[Treats]

Here is a thread from 2001 Velious era:

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5488

Eh, so we move on to the sixth isle, aka Wasp Isle, or Bee Isle, or Bzzzt Isle. Basically, there's just three aggro mobs on the whole isle. Kinda. They split, like on the fourth isle. Except these are the splits from hell. They're all just the same graphic as the n00b wasps in GFay. Except they're far meaner. Some are level 55 and triple for 500, some are level 60 and quad for 700, some of them when they die split into three bees that double or quad for 1800, depending on what level they are when they spawn, but only have about 2k hp, and then they split when they die. Add the confusion of them all being just standard bees (minus two giant bixies for the boss mob and the mob right before it), and the fact that they all have very similar names (Bzzzzt, Bazzzat, Bizzzat, Bzzzt Zzzt, etc.)... well, it's madness. And you have to kill them in a very specific order or you're screwed. Because the boss mob is level 65, Death Touches, quads for 850, has a disease AE DoT that covers the entire isle... and if she spawns in the wrong place, she'll be camping the only safe spot on the isle, making CR impossible, and she'll despawn in 60 minutes, ending the raid because there will be no possible way to move on. Well, she's a mean bugger, like I said. Dunno how people managed pre-Kunark, as she's meaner than Trakanon IMHO (Death Touches, quads for 850 as opposed to doubling for 625, AE DoT eats away HP a tad slower but is harder to resist, etc.). Must have been the Zerg Rush of all Zerg Rushes to keel her off back then.

She quads, trust me. It's just that most casters don't have enough hp to make it to the fourth hit. I was walking funny for the rest of the day after this.

So time to pull the Hand. Hand, as you can tell, is kinda aggro. The Eye is not, but it will assist. And the last isle is quite small. Eye is basically a Venril Sathir clone that can Death Touch and has more HP. Hand is... evil. Quads for like 850, Death Touches, Grav Fluxes, and procs a lifetap. VS is easy to take care of because he can only lifetap on a person if they don't have a rune, and since VS only doubles for 350, it's easy to keep one up on the main tank. But a mob that quads for 850 and DT's? Um, ick. So we try to pull just the Hand to the seventh isle, as people always do. We try to use a revive trick to get him over. No dice. Jumping? Nope. Aggroing near the corner of the isle? Didn't quite work. So we had this rather impressive Eye of Zomm fleet go after him. Loth missed it, as he was the first to die. But I was bound to the Hand's sight at the time... and seeing about eight eyes coming right towards you is rather humorous. Everyone would buff and heal those he aggroed on, to maintain aggro... but, well, we learned something today. Apparently Verant didn't like the idea of splitting those two by pulling the Hand to the seventh isle. Hand doesn't leave his isle at all anymore. He would try to leave the isle, but run up against an invisible wall at the edge, sliding back and forth trying to get to us, but being unable to. Needless to say, this complicates things somewhat. We only had 15 or so keys to key over to the last isle... but the Hand is KoS (the Eye isn't but will assist), so there's no way we can summon people over. So those 15 would have to kill the Hand alone, and possibly the Eye if he adds, which would be likely. Um... hell, the Hand isn't even worth killing in the first place. His drops are only needed for the final quests, all of which need a rare-ass drop off the Eye for a reward that's very very outdated and probably won't be used. Hand drops the same loot as the Noble and Overseer, so he literally isn't worth killing. Of course, I wanted to kill him, just because. But having both up on the last isle is... um... bad. I've already thought of two ways around this little problem (both will allow us to kill both Hand and Eye), but both methods require some serious forward planning, so they couldn't be done at the time. Oh well.

I suppose its possible they could have introduced quad's with Velious. If you think about it though they would have had to go back and retune EVERY mob level 60 and higher adding that damage and testing difficulty. It was just so rare to see it back in the Classic/Kunark era. Only high end guilds were doing Trak/Talendor/PoSky/Gore/VP back then, a very small amount of the total population.

Suppose you could take a time machine into the Kael arena to fight The Avatar of War with the same raid force/gear. They would get absolutely flattened. He would decimate the entire raid force in a matter of seconds with a 7 cleric CH chain. The Avatar of War was not even killed on live with an actual PC tanking until a few days before Luclin was released if I remember right. This was only even possible after MONTHS of farming in Temple of Veeshan. He was killed prior to this, but that was using "The Frozen Moses."