EZ Server

To give Hunter some ideas on ToFS as a continuation of ldons I thought it would be a good idea to have one thread to have a compilation of ideas. Lets try to keep it constructive so it is a pleasure to read. If you have an idea reply on this thread and I will place a link to the actual reply in this first post here. This will make it easier for Hunter to read the ideas instead of wading through 15 pages of people debating ideas. I have some ideas myself but I am going to post it in a reply and add a link so that there is nothing in this original post but links to peoples ideas, giving each one deserved importance. I will place a link to each idea no matter if I agree with it or not.

Xiggie, we really should probably keep this in the original thread about it. Some very neat ideas there and a lot of it that will be based off of that.

http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=2639.0

-Hate

Just thought it would be easier than Hunter having to wade through 13 pages of suggestions and counter arguments. Putting my suggestion in that thread.

Instances would be allowed however instance cost is multiplied by the by the number of floors.
All bosses on each floor will spawn 30 minutes after the zone is activated. This is to keep people from spamming bosses by recreating instances.
Floor tokens are used only once to gain access to the next level. Key components can be re-used at the mirror of each floor. Master key can be right clicked for floor 7.
CoTH would not be allowed. Mobs can see through sneak/hide and invisibility.

First Floor
As hard has ldon6 and bosses. 1 boss.
•   Trash has a .8% (1/125) chance to drop a charm upgrade.
•   Bosses:
o   5% chance to drop a charm upgrade,
o   1% chance to drop a universal v1 charm upgrade.
o   3% chance to drop key component 1
o   25% chance to drop a floor 2 token (library card)

Second Floor
As hard as qvic trash and bosses. 1 boss
•   Trash has a 1.6%  chance to drop a charm upgrade
•   Bosses:
o   10% chance to drop a charm upgrade
o   2% chance to drop a universal charm upgrade.
o   2% chance to drop key component 2
o   25% chance to drop a floor 3 token. (Suggestions?)

Third Floor
As hard as T1 trash and bosses. 2 Bosses
•   Trash has a 2.5% chance to drop a charm upgrade
•   Bosses
o   15% chance to drop a charm upgrade
o   3% chance to drop a universal charm upgrade
o   1% chance to drop key component 3
o   25% chance to drop a floor 4 token (Suggestions?)

Forth Floor
As hard as T3 trash and T3/4 bosses. 2 Bosses.
•   Trash has a 3% chance to drop a charm upgrade
•   Bosses
o   Boss 1
oo   Same as T3 boss
oo   20% chance to drop a charm upgrade
oo   4% chance to drop a universal charm upgrade
oo   .25% chance to drop key component 4
oo   25% chance to drop a floor 5 token (Wedding invitation)
o   Boss 2
oo   Same as T4 boss
oo   23% chance to drop a charm upgrade
oo   4.5% chance to drop a universal charm upgrade
oo   .5% chance to drop key component 4
oo   25% chance to drop floor 5 token (Wedding invitation)

Fifth Floor
Trash is as hard as T3 bosses. 1 Boss
•   Trash has a 3% chance of dropping charm upgrade
•   Boss
o   Difficulty
oo   This boss is just like MCP, death touch, hp and dps. This boss has a chance to respawn like the first boss in tacvi. The DT is the same as MCP in that it is single target and agro based.
o   0% chance to drop a charm upgrade
o   5% chance to drop a universal charm upgrade
o   5% chance to drop a key component from any floor or a key container.
oo   Key container is used to combine all keys to get to floor 7
oo   Can be combined at this point for a completed ToFS keyring to be turned into A Weakened Keymaster
oo   There is no re-useable key to gain access to the 6th floor
o   25% chance to drop floor 6 token (Suggestions?)

Sixth Floor
As hard as T5 trash and Bosses. 2 Bosses
•   Trash has a 4% chance of dropping charm upgrade
•   Bosses
o   Both bosses are equally difficult and have the same drops and % except the first boss drops a token used to get to the second boss (15% chance, not re-usable)
o   0% chance of dropping a charm upgrade
o   3% chance of dropping a universal charm upgrade
o   Boss 2 has a 10% chance to spawn A Weakened Keymaster.
o   Weakened Keymaster
oo   Though he is unattackable he is very weak and will only stick around for 30 seconds. He will despawn once given a completed ToFS keyring or after 30 seconds, thereby only allowing one turn in per spawn. Turning in a completed ToFS keyring yields The Keymaster's Keyring.
oo   The Keymaster's Keyring
•   Right click self port to Floor 7

Seventh Floor
Trash as hard as trash in T6
•   Trash has a 5% chance to drop universal charm upgrades
•   Boss
o   Difficulty
oo   As hard as the last boss in T6
oo   Somewhere in each 20th % she spawns bosses from floors 2 through 6. Each boss she summons behaves just like the bosses from those floors. If there are 2 bosses on a floor, she summons 2 bosses. If the bosses on those floors summon adds they also summon adds in this fight.
oo   Each summoned boss has their original drop chances of charms but no keys or components
oo   Has a 25% chance to be re-incarnated. Each re-incarnation doubles the amount of bosses spawned.
oo   This boss drops no loot.

Seems like a lot of thought was put into it, and so far I like it. I was going to post my own suggestions for difficulties per floor, such as floor one would be Qvic through Floor 7 being like T6 difficulty.

I can see ToFS being created to be most of what Xiggie suggested.

More ideas are welcome too

Hunter

Yeah we tried that. It just ended up being entire guilds afk at zone in while 1 bot ran around afk killing stuff. Learned my lesson on that point thing.

Yeah, I didn't read through all the 13 pages of suggestions yet.

I do like the ideas for ToFS so far. Lets start with Xiggies big long post of difficulties and drop rates, and work from there.

I like the idea of Qvic players being able to enter floor 1 and end game players making it to floor 7. Sort of a custom expansion/zone for all (current) tiers.

I'd like to add some special triggers bosses just like in Abyss for bosses that drop new / special loots. Make things interesting in addition to static spawns and scripts.

One idea I liked, and I know its that old hated grind, but along with all the plans for ToFS so far, add in ranked or leveled jewelry. The slots would basically be the rings, earrings, face, and neck. Combining any 2 of the same rank would give you the next rank, up to rank 10. So just like RoA, Charms, and Sceptres, the jewelry slots would have ranks too that would be upgraded similar to Sceptre of Time, and the components would just be random drops off trash and bosses. We did this in our originally LDON almost 5 years ago which at the time seemed to be popular. It wouldn't be geared towards adding more HP, but adding more clickies and buffs, stuff for casters, etc.

I got some exciting plans for T7 as well, but I think I'll hammer out ToFS first.

First, thank you for moving it here. There are quite a few good ideas in here and I'd hate to lose them (or rebuild the thread on the other post).

Heh you also hit the respawn time on bosses at exactly the same window I suggested. Couple of notes though

1) Keys to next level need 100% drop. This would essentially keep players/grouped trapped in lower levels until RNG favored them. LDON does not work in this manner and I would hate to see something like it as a limiter. The difficulty of the mobs should dictate how fast/slow a group/raid progresses through the tower.

   -- To combat the need for literally hundreds of keys, it would be prudent to change the way in which the keys work. Instead of simply moving the character up to the next section, trigger a small AoE port for members in your group/raid at mirror. This would handle the need for tons of keys being needed. This would also address the issue of the key becoming part of the keyring, allowing permanent access to the next level. (The mirrors are literally classified as doors in the database.)
   

2) I totally, completely, and fully agree with no CoH, Corpse Summon, or other such nonsense. ToFS is actually a singular zone (contrary to my initial recollection). There are a few ways to handle this, but none that I am particularly fond of currently. I would say that different/higher instance costs may be unnecessary as the mobs should (again) be the limiting factor.


3) For the end boss (Tserrina Syl`Tor), it would be pretty easy to allow one player to combine all the keys into the token to summon her. Since it would take 1 of each key, this would obviously REQUIRE a clear of tower to get them all. By combining the keys, this also destroys the access back up. So one would need to reclear in order to spawn boss again. I also do not think that the end boss should spawn other bosses. Both because I would like to see custom boss fights and it would suck for everyone but the absolute top-most rung of the ladder. Even so, would you like to be fighting a T6 boss and then have a T5 boss be set loose upon you? Sure, some of the players running 50 plates might just set 2-3 afk on the add...but the rest of us will wipe.


4) The drop chances for charm upgrades will need to be looked at as a whole. I believe you of all people understand why trivializing would be a bad thing (not implying anything). I think the drops should be handled based on some pretty realistic math. I can say, with reasonable certainty, that nobody follows the train rule while instanced in LDON. If anyone does want to come forward and claim that, possibly the bossman could back up that claim. So the drop chances should be based off the rate of killing an equal geared player could accomplish. For example, it may be safe to assume that a t1 character could not zone pull LDON. It may also be safe to say that a T2 could, but might struggle with it. However, by t3+...steamrolled. With this in mind, the math should be something to the extent of:
   -- Mobs in LDON4: L
   -- Mobs in ToFS__: T
   -- Chance for Upgrade (LDON): C
   -- Respawn time: R (seconds)
   -- Pull-Time/Clear-Time (est): P (time in seconds it takes to round up/clear zone)
   
   NPCs per Second (NPS) = L / (P + R)
   Kills Per Hour (KPH) = NPS * 60 * 60
   Approx. Charms Per Hour (CPH) = KPH * (C)
   
   Then we only need to know what the average T1 group's kills per second rate (which we can find from public t1).
   
   THIS IS SIMPLE MATH! NOT INCLUDING RNG
   
   

---

Now comes the part where I piss people off.

Keys should be trade-able. Why? This worked very well in Diablo II as it allowed players with more cash/items than time to buy their boss spawns. This would also allow another useful thing to trade for players. More trade-ables means more player selling, which means more platinum going from player-to-player (instead of player-to-vendor).

Custom items from the bosses. Since we are going through the trouble, casters need accessories. Badly. Right now, from T3+ it's melee accessories only. Leaving some of the pure casters STUCK with t2 accesories (even in endgame) for the mana regen. Also would like to see a few potion-type clickes (no drop) that have unique effects.

---

A bit disjointed, but I was writing this during lulls at work.

Will update/add-more later.

-Hate

Topics split/merged into this one.

Wow, all this sounds exciting. Holler in Chat/TS/Vent if I can help with whatever!! ;D

Yeah I figured percentages would need to be adjusted here and there. One limiting factor between ldon vs ToFS is the amount of mobs. There are simply not nearly as many mobs to mass pull as in ldon.

There are 2 different key types. The token keys would need to be used at each mirror to advance to the next floor. Basically this would work the same way it currently works. It would port the entire group as long as they are in range. The second key would be a single port key. The reason for it to be a single port key is to make it hard for a full group to be able to go up there. I thought about a third key. The third key would only drop on the last floor. It would not a guaranteed drop. The main purpose of this key would be to sell gear or to gimp in one of your alts for drops. They key would be no trade but the effect of it would be a CotH that would work in that zone. Limited number of charges, maybe 5. Probably a 10% drop rate off boss 7 itself.

I like the idea of having to re-fight all of the bosses in the zone when fighting the last boss. Yeah, it will be tough, especially when he summons the boss from floor 5 and he starts Dt'ing people. Double especially if you don't manage your dps and pull dps off the boss and burn the previous bosses off. It fits with the lore, you could even have it so she pauses the fight, (ae mezz on everyone) summons bosses from the previous floor and tells them these people are not worthy, how in the hell did you let them pass. Then after about 20 seconds or so cast an ae 1 second stun to break everyone's mezz.

Being that I am in the process of UC'ing my toons I have mixed emotions about the changes. The LDoN grind is meh, HoH is not bad just repetitious as well, change is good as long as it is not more of a grind.

We're trying to make the grind more fun + add new toys for casters.

cool beans :)

btw, all of our crazy asses are in teamspeak atm.

http://tinyurl.com/ezteamspeak

-Hate

Just for grins.,.. I ran over to TOFS and tried to zone in.  No go.  Bombed me back to desktop.  Seems like I ran into this once before on Titanium... I'm on UF now.  So, it begs the question... It's probably something simple, but before we jump head long into a project to develop TOFS we need to ensure it's useable on EMU/our clients.

Oh yeah, sorry. I'll upload the files to my server :-D

-Hate

I haven't even tried to zone into ToFS, never been there before.

What is the short name of the zone(s)?

If you can't zone in, is it because of missing files on the client, or need update on the server db?

Edit:

Found the short name


http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=ZoneList

Edit:

I locked out frozenshadow to account status > 1 so its officially under development. Will have to log onto another server currently to view the zone if curious.

The short name of the zone is frozenshadow. I zoned in today also to refresh my memory of the zone. I crashed at first, then I copied the frozenshadow files from titanium and overwrote the files in Underfoot, Then I was able to zone in.

So copying Titanium files from Frozen Shadow to Underfoot fixes it?

Which files were copied? Was it just the race text file? Or something other?

Edit:

frozenshadow_chr.txt seems to be the same in Titanium and in Underfoot. Will check the other files later.

I copied over frozenshadow_chr.s3d, frozenshadow_sndbnk.eff, frozenshadow_obj.s3d, frozenshadow_sounds.eff, frozenshadow_chr.txt, frozenshadow.s3d, and frozenshadow.xmi.

I have no idea which one fixed the problem though. I would guess maybe frozenshadow_obj.s3d since that is the file I got the error on when I first tried to zone in. But that is just a guess. It may take more than one of the files to fix it.

http://hateborne.dyndns.org/ezserver/fixes/

Do it.

-Hate

 Are you using the UF client from Hates site? It zones just fine into ToFS, least on my test server anyways.

I think the UF client hate uses is the same one I loaded when I came back in December.....and if so that zones to ToFS just fine. I did a wee bit of RoA there not too long ago with my wife, since thats her favorite EQ zone.

ToFS is now locked for developement.

Nice! Awesome that your usen that zone. I had a bunch of fun there when velious originally came out with friends, will be fun to explore it again with new content.

As someone who spent a LOT of time in this zone on live, there were 2 named on floor 5 - Nosja (vampire elf model) and Daman (same model as Cara Omica, the ugly green warty witch lady)

There were also about a dozen named "trash" mobs that were wedding guests, zombies and mummies. Honestly, the whole wedding thing should be a 2 boss event to do it justice.

Also, floor 6 has two halves, moving from one to the other didn't require a key. The djinn who dropped the key to floor 7 (not master key) was triggered by killing mobs in the first half of floor 6, then you ported to the 2nd half to engage and kill him.

I'm not saying you should keep the zone the same or even use the same npc models as the original, but the 5th floor is pretty much themed for a wedding, so might as well use it!

If you have any questions about the live version of the zone, I can probably answer them for you.

Also, the floors go in this order:

Going by the map at http://eq.mapfiend.net/map/frozenshadow

1) 2nd from bottom left om map. Floor with the pit in the middle, branching side rooms off the main room, 2 mirrors at the north end. Skeletons, undead gnolls, ice shades. a large undead gnoll drops key.

2) Library area, bottom left on map above. Lots of erudite ghost models. Random dwarf ghost named Zorglim the Dead. Angry Librarian drops key.

3) Upper left on map. Lots of weird hallways. Undead gnolls and suit of armor guys.

4) Top middle on map. Three named, Amontehepna (zombie), a goo, and Cara Omica (drops key)

5) 2nd from bottom left on map. Wedding floor. "An enraged relative" (spectre) drops key

6) Another ghost dwarf model namrd, lots of skeletons and other undead and stuff. I don't remember how to trigger the djinni guy, I think you just randomly killed stuff, then went to 6b and killed him. Top right of map for 6a, bottom right for 6b

7) Vampire bats, drakes, dark elf vampires, and Tserrina, who spawned out of bats randomly. Dropped master key.

Something that popped into my head was the portals in bastion of thunder. If you try using them in a non public instance, it will try zoning you and end up chain zoning you back and forth between public and non public. The only way of fixing it is to use the char mover to put the char back in nexus. Just want to make sure the "mirrors" that you need to use between floors do not get all buggy like them in a private instance.

+1

It's similar to if you use your PoDragons/HoH/PoSky/Etc ring in an instance, you get sent back to the pub zone.

If I remember, the teleporter for T3/T4 airplane bosses is working correctly? You should be able, within an instance, hail the NPC and teleport to the island without leaving the instance?

I'll copy/paste that code for the teleporters in ToFS. If we can't use doors, then I'll make an NPC near the door/mirror that you can hail to properly teleport/move you and your group to the next area.

Now that I think about it, I could set edit BoThunder, and remove the floor teleporters, and instead set an invisible NPC there with a Proximity event of 30 range, that when a player gets close to this invisible npc, it auto moves the player to the proper spot within the same instances.

I'm assuming the only work around / fix for that right now is that players use the teleport pads in BoThunder, then when arriving at that XYZ location in public, have to re-enter the instances again in that spot?

Hope makes sense. We'll try to make sure that ToFS teleporters are working even in instances.

Honestly, I never did that zone on live, although I know Crystal Caverns (I think that is the name omg its been such a long time now). Its that zone that has entrace in that outhouse inside that fort in velious, omg whats south of Great Divide, western waste? Its huge tunnels that go deep underground, then there is a city, then tunnels with spiders and geo rock thingies in a tunnel going up to the zone out. I used to buff my druid with sow before going in, then nerd rage pvp that zone. Anyways, was a favorite zone but I don't think big enough for expansion.

I know Hate plans to do a lot of work this weekend for stuff.

I probably won't be able to do anything until Early Sunday Morning, since I got plans for Saturday.

I'm def excited about ToFS for all tiers and also creating a T7

Yes, air plane teleporter works properly inside a private instance

That worked for me.

I can zone into TOFS (on another server) using Steam's UF now.

The zone was called Iceclad Ocean Hunter and it was inside the orc fort. I spent more time there then I care to remember. Small Coldain town at the bottom of it.

All the mirrors, which are what port you to the next loc's, work in ToFS, they are keyed tho.

This means you could easily add a player.pl file to the quest folder and use doorID's to port groups over. You can also change the keyitem in the door DB to match the new key, so you don't have to use perl. The more you can handle in the DB, the smoother things will be and less chance to break.

If ya need any help rounding some this stuff up, let me know Hate, be happy to help.

edit:
 This is just a quick run down of the mirrors. Used as a player.pl. You still get the 'locked' spam(if not in GM mode) but it overrides and moves ya anyways, so would have to edit the DB and zero out the existing zone/loc's it moves you to and the key. From testing I guess you would still have to use perl for key check and to port group. I don't run a group or have instances on my test server, so that's above my pay grade. But I'd like to learn!


Here is a little script I found to let ya know doorids if ya interested in using them, just drop it in a player.pl then into whatever zone's quest folder. Then when ya click a door, it'll give ya the ID for that zone. Objects that are clickable are found in door's table too. So you can pop mobs,start events,port etc from clicking them. This gives those id's too.

What? Iceclad Ocean was the zone that connected Oasis and Eastern Wastes. TOFS was in Iceclad though.

Crystal Caverns was indeed in Eastern Wastes, and had 2 exits there. One was in the orc fort as hunter remembered, the other was through a tower, though I think that was a one way exit from the Geonid side of the crystal caverns zone.

o.0

Your memory is clearly better than mine, I forgot eastern wastes existed.

Inside the orc fort in Eastern Wastes was a small stone hut with a gate and a crystal.....the crystal zoned you into Crystal Caverns. There were a variety of mobs in there, including orcs, ghosts, testicle terrors, spiders, geonids and more....and yes, in the bottom of CC there was a Coldain (dwarven) outpost called Froststone, the original home of the Coldain. Many quests down there.

don't know if you were being serious or that was a typo but i say

LMFAO +11111111!!!!!!one one one

I started looking at frozenshadow today. Its a confusing zone. Not sure if all the keys are available, but that could easily be fixed with updated quest files downloaded, and making sure the item keys exist.

Not sure what style to do yet. Was thinking of making mobs all difficults from T1 - T9 with various loots and bosses. Not sure if this would prevent lower level players from advancing where they need to go.

What loot would we drop here? I could always make an earring rank quest item.

Would probably leash mobs like LDoN.

I've seem some good post already in this topic here about how they would set it up. But I get lost when roaming around the zone. I've used a few mirrors already that teleported me around.

Should we make the mobs a variety of levels? Or would that be too difficult for lower level players, and too easy for higher level players?

What about making it into a T8 custom zone? Since mobs are already spawned, would only need to edit their stats and add new loots.

Any ideas welcome, haven't decided yet how to use this zone.

Probably make the first few floors 1 or 2 tiers per floor then final floors 1 floor dedicated to all that tier, throw in a combination of v1 and v2 charms for all the floors, no leashing. Then some specialty quests for just that zone, perhaps an earring, special augment, or ammo slot item that can summon stronger arrows?

I don't even know which floor is which lol.

First Floor - Brown one with the pit in the middle
Second Floor - Library
Third Floor - Has a bedroom in the northeast corner
Fourth Floor - Has a pit below, room with a casket/sarcoughagus (kind of a maze)
Fifth Floor - The wedding one, with the frosty columns or whatever at the entrance
Sixth Floor (A and B) it's dark, I can't remember much else. There was a djinni guy at the top.
Seventh Floor (where Tserrina is) Has a staircase in the middle and an area leading north at the top.

I wouldnt make it T8, I would make it a continuation of LDON.
First few floors can be T-whatever and drop V1 updates.
Make it harder then ldon and better drop chance.
Rest of the floors make harder then hoh by far and drop V2 at a better rate.

At least thats what I would love to see since we (the server players) have been talking about TOFS being the next step in LDON/HoH for so long now.

I totally agree with Felony. This was a great idea for the charm grind as a change of scenery

You know what else this does? Saying it is a second level of Ldon and HoH, people whom need their first UC or two who are at t3 in progression can still use ldon and HoH, but ToFS could be t5 with higher drop rates that is flagged along with abyss so that higher tiers whome need to farm charms have a better chance to get them from higher tier mobs in this zone. Or you know, a variation of this idea. Kind of leveling out the difficulty to drops and necessity. Alongside a change of scenery and names.

ToFS should be exactly what we wanted it to be. Charms... Nothing below t5 difficulty.

Once new players go through the hell of ldon/hoh. They can enjoy the benefits of ToFS for their future uc's.

yeah that is like.. Exactly what i said summed up lol.

It was a long winded "+1"  :P

Ok lol then we're cool :p

This is a GREAT idea! I give it ywo thumbs up ;D

I know I posted this before but I wanted to post it again in case others didn't get a chance to read it or in case it is just lost in the thread.

http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=2859.msg37237#msg37237

Xiggie you quoted your own long post that is already in this topic on different page. Rather than filling up my browser, maybe post a link to it instead? Yes, I saw your original post when I started to re-read this whole topic.

Done, lol. Sorry about that.

Thanks :)

Sorry xiggie i did miss your post cuz i didnt realize the thread was 4 pages long. I second your ideas as tiered floors and differential drop rates per floor.

bump each floor up one difficulty with T7 being the top floor

except HOH is already sorta t3.  so that every floor would be sorta equivalent to t3 would need to roughly equal droprate, so maybe floors 4+ would have better drop rates.

But hoh is primarily v2 charms, if I remember correct Hunter was thinking ToFS would be for v1 charms.

I agree that it would need to be bumped up, specially since T7 is out.

V1's have been taken care of with the improved drop rates in LDON. Plus we have so many floors to work with we could alternate floors for v1/v2.

Floor 1 : low rate v1/v2
Floor 2 : low(ish) rate v1
Floor 3 : low(ish) rate v2
Floor 4 : medium rate v1
Floor 5 : medium rate v2
Floor 6 : high rate v1
Floor 7 : high rate v2 + incorporate the new earring quest

Keep in mind the  number of spawns in TOFS is not exactly amazing.
Each floor has a hell of a lot less spawns then any ldon floor.
If drop rates were not amazing it would be a total waste of time to do shit with the zone.
Unless he wants to spend his time tweaking a zone that will get about zero use.

Yeah, I noticed about 150 spawns in the zone. Divided by all the floors, not much per floor.

Would have to make more spawns and/or faster respawn time, but I know if I make faster respawn time, some idiot is going to think its cute to afk with his pet on top of a spawn.

Its probably better that there isnt a lot of mobs. It allows you to tweak encounter per floor without editing loads of npc's.


I was under the impression that this was a more difficult UC farm, I sure hope no one could solo here.

There are some people on the server who can solo stuff a full t5 group can't.

Maybe make 5.0 the flag to get into the zone.  Most people wont be able to get through T5 w/o a UC.  That will help keep TOFS more of a "paid your dues" kinda way of getting other toons UC'd.  Think this keeps things in-line with some of the ideas i have seen.  Also make floors T5+ difficulty and scaling every other floor up to T7+.....or maybe first 3 floors being v1 and 4-7 being v2...with mob scaling per tier and drop rate scaling with mob difficulty...risk vs. reward kinda thing
 

I think the point of it though is an alternate route to get your v1 charms, something everyone who is T5+ should have already done long ago.

Then they have no need to be here unless they selling runs  :P

lol

?.. You are T5+, you make a new toon, you now have ToFS to do your UC. Where is the confusion?

Joe Bob gets his gets his 1st few UC's old school, gets through 5.0 and can now UC at a higher difficulty with an increased reward.

That is the point exactly of the zone. Being able to gear your own alts or guildmates or sell runs for that matter. What I was refering to was the...

Unless it is made a group portal to enter then it would not be possible to gear those alts. I didn't think about the group portal part when I made my statement but it was not mentioned in his post anyway.

I am not a fan of the flag requirement either. This is a new fun experience that everyone should enjoy. The escalating difficulty is what will keep 3.0'd toons from going to floor's they cannot handle.

+1

I've mostly skimmed everything so far here. Will have to re-read again later to fully understand some of the ideas.

A few people emailed me already with some info on the zone, maps, etc how it works so that will help a lot.

So far this is what I'm thinking about making.

No flags
No instances
Qvic - T7 difficulty separated by floor
Possible charm upgrade drops
Decent AA Rate
Will need to add more spawns cause entire zone has about 150 spawns currently.
Lots of custom NPC spells casted on players (Charm, Root, AoE DD, no fear though)
Mobs will be leashed, possible aggro range 25-50 (Most dungeons are about 50 aggro range, and I think PoTime is 150 range).
All mobs 30 minute respawn time.
One or more bosses per level at 30 minute respawn time.
Possible min (non-final) boss loot: Bags of Plat, Charm Upgrades, Exp Potions, maybe some custom 1 charge potions for fun
Final boss on final level custom battle


Final Boss
Might be hardest hitting boss in game
Aprox 15 minute fight regardless of player DPS
Randomly spawns adds based on which bosses on lower floors are still up.
Other bosses might be 30 minute respawn, need to keep them down else main boss on last floor gets too hard.
Maybe 4-6 hour respawn time
Quest for item: Maybe Earring with Divine Intervention
Possible everyone gets reward like Black Unicorn Event

So lowbies will be able to have an alternative charm grind spot while getting decent AA, and helping high levels to kill final boss by keeping other bosses down. This would have all players Qvic+ working together for common goal.

The zone would have no flags and would not be requirement for any other tier progression, but hopefully will be fun, everyone works together, provides alternate grind for AA/Charms, and new ranked earring. You don't have to do this. If its too hard or you don't like it, then just don't go there.

I am still figuring out and deciding what to do as I was writing this post. Nothing is final yet. Feed back welcome.

I'm drinking a Green Monster right now so some sort of progress today on ToFS is likely, even if just on the test server.

I haven't tested the click event script yet. I understand how it works, but need to know if the ids and xyz are correct, or if it was just examples. Maybe someone can come up with a final version of that script? We could easily add required flags to click on the window/glass in the click event quest, but maybe rather hasitem to see if they have a key? I still need to see what keys are already in the zone to farm or required for click. Will need to edit the doors table to remove the zone/xyz + key part of it. Maybe key for each floor, sort of like LDoN, but specific key per floor.

Server is back up, just did a #unlock right now.

Yeah, this is a TL;DR post, but for those that are really excited bout ToFS, let me know what you think. I will read every post in time.

I can see that.....I was looking at it in a way of UC'ing new alts or more box groups....and trying to keep it in line so noone could steamroll the original content but that would be handled by making upper tiers more difficult...maybe additional tiers being t6 or tougher and having first level being slightly more difficult /shrug but would love to make it so that different charms (v1 and v2) dropped from different levels as I mentioned.  Lots of good feedback though guys!  Keep up the good work.

No Instances is going to create another empty zone/dominated by few. People want to accomplish their goals not compete for them.

My original vision of ToFS was that we could go directly to the floor which suits our gear level (after finding the keys of course)
Although your idea of must completing each floor to avoid pulling everything is not a bad idea either. You could make it to where once its dead its dead, create a new instance when your done; sorta like Anguish.

I see how you are looking at this and your idea is a great/exciting one (community event), just not for this zone.

If you are adamant about this then the spawn times would have to be EXTREMELY low (like 2 mins) where box players would become overwhelmed and REQUIRE assistance even if they don't want it.

I wouldn't mind making more spawns, zone super crowded, lower aggro radius and super fast respawn, but would need a way to prevent someone from afk their pet class on top of a spawn.

Bosses would probably be 30 minute spawns, or maybe even require X number of mobs to be killed on that floor before it spawns.

One possible idea is that when all mobs and all bosses are dead in the zone, then the zone auto repops. Could make 1 hour repop on everything with the auto repop for empty zone an option. Would have to think this option over though.

Good ideas so far.

Okay, I see that you are adamant  :P Going to email something that should fulfill your desire much better. Give me 10 mins

Instances, please. Please. With a long, long respawn timer. The idea of "working together" only appeals when the zone can sustain the number of people actively working it--this was the fundamental issue with the Black Unicorn on Halloween. Excellent fight, wonderful idea and execution, and horrifying lagfest for everyone involved. For the same reason, I would suggest NOT implementing rewards like the BU had, and instead only allow those who were in the raid to receive the benefit of completing the task.

I for one would rather see mobs in the first areas of ToFS tuned to the difficulty of T5/T6/T7, with a good chance of dropping V1s and V2s. Lowbies already have LDoN. I thought ToFS was supposed to be LDoN2, with higher risks and better rewards. Once you move past the first few areas, shit should get crazy. Practically impossible. Unresistable spells, not just -resists. Proc DDs on mobs so that tanks can't mitigate all the dmg. Threat resets. Dispells. DTs. Knockbacks and rough terrain. Nasty damage shields. Mobs that require specific classes or weapon types to deal killing blows. Etc. etc. Just getting to 'the hardest boss' should be an achievement that means something, even for the people in T7. As people progress through the zone, trash mobs should essentially become boss fights in and of themselves, that must be pulled/split/controlled/kited, etc to allow the group to progress one at a time. Once this happens, every mob should drop a v1/v2 charm (random), or at least have a 50%+ chance of dropping.

Final boss should have insane dmg mitigation, spell reflect, aes that must be hidden from/can't be clicked off, rampages that will insta-gib dps, etc etc. People should not be able to kill this boss immediately. It should drop a metric ass ton of v1s and v2s (10+), and whatever the quest piece is for the earring.

adamant bout what? I'm still brain storming here.

If we start off at T5 difficulty, then I see no reason for allowing PreT5 into the zone unless its to backflag an alt quickly.

I'd like to keep this zone open to everyone Qvic+

I know Black Unicorn Event was over crowded, but that was also a limited time event that everyone had to join at the same time.

This new zone would be open 24/7 all year round, and lots of players would be in other tier zones gearing up. This would be something to do in your off time, so I don't think it would be an issue after a while, maybe just in the beginning while it is still new.

I could have repop per floor maybe, if all mobs on that floor is dead, then repop them all. Might require a control NPC to spawn everything instead of spawngroups.

Right now I'm running around ToFS trying to learn it, and renaming all the mobs to have their last name = Level + Floor so when I edit their stats in the database I know which mobs are which.

Good ideas so far, nothing set in stone yet.

What i would like to see is floor 3 and 6 having a boss like the black rever that can spawn over and over. Could make it so the later spawns get more and more powerful. Just a thought.... For final boss make it like the gas chamber where you have to move/ do certin things so it is a true raid boss not a bot swarm.

I've combed through the entire zone and renamed every mobs last name to reflect which floor they spawn on. Seems floors 1, 2, and 7 have a few same npc spawn, but I can easily fix that manually by cloning the npc to separate floors. Now I can easily edit their stats, loot, and quest sorted by last name.

Already downloaded all the quest for the zone and will comb through that as well to see how the quest/events work in the zone. Will make sure all the keys exist and drop.

The mirrors already seem to work since I updated the doors table recently, but I might move that clicking on mirrors from doors table to quest file to have further control or additional options, such as if we do use instances, I'll be able to have players warp via mirror without getting ported back to public zone.

Some of the zone just seems empty, so I'll probably double the number of spawns in the zone.

Its a good start for customizing ToFS with a live like feel on spawn names/races, keys for mirrors, etc. Now need to add some custom stats and loot, custom npc spells, and maybe some custom boss scripts.

Might make the final boss a raid effort being that all bosses on floors 1-6 need to be killed / down else they will spawn adds for the final boss on floor 7 that could wipe out even a T7 group via spells effectively bypassing stonewalls. So the T7 groups could hire lower tier players to stand guard at every boss location in floors 1-6 to make sure they don't spawn.

Possible good item on final boss like ranked earring. Meanwhile grinding AA and Charms would be worth hanging around any of the floors while waiting for final boss, or figuring out how to spawn the final boss.

Maybe when all bosses are dead, then the final boss dies. So if bosses on floors 1-6 have a 30 minute respawn time, then you'd have to coordinate them all dying aprox same time, which would then give you a 25-30 minute window before they start repop'ing giving adds to final boss. Due to the event style, might disable CoH, Bind, and Waypoints in this zone, but undecided yet.

After spending a whole day in ToFS I've learned the zone pretty well. There were only a few spawns that needed a manual fix.

All mirrors on all floors are working correctly, including the 6 mirrors in a half circle on floor 7 via master key to go back to previous floors.

Floor 1 has added spawns to make that floor fully populated. Trash mobs quest is tested for spawning named that drops key to the 2nd floor.

Will continue over the next few days to add more spawns to floors 2-7, and verify their named will chance to spawn off trash and drop key to next floor.

After spawns are all done, will edit mob stats and create loot list for stuff like charm upgrades, exp potions, aa exp rates, etc.

Might manually add a special boss to each floor later for the floor 7 boss scripted event.

Boss 7 might have a grind item for earring, or whatever other super rewards I can think of.

Still need to make custom npc spells for all trash and bosses.

Trash mobs are going to be different levels so they are some what color coded names per level.

Everything is coming along pretty good so far. If I continue this pace, could be done in a week, unless I get distracted IRL with family.

All floors are fully spawned now. All trash and bosses had their stats updated. There are over 600 mobs up in ToFS now.

I started floor 1 to be about has hard has T1 in Plane of Dragons, up to Floor 7 about as hard as T7 Loping Plains.

Some mobs see through invis, and some see through see invis to undead, depending if they are undead or not. None see through improved hide for you Rogues out there.

No mobs are charmable or fearable, but they can be mez, rooted, slowed, pacify, etc.

Mobs will not summon, and CoH and Reward CoH will not work (keys only).

Aggro radius set to 35. NPC spells will have short range. They won't fear you but might charm you. Their resist is 150.

Bosses that drop keys all spawn properly, drop their keys. The keys work in the mirrors including master key and 6 mirrors on floor 7.

Now need to make custom npc spells, boss event scripts, and super reward item from final boss.

Leaning towards making this public only (no instances) and no leashed mobs. Do not train in this zone. If you have more than 1 mob, then stop, and kill what you have. No running through to mirrors, since mobs will follow you to other floors. Anyone griefing this zone via trains, etc, will be banned.

Respawn time might be 30 minutes. Progressing doesn't require keeping all mobs down for triggers. Some mobs have place holders or are rare spawns though. With over 600 mobs spawned, and no trains, there should be enough for everyone. Majority of players will be in other custom tier zones doing other stuff, so I don't see over crowding to be an issue.

Still need to figure out loot. Planning charm v1 and v2 upgrades to drop, with higher chances on higher floors. Also might drop exp potions, bags of platinum, and decent AA rates.

Teamwork might be required to hold down all bosses in all floors else final boss will summon adds based on how many other bosses are alive. Might make a reward chest pop after final boss dies sort of like the Black Unicorn event.

We're working with a database spawns from 6 years ago off PEQ. Some spawns needed to be manually fixed. After that zone still being empty needed to copy/clone mobs to fill it up more which is now over 600. It will still be a bit like Live with same mobs and bosses, same keys, progression, etc. Just a bit more crowded, and higher hp/dmg with custom reward off final boss.

Haven't decided what the custom reward will be yet, most likely a ranked earring. Might use Divine Intervention ranks, and maybe some HP too.

I realize lots of this stuff was written / discussed already, but these are the updates where I am at right now since working on it for last 2 days. We should be done soon here, maybe in a few more days.

Sounds great except for the public only possibility.  Can it just be made an expensive instance at least?

+1 on instances.  One thing I absolutely hated about live was the zerg mentality where one griefer could ruin your night.  Instances cure that problem 100%.  I would forgo getting to play with the 7th floor boss to avoid the inevitable horse crap you have to deal with in public zones.

Reward items should work virtually everywhere.  It's why we bought them.  The beauty of the reward CoH is not to bypass objectives it's to compensate for corners that want to grab your trail toons and to avoid tabbing to 13 other toons to complete an action.  I get why you want to add this limitation so ... is it possible to limit it to the 7th floor and leave the other floors CotH'able?

Thanks

Dokk

How many people are in LDoN and HoH instances farming V1/V2s throughout the day? I honestly don't know. I would imagine there are at least several on any given day. Most people take one to three goons into LDoN to farm V1s. HoH requires less than the full raid party, too. With ToFS, there will be a justifiable reason to bring the whole group because you can progress to the level at which you are geared. Cramming all those goons into one zone is a recipe for disaster--and that doesn't even include the parties of 12-24 that will be destroying the upper levels of ToFS one mob at a time to get top end players their ranked earrings.

You mentioned that this will zone will be used players 'off-time', but the driving force behind making the zone (as I understand it) has always been to make UC progression more bearable, particularly for top end players. UC progression is not something that I would label 'off-time'. It is (for all intents and purposes) a required time sink in which many people pour weeks of their playtime just to finish their first few UCs. I think it's a little naive to think that the new zone for UC progression isn't going to get incredibly crowded without instances. Depending on the 1/## chance for key bosses triggering, it's going to be redamndiculous with everyone on floor one waiting for repops until some folks get their raid parties keyed to progress.

One way to perhaps alleviate concern over people spamming instances to kill the earring mob (if that's even possible without clearing other level bosses?), could be to just make the boss spawn 4-6 hours after an instance is created.

please allow instances! :( even if theyre super expensive, id at least give people more of a reason to buy a free waypoint if anything

Make it so only guild instances can be created in there and then make it so people can't delete their instance. I realize there are some who have multiple guilds they can use, hell I have 4 extra ones myself, but that is a hell of a lot less than people spamming 20, 30, 40, 50+ a day to farm something. Lack of any kind of instance will result in just a few people getting the spawns. I think it would also result in a lot of griefing.

That is not necessary, there is 600 mobs with a 30 min respawn. Who will need to spam instances?

Same reason the spam some other instances. To kill bosses over and over.

a chunk of boss's spawn from trash; may not want to skip those  :P

Hunter also mentioned that there will be traditional 'camps' like in old world dungeons. Spamming instances will net these bosses much faster.

I just slept for like 12 hrs lol, after working all day 2 days in a row on this. I'm even dreaming of ToFS content now, where to set spawns, etc.

Certain bosses (not every floor, but some) with either spawn or have a place holder. Basically a spawn group might have 70% chance for PH and 30% chance for boss, and will spawn 1 of the 2 based on chance. So spamming instances would defeat that part. Sometimes the boss has same name as the trash so wouldn't know until killed it.

Might consider super expensive instance for players that really really want to get away from the public, minimum 1 million plat, maybe more. Try spamming instances then! lol.

Might make Free Waypoints allowed too since those supporting the server would deserve it. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm pretty sure that players are spawning Free Waypoints for other people to hail and use. This is not intended, and I would need to make those Free Waypoint pets only respond to their owners, just like other types of pets when getting buffs, etc.

Good idea about making the final boss only spawn within X hours after zone is up. This would also discourage making instance since it could take 6 hrs to see a final boss.

Would control how often bosses spawned based on how many ranks for the earring, and how much material is required per rank. Basically nobody is going to get a max rank in a week or month, even if they kill every spawn.

Thanks for the feed back, good info.

Oh yeah, regarding exp pots: I'd rather not have even more exp pots clogging up my bank space. But maybe I'm in the minority here. Rather keep the drops (and looting) very simple: no coin, just plat bags and v1/v2s. Maybe bosses here can have a chance at essence too, based on what level they spawn? I don't know.

As far as CoTH goes, I can see why it's a concern: one goon gets the key and--voila--the whole raid is on to the next level. The argument that supporting the server should provide benefits doesn't float as much here either, what with christmas creds. Personally, I'd rather have the difficulty of the mobs/bosses be the limiting factor for progression vs. waiting to get a key on every goon (and tabbing through to click, waaaah!).

I'm excited to read all the updates you're putting out about the zone! Any sort of tentative ETA on it?

A few days maybe

Already made over 20 new npc spells for ToFS for mobs on each level.

No spell file available yet.

Mez, Roots, and Charms will be shorter duration and shorter range than other custom zones. None will cast fear.

Haven't made the earring quest yet, just trying to polish up the mobs with custom npc spells and scripted events first.

Just wanted to add in that, Free Waypoints indeed do work for others to hail. Although would removing that effect the group or alts from entering using a regular waypoint? And the option and luxury of using them for guildies to would be diminished.

yeah, he is looking for ways to make sure Guildmates can enter a zone that is "created" via FWP. Brokyn's idea on the waypoint page is a great one. Hunter isn't going to Screw us like that, he is just looking for alternatives.

I haven't forgotten about Waypoints. If nobody else helps, then I'll just comb through it and re-write it myself to be as intended, with features like not instantly zoning you, instead giving you the option to wait and/or port your group in, etc.

ToFS is mostly done now. All the trash/bosses and their spawns/stats/spells/loots/scripts are all done.

For now I put an Essence of Tower of Frozen Shadow on the final boss which will probably be used in the earring quest.

Most trash have chance to drop charms v1 and v2, which obviously will be better chances on higher floors.

Need to check AA per hour rates too.

Will probably release the first week non-instance, since I'm afraid if I make instances, we're going to have old school LDoN trains in private instances. If I make instances, then everything will be leashed, and instances will be in the millions. And there is the minor issue of spamming instances to see if a named or boss pops up. There are over 600 spawns already in the zone.

So to sum it up, last on the to-do list are Earring Quest, AA Rates, and Waypoints. Everything else is done.

Spell file is now available (02-26-13).

ToFS should be open shortly after reboot and I take off the status required flag.

New spell file 02-27-13 now available.

Its about 99% complete. Might add more random loots later, but right now its mainly for charm upgrades, and final boss rewards.

ToFS is open!

These links should help.

http://www.angelfire.com/freak/eqjonze/guides/velious/tofs/tofs.htm (http://www.angelfire.com/freak/eqjonze/guides/velious/tofs/tofs.htm)

http://www.eqmacwiki.com/eqatlas/towerfrozenshadow.html (http://www.eqmacwiki.com/eqatlas/towerfrozenshadow.html)

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zones.html?zstrat=117 (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zones.html?zstrat=117)

Anyone else is welcome to post guides.

ToFS is mostly like live except has more spawns now, mobs are harder, and some additional loots such as charm upgrades. Some bosses made more rare since you only have to get a key 1x then keep it forever, and its not like you have to do corpse recovery when you die.

Awesome. Now I'm going to be thinking about this all day at work.  :'(

Hunter please add to the server files the ToFS zone files cant enter it always crushed and error !!! or any other can giv me an direct download link !!!

Rofl with every mob camped on 1st  floor for last few hours is ... kinda .. well

shrug

lol no instances..chaining ones leg down to attempt to slow progress or make it look hard this isn't fun   :-\

Same here. Get en error from the ToFS file. Can anyone provide a working copy of the zone file?

Excited to try ToFS, but pointless to without instances right now. Asspacked, nothing up, ever....and I think it will be that way for at least a couple weeks. May just have to wait til shit calms down. I dont feel like adding to the mix or letting myself be drawn into the drama.

lol and its only a little over noon on a wednesday, just wait until prime time this weekend :)

Funny, people talk about being EQ purists and the uber grind.... yet they complain about not having an instance.

If I recall, 1999 (piss poor implementation) EQ did not have instances either.   People had to fight for boss spawns.

Careful what you wish for, you just might get it.


King Nothing

There is a major difference between being willing to do the grinding to do a long quest, and the desire and willingness to race for content.  One of the things that makes EZ so great is the custom content that we can all experience without concern for what the other guy is doing.  If you are willing to put in the time and work for it, you can attain the brass ring.

I haven't seen anyone talking about being an 'eqpurist'. I see people talking about being an 'ezpurist', (ez = extended zones). Instances are part of ez culture. Eqpurist is more like a p99 thing. An Eqpurist wouldn't last on ez.

Let's try to remember this is for charms. I don't remember where Fugitive posted it, but he said something along the lines of:
   "Why so much focus on an outdated item with outdated stats when so many newer/better items have been introduced"

Sorry for the butchered misquote Fugitive

The members with load of UC's should be able to go to floor 6 and knock out a new UC in 1-2 days; it's trivial to them.

I would like to add that I am not bashing your idea Hunter, I just don't want to see your effort put into making zone's that will mostly be empty

Am SO excited about this zone!!!  I will just have to wait to go in to see it after some of the hype and all had died down or instances are implemented.

I saw someone get first key in a few minutes, RNG hates you!

Besides, instances are open now.

As thanks I present you with a Constable doing a jig.

(http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w281/Xiggie/82470724_zpsbc9f363e.gif)

I could make keys a lot more common, and port your group to the next floor, in exchange for having to re-farm them each time?

RNG always has hated me =D

For anyone and everyone who needs the files for ToFS because it crashes when you try to load in:
Go to www.hateborne.com and go to ezserver, fixes, and download the ToFSfiles.rar I uploaded
copy and replace all of the files into your EQ directory. Have fun!

Thanks Anuli

Been in here last few days moving slowly with group getting each toon a key...have hit the 3rd floorr and have 3 keys for 4th floor still waiting on 3 more to progress to the 4th floor.....at what lvl do V2 charms drop?  I have only seen V1 drop on floors 1-3 and have some new toons I need to get UC'd...just dont wanna have to do HoH again if I can help it (with the changes that were made there lately)...any tips would be appreciated

Spent hours in ToFS last couple nights. Didn't see one key, had 1 charm. Am I unlucky or what am I doing wrong?

seen 1 v2 drop on floor 4 after a couple clear's

I have completely cleared floor three 18 times (pub 4, instance 14), in addition to about a dozen partial clears of the shadow beast npcs. Not a single trigger boss or key drop. What the fuck.

Response:
RNG.

Thanks, was thinking that was the case.

I was on floor 3 for 3 days to get 6 toons keyed....floor 4 is a beast..was wiping my group quick off 5ish mobs (all a shadow) bombarded with 48k damage spells (not much with over 1 million hp) but was spammed with them and dropped the group quick....also when you zone to floor 4 are 3-4 mobs on the other side of the mirror that aggro so no time to get tuned in...have your toons ready to click over asap or you will wipe! ::)

ok, seriously... what is the spawn chance to trigger the enraged shadow beast on floor three?? I've cleared this floor dozens of times now in pub and instances and have triggered exactly zero of these. is it really supposed to be that rare?

strike that. just got first trigger. sigh.

What I have seen is that any mob type can spawn the key named on floors 1-3....dont know about the 4th floor that where I stopped and moved elsewhere....but only charm augs v1 dropped on floors 1-3...v2 drops on floor 4+.....its just much easier to get v2 charms in HoH than it is to try to kill in TOFS.

Floor 4 ToFS--only the Shadow npcs have a loot table. Is this intentional? Or did the mummies, etc. get left out by accident? Just makes it so that the third floor is a far better place to farm V1s vs. a better drop rate as you move deeper into ToFS.

I left original loot tables in there, and then added charm upgrades vs addloot script.

Pls revert HoH back to where it was before or greatly increase v2 drop rate been averaging 1 v2 per 10 clears

Spent a good bit of time here lately and here are some thoughts:
1) Remove old mob loot tables
2) Add plat bags (so not a complete waste of time between the few and far between charm upgrades (DAYS spent here and have only seen one V2 charm drop))
3) Maybe tweak the boss mob spawn rate on floor 4 (dont know about past that as I havent got the first key to floor 5 yet)

boss on 4 is spawned by popping Amontehepna to get cara to spawn.. pretty easy really .. now Cara on the other hand haha... well that is .. a different story.

So how do you spawn Amonawhateverthenameis?  Like the previous floors where you kill trash till it spawns?

ToFS mobs now set to 10 minute respawn. This should help with the time it takes to farm keys and charm upgrades instead of waiting on repop or needing to make new instance.

Updated spawns in ToFS on all floors to have 1/40 to 1/70 drop rates on trash mobs for Charm upgrades.

This with the 10 minute respawn should help with charm farming, and possibly now be the fastest way to farm charms.

Oh thats awesome!! ToFS gonna be the new place to be!

Thanks hunter!

Tankz~

at what point do they start dropping v2s ??
since thats what im farming atm and i need something else than Hoh

I think I read earlier 1-4 v1's, 5-8 v2s.

I think the poison rain on floor 3 accidentally has an extra zero in its damage. The one on floor 2 was hitting for like, 3k on my SK with max shielding and the stone monster pet. The one on floor 3 hits for 42k. The other spells they use on floor 3 only hit for like 4-5k which would be about a 50% increase from the previous floor (though their melee hits go from 6-7k to 20kish).

I like that it's challenging, but for instance, trying to split the room with 7 shadow beast servants results in getting 7 rains cast on you totaling almost 300k damage, which then pulses 2 more times if you don't move. This is only the third floor.

It also seems to be a proc in addition to something they cast, as a dual wielding skeleton was ften layering 3-4 of the rain on top of me at once, forcing me to constantly backpedal and spam my donation cure clicky.

As a SK tank, the constant knockbacks, mana drains, and stuns certainly make this an annoying place. I can kill the mobs on floor 3 in like 2-3 swings assuming they don't get me first...

Have yet to get a key to see what floor 4 is like. Suffice to say, I doubt people will actually farm this zone for charms when ldon has zero risk and anyone with at least a couple strike IIs and a sorc I can one shot anything.

Well after playing in the zone today I won't be going back. Seems like you need to have the reward cure item and a pet to rebuff yourself over and over again or you spend a lot of time sitting there. The risk vs reward isn't there compared to what is currently in place for v1 and v2's. The old world trash drops are quite annoying as well.

Guess I'll have to make charm upgrade drops even higher.

This is the hardest zone in the game, and balanced towards Floor 1 being T1 difficulty to Floor 7 being T7 difficult but with some of the AoE rains, yeah can seem it is a future T10 difficulty at higher floors.

I'm sure with enough incentive players will go there. Deal with the challenge in trade for saving time on UC farm.

If it's supposed to scale up from T1 to T7 by 7th floor, I sincerely doubt the 3rd floor is T3 difficulty. I only had maybe 120k hp in T3 gear without a UC as a tank. Most of my crappy alts in T4 gear without augs have maybe 140-150k hp with a 4.0

Are you saying a rain spell that does like 80k unmitigated damage x3 is appropriate for that gear level? It is doing something like twelve times the damage of the second floor version. I was messing around in there tonight with 300k hp, a stone monster pet (which gives a further 15% spell damage reduction), and capped spell shielding on my gear, and I was having a rough time if I pulled 2 at once. They also spam debuffs, mana drains, roots, and knockbacks at a rather obnoxious rate, which often take multiple clicks of the reward click to remove.

They only melee for around 20k which is on par with HoH stuff (which doesn't dual wield but can hit for upwards of 35k or so). They certainly have pretty low hp as I could kill one in 2-3 swings, but the amount of damage that rain does is ridiculous. I can solo 2-3 trash mobs in T5 at once, and I would often die tanking 2 of these floor 3 dudes at once. These guys don't drop any real cash loot either, so meh.

I'd be fine with the current charm drop rate if the mob balance was a bit less out of whack.

Anyone try lull or or mez for crowd controls?

That would be ok in some situations, but there are some rooms that are like 5-7 mobs. I tried to feign split but simply aggroing them caused me to get 5 rains dropped on my head killing me instantly.

I don't think the rate should be changed, I think the mobs need to be tweaked. I would start by dropping the dispells/roots and playing with the amount of dmg the rains do.

LoL no. Dispel/Roots are the only hard counters to people running large groups. I like hard counters.


-Hate

I would bend on the root issue, however the dispell part I disagree with. Like I said earlier, you're gonna spend most of your time rebuffing or chain casting cures unless you have a donator item to speed that process up. Last thing you want to do is make this server like THF where you can't do anything without paying for it.

UCv2 has a 1/5000 Chance on Floor 5 FYI.... get to farming

You don't have to do ToFS to progress, you could just go back to LDoN.

Which is what most people will do, because the mobs are too annoying and the RvR isn't there.

People were just asking for something equivalent to "tougher ldons" which were less boring for higher geared characters to do. In its current state, ToFS is pretty badly tuned (if you assume the "floor X = tier X difficulty), there is no real cash loot (at least there are some gems in LDONs)

To give you an idea of the difficulty, if I pull 2 mobs at once on floor 3, my cleric who has a UC, a 4.5, and about 240k hp can die to the rain during the Word of Viv cooldown from full HP. This leads me to believe that the damage wasn't really tested. Maybe if it had a cast time so it could at least be interrupted via stuns or whatever or I could start moving out of it. It seems to just be a proc that goes off constantly.

Like I said, the other abilities (at least so far) seem reasonably balanced damage wise, if a bit troublesome for a SK tank who relies both on mana and spells with a cast time while tanking, and the number of counters the debuffs have pretty much necessitates the donation cure item, but those issues are more annoyance than difficulty related.

I'm not asking for easy mobs that fall over and shower me with charms. I'd just like a place that is appropriate difficulty for someone capable of doing T5 where mobs neither fall over in 2 seconds nor one shot my entire party in 2 procs, that maybe gives me some cash and other stuff - I.E. something that isn't a complete waste of time. I really like the zone overall, and it was one of my favorite zones on live. It lends itself well to the whole "LDON 7-13" theme with its floor theme. The problem right now isn't even the drop rate, it's that the zone isn't very fun, it's difficult to CR, and you can't really out-strategy any of the diffuclty other than "way over-gear it and have 300k+ hp". People might actually go there if the situation were otherwise.

Have you tried mez or pacify?

I haven't brought in my enchanter yet. I did try splitting them with FD, but simply aggroing that room with of caused me to get instantly killed because each of them all cast the rain on me.

Also, the higher floors are red to me at 73, so I somehow doubt they can be mezzed or lulled.


Please just answer this - is a spell that would likely hit a T3 geared played for 60k x3 appropriate damage for a single trash mob to have? Much less something spammed by the NPCs. Your average T3 geared player likely only has about 120k hp. I can solo 2-3 T5 trash mobs at once on my SK, yet two of these (supposedly T3 difficulty) mobs can easily kill me because of this one spell doing such ridiculous damage. I could understand a boss having something like this, but essentially these mobs do way more damage than anything in T5.

With Paladin group heal Spam should be ok but I can see where more than 1 mob would be deadly, so yeah enchanters encouraged, and if their mez doesn't work on that high of a level then I'll edit the spell, which I'm sure I already did but forgot which level it goes up too. Maybe someone can check out the enchanter mez's with MQ2 for info.

It's fine for now. Assuming the mob is below lvl 90, Euphoria works. With the last round of nonsense I sent, they should have quite a few more options as well. :-D

-Hate

I haven't all that much tested it, and this is just one persons basis off the zone with "paladin group heal" they CAN cure, if the mob is alive long enough for all your characters to attack before the poison goes off and your main character already kills it, then it leaves it up until the next round of mobs you may pull. Don't think it's that big of a deal yet. Of course i'll play around with it some more but that can always be what people are getting at when saying they basically need the reward cure.

Or you can use a cleric?

Uh, my paladin with a UC and a 4.5 heals for like 40k on a proc. With the weapon speed changes and the low hp of the mobs, you'll probably get 1, maybe two procs (my SK alone can kill them in 2 swings and a 4.5 click). The poison rain does more damage than the paladin proc heals for, and does it three times in a row. I do have a cleric which I'll also be using if I actually decide to venture in here, but it seems silly for content that drops v1s to require multiple UCs to do easily.

My SK can solo two at once because they have such low hp by spamming legend of crab and getting proc heals, but I have a feeling that the same pull would kill everyone else in my group, and my SK can still die if I get interrupted on my lifetap.

Anyways maybe I just suck at this game. I challenge anyone in T3 gear rocking some strike IIIs and IVs with no UCs to go up and kill even one of these trash mobs on floor 3. Sam Deathwalkering it with 6 wizards who die after the mob does doesn't count ;)

Viable option for those with well geared ones, I did bring my cleric only for her to eat complete and utter dirt when hit with the aoe.

If I get off my ass, I'll drag my group in there and spend hours farming the verdammt keys. I'll see just how far I can get before being decimated.


-Hate

I vote floor 1

(http://i45.tinypic.com/xkrpmg.jpg)

Challenge Accepted!

Ill use Anuli only.

I've been playing around in this zone. My group is mostly T4 with 4.0s. Last time I tried the boss on floor 3 was in mostly T3 with 4.0s. I may have eventually been able to kill it, but it was incredibly frustrating because it quite often took my non-tanks from 100 to 0 in less than 6 seconds thanks to the AE acid and rampages. I expect that it would still be able to do so, but slightly less often.

I very much doubt that a group with gear from the advertised difficulty of a floor would be able to kill the boss of that floor after floor 2.

Some things I would suggest are:

• Reduce the current AE damage by 33% to 50%.
• Have a fixed time between spell casts, if possible.
• Make different AE spells for each floor to fine tune the damage to what an appropriately geared player would be able to take, instead of dropping what I would guess is T5 level damage onto T3 players.
• Increase the reward by a large amount, and state that floor 3+ difficulty is no longer supposed to correspond to said tier.

Any one of these would make me much likelier to enjoy this zone.

Regarding drops.
No trash drops would be nice. I can understand wanting to leave them in for nostalgia, but it's very inconvenient to have almost all of the corpses drop nothing, yet you still have to loot them.
I think v2 drops should start on floor 3, considering the large difficulty jump. Perhaps a chance of v1 or v2.
Plat loot. If you farm v2s here instead of HoH, you're going to gain a lot less plat, not to mention you miss out on T3 tokens, which means no essences.
Gear/items uniquely from this zone. For example, white damage aug components (an amount to make them competitive vs strike augs), sympathetic proc aug components for casters. Similar to how essences work for strike augs.
The reward for killing Tserrina is not that good. From what I hear, 1 ez credit is worth 300k-400k plat currently. That sounds like a very poor return for the time investment of just killing the boss, let alone keying your group and spawning it.

So.. How are people supposed to deal with the 95% melee and spell mitigation buff? Dispel gave the "Your target looks unaffected" message, and it appears to be permanent.

Moved my post to:

http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=3705.0

Thank you for key update! I swear I had 6 or 7 charm upgrades with no keys heh

The charms are more common than keys, and after this update probably even more common than before cause I tagged a few npcs that were missing the quest files to addloot.

Stonewall is broken somehow. Was beating on the floor 3 boss for 15 minutes, never got through it. Guessing it's something funky with the spell damage mitigation, since my wizard's spell rune lasts for far more mana necklace clicks than it should going by the numbers.

Lost me. Stonewall affects physical mitigation only. Try dispelling.

As for the rest, I have no idea what you were trying to say. What version of necklace, what epic, and where is spell mitigation fitting in to this?


-Hate

or maybe your damage output is way less then required to eat away at the needed amount of damage ... 45 mins + on 6B floor boss for me =D so 15mins..

The ToFS stonewall also has a spell mitigation portion. Dispel does not work against ToFS bosses. Depending on if floor 3 uses the 75% or 85% stonewall, it should drop after absorbing 1 million or 50 million spell damage.

No epic. Mana Necklace IV. I'm talking about Eldritch Ward II, which is supposed to break after absorbing 37k spell damage. However, it does not break even after 20 clicks, which would be > 75k absorbed. 9750 damage without the ward, 5850 with.

Regarding not enough damage, my group does roughly 2 mil spell damage per tick, assuming one spell cast and one melee round per tick. So that should break it in 3 and a half minutes.

A tic is 6 seconds

I'm.. not sure what you're trying to point out. There are 35 ticks in 3 and a half minutes, which is well over 50 million absorbed with the numbers given.

I combined Mitigate Melee and Mitigate Spell Damage into 1 spell Stonewall for NPC in ToFS. Seems the Mitigate Spell Damage until X damage absorbed isn't working, so need to wait until it fades.

Right now the npcs only cast the stonewall 1x when they spawn.

After reboot, the stonewalls will last 30 minutes, 60 minutes, or 90 minutes depending which rank they use.

Might separate the Melee and Spell part into 2 different buffs later so that it can be worn or dispelled.

Hope that helps clear up how the stonewall is working.

So basically if you get a mob with stonewall II then just wait 60 minutes and the buff will fade. Kill rest of the zone or something :)

I remember an issue with physical mitigation. Not the Stonewall effect, but Mitigate X amount of melee damage until Y absorbed. I had originally written Tower of Vie to use this, but values over 32767 (int16 max val) caused it to go negative (meaning each hit brought the value further down, resulting in un-ending mitigation).

I'll check the actually spells at one point to see if I can be of further use.


-Hate

---

EDIT: I tested rank three (Frozen Stonewall III, spell id 12014) and it broke numerous times. So....yeah, no idea friend.

and enraged shadow beast, lvl 3, throwing about 1m dps at it and the most I can get it down to is about 25% health and he regens back up to 55ish%. There is no casting at all, no spell that I am seeing. It's not regen because he would be at full health if that was the case. This seems to be triggered at a certain %. Is something wrong here that this much dps can't beat this mob?

Been going on for about 45 minutes now.

Just posted updates on front page, and changed duration of the stonewall buff on npc.

They cast it when they spawn.

Depending which floor/boss/stonewall the buff will auto fade after 30, 45, or 60 minutes.

Now if its in a healing loop then yeah probably bugged since I been raping the database and quest today doing lots of updates.

Mitigate spell damage, not Melee.

Is it possible to limit the amount of times the bosses can heal?

Yeah, there are 2 hp events they heal at, but also a heal spell in their spells list. I can put a bigger recast time on heals.

Stonewall isn't on a freshly spawned boss, but if you wipe and go back, it will have it. If you let it run out and then wipe again, stonewall will be back as well.

Also I'm not sure why it needs to last so long, wouldn't 3/4.5/6 minutes be fine?

Looks like enraged shadow beast has been squared away.   He still healed quite a bit and did a teleport heal but I was able to down him last night.


The spell resists may still need tweaking though.   

I'd suggest trying to tier off ToFS , that way armor / epics will still add a value to hps, while still allowing tiered progression based upon floors, since its obvious floor 3 isnt for T3

You will resist the spells and rains, but still have to deal with the damage from melee, and make boss's have a rain or spells that are unresistable.....

Floor 1 - 1000 resist
Floor 2 - 1200 resist
Floor 3 - 1400 resist
Floor 4 - 1600 resist
Floor 5 - 2000 resist
Floor 6 - 2400 resist
Floor 7 - 3000 resist

Those 3 mobs at the entrance to floor 4 need to be removed, 3 mobs even when you're ready for them will probably wipe your group.

Add heroic resists to epics in order to help balance out the ridiculous amount needed

Would be sweet to see another zone like this one day! Its got the old school feel to it with some custom drops. I was having fun just farming the resist augs trying to get to the next level of the zone.

Is this place supposed to be set up as the other tiers are? If it is there needs to be some tuning going on. Being a t5 playing I have literally fought an enraged shadow beast on floor 3 for 20 minutes over and over eventually wiping. Pulling more than 3 gets my group insta-wiped.

There is an issue with your suggested resist levels... The only people with resists to handle those have UW, which means you are making UW a required item for all toons...

Is it a requirement that you must resist all spells brokyn? 

Are the top levels of ToFS that hard that you must resist all spells to survive? If so it sounds like a problem of frequency that the mobs cast rather than resists.



(Mostly asking to clarify.. I haven't made it to the top floors yet.. Not bashing if it sounds "dickish" ... I am just tired lol)

What I have found to be true in ToFS...

Non UC full T6 toons struggle on Floor 3, are a total hindrance on 4 and insta dead on 5.  So, if the goal was to create a viable and challenging alternative to farming UCs for alts there is still a need for some tweaks.

IMO ToFS is a heck of a challenge and may not have been the best bet for this "alternative" farming zone.  The biggest draw back being the combination of no CoTH and no safe spot to park the Alts. 

1. Because the zone demands that each toon have a key to move floors you can't allow CoTH. 

2. You can't park them and call them to loot when a charm does drop and if you drag them along you spend time ressing when they get blasted by spells they can't resist. 

3. If they are casters (normal) they are fairly useless as mana drain spells and or traps suck them dry and they don't regen the mana fast enough to be useful.

V2's start dropping with some regularity just about the time the non-UC toons start dying often.  It's doable, but MAN.. what a PITA.  About as much fun as hailing the nexus buff bot and getting blasted.

I'm not looking for easy mode here and do enjoy the challenge, but the risk vs reward in both ToFS and T7 has some disparity issues.  I am not having fun in either place anymore.

Haha, I completely agree that there is a competing interest in having stuff drop for a UC off of mobs which are scaled to pretty much need a UC to survive, but that's kind of inherent to the whole thing. Level 4 is especially tedious finding where your gimp last died and then getting him to the loot, but I'm not sure it's meant to be "easy". Right now the other option is clearing HoH and getting about 2-5 per clear.

A long time ago, I remember TOFS being planned as a zone for higher-end characters/groups to get a change of scenery farming their 6th+ UC, but that narrative was swapped out for one in which it would be for everyone, with each floor corresponding to a tier. I don't think I could give an accurate assessment of where either of those interests are at the moment, but from what I've seen it's probably more of the former and less of the latter.

As I recall Hunter wanted this to be an alternative for higher tier players for UC farming....NOT an alternative for a group in below T1 gear.

That being said, with a T2 group lvl 1 is VERY doable, and a decent alternative to LDON for v1 charms. Level 2 is very much doable with a group in 3.5/T3 armor. Level 3 gets a little trickier...but I've done it with 2 T5 players (4.5 epics) and see plenty of players in T4/4.0 gear doing just fine. Mobs die fast, and with some resist stones farmed from lower levels the rains are survivable. The key is to pull slowly. Use old EQ tactics with split pulling. Contrary to what some players may tell you L3 CAN be split pulled with a monk, SK, necro, rogue with FD clicky. You just need to remember old EQ pull tactics from live....or hit some old EQ websites to learn how.

As to the enraged on L3 for the key....the mob dies quite fast if you are the one to spawn it and you dont give it time to SW. If it gets its stonewall up, it can take half an hour or better to kill it. Enraged that I pop myself die in a minute or 2. If its one someone else has left standing....well, pack a lunch.

BTW....I've killed Cara with 6 T5/4.5 boxes on 4. Four of my team now keyed to 5. Thanks to the fatass warrior who will remain nameless for his assistance on the first key :D

I have two suggestions for ToFS:  first, is it possible to make the resist Augsburg tradeable?  It would be much more convenient to do all my combines from my main screen.  Also could the keys be made to have a succor/teleport that would put the toon at the appropriate level from the start without having to run from level 1 Evert time?  That ice pit in the beginning is annoying to maneuver 12 rooms through

You could use levitate to avoid the slippery floor on floor 1.

I do enjoy the having to key each toon and the no COH in the zone. That part is fun dragging the toons around with me and have to account for each box. The part I am not enjoying is the total slaughter on floor 3.


Totally agree with you except I haven't had the joy of getting out of T5 yet so the T7 part is foreign to me. If I were to change anything up to floor 3, it would be taking the mana drains off until floor 4. I like knowing that if I pull more than 3 I will get owned and have to use pull tactics. I can't stand knowing I have no mana to heal and having to hope my pally can keep everyone else up.

Yes I haven't made it past floor 3 however I think you should be able to nibble at the carrot to get yourself prepared for the next challenge. Baby steps.. introduce different spells / abilities on different levels which would work with the drop rate in place instead of throwing the kitchen sink.

Some of the classes that get Levitate got a group version. Revisit the 1-69 npc to get all your 1-69 spells again.



-Hate

An enraged shadow beast needs a fix. It's not bad if you get it to pop but if you walk up on it already popped... well there is a lot of time to get things down around the house while it heals itself over and over.

I checked both Intel and Wis vendors in SFG... nada.  What spells should I be looking for?

 1-69 spells are trained by the Trainer ... not bought from the spells vendor.

The difference between floor 2 and 3 is so steep atm. Please look at the dmg mobs on floor 2 put out compared to floor 3. Pulling 10 on floor 2 isn't even close to being equal to pulling 2 on floor 3. Def. needs a small tweak please !

I need to learn to read.  Thank you!

The SW duration on this mob is way too long.     I've engaged him when he was up and the fight takes forever.     It is not necessarily challenging, more of an annoyance and a wicked timesink.

Thumbs up for Heroic resistance stones stacking!!!

I reduced the Stonewall from 30,45,60 minutes for ranks I,II,III to 5,15,25 minutes effective after next reboot.

Will look into why the bosses are healing too much. There are 2 HP events that they cast a heal but should only happen twice. If I put heals in the list of spells they are using then maybe I can put a bigger recast delay on it, or maybe a cast time so that players can stun the mob from healing to make it interesting.

I gave ToFS heals longer recast delay, and they now have a few seconds of casting time that you might be able to stun them to interrupt them.

I would really appreciate if the trash loot like pages, words, runes, etc.. was removed from NPC's in TOFS when you get a chance. Right now it's a royal pain to farm resistance augs, let alone charm upgrades.

I cleared floor 2 today piling up all corpses in the middle and had to loot 90+ corpses to get 3 resistance augs :o
The remaining 87 corpses had nothing useful, 3-5 plats, 2-3 words, runes etc.

I'd be willing to wait the length of a scheduled downtime to have the query ran to remove this stuff. Bet a lot of people would lol  :)

The bossman has had the query for a week+. He's just been busy and will likely run it after the Double Loot.


-Hate

Double Trash Weekend! Woot!

Thanks H-Man!