For those of you who didn't run this quest last year:
This is by far the most complex, dynamic, and difficult of the seasonal quests (excepting, perhaps, the harder winter event; but that's not quite the same sorta thing).
The various NPCs and mobs have been carefully designed, take a moment to check out their paperdolls where available. It would also behoove you to play with your sound on, particularly when you reach Book 4 and 5. Take your time with the various quest interactions - some are quite detailed and interesting, especially during Book 5.
Important information:
- Initiate the quest by saying 'hail' to River. This is the only time you will need to use speech to progress this quest.
- This quest is not as easy as the St. Patty's, Valentine's Day, or Spring quests. It is quite a bit more lengthy, complex, and challenging. Please do not attempt it if you aren't willing to work for it.
- Since this quest is more complex and lengthy, please set aside at least an hour and a half to fully appreciate & complete it the first time. I imagine it will take most players about 45 minutes to 1 hour to run on an average run.
- Estimated difficulty level- I think any player who can handle balrons with relative ease, either through gear or pets, should be able to complete this quest. Some of the dungeon levels will be quite challenging if there aren't many other players hunting in the area and thus have full spawn, so you might want to go with friends or at high-traffic times.
- Unless you are one of our super-geared players, I strongly recommend you avoid running through the dungeons willy-nilly. You will die a horrible death.
- This quest is repeatable every 4 hours. Your quest book will expire & decay 16 hours after the time you obtained it. The quest cooldown is by account - if you are on cooldown, you won't be able to run the quest on your alts. You will be able to collect another book, but you won't be able to complete it.
- Pets are currently allowed in this event, but if their usage becomes overly bothersome or trolly, I will disable them.
- You will frequently be forcibly teleported around as part of this quest. If you are a pet user, always remember to shrink your pets before approaching the quest NPCs with your completed books. Otherwise, the pets will be left behind and you'll have to summon them with your pet summoning ball(s), or pay the fees on the pet summoning stones in the dungeon. This applies only to the pets following you around; it does not apply to your mount, obviously.
- Please read all gumps and quest book text carefully. The steps to this quest are not necessarily obvious, but they are explained in sufficient detail to complete them.
- Players with the [young] tag cannot enter the quest building. Other than this, there is no age limitation on the event.
- The quest books are all patch graphics. If you aren't properly patched, you won't be able to see the book in your inventory even though the NPC's gump will trigger appropriately.
- All of the companions for Book 1 can be reached by foot.
- I've added some anti-exploit, anti-troll features to the primary quest npc. If you say "hail" to the main quest NPC in Serpent's Hold while already on this quest, and trigger the opening dialogue, your current quest book will be deleted and you will be given a new one. I've added some checks to her so that if you are already on the quest and say 'hail' (when you shouldn't), then she will just tell you that you're already on the quest. However, if you say hail a few times,it could potentially trigger the opening dialogue and thus trigger the anti-exploit measures, which will remove your current book. If you are returning with a completed book 1, you DO NOT need to speak to her. Just walk around her a bit and she will give you the next book.
Event Dungeon
- Healing has not been diminished in any portion of this event.
- The immediate area surrounding the entrance to each dungeon is a 'safe' area. Mobs will not spawn there, but they can be dragged or wander into that space. The same goes for the area immediately surrounding the entrance to the next level of the dungeon.
- There are 2 res stations per level for the first 3 dungeon levels. There is always one res station within 1 screen of the entrance, and another at the exit. These res stations have an ankh, a pet summoning stone, and a corpse stone. All other dungeon levels are very small, and include only 1 res station, with no pet or corpse summoning stones.
- You cannot be in the event dungeon unless you are working on the quest. There is no way to enter it without being on the quest, and if you log out in the dungeon and then log back in after your quest book has decayed, you will be moved out and will have to start over.
- This quest is very linear - once you are moved to the dungeon, you will have to reach the end of that level in order to progress.
- If you must leave the dungeon before completing your current book, you can re-enter by approaching River in Serpent's Hold. You may leave by using Recall or the world teleporters placed at the end of the dungeon levels.
- Take heed to the quest books' instructions to avoid the weeping angels. They will drastically affect the outcome of your quest!
- All mobs are on a pretty fast respawn timer, with 1 of each type spawning every 1-ish minutes
- The items you are required to collect are found inside barrels, and they won't be in the same spot every time you run the quest. These items must be stolen (requires 1.0+ stealing skill), and will respawn every 1 minute. All barrels have various junk items, which you cannot remove or steal. The quest items will not respawn underneath any of the junk. This is just to prevent scripting to determine which barrel contains the quest items. These items also have a small chance of spawning on any mob on that level of the dungeon.
- I haven't gone out of my way to reduce the gold, tokens, or exp provided by the quest mobs overmuch. I did make some generalized reductions to gold and tokens across all mobs spawning in the entire dungeon, but I think you will find the gold is still decent for a full run of the quest.
Dalek Supremes
These mobs are custom to Excelsior, handmade by me. They work a bit differently than other mobs in terms of looting. In order to successfully loot these mobs, you must be abiding by the following:
- You cannot be in war mode.
- You cannot use any auto-looting scripts/programs to loot the mob.
- You cannot use any script or program to auto-open the corpse window. If you do this, the container will be completely empty!
- You must double click the corpse yourself in order to open the corpse container.
- If you're still having trouble, try using CTRL+Shift to see the corpse name - make sure you're clicking on the yellow one, not the gray one.
- These mobs always drop gold and the screwdriver. If you're seeing a completely empty container, it's the wrong one.
- A good way to tell you've opened the correct corpse is that these mobs will have a backpack gump graphic. If you are seeing the usual corpse gump - the crossbones casket gump - you've opened the wrong one.
Weeping angels
- Once you get the "don't blink!" message, you have ~3 seconds to get out of range of the angel. If you run into another angel within the next ~30 seconds, you might automatically trigger the "you blinked!" cinematic.
- If you are victimized by a weeping angel, you will eventually find yourself back at the beginning of the level you were on.
- The weeping angels move periodically. They won't always be in the same place they were last time, and sometimes they will be in very inconvenient spots. You may have to be clever in your methods to get around them, or return later once it has moved.
- The weeping angels keep a running count throughout the entire quest of how many times you were punted by them. This will affect your reward. Essentially, the less angels you fall prey to, the better chance you have of receiving a top tier reward.
- I'm not going to tell y'all the exact numbers for the angels or exactly how the tiers work. Suffice to say that if you fall prey to more than a handful of them, you'll have the lowest chance for a top tier reward.
Rewards
- There are 37 total rewards possible for this quest.
- You cannot view the rewards until you have completed the quest. They are the same as last year, with 4 new hues of jellybaby replacing last year's hues.
- The rewards are separated by reward tier. The table tiers go clockwise beginning on the south end. Thus, tier 1 is the table on the south side, tier 2 is the table on the west, tier 3 is the table on the north, and tier 4 is the table on the east.
- The number of times you were blinked by an Angel affects your reward tier. The fewer times you were blinked, the better your chance for a top-tier reward. You are not guaranteed a specific tier, but with a perfect run you are extremely unlikely to receive anything below a tier 3 reward.
- All wall-hanging reward items come in both directions, but only one is displayed.
- Some of the tier 4 rewards are interactive
- Some of the tier 4 rewards are rare even within that tier's range.
- Some of the quest items are wearable, but none are samplable or relayerable.
- You can stay in the reward area as long as you like
- The reward area allows recall and personal world teleporters to be utilized to exit.
For 2016, I have added 2 additional side-quests to this event.
Seasonal Totem
This quest now offers a seasonal Totem, the Gallifreyan Seal
- Every time you run the quest, you will earn points based on which reward tier you achieved.
- Once you have 500 points, you may say 'hail' to Rory in the event building, he will give you an item to take to our good friend Andrew the collector outside of Yew.
- You can check your count at the blue crystal ball in the event building.
Puppets
You can now obtain one of four Dr-Who themed puppets from this quest. These puppets are equippable and can be sampled. This is the first time ever that I have released any patch graphic wearables for sample!
- There are two tiers. If you achieve 600+ points you may select from either the Weeping Angel or the Cyberman. If you achieve 35+ perfect runs (not being ported by an angel during the run), you can pick from the Adipose or the Dalek.
- You can only pick ONE. If you pick a weeping angel once you've reached 600 points, and then later achieve 35+ perfect runs, you are out of luck. I strongly recommend everyone choose carefully.
- You can check your count at the blue crystal ball in the event building.
- When you are ready to pick your puppet, say hail to Clara Oswald in the event room.
Points are assigned as follows:
Tier 4: 20 points
Tier 3: 15 points
Tier 2: 10 points
Tier 1: 5 points
There haven't been any major changes to this quest since last year and our preliminary tests were good. If you find anything that is in contradiction to the statements I've made above, please send me a page in game, explain the issue and tag any relevant items/mobs/locations. Do not post in this thread for issues/questions.
To begin the quest, speak to River Song in Serpent's Hold. She's in the building to the far Northeast corner of town.
This quest will run until August 1st.
Enjoy, shardlings!
- +N
