Fun with Zlandicar

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Lance Berg - 19 Dec 2007 15:21 GMT

So this is a sad tale.

For many months my SK has longed for a slow proccing weapon. I solo or
duo with a mage or cleric, or trio with all three, fairly often, and the
one thing we're really missing is Slow (haste clicky, single pulls to
avoid needing CC...)

There's an item a guildmate has that procs a slow but its only about
10%, really more of an aggro producer than anything noticable. I was
excited when I saw it drop, but when I read up on it, I dismissed it as
not worth the time spent weilding it to make it proc.

Very recently, though, I was grumbling about that to a ranger friend,
and he told me of Willsapper, a drop off a named rat in DN; said it was
on a 3.5 day timer and spawns between the two hoarders near the
Zlandicar spawn. I knew vaguely of this weapon but for some reason
thought it was warrior/rogue only. Well, a little research confirmed
that it was actually 35% slow and had a 3 minute duration, so certainly
worth my while. Cursory glance over the comments (most of them arguing
about which class should use the thing, its useable by all but cleric
druid monk and berserker) confirmed that the rat Vaniki does spawn near
Zlandicar.

SO begins an epic journey. I have two accounts, one with my SK and a 20
ranger, one with a 70 cleric and a 24 ranger. I took the SK over to DN
first, ran in and found the setup spot as described by my buddy.
Nothing up. Then I logged him out, logged in cleric and ranger, took
both to SG, dueled the ranger to death and dragged his body to the WW
zone line, rezzed him, and went off to DN. In DN, killed the ranger
again and tried to drag him to the spot, only to discover the cleric
wasn't able to do that so easily, tripped a trap that broke invis and
spawned adds... well anyway, SK drags the cleric back to the zone in,
cleric comes back and rezzes himself and the ranger. (which means
logging the SK in for drag, then the ranger in for rez.. barely made the
timer)

This time we have the ranger kill himself on a local mob, so the body
will be rezzable longer, and SK and cleric go invis/fight their way back
to the spot. Log the SK out, the ranger in, rez ranger. SK back in, I
spend a couple hours killing stuff in the area, but then get the ranger
back up and there he sits for a day and a half, with me occaisionally
hittin the track button to check the area, or just really AFK but
figuring at least I'll be able to read the signs of a fight if someone
comes in and kills the mob while I'm asleep.

Next day I play my cleric some while keeping the ranger on station, but
then there's a raid, I log the ranger out, and SK abandons the area to
attend the raid, I can't have my cleric there to check either, because
my son is using that machine for his mage. I spot check a couple times
but nothing is up when I check, its very possible though that my mob
pops and is killed and the area is clear again in the hours between checks.

I get the ranger back on that evening, and again leave him overnight.
From that point on I maintain a constant presence. My son's laptop
finally really dies, so I give him the one I've been using to dual box,
and get a new one, which means spending much of monday evening setting
that up and most of Tuesday getting EQ loaded on it. I borrow the
laptop back when a friend's cleric has some spare time, and we get the
second ranger dragged down and rezzed in the same spot, just in time for
the Tuesday night raid, and I get the new laptop running EQ in time to
attend the raid with my SK while leaving ranger #2 on station, and my
son brings his mage to the raid on the old laptop.

So I manage to never lose that watchful eye on the spawn. Sleep the
night away, come back to find Vilefang has been in the area but is no
longer. Well I play around some fixing the new laptop's EQ UI
arrangement, have to log off at one point, and when I log back in a
couple minutes later, Zlandicar is on track. I run the SK back over in
a hurry, pausing to kill Vilefang who for some reason is near the ST key
hand in spot, although its been many hours since my ranger heard him
cast, someone must have pulled him towards the exit and then died or
lost him and didn't bother coming back to finish him off.

At any rate, I'm not there for more than a couple minutes, buffing up,
when a 15 minute warning comes, servers going down!

I engage immediately, and it takes me a good 11 minutes to take
Zlandicar down solo. I loot everything he drops except the no drop
talisman, I log out, log the ranger in who comes and loots that with
less than a minute to spare.

IF there are no rollbacks, at least I have the Zlandicar loots to show
for my efforts.

So why is this a sad tale? Because I don't really care about the
Zlandicar loots, its Vaniki I wanted... and taking the time to read over
the Vaniki postings more thouroughly, I find he doesn't spawn, as I was
told, every 3.5 days in that one spot near Zlandicar, but rather in any
of 4 spots around the area, and in any spot has a chance of showing
every 4-6 hours. My ranger was in range of perhaps two of these at best
(at his level his track skill caps at 105), and was in "hearing" range
of any spell casting of only one, if the mob actually buffs himself at all.

Now I should mention that not only did I intend to camp this guy for my
SK, but also to lock down his timer so other people in my guild could
come and spend only a couple hours to get him for themselves, each time
he pops. We have a good many people who could benefit from this weapon.
So, when they announced the patch I was upset because it was messing
up my timer... only now I find I wasted all that time because there's an
entirely different timer anyway!

I also think I see a spot where my ranger might be in track range of all
four spawns... and its back out of the rat tunnels, no need to do the
whole death drag thing at all, simple invis will get him there. Sadly,
both rangers are now in deep, and getting them out will require gating
them home or killing and rezzing them or some such solution!

On the plus side, I will now be able to key my cleric for ST, so I can
bot him in there if someone wants to do a little mini raiding to get
some avatar proccing weaponry into the hands of the guild.

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Lunaren - 20 Dec 2007 03:06 GMT

> So this is a sad tale.
>
[quoted text clipped - 104 lines]
> him in there if someone wants to do a little mini raiding to get some
> avatar proccing weaponry into the hands of the guild.

A sad tale perhaps but a fun read for me this evening. I recall hearing of
the willsapper myself and maybe someday my own little SK will go for one of
those as he too would be paired with a cleric. I have a 75 cleric on one
account who I used to raid with and is very nicely geared and another much
older account that has a 67 Monk I've been playing for some time now along
with a 29 SK and a couple other lowbies including a necro, mage and more. I
am having trouble deciding what I'd most like to play with the cleric when
by myself late nights, or sometimes to help out with my small group of
friends I play evenings with.

That's the stuff of a separate post tho which maybe I will post in a bit.

I enjoy your stories Lance. I remember you from a long time ago here before.
I forget what name I might have gone by here at the time but I returned to
this group in hopes of finding some good conversation and story telling such
as this. I'm glad the faithful are still here.

It is the little old world adventures like this one that make the game
continue to be what it is for me regardless of its age and changes over
time. All the old places are still right where we left them.

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Lance Berg - 22 Dec 2007 12:35 GMT

Wasting Time

After the patch, I logged in the 24 ranger and my SK, ran the SK over to
DN and down the tunnels to Zlandicar's room. There, I proceded to do
the least practical thing I could imagine: I PL'd the ranger.

With Zlandicar's Heart and a shield, my SK, buffed with all the DS I can
muster on my own, plus several DS items, would pull a mob deep into
Zlandi's room and allow it to beat on him, with the little ranger
pounding away on its back for all she was worth, theory being that the
ranger need only do a single point of damage to overwhelm me since I was
doing none at all; with Zlandicar's Heart in hand I didn't even riposte.

Of course this was doomed to failure initially, as it turns out the rats
run when low on HP. Ranger couldn't land a snare or root, so the SK had
to snare, and all SK snares do damage; Festering Darkness outdamaged the
ranger so no exp for her.

I set up again in the same positions, but now I had Clinging Darkness
memmed in place of Festering. Uh Oh, turns out the mob runs so early
that Clinging only slows it down. A quick Lifetap drops it but no exp
for the ranger.

Take three, I mem several snares. Turns out Engulfing is necessary to
stop the mob initially, but after the mob's HP drops some, Clinging will
do the job, and this is the prize winning combo; the rangerling can
outdamage clinging and having put some DPS "in the bank" as it were by
meleeing the mob while its eating DS, also outdamages the single
application of Engulfing.

An even better trick is to pull two mobs, neither runs till one dies, so
by splitting ranger DPS between them so as to keep them more or less
even, we get a much faster kill on the first and the second is very
close to dead, clinging stops it and it dies fast.

Ranger also becomes more DPS as her weapon and double attack skills
improve, she's clearly a PLing victim from way back as her skills start
out very low.

Good news is it only takes about ten kills to level, and another 10 to
level again. She's killing desperately red to her mobs, and I guess
there's a cap to how much exp you can get per level or she'd probably
ding with one kill each time.

Bad news is because the mobs are deeply red, once they run it takes a
long time for her plus clinging darkness to take down that remaining 19%
of their HP bar.

The point of this exercise (beyond giving me something to do while
waiting for the spawn) is to increase her track range so hopefully she
can cover all four spots. To test this, I invis up and go over to see
if she's in range of the second nearest one; at 135 skill she is. Then
I head off to the further two; she's in range of the third nearest. Up
the ladder and around to the fourth spot... Bang, my mob is up.

I wasted a lot of time and effort skilling up the rangerling, but on the
other hand I needed to waste that time anyway as Vaniki wasn't up when I
checked at 130 skill.

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Lance Berg - 22 Dec 2007 13:02 GMT

Rat Vs Gnome

So, Vaniki announced himself by beating me into a pulp. Apparantly he
see's invis, and he saw me before I saw him; I'd forgotten he might
actually be up, after 5 days looking for him all I was doing was setting
up the tracker for range of all four spots.

I tried to rise to the occaision and melee back, but it didn't go well
at all, I got him down to about 90% while he got me down to 25% and I FD'd.

In retrospect, going after him unbuffed and with my normal spell layout
replaced with multiple low level snares wasn't likely to succede, but
worse yet I had forgotten I was armed with Zlandicar's Heart...
deliberately set up to do no damage at all other than the DS!

Once I successfully FD'd I was able to take stock of my situation and
realize that I'd need a weapon. I left the Heart in for the moment
though as I needed some regen, and besides, Goats had just popped in
Qvic and my cleric bot was needed, so I logged the rangerling, logged in
the cleric, and headed over while I got some HP back.

Swapping in my 1.5 and with full HP, I stood back up and started the
fight again... only to find I wasn't doing much better. Vaniki has a
lifetap proc that goes off frequently, and I wasn't keeping up. I tried
to move back and FD to ditch him so I could mem better spells and buff
up, but he didn't reset nor did his buddy.

On advice of a friend, I used IOF to get my resists up and tried him
again, with no better results, I wasn't resisting those lifetaps even
with 525 in all resists, and I couldn't ditch the adds either, fighting
him plus a couple friends was really not working out. FD again, and
several different efforts to split him just didn't go.

Eventually (and with long pauses while I regened HP while performing
cleric duties on our mini raid) I ended up throwing in the towel on the
idea of soling him, and started dragging him to the WW zone line. This
was a laborious process, as I'd get a pile of adds, and he would keep
stopping to cast so I couldn't just train the whole pile out, I'd outrun
him. Wait for the adds to mostly clear (some never did, he always had
buddies) and then get him moving again. I did manage to swap in a
couple spells, which improved things. Best part though was that I'd
recently maxed out Willful Death AA, which meant the many many casters
who's spells I was resisting weren't breaking my FD attempts. Two weeks
ago there's no chance I would have survived this effort.

Next roadblock was the curving ramp up from the tunnels to the spider
area; easy to travel in, but I'd never tried it going out. Turns out
that at gnome size its a very difficult traverse. Normally I'd just go
wood elf or skeleton form, but by now my chances for stopping and
memming or casting spells were gone, it would have meant serious
backtracking to get to the spot where I'd actually managed a little
aggro free time. So there was a lot of jumping and hopping and
manuevering, and I'd get beat up bad enough to have to flop and regen in
between steps. All the while timing my efforts to coincide with breaks
in the Qvic run.

All this must have taken me about an hour, because the goat raid wrapped
up, 3 M'Sha down, and some friends were willing to come help out. I left
the cleric bot be and concentrated on dragging Vaniki past the spiders,
much easier in open terrain, his follow distance was short enough and
his run speed sufficiently slower than Run 5 that I could get breathing
room. I finally split his buddies off by using my Bioluminescent Orb to
blind them and ran him far enough forward to be out of add range when I
FD'd aggro off and reaggroed him. A rogue friend showed up and helped
clear spiders out of the path and we got him back to the zone line just
as the rest of the crew arrived.

With a full group this guy was no trouble at all, in fact I wager just
me and the rogue could have done the job; I simply wasn't enough DPS to
overcome his lifetapping

Tried Willsapper out on some of the trash mobs at the zone line, then I
went to bed happy.

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Lance Berg - 22 Dec 2007 13:24 GMT

So here's the deal with Willsapper; its not a great weapon by any means,
but it isn't terrible either; cuts my DPS in half but paired with a
shield isn't a big drop in AC/HP from my 1.5, and because of the way
shield AC counts, is probably actually a better mitigation setup, which
is good because I'm tanking an unslowed mob.

Once it procs, thats a 3 minute slow, so I can swap in my regular weapon
and the mob will probably be dead before slow runs out.

The message from the slow landing is the standard yawns one; its small
and hard to see. This is a problem, because I really want to swap in a
real weapon as soon as it lands.

I've tried setting up an additional window and putting all the "mine"
spells in it, but this window is getting heavy spam; the heal portions
of my lifetap procs, everyone's DOT damage, and so on. I need to play
with this more as I don't really want to switch permanently to the
Willsapper.

One idea I have is to finally break down and set up an audio trigger, if
I can find some way to turn off all the other sounds as I generally
dislike sound on my games, a quiet "Slowed" murmered occaisionally out
of the speakers might not be intolerable.

The proc rate is not great; I see several TOTC and SOD procs for one
yawn. I'm at 24 CE and WA 3 (well, just raised it to 4 and now working
on 5) so there's some room for improvement, which is vital, the less
time I spend waiting for slow to land the better.

The slow is also not fantastic, but it is noticable. Fighting mobs
where my hp bar slowly drops, when slow lands, my lifetap procs now
gradually restore me to full hp; on mobs where I used to end a fight at
50% I'm now ending them at full. Its not game breaking by any means,
but it makes things that used to be hard easier, and that was the idea.

What it doesn't do is make things that used to be easy easier; if my
lifetaps were keeping up with mob DPS already, then swapping in a lesser
weapon in order to eventually land slow just makes the kill take longer.

And killing multiple easy mobs benefits even less; I have to switch
between them to slow one after another, all the while with half normal
DPS, and when I am pulling multiples I'm usually using a DS strategy;
slowed mobs hurt themselves less on my DS!

I did use it to kill two difficult mobs, slowing both meant my lifetap
procs were able to keep me alive long enough to kill the first one, then
I reslowed the second and took him down fairly easily. The slows matter
more than Haste for this, because haste doesn't alter my proc rate and
that's where my healing is coming from.

Aggro is mentioned in the Allakhazam thread on Willsapper. SK don't
have to worry much about aggro, if I want it I cast a spell to get it.
But some testing showed that slow was noticable aggro; I had an SK buddy
fighting with me at one point, not using extraordinary effort but
fighting as normal with him as MT, me casting no spells nor taunting,
one way to tell when slow landed was that the mob would usually turn on
me. He could easily get the mob back but it was a certainly a bigger
hate production than the lifetap augs I normally use.

Oh, and I made a hotkey announcing 35% slow landed, which will amuse me
for a while, I expect soon enough I'll go back to my normal silence
about results which don't really concern anyone.

Berg, 70 Gnome SK slower, Combine

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Lunaren - 23 Dec 2007 02:34 GMT

> So here's the deal with Willsapper; its not a great weapon by any means,
> but it isn't terrible either; cuts my DPS in half but paired with a shield
[quoted text clipped - 59 lines]
>
> Berg, 70 Gnome SK slower, Combine

Grats on your shiny new Willsapper. Very nice item to have and I know I will
want to get my own SK one who by the way also happens to be a Gnome.
Personally I enjoy ingame sounds and music so I always use audible prompts
for important events to bring them to my attention. I would for a slow so I
knew to bandolier a better weapon in one the Willsapper has landed a slow
for me.

This is kind of funny but I always have an audible sound for this phrase:
"you feel yourself"

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