How exactly does an Agent of Change work (for those of us that have only heard praises sung about this NPC)?
It spawns a private instance of the specific raid zone with all raid NPCs up. The lockout is all your characters on that server. You need 6 bodies in a group to pull a zone (5 offlines work). Lockout timer is 6.5 days if you kill stuff, 3 days if you zone in and immediatley drop it. Some AoC instances are setup to never allow rare mobs to spawn as well.
Mr. Bobby... ...why would someone create an instance, zone in, and immediately drop it? Are they trying for base pop rare spawns?
Classic to and including PoP + GoD You could do this, though killing the rares gave the long lockouts iirc, if you weren't raiding you could guarantee kill rares in mischief/thornblade this way
So ... looking through the list ... was curious not to see Qvic on the list for AoC zones with Cynosure and Iqthinxa being open world contested and one of the three sources for Chaos Runes. Anyone know the reason why no Qvic?
I've never played on a TLP, so I have no experience with the AoC. I'm assuming that the PoP Agents would make doing PoP progression for the Artisan's Prize much quicker, yes?
Pretty much, if there is an agent of change for a zone you can go there and kill the raid named without worrying about it being camped all the time. I've had a mage in VT for the last 2 years trying to get the IVU earring, the times I've managed to kill her she has only dropped it once and I could use a couple more for friends and alts. Now I can guarentee I can kill her once a week without having to try and beat others to her spawn. The same goes for POP progression, if you have the time you could hit all the raids in 1 day.
In regard to this, it takes 6 characters to request, but can you add people into the instance afterwards, or do they have to be added to the group/raid before requesting?
A few more things about AoC zones in case it wasn't clear: Regular named can and will spawn in the DZ. I spawned an OG Velk's instance on TLP and it had like 5 named up. The zone in location can vary a lot. Velk's is the regular zone in. Hate is the port in spot. Kedge Keep is right outside Phinny's lair SolB is at the fire giant area In some cases the zone out is weird. Take old Velk's, for example. They AoC is by Thurgadin but when you zone out (either by hitting the zone line or telling the AoC you want to leave) you are dumped outside of the static Velk's zone. If you want to reenter the DZ you have to run all the way back to the AoC. I don't know of many like this. At one point they were going to dramatically nerf XP in DZs. Does anyone know if they ever did that? Edit: Trash generally doesn't respawn in AoC zones or has limited trash pop to start with (thanks Febb).
I think they removed trash from certain raid AoC instances to keep people from using them as private exp zones.
Awesome. I did the AP on two toons, but really didn't want to go through the "waiting for the mob to pop" shennanigans on toon #3. Knowing that I can now knock that crap out easy peasy makes this task much more appealing.
Are there still level restrictions with the AOC like for Vox and Nagafen? I've wanted to go back and kill them with my current characters just for achievements sake and to be able to say I did but aside from using the shroud system to be low enough level I don't know of another way to do so for the original versions. I would assume the shrouds are fairly weak at that level as well?