Commentary: The Attack of the Rage Quest
With Game Update 66: Scars of the Awakened, it’s clear that the EQ2 team are trying to do some new things with quests. I’ve done I guess about 1/2 of the Othmir questline in Cobalt Scar and have had to do some interesting tasks under certain conditions which go way beyond the usual “kill 10 rats” quests. Of course the problem with more complex quests is, there are so many more places where they can break, and I haven’t encountered this many breaks in a single quest in a long time.
I’m talking about the quest Gifts from Prexus. If you don’t want the quest spoiled, then skip this article.
So after offering to help Osh dig into the mind of one of the corrupted Shamans and figure out how everything went so horribly Walking Dead in Cobalt Scar, I was zoned into the instance Cobalt Scar: The Plague. In an attempt to avoid some of the bugs that others had reported, I sagely left my mercenary and groupmates behind. I hoped that by facing the challenges solo, I could skirt any difficulties. I handily completed all the steps in Meru’s quest and spoke to her for the last time. She was waylaid by three zombie othmir who then turned their attemtion towards me. This is when things started to go wrong.
It seems we have yet to learn from the unpopularity of Dungeon Maker avatars. It’s not that we are averse to playing a different class or driving an NPC. This was never the dealbreaker for me. Indeed I am currently playing Eternal Darkness (yes the 11 year old GameCube game) and you play 12 different characters with different strengths and weaknesses. But the difference is, each is given the tools necessary to complete their tasks. As this Othmir shaman, you’re given no attacks, no heals, no cures, and nothing else to defend yourself save a few reactive buffs.
So somehow, I got into a bugged state where the mobs were wailing on me, yet any attempt to damage them yielded the message “You are not allowed to attack your current target.” Because my buffs were entirely dependent upon hitting the mob, it didn’t take long to get wiped out by the trickle of damage from their detrimentals.
So thinking I could zone out, delete the quest, and try again, I set out to find the exit. You see, when you are inside the Cobalt Scar: The Plague instance, the only way to zone out is to find the tiny clickable totem, which requires you to remember where you zoned in. I couldn’t. First I glanced over my UI to see if I had a spell to cancel the possession (no luck) or a spell that would cause you to exit (you don’t) or an item in my inventory to zone out (you have no access to inventory). You also cannot gate out with Call Home or Call to Guild Hall. Basically you are totally stuck in this situation until you find the exit. It only took me 15 minutes to find it.
So having shaken off the frustration of this situation, I deleted the quest and tried to talk to Osh. At which point I was given the final insult. He said simply “We are lost.” I couldn’t sum it up any better myself.
Final
Bugs are inevitable. As inevitable as crushing deadlines on creating as much quality content as possible in a short time. But I see a number of places within the design of this quest where frustrations could have been avoided. A cancellable buff. An actual attack. A self-heal. And an easy mechanism to reset the quest and re-acquire it. With any of these, this negative diatribe would have not been necessary.
I’m glad that the EQ2 team are trying to get more creative on quests. Even if it makes group updates trickier and we can’t simply click through all the dialogue but actually have to pay attention. But with more creativity comes more complexity. Hopefully with Tuesday’s (or Thursday’s) hotfix, this will simply be a distant memory.
Update
Two updates to this.
First, when you die, you spawn right next to the exit (although you face away from it).
Second, the undead othmir can be temporarily put into an attackable state by breaking the encounter with /yell. This will need to be repeated multiple times during the fight.
However even with the othmir dead, the quest cannot be progressed further despite zoning out and back in. It would be an interesting (if tedious) twist that we have to speak to Meru — in the Ethernere.
Tags: game update 66
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Comments (30)
JesDyr
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Suspend your merc before you enter. While in the zone, do not use the run speed buff.
Those are the two things that people claim can bug the encounter.
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Savas
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I got through it without the bugs, but the reactive buffs for damage were a pita. Where I got hit with a major annoyance was the part where you had to break through the fences and it would spawn mobs to heal it, I killed each fence three times only to see if go back to full health without any healers near by.
I loved the quest line though, zombie othmir best idea ever.
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Gash
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Personally, I dont mind playing something other than myself as long as its SHORT, and it makes sense to the storyline like it does here.
I didnt have any problems with this quest, although I have talked to people who have. It seems suspending your merc before you start can help.
The runspeed was painfully slow in Beta. This is one thing I feedbacked and I’m glad they beefed up the run speed ability.
The 3 stances seemed kinda cool to me. Better than just the nuke and the heal you got in Beta. It was somewhat unique. You get a dps stance, a stance that heals you when you attack, and a Turtle stance.
The Turtle stance reduces your incoming damage by 75% and (is supposed to) damage any mob that hits you. I found it particularly useful when I got mobbed by a large group of zombies, I just let them beat themselves to death hitting me. It amounted to better dps than the dps stance because it was hitting so many mobs. Apparently this damage shield wasnt working for some people though?
TL;DR – good ideas here, too bad it was buggy for some people.
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Feldon
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Just in case it’s not clear, I suspended my merc before zoning in and, after seeing some comments warning me not to in chat, I did not use the Spiritwalker speed buff either.
I did this all on a Ranger and it’s not like we have a lot of buffs or reactive things that can cause problems. I have no idea why the quest bugged out.
The article is more about quest design, failsafes, and making sure people can workaround bugs than the quest itself.
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Griffinhart
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I have run through that part of the quest line twice now and never saw any of the bugs. I never suspended my merc, I heavily used the speed buff. A friend of mine, however, was having difficulty with the 3 zombies.
Even without bugs, I would have to agree that I don’t care for quests that have me take the persona, complete with unfamiliar buffs, of an NPC to finish. I did find waddling around the camp reclicking the run speed buff over and over annoying too.
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Trepide@Storms
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I’d no problem with this quest or any other. I play w/o merc,however.
But I agree that those quests need failsafes, just in case.
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badcat
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I done this quest on 3 different of my toons. It does not matter if you suspend your merc or not. What I had to do each time was zone out and back in after dying multiple times. I got to say it needs to be fixed.
Not only that but the walking dead zombies in the entire camp, not a problem for my sk, or my defiler, my necro however was quickly dispatched. They need to do something about the spawn rates, this entire zone is not that fun, and having the daily quest locked behind doing a good portion the overland zone not fun either.
Addendum toons that I had in raid gear had no problem with the zone toons in less than stewards gear a huge problem. Quest rewards vs difficulty, what can I say.
It is really to bad the new zone is nice on the eyes but the quests ruin it.
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Moo
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Never ran into any problems when I completed the questline last Tuesday. Guess I’m lucky on that.
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Striinger
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I did the quest line on my ranger without trouble (other than pausing for a bio on the side of a big rock only to have a group of zombies sniff me out and port through rock to get me).
I don’t use mercs and only have a mix of Skyshrine EM raid armor and Drinal faction stuff.
To chime in, I’m also not a fan of avatar play… That’s what alts are for if you want a change.
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Mermut
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Another annoyance with the quest… you’re supposed to talk to/confront the head shaman.. but you never get to the guy to talk to him. Story-wise, that’s a real let down. We never find out why he’s destroying his own people, we just know that he’s got at least an idea that it’s ‘bad’ because he’s trying to keep the shaman we’ve inhabited away from whatever he’s doing.
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Prrasha
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For the folks saying “worked for me”… yes, that’s why this sort of bug is a pain in the tail to fix. Software development is hard.
If it affects everyone, it’s easy to find and fix. If it affects some people some of the time, then it’ll go live due to limited testing and thousands of folks get a case of the rages. And we start hearing about “don’t use this buff” “click them in clockwise order” “don’t kill the blue ones before the red ones” etc etc. And one of those might be a workaround, or might be worth having the devs consider, or it might just be dumb luck, like anyone else who gets it to work.
But until they’re willing to pay people for testing, even if it’s in Station Cash or krono or something, this is what we’ll have. Log into beta, see 7 other people on “/who all” (only one of them in the new zone), /shrug, log back out.
(Not that I’m part of the solution, or anything; I submitted a whole two /bugs on the beta server.)
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Moo
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Well he’s not actually ‘bad’. Apparently it was an accident. High Shaman took over bones he thought were given by Prexus to his people when in fact they were the bones of a cursed dragon. Possessed him until he was literally a souless bodyless husk helping spread the undead curse.
Also the fading in to dark when you get into the his chambers when you’re playing as Meru is only to add suspense. You know he died, and the purpose is to just run towards his lair likely dieing the moment he saw a glance of what was happening.
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Feldon
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It’s enough of an issue that Customer Service will not fix the quest for me. I must wait for a game update. Which will probably autocomplete the quest for me. I’ve actually been reading dialogue. 🙁
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Mermut
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@Moo
I read the text and it was unsatisfying, rather then suspenseful for me, to get the information in a blurb afterwards rather then getting to actually confront/have a conversation with the culprit.
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griffonlady
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did you try /house_exit
works in most instances, all houses, and all players made dungeons. A lot faster than waiting to get ported by a GM. I actually have it macroed on most of my toons emote list.
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Mentin
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I found that the ‘fight by buffs’ method actually was something new and refreshing.
You probably won’t get easily through this zone without reading and understanding what the buffs do.
My run through was bug-free.
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Feldon
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They learned it from players running Dungeon Maker zones entirely through heal and damage procs. 😉
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Akina_Storms
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I had trouble with this quest too, until i dismiss my pet and my merc.
this was an easy fight, you juste have to use the buff which heals each tilme you hits.
I had more trouble with Shymeera, she keeps bugging her script, i’ve tried a lot of options, with or without merc, pet, death preventing tool, very low DPS…
I think i just have to wait for a fix.
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Blacktop
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I took a different approach, i just leged it and killed nothing 😛
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Amybelle
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The ‘dungeon avatar’ based instance bugged for me, too. I kept getting knocked back, stunned/stifled/dazed, and then the mobs would either kill me or leash. It finally completed, then when I died trying to find the High Shaman, I figured the whole zone bugged out.
As to the zombie Othmirs in the overland zone, I can’t tell you the number of times I stepped in to help players who were just overwhelmed by 30+ mobs with more incoming. Time and again I wondered how anyone who wasn’t in raid gear would be able to work this quest line.
The aggro range on the zombies should be decreased, or their respawn timers greatly increased.
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Yagyu
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Questing sucks…if we wanted to do work, and tedious, not fun stuff…we could get a 2nd job, and get paid to do it.
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Anaogi
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Worst. Quest line. EVAR.
Whoever came up with this should be flogged with rusty razorwire.
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le comptoir marchand
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i just completed the quest line (on my guardian,monk,illu,fury,shammy and conjuror) the “gift of prexus quest is the only one who seems bugged to me. Degroup merc and groupmember, exit-re enter the instance worked fine at the moment. Did you see the season 3 of The Walking Dead? we have the othmir for the mid season right?! so i am going to repeat the Cobalt Scar questline again and again! i have the feeling that there is a way for solo players to pex character while we have a 30mn buff from Osh, call prexus gift, buff that affect undead with nipik’s aura. i do mass zombie pull and it look interesting!
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Chris
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Odd, I’m not sure what you are saying about the no attacks thing. That reactive heal was pretty solid, kept me alive the whole time even when 4 mobs were hitting me.
Your NPC has three buffs that do different things when he is attacked. One heals your NPC each time he hits a mob so you just walk up to a bunch and auto attack, no need to press any buttons and you will happily kill the monsters. Didn’t take long to kill them either.
Totally agree however that if you need to get out of the instance there should be a more intuitive way.
Cheers,
Chris
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Tabri
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I finished this quest and didn’t even know there was a bug until I read this. I only had to kill the 3 sick othmir for the shaman part in the zone the rest of the time I used the speed run totem and trained till I was auto taken out of the zone on quest completion.
I agree the zombies are overwhelming in the overland area, but I am playing a fully raid geared, mastered, conjurer with an Archon mercenary with me so tons of them I can handle but I dont think I will be doing this on my brigand.
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Moo
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Again, he has no conscious. He’s literally a husk made out of the energy that engulfed him that’s living on pure instinct like any of the other zombies.
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Mermut
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@Moo
He is when we ‘kill’ him as ourself, but I find it unlikely he was at the time we play the ‘avatar’ othmir since he gave the guards at the tunnel mouth instructions to forbid others to enter.
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Gash
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I agree that really bad policy that Customer Service won’t update anything for you and tells you to wait for a hotfix.
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Benj
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I knew there were bugs because I read the beginning of the article before running the quest. I held off on the rest because I didn’t want it to spoil the story. I didn’t see any of these bugs. I found the avatar interesting, and certainly a different play style than any of my alts. I loved this quest line.
My only complaint was the ending to the instance. It would have been nice to see the High Shaman before he had been entirely corrupted.
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Tyrantkilja
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WORST questline ever. i HATE all the new quests of course they are long and drawn out and over bugged, but they are drawn out TOOO much id rather watch paint dry than do this boring mondaine garbage. like i give a damn about some bathsalt eatin othmir. this quest could have been reduced to about half and got the story told. after doing the damn cloak quest for HE and Obols i almost just deleted my account but then i thought about how long i have been playing and all the crap i have endured along the way. I REALLY WISH THEY WOULD FIRE that retard Producer and get this game going in another direction i do NOT like the direction its going.
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