Nitram Anziok

[Paloverde]

Has anyone seen this merchant at his secondary location?

[Rawckett]

Has anyone seen this merchant at his secondary location?

Haven't looked, but can only hope he is disgusted by what he has seen become of his machines and locked himself back in his labratory

[Sharrien]

I watched him wander to the zone in while i was plowing around harvesting saltpeter. Later, he stopped again right outside his usual workshop where I sold him all the uselss crap I collected during my saltpeter hunt.

[uncleshmoozo]

I'm going to repost the info I've already posted in various places because it's priobably most relevant here.

Dang it all ... they set him up in such a manner that he's no longer conveniently accessible to rogues when he's back near his workshop.

He used to stand in the back end of his little shop. Back there, only one roaming clockwork would move into agro range so a rogue with SOS could stroll back and buy Metal Casings as soon as the roamer was out of range. Now he stands out in front of his shop and within agro range of a several static spawns. Unless you can solo several of those mobs at once you you have to wait for him at the zone in area like everybody else.

For those who might be wondering his schedule seems to be about like this.

1. 15 minutes at his shop.
2. 2 minutes walking to the entry
3. 18 to 23 minutes in the area of the zone in -- He wanders about near and in the graveyard for a while, stopping for long pauses at various locations just outside the graveyard and deep in the back of the graveyard. If he stops just outside the graveyard when he first arrives and there's a mob pathing back and for there, you can wait a few minutes and he'll eventually wander deeper inside where he'll be out of agro range of the mobs. I think he'll hang out there a little longer if you hail him and run him through portions of his quest dialog.
4. 2 minutes walking back to his shop.

And then he repeats the cycle

What this means is that if he's not near the graveyard area when you zone in to look for him he'll be there within about 19 minutes or so ... unless, of course, somebody has triggered his quest and he's walking around the deeper parts of the zone.

It would be nice for us rogues if they'd either tweak his pathing a little to have him move all the way back into the back of his shop where he used to stand, or moved the static spawns a little be father away from the front of his shop so folks who can get back to him there could shop without having to wait for him at the entry area like we rogues used to be able to do.

[Ngreth Thergn]

It would be nice for us rogues if they'd either tweak his pathing a little to have him move all the way back into the back of his shop where he used to stand, or moved the static spawns a little be father away from the front of his shop so folks who can get back to him there could shop without having to wait for him at the entry area like we rogues used to be able to do.

While it may be possible to move the statics... he cannot go back into his house. A Geometry bug (which unfortunately are not really fixable) means he falls under his house if he tries to go back in.

Have you tried standing behind him on the stairs?

Any movement of the statics will be a while though so don't count on it being soon.

[Rawckett]

Just need to have fast fingers in buying what you need and if you get some aggro, just run and escape

[Snibbly]

I guess it's a good thing they thought about a geometry bug like that before making him path back to his old spot. He'd probably wind up getting stuck under the building, and never move to anywhere anybody could access him.

[Yammez]

Sheesh

OMG! Are people never happy? People have whined and cried FOREVER to be able to get to Nitram. And, now that it couldn't get much simpler than just plopping him in PoK, people are still sniffing. Knock it off and thank someone for once and be done with it. Thanks SOE

P.S. Don't be lazy, forage grease while waiting for Nitram

[uncleshmoozo]

While it may be possible to move the statics... he cannot go back into his house. A Geometry bug (which unfortunately are not really fixable) means he falls under his house if he tries to go back in.

The poor little fella ... I was afraid something like that might happen.

Have you tried standing behind him on the stairs?

I'll give it a shot and post my results here.

Any movement of the statics will be a while though so don't count on it being soon.

I understand. I'll let you know about trying it from the stairs.

<edit> Just checked ... It didn't work for me when I tried it from halfway up the stairs. I was able to open a merchant window with him, however, and then popped my Escape AA when the clockworks came gallumphing over to attack me. I was then able to buy from him. Frankly, however, that's a rather clumsy workaround and having to blow escape (which has a long refresh time) is ... well ... not a happy thing. </edit>

[Ngreth Thergn]

Ok.

Well I am definitely not planning to change him back to just sitting at home. This change helps many more people than it inconvenienced.

Will at some point look into adjusting either agro ranges or placement of mobs near him, but I readily admit that I am not placing a high priority on it, Gnome Rogues will just have to wait like everyone else in the meantime.

[Evram2]

P.S. Don't be lazy, forage grease while waiting for Nitram

Sure, if you happen to be one of the classes of gnomes that can forage...

[Taushar]

OMG! Are people never happy? People have whined and cried FOREVER to be able to get to Nitram. And, now that it couldn't get much simpler than just plopping him in PoK, people are still sniffing. Knock it off and thank someone for once and be done with it. Thanks SOE

P.S. Don't be lazy, forage grease while waiting for Nitram

Well, easy for you to say. I spent countless hours on my Rogue so he can get up to level 63 and all the AAs needed to get SoS, mostly so that he can get to Nitram and get stuff for my gnome. At best case scenario, Nitram is near the zone in and has no adds so I can buy. Worst case scenario, I have to wait 20 mins for him to get the zone in or risk dying by running to him with SoS and hit the right combination of buttons and buy what I need from him. I feel like I am being punished for working so hard to get my Rogue up so he can do this one thing and now he can't do it.

As for foraging, last time I looked neither Rogues or Gnomes can forage so how am I suppose to do that again?

Taushar

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Wood elf rogues can forage... not very well but they can.

[uncleshmoozo]

Ok.

Well I am definitely not planning to change him back to just sitting at home. This change helps many more people than it inconvenienced.

Will at some point look into adjusting either agro ranges or placement of mobs near him, but I readily admit that I am not placing a high priority on it, Gnome Rogues will just have to wait like everyone else in the meantime.

For what it may be worth, by using your hints I was eventually able to locate a spot just barely out of agro range of the static spawns and barely within range of opening a merchant window with Nitram. I began by taking out the roaming Erratic Model that was in the area so I wouldn't have to worry about it messing up my experiment. I then checked to see if the static spawn mobs would agro if I dropped hide while standing at the top of the steps into Nitrim's workshop. They didn't agro, but I was too far away from Nitrim to open a merchant window there. I then moved down the steps one at a time and tried again to open the merchant window at each step. A few steps down from the top I succeeded and did so without getting agro. I think I was barely a step or two above where I was on a previous attempt when I did get agro, so I'd have to say that there's virtually no room for error on this.

In other words it does work, but it's a wee bit tricky.

I can live with that.



Having said that, however, I do have a few modest ideas to offer here that might be viable. One is kinda goofy, and the other is a bit more reasonable, a bit more fun and also works quite well in a roleplay sense.



One would be to have Nitram make the same trip he's making now, but instead of having him stop in front of his shop, have him move around the side of it and along the ground level plane below the shop toward the back of it. There is a fairly large area back there where only the one roaming Erratic Model and one of those low level Obsolete Units ever comes into agro range. The roaming mob can be avoided by either waiting for it to path out of range, or (if you are able) by taking it out. The low level Obsolete Unit is a static spawn at the back of the shop that doesn't seem to agro on me at level 70. (It might, however, agro on lower level rogues. I'm not actually sure about that.)

He'd be a little more difficult to find back there, but it would be a lot easier to do business with him without getting agro.

That was the lesser of the two ideas. I'm not at all sure I like it myself, so don't think I'm pushing for it.



The other idea is one that actually works in the context of the in-game lore and also solves some another problem related to the fact that Nitram is both a merchant and a quest NPC. Once in a while a guild (or a pick-up raid) will take it upon themselves to do the quest (which is really more like a trial of sorts) to get some folks the key to open the factory door. This involves having Nitram walk around the back end of the zone for quite a while which pretty much takes him away from his merchant duties for an hour or so.

But what if Nitram, who while a bit of a bungler, is still a tinkerer and mechanic of at least a significant level of ability, were to decide that he wanted to build himself a clockwork assistant? He could, for example, make a few adjustments on an existing clockwork that would reprogram it to collect bits and pieces of scrap from the zone and carry them to his shop. He could also program it to act as a merchant which could handle the bulk of his sales so he could spend more of his time doing the experiments that really matter to him.



That would allow Nitram to spend his time back up inside the rear of his shop as a static spawn, effectively returning him to his original location and functionality, while also having a merchant that would follow the same patterns he does now.

I could envision this assistant being a bit ideosyncratic in his ways, of course. He might have his own merchant dialogs, or he might say some amusing things when hailed and conversed with. He might also have some amusing dialogs (or even arguments) with Nitram whenever he gets back to the shop.



You could make this assistant out of an existing model in the zone. Make him sufficiently low level that he'd be very green even to the lowest level people who can get into the zone so he'd be useless for killing for experience. Make him uncharmable so he couldn't be used as a pet by enchanters.

I'm actually rather fond of this latter idea. I'm not sure how well it would be received by the powers that be, but at worst I had fun throwing it out for consideration.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Thanks for the idea

Even that I dea will be a while, if it is chosen Basically he will not be retouched until after I get a chance to look at the whole DoN cultural stuff.