Winter Event 2013

[Annachie]

[quote="Gaara"]
Some of the monsters seem to spawn on the safe area and the teleport system on the wall isn't working sometimes: i teleport and get ported straight back in (sometimes even a few steps away from the wall), today i had to use the help request to get out...

Otherwise great job :)[/quote]

I think what happens is that you can trip both exit teleporters, and that when the second one drags you back it trips the entrance teleporter and tosses you back in. Spent a while myself trying to get out :)




The mob situation for the elf quest is that dreaded numbers thing. By myself last night it was too much. I just couldn't get the kills whilst running from gods knows how many mobs, but when there are even three or four or so people in there, it can seem too few spawning. Unless you can modify he spawn by the number of people in the area, it will always be this way. (That said, I think if I actually had a decent bow instead of the mismanaged low level one I have, I could have done it. So it really is close)

[Yoda]

had a look before heading to my upstairs tonite at the reindeer quest additions and ajustments.. and now that the spawn has settled a bit.. thats about the perfect level there perfect balance between challenging and time consumption happy to say I can more easily fit that into my schedule and will be able to get mah stocking

I know the changes were annoying to accomplish nyx but you found the balance perfectly across the board in all of the quests now and I couldn't be happier

I know pheobe is too since she really coveted the personalized stocking

[Kara]

So, er... are Chivalry spells supposed to be disabled too?

[Yoda]

short answer is Yup

[Kara]

Heh, I just wondered if it was a feature. Since +Nyx's opening post didn't mention Chiv.

[NME]

Whoever did the Overnight fix after launch did an Excellent job in reindeer area! I noticed : D TY!!!
Please don't change from here, except maybe more yeti blood :D (It's ok actually because they don't run away, very happy about that) I've already thought of a pleasant tactic. Doing about 1.5 hours now. Excellent work staff. +Requiem, If you happen to be reading this, my actual response was supposed to be "+Requiem" . ; )

Also Vamp WW users thank you for the Ice Golem. They keep me alive, when throngs get involved.

[fingers]

Completed hard quest with 200 Dex, 267 HP, 0 relayers, died a total of 4-5 times, including 2 times naked (volontary death with the objective of locating quest objects). Using 4 GoC peices atm. Very fun quest, thanks +Veritas and +Nyx.

Completed the earring quest dying once: thoses bandits will one shot if you are enemy of one to something else :)

All this to say that it is possible to do it with lesser gear :) gogogogogo!


Good luck all!

[fingers]

[quote="Kara"]So, er... are Chivalry spells supposed to be disabled too?[/quote]

Enemy of one and divine fury worked for me, consacrate weapon didn't :)

[amattar]

Hi All,

Please excuse this simple question but I got two of the quest items in the easy quest, the silks and cloths and I cannot add them to the quest book. can you help?


Thank you,
Amer

[Unbeliever]

For any low-level players who haven't already attempted it, here's my experience with the mid-level (Santa's Magic Suit) quest. I intended to see how far I coud go through these quests, and I've found out. :) Once again, I typically run with 16 mana regen, non-med armor, 146 hit points, and from 54-70 in resists, though with a change of one piece of eqiupment I can have 169hp.

Santa first asks you to collect 20 magic dust from the corpses of Ice Witches and to kill 30 Velied Assassins. The first time I went in there was only a small spawn by the entrance (4-5 monsters) but it kept me moving because it is also a small area without much room. The Ice Witches don't hit very hard but can score level 4 poison or bleeding attacks on a successful hit. I ended up using a lot more bandaids than I did in the easy quest, but it wasn't difficult to stay healed with GM healing and 145 dex. The Velied Assassins, however, are another matter entirely. They are capable of one-hit killing me at a full 169hp. I realized that when I provoked them onto one another and saw one land a hit for 453 damage, so I kept a very respectable distance.

I was able to clear the spawn by the entrance and manage it with spells, summons, provoke, and discord, then go drag up a few spawn from the next clearing and kill them as well. By the time I got done with the second batch, the first was respawning so I repeated this successfully without dying until I filled Santa's order and returned to him. Now Santa asks you to get two items by killing and looting Padfoot Thieves, which are located pretty far into the ice passes. I doubted my ability to achieve this goal but decided to try anyway.

The first time I ran into the area today, the entrance was mobbed with monsters. I've since gone in several times and it wasn't just that someone had dragged spawn up there - there are now around 15 monsters spawning very close to the entrance. It was impossible to run around and avoid everything and I very quickly got one-shotted by a Veiled Assassin. I ressed and tried again, this time popping in, provoking, and popping back out again in a really cheap hit-and-run effort [I wish that the teleporters were a little easier to use in areas where one-hitting creatures live]. I succeeded in clearing out the entrance with a lot of work but found it absolutely impossible to progress. The second clearing had far too many spawn for me to deal with. I couldn't stand and fight them, couldn't run around them, and couldn't drag them away and kill them before everything would respawn anyway. Eventually got one-hitted again.

I tried a third time - took insurance off all my items and tried to run past everything to the Padfoot Thieves. I was able to do it but not fight the thieves anyway. The one in the narrow pass east of the entrance, at least, spawns a Velied Assassin to defend him. So unless you're capable of handling one of them in a very small area, you might as well not bother. The second thief is located out on the open ice but had a large number of spawn around him. It might have been possible for me to work very hard at it and clear out the spawn there but since I had no chance of taking down the other thief, I didn't bother trying.

Being that there's no reward for partially completing the quest, there was no point in me starting it. In order to handle this I'd say you'll need upwards of 200hp (how much I don't really know) and/or be willing to part with a lot of corpse retrieval/insurance gold, be able to handle yourself capably in melee or ranged combat, and have rather high dex. No amount of barding or spell casting is going to work here. There's a bigger gap between the easy and mid-level quests than I expected but this is probably appropriate since I wouldn't consider myself a mid-level player. Back to the easy quest for me :]

Thank you staff for the fun times! Even the dying can give us a laugh sometimes. :]

[+Nyx]

I'm sorry to hear you were getting unlucky with the spawns. You might try again at a time when others are hunting there.

A few notes based on your post:
- The mobs aren't set to spawn near the wall. The spawners are centrally located with large spawn radius'. So, sometimes there will be a bunch spawned near the wall, and sometimes none.
- Related to the above, when a player drags a mob and then poofs over the wall, the mobs don't return to their original spawn point like they would in other MMOs. UO just wasn't coded this way, so the mobs sorta just stay where they were dragged. It seems most likely to me that when you saw many near the wall, a player had recently dragged some up to it and nobody had come by to kill them yet.
- All mobs on the spawners are temporary. They will despawn eventually, and then the spawner will replace the despawned mob somewhere in its radius. But there are no longer 'full respawn' functions on any of the winter events, so they don't suddenly all respawn at once.
- The padfoot thieves don't summon assassins. You likely just got unlucky and there happened to be one spawned near enough to the thief to aggro when you were fighting it. You could likely kill them if you were willing to kite it and try to separate it from any adds you'd acquire, or with a friend to help with crowd control.
- The veiled assassins will 1-hit kill, yes. But they also move pretty slowly and have very little HP, so if you stay on your toes and move around a lot, you can usually spot them before they get to you and dispatch them.

Just wanted to clear those up. I hope you decide to try again and are successful

[+Nyx]

Alright, I just made it so that mobs can't bunch up on the walls for any of the events. If they get within a few tiles of the wall, they'll be removed and the spawner will respawn them somewhere else. It's possible for them to spawn within a few tiles of the walls, but once they walk around a bit they'll get removed as well. That'll prevent huge groups of them sitting there to gang up on poor, unsuspecting questers =P

[Unbeliever]

Thanks twice +Nyx :) The information and the adjustment are greatly appreciated. I might try the quest again.. that would be my luck that a Veiled Assassin showed up where he was least wanted by complete accident.:) And now everyone else has accurate information to go on instead of my misreading of what I saw.

If anyone wants help with this quest or feels like helping me out with it, feel free to PM me :)

[Kevan]

I've been supporting this shard with a few donations the last 4+ months. I also read through the entirety of the quest descriptions above. The way I've lost access to the quest today is a bit beyond reason, and excessively harsh and I'm honestly not happy about it.

You created a great event, which I was having fun with, and decided to put Kalare in a place where she has a 2 tile path in order to leave the holiday event area since you can't recall/sacred journey out. So when I finished all of my quest pieces this morning and had to log to go to church, I run by Kalare and she converts my quest items into the boss key and I log off. I come back hours later and the boss key is gone and +Nyx says I've failed the quest and can't do it again. I didn't fail on the boss, I didn't enter the boss's area. No, I'm out of the quest for good because of the 2 tiles I chose to run by Kalare, I chose the wrong one.

Additonally, the forum states: "Once you have entered the boss' room, you have 30 minutes to kill him or you will be ported out. NO second chances will be given if you do not complete the boss within the allotted time frame. We will not make exceptions for dropped connections (except in cases of verified server crash), death, or inability to do enough damage."

When I read that, I don't understand it to mean that you can fail this quest in any way outside of not killing the boss in 30 minutes within entering the boss room. Is there any other way we're supposed to read that? It doesn't say, "Once you have completed a quest leg and earned a boss room key, you have 30 minutes to kill him or you will be ported out and/or fail the quest."

The items in there are nice items for mid-level and even upper-level players on the shard, and I understand why you specifically stated exceptions wouldn't be made for dropped connections, death and inability to do enough damage. With that said, it doesn't mean exceptions can't be made for anything, particularly when the placement of Kelare could have possibly been made a bit more forgiving for people just trying to leave the area. I don't believe you created the ability of failing in the event to include someone failing because they ran too close to Kelare.

Also, the "oh well, it happened, suck it up" response of players is baffling to me. I don't tell my 3 kids to do something "because I told you so," because that's not a mature, well-thought response. It's the easy way out. There's nothing wrong with having an open discussion and admitting or agreeing to disagree with the validity of someone's argument.

If any exceptions are even considered, the GMs can see through the server logs that what happened to me above is exactly as I described. I ran by Kelare, logged off, and did not come back online again for over 4 hours.

Thanks for any consideration.

[Xavian]

[quote="+Nyx"]The items that grant you access to a boss' room are temporary and only last 30 minutes from the time you turn the quest in. ...
- Since the bosses are fought alone, and the summoning item lasts only 30 minutes, it is a good idea to check the line for that boss before you turn in your quest book and receive the temporary summoning item! It is also a good idea to ensure that you have enough time to play without distraction before turning in the quest book to receive the boss tokens.[/quote]

[quote="Kevan"I run by Kalare and she converts my quest items into the boss key and I log off. I come back hours later and the boss key is gone[/quote]

What happened may have been a "mistake", however it clearly states in the first post that the quest item to summon the boss only lasts 30 minutes. When you ran by Kalare and she converted it to the summoning item, you only had 30 minutes to use it. Coming back hours later, the item was decayed and you failed the quest. It might suck, but the reality of the situation is that is happened and it's over. You being allowed to do the quest, or log in to the server at all is a privilege, not a right. The quest will likely be held again next year, just don't make the same mistake then.