The Gnome Take quest seems broken.

[Uradamus]

This is a low level Dwarf Rogue quest given by Jeet in North Kaladim after completing the Rat Patrol quest. You have to head to Ak'anon and find a special scrubber robot, say "628" near him, get a response and then give the scrubber the key Jeet gave you in order to get the package you are supposed to bring back.

The scrubber in question is Scrubber IV who is one of several scrubbers that can spawn in the same rotation as Duster V. Scrubber IV does spawn, but he doesn't respond to 628 and when given the key he just eats it, causing the unfortunate rogue to have to head back home empty handed to restart the quest and get a new key.

I notice that some changes have been made in the past in order to make sure Scrubber IV properly despawns like the others npcs that spawn from the same location so Duster V can eventually show up for the Gnome Wizards who need him for one of their quests. I am wondering if something was broken in regards to Scrubber IV while that was being fixed.

[nilbog]

One of the clockwork scrubbers responds to 628, not Scrubber IV.

From reading the quest write up here, that seems accurate http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=369.

Do you have different information?

[Uradamus]

If you notice on the link you provided Scrubber IV is listed as a related NPC on the sidebar. Also the Project 1999 wiki pages for both the quest and Scrubber IV point to a connection between the two.

http://wiki.project1999.com/The_Gnome_Take
http://wiki.project1999.com/Scrubber_IV

Though those both seem a bit incomplete. But from what little I can recall of playing a young dwarf rogue on live many years ago, I could of swore it was Scrubber IV on there as well instead of one of the generic unnamed Clockwork Scrubber place holders, but obviously I could be mistaken on that. So some confirmation would be nice on this.

I sat in the spawn room for about an hour or so this morning with "/say 628" set in a social macro to spam each time something popped up in the room and started their pathing and nothing ever responded, though that could have just been a string of bad luck on my part. While there I saw Duster V and Scrubber IV each twice and several of the generic Clockwork Scrubbers. A new one would pop up every several minutes, in that square room in the palace on the way down to the king that matches up with the coordinates given for Scrubber IV on the wiki.

[nilbog]

Were you targeting the scrubber, then saying 628?

[Uradamus]

Hmm, probably not most of the time, I just would run along making sure I was pretty much on top of them while spamming the macro a few times to make sure I was close enough to trigger a response. I just redid the Rat Patrol quest and restarted this one to get a new key, now sitting in the palace again to try for a while again. I will try targeting them this time around to see if it makes a difference, but I don't see why it should, dialog responses are usually just a proximity issue, no?

[Uradamus]

I'm starting to notice a ton of really super buggy pathing going on around the palace. There are a couple scrubbers I haven't managed to get close to that seem to be walking through walls and sort of falling from the sky over and over again as they pass the gap between the palace and the first tower closer to the shore. Decided to forget about trying to get them while they are in the palace because of that, trying to find a better place to get close to them.

[Uradamus]

Ok, just spent almost exactly 2 hours around Ak'anon, targeting and spamming "628" on every clockwork scrubber and Scrubber IV that I could find. Started out in the palace for a while, then started to run back and forth between the PoD and the commercial district, occasionally heading in towards the zoo or down towards the dark district, then set up camp near PoD for a while to work on fishing and waited for the rats to come to me down that end. None of them ever responded and I know it definitely didn't take more than a half hour tops when I did that quest on live years ago. I remember it being pretty quick in and out before I was trekking back to Kaladim to finish the quest. So I am forced to conclude my original speculation is likely correct and this quest is probably bugged.

On an unrelated note, is there a way to edit posts? would of probably put all these updates in a single post, but couldn't see an option for edit.

[nilbog]

I'm starting to notice a ton of really super buggy pathing going on around the palace. There are a couple scrubbers I haven't managed to get close to that seem to be walking through walls and sort of falling from the sky over and over again as they pass the gap between the palace and the first tower closer to the shore.

Yeah, it's probably bad grid pathing. They just need to be fixed.

Ok, just spent almost exactly 2 hours around Ak'anon, targeting and spamming "628" on every clockwork scrubber

One of the clockwork scrubbers definitely responds to '628', but its not necessarily always spawned. What might need to happen is at the end of a scrubber's pathing cycle, it should depop and spawn a new one from its spawngroup.

Does anyone know more about this?

[Uradamus]

If I recall, they should do 2 cycles of their path before despawning. At least that is what I read somewhere about some of the other special clockwork rats for the wizard quest. Though that definitely wasn't the behavior I was seeing with most of the scrubbers, I had a few of them targeted for quite a while without them ever despawning. At least one spawn does seem to despawn though, because I was seeing Duster V, Duster X and Scrubber IV all showing up from time to time following the same path along the lake and they all come from the same spawn point that should be shared with the npc for this quest.

I suppose it is definitely possible that I am just having extremely bad luck with this, but a level 4 quest shouldn't take several hours of waiting around, that nonsense should be saved for higher level quests, heh. =P

[nilbog]

Pending update,
After a certain amount of time, the clockwork scrubbers will repop from their spawngroup. Eventually, the scrubber needed for this quest will spawn.

This was a quick way of fixing the issue. If more evidence/research is found about exactly how it should work, I will change it accordingly.

[Uradamus]

Cool, that should be good enough. Still got my young dwarf camped out on the shore of Ak'anon lake, so I can try once the update goes out. Thanks for looking into this and finding a solution, really didn't want to scew up my faction by killing scrubbers to try and get the proper one to pop for so little reward. >.<

[Uradamus]

Woo, the second scrubber I spammed 628 at today after the server came back up was the quest npc. Finally done with this quest. Thanks again for getting this fixed!