Enter the Kobold

[redoubt]

Having the spells not respawn would make the end fight less of a hassle; you shouldnt have to bring mobs into a maze in order to finish the quest, there's nothing to be gained by setting up a quest in which killing the mobs doesn't help since they respawn so quickly

1. remove all stat damage regen. from players and mobs.

2. put meteor swarm back the way it was. i.e. no bludgeon damage. Or at least make it evade-able.

3. make the rest of the dungeon harder.

[quickgrif]

Find a hammerblock robe to mitigate some of the bludgeon damage and kite them away? Get em into the maze maybe and have them spinning their wheels in there. Hell some PLAYERS can't navigate through that maze I should hope that the AI isn't advanced enough that they can logically get out. Sure some of the might eventually get out on accident, but by then you should have beaten down both the kobold and the djinn, looted and been on your way back out.

Spells are pretty quick in the maze so if you do not get out fast they will find the way out and be on you.

[muffinlad]

I agree that its broken in the regard that the Kobold can and will keep backpedalling until he is up the wall and cannot be touched is an issue. The fact that when this happens he instantly regains all his HP is also a problem. Its one of the reasons they removed the splashdown from teh end of StK because once the guardian set foot in the water it would reset his HP.

I want to echo that I do not have a problem with ANY part of this quest, EXCEPT (shouting intended) the leashing on the Kobold giving him his HP back. The Jumping is annoying, but can be dealt with even though I don't care for it, but the HP return is absurd.

The rest of it, from the excess damage, to the protected creatures with high immunities, fine...we have to over come. Don't limit tactical options by using a leash that also punishes.

muffinleash

[Tobril]

Stealth in and enervate/energy drain the oozes, followup with an extended, heightened ooze puppet.

Send in evasion tanks or people with high fire resist due to gear/enhancements/class. Keep them on the big guys and try to keep the trash distracted. The fire summon will last long enough to cause some confusion in there.

Mass charm/suggestion what you can to serve as additional distractions.

Stealth and/or enlarge can also help a lot. Get casters and healers in place outside of danger and assist with buffs and healing.

Just keep pounding on the two big guys and retreat if you need to, preferably without letting the bosses reset.

The fight is a little tricky, but far from "broken".

[Natulyre]

Stealth in and enervate/energy drain the oozes, followup with an extended, heightened ooze puppet.

Send in evasion tanks or people with high fire resist due to gear/enhancements/class. Keep them on the big guys and try to keep the trash distracted. The fire summon will last long enough to cause some confusion in there.

Mass charm/suggestion what you can to serve as additional distractions.

Stealth and/or enlarge can also help a lot. Get casters and healers in place outside of danger and assist with buffs and healing.

Just keep pounding on the two big guys and retreat if you need to, preferably without letting the bosses reset.

The fight is a little tricky, but far from "broken".

Mass charm/suggestion will do nothing in there.

Enlarge is useless, if you get the boss's aggro from the tunnel it'll reach max distance and reset back to full health.

There is something wrong with this dungeon. It's so unbalanced that many players consider it Broken and despise it so much that they'll never run it unless they NEED to, (aka First run flagging and guild member flagging...)

The dungeon itself is a big joke and need to be changed, especially if they plan to get an epic difficulty version of it soon.

[Enochroot]

The dungeon is only broken in that it is far too easily zergable.


I was just in there with a cleric that said "anyone that goes up there without evasion is gonna DIE, ZOMG!"


Well, he did die. We completed it easily. No cleric. I don't see how it's broken.

[Tobril]

Mass charm/suggestion will do nothing in there.

Enlarge is useless, if you get the boss's aggro from the tunnel it'll reach max distance and reset back to full health.

There is something wrong with this dungeon. It's so unbalanced that many players consider it Broken and despise it so much that they'll never run it unless they NEED to, (aka First run flagging and guild member flagging...)

The dungeon itself is a big joke and need to be changed, especially if they plan to get an epic difficulty version of it soon.

It slipped my mind that the fire guys can't be charmed.

I still stand by the enlarge comment though. The idea with that is for the casters to grab aggro from everything in the room, while the fighters do enough damage to regain aggro of the big guy. If your casters are not particularly brave, they can stealth and support the fighters via enlarge and heals/protection instead.

I will admit that it takes fighters with decent AC and high saves to do the fight. It's not easy, but it is doable.

[Shade]

There is no gear that makes a level 20 have an easier time with this. The only way to mitigate the fire damage is with evasion and that doesnt help with the physical aspect of meteor swarms. What tactics do you recommend? Having the evasion try and kite them all into the tunnel? He cant get everyone aggro without dying from the blunt damage. Ooze puppet? You'll specifically need a wiz for this quest because you wont find any sorcs with it, and they save on everything other than a 20. What strategy is there in dying over and over again and hoping you land an acid fog before you die over and over again? Killing the spells doesnt even do much because they respawn!

The idea that you need someone with evasion to complete this fight has always been a joke to me. IMO evasion is just a crutch, never required, rarely helpful. People that force it into there build and sacrifice DPS to get it could often be better off not doing it at all, as what sacrifices they did to get it can make the fight more difficult then it need sto be.
I've completed the quest dozens of times, with at least 10 of those completions being on elite, very rarely did anyone have evasion and never did we use "acid fog" or much at all in the way of nuking

The answer is simple: DPS. Like everything in the entire game, the encounter can be simply beaten by having enough dps and targetting the correct foes. This was tough for a lvl16 character, but as I said pretty easy for a lvl20 especially with the new PrEs.

I can do it as the sole DPS in the group on any of my Barbarians (none of which have evasion), but for most groups thats not going to happen so I recommend 2 good DPS melee. Also take 1 healer, and the rest doesn't matter much as long as they can contribute something.
Strategy:
Long buffs at the shrine, then everyone down into the tunnel for short buffs (haste, rage, displace, songs, prayer, etc)
2-4 DPS melee sprint straight to the kobold and beat him down. Most important thing - run FAST and Direct, Never flank the kobold. Approach him straight up and fight him straight, he will jump back into his tunnel and then you block him in and beat him down. This should take under 30 seconds with 2 decent dps melee on normal. If 1 of the melee run in from the side or tries to flank him, this can end the encounter for the entire group, by causing the kobold to jump into the lava or up where you can't reach him, so correct posititioning is key.
The healer and everyone else should just wait at the very back to avoid initial agro on the spells and elementals, then once there on the melee, run in to heal - timing this is important else the healer ends up with the agro and dies. If done fast enough, they should only need 1-2 heals anyways as the meteor swarm doesn't even spawn for about 30 seconds.
Once the kobold dies - kill the meteor swarm. Again straight dps is the key, it dies in 5-10 seconds if you can locate it quickly - often this is where groups mess up and try to fight mephits, other spells or random stuff. You need to spam tab FAST and find that swarm ASAP to kill it or it will kill you.
Once it's dead, you have plenty of time to kill the Efreeti and end it. It takes 30 seconds for it to respawn, and thats all you should need to down the Efreeti. The moment the Efreeti dies, so do all the spells and they no longer respawn.

That's basicly it, take a couple decent DPS spec characters, 1 decent healer to keep them alive and the fights a piece of cake. No one needs evasion, no one needs to die allot.

The frenzied fire elementals remain, you can either have 1 person kite them near the entrance while ppl loot , then DDoor. Or kill them outright ,then loot in peace and recall.

Tactics such as charms and ooze puppet can work great - but as noted they require players specialized in those abilities, generaly high Int wizard. But with my strategy they aren't required.

But just for notes: Charm tactics:
Symbol of Persuasion on the ramp up imediately before any trash spawns, the retreat back into the tunnels. IF - and this is the big factor as so many wizards will do this wrong, IF - placed correctly, it will charm all the mephits, and they will get the living spells agro, making the rest a breeze as long as you don't get too close to the mephits.

Ooze puppet can work too - but the spell - meteor swarm (shouldn't charm the others, as the swarm will gain all the agro for you since it's blunt dmg works on everything) have good saves and high SR, so it's a more difficult tactic to put into use then symbol of persuasion.

Re: lvl20 not having better survivability.. Um yea they definetely should. There are far better and more reliable ways to mitigate fire damage then evasion. Hitpoints most obviously, as everyone gets bad rolls and evasion doesn't work when you roll a 1 orr even higher without enough reflex save - which increase with levels.Then there's the rarer equipment generally only higher lvls get such as firestorm greaves (or epic variety - lvl20 req), Bracers of the Glacier for fireshield cold proc, and a shroud 45 pnt fire resist item.

[SableShadow]

Have a rabbit run race tracks.

Drop some agro gathering AoEs (clickie, spell) and just keep moving around the room, using the island to handle the direct fire spells (scorching ray, meteor swarm), and keep hasted to stay ahead of the fireballs and flamestrikes. Running, jumping...screaming optional.

Rabbit needs to be able to re-pro, self-healing makes it much easier (since then the cleric can ignore you), fireshield helps a lot...as do decent reflex saves. Done it at level on my non-raid geared, non-greensteeled bard...the key is timing and placement, one AoE on the doorway into the main room (so anyone needing a safe spot has one) and another on the ramp (to pull stuff away from the melees beating down the kobold) before stuff starts to spawn.

Hit the efreet a few times and pull him back up the ramp, repeat. Pick off anything left one at a time, repeat.

Rabbit heals and re-pros as needed...I've seen a cleric clear the whole room by doing figure 8's into the corridor (for multiple bladebarrier goodness), but that's going to depend on how well you can twitch your way past the direct damage stuff.

Keep the eles or don't, once everything is open and folks are done, the rabbit can speed l00t and take off also.

[ddoer]

For those who think this quest is broken should start a thread in the Quests & Adventures forum to gather some strategies before suggesting it is broken.

there are many different ways to finish the quest. My drow wiz 18 just solo'd it twice easily. It took me 30-35 mins and used DD twice. Just buff up with cold shield and fire resist, run in, exhaust the kobold (optional), then use CoC and Otiluke to nuke everything without using any special tactic. when i run out of mana, DD, use rest shrine and come back. In the past, I 2-man'd the quest with 2 casters and we didn't need to use DD at all.

The main threat in that room is the meteor swarm, and the key is to kill it asap. After mod 9, I tested the meteor swarn damage with my sorc 20 and have recorded the damage figures:
http://www.ddoer.com/guide/quest/kobold
My interpretation is only the meteor swarm does meaningful damage to a caster who has good fire damage reduction and absorption. And in general, all mobs in that room deal with small damage figure.

You also have to handle the aggro of living spells and fire elementals, so they won't shoot lots of DBF to the main party. Most people know we can kite them. Other than the fire eles, any caster could kill them easily with CoC, Otiluke, and polar ray. All mobs in that room are vulnerable to cold spell.

Acid fog and ooze puppet are almost useless. By the time you get a crit AF, the fight will have ended already. Ooze puppet should have around 5% chance of landing, i guess.

Evasion is not necessarily, but you either need reflex save to avoid cometfall knockdown or with high enough HP to survive when you are knocked down. if you don't have a healer who can survive in that room, you got to be able to self-heal. You can't reduce the bludgeoning damage but you could reduce any fire damage with firestorm greaves, or craft a GS fire absorption weapon, use cold shield, and keep re-casting fire protection (or just keep drink fire prot pots).

In my 2nd run, with 20% bonus + voice, it still give 19k xp. For a quest with decent xp, it is suppose to be challenging. I do not think this quest is broken. However, there does exist a bug that the kobold may jump to an untouchable spot (to melees).

[LookingForABentoBox]

For those who think this quest is broken should start a thread in the Quests & Adventures forum to gather some strategies before suggesting it is broken.

there are many different ways to finish the quest. My drow wiz 18 just solo'd it twice easily. It took me 30-35 mins and used DD twice. Just buff up with cold shield and fire resist, run in, exhaust the kobold (optional), then use CoC and Otiluke to nuke everything without using any special tactic. when i run out of mana, DD, use rest shrine and come back. In the past, I 2-man'd the quest with 2 casters and we didn't need to use DD at all.

The main threat in that room is the meteor swarm, and the key is to kill it asap. After mod 9, I tested the meteor swarn damage with my sorc 20 and have recorded the damage figures:
http://www.ddoer.com/guide/quest/kobold
My interpretation is only the meteor swarm does meaningful damage to a caster who has good fire damage reduction and absorption. And in general, all mobs in that room deal with small damage figure.

You also have to handle the aggro of living spells and fire elementals, so they won't shoot lots of DBF to the main party. Most people know we can kite them. Other than the fire eles, any caster could kill them easily with CoC, Otiluke, and polar ray. All mobs in that room are vulnerable to cold spell.

Acid fog and ooze puppet are almost useless. By the time you get a crit AF, the fight will have ended already. Ooze puppet should have around 5% chance of landing, i guess.

Evasion is not necessarily, but you either need reflex save to avoid cometfall knockdown or with high enough HP to survive when you are knocked down. if you don't have a healer who can survive in that room, you got to be able to self-heal. You can't reduce the bludgeoning damage but you could reduce any fire damage with firestorm greaves, or craft a GS fire absorption weapon, use cold shield, and keep re-casting fire protection (or just keep drink fire prot pots).

In my 2nd run, with 20% bonus + voice, it still give 19k xp. For a quest with decent xp, it is suppose to be challenging. I do not think this quest is broken. However, there does exist a bug that the kobold may jump to an untouchable spot (to melees).

You did all this with a full group or a small group? When I did the quest and everyone was dying from fire damage it was a full group, so maybe you were having an easier time because of dungeon scaling.

[Krell]

AD is right on this one.

You've also been around long enough to remember when the meteor swarm could be evaded AND when you would enfeeble the spells and have them stay that way.

That version of the quest presented multiple options at completion and I would say was better balanced with the rest of the quest. With the nerf to stat damage and the huge buff to meteor swarm, this quest is now out of wack.

Also begs the side question of: "whats the point of evasion if you can get pounded by chain casting living spells' meteor swarms?" I'd like to see meteor swarm nerfed back down to all evade-able (both for mobs and players.) It used to be that you could mitigate the fire part with buffs and only suffer half (the bludgeon part) even without evasion. Now there is little difference between evasion and no evasion. I'd also be happy going back to not auto-regenning stat damage (both mobs and players).

I think in general living meteor spells are unbalanced. I was hit by one today for 275 just running to VOD. Can't evade, can't protect, they chain cast. This quest was biased toward evasion characters before this change, same with SoS. I can live with that. At least a good healer could keep you up most the time. But after the change people avoid the quest due to bad experiences. The best chance is to use questionable tactics such as pulling long distances and getting mobs stuck. Also, why does Ooze Puppet work anyways? This level 2 spells says "Telekinetically controls the actions of an enemy ooze, forcing it to change sides.". Also the boss climbing to the ceiling further raises the frustration level. This quest shouldn't be harder than Prey or Monestary at the end.

Suggestions?
Make it so the living spells don't respond or only respond every 3-4 minutes, or change cometfall or remove the living spell version from the game. Imagine a Horrid Wilting living spell. Put in some inviso walls to keep the boss off the roof. Reduce fire elemental health. I think this would put it in line with the other refuge quests.

In short, the quest is do-able but not in line with the adventure area in my opinion. I've been in a few groups where people talk about what quests to run. Everyone is up for prey and monestary but when kobold comes up, people start talking about why they don't want to run it.

[firegood]

Have you been in since the changes I mentioned? I think they both happened at the same time scaling did (or close to it). Maybe you've not been in since?

I didn't mind it too much before, but I find it annoying now. I'd rather run coal chamber...

Yes, it's not hard. No one in my party had evasion. Caster FvS, Melee FvS, warforged wizard. 40 FR FvS and fireshield on the wizard, we had all the spells and mephits charmed the entire fight. This is probably a very strange group that we play, we can all heal and have good fire res, but it was really a joke. No challenge at all on normal.

[Varis]

if you're a sorcerer and you didn't treat reflex like **** you can solo "enter the kobold" without greaves.... on hard. (elite they spam dispell making it a wee bit inconvenient solo)

You run in, up the hill and nuke downslope. No holding back, only pause quickly to use a heal scroll. I like to rotate cone of cold and polar ray, targeting the kobold. It is essential that you adjust yourself so the kobold is always between you and the horde of mephits, elementals and living spells.

Cone of cold will take care of the mephits quickly and keep the living spells in check. IF however, you keep missing the meteorswarm with cone of cold you need to jump down and kill it or you will end up spending too much time healing.

If you run out of mana, DD out to shrine up again. Rule of thumb... DD in between kobold and efreet fight or you risk a reset.
Also, the harder you nuke, the fewer times you have to worry about the meteor respawn. In my case I don't have to kill him more then twice.

[LookingForABentoBox]

if you're a sorcerer and you didn't treat reflex like **** you can solo "enter the kobold" without greaves.... on hard. (elite they spam dispell making it a wee bit inconvenient solo)

You run in, up the hill and nuke downslope. No holding back, only pause quickly to use a heal scroll. I like to rotate cone of cold and polar ray, targeting the kobold. It is essential that you adjust yourself so the kobold is always between you and the horde of mephits, elementals and living spells.

Cone of cold will take care of the mephits quickly and keep the living spells in check. IF however, you keep missing the meteorswarm with cone of cold you need to jump down and kill it or you will end up spending too much time healing.

If you run out of mana, DD out to shrine up again. Rule of thumb... DD in between kobold and efreet fight or you risk a reset.
Also, the harder you nuke, the fewer times you have to worry about the meteor respawn. In my case I don't have to kill him more then twice.

I don't think being able to solo it on normal is an indicator to how hard it is with a group, because of dungeon scaling.

[Glenalth]

The kobold jumping onto spots where you can't hit him and regenerating to full health for no reason tend to make the end much more frustrating than enjoyable IMO.

RAGE!

Had him do that 3 different times on a solo run including once when he was low enough to spawn the djinn. Was getting very, very angry. I would have given up but it was the principle of the thing at that point.

Typical group tactics that have been working well for me is to have one evasion type with some sort of healing ability kite everything except the names in a circle while the rest of the group fights the named and then does cleanup, pulling 1 mob at a time so they don't get toasted too bad by the fire ele auras.

[Varis]

I don't think being able to solo it on normal is an indicator to how hard it is with a group, because of dungeon scaling.

I have soloed it on hard and I have killed the kobold with 5 stones in my bag and duo/3man the quest ALL the time. He is simply NOT hard on normal. The only thing you notice a bit more is damage from the meteorswarm but if you do your job and pay attention that won't be an issue at all.

[maddmatt70]

No do not change a thing. The casual players already have the IQ snoozefest. I am so happy for a challenge of any sort at the end game. Please do not make this end fight easier. The challenge aspect of it makes it fun.

[LookingForABentoBox]

No do not change a thing. The casual players already have the IQ snoozefest. I am so happy for a challenge of any sort at the end game. Please do not make this end fight easier. The challenge aspect of it makes it fun.

A) Taking out the respawning nature of mobs, or making the elementals orange-named, would, IMHO, make the quest a lot less annoying but still challenging. There's a difference between frustrating and challenging, I'm okay with having difficult opponents but difficult opponents that you can't kill for more than a short period of time I never was a huge fan of, since these elementals can't be charmed or flesh-to-stoned or anything.

B) Someone looking for a challenge can always do quests on hard and elite, quests are generally a lot more challenging on hard or elite than on normal, but a level 17 quest on normal shouldn't be harder than level 17-20 quests on hard or elite. Hard an elite would still be there for people who want increased rewards and increased challenges, normal would be there for people who are okay with not having the perfect group makeup with perfect gear to do a level 17 quest

[ddoer]

You did all this with a full group or a small group? When I did the quest and everyone was dying from fire damage it was a full group, so maybe you were having an easier time because of dungeon scaling.

I don't think being able to solo it on normal is an indicator to how hard it is with a group, because of dungeon scaling.

how well do your party, esp the party leader, know about the quest? how well are your build and do you have any fire defensive gears like Firestorm Greaves? what tactic did you use? Perhaps it is time for you to stop complaining the quest is broken but to learn about the quest, figure out a better tactic, improving your build/gear (such as gear or umd for cold shield). If six people with no clue rush in and fight randomly, it is expected that they'll get wiped easily.

dungeon scaling makes a quest harder but getting a few more people outweigh the increase in difficulty. when you drop in HP or get killed, somebody else could save you. and you have more dps to kill the mobs, have a chance to send a dedicated person to take care of the meteor swarm and do kiting, and could put a person at the switch as insurance. When i was in a full party, it took much shorter time to complete and I never need to DD out for mana.