Deep in the Rotlands - Pit Drop

[Spartan]

Can someone take a look at the pit drop for the Deep in the Rotlands quest? You are dropped right on top of the spawn. Given the abilities / attacks / auras used, its very prone to TPK. We had three die before they even loaded on the most recent run. Then most of the rest of the party went down. It seems excessive.

[Pup]

If no one in your group knows that the ants are a hive mind and will know that you are coming then I suppose this is a problem.  I personally always spoke and emoted about how the ants know we are here and we need to hurry, so as to make sure everyone joined the melee quickly.

If you are playing a char with a decent Lore skill, pipe up and say something.  If you are low Lore/Wisdom, jump in and wade through the melee.

[Spartan]

I will be honest, the smart ass side of me wants to respond with 'so we need to meta-game the quest in order to not have a half+ party kill on the drop in'? There is no indication of what your about to enter when you drop into the pit.  ;)

On the more constructive side, we did prepare before dropping in actually. We had a solid group of level 9s and 10s. We all entered together. We landed right on top of the spawn. The more squishy ones died before they could even finish loading. The rest of us were surrounded / blocked by the sheer number of NPCs to make positioning & moving extremely difficult. Combine that with what with the fear auras, poison attacks, and webs those NPCs are using and you get the situation I described.

[VanillaPudding]

I'd like to say that I agree with the idea of this suggestion. It would be nice to change up the "drop in" part a little to have it less brutal / instant

[The Tailor]

It didn't used to aggro the whole room whenever you did the drop... the mobs were separated out into different packs, rather than it just being a continuous onslaught of doom from the transition down. I think that changed whenever the big AI change happened, and we started getting things like quest mobs pulling from ridiculously far away or running toward the start of quests or congregating into larger, more unwieldy packs. It's definitely not how it was, and I don't know if it's intentional, but it definitely changes the character and the difficulty of the quest in a very negative way.

[Anonymous Lemur]

I've brought several low level covenant people who had never done this quest before (mostly ranging between level 5 and 7) and only had a little trouble keeping them alive.

That said I DO AGREE that being swarmed on all sides immediately by the entire area of a hundred odd monsters is pretty crazy. I think it would be nice if the drop down area was changed to have a couple of more obvious choke points so you can protect your less experienced folk from getting completely overwhelmed. A simple ring of debri or "entry room" would suffice. Maybe that goes against the design of the quest though.

[Spartan]

Lemur, can you PM the tactics you used to keep them alive? As a player I am very curious. Every run I have been on with that quest (including the ones with full buffed / high level / well geared characters) ended badly. If it involved FOIG stuff, then no worries. But as a player I am wondering how to keep the more squishy characters alive when you drop in.


If the AI used to be different that would make a huge difference. Roaming packs are not so bad. Its the inability to move due to number of NPCs / mass swarm that causes the above. Maybe a drop in room / choke point or something as suggested.

[Anonymous Lemur]

Basically you need to have your group drop down all at once and not delay at all, also the first people to drop down need to run forward a bit and expose themselves that way the swarms will congregate around them. Ideally you want to herd your group into one of the corners so that you can defend them without anything getting past you.

I sort of wish I had a screenshot as it's hard to describe, but essentially you need your weakest people tucked into a corner against some rubble or a wall and your frontline in front of them so your group sort of form a triangle against the wall. There is NOWHERE to run if you do this though... so you need to be confident. 5/+1 dr from blur is essential for all of your front line as well as constant endure elements (thankfully the quest drops tons of 8 charge endure elem items.)

The most important thing however is that everybody gets down IMMEDIATELY, if you delay at all you will spawn in surrounded and be in trouble.

[Listener]

With that in mind, I feel like a good potential change to make would be to delay the swarming entirely and for 2-3 rounds instead add in atmospheric ominous emotes about how you've landed in what seems to be the heart.. the insects are aware of you.. you can see them all around you, massing for an attack...


Then unleash the summons.


Because some people just have crappy load times.


And by summons I did mean spawns. Whatever lol

[Pup]

Silly me I thought I included a suggestion to warn IG about the spawns.  I started my point by talking about dealing with the OOCness of the quest, then meant to go into how it can be changed.  I didn't mean to write a guide to metagame the quest.  For some reason I lost the middle part of my post and didn't notice until now. 

[Time_Stomped]

seems like this quest has a little bit of the flesh golem gnoll quest syndrome