[Baugi]

I found a better (Luclin era) thread describing the poofing thing. Supposedly any NPC lvl 55+ wouldn't poof (and gave exp) if there was any player damage on it. -

Originally Posted by https://web.archive.org/web/20050522105808/http://forums.interealms.com/shaman/archive/index.php/t-3142

Think you're referring to Western Wastes. You first need a bard on cov faction, and then he finds either a rhino or mammoth to charm. Once done, he aggroes something like an ice burrower, runs both the charmed pet and burrower to a dragon (or cragwyrm for that matter). The dragon will assist your charmed pet and then aggro the burrower. The dragon will not ks exp or loot either as the burrower is 55+.

Another trick is to charm a rhino/mammoth, pull Tantor/Stronghorn, and run both around ToV entrance where Tantor will own practically any dragon except Sontalak. If you're sure the dragon is gunna die, cast a harmful spell on him near death, and you'll get exp and loot too.

Another I thing I recently discovered was that Melalafen drops standard Naggy loot. He's a dragon in Western Wastes, but he's not on cov/ring of scale faction. He's one of the very few mobs that's on Disciples of Kerafyrm faction. What the bard can do in this case is charm the same type of mob, pull Melalafen, and run both to Sontalak because the bard obviously wants Naggy loot.

For ae-type dragons assisting your pet, there is one slight problem though. Dragons will assist a charmed pet but their ae will hit it as well. This in turn will cause the pet to get pissed at the AE dragon and he will very likely aggro him. If thed AE-dragon happens to survive the fight and prevail over Tantor/Stronghorn/Melalafen, then that ae-dragon will aggro you = near-certain death because they'll chain summon you. Such is the case with Sontalak so if you ever plan on bringing Melalafen to Sontalak, be prepared to accept death, and have one of your group partners loot Mela.

I've experimented around with this a little, one of my best eq friends is a virtuoso, but this is an exploit, so I'd tred very carefully. Anyways, not like I'm gunna get fried anymore, I'm max kos to CoV and thus Western Wastes is out of the question for me except for the occasional totally legit soloing of Yeldema. Not like I need her though, already got my monk his talisman XD XD XD

Conflicting claims about whether or not it was considered an exploit (seemed to be up to GM discretion?) -

Originally Posted by https://web.archive.org/web/20050522105808/http://forums.interealms.com/shaman/archive/index.php/t-3142

heh, our server lead GM directly observed people doing it and declared it was perfectly legal [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I also found another post claiming that it was only implemented that way due to technical limitations with damage attribution (e.g. so raid mobs wouldn't poof if they died to dot damage from someone who died) -

Originally Posted by https://dbsanfte.github.io/eq-archives/newsgroups/alt.games.everquest-msg-104901.txt

As for the soloing Sontalak thing, which I do not know the exact
step-by-step for, it involves getting CoV mobs to assist your charmed CoV
mob against big non-CoV mobs you pull, and doing at least one point of
damage to Sontalak with one of your DoTs. The assist thing is some buggy
faction nonsense, and the reason Sont's corpse doesn't poof when killed is
because of the fix done to prevent raid-mob corpses from poofing when DoT
damage becomes unattributed. In effect, your DoT ensures a corpse will be
left. From what I can tell from the threads that weren't deleted, it started
as a technique for soloing Tantor and evolved into a way for a bard to clear
WW solo. And yes, people have been suspended and banned for doing it.

This seems to also suggest you shouldn't be able to /q faction hits for sub-55 mobs like you can on P99. The corpse should poof if a linkdead player has max-damage or gets last hit.