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  1. #1
    Community Member FlyingTurtle's Avatar
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    Default Mabar Dragon Chamber Walkthrough (SPOILERS)

    Depravity made such a nice map of the Mabar Dragon Instance that I had to write a guide to go with it. Also, since I was the one who asked for a walkthrough a week ago, I feel obliged to write one now. Here it is.

    Plot Summary

    Joe Lantern the pumpkin-wearing mindflayer has summoned an undead Spectral Dragon! It is now up to you and a group of 16-24 complete strangers to take down the beast and recover the spoils. Will you be cluey, or will you be a noob?

    Overview and Objectives

    Protect the altars from the dragon and the Night Gargoyles. Keep the lights on to greatly weaken the enemies. And slay the dragon!

    Walkthrough

    Before the quest

    Prequisite item: You need an Ethereal Key to enter the instance. Keys are dropped randomly by graveyard undead just like ingredients.

    Keep track of how long until the next summoning by talking to Joe Lantern about how many more ritual ingredients are needed. When it hits around 2k, you have maybe 5 minutes until the gates open. Restore your SP and HP (unlike normal quests, the quest instance is considered a public instance. So you will enter the instance with your CURRENT hp and sp). Tip for lowbies: Go to the tavern and stand near the bar. You will be hit with many high level buffs, all of which you can bring into the quest with you (but only the ones that last >10 minutes will be useful). Note: you will NOT get a notice of the door opening if you're in House J. Keep track of the time. When the gates open, enter immediately. Time is of the essence.

    Deployment Phase

    You have 10 minutes from the start of the instance until the Dragon appears. During these 10 minutes, all players must spread out to make sure all the vital quest locations are covered. This is the most tricky and crucial part of the quest.


    Map courtesy of Depravity's map post

    You will spawn in one of 4 randomly chosen corners of the map (see green stars on map above). That means other players will be randomly distributed around the corners also, so there's no need to run to the one farthest away from you. The corners are at NW, NE, SE, SW. Head straight towards either the nearest:
    1. Altar Room: From the main corridor, you will have to go up a ramp marked with yellow runes, and drop down a hole. Touch the altar to activate it. To exit an altar room, you have to go to a hole in the ground (also marked with runes), drop down, run through a corridor, and climb a ladder to get back up to the main corridor room.
    2. Lever Room: these are visible from the main corridor. Levers will be locked to OFF until the 10 minutes deployment time is up and the mobs start arriving. When that happens, your job is to make sure it's in the ON position and the altar room it overlooks is lit up. More on that later.

    Headcounts

    Open General Chat and keep sharp notice of it: it is now restricted to only the players in your instance. Once you're at your chosen location, announce your local headcount regularly into General Chat. E.g., if you're in the SE Altar Room, and there are 5 players there, say: "SE altar: 5"; One guy at the SW lever = "SW lever: 1". Other players should be announcing their headcounts too as more players enter the instance.

    Balancing headcounts

    It's possible (maybe even optimal) to complete with 5 teams, one for each altar room and one roving team for all the levers. But IMO this potentially requires a very high level of coordination that you should not be expecting if you're a new player reading this guide. Most of the time, you'll have enough players that you don't have to short-man like that. So we'll assume we need 8 teams: 4 altar rooms and 4 levers.

    Each lever room needs at least 1 person or you will fail (preferably at least 2 if you have more than 16 players)
    Each altar room needs at least 2 people or you will fail (preferably at least 4 if you have more than 16 players)

    Rearrange yourself into teams of roughly equal size in each corner. If one of the rooms or levers is not announcing a headcount for a while, assume there's nobody there. Go and check! The Phiarlan Pendant of Time, or Haste and Expeditious Retreat is very helpful for navigating through the long corridors quickly. If there are 6 or more people just hanging out in a room, someone almost certainly needs to move. If you switch rooms, announce your intentions so people don't collide, e.g., say on gen chat: "I'm moving from SE to NE".

    If you need more people in your room, or if you're looking at the announced counts and it looks uneven but you can't move yourself since it would leave your room undermanned, feel free to suggest people move to the undermanned rooms.

    Once everyone is in place, if you want, you can party up with the other people in the same spot so they can monitor health bars. Often you can't because they're already in a party. It doesn't matter, just make sure you're self sufficient. BYOH (bring your own healing - potions wands etc), because if you die and are not ressed in 2 minutes, you get booted and don't get a reward even if the instance wins. Cast your long lasting buffs (most of your SP should regenerate before the dragon arrives).

    The Battle

    Things are pretty simple when the quest begins. The dragon "Eternity" spawns in one of the 4 rooms at random, fights a bit, then teleports out to another random room, repeat until he's dead.

    At regular intervals Night Gargoyles will spawn in all the rooms and also rush any levers that are on: they will attempt to destroy the altar, or turn the switch to cut the lights in the altar rooms. If any altar is destroyed at any time the quest instafails. If the dragon is in a dark room, it gets much stronger, gets damage reduction, etc.

    Hence your goals are, in order of priority:
    1. Protect the altars
    2. Keep the lights ON
    3. Slay the dragon

    Yup, "slay the dragon" is the lowest priority. It should just happen naturally if you're doing 1 and 2 correctly.

    Levers cannot be destroyed, so if you're defending a lever over a room with no dragon, you can conserve resources and leave the lever off (which causes the gargoyles not to spawn) or take them out slowly. If the dragon is in your room though you better keep those lights ON if you want your buddies down stairs to be making progress at all.

    Aggro-grabbing the night gargoyles is thus of the highest importance. Their aggro is very easy to grab, you just need to damage them a bit. For the lever teams, one should grab aggro while the other makes sure the lever keeps the lights ON.

    For the altar rooms, immediately announce on gen chat when the dragon ports into your room to alert the people in the lever room. This may also alert people running around upstairs to reinforce the appropriate lever room.

    I'm not sure what the stats on the mobs are, maybe other players can contribute here. All I know is Eternity can be hurt with fire (slightly resistant) and ice (not resistant) and is immune to lightning. Disintegrate works on the dragon. The gargoyles are Evil (so your Holy / PG stuff works on them). Eternity is an Undead, not a dragon, so Firewalls and cleric light spells do double damage and Dragon Bane does nothing. Eternity has a pretty weak aura of cold that damages you if you're close, so try to have some cold resist on the melees.

    The End

    Once someone kills the dragon, you will get a victory message. After a few seconds, everyone will be booted from the instance, with a shiny Spectral Dragon Scale in your backpack, which you can exchange for Halloween goodies.

    Happy Halloween and Good Undead Hunting!
    Last edited by FlyingTurtle; 10-30-2010 at 08:13 AM.

  2. #2
    Community Member systemstate's Avatar
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    Excellent guide sir! +1

    I would also like to add that while you are in the tavern passively gathering buffs, now is the opportune time to chuck a pumpkin grenade at your feet.

    The satisfaction garnered from successfully pumpkin-heading 30+ other players with a single grenade is second only to obtaining red dragon scale armor.
    Have a nice day!

  3. #3

  4. #4
    Community Member Crann's Avatar
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    Nice guide. +1

    One point might be to address the raid grouping.

    I know that on Lam, that if you were in a party/raid going into the dragon instance, you may not be in the same instance as your raid/party members.

    I had read a couple posts about people in the live previews going in with their raid group, so not sure about which holds true for the live event.

    It would be highly beneficial to be able to enter the event with an organized raid, but if that is not the case, you should drop group before entering, so you may form raids inside the event. Alot easier to coordinate when you can see the others dots and bars.

  5. #5
    Community Member Cauthey's Avatar
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    Fantastic guide. This is how I have done it twice successfully, and this is how I would do it again. I would +1 ya, but it hasn't been long enough since the last +1.

  6. #6
    Community Member stoolcannon's Avatar
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    Excellent guide and apparently I must like you because it says I need to spread rep around before giving it to you again.

    Someone make a brilliant and insightful post so I can rep it and then rep turtle.

  7. #7
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    Nice guide, thanks.

    Quote Originally Posted by FlyingTurtle View Post
    Haste and Expeditious Retreat is very helpful for navigating through the long corridors quickly.
    Additionally, the Phiarlan Pendant of Time works if you have the favor, since it's a public instance. Speaking of favor rewards, the Silver Flame reward that boosts your in-town regen to 2 hp and 8 sp (from 1hp and 5 sp) was pretty useful.

    Also, I have a question. In one run I was on, people were saying not to pull the lever unless the dragon was currently in that room. I'm not sure why, maybe it reduces spawns at the lever if it's not pulled, or maybe they were just mistaken. Anybody know anything about that?

  8. #8
    Community Member dogpig00's Avatar
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    how do i deal with the following situations?

    1. I cannot move, or I moved after 30 seconds .
    2. I cannot cast spells, or my spell showed after 30 seconds .
    3. I cannot target anything even the dragon is in front of me.
    4. I am taking damage when nothing is around me.
    5. I cannot use the lever.
    6. The dragon is not taking damage, even though the skylight is on.

  9. #9
    Community Member Crann's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by dogpig00 View Post
    how do i deal with the following situations?

    1. I cannot move, or I moved after 30 seconds .
    2. I cannot cast spells, or my spell showed after 30 seconds .
    3. I cannot target anything even the dragon is in front of me.
    4. I am taking damage when nothing is around me.
    5. I cannot use the lever.
    6. The dragon is not taking damage, even though the skylight is on.
    How do you deal with lag anywhere else in DDO?

    Results have varied, but the majority of feedback, including myself, experienced very little or no lag.

  10. #10
    Community Member FlyingTurtle's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by dogpig00 View Post
    how do i deal with the following situations?

    1. I cannot move, or I moved after 30 seconds .
    2. I cannot cast spells, or my spell showed after 30 seconds .
    3. I cannot target anything even the dragon is in front of me.
    4. I am taking damage when nothing is around me.
    5. I cannot use the lever.
    6. The dragon is not taking damage, even though the skylight is on.
    Lag-playing is a lost art.

    The thing to remember is that, although stuff is happening / not happening visually on your client, it's being only slowly processed at the server, which is still taking all of your commands. There's a buffer of commands that will be processed eventually in order.

    So, for example, if you press your "cast spell" button and nothing comes out, you don't:

    * Tap it a lot of times impatiently and start cursing
    * Jump around to see if you've been webbed (nothing here casts web)
    * Throw your mouse across the room
    * Log in to the DDO forum and start complaining about lag in somebody else's walkthrough post

    Instead, you:

    Keep the dragon hard-targetted; press move right to evade (your character on screen actually doesn't move); wait 3 seconds; throw another spell; quaff a heal (you're close to full health, but just in case); move again; press cast again.

    Your friends will be all "holy carp how did you play in that lag???!?!"

    Good luck.

  11. #11
    Community Member Crann's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by flyingturtle View Post
    * Log In To The Ddo Forum And Start Complaining About Lag In Somebody Else's Walkthrough Post
    Roflmao

  12. #12
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    Default Is the scale tradeable?

    Or bound to Character or account?

    Thanks!

  13. #13
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    Default just to be snippy back

    Quote Originally Posted by dogpig00 View Post
    how do i deal with the following situations?

    1. I cannot move, or I moved after 30 seconds .
    2. I cannot cast spells, or my spell showed after 30 seconds .
    3. I cannot target anything even the dragon is in front of me.
    4. I am taking damage when nothing is around me.
    5. I cannot use the lever.
    6. The dragon is not taking damage, even though the skylight is on.
    Fire with fire, bucky,

    Upgrade from dial up.
    Buy a new router.
    Turn down graphics.

    lag is going to happen. Turbine can affect some but not all causes.
    The improvements from lama, to beta1, to beta2 were amazing.
    Please understand that if not everyone is getting lagged out it is not a design or system problem. Sure it could be a confluence in the code but it is less likely to be on the server end if it is not everyone.
    If your getting lag non-stop, that is more than a stutter, dump, and hope you get a better hop to their servers next time.
    If repeated restarts don't fix it, make sure nothing on your end is to blame.
    Then, or also, file a bug report with exactly what was going on and what was being done.

  14. #14
    Community Member FlyingTurtle's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ZodacBKB View Post
    Also, I have a question. In one run I was on, people were saying not to pull the lever unless the dragon was currently in that room. I'm not sure why, maybe it reduces spawns at the lever if it's not pulled, or maybe they were just mistaken. Anybody know anything about that?
    Ok, I checked this, and, I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem to make any difference whether or not the lever is open, you get attacked anyway. Personally I'd just keep it on all the time, you never know if the dragon's going to show up in your room while you're in a furball with some gargoyles.

  15. #15
    Community Member irivan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by FlyingTurtle View Post
    Depravity made such a nice map of the Mabar Dragon Instance that I had to write a guide to go with it. Also, since I was the one who asked for a walkthrough a week ago, I feel obliged to write one now. Here it is.

    Plot Summary

    Joe Lantern the pumpkin-wearing mindflayer has summoned an undead Spectral Dragon! It is now up to you and a group of 16-24 complete strangers to take down the beast and recover the spoils. Will you be cluey, or will you be a noob?

    Overview and Objectives

    Protect the altars from the dragon and the Night Gargoyles. Keep the lights on to greatly weaken the enemies. And slay the dragon!

    Walkthrough

    Before the quest

    Prequisite item: You need an Ethereal Key to enter the instance. Keys are dropped randomly by graveyard undead just like ingredients.

    Keep track of how long until the next summoning by talking to Joe Lantern about how many more ritual ingredients are needed. When it hits around 3k, you have maybe 5 minutes until the gates open. Restore your SP and HP (unlike normal quests, the quest instance is considered a public instance. So you will enter the instance with your CURRENT hp and sp). Tip for lowbies: Go to the tavern and stand near the bar. You will be hit with many high level buffs, all of which you can bring into the quest with you (but only the ones that last >10 minutes will be useful). Note: you will NOT get a notice of the door opening if you're in House J. Keep track of the time. When the gates open, enter immediately. Time is of the essence.

    Deployment Phase

    You have 10 minutes from the start of the instance until the Dragon appears. During these 10 minutes, all players must spread out to make sure all the vital quest locations are covered. This is the most tricky and crucial part of the quest.


    Map courtesy of Depravity's map post

    You will spawn in one of 4 randomly chosen corners of the map (see green stars on map above). That means other players will be randomly distributed around the corners also, so there's no need to run to the one farthest away from you. The corners are at NW, NE, SE, SW. Head straight towards either the nearest:
    1. Altar Room: From the main corridor, you will have to go up a ramp marked with yellow runes, and drop down a hole. Touch the altar to activate it. To exit an altar room, you have to go to a hole in the ground (also marked with runes), drop down, run through a corridor, and climb a ladder to get back up to the main corridor room.
    2. Lever Room: these are visible from the main corridor. Make sure it's in the ON position and the altar room it overlooks is lit up.

    Headcounts

    Open General Chat and keep sharp notice of it: it is now restricted to only the players in your instance. Once you're at your chosen location, announce your local headcount regularly into General Chat. E.g., if you're in the SE Altar Room, and there are 5 players there, say: "SE altar: 5"; One guy at the SW lever = "SW lever: 1". Other players should be announcing their headcounts too as more players enter the instance.

    Balancing headcounts

    It's possible (maybe even optimal) to complete with 5 teams, one for each altar room and one roving team for all the levers. But IMO this potentially requires a very high level of coordination that you should not be expecting if you're a new player reading this guide. Most of the time, you'll have enough players that you don't have to short-man like that. So we'll assume we need 8 teams: 4 altar rooms and 4 levers.

    Each lever room needs at least 1 person (preferably 2)
    Each altar room needs at least 2 people (preferably 4)

    Rearrange yourself into teams of roughly equal size in each corner. If one of the rooms or levers is not announcing a headcount for a while, assume there's nobody there. Go and check! Haste and Expeditious Retreat is very helpful for navigating through the long corridors quickly. If there are 6 or more people just hanging out in a room, someone almost certainly needs to move. If you switch rooms, announce your intentions so people don't collide, e.g., "1 from SE moving to NE".

    If you need more people in your room, or if you're looking at the announced counts and it looks uneven but you can't move yourself since it would leave your room undermanned, feel free to suggest people move to the undermanned rooms.

    Once everyone is in place, if you want, you can party up with the other people in the same spot so they can monitor health bars. Often you can't because they're already in a party. It doesn't matter, just make sure you're self sufficient. BYOH (bring your own healing - potions wands etc), because if you die and are not ressed in 2 minutes, you get booted and don't get a reward even if the instance wins. Cast your long lasting buffs (most of your SP should regenerate before the dragon arrives).

    The Battle

    Things are pretty simple when the quest begins. The dragon "Eternity" spawns in one of the 4 rooms at random, fights a bit, then teleports out to another random room, repeat until he's dead.

    At regular intervals Night Gargoyles will spawn in all the rooms and levers: they will attempt to destroy the altar, or turn the switch to cut the lights in the altar rooms. If any altar is destroyed at any time the quest instafails. If the dragon is in a dark room, it gets much stronger, gets damage reduction, etc. (I think the gargoyles do too, not sure).

    Hence your goals are, in order of priority:
    1. Protect the altars
    2. Keep the lights ON
    3. Slay the dragon

    Yup, "slay the dragon" is the lowest priority. It should just happen naturally if you're doing 1 and 2 correctly.

    Levers cannot be destroyed, so if you're defending a lever over a room with no dragon, you can conserve resources and take them out slowly. If the dragon is in your room though you better keep those lights ON if you want your buddies down stairs to be making progress at all.

    Aggro-grabbing the night gargoyles is thus of the highest importance. Their aggro is very easy to grab, you just need to damage them a bit. For the lever teams, one should grab aggro while the other makes sure the lever keeps the lights ON.

    For the altar rooms, immediately announce on gen chat when the dragon ports into your room to alert the people in the lever room. This may also alert people running around upstairs to reinforce the appropriate lever room.

    I'm not sure what the stats on the mobs are, maybe other players can contribute here. All I know is Eternity can be hurt with fire and ice but isn't particularly weak against them (haven't tried acid or lightning), and the gargoyles are Evil (so your Holy / PG stuff works on them). Eternity is an Undead, not a dragon, so Firewalls and cleric light spells do double damage and Dragon Bane does nothing. Eternity has a pretty weak aura of cold that damages you if you're close, so try to have some cold resist on the melees.

    The End

    Once someone kills the dragon, you will get a victory message. After a few seconds, everyone will be booted from the instance, with a shiny Spectral Dragon Scale in your backpack, which you can exchange for Halloween goodies.

    Happy Halloween and Good Undead Hunting!
    Outstanding
    Quote Originally Posted by MajMalphunktion View Post
    By our metrics you guys (forum folk) are less than 5% of the population. Bug reports come from 100% of the population.
    Master of the Tower
    http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=203205

  16. #16
    Community Member lugoman's Avatar
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    The two times I've died in the raid, I've gotten warped out after 2 minutes and lost my key. Is this WAI?

  17. #17
    Gweater Dwagonmark of Fwiends (2009) (2010) Girlbrush's Avatar
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    Thank you so much for this guide.

  18. #18
    Community Member Depravity's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by FlyingTurtle View Post
    Depravity made such a nice map of the Mabar Dragon Instance that I had to write a guide to go with it.
    Ye gawds, a compliment. Thanks.
    At regular intervals Night Gargoyles will spawn in all the rooms and levers: they will attempt to destroy the altar, or turn the switch to cut the lights in the altar rooms.
    If the lever is off, the gargoyles up top don't spawn (dunno about the altar room). This can be handy if the waves are chewing up whoever's on lever duty. Just let it stay off until the dragon comes and you can rest up a bit. On the other hand, those gargoyles have a chance to drop collectibles for more motes. Gripping hand: Wall of Fire!

    ****EDIT****
    Quote Originally Posted by FlyingTurtle View Post
    Ok, I checked this, and, I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem to make any difference whether or not the lever is open, you get attacked anyway. Personally I'd just keep it on all the time, you never know if the dragon's going to show up in your room while you're in a furball with some gargoyles.
    I may be wrong. I usually do lever, but I also usually keep it lit and WoF going. An iffy group can net me 20-40 of each collectible while they thrash about, so I haven't really tested this extennsively.
    This edit is what happens when you don't carefully read the entire thread. I blame the night-black coffee.
    ********

    I'm not sure what the stats on the mobs are, maybe other players can contribute here. All I know is Eternity can be hurt with fire and ice but isn't particularly weak against them (haven't tried acid or lightning), and the gargoyles are Evil (so your Holy / PG stuff works on them). Eternity is an Undead, not a dragon, so Firewalls and cleric light spells do double damage and Dragon Bane does nothing. Eternity has a pretty weak aura of cold that damages you if you're close, so try to have some cold resist on the melees.
    She's immune to force, so magic missile, the wizard past life feat, and (I think) arcane bolt are all no gos. But WoF works, so who really cares.

    Great guide, enjoy the greenis extension.
    Last edited by Depravity; 10-28-2010 at 11:18 AM. Reason: Reading, it's fundamental
    Near useless builds for those who want a challenge: The True(ly Useless) Necromancer - The Abuse Sponge Paladin
    Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

  19. #19
    Community Member Mockduck's Avatar
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    I've also seen an alternate lever tactic where a good group of 2 or 3 people handle all of the levers, running from corner to corner as needed to follow the dragon spawn. This of course means good general chat tactic talk (and haste), but provided people are being clear about where the dragon is, it's pretty doable to run around the outside, hit the levers and fight the mobs, particularly if there are a couple of people with you to handle the spawns (in this case it was several well-geared level 20's.)
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  20. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by Depravity View Post
    If the lever is off, the gargoyles up top don't spawn (dunno about the altar room). This can be handy if the waves are chewing up whoever's on lever duty. Just let it stay off until the dragon comes and you can rest up a bit. On the other hand, those gargoyles have a chance to drop collectibles for more motes. Gripping hand: Wall of Fire!
    My wife and I normally duo a leaver on our sorcs. We pull the lever and forget.

    Between cloud kill (gargoles are living things, and this tends to grab agro a heck of a lot better than WoF) WoF, and an air elemental.... We pretty much sit back and collect motes/items while waiting on people to kill the dragon.

    Quote Originally Posted by Depravity View Post
    She's immune to force, so magic missile, the wizard past life feat, and (I think) arcane bolt are all no gos. But WoF works, so who really cares.
    Fire only seemed to work if the light was on her. I tended to resort to Ice instead. That worked quite well.

    And I'll toss you some green for the map work.

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