I'm Tired of Being Fish Food

[Fox the Clever]

This is my personal gripe with the river crossing in the Plane of Nightmare. I keep having trouble with it, and I'd like to know why.

To those of you who haven't been there before, let me give you a little rundown. The Plane of Nightmare is bisected by a river valley. The river in the bottom of this valley is filled with bad, nasty things. These things have big aggression radii, hate all adventurers, would like nothing better than to make your character dead, and possess the means to do so with horrifying speed. If you wish to get to the other end of the Plane of Nightmare in order to hit raid targets, you must cross this river.

The standard technique is to stand on a big boulder on the northern shore, with both a levitation and running speed enhancing buff on your virtual person. No problem with me on my first attempt, so when the raid leader assembled our force atop the boulder and gave the signal, across we went.

I, however, saw that I was slowly sinking downwards while I crossed, and my companions were not. I reached the opposite shore with the clifftop about 10-15 feet above me, so I thought it wasn't so bad. I crested the cliff and settled in with my companions, sure that I had done it right.

STAB, SMASH, CRUSH!
Returning to home point....
Loading, please wait....

When I quickly got back (thanks to the cleric's resurrection), I witness the raid members finishing off the last of the five critters that killed me, while some lone guy whined about us taking his camp spot! "Ah, so he trained those things on us!", I thought, and gave it no further consideration. We all went on to successfully complete the hedge walk, and all was well.

Then, a week or two later, another hedge raid is called. We once again meet at that boulder at the riverbank. Once again I charge across with my companions - and once again, I sink down during the crossing. This time, however, I keep on going once I crest the clifftop, and look behind me as I continue to run. Sure enough, I see a tar`dak hunter cresting the cliff and charging for my throat. Fortunately, the raid force dropped him fast.

So here's the rub: What the heck am I doing wrong? Please be aware of the following things:

- I always start at the top of the boulder on the northern shore of the river valley, just like everybody else in the raid.

- I always have a levitation buff on me (that's a given).

- I always have a speed enhancing buff on me. The first time I crossed with Spirit of Eagles on my character, and the second time was with levitation while riding a giant white drogmar.

- I was not the least bit encumbered during both crossings.

- I looked upwards in order to stop myself from dropping down, and the fat lot of good it did me.

Does anybody know why I'm dropping down during the crossing I have mentioned? Is there something (possibly very basic) that I have missed? If you know, kindly post and enlighten me, as I have no desire to be fish food.

[Cyrint Aircaller]

As far as i can remmeber then the Z axis has always been weird as in mob agro and can hit you no matter how high up you are.
Normally i just run over, stop up and kill any mobs who agroed me, but if you arent capable of doing that then you have to navigate betwen the tar dak hunters so you dont get agro.

[UruzMagnuson]

look up when you run with lev. you won't sink nearly as fast. and lag plays a big part in how much you sink. atleast that is what i have seen.

[Ngreth Thergn]

HRm. My raids have used a slightly different method.

it has been a while, and I have never looked at the directions... so I do not know if it is North South East or West.

Zone into PoN. look at the house and GY.

Turn left.

Run that direction until you get to the river... to the right is an "outcroping" not necessarily a rock...

And we cross there.

I have found that a mount sinks even less than a person under lev. To the point where I need to unmount sometimes to get down, so if you can aford one...that may help you.

[ColdHeart]

How much weight are you carrying, even 200/340 will make you drop faster even if your running isn't slowed down.

[Verdandi]

This reminds me of a step in the shaman cudgel quests out of Cabilis. Nobody knows how we're supposed to get to the top of a tower to a mob we need, so everyone just runs over from the nearby zone wall. Problem is that not everyone can make it. The prevailing theory on the guides I read at that point was that people with better connections can make it more easily, while connections that are just a little worse might add just enough lag to make people fall too short. How good is your connection? Do you get any lag at all?

It's conceivable that video lag might have the same effect, if your system stutters even a little bit in PoN or with a big raid. Turning off some graphics may help, in that case.

[Twistagain]

My girlfriend's (er....fiance's, as of this weekend. ) character descends faster than mine under identical circumstances. She's a Dwarven Cleric. I'm a Vah Shir Beastlord.

I'm not sure about the weight thing. It could be that. I might do some further testing. I don't think the connection is the difference in our case. Similar machines on the same router...and it doesn't matter which machine we log into. Same results. Someone in my guild mentioned Safe Fall. I suppose anything's possible. /shrug

[Maevenniia]

I also used to fall a lot, but weight may be the key, I dont fall anymore, and my connection is still 56k dial up (aol!) I used to be encumbered or really close to the limit, but now that I use my GM bags and my STR is usually over 300 with buffs, I make it across every time.

Even if you are not encumbered, try running across with as little weight as possible (use weight redux bags, leave all coin in the bank, etc), get STR buffs as well as runspeed and lev.

Good luck )

[Itek]

Twist - Grats.

Now on to the content of the thread.

1) Weight matters.

2) Connection speed matters.

3) Video cards matter.

1a) Less weight = less fall. When I was a Guide I got several petitions about dying due to falls in Velks Lab. I would go, jump from the same height and if I didn't die I'd rezz the fallen and log the bug.

After about a week we were informed that race, strength, weight and lag all contributed to falling damage (and rate) so my Human Ranger carrying almost nothing would take less damage than an Ogre Shadowknight carrying 300 stone in weight. Oops. No more rezzes for falling damage in Velks.

2a) If you and your friends leave the same spot at the same time and run at the same speed, yet you still see them crest the hill before you arrive... it's taking you longer to cross the river, so you have more time to fall.

Case in point. When my wife (then fiance) started playing she was using An-Often-Laggy connection. My friend/roommate and I would watch her run from far away to us. Then she would warp back 75% of the way and run to us again. Warp back 50% of the way, run to us yet again. Repeat ad nasauem. (No really, it can give you motion sickness, or at least it made me want to go vomit.)

Dead-reakoning. The game says "you are here, facing this way, running, so you should arrive -here- at time X." Then it shows everyone where you are and where you are going. Later it actually updates your location, and if you turned, stopped, lagged, etc it re-updates your position. This is why you see mobs run past you sometimes and then "bam" they are actually in front of you.

3a) Most of her problem was the connection. Once I arrived and started raiding in PoHate for my Insidious gear and Epic piece I frequently lagged out it was so bad. (With everything off, including PC names. Makes targeting strangers painful.) But she got a HUGE performance upgrade (less dead-reakoning warping) when she bought a better video card. Since the video card can process the 3-D info of where you are faster it updates your position quicker (with VERY nice cards it's basicly real-time) so you actually ARE where the game expects you to be when it checks back.

Carry less. Use the best connection you can. (Turn off effects and names you aren't in DESPERATE need of, everything drawn on the screen takes video processor time, which you don't want to waste.) In -some- cases playing with the data rate in the DataRate.txt file in your EQ directory helps. Never did much for me but it's helped some people on their connections. Or just upgrade your connection, it's always nice to have bandwidth. And upgrade your video card. Better graphics is cool.

Oh, and failing that run with a bard with a nifty magic drum. Best run speed in the game. (They can out-run guides.)

Itek: I need to group with the bard for the crossing.
Raid Leader: Bard group full.
Itek: I've got a freaky connection. Without bard run-speed I pull the hobgoblins.
Leader: SoE will be fine. Look up.
Itek: Ok, I've trained the last 3 raids where I didn't have Bard speed.
Leader: /raid Stony switch out of Bard group, Bard invite Itek, Stony join Itek's old group.

[Clamford]

Don't bother with lev

I don't have anything to add about how fast you fall when you make the crossing. But, I would add that if you practice and are careful, you don't even need lev for that run. Instead of standing on that rock before you start your crossing, look for an obvious notch in the cliff wall (I think it's north of the rock?). Stand just right of the notch, and jump into the river (be sure to jump to avoid aggroing the Slarigugh-thingies on the near wall). Then, swim across the water, aiming for a rock on the far shore between the hobgoblin and the crocodile on the shore. Run up the far bank at the midppoint marked by that rock, and you arrive on the far bank with no aggro.

Try his on your own if you want to avoid training anyone, but I promise you it does work. And there's something to be said for not needing to use lev for that crossing if you are not a lev-casting class. Plus, this method should work whatever your minor lag issues, so you don't need a hardware upgrade to make your next raid there.

[Konjure]

Well, without knowing exactly where you are crossing, and what killed you. I know that a lot of people try and jump up on the first stone they find and run to other side. That will bring Hobgoblins on some random person that happens to get aggro.
The stone that is relatively safe to cross over at (atleast I never had any problems, you do pass close to a crocodile though), is a lot further out and can be used to run straight across, or to docks. If you are starting from a stone where you can't make it to the dock by just going slightly to the right, you probably starting from the wrong stone. (The wrong one in my opinion that is. )

[Aethn]

Your computer is the single biggest factor in how you "Float" over things. In Plane of Fire there are some people that can never ever get over C1 wall. Although they do exactly the same thing as everyone else does, they just never make it.

When you ask these people what systems they use, universally its usually an older system, dialup connections, AOL, low RAM or older Video Cards with low memory (ie 128MB or less).

[Cerpicio]

My girlfriend's (er....fiance's, as of this weekend. ) character descends faster than mine under identical circumstances. She's a Dwarven Cleric. I'm a Vah Shir Beastlord.

Congratulations! I just got married over the weekend.

How long till the wedding? Hopefully you have enough time to plan things without getting too stressed.

Anyway, nothing to add to the original post, just wanted to say that our wedding was wonderful and I hope yours is too.


-- C.
(I have pics on flickr is anyone is interested. Sometimes it helps to see what others have done, to give you ideas.)

[Twistagain]

How long till the wedding? Hopefully you have enough time to plan things without getting too stressed.

Sorry to derail.

No date, yet. I proposed at Dragon Con this past weekend (we're both gamers and sci-fi fans.) I had Morena Baccarin (Inara from Firefly/Serenity) write the proposal on an autographed picture while my GF was standing behind me. Then I prepared the ring while she was reading it.

[Sylphan]

The speed of your computer and video card is the biggest factor in how fast you sink. It's also an issue in Plane of Fire, Howling Stones, floating across Dreadlands, and a few other places. I've found various workarounds.

What sort of mobs are killing you in Nightmare? If it's hobgoblins you're simply running from the wrong place or in the wrong direction. If it's fish something is wrong, because they're not supposed to leave the water. If it's Slargs, then you should go a few yards to the right of the rock before leaping off the cliff.

In Nightmare, I found I could float halfway across the river and stop. I don't get aggro from either side if I'm right in the middle, and fish usually stay in the water. Then I can look for a clear spot between two alligators to run to the other side, or just go down to the dock.