DEV: Toxicity of Ancient Cyclops Camp

Problem: A lot of toxic behavior on TLP servers deals with camping An Ancient Cyclops (AC). It has the bottleneck item to obtaining journeyman's boots which every Classic-Velious raider & slow running class wants. Every AC spawn degenerates into a DPS race & killstealing contest that leaves everyone frustrated.

One fix was removing the ability to charm the AC so that bards/encs don't have a monopoly. Good. But now, that same monopoly has shifted to Drus, Mages, Necs, & Wizs because of how quick they spit out DPS. The charm nerf did NOT fix the toxicity of the camp. The AC monopoly just changed hands.

Solution: The issue is that the ring of the ancients ONLY drops of the Ancient Cyclops. To fix that bottleneck: what if ALL seafury cyclops in ocean of tears have their loot table changed? The seafuries could ALSO have a RARE chance of dropping the ring as well. That would significantly reduce the bottleneck. It would reduce need to DPS race the AC. All classes would have a fair chance at getting the ring. No more monopolies.

Can you clarify - is this Vaniki or Yelinak TLP?

Maybe put an AOC in OOT that gives us the ring when we hail it? Bonus points if you put it at the butcherblock docks so we don't have to run all the way to seafury island

Mischief solved this problem, I had a harder time getting 6x shadowed weapons than the cyclops rings.

Any server where the ring of the ancients is a no drop item.

It'd be nice. But I feel there should be some effort needed acquire the ring. Getting things with no effort makes them boring. I would like the camp to be more fair for all classes instead of monopolized to dpsers & mage armies.

The Ancient Cyclops in So Ro doesn't count?

Probably both,

I do know that on Vaniki there was a level 40 bard training people constantly every time someone came to the island.

I believe there is a partial solution to the problem with the Ancient Cyclops. When asked about Journeyman Boots Hasten Bootstrutter says the following:

"Ancient cyclopes do march the land. Long have they lived and crafted the rings of the ancients. I must have one and you shall go and fetch one for me. Seek the lands of the oldest cyclops clans. Seek the plains, seek the island in tears and search the dunes for there is one who is last. His clan was blown from the sands."

The island refers to the island in the Ocean of Tears. The dunes refers to South Ro. The plains obviously refers to the plains of Karana which include North Karana, West Karana, East Karana, and South Karana.

Currently the Ancient Cyclops does not spawn in any of the Karanas. This fact contravenes the specific information in the quest.

I believe a partial solution to the toxicity of the two existing AC camps is for Darkpaw to make the Ancient Cyclops have a rare but fair chance of spawning in any of the four Plains of Karana zones. Killing any mob would have a rare chance of spawning the AC. If I was a developer, I would make the level of each AC in each Karana zone, level specific so that lower to mid level players would have a chance to vanquish the AC, not just high level farmers. This would take the pressure off Ocean of Tears and South Ro which have two very specific spawn points.

Not only would this help to alleviate the rarity of the Ancient Cyclops, it would finally be a chance for Darkpaw to stay true to the quest dialogue and fix this longstanding bug. Thanks for listening.

Player created problems require player created solutions

Toxicity is up to everyone to manage

Good post, would fit the in-game lore.

Only time I manage to get him is when I luck out and he spawns right on top of me before Necros using their magical Necro tracking abilities make a B-line straight for it the instant it spawns from the opposite side of the island. That just happened to me again earlier tonight!

It used to spawn in East Karana, lasted about 6 months before it was removed due to being bugged...

I feel old!

Random loot is the solution!

It is definitely "a" solution.

The other is having more mobs that can drop items which are normally only associated with one spawn, such as was suggested by Brontus (& others before for other items/targets) by also giving nearby mobs a chance to drop it, albeit lower, after all players tend to camp an area surrounding a targetted mob & clear it so that would fit with EQ playstyle.

We do need to move away from one mob being the only source for one item anyway I think, it's outdated & has been exploited by monopolization tactics for years which allow a small number of players to bottle-neck access to certain items.

Brontus' solution is elegant, workable, and moves into the right direction the game needs, this solution also still allows for the "roleplay" aspect of a specific mob location being where you need to go to get something which random loot does not do.

DP can implement zone change at command. Opening a new zone on command will also solve this problem. That way everyone can have a zone of their own. Or invitation only zones.

That seems like a recipe for server crashes, we've already seen examples of what players do with on-demand instances.

If it were entertained these would require significant cooldowns, such as F2P accounts may not request them. And each account may only request one such zone each 48 hours, or maybe longer.

They have said many times that they don't want players opening a new zone on command and have put restrictions in place to limit what players can do in the ones they can open. Private zones have also been mentioned many times as something that they don't want players having.

I like this idea. However I'm pretty sure the Karana part of the text is referring to the Undead Cyclops in South Karana, with the idea being that that particular one just deteriorated and the ring is gone.

Still, that UC could easily be switched out for an AC in the spawn cycle, or given the ring as a drop. Maybe an uncommon 1/5 type drop since the UC spawns pretty regularly and I like having this quest be some sort of obstacle.