4th Shawl Angst!

[Delfontes]

I know, just the 4th shawl, the tradeskill part is fairly trivial.

So I make a Thurg gate potion (second try, first broke while firing).

Then I go run around in EW on the Ramp to Kael....

I use a guide showing exact loc's, and go to all of them, then circle randomly in a fairly decent search pattern.

Nothing, nada, no death squad, nothing whatsoever.

Naturally I know about the pet trick, but to me that seems like an exploit. Forcing a pet to look in the direction of an NPC that is not there is a cheat they never expected people to do.

Anyhow, after complaining in guild chat, everyone told me to get a pet class there... and I refused to do so, but a guildie showed up anyhow and started charming things (bard).

So we make a death squad, in a patch of snow that was VERY trampled by my feet, as I had run within inches of it at least a dozen times by then.

Next death squad spawn was way far away, farther than I would have thought to even look in my search pattern.

Anyhow, 6 death squads later I realise that this would have been almost literally impossible without cheating, having to cover this much ground to get lucky and trigger them?

We did eventually get the right guy for the turn in, but by then I was just pissed as all heck and being forced to do what I consider cheating.

So I ask all you tradeskill guru's, has anyone seriously done this guy without using a pet (or other cheat such as coin)?

[Verdandi]

Were you sowed and running at full speed all the while? It's been reported that you can run right over spawn points without triggering them if you're going too fast. (Probably similar to the fact that you can sometimes run right over kos mobs that normally would agro, without catching their attention.)

I got a Tanik for my friend and very soon after another for myself, just by running around. At no point did either of us make a pet, but then we didn't have to try for long. Both time I got him at the same spot, down in front and just to the right of the archway, maybe just a fifth or a quarter of the way up the ramp. Note, however, that that's just about the point where I turned around to go back up the ramp, so I slowed down there. I didn't know it at the time, but that might have had a lot to do with why I found Tanik there so easily and not anywhere else we were running.

[Delfontes]

I was expecting to spawn a death squad...

Naturally my desire was not to be there for long .

So I was sowed, I had not thought of that, I dropped Lev after about the first 10 minutes, since O'kiels came out my feet seldom touch the ground. But I did have J-boots going. Even with the pet showing exactly where it was, the bard was still having to run around a lot to get it to spawn, so you literally do have to be directly on it.

The spawn that was the general, facing the ramp towards Kael was WAY to the right, not even near the ramp really.

[Fror]

I did it without a pet... but it took a long time.

I had to trip it five times before I got the guy instead of a death squad.

[Phabos]

I guess I just got lucky.

I couldn't find him with a pet, and the next day I went back, wandered around a bit without SoW or any help, and the first thing that triggered was the Dwarf.

What can I say?

Phabos
Drunken Paladin of Brell
Tarew Marr

[Eumerin]

I did it without a pet as well, with SoW to escape the Death Squad, but I was only able to get a trigger when I paused periodically in my running around. The giants, when they spawn, pause a bit before they swing at you or start running after you, so you have a tiny window of opportunity to slip away.

[Froni Thunderpaws]

A cleric friend got it in one try with no pet and no waiting - he has cleric luck. I am happy for him, but sometimes I want to just bonk him.

A druid friend was using pets and kept triggering death squads, so she asked for some company and a bunch of us went and stumbled right into Tanik.

[Daddo]

using a pet is an exploit and using a guide with locs isn't?

[Delfontes]

using a pet is an exploit and using a guide with locs isn't?

Huh?

A pet facing something that is not there at all is an in game feature that was never intended.

I would really expect that if verant was aware this was being used in this manner, pets would just look around randomly when set to guard mode.

------------------------------------------

Reading a quest walkthrough is just going by someone elses research... like reading how to make a Misty thicket picnic or Hero sandwich on EQ traders.

How on earth can you compare the 2?

[Daddo]

How on earth can you compare the 2?

Just a difference of opinions I guess. I understand why as a computer game there have to be "locs", but from a roleplaying/immerse yourself in the world type of perspective, locs are entirely foreign.

I see a difference between "go halfway between those two rocks" and "go to 4137, 2694"

edit: had to turn on BBCode for the quote to work

[Mnemosyne]

I didn't use a pet, too much of a pain. It took me a couple days of randomly looking, but I found him without spawning very many DS. I used another erm.. 'feature". I held the No Drop vial and clicked around on the horizan. When I got "You are to far away you stumble to trade" i knew i found a spawn point. I'm too tired to remember which one that is. Theres You stumble and You have, one is the DS and one is the dorf. When i didn't get what i wanted, i tripped the DS and went back to look for the dorf. I got my fourth shawl without too much hassel.

Morgani Windlance
still a 54 wanderer

[Cigarskunk]

Is the pet an exploit?

Technically.

Has the whole "make the NPC spawn thing" been made so rediculously hard that all but the most insanely honest or hardcore RPGer will refuse to do it.

Yes.

Let's face it - we're tradeskillers, so we're all used to doing things that are very time consuming and viewed as very difficult by others in the game - ie/we're not slackers.

But when all is said and done, there are just some aspects of the game which have been made impractical (as compared to difficult) to the point that even the most reasonable of players doesn't feel all that bad about taking advantage of shortcuts if they are available.

This is unquestionably one of those times.

When I did my 4th shawl, I popped the KDS 27 times. I had originally tried just walking around, but after 2 hours and only a handful of pops, I realised that it wasn't going to be practical not to do the pet thing. If I had kept walking around trying to spawn that guy, then it would have taken me about 16 hours at the rate I was going.

Not 16 hours of farming.

Not 16 hours of popping in and out to see if the mob had popped yet.

16 hours of walking around and trying to dodge 2-4 EXTREMELY deadly mobs that could spawn at random instead of the mob that I want.

That's not even remotely reasonable in my book - heck, that's not even unreasonable - it's insane.

This basically goes back to what I had said in another thread - the folks designing these quests are obviously not the people who are doing them because I can garantee that if you locked the designers/programers/whomever is responsible in a room and refused to let them out until they finished some of these quests with appropiate level/equipped characters and not use any of the player tricks to pull them off, they'd die of starvation before they did.

[Mystiqie]

I really hated doing the 4th step as well. I got lucky I guess, in that I only spent about 2 hours searching, and I just got lucky in that I only died once there. But it seemed to be rather annoying that not having a pet would make me wander around looking for death. Reading here, now I realize I could of charmed a pet and had them look... but at 37 or so when I did this one, I would of most likely been killed unless I charmed a Snow Bunny, which is what I usually do when I am in EW. Anyone remember that old movie 'Looking for Mr Goodbar?' hehe.

What also annoyed me is that I was running through EW 2 nights ago and wasn't even near the ramp, and decided to make the switch to windowed mode to look up a receipe, thinking that I was safe as I was invis. All of a sudden I hear the sound of Giants stomping my butt into the snow. I DID manage to get away, only because I happened to have a rune up and managed to get back to the EQ window before I was completely toe-jam :roll:

[Grimina]

Okay, I feel your pain, I feel Cigarskunks pain..now feel MY pain. I started 6 days ago trying to get that dwarf. My husband and I wandered around about 2-3 hours the first 4 days. Never got a single thing to spawn. And we were doing step-step-pause, step-step-pause the entire time to make sure we weren't moving too fast for the trap to be triggered. We were walking over EVERY INCH of the ramp and the surrounding area. Yesterday I decided I was GOING to get that part done if it killed me. Started at 10am on the dot so I could truthfully say how long it took me. For an hour I walked everywhere, nothing. So I gave in and asked a friend with a pet to come help me (I too didn't want to "cheat" but I got desperate) my friend summoned BoBo (druid pet bear hehe) and BoBo quite reliably pointed out the deathsquads so we could find them. At first we just ran down to halfway between Kael entrance and the 2 normal giant guards. As long as kept one DS targetted and didn't move closer until they despawned, they never followed us. For the first 10-15 DS we shouted to the zone warning them. Then we realized we were annoying people by shouting every 5 minutes so we stopped. Then we started killing the DS for revenge. For 4 hours my friend stayed with me trampling the snow and triggering the DS. Finally he had to leave, I continued searching myself (giving serverwide.eqtraders the playbyplay LOL) this time I was actually able to trigger a few DS's by myself even without the pet. Finally I said I was giving up. It'd been around 6-7 hours and 40+ DS's. Our very own Xynn felt pity for me and created a RZ worshipping ogre on my server to help out. He stayed for a couple more hours where upon we all decided "This is #$*(#$ up" and I petitioned just to make sure there wasn't anything wrong with the danged zone. GM said I just needed to know the "trick" *sigh* The response was what I expected, but still was rather hoping he'd have said "yes that's a known issue to be fixed in next patch" LOL. Had a random stranger feel pity on me and Xynn (we'd been shouting to the zone about DS's quite a bit LOL) and came over with his pet. He stayed just long enough for 2 DS's then had to go. I decided I was sick of this CRAP, thanked Xynn heartily for helping, and logged off. After 54 deathsquads (that's 108-216 giants that chased my butt) and 10 straight hours (I logged at 8pm), I just couldn't stand it and vowed I wasn't going to do this again until a month or more had gone by.

However, my husband..after saying he would help, then deciding not to...suddenly decided to drag his lvl 13 enchanter over to help out. I only noticed as I walked past his computer and saw him in snowcovered land LOL. I quickly logged back on. Then we spent 30 minutes trying to find a danged snowbunny for him to charm. We FINALLY found one, dragged it's adorable little tail to the opening of the ramp to Kael, told the little angel to guard, it pointed straight away from the ramp. I took 2 steps and the dwarf spawned. My hands were shaking so much I could hardly open my inventory, but I got the turn in done and got my 4th shawl within 10 minutes afterwards.

*deep breath*

Now to the hard ones *shudder*

Grimina