On Test now: - You no longer need to defeat an entire encounter to get credit for completing most quests. This is going to be great for monks. There are quite a few quests that you have to kill things like swamp beetles, antelopes, owlbears that comes in group of 4 to 10. I could never do those solo even if they just turn grey con. Now we could probably do it even if they are blue con. Target the weakest one with 1 or 2 down arrows and kill it fast.. then FD. The encounter is broken, you got quest credit for killing one. Rinse and repeat, quest will be done in no time. If you kill 1 mob in group of 5 mobs and break the encounter, doesn't the one you killed spawn back immediately? If so, why would you not break the encounter even if you could kill them all? For example, you need 20 gnolls, and you found a group of 5 easy ones. You kill 4, break the encounter, the 4 spawns back. Rinse and repeat 5 times and your quest is done without waiting for the 10 or 15 min respawn time if you killed all of them. It sounds like a possible exploit with this new change.
I'm rather surprised this was done, actually. I hadn't seen a need for it either in-game or on the boards. Of course, I don't lurk every board but I hadn't seen even a hint of it being a problem. Makes you wonder why the devs did it. Hmmm.
I cannot think of a reason why they would do this either. Maybe they have some kind of broken quests where 1 mob of the encounter cannot be killed. They cannot find an easy way to fix the quest, so they change the gameplay mechanic to fix this?
I'm betting this is going to make some non-heritage quests easier, especially for monks. Now that some previously keyed/restricted zones are no longer restricted, go in, kill the main mob you need, feign off adds regen and leave. Message Edited by Coterei on 02-16-2005 02:13 PM
I think this was done because some encounters would get bugged and stuck in the wall or if you had a bard that sent one of the opponents running off you would have to look all over creation to find that beastie and end combat.
You can't do this infinite times. An encounter becomes perma-broken if you feign it twice. I thought it was a rumor untill I found it out (the hard way) on my first Zek boatride attempt.
This wasn't true right after Big Patch 2. I needed to kill some silly little grey mobs to get a quest out of my journal (Freedom quest in Antonica, needed to kill some witches or something). I ran around killing them for a while, then thought of a better idea. I found a group of four, killed three of them, and if I didn't get the "your quest journal will be updated when you finish the encounter" I would FD and kill them all over again. It took well over a hundred kills to get the quest update, which would have been many hours of camping them (slow repop). Instead with the FD exploit I finished the quest in about 15 minutes and got my reward: the quest was out of my journal a hammer that would have been neat at level 10.
The individual encounter credit was in Beta, and changed at the last minute at retail. At that time SOE's vision 2.0 didn't have any forgiveness in gaining credit without killing every mob. It was a solo-player nerf. Since they were forbidden to have fun at that time. This is a surprise, but a welcomed revert and a sign that SOE really wants the solo crowd to stay and play. Like I said, encounters were like this through all of Beta. You also gain exp per kill in the encounter now, so you can ding mid-group-fight. I just did it this afternoon on Test
You can't do this infinite times. An encounter becomes perma-broken if you feign it twice. I thought it was a rumor untill I found it out (the hard way) on my first Zek boatride attempt. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This was not true just recently. I had already figured out a nice little trick when you were needing to get credit from a specific mob i a group. I would kill the mob I needed the update from, and if it did not give me the update, I would feign off the group so it would reset (the mob I need would respawn again since the group was not killed). I never had the group stay broken, and I think I feigned them a good 15 to 20 times in a row before I finally got the message I would actually receive credit and then killed the group off. The above poster is correct. In beta the encounters used to give credit as soon as the mob died. Was really nice for the quests where you needed to trigger a second group of mobs from killing off the four groups around (armor quests). Once you got the middle group to spawn, you could just kill three of the four mobs then break the encounter and let it reset. Then rinse and repeat until you got the 20 or whatever number it required. Also consider, rare spawn groups like Lord Andros. Where you need to kill him for credit. Kill him, leave his pets and break the encounter and when it resets he is up again. Another group could come along and do the same... Message Edited by Isawa on 02-17-2005 12:20 AM
which would effectively eliminate "spawn camping" cos a decent person could leave the mob for the other group.. I like that. btw: you get exp mid-fight at the moment. I have dinged mid fight, and I have seen others ding mid fight as well. you get exp based on the kill; but quest rewards at the end of the encounter
You always got xp in the middle of encounters, you just don't get the bonus until the whole encounter is dead. Its usually so small you don't notice it but you do get a "You gain experience" message everytime you kill a mob.
Just for those wondering what encounters it was not done for last night I completed the access quest to fallen gate and my first attempt failed. Made the mistake of having Brawlers Stance running which caused my dps to decrease, so at the last second I FD'd. the only one left standing was one of the guards. Soon as I FD'd all 3 mobs respawned and I did not recive credit for the kills. Healed up did it again and this time killed them all and got the proper credit.
