Yesterday I tried to do the Covering Your Snow Tracks quest. I entered the "Easy" version of the zone. (I've been able to solo the "Hard" version for years with absolutely no issues.) I got a little ways into the keep, past the first two Guardians of the Egg and the assorted yard trash, fine. Everything went as it has for me in years past. Just after I took out the yeti trainer boss, I engaged the first Icy Shard. That's where the problems started. I fought and fought and fought it and fought it some more and more and more. Damage was being done to it, but its health bar was not budging. After a fifteen minute battle, the bar went down a total of about 20%. (At that point, I ran away and exited the zone because the battle appeared to be impossible.) I thought maybe I was lagging, or something, and it wasn't updating properly, so I went back in today. This time I called out my mercenary, just for good measure. The zone had not reset since yesterday, I continued on anyway. With the mercenary's help, I was able to take out the Icy Shards, and the mobs after them, although it seemed a bit tougher than usual. Then I walked up to Kastus. Barely blinked. Instant dead. The mercenary revived me, after I waited for Kastus's health to be almost out. Barely finished reviving, not even a second passed, and instant dead again. Scrolled through combat log... Kastus had hit me for an obscenely high amount of damage, a number so high I can't even give it a name, but it was more than trillions of damage, from "Frostbite" (which I assume is an (AoE). I have 300k HP, and my gear and stats aren't the best for my class, but they're not through the floor, either, and I have never had issues with Icy Keep (or anywhere else level appropriate) in the past, most especially not the Easy version of the zone. I'm thinking I have now discerned a pattern between "zone completeable as normal" and "Super Duper Godhood Mode". I'm level 99. The mobs and bosses at the entrance to the zone that I was able to handle as normal were level 99. The Icy Shard that I couldn't hurt, and the mobs after it, including Kastus, were level 100. I'm guessing the level 100 mobs are being scaled to be challenging to characters over level 100. (I've seen my friends' stats over that level, and they defy my comprehension.) However, this is causing a massive issue for me because I'm only level 99, and don't have (and can't get to my knowledge - granting that I extremely challenged in understanding the combat stats area of the game since I've always been primarily a crafter) even a tiny fraction of these stats.
That isn't the point, Tkia. Zones are being made more difficult to try to keep the stat bloated higher level characters from being able to just walk in and blow things up, which prevents those who are at that level from completing the zones because they become impossible to do at the appropriate level. One should not have to mentor down to be able to run the zones, thereby experiencing less experience gain, simply because they are not able to complete the zones at their appropriate level. They should not have to gain x amount of levels above the appropriate level of zones in order to run those zones that they should have been able to run at the appropriate level. I understand that the OP is talking about a Frostfell event here, but the same still applies to normal instanced zones as well. This particular instance has been bugged, however, for a number of years. Those boards you have to move...if you move them more than once or twice, when you go to put them across the ravine to form a bridge, they tend to vanish, though the glowy outline of the boards may still show, and if you try to cross those invisible boards, you fall to your death. I have experienced this glitch for the last several years, this year included, and it's never once been fixed. :/ My workaround is to use the first board to get across to the other side, then clear the entire other side before moving a single board. Once that side has been cleared, I take the board up top down to the bottom, immediately place it on the board downstairs, about two thirds of the way so that they "stick" together, then pick up the bottom board, and carefully jump across the ravine to the board I used to cross over, then place the board I am carrying about two thirds of the way up the board I'm standing on. I then cross to the main area, leaving the three boards behind, jump across the other ravine, clear that entire side out, then I move the one board at the top area to where the end of it faces the the ramp that goes down (to make room for the other three boards). I go back to the three boards I left at the other ravine, pick the bottom board up, carry all three boards to the board above the ramp, place the board I'm carrying about two thirds of the way up the board on the ground, then I pick up the bottom board and carry it to the windy spot and place all four boards down at one time. This is the only method I've found that works without causing any boards to vanish on me. It's annoying to have to do all that backtracking, but if that's what it takes to have a successful run, then so be it.
I think there's a few things they boosted this year.. Kastus being one of them.. first off, if you hit him with anything other than melee dmg, you take reprisal dmg, which can be enough to kill you. I've ran several of my lvl 100 chrs through (with the gear out of the PoM lockbox), they all had trouble taking him down quickly (last year, no problems, between one round, and two rounds of combat).. A suggestion about the planks.. If you have the jann illusion from the pre-order, or tinker made spring-loaded gnomish stilts, needing the planks is a near non-issue.. you can jump over the first chasm to the tower area to fight Kastus without needing one, and all you'd really need is one (perhaps 2 if you don't time the jump right), after you kill Odaufe (who can only be damaged with magic or ranged dmg, or you eat reprisal dmg like from Kastus). (also since I have had trouble with my lvl 100s, even mentoring down to 90, you can one shot the big named)
I thought to try the mentoring down thing the next day (haven't been able to play in quite awhile so I'm rusty). I was originally going to mentor down to one of my lvl 90-95 chars on another account, but then ended up just logging in my lvl 95 SK and running through the zone with her. Again pulled her merc, since the first run through attempt of the zone this year scared me off. Everything was easy peasy for almost the entire zone. The one exception was Kastus. My SK's stats, gear, and spells/CA's are way, way below where my Illy's are. My illusionist has been my main char since launch (although I only just got her into the high levels about a month before AoM launched - like I said before, I'm a crafter, not a fighter). My illy has most of her spells at Master or Grandmaster level. My SK was powerlevelled to be a support char for my low-level characters to protect them during things like the Gathering Obsession quest, other crafting quests, and holiday quests. Her spells and CA's are almost all at Apprentice level. Additionally, I've been working on major upgrades to my illy's gear for some time now. She has over 300k HP and related stats, and my SK still has the base pre-AoM lvl 90-95 gear that gives her about 100-150k HP and related stats. The second I walked up to Kastus with my SK, it was the same as with my illy - instant death from an over 1 trillion damage hit from Frostbite. (I had forgotten about the melee/spell specific and reprisal damage on Kastus and Odaufe - which I had heard only applied to the Hard mode version of the zone and not the Easy mode version. I'd certainly never paid the slightest bit of attention to damage type on these two the hundreds of times I've run this instance over past years when I was in the Easy version, which was most of the time, largely due to this, because my higher level chars have been able to solo even the Hard version with ease for years.) When I searched and read up on damage type and reprisal from Kastus and Odaufe to refresh my memory, what I found said the reprisal was supposed to be a very hard hit, but certainly not a deadly one, and over one trillion damage from one hit does seem massively overkill to me (my mercs were able to withstand the hits from Frostbite - pretty hard hit, but not deadly, or they outright resisted it). I then switched to focusing on melee-only damage on Kastus, and all seemed well. The first time my illy had approached Kastus and instantly died on approach, and when my SK approached Kastus and instantly died on approach, I think they did both get off spell hits on him. (However, when my illy revived and instantly died from Frostbite again, I hadn't even had time to blink or realize she was revived before she was dead again - she got off absolutely no hits - unless my merc was doing something untoward at the time. She also didn't have any DoT's cast on him, and no AoE's or such on her gear (I had to get rid of one very expensive item because of an AoE on it that was causing major issues so I learned the hard way to pay close attention to things like that)). After that, I very trepidatiously walked slowly up to Odaufe, and focused on spell-related attacks. I only got off one attack before he was dead (my merc killed him). Odaufe went down within a few seconds, as did all of the other Guardians of the Egg, with the exception of D'nai, who took (just a tad) longer. Looking at the logs, my merc did about one million of (melee) damage to him, and he was dead. Looking at the logs for Kastus, my illy's merc was doing 500k damage a hit, for quite a few minutes, to him, before he died. My SK's battle with him likewise took several minutes. So something still seems, to me at least, to be very, very wrong with Kastus this year. He seems to be way overpowered compared to the other bosses in the zone (which, granted, SHOULD be a bit more challenging to higher level chars), and the damage from Frostbite seems to be way overkill. (At this point, I'm thinking again that my problems with the icy shard I mentioned before were probably due to lag and updates not happening properly.) This issue has still made me very concerned about completability of scalable instances/mobs for lower than top level chars, though. I know there's a few spots in the higher levels where there are sudden massive jumps in stats etc, where you might be strong and powerful one minute, then you level up, and you're suddenly way underpowered and get instantly wiped out by level appropriate mobs until you make massive adjustments to your gear and such. (To me, stats and such should always go up in a level, gradual manner, not all these sudden cliffs, which have one side effect of doing things like causing issues with scalable stuff - making things too easy for high level chars if they're based on low level stats, or making things impossible for low level chars if they're based on high level stats.)
Well, actually it is. If you don't do that to confirm the problem then you can't /bug it accurately. And if you don't /bug it how do you expect anything to get fixed? The devs don't spend their days trawling this forum. Even if it is confirmed as a bug it's not going to get fixed before next year so if you need to complete the quest this year and can't at level then you'll need to mentor down. And if it does turn out to be a design decision then nothing is going to change and you'll always have to mentor down.
I did this myself last week with no problems. I was on a level 70 SK mentored down since as a crafter alt she's not geared up for adventuring. And I never use mercs so I know exactly what was thrown at him. What I did do once I got to Kastus was open up my knowledge book combat arts tab and cast everything directly from there. That stopped me firing off a spell ability by mistake as I can never remember which is which on my hotbars I just checked my log of the zone and there was no mention of Frostbite at all, which I assume is the mob's nasty reaction to spell damage. If I get time between now and the end of event I might try going back and throwing a spell at him just to see what happens Bottom line, if you still think there's something off do a detailed /bug report and give them a chance to poke at it.
I just went in and tried the first lvl 100 Icy Shard again, just to see what would happen. I had my merc on standby in case it went the same as the first time. It went the same in that I very quickly plowed through the lvl 98-99 mobs at the zone entrance, including the bosses, and then when I got to the Icy Shard, I was barely scratching it. My pet and I did get it down 20% HP a lot faster than the original 15 minutes it took, so I'm now thinking it was probably a combination of level and lag. Been wondering if the (newer) Resolve stat has anything to do with my problems... just the whole give less damage/take more damage thing... I've never seen it available on gear that any of my chars can wear at their levels, though (my highest is my level 99). My Illusionist can't do much in the way of melee damage, so Kastus is still out for her solo. (It's possible the merc can handle him, but I can't say I've ever trusted mercs on these two bosses when melee/spell only damage was required.) But even if it was changed at some point so that Kastus and Odaufe require strategy and melee/spell only damage in Easy mode as well as Hard mode, the extreme severity of the Frostbite hit makes me wonder. Even my SK was hit for nearly as much damage as my Illusionist was, and both were way off the scale. (Unless they also decided to change it to be instant death for even the slightest misstep or not paying attention to gear proc choices, and really really REALLY wanted to make good and sure they killed absolutely everyone.) Plus he did take way longer to kill than any of the other bosses in the zone. And if this is the case that reprisals were changed, my SK's merc did do melee damage to Odaufe, with no reprisals that I saw.
Evania can handle both Kastus and his brother by herself. I start the fight and then back off and let her take the wheel.
Well I just spent the evening in Icy Keep easy mode and can't find any problems unless I invoke them. I used my level 96 raid geared warden, the highest I have, and everything went down the way you'd expect for a toon geared that way. I can confirm the following: Both brothers invoke the Frostbite reprisal if you use the wrong attack type and for the 96 toon they are spawning at level 97. Hit Kastus with a spell and Bam! 500 million instadeath Frostbite. Odaufe is actually worse. Hit him with a big sword and Bam! 1800 million instadeath Frostbite! I had no obvious problems with any shards. For the good news, I left all of my gear and ability procs in place, along with damage shields and none of those seemed to trigger Frostbite, only the direct melee and spell casts. I also had a go at both brothers using only the ice axe weapon that you are given from the first quest and they both went down reasonably easily like that so the axe doesn't appear to trigger either of their damage type flags. So in summary, park the merc/pet or anything else you can't completely control, equip the axe and just chip away at them like that until they fall over
