Escorting the General

[Erisea]

I am currently getting ready for my second attempt to escort General Bragmur across Iceclad Ocean to forge an alliance with the gnomes.

My first attempt failed because a mage's pet decided that the General looked tastier than the wolves we were supposed to be fighting. It took a while for the mage to realize we were all shouting at her to dismiss her pet, and by then it was too late. I've read a number of the comments and the walkthrough on this site, and I'm fairly confident that I can gather the force required. (Last time we had three groups ranging from 52 to 65, average level about 57 or so. I'll probably get slightly fewer of the higher level people next time, but everyone else will have gained a few levels.)

However, I really don't want this to fail again. My current plan is to get a skilled bard friend to pull the General away from any danger, including pets supposedly on my side. Then, when we have finished each wave, he can bring the General back, we mem blur and he carries on.

As I understand it, this should work. Can anyone give me any advice on this plan? Should I also just state No Pets Allowed? This obviously severely reduces the power of mages and beastlords, and we won't have an overpowering force such that this will be completely irrelevant.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[Meribor]

I've been on several General walks for others as well as my own ... and I had to get the General's aggro off others (including pets) for most of them. I'm an enchanter and my strategy was to mezz and memblur the General when it happened ... pets stop attacking mezzed mobs. So, no need to get the General away from danger if you have an enchanter or bard with you.

Sorry things went wrong the first time, but good luck on your next attempt!

[ChaseFV]

I've been on a pretty goodly number of 8th shawl walks now too, and on the last one, I was finally allowed to do something useful: keep the General occupied. At each pop point, just as the mobs spawned, I cast tangling weeds (high-aggro, fast cast low-level version of snare that does not affect the General because his runspeed is unalterable), then moved slightly away from the fight, and ran in a big enough circle that the General couldn't catch me. As I saw the 4th mob go down (we had much overkill, so I knew the 5th would go down seconds after the 4th), I'd head back to where the others were, and the enchanter in charge of babysitting the General would mem-blur, and we'd be off to the next pop.

I recommend getting the highest level enchanter you know. We've done this with 65 'chanters and 50's chanters: the 50's chanters get hit a lot more often because mem-blur fails. Good luck on your 2nd run!

[Lokase]

I had 4 groups helping me on my walk - average level was 55 - luckly no one was KOS to the Coldain so there were no aggro problems from raid peeps.

Put away the pets and the AE spells for the walk. Let the general fight along side everyone else - he is a tough bugger and can take some hits.

Make sure you have enough tanks and enough heals to go around and you will be fine. We had one enchanter assigned for mem blur work and he only had to mem blur the general once - as I mistakingly aggroed him - hehe.

Good luck and have fun on your walk.

Cheers,

Lokase

[Breez]

Having done this same walk at least 6 times and having 3 more folks in guild that ONLY have the walk left...

I have had no more problems with pets than people aggroing the General. I use a DC pet myself.

We did the aggro/memblur trick the 1st time to get med breaks in, but since we have all leveled alot since then this is no longer an issue.

AoE's are a No no, but in general (assuming compentant people) pets have not caused us any issues.