Project 1999 - Game Mechanics: Dartain the Lost

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- - Game Mechanics: Dartain the Lost (/forums/showthread.php?t=158557)

2003 Post

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#1 - Tome of Miragul - Drops from Dartain the Lost, in The Ruins of Old Paineel (The Hole). Reportedly a pain to get to, and you need a rogue, and to be prepared for many magic resistant, unmezzable mobs.

Talking about people's experience getting the book before revamp (bout a month before this post). Since Dartain was pulled after the revamp. Also because the door was unlocked with the revamp.

Gives credence to high MR mobs.

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Originally Posted by Daldaen (Post 1548997)

It strikes me as such since literally the only people disagreeing are those who have soloed him several times in the past. I'm sure if you dug through ECTunnel histories you'd find a few posts about selling withered leather tunics and tomes of Miragul too!

If this had been a change to a named cycle mob in Skyfire, I doubt any of you would've posted. Just sayin'

I hear ya. I don't think either of us play very often. Yesterday was the first time any of my characters has left EC in 2014. No worries though :) - this tends to happen on a lot of threads, I've been implicated in all sorts of causes! I have a high level war/cler/enc/rog/monk/sham/necro, so pretty much any post on a bug thread can be tied to be arguing out of whats good for character X.

And yeah, I was trying to follow up on Kalendrox's (a pal of mine) link to the Dartain thread on EQTC, but to no avail on the waybackmachine. The ghost area is already very MR for its level (mobs are 49-52ish) as Manowarr indicated. It's one of the reasons that withered leather gear is so expensive on this server. I will pretty much avoid that area outside of nameds already up who are guaranteed to put out big $$$ and people who need me to kill Kindle for them. I'm very surprised that Aegiral mentioned that he was able to land root in that area.

I think there's also a misunderstanding over how resistant Dartain/Ghosts are on the server currently. My post where I mention to root him doesn't talk about keeping him rooted. The goal is to tash him, then root him for a long enough time that you can land slow (while trying more than 1 slow due to cooldown). After that, you memory blur him so that the pet will hold aggro when root inevitably breaks. I still have attempts where root resists/breaks too much or there are too many slow resists where I have to cap out. Him and all his ghost pals are pretty resisty as is. I'll try to find him up and fraps a fight of him sometime soon.

All in all, I appreciate the initial post. He should be dropping 2 items at a time. We got some positive changes from this thread.

Daldaen the reason we are all posting here is bc we have extensive experience with the mob and area that you are trying to change and it goes well beyond "I was down there one time and I think snare landed real easily." Why don't you do some leg work and run a low 50s toon down there on p99 and show us your logs.

See aformentioned perma-campedness. The last 5-6 times I've been down there on cleric for ranger/sk/pal/ench epics he hasn't been up.

But no one has responded to my comment about why he is stun immune if he isn't a 'giant mob', level 56+ or magic immune.

No one has posted their own logs either.

Getting a bit off track on this one, but I like where this is headed.

I would think the reason he is stun immune over here is because the Revs are stun immune. Now, the question would be where we are getting the information that Revs are stun immune. I don't know.

Probably the best source of knowledge that we have of this area of The Hole is going to be Gello over at EQclerics (the cleric I mentioned before). He was a guy who soloed that area at 60 and 65 and frequently posted about it on EQclerics.

As with anything, when you start looking for answers, you'll find that 2 questions arise for every 1 question that you answer.

I posted one of his posts at 65, heres 60:

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This doesn't answer your question (actually the fallen erudites don't summon but I'll get to that), but I'm able to solo the summoning revenants (wanderers even) fine. But not when they're surrounding by mobs that can pact faster than I can deal damage.

When fighting summoning stuff:
1) Click off all damage shields. They prevent you from parking adds. MoR is great since you can choose which mob gets hit by a damage shield.
2) Don't damage the adds. Make it a habit to turn off attack while root parking.
3) For stuff in the undead tower, keep RM/RD/RF up always. RD for the Insidious Retrogression (it's easy to resist with moderate RD), RF for the ignite blood/bones, RM for the ST's and snares.

There's two places I solo at the undead tower, depending on how buried aego is. The easier spot time-wise is the top of the undead tower in Ghost of Kindle's room. This is a good spot to practice killing summoning mobs. You'll have a good amount of time to recover, it's a viable spot for those without a manastone. Almost always (I want to say always but could be wrong), one of the two revenants is dubious, one is kos. Neither will assist the other. (A dubious will assist a dubious and a kos will assist a kos always) Have immobilize up. You want the fastest possible root because if the revenant gets away you'll get adds. You won't get a ton of adds unless you chase the mob. Mobs flee at a max of 200 feet. So if the mob flees and you didn't root them in time or don't think you will, immediately strafe/run to the back of the room behind the Ghost of Kindle. You may get lucky and be able to zap it from there. If you lose it, and you're against the back wall before it gets to far, you're likely safe until a roamer meets with it. When that happens both will warp back onto you. Root one, pull the other away and finish it off, then stone up to take on the add. If you chase it, or stay in the middle of the room, you're likely to get a ton of adds. If the mob is moving slow because you got it to pixels then it's likely safe to chase. The one guarding the room between Kirn and Kindle is almost always dubious. I use the L5 stun to stop fleeing mobs then immobilize.

The worst part about revenents isn't that they cast ignite bones now (I love that cast on me), but they cast dispel an awful lot. With just RD/RM/RF/aego/baotr up, I was getting aego dispelled every 5th mob. It's no problem manawise but really hurts the bank. Because of this, my preferred spot is the fallen erudites in the left courtyard down below:

There's one wanderer that roams the courtyard. Wanderers in my experience are always summoners. They're tougher than revenants and can HT in the 700s. Worse, there's like 4 other revenants in the left courtyard that can keep pacting nonstop. It's not unusual to fight it for 10 minutes with the mobs pacting the wanderer and its hp bouncing from 55 to 68% for most of the fight. So to start breaking the spawn I use banishment of shadows to poof the initial roamer. He's tough/impossible to kill unless you get him away from the others which you will later. Once he's gone I run down (invis undead) into the catacombs and run into the back corner of the first tomb and kill the fallen erudite. Some are light blue, most are dark blue, they never summon. I run from room to room, killing the fallen erudites. There's only four of them in the catacombs but respawn is fast enough that you won't have much time before the wanderer respawns (manastone isn't used much during the fights but it's vital between fights to keep up with respawn). After the last dies, I put up improved invis undead and run out to the steps and wait for the wanderer to respawn. Once he does I hit him with a non-damaging spell (L5 stun) and run back to the end of the catacombs. This is far enough away that the other mobs won't pact. I kill him here, put up invis undead, and the first fallen erudite will already be up. Took 5 seconds to kill the first wanderer, so be prepared for respawns to already be up. Don't run down the corridor now without invis undead or you'll make a small train on yourself. Once this set is killed the spawn will be broken pretty easily.

Spell lineup for me has been:
Stun
Ethereal Remedy
Exile Undead
CH/Banishment of Shadows
Immobilize
Improved Invis Undead/Epitaph of Life/Pet
MoR
Yaulp V

The pet is useless against revenants unless you MoK them. They have a pretty hefty damage shield. I want to squeeze CE in there somewhere, but I can heal myself faster with ER and the occasional crit helps turn the tide of a close battle. Banishment of Shadows and a small pile of star rubies will make life easier here. Just about every undead short of Dartain is banishable. It's very temping to use 3 banked points for innate invis undead.

Yes I'm a freak, no DA or gate. :P I use the Hammer of Souls, manastone, have 4101hp and 1207ac self buffed using the hammer, 31% haste and 147 dex before Yaulp. Primal will make this easier, but I doubt a hammer of the sun will since almost all casting is done while the mob is beating on you.

XP-wise, I really haven't watched close since I'm too busy trying to stay alive. I'd say about 3-4 blue an hour. Not stupendous compared to a group but very good for what I've done in the past. It's a wicked fun place to solo, if not for the xp than for the experience.

Just going off that, you can come up with a list of at least 10 things that are different on Project 1999. This is an area of the game that was not traveled much when it did exist and was removed from the game at the baby stages of MMORPG information gathering.

Banishment working down there would be pretty nuts.

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Originally Posted by Pint (Post 1549969)

Why don't you do some leg work and run a low 50s toon down there on p99 and show us your logs.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure if you run a level 52 down there, you'll find Dartain to be "almost full RM."

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Originally Posted by Daldaen (Post 1550003)

But no one has responded to my comment about why he is stun immune if he isn't a 'giant mob', level 56+ or magic immune.

It struck me as different when I've been to the hole and run into a number of level 54-55 mobs that were immune to stuns and mezzes (even rapture), but I'm not about to start a thread asking for a change when I have no real evidence in support of my position ;)

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Originally Posted by Daldaen (Post 1550003)

No one has posted their own logs either.

Again, that's now how bug reporting works. If you think something should change, it's supposed to be on you to prove that it needs to be changed. Show a 52 landing spells on an undebuffed Dartain and I certainly won't be claiming his resists are fine anymore.

Not that any of this really seems to matter anymore, since Alunova already "fixed" this.

I just noticed that the cleric talking about soloing hole didn't understand the benefits of clickies to protect against dispels. See? People were TERRIBLE at this game back then, lol. Even someone who was soloing one of the most remote, nasty areas of the game, with a class that isn't much for soloing at 55+, didn't know tricks that everyone on p99 knows about.

And that's why I was surprised at the idea of changing Dartain based on a vague comment from a low-50s who was probably trying to blind or stun Dartain without MR debuffs... and who concluded he is "almost full RM" because 5 of his spells resisted before his raid of level 50s killed the dude.

Next time you find him, I would be happy to try nuking him on my 55 cleric or 51 wizard. For science.

And as for dispells... I've felt they aren't exactly classic for some time but haven't researched it much. Deserves another thread. There's more to it than top-down debuffing.

We gettin' classic dispel system?

:D