Manaetic Behemoth in PoI, Mindrider & Reptile Door in Yxtta

[Ash]

In Plane of Innovation, the Manaetic Behemoth remains untriggerable solo; it was good to tone down the AE discharge of the clockwork spiders but it is not enough. Even if one runs through the dialogue with the gnome at the entrance and is properly preflagged, even eating the AE's for ten minutes is not enough for the Behemoth to become active; even creating piles and piles of spiders until they start rotting is not enough. All I believe that needs to be done is to change the flags on the boss so that he is targetable; with the attenuated spider AE DD the script should just run over and over, however, it would probably be best to remove it in case there are memory leaks or unclosed counters. It may be as simple as going to the poi scripts folder and deleting anything having to do with this npc, but I am sorry, I do not have a local copy to check what scripts are running there.



The earliest center corpses have long since started rotting; this is about fifteen minutes into clockwork spider slaying, and my hands honestly started hurting-





In Yxtta, the first boss Pixtt Suir Mindrider uses two apparently unresistable charms that cannot be broken, and if more than one player tries to kill here they die quite quickly to their partner or partners due to scaling here. This is not a problem so much for any melee or hybrid class but it makes her pretty much unbeatable by casting classes, or those with low or no melee skills.

mqemulator.net/npc.php?id=291111

everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=14629

Offending spells are

Chaos Epidemic mqemulator.net/spell.php?id=5023
everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=5023

Curse of the Ikaav mqemulator.net/spell.php?id=2685
everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=2685


And her various ward spells; three of which effect only spell casters; the main problem being that nearly 200 curse counters are setup and even spamming 'radiant cure' is not nearly enough to get rid of them before they are reapplied. Quite honestly this encounter needs to be better tuned, and rather than totally gimp her by removing her unique set of spells, wouldn't it be possible to simply nerf her health by a significant amount?

She would probably beat even well geared level 65 players half the time if her health were reduced 90%; from 648,594 hit points to just 64.8k

Clerics at this level nuke for about 20k, Druids nuke for a bit less than 30k, and Wizards nuke for a little under 40k non-crit; so, 65k hp is likely not within "one shot" range of even the top nukers. Most melee classes have little to no trouble with her, other than her fight is long and annoying and if you partner with anyone else, one will kill the other(s) leaving only the top melee class alive. On test, if a Bard can kill her solo (half the time), then she could be considered to be "properly tuned" for average solo play.







Lastly, the "riddle door"- or "reptile door"-- is apparently very bugged here, despite abundant spoilers; I'm guessing that the main culprit is the timers, rather than the game objects; either way, the scripts are incomplete and do not give enough feedback to players to successfully beat the riddles, opening the door for a few (3.5 - 4.0 ) hours.



everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=7611

This is kind of tricky, and there is no best way to fix this for solo play; the simplest fix is to simply remove the door game object, or at least the lock condition on it- or change it to a different key or object that players can actually obtain solo. Naturally, Sony put this stupid content block in to slow down player progression, and for a long time, even sharing the ## spoilers with others outside your guild was considered to be traitorship. Sadly, this set of puzzles is nothing anymore but broken, needless, boring and unimmersive content.

Besides, it is my understanding that players using certain clients and cheatware can just warp to the reptile bosses and engage them anyway.

....

Lastly, is the NPC "Mastered Destroyer" in game? I have never seen him and he is a good source for 2 of the 3 top GoD level 65 spells/songs. It appears that he has four placeholders but a low chance to spawn, so perhaps I have just been unlucky so far.

mqemulator.net/npc.php?id=291107&view=generalinfo

everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=15275





 
Thanks for reading

[Ash]

/bump still issues for me, though i was told by a player recently that they were able to kill behemoth, they did not explain how, and i really don't believe them

[Ash]

Only my Monk has been able to kill the Pixxt Suit Mindrider NPC reliably, solo; this whole zone still has issues, which is frustrating. Just FYI.

Thanks

[Osiris]

thanks for the detail...ill have to bite this off in chunks.

the first thing I want to straighten out is the behemoth stuff.

As for the GoD stuff, it doesn't surprise me what you are reporting because I have next to absolutely nothing with regards to development with regards to GoD, except for some hacking of some stuff in Txevu. I'm open to seeing what can be done with GoD.


as far as Mastered Destroyer, he has a 5% chance to spawn at those 4 spots, there should only be an onyx rockbearer as the PH with a 95% - no other mobs in that spawngroup.
EDIT: I increased the spawnrate to 20% reboot required

[Ash]

Cheers, I will hopefully be able to move my characters back into Qvic and Yxtta soon

[Osiris]

Apr 22, 2016 19:37:06 GMT -8 Ash said:

In Plane of Innovation, the Manaetic Behemoth remains untriggerable solo; it was good to tone down the AE discharge of the clockwork spiders but it is not enough. Even if one runs through the dialogue with the gnome at the entrance and is properly preflagged, even eating the AE's for ten minutes is not enough for the Behemoth to become active; even creating piles and piles of spiders until they start rotting is not enough. All I believe that needs to be done is to change the flags on the boss so that he is targetable; with the attenuated spider AE DD the script should just run over and over, however, it would probably be best to remove it in case there are memory leaks or unclosed counters. It may be as simple as going to the poi scripts folder and deleting anything having to do with this npc, but I am sorry, I do not have a local copy to check what scripts are running there.

if any 'a clockwork device' gets thru 2 things happen, the AE goes off and the Behemoth timer is reset. So every AE you saw, the timer was being reset. In essence you need to prevent any AE from happening for 3mins, then he becomes targetable. There are 4 different 'a clockwork device' mobs that can trigger an AE, and they come from 4 different, opposite direction spawn points...kinda difficult to do solo.

reading the bolded part above, i TESTed some things out. I killed all the spiders, yet an AE would still go off. Eventually, I found a spider that would 'appear' just inside the sliding door and walk straight to behemoth and trigger the AE. This spider would NOT be seen coming down the hallway, it would appear like i said and go str8 to AE. I noticed the same 'appearing' spider on the other side of the room as well (by the other sliding door). I re-did all of the waypoints on those particular grids.

to fix the issue, and alter the scenario to make it more interesting (hopefully), and inline with this server environment, here is what I did:

-Giwin - speak to him as normal to start the event, however now he will trigger a custom script (background).
-Now, only 2 of the 4 spiders can trigger the AE/Timer reset; these are of course 'a clockwork device' mobs(same as before). They come from opposite directions.
-The other 2 spiders, 'an envious clockwork device' will never reset the Behemoth timer, no matter how many come thru. But, they do 'build up' the AE.
-(just like the McRib) The Energy Burst AE is back! however, not as strong as it was. Its currently is 50% of its original strength.
-As 'an envious clockwork device' get thru they will 'overload' the behemoth and every 5th one that gets thru (each one is emoted), will trigger the AE.(Just the AE, no timer reset)
-Only an AE that is triggered from 'a clockwork device' is the only event that will reset the behemoth timer back to zero.

Check it out...hopefully its cool


this is why I had the server locked for awhile tonight; I copied over all of the quest files, and db changes, and went thru cycle quite a few times (and then altered some stuff again, just asking for trouble)

[Ash]

Rgr that, thank you! Will try again when I can

EDIT: Tried again tonight; the two spiders still come simultaneously and often warp into the room without opening the door, giving players no chance at all to target them and slay them. It was impossible for my Monk to even kill one of them, much less both, and he ate alot of AE's... also "Pain and Suffering" also hit him for 1800 hp.

I'm unsure why this particular encounter has to be so "cantankerous" and "confusing"- especially on an emu server; you could design this encounter any way you wanted to, and I am often puzzled why more servers don't take the opportunity to be "better than live-like"... imho, the spiders are still to fast and the AE is a bit much; it can't be avoided, it can't be mitigated, this fight is as can probably not be done "solo" at the level that it is first available, after Xanamech and factory flag, for tier one players around level 50.

Players should be challenged in the Elemental Planes and Time itself on a solo server; and that means pretty much having a lot of aa's and the best gear one can get from the lower level planes; the problem is that by the time my characters are able to complete lower tier flagging, my characters often need nothing that drops there, and i find myself just looting parchments and runes and passing twink gear down, or tossing some droppables to the Tribute Master.

I really appreciate all the hard work on this, but, I confess, I just can't complete it, even with target macros and MQ2; pathing and lag just conspire against me... I'll try again another time, perhaps on a different character.

Thanks again! ^_^

[Ash]

NPCs named "an envious clockwork device" appear to be immune to all forms of magic castable by players.

[Ash]

If I wasn't clear before...

This is still undoable and the main blockage to continuing any planar progression past tier 1.

The spiders still warp in; appear-boom; and I was unable to initiate the Behemoth being targetable with any class.

Yes, hailed the Halfling, have the factory flag, etc... even did endurance testing for fun and AAs...

A bit frustrating having over a dozen characters stuck at needing past PoI, into Plane of Tactics, and beyond. I have ALOT of missing level 65 spells across the board, because Glyphed Rune Words (still NO DROP, though thankfully parchments are tradeable between characters) drop so rarely off the 5+ mini-bosses of Sol Ro's Tower, and there is no other Tier 1 source that I'm aware of, other than maybe Bertoxxulous himself, and maybe Saryrn (that is reliable anyway).

Thanks for reading; the Behemoth just needs to be targetable, after the Gnome/Halfling is hailed and raid characters have the prerequisite flags (factory key and level 55+ iirc)

[Osiris]

i will get on later tonight, hopefully you will be on then, and I will show you what I did to get the behemoth targetable. Once I show how the encounter has been altered, the encounter will become trivial.


-there are 4 spawns that typically go in and set off the AOE AND reset the 3min timer. (this is what the un-altered encounter has)
-All 4 spawns still trigger the AOE, but only 2 of them will reset the timer. (Envy alteration)
-the 'envious' mobs still set off the AOE, but do not reset the timer. (hint, ignore them, and kill the other spiders, because they set off the AOE AND reset the timer).
-The mobs you need to prevent from getting to the behemoth come from opposite directions(4 mobs still come thru and 4 trigger the AOE, but only 2 reset the timer).

its really easy if you kill them in the hallway, then run thru the behemoth room, and kill the other one in the opposite hallway; rinse and repeat for 3 mins. I think once I point out what direction the 2 spiders are coming, it will become a trivial encounter. it boils down to killing the same 2 spawns for 3mins, after 3mins the behemoth becomes targetable. in testing, I was able to trigger him everytime without fail. I think all you need to kill are 6 to 8 mobs to get him targetable.

ADDED: I left all 4 mobs still triggering the AOE in an attempt to make it somewhat more difficult(just being able to manage the loss of HP), also the strat makes the person run thru the room (where the AOE are going off). before the AOE was altered to do no, or very little damage - I think it does 1500dd now, definitely NOT the original 4k DD. I could adjust the amount of the DD to make the encounter more interesting.

the majority of the killing should be done in the hallways, you COULD wait for them to get into the behemoth room, but its more risky.

if I didn't change anything, you would have to do the same procedure, except there would have been 4 spawns to control making it logistically difficult to be accomplished with one char.

[Ash]

I understand, I will try again

EDIT: First char beat it tonight, Monk ofcos. Still ate some AEs but staying focused on the two triggers in the hallways did initiate the event, the main problem will be for casters will slow casting spells and lag, mainly clerics, simply engaging the spiders are not enough, they must be destroyed outside of the behemoth room it seems

[Osiris]

the riddle door is not bugged, its just a pain in the ass. does your in game map have the doors numbered? (1-2,3-4....11-12?)


try this in-game, it's been altered; if you have the [correct] map, this is now trivial.

[Edit for future reference]:

the 'huts' on the in-game map should be numbered
(counter-clockwise from the top left):


1--------12
2--------11

3---------10
4---------9

5--------8
6--------7

[Ash]

I won't bother with links, but this is what it was, literally TWO wrong JPEGs and no correct ones, AND a post which stated that the top-right stone was #1, and ZERO dissenting info.

My bad luck appears to be resource related outside of the emu, that or the whole Emu has it backwards, which seems farfetched to me.

Thanks for clearing that up; that it all it was.