Hollowshade war - appears to be bugged

[Drachir]

Hail, Tradeskillers of Norrath !

As an aspiring smith, I've been working my way through Shadowscream armour, and seem to have run into a wall in Hollowshade. I think I have a relatively good understanding of the war, but I'm having a problem that I can't figure a way around, and was wondering if someone has already dealt with this.

On the Rathe, the sonic wolves currently own the North caves, and the owlbears have the East caves and South isles. This hasn't changed for at least the last three days. I've already farmed the owlbears for far too many substances, but now I need the sonic wolves in the south so I can farm them. I've never seen a shrieking substance drop in the North caves, although I have found them in Tenebrous mountains. So I'm trying to manipulate the war to get the wolves down South.

The zonewide emotes are working as normal. The sonic wolves are attacking, and the bears can't defend themselves because they are stretched too thin. Sometimes the bears send out their attackers, and the sonic wolves prepare a defence. Regardless, the zone doesn't change hands.

The problem I've seen is this. The attackers spawn, and path (slowly) towards the opposing camp. Before they get there, another zonewide emote goes off, and the attackers despawn, to be replaced by new attackers. The two factions never actually engage each other.

Things I have tried:

1. Killing all the named in the three camps. They respawn as normal, no change.
2. Wiping out an entire camp. Did this with the East and North caves, but nothing changed.
3. Tagging the attacking sonic wolves, and training them into the opposing camp. Nothing. As soon as I feigned, the sonic wolves pathed back to their normal route, and the owlbears didn't aggro them at all.
4. Rounding up every sonic wolf in the zone and training them into the South camp. While visually impressive and personally satisfying, this also had no result on the war. The bears just respawned as normal.
5. Submitted a /bug report. No response, which I know is normal for a /bug.
6. Submitted a /petition, so I could show a GM exactly where the despawn is happening. I got an update to my ticket saying "thanks for submitting a /bug, we are closing your ticket".

Other than waiting for a path or a zone reset, is there anything that I can be doing ?

Thanks in advance,

Drach

[Aldier]

Kill the named in the South.

If the sonic wolves then attack the south, there should be no defenders. If there are, kill them and wait for the wolves to arrive. As long as you don't trigger another event, it was my understanding that they would attack. However, I found sometimes when I killed the south named and the south also controlled the east, the North would attack the east. In which case you wait for the emote of the change/stop of the attack. And kill the south named again. Do not just chain kill the named as the war needs time for events to happen (its SO SLOW). If you can get the wolves to control all 3, you will be able to farm them to your hearts content, then reset the whole war and start over again.

p.s. Can this get moved to the smithing forum?

[Maevenniia]

I think it must be bugged, one of my guild officers reported the same thing was happening on Quellious. He has also /bug'd it.

[Velurian]

Hollowshade war -- appears to be bugged

Someone also posted about this in General, but I'd guess this forum would be where people would actually be interested.

The Hollowshade war appears to currently be bugged (at least on Tunare, though given the post in General, I suspect it's acting this way everywhere). Killing the south boss does trigger an "invasion", but the "invaders" never actually arrive at the south camp to take over, so the switch never happens.

Examined the following cases:

1) Killed south boss. Killed again when he repopped, repeatedly. Zonewide emote followed some, but not all of the killings; wolves never arrived.

2) Killed south boss. Waited, without killing anything further. Zonewide emote followed shortly after kill. Wolves never arrived.

3) Came back into zone a couple hours later, no one else in zone. Ran into wolves already heading to south islands, so followed them. They pathed to the edge of the southern islands, and then despawned. At the same time, a zonewide emote came saying that the owlbears (who had the south islands) were preparing to attack the north.

Every time I checked, there was no one else in the zone; it's possible that someone ducked in and triggered an attack and then left while I was outside the zone, but I doubt it given how empty HS usually is these days.

It's been years since I've done any shadowscream (stopped when I hit 250 way back, finally getting around to heading for 300 now), so I have no idea if this is new or has been an issue for a while, but I didn't see anything recent on the boards (other than the recent post in General from someone with the same problem).

Anyone know what's going on here, and/or a way around it? I've been hitting Tenebrous for low-volume shrieking substance farming, but that's nowhere near as efficient as a working HS war would be.

[Maevenniia]

threads merged

[Maevenniia]

Prathun has responded in the EQLIVE thread:

I've found out what's wrong with the war. The attacking NPCs pause for one full minute between every movement, so they never reach their destination in time. I'll have a fix in for this very soon. Thanks for the heads up.

-Prathun

He did not specify a timeframe other than "very soon" so expect any fix to likely go in at the next scheduled patch.

[Orelli Virbonus]

Happening on Povar as well

I followed the Grimlings three times on their way to attack the owlbears in the south, and the same thing happened every time. At eight different points along the route they would stop, and stand there for a full minute, then head on again. It was always at the same locations; the mobs would stand on top of each other so you could barely distinguish one from another except for their idle animations. It always took them a minute to move on again.

I submitted a bug report as well. Just crossing my fingers that this gets fixed soon. I'm SO close to being done shadowscream...

[Maevenniia]

more good news, we may not have to wait for the next scheduled patch (in May):

This should be fixed on Test and Beta, and it's something that could be livecopied without bringing down the servers.

-Prathun

[Grolyn]

So when is it going live? I got over 1,000 whailing stuff trying to pop the wolves.

[Tokkyl]

Anybody else not having ANY luck getting shrieking or wailing to drop in Hallowshade? I would take either at this point as the war being bugged isn’t the issue for me atm. I'm on Saryrn(MM) btw.

For two nights in a row I’ve aoe'd both caves (one had wolves, other owlbears) for almost an hour straight and have yet to get ONE substance to drop from either mob - which seems very odd.

Multiples of the same items seem to drop pretty frequently – such as 2 meats, 2 skins, etc. but not a single substance. Every time I’ve been there nobody else was in the zone to ask if having any luck on drops, so figured would ask here?

I know the RNG seems to have an evil sense of humor and is trying to make me go completely bald after pulling my hair out, but this just seems ridiculous to not get ANY to drop from hundreds of kills. At this rate it would seem faster to farm plat and go Sickles all the way (shivers at the thought) even though I’m below 250.

[Twistagain]

Anybody else not having ANY luck getting shrieking or wailing to drop in Hallowshade? I would take either at this point as the war being bugged isn’t the issue for me atm. I'm on Saryrn(MM) btw.

For two nights in a row I’ve aoe'd both caves (one had wolves, other owlbears) for almost an hour straight and have yet to get ONE substance to drop from either mob - which seems very odd.

Multiples of the same items seem to drop pretty frequently – such as 2 meats, 2 skins, etc. but not a single substance. Every time I’ve been there nobody else was in the zone to ask if having any luck on drops, so figured would ask here?

I know the RNG seems to have an evil sense of humor and is trying to make me go completely bald after pulling my hair out, but this just seems ridiculous to not get ANY to drop from hundreds of kills. At this rate it would seem faster to farm plat and go Sickles all the way (shivers at the thought) even though I’m below 250.

The issue you are experiencing is EXACTLY why the war not working is a problem. The mobs in the caves DO drop substances...like, annually, maybe. The mobs in the southern peninsulas/islands drop them frequently (maybe 1 in 6-8 or so.) In order to farm the substances at a decent rate, you need the mobs to take over the south.

You can quite literally kill hundreds of bears/wolves in the caves and not see a single substance. I don't even attempt that, anymore.

[tomojo]

It's too bad the war didn't stick on the wolves...

You can always get the bear drops from their alcove in Paludal Caverns, as they drop their substance rather regularly. I was seeing a drop rate of around 1 out of 4 or so.

[Sharrien]

I remeber the wolves in Teneberous Mts dropping shrieking substances frequently.

[Twistagain]

It's too bad the war didn't stick on the wolves...

You can always get the bear drops from their alcove in Paludal Caverns, as they drop their substance rather regularly. I was seeing a drop rate of around 1 out of 4 or so.

True enough, but there are only 7(?) Owlbears in all of PC (in 3 different areas.) Combined with respawn time, that's some SLOW farming.

I remeber the wolves in Teneberous Mts dropping shrieking substances frequently.

Also somewhat true. I'd say it is a comparable ratio to the southern section of Hollowshade...and there are plenty of wolves in Ten Mts...but they are all roamers. It makes rounding them up to AE a lot slower in terms of kills/hour. We spent an hour or so in there last night and got maybe 30 substances.

[mewkus]

Can't they just patch Hollowshade by itself? Why does this need to wait until server patch? It's not like there's peoplel in that zone trying to do anything else. The only reason people are in this zone is they're either passing through or they're farming substances.