Winter Event 2015

[+Nyx]

It's that time of year again!

The Grinch has teamed up with Jack Frost, Oogie Boogie, and a den of thieves to wreak havoc upon Excelsior! They have created an army of evil minions to protect them in their lair and do their evil bidding. They have stolen all of Santa's gifts, destroyed his magic suit, and are endangering the reindeer population. Without these, there can be no Christmas!

There are 5 quest lines varying in difficulty from relatively easy to rather hard.

These quests will be available until January 4th, 2016.

For full quest information, event rules, and troubleshooting help please see the new wiki page:

http://www.uoex.net/wiki/Winter_Events

This wiki is locked for editing except by administrators, so you may trust that the information on it comes directly from the staff.

Please be aware that by participating in any of the Winter Event quests/areas, you are held to the event rules & restrictions outlined on the wiki page.

Do yourself a favor, take ten minutes and read them.


2015 updates:

Miscellaneous Updates:
- Healing is still diminished for all quest areas, however this year it is diminished by 50% less than previous years.
- Gold drops from mobs increased marginally across all quests
- All quests have had their code streamlined further and been moved to gump functionality. You should still avoid mobbing up on the NPCs, but they should be much smoother to interact with this year.
- All quest items needing items to be collected from the ground/world must first be stolen. This requires only 1.0 stealing for all quests except the Reindeer quest, whose requirement is 50.0.
- Santa Hat from the Save Christmas quest has been updated to be a bit more desirable. All hats chosen last year have also been updated to match the current stats of the hat available this year.

Artist Elf Quest
- Rewards updated to reflect the current year
- +Nyx's sweater updated for this year
- New Rewards:
- Wassail
- Toy Workshop Miniature
- Snowman Plush
- Reindeer Plush
- Snowglobes: Blackthorne's Castle, Lakeshire, Luna, Mistas

Santa's Suit Quest
- Streamlined quest system on NPCs
- Added gump functionality to NPCs
- Added internal tracking to prevent exploiting
- Updated quest code for efficiency and easy of editing

Save Christmas Quest
- Added functionality to prevent the NPCs detecting you until you approach them from east.
- Added additional internal tracking to identify potential bugs/exploiting

Reindeer Quest
- Streamlined the quest system on the NPCs
- Added gump functionality to NPCs
- Streamlined quest code for efficiency and ease of editing
- Rewards updated to reflect the current year
- New rewards:
- Snowy Bulletin Board (functional)
- Holiday Tapestry
- Holiday Banner
- Miniature Christmas Tree
- Holiday meal platters
- Paper crowns
- Staff Snowmen
- Candycane fireworks wands


NEW FOR 2015!
All quests will return a special item in addition to your regular reward:

Defender of Christmas Quest
Ebenezer Scrooge is vacationing in his mountainside home and is very disturbed by the racket the Grinch and his minions are making nearby. While he loathes Christmas, he loathes having his peace and quiet interrupted even more. If you'll do something to eliminate the disruptions, he'll (begrudgingly) reward you handsomely.
Check the wiki for more information regarding this quest.

NOTE: You must obtain this book before completing the non-repeatable quests or you will not be able to complete this quest!

NOTE: The reward for this quest is wearable only in the winter months, similar to how Halloween costumes can only be worn in October. As of today, this is not displayed on these items while +C finishes some retouches to that functionality. Once he's done, a global change will be made and these items will then reflect that. This is the beginning stage of my rolling out a new perk to running the seasonal quests. All subsequent seasonal quests will offer an item like this which is wearable only during the season for that quest.

Wrapping Paper
Every quest you run as a part of the winter event will reward you with a small number of Vials of Christmas Spirit. These are a very special form of currency that will decay on January 5, 2016. While the winter event is open, you can use these vials to purchase wrapping paper from the mountain house in the winter event entrance area. This is a brand new item for this year, it does just what it says - it allows you to wrap an item into various festive packages. You can also mark the item with your name, or dye it with a dye tub (or universal dye tub). Once you give it to the recipient they will then be able to unwrap it.

Note: Vials of Christmas Spirit may need to be in your pack to spend them. If you have trouble, try that first

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Happy Questing!
<3

[Ishya]

can pets be used in the boss area

[+Nyx]

As I advised in the thread, please thoroughly read the wiki page. It covers this kind of information

[apocalypse]

Just a question, I heard in the world chat that you can not relayer the jewel of winter to another slot.
Would someone be able to confirm this is the case for sure?

I have one already, and would choose it again if it was possible to relayer it. Would hate to get it and then find out after the fact that you can't relayer it.

[+Nyx]

You can't relayer or sample any of the rewards for any of the winter quests. For that matter, none of the wearable patch-graphic items we give during any seasonal quest can be relayered or sampled.

[apocalypse]

Okay, definitely good to know. Thank you for the reply.

[Annachie]

Um, I did the santa suit quest, then decided to see what the ebenezer scrouge quest was.

Since the Santa Suit quest is not repeatable, have I already failed the Pest Removal quest?

[+Nyx]

Yes, you'd need to grab the scrooge quest first (which is why i put him so close to the entrance hehe). But I'll modify your book today so you can still run it.

[Shindaril]

I have a question or two concerning the hiding restrictions on the event area. I already noticed hiding being blocked, but it seems that using a weapon special move Shadow Strike will indeed hide a player even within the area. I've been killed several times today by the same player running close to me and hiding with this weapon ability, causing the mob he pulled behind to target me and get me overrun.

I cannot page in game at the moment, as I have another page in about the PestRemoval quest, otherwise I would have had paged about this already as this player is pulling creatures on others to handle, thus luring, which I would assume being against the rules even in the high density spawns around the reindeer quest area.

To my first and most important question: Is hiding via Shadow Strike allowed within the quest area or would that be prohibited as an exploit?

-Shindaril

[+Nyx]

+C's gonna fix the shadow strike working when hiding is disabled bug and I will investigate the matter of a player using it to lure mobs onto others, thank you for reporting it.

[Shindaril]

Thank you for your great work and you're most welcome +Nyx and +Colibri as well. I did happen to have an interesting day and also found out a typo in the Artistic Elf quest book "One last task" as well. The explanation goes: "Collect 10 Petrified Treant Logs and 10 Immaculate Snow from the Vengeful Treands and Argentus'. Kill at least 10 of each monster." while the book itself asks to kill 20 of both creatures.

Small thing, I know, but thought to share that as well.

-Shindaril

[+Nyx]

Thanks, I'll go fix that next

[Shindaril]

Thank you again, +Nyx. Sorry for being troublesome to someone as kind as you are.

-Shindaril

[+Nyx]

Modifications:

- Region issues fixed
- Rabid polar bears' & Glacial Brute's berserker damage bonus decreased significantly
- Reindeer quest mobs' detection range decreased by 50%
- Various minor issues fixed with quests (spelling errors, quest item graphic errors, etc)
- Added even more internal tracking to assist in locating bugs and identifying those attempting to scam/exploit
- Fixed positioning of mob-deleting items at reindeer quest stealables areas & updated the bounds for non-combat status while stealing.
- Added yet another reminder to Kalare's gumps about turning in completed quest books before you're ready to fight the boss.
- Added another row of blocking items so that you must walk even further to be able to trigger Kalare. This is just another technically-unnecessary measure to prevent folks from wandering up to her without thinking. While it was not possible to trigger Kalare from anywhere except the intended tile previously, I've made this change as an added control.
- Modified diminished healing, it should be working as intended now (IE: a better rate than last year)


There is a bug with the hiding disabling which is currently allowing some forms of hiding to function when they should not. +C is working on fixing this, but in the mean time players may not utilize Shadow Strike, Egg bombs or any other item-based methods of hiding anywhere in the winter event areas. If you are found doing so you will be given a warning and if you continue beyond that you will lose your winter event privileges.

[+Nyx]

Modifications 12/7:

- Reindeer quest stealable areas will function properly now. Mobs can spawn in this area or be dragged there, however the areas surrounding the stealables is a combat/benefit dead-zone, you can basically do nothing here except steal the items and go. Mobs that spawn in these areas will automatically decay and respawn elsehwere.
- Reindeer quest plant matter relocated to the ledge immediately southwest from its previous spot to allow for better visiblity.
- Reindeer quest mobs' detection range reduced marginally
- Reindeer quest - overall number of mobs decreased by roughly 25%, this may go back up depending on my observations in the next few days.
- Event link stone moved right next to the entrance gate with a greeting message (in hopes more people will then read the forum thread/wiki before beginning)
- Improved how the exit teleporters work (to prevent it punting you to trammel instead during a lag spike) in the santa and reindeer areas.
- Added visual aid to the Save Christmas NPCs to show you where their boundaries have been.