EZ Server

Shadow from T3/T4 Hohonora will now shadow step.

When creating an instance (or non-instance coming up), he'll spawn after 30 minutes. Then, after you kill him without him doing a shadow step on you, it'll take 1-30 minutes for him to respawn again.

His original spawn location is random every time throughout the whole zone.

His HP and Regen are reduced to help make this quest go faster.

His size has been made smaller from 45 to 30.

There won't be so much of a long battle like before, but searching for where he shadow stepped too can be challenging.

As always, you can use MQ2 to see NPCs on the map, but you can't warp to the mob. If I catch players warping/teleporting to the boss every time he shadow steps, then there will be bans in place. You need to run/fight your way to him again.

I'm thinking about making him also do a shadow step once an hour, sort of like the 1 hour depop in Plane of Dragon bosses, but the Shadow would shadow step instead. I could either have engaging the boss reset the 1 hour time for shadow step, or not do that and hope you got to him within enough time. Either way, he would still have chance to shadow step during the fight as its written already. So that is just an idea for the future.

Later I'll be 1) adding mini bosses to Hohonora and 2) Assassin Quest bosses in the 10 zones will call for random guards to help them out during the fight, instead of spawning adds. Just need time to add that stuff in.

Edit: If the Shadow boss shadow steps, then the 1st able group that gets to him will have the rights to the boss. You can not hold the boss because he shadow stepped on you. First person to find him again gets him. Using instances will help to avoid this probably too.

Enjoy!

Hunter

This sounds great boss,

My guild is getting flagged right now and should be doing T3 soon. From what we have heard it is a grind and no fun at all so this is good news as the shadow fight will be more dynamic.

Could the 100k pricetag for guild instances be reviewed at all since this appears to be quite steep ever since the 3.7billion was removed from the game.

Since the plat was removed 100k is more like 300-500k due to what you can make from selling charms/fg or cg items/quest armour/runs is now alot less than it was before the nerf.

I know it is higher content and should cost more than the others but 10k to 100k is a steep rise nowadays. Even 50k would be a massive improvement for a guild like mine which isn't uber rich and will have to farm just to do the current level of content.

Thanks for your time,
Krusha

Even though 3.7 billion Plat was removed, about 100 people still had 5 million plat each. So that's 500,000,000 plat still floating around in the economy right now.

Killed shadow at 750am EST
Chased him all over the zone.
I suggest you pre clear several areas.

Hey I spent all day in my instance. 100k to make it. I made 100k back plus 750,000pp. Of course I was grinding my alt warrior's UC and I spent all day in there.

My man Balthor doin' work.

Maybe I have to increase prices to 250k pp for instance then.

250k for an instance balthor failed to tell you he was in HoH for about 10 hrs yesterday... hell now that i think about it think he was in hoh longer then 10hrs lol

I was in HoH for 20hours.
Wanted my UC

hope this means the guards arent gonna take as long as the boss to kill..

Yeah 250k sounds about right. ;)

Were the 1-25 charms added to Shadow? That was mentioned in the original post about changing Shadow a few weeks back.

I think it would be bad, but you can farm qvic or velks for gems to pay for Hoh and spend about 3 hours in there to make back the cost.
Still wouldnt want to see the price increased.

No charms atm.

Yeah my guess would be youre not going to be seeing charms on him.  Of course I could be totally wrong.

was supposed to be on em but shrug

Right after Balthor killed Shadow, and mentioned the lack of charms hunter said he forgot and that he'd write it down, so I assume when he gets to it he'll have charms

We should have 1-25 charm upgrades after next reboot. Sorry I forgot about it, was trying to make sure the script worked for Shadow.

Sounds good. Btw the math was around 37kpp-41kpp / hr farming in there.
A large portion of the server has 4.0 and UC and can kill fast and earn more but another large portion of the server can not slaughter 50%-90% of the zone before respawns and will bring in a lot less pp.

So playing in an Instanced HoH for 3+ hours pays for itself? And profit after? Or even in a Non-Instance for 3 hrs before you can afford an Instance? Sounds good to me.

The charm upgrades 1-25 should be some incentive to go after Shadow even if you have your epics. Also drops a ton of gems + magic stones etc to make chasing him all over worth it.

Yea it takes about 3hours to break even for most people, more time you can make something outa it.
Your full 4.0 UC group will break even faster but thats to be expected when they can clear more of the zone before repops.

A lot of people are looking forward to the Shadow change, I know I am.

Also keep in mind that alot of people, like my guild, won't have any extra pages/books to sell for profit since we're "up and coming" and need them all for our own toons.

Reduced hps/regen will totally make up for the slight annoyance of moving shop. Adding in charms? Booyah!

Thanks Hunter!

He does get in more lucky rounds then before, just that fluke people have been talking about the last couple days, so make sure your on top of your healing.

If you're an up and coming, you won't have anything to sell so i don't understand how they would even remotely break even.

OK,

This is Fkin retarded.. getting ready for to engage from the 6th step now..

There needs to be a cap...

Lame..

Fugi the last step someone was like "I bet it requires a certain amount of dps to stop it" and I was like "I can kill shadow in 17min if thats not DPS then wtf is"
So I burned all the possible dps disc I could and killed it.

normally I get 2-4 steps give or take an odd one like that..

DPS wise

Like you, we got it covered way more then enough...

oh well, still something to do while farming stones fun fun

Yes, slightly frustrating but its a fun change and when it drops charms the work is very much worth it.

Plat and gems off the corpses.

At least this zone has pp / gems now. While at times I hate taking the time to loot it, the fact that you can make back the cost of the instance is nice. I probably only dropped about 1mil on the old system but some players easily put 10-20million into it.
The old system was also why I only did HoH on days I knew I would spend at least 5 hours in there.
Now at least I can go in there for a couple hours here and then a couple hours again later, break even on the cost and not feel like I need to spend all day because I spent that 100k

Think about Lguk and Seb, you might not make hard coin off looting the crap in the zone but I know that when I pay 100k to make a instance I am staying until I loot at least 200k in items to sell to others.

Killed it again.
One charm drop.

Not fun.  If the shadow stepping was intended to bring fun to the encounter...then I question the definition of fun.  Are we supposed to laugh and say "HAHA omg that was a close one we almost killed him before he shadow stepped!" every time he does it, and then go off running after him?  It's not the reaction you are going to get, and making the amount of jumping random is extremely counter productive.  I killed him yesterday in my first 2 fights after only 1 jump each.  Since then I have killed him 0 times and have counted 8 jumps in a row.  What the hell is the point?  There is nothing in this encounter relating to skill or competency.  HINT: random mechanic does not = interesting encounter design.

For those people that read this and scream from the rafters "If you don't like it you can leave, it's free!", here's a NEWSFLASH:  You can leave any game at any time even if you pay for it!  Some of us are providing feedback to existing game play, so if you don't know anything about the encounter feel free to not click "Post".

I could understand if after shadow stepping he were to get weaker (as in hitpoints and/or possibly AC/dodge/something). That way, there would be more of a chance to kill it next you find it. Also, it would be a bonus in the public instance if you were to find Shadow after he's jumped multiple times. =)

That is an interesting idea.  Maybe make it so that he jumps every 10 minutes of combat but then loses 30% of his total hp for the next fight so if he started with 100 million hp, he starts the next fight with only 66 million hp and after he jumps again he has only 44 million hp.

This would allow many different group make-ups to kill him.  Some groups might take 4 or 5 tries to get his hp low enough that he can't port.  Others might be able to kill him after only the second jump. 

Finally got him after the 13th shadow step in a row.  I like the idea of making him less likely to jump each time.  Hopefully that is something hunter might consider.

Is it a set time that he Shadow Steps or is it random time after you engage him? I didn't see anyone say yet of how long he is at one location.

It doesn't have anything to do with the length of time he stays at one location, because I have had him jump on me to a place I had cleared and I attacked and had him jump within another 5-7 minutes.  I think it is entirely random unless there are only certain locations he is "allowed" to die, and will jump from all others.  That is just a notion, i have no idea if it has any merit.  I wish I had written down the pattern of his jumps also, though I doubt there is a pattern and every thing to do with it is just completely random.

Hmmm would be interesting to find out if there are set spots where he SS's to or if it is completely random at anywhere in the zone. My guess is there are set locations, but they are randomized(i could be wrong though lol).

13 is way to many hops period...

I'm just sayin that I aint sayin anything......

I just had him hop to the exact same location (where he was standing), so it's definitely random and presumably only to certain locs.  not ANY loc, as someone speculated earlier.

He must have felt bad for you for the other 13 last time  ;D

You got some bad random rolls. He should only shadow step maybe 1-2x before kill. If and When he shadow steps is random.

Can you make a NPC here named Random so we can murder it because random(RNG) is generally terrible here.

There will be times when  the RNG sucks and he'll shadow step a lot. I shouldn't have to tweak it, but keep me posted and I can always tweak it later if needed. Will will shadow step sometimes and the loots on him make it worth hunting down with Magic Stones, Gems, Epic Book, and Charm Upgrades (1-25). His HP should drop faster with the lower HP and Regen too.

If random truely sucks, then I could make it a finite number of shadow steps, like 1 or 2 per fight before he won't Shadowstep anymore.

That would be awesome, Hunter.  Extremely awesome.

That sounds good, that way you know you'll be able to do it in a certain amount of time whether you kill him before he shadow steps, or after you chase him down the other times. Makes for good competition in public too, to get him on the last time.

As someone not quite ready to kill him, I think random is kinda fun, but there should be a limit so it doesn't go on for days.

Just killed him again after the 5th shadow step.  Limiting it to 1 or 2 would be wonderful.

Every kill for me has been 5-6 shadowsteps.
I only did it once after charm fix, anyone confirm total number he can drop?
If its only one its still better then LDON but in my opinion not worth the hassle with that shadowstep. I can farm more LDON credit if I get a decently friendly zone companion or a empty ldon vs. the average time this takes me.

I really do like the shadowstep its kinda funny but ug..  my average kill (old shadow) is about 19min since I change my box group around depending on which 3.5 I'm working on and now its like 55-80min per kill.

still crash on shadow... sux when you waste 5 steps or more into just to crash ....

I've been just negative all day today =/

I'll work on the times he shadowsteps on my day off.

Thank you sir

I made shadow to have "less" chance to shadowstep from 66% to 50%, which was a quickie edit until I get time to write up a script that makes him shadow step no more than twice at most. This should help a bit, or even be fair enough to leave it at 50% chance.

Also, he'll shadow step at lower % of health now too.

Would it be possible to have Shadow randomly step based on group ID? 

I was following someone around HoH, helping clear trash so they could get to him a bit easier.  It occurred to me that I could very well follow him around, watch Shadow step twice, then race for the mob knowing that he will not step again.  I was hoping that there was a way to keep track of how many times he has stepped on a group or raid basis, so that this can be avoided. 

Then again, I am not a coder, so I dont know if this is even possible.

I really appreciate the attention on Shadow.

It is rather frustrating seeing it teleport on me especially when I am not handling him with an overpowered group.  It takes about 35-40 minutes to get him down, and when he has a chance to shadow step after 35-40 minutes of combat, it really ruins the fun factor...

I can understand the changes for people that can take him down really fast, but for properly geared raids, this is not a very good "feature" of this fight.

I totally agree. I honestly would have rather him just been left alone then have him be able to step.

Yes, for some of the higher end people who can take him down rather fast, maybe this was a step in the right direciton... But for the people who are attempting him for the first time so that they may progress their own toons it is really rather ridiculous. Atleast before if you spent a very long time fighting him, you knew once he was dropping his HP that there was no way in hell he could get them back except if you died. Now, you fight him for 45 minutes (if you aren't super beefed up like some groups) and then he SS's on you. It makes it very hard to want to go kill him for the people new to the content. Of course, there are uber people out there that would not mind helping you for a price.... Lol.

Maybe I am just a whiner, but I think that maybe Shadow should be rethought.... Again.

If your group is not strong enough, then invite more people on the raid, and start getting your T3/T4 armor.

Many players already got their T3/T4 armor + Epic 4.0 kills without having a 3.5 Epic Weapon as a stepping stone. Maybe some are trying to rush it soon as they left T2?

Do you have ring of ages max / near max and/or UC?
I know its doable without either but its really hard and probably not worth the effort as the time invested could get you enough cards and point tokens to get 2+ charms compared to the single he would drop.
T3 is very much doable without 3.5 and since Hunter removed the root I would take advantage of it now for some armor.
Piece of advice, plate up the Knights first. Biggest bang per piece.

I was able to kill it without any T3, single grouped so it's not too bad.

War/sk/pal/pal/rng/rng Warrior is about 140k from RoA 100 and Using Guardian, but 95k SK was able to tank it no problem and he only has a lvl 15 RoA and not all HP augs from T2 lol

Edit: also it takes roughly 30mins to get the kill with this group, no firestrikes so the dps is rather lacking, and about 20mins gone if he shadowsteps.

I'm curious what other people are seeing in terms of number of steps. I had him step once yesterday before we killed him, then a 2nd time he stepped 4 times then I had to log from being to tired due to staying up to much during double loot. So he could of stepped more than 4 times I just never stuck around for it.

Did him a couple times this past weekend, he stepped 5 times the first fight, then 2 times the second time.

I was chasing Shadow around an instance pretty heavy during the Christmas event.  I was surprised, my first 4 kills, he stepped twice.  I even sent a couple of tells to people asking if it had been modified.  The next kill he stepped 7 times.  (Guess I shouldn't have sent the tells  :) )  After that, it was a random, but I don't remember any kill that was more than 5.  Last night after the event was over, I killed him in public twice.  One stepped 3, one stepped 4 times. 

Anyone got more than 1 lvl charm ? all the people who i asked told me they never got more than 1 upgrade, and i never saw more than 1 lvl too ? i know its RNG and RNG can be painful, but i was wondering if there wasn't a bug here, or something wrong in the script ?

I believe this means that one charm can drop, which will upgrade the level 1-25 charm.   The only time I have seen more than one per kill was double loot, when two dropped. 

Only 1 Charm upgrade should drop, and it is the kind of upgrade that will take your charm up to level 25.  1-25 Implies the charm level.

The only time i saw two charm upgrades was during double loot.  That was amazing btw =)

Ohhh  :o sorry i misunderstood  ;D so 1-25 is the sort of upgrade that would drop  ::)

So did a lot of people take advantage of double loot weekend to chase Shadow all over for 2 level 1-25 charm upgrades?

How long is the average chase right now by the way with current stats and shadow steps?

My sample's small, but it will add to the total.

Engaged Shadow 3 times.

First - 1 shadow step (another guild engaged so don't know what happened after that)
Second - 0 shadow steps
Third - Zone Crash (Shadow at 47%) - shadow not on track when I logged back in though he could have been on the other side of the zone beyond my track range

i just got done doing him and he stepped 3 times. but he had stepped on someone else before that so it's at least 4. I did him again the other day and had 4 steps and then i logged cause i didnt feel like doing it again for a 5th time
it still seems to be a pretty high on average.

Had a few 2 steps but lots of 7 and 9 steps...that's a lot of chasing.. ;D

Tried Shadow for the first time with a buddy, it was very frustrating just breaking into HoH to get him down low and have him step.  Without already having 3.5 or T3 armor he is certainly a challenge.  After having him step 3 times we gave up as the chase was too much to continue.

For the record, War RoA 100, Sorc 48, full T2/augs, 1 paly Oracle focus 5, 1 paly oracle 1, Cleric oracle 4, monk, mage.

Yeah it seems its difficult for undergeared guys, someone told me last night he stepped 5 times and they gave up.  I absolutely applaud having 1-25 charm upgrades on him though.  i will start farming him soon to try out though my findings will be skewed since all my toons have ultimate charms and such.

My average number of steps is 4 per attempt. I only chased him down twice on double drop because I only needed two books and felt clearing the rest of the zone was a better use of the limited time i spent in hoh on double drop.

Today he shadow stepped on me 5 times before I killed him the first time and the second time he shadow stepped 4 time and anouther group beat me to him and killed him. PLEASE FIX THIS

Well if you use public it was stated that the first group to get to him gets him.
Kind of sucks but can make it fun.
Hopefully soon it will be changed to a max of 2 or 3 steps as it does get annoying chasing it around.

We were finally able to get him after just 3 shadow steps.  It was our first kill on him in the last full week of chasing him around.  We only have limited time so unless its a weekend or we don't have to work, we have to give up after that long and call it a night.    We are only in T2 gear fully aug'd but it's completely doable.  It just sucks spending that much time and surviving just to have him keep stepping at around 20ish% every time.    We typically survive every attempt now but that much stepping is just crazy.   Our group makeup War (100roa / has both 50 sorc and 41 guardian), paly (48 oracle), paly ( 1 oracle), monk (25 brawler), mage (think around 35ish sorc), cleric (41 oracle).     Great survivability but he says see ya later almost every time.     As of today though he finally stopped stepping and we got our first 3.5

with this group makeup it takes about 25 minutes.  I think the loot is definitely worth a couple shadow steps and makes the fight interesting but more than that it gets very tedious. :)

is the 2 shadowstep max change coming soon?

just had 8 shadowsteps

Did Hunter say he was changing it to only 2 steps?  Just wondering as I haven't seen him post it.
The stepping is worth getting the charm upgrade for my alts.  Sure beats LDoNs!

He said this awhile back (Dec 24th Update to be exact)

Thanks Funkin'.    :)

Unless a guildy really needs the help, I am done chasing Shadow around until the step rate is adjusted.  I've wasted so much play time on this.  It's so frustrating doing enough damage to kill him multiple times but still be no closer to success than the minute I began.  I can't play 6 hours at a time to finally outlast EQ's famous RNG.  If I had the option, I'd go fight the old super-hp version Shadow.  At least I'd have my success in under 60 minutes.

The charms are nice, but given my decent but non-maxed DPS, LDoN is still a faster way to collect them, especially if there's a specific type of charm I'm after.

Please roll out the 2 step max or come out with some other adjustment like zero steps and a blue stone to spawn him.

Skorp

Maybe when I'm on vacation working on T5 which I plan to finish in Feb. I'd also consider streamlining T3/T4 to make it faster too, with lower stone req for bosses, and maybe a rot bot.

(http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w281/Xiggie/81264314-1.jpg)

Well said Xiggie, well said. :D

Xiggie, that might be just a little too happy.   :o

Yeah, I had to crop the picture. He also has a woody.

(http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j167/Ayrianth/emotes/eek2-1.gif)

This guy is a pain in the backside... I can take him with my group, no problem, but trying to track down his respawn point is a major pain, I have no tracker in my group so it is a run around the zone randomly and hope I bump back into him before I get tired of F - ing around and decide to camp

That's what mq2 is for

No worries, got my third Shadow book today, after basically clearing the zone repeatedly for about five hours...

Couple of mq2 questions tho-I do not run mq2 currently, If I install it, will that get me in trouble if I play on a non-bot friendly server, such as p99?

And does the mq2 thing work as a tracker, or does it warp you to the mob that you seek?

You can't really play on both servers with the same installation anyways so you may as well just have an installation dedicated to the server that is catered to the rules hete.  MQ2 will make your life 100% better.

You cant warp to Shadow but you can use /target shadow from anywhere in the zone and he will show on your map with a line to him and show red (default) so he stands out on the targeting.

This can be useful for just entering to track when he spawns, as well where you have cleared. Once you are just looking for books its easiest to start clearing the paths first then route back to clearing the little side room areas.