Symbol of the Ducee Quest is finally complete after close to 14 years being unsolved. So why was it unsolved for so long? Well, the quest giver was the Amalgamation of Spirit`s Honor in Halls of Honor. However this particular NPC: 1.) Was supposed to have a 1 in 10 chance of spawning at midnight game time. But... in reality he has a 1 in 10 chance of spawning ONLY on a server repop at midnight game time. However, just due to the way the script was written, a cycle seemed to be around 24 seconds short (based on another zonewide emote) which meant after approximiately 7 chances, he'd stop spawning because we'd be in hour 23, not 24 and break the script. (That's a bit of a guess, but I never saw him past the 7th attempt.) I never saw him twice before a server repop, so it's very possible him spawning would also break his spawn. This also means that when a server was brought back up but locked, that time is ticking away. If a server was up for 2-3 hours before it unlocks, you've lost multiple cycles of seeing him. He also despawns at 5am game time if he does spawn. So you have a total of 15 minutes to do what you need to do. 2.) Spawns in the very back of the undead room in HoH on top of another mob. This was the toughest part of the zone back in the day too. (Killing one mob spawned 2 more.) It's also mixed with a live mob in your path, so you couldn't really invis easily. 3.) Was put on Battalion of Marr faction so was KOS to anyone who's pretty much ever killed a single mob in Valor or HoH. Even if you could sneak and Hail, back in the day classes who could sneak didn't have blur, so after one Hail, you'd get aggro. 4.) Actually gives out another quest before giving out the Symbol of the Ducee quest. 5.) Requires higher than Amiable or higher faction in Battalion of Marr to complete the quests. Back in 2005, Rainbird (Dev at the time) "fixed" the quest by removing an erroneous requirement (which I assume was the first quest). However, GMs bypass faction when testing a quest and thus presumably missed this. 6.) Not 100% sure, but think it also required a item flag of sorts that was unobtainable, hence also breaking it that way. I started this quest in mid June of this year. Today I finally finished it. (Was hoping to finish this earlier, but had to wait for patches to fix all the bugs.) I camped him for about three weeks without initially seeing him. I actually got lucky that Rathe was having all sorts of server issues because that's when I noticed he'd spawn only after a server restart. After almost a month, I finally got him to spawn when I was at my computer only to find out he gave that first quest and wouldn't accept the Symbols. (Keep in mind he's only up for 15 minutes.) So I collected the items, swapped to Test (since they patch more) waited a week to find him again, handed them to him, and... he handed them back. I eventually tried another toon he had indifferent Battalion of Marr faction, and he too handed them back. So I grabbed an Ornate Velium Pendant to bump my faction of Amiable... and he handed them back. So at this point the quest was fully broken. Luckily, Dzarn is awesome, and he shed some light on the bugs I was having, worked his magic, and fixed the quest. (And in doing so, discovered the lack of Quest tag on 6,000 items.) Unfortunately, I had to wait for a few full patches for his fix to go live since we discovered one bug after another. So after all that time, what's the reward? Prepare to be amazed my friends: Considering it's PoP Era, that's not too shabby. On par with Elemental Raid quality loots.
Haha grats. I noticed the Amalgamation was seemingly fixed today as well and had been trying to finish the first quest for the past 8 hours. The Nightmare Hoof is being very elusive for me however!
Yeah, Dzarn fixed the timer to be 100% spawn rate at midnight game time. Woulda sucked for other players if that wasn't fixed.
They threw around some number a while back regarding how many unsolved quests there are. I would bet that a fair share of them are for similar bug reasons. Quest being added to these items might help some of them be found or discovered.
Awesome job. I wonder how many other "useless factions" (that was the belief on Battalion of Marr) have unsolved quests? Personally I have always thought Crushbone Orcs and Clan Runnyeye should have something, and that Broken Skull Clan was a lot of work for only one known quest... It's good to say dev action when the playerbase provides enough information for them to investigate.
I finished it today. Can confirm that he spawned at 11pm game time in the spot originally posted at N1675, N854, N113. You start off by gathering Nightmare Hoof, Locket of Tangled Banshee Hair, Tattered Clothing of the Leperoth, Malarian Wing. First two from PoNightmares and the others from Plane of Disease. After you turned those in he goes into the second quest where he asks about the Ducee's . Hand in the Symbols and voila. The Cloak up above. Was fun to finally get that done. I wish they would maybe continue this quest and make it an evolving cloak to fit todays standards. I could get behind something like that.
The more ancient quests that get fixed the better. I really think they should spend actual dev time on quests from classic era up... This game is suppose to be Ever "QUEST" it would be amazing to see thousands of broken or unsolved quests worked and fixed.
Thank you Dzarn for fixing this! It is is great to see the mystery of the Ducee symbols finally solved. Also the first half of the quest has a melee reward and caster reward Battlecloak of the Ferocious (melee) AC +8 50 HP STA +5 SV MAGIC/FIRE/ICE/DISEASE/POISON: +5 Orb of the Wandering Souls (caster) HP: 30 Mana: 35 Int: +7 Wis: +7 SV MAGIC/FIRE: + 10 Which explains the old clue of "Battlecloak of" and "Orb of" Thanks again for fixing this, I am so happy to see the mob spawning and to have a new bit of POP lore!
Wow that's really cool. Good job on the EQ archeology. I wonder if any unsolved quests involve some kind of clicky item as a reward. I wish the devs would give us a complete list and stat description of every undiscovered item from PoP and below.
Found link to this over at Alla's GRATZ! Awesome job! And the reward looks pretty sweet to me. I miss the old game. Stats spiral UPWARD so fast now sometimes I wonder "what's the point?"... It's always amazed me reading about the early game when people (probably guilds) figured out all this stuff before there were spoilers all over the web. It took a LOT of time and dedication. Some might say it's just a game. That's true. But still... it took a LOT of time and energy and dedication to figure out a lot of this game! Again... GRATZ!
