For whatever it's worth, I never knew this was even a 2 group mission. While I was able to complete this mission with a lvl 108 3 box crew + 3 mercs, it was very difficult. It took me 4 tries over the course of a couple of weeks (I have limited playing time and can't get that chunk of time all together), and it was a real learning experience. With 2 groups and more real players/less boxers, this would have been much easier. In my opinion, these missions are generally only worth it for the bonus reward. The actual reward in terms of exp and alternate currency isn't worth it. The bonus reward is all that people are after, and considering you can only get 1 of some item each time through, it does seem a bit disproportionate to have 2 groups go through a mission for one bonus reward. For any boxers who don't always have groups of people to join them, expect this mission to take a very long time. I would expect to die often, but that was partly how I had to finish the mission. First key point, make sure you clear all of the final rooms before taking on the Presence (rogue) in the northwest. Otherwise, you get the original room mobs + named + named minions on the Presence and Harris, which gets ridiculous. On the Presence (rogue) + additional mobs, I was able to tank them with my SK using every possible defensive until I burned them down one at a time. Shaman root/VP doesn't work much for me because my mercs are stupid and nuke anything I root. On the final boss, that tactic didn't work because they all hit so much harder and have more HPs. I can't root/VP the mobs with my shaman for the same reason as above. I had to use every disc and burn down a single add, and then I wiped because I didn't have enough DPS and defensives to continue surviving. I then rezzed up, buffed up, and repeated the process for another add, at which point I once again wiped. Finally, I was able to get the last 2 adds and the boss on the final try. I really only cared about the bonus reward/trophy for my SK since he is tanking. I don't want to endure that kind of misery again for my other 2 toons, which are really only there to support the SK. I think the saddest part about all of this is that I can't even use the trophy since I'm barely lvl 108. I believe I have to be 110 before I can activate the trophy and gain it's benefits. /sigh.
so wait, if this is a 2-group mission, you have to form a raid, right? LOL sorry for the dumb question. So essentially, you try to get 6 PCs + 6 mercs & zerg the instance? hehe
How is that supposed to work at all? When forming a raid, mercs get suspended when joining. Basically you can do a 12 person mini raid without mercs, or share the instance/reward inbetween two independent groups when using mercs?
Just /taskadd additional people. The task can hold up to 12 and the instance will allow up to 12 in it at a time. If you want mercs, you can't form a raid, which makes things a bit inconvenient. You can't share exp between groups, but that's not an issue since the kill exp is effectively 0. It will make looting the tent pieces more cumbersome as you'll need to either swap people between groups to loot with adv loot, or leave everything on the corpse and open it for others to loot. It's interesting that around the same time they were removing mercs from the group instances of Plane/Hate and the Hate's Furry anniversary where multiple groups were actually handy when current, they went and made this mission multi group and allowed for mercs. The dev team seems really bi-polar at times.
Lol, I was just running through the instance with two groups that don't share xp, advloot, xtar and stuff (in my imagination) and was shaking head for minutes thinking "This can't be how it's supposed to work, no way!". I'ts cool the dev team tackles new ideas like two-group content. But this is just terrible.
Get the instance with a group of players, then once you have the instance, have some disband and form their own group. Then everyone pops their mercs out. Don't need to set up as a raid to start or to do the mission.
They'll probably change it in 2 years and say that we were exploiting by using mercs the entire time.
For those who want to accomplish the aug reward without belonging to a high end raiding guild I find the 12 man raid to be completely in line. Now, its great that we have so many boxers and raid level toons out doing these but allowing the 12 toon raid, even for one reward, still puts this in the realm of possibility for everyone. OK maybe not easy with group gear but its still quite manageable if you want it, its there and quite challenging to get either way. Coa/g
Anyone have a disarmed trap still going off when someone passes over it? The graphic of the trap is gone so there is no way to try and re-disarm.
I've found the problem another trap way in another room from where I was crossing was activating. It was doing this even though there is a wall there. :/
Some of these things might be exploits but even if they are no one can use these exploits for 10 months. Simple checklist: 1) What is the reward for completing the content at the lowest available level? 5 Com Coins (post patch), 200ish plat, a small XP reward and a bonus item that requires Level 110 to use. Sure, it's desirable to taskadd Level 110 characters for a large AA reward to be helpful and/or for profit. Sure, lower min level allows someone to acquire the Tent for future use. But if you're not going to actually make a desirable reward below Level 100, simply message that intention “Lost but Not Forgotten" is intended for Level 100+/105+/110 characters but does scale as low as Level 70. Or simply set a higher min level, for starters min 71+ eliminates Shrouds and various tactics/exploits. Assuming the stated reward is text, just change 10 to 5-20 and 800 to 200-800. 2) Do spells scale? No, [47421-47425] do not scale. Spells very rarely scale regardless of HA adventures being around for 4.5 years. Casters scale and the Level 72 Necro casts level appropriate-ish spells with issues and/or intentional design that most likely the resist system is based on expecting 900+ resist values and every spell a Level 72 Necro casts in an HA is going to land. 3) Are there relevant inanimate objects? Yes, but in this case the traps are more so a spell scaling issue not an inanimate object issue. Again it's been 4.5 years, don't put ~3mil HP weapon racks that Level 70s have to destroy of if for some reason those inanimate objects are necessary stick a key or other device so the Level 70s can kill (additional) mobs to deal with the inanimate objects. 3) How many of the mobs do you expect players to kill to earn the reward? Unknown, but if you make a step even if it's a 0/10 Kill Step you inform the players of the intention of the mission, with 150ish mobs in the zone and the basic design of the mission my best guess is a 0/50 Kill Step would be appropriate. But to relay your intentions even if you're not concerned with how few mobs can be killed you should basically always have a 0/XX Kill Step. If it's higher than 10 it would prevent an exploit with the mission. 4) When should this task lock? Up to half an hour after killing Forceful Presence (post patch). Maybe this is intentional but locking on Earn Sila's Trust which spawns the last mobs would actually lock the mission at the seemingly intended time while preventing a very simple tactic/exploit of looting Sila's Medallion, dropping the mission and then running the mission as many more times as you want being able to sell/offer task adds with only a looting step needed to complete the mission (Sila's from 1st on 2nd run, from 2nd on 3rd...). 5) What global drops are available? Scuffed Bags, you can kill a Cloth dropping named every couple of minutes very easily by clearing the first two rooms over and over again. Maybe it's intentional for this to be temporary content with the highest rate of Scuffed Bag acquisition, maybe it's an exploit, but there really aren't many global drops that are all that relevant so it's a good idea to consider changing the drop rate or removing a global drop when appropriate. 6) What if anything shouldn't be tradeable on FV/Brekt or all servers? Only the completed Tent on FV/Brekt, also Tent parts on other servers. Another no right or wrong question, but something that should be a decision and not a happy accident. Either way, thanks, worked out great for me to be able to AFK sell the Tent for 4.2mil. With inflation and the Bazaar cap if the reward design actively considers FV/Brekt having 3+ rare drops would be even better for the 20th Anniversary. Since you can just sell the taskadd you could consider making things tradeable on all servers to avoid catering to "professional" players, with an established reputation it is easy to sell a Tent on any server, if you made the parts tradeable then "amateur" players could also sell the Tent. Advanced checklist: 1) What fail safes exist to advance the quest? General Sagrinta's Last Stand has a fail safe if General Rikkik is dead and the quest step Kill General Rikkik 0/1 is not completed, the General spawns again. If quest step Kill the Vampire Lord. 0/1 is not completed and Lord Enghearst is dead (deanimated?), the mission cannot be completed. This is more so if time permits, it's part of EQ that stuff happens and you can't complete a mission, but you can take steps to make stuff happen less frequently. 2) At which point do brave/foolish adventurers get an idea of the difficulty of the mission? Consider the plight of people who for some bizarre reason simply play EverQuest, do not search these forums, ask in /gu or consult 3rd party sites. Scion of Blood and Darkness swapping places with Shambling Archer would test the mettle of these adventurers before they mindlessly kill for quite possibly at least an hour before encountering challenge and finding out they should have brought more people. Whether or not Scion of Blood and Darkness are encountered before the tasks locks with "standard" mission progression is a 50/50 proposition post patch. 3) Is there something specific to learn that makes the mission easier rewarding repeat runs or consulting a 3rd party site? Killing the 4 mobs in Harris Feril's room. Simply having an Explore step avoids this for better or for worse, you then have in game information that leads them to the room at which point they most likely kill the mobs before Harris spawns. Having things to learn can be considered something to add to the mission, it's a question of intentions. 4) How little does someone have to be present for to get the full completion reward? It's been 7 years since there was a decision that /taskadd was being abused, if I had to guess it would be Old Man Monster Missions that inspired the change. It was surprising and very easy to (ab)use to see large rewards available by /taskadd, maybe this signals a change in policy and going forward /taskadd sales are going to return to ;general and /taskadd whining is going to return to /gu but hopefully at least the Anniversary design was intentional. 5) Why isn't the content available year round? Players complain about lack of content, Devs complain about lack of staff but then you make content that is available 1/6 of the time which takes just as long to make as content available 6/6 of the time. Remove the bonus reward and Com Coins and/or reduce the XP reward and/or require a DBC purchase or RoS expansion wide rare to start a mission after May 10th. But especially with the change that pre-RoS HA no longer scale to 110 it's brutally inefficient to make content unavailable just because "that's the way it's always been done". 6) Is the reward appropriate? Unknown, it probably "has" to be the same reward as Formal Dinner Party so at least one won't have an appropriate reward since the missions aren't at all similar. Overall the mission works well, by all appearances you stuck with simple mechanics that have a very low failure rate and that require little to no scripting support. Kill mobs, loot mobs, a few dialogue based updates, one combine using tradeable on any server items to advance the quest and one combine for the bonus reward with items that can only be traded on FV/Brekt. You even managed to get Elaborate Defiant to drop in the mission which based on the rarity of level appropriate zonewide drops seems impressive, although maybe Elaborate Defiant was also dropping for Level 110s and it was simply a copy of LDoN zonewide drops.
The end fight went tons smoother when I blocked the mercenaries "cure" spells, upon reviewing my logs of failed fight they tried very frequently to cure things mid combat.
I am really not sure what the point of making this mission even harder was. Initially the final mobs (Forcefull Pressence, Harris) were able to be completed by a single group, although initially there was a pretty steep learning curve, it was possible, even on a low population server, with average non-professional players. The difficulty of finding 6 live players willing to spend the time to get to end of this mission can be tough, but it can be done, finding 12? Seriously? I thought the point of the anniversary quests was to have a fun time doing something challenging, not spending time looking for more people to help with what has seemingly turned into a giant middle finger from the Devs
The Boss never returns to spawn. I pulled him to the NW room, when the adds path back , tag him again, and take him to the east tunnel, you should get 3-4 adds as well which is the ideal. Then kill the adds, once those adds are down...then move back into the west tunnel..and the remaining adds will reaggro and path in...kill those adds and finish him. (you need to kill all the adds else he hp locks at 5%).
It's a shame, but i too overlooked this until the very last week. Still, it was the easier mission of the two (the fishing and collection quest in the old static zones are trivial) and easily boxable (both pre- and post-patch) with WAR+CLR+BST so i did not care much. Difficulty depends ofc on a number of factors and yours might well differ from mine, but pre-patch this was EASILY boxable (only problem one might have had was the room with the two nameds in it, perhaps the annoying de-agro of the forceful presence and if you were careless the final ones. But pre-patch you could deal with JUST 3adds on one pull and Harris and one Ghoul on the 2nd, leaving the 5th Ghoul untouched alltogether. Post-patch, you "have to" tank them all, but with defensives that is no issue - and burn the adds down as quickly as possible (WAR on autoattack+BST dots+pet and CLR healing was more than enough to get them down to where WAR could comfortably tank on with secondaries after defensive ran out). a SHM instead of the CLR would have sped that up even more. This is indeed "the" key point, especially when boxing. Before Forceful presence, the skeletons in the corners are all single and trivial, even though they have quite a few HPs. If they're still up when you have to fight Harris, their extra HPs might make the difference. That's why this point has been stressed above (or in another related thread or in both places) much. Definitely. Especially since i know this is intended as a 2group mission, i agree. Prior to this having been pointed out, i thought 1reward for 1 group is "ok", even if it takes quite a bit to box this through. I did not mind having "had to" run this several times for myself and then some more times for guildies. But for two groups, yes.. it seems, as you say, disproportionate. Mercs assist, well... the MA. Make the SHD MA and not the SHM and the SHM can root freely. since Mercs also tend to "assist" their owner first, it helps when the rooting SHM himself does not run a WIZ merc. That is your personal take of course and i do not doubt what you say here, i just feel obliged to point out that this NEED not be. WAR+(group)BST are enough DPS them to handle-able numbers. You might want to try a slightly different merc setup next year perhaps, if the then-available gear doesn't carry you through comfortably enough by itself. I do not get the "even harder" part really. The only thing that was changed much was that the final encounter is now all adds and named except 3 and then named+1. The mobs do not hit too hard though. Sure, numbers can get you killed if you insist on pulling much and pathing nets you the whole room. But for the most part you could keep mobs single or 3max throughout - except for the named now, since that patch. The mission allows 12, but no way do you NEED 12. A live group of 6 can easily do this relatively quickly, in about half the time the same group needs for the augment mission in DSK. THIS mission, was really "ok" imo from the get-go. i did not see much "need" for linking the final adds and WAS a bit worried, especially since the task locks before the final fight, so you can not call in help if you should wipe. But it turned out that i did not have to worry really, the final adds were not that much of an extra bother (and i had tanked the Forceful Presence the "hard way" anyway, all the time because i prefer stuff hitting the WAR so i only have to heal one rather than having a squishy BST tank or so. Though in a pinch i had the BSTs pet taunt on and CLR use group heals instead to easen the burned a bit. (pet on forceful presence while named was up turned out to be beneficial since pet was on it again after the de-agro so i could mostly concentrate on just the adds with WAR+BST swarms/dots). LOL... I never did it this way. But if this holds true, then it's even easier than it probably "should" be, especially if you have one or two FD classes. Very inventive, that. Though overly complicated imo.
Rez incoming. So I finally got around to running this mission, took a bit over 3 hours. Made the tent and it requires L110? Are you kidding me? Didn't we go through this with the Extruded black pearl as well? And yet you left this one at L110? I have a bag of GMM stuff I might never be able to use as well. STOP BLOCKING "FREE CONTENT" AND ITS CORRESPONDING REWARDS WITH A PAYWALL. THERE IS NO REASON FOR THAT. I am L105 and should NOT have to pay in order to use something I earned in a 105 instance. My accounts are gold. I don't want to buy your expansions. I don't like the content. You already have enough of my money.
So what you are saying is you wont ever play in any content past EOK because you don't like the content and it isn't worth your money? Pretty sure once ROS opens up you will be all over it like white on rice. This "paywall" you talk about is what funds content development. Its a business and needs money to operate. Look on the bright side you just cut down on future farming of gear once content you didn't pay for is available to you for free.
tsk tsk. necro'n a thread from a year ago just to complain about free to play.... 3 out of 10, for the use of "air quotes" and unnecessary bold and caps lock. At least necro a thread....about dot revamps.
