent decrepit and selfish behavior.

You're such a subject matter expert on many things. I think you'd be better off hanging with your cool friends. Your opinion here is very weak and meaningless.

Keep it the way it is. Bard epic should be epic.

Eh, dealing with training and killstealing is not epic.

dont play a bard but something should be fixed regarding this step in the bard epic. plenty of pretty easy solutions out there

1. put dragon guts on openworld trak
2. allow UDB to spawn in the picks similar to how VSR spawns in karnors picks. (make it so UDB trakanon = only gut item, similar to how spawned venril only gives quest items)
3. move UDB spawn point & event to another place in Sebilis, little area between the juggs wall and the door has enough room to contain this event.

They should have just removed BPs from spawned Trak in the first place instead of removing him from instances =/

The only relevant dev comment I've seen on this issue regarded 1.0s as a whole. The comment, from prathun I believe, was that they had looked at 1.0s at some point in relation with the other changes and had decided to not give them a go over.

This is probably because they honestly weren't sure how all the 1.0s would be affected. Well we've had ample time and feedback now, on bard, chanter and wizard and no response from the devs.

I doubt you guys will see a change based on those facts, and I sympathize with you bards.

But they DID adjust undead bard - originally he was spawning in pickzones and they removed him from picks because people were farming BPs off of him on Ragefire/Lockjaw. Great example of a few bad apples screwing it up for everybody else who just legitimately want to play the game =(

To those of you that feel passionately about this and would like to encourage a response from the development team, there is currently an open ticket in the DBG issue tracker in relation to this; upvoting or watching the issue would help get more visibility.

https://dgcissuetracker.com/browse/EQ-945/

If no one is killing Trak in open world as you suggest, maybe your guild should kill him just to get UDB.

Yeah - people on RF/LJ knew ahead of time they would offer inferior Phinigel and they knew doing it would screw you.

Please.

Again - OP said no one is killing Trak. Perhaps all you Phinny whiners should go kill Trak and keep him dead so UDB can spawn for folks.

Except OP clearly states that regular Trak hardly ever dies. So he and his guild should go kill Trak. As should other guilds with un-epiced bards.

Instead of whining.

Easiest solution of all.