Abbot raid - doing goggles legit

[ulticleo]

I wanted to share with everyone my experience in learning how to do goggles legit. I hope some would find it helpful, and maybe we'll get more people doing it. I find the black abbot to be one of the best raids in the game, and I flag all my toons if only for the insane amount of xp in the actual flagging process. I think necro 4 is an excellent pack (despite some recent posts to the contrary), but then again, I also don't mind necro1-3

The Puzzle:
The goal is to get across a wide chasm to the other side, where you can break one of the sarcophagi granting the black abbot immortality. The chasm is too wide to jump or abundant step/fly across, but there are vanishing platforms that you can use to run across. The catch is that you CANNOT see them. A second player, blocked by a barrier from you, can see them, and the two of you must rely on each other to get across.

I will be calling the person who can see the tiles "leader", and the person crossing the chasm "runner".

The Basics:
Voice chat has inherent latency, and is inaccurate. If you try using "go/stop", you will fail. The runner will invariably not respond quickly enough, or run too far, or not far enough, and will fall. Instead, the idea is to face each other across the barrier, and using the strafe right/left (Q and E for me) to move. The leader runs and stops as appropriate on the bridge, while the runner does his best to mirror him PRECISELY.

The Approach:
1) Be patient and take your time.
This is the most important factor. If you try to rush, you will fail. Most players would much rather have you spend an extra 5-10 min and get it done the first time, than have you fail and repeat. So take your time.

2) Study the route.
This should really be "take your time to study the route", reinforcing the above point. There are four rows of tiles across. Ideally, you can stick to one row. In some rare tough cases, you will have to switch rows part way through. This is tough to do right.
Different leaders may look for different criteria in choosing a route. Some prefer as many blue (permanent) tiles as possible, or as much continuous running. My preference is safety. I look for a row where the runner is always safe, no matter how many starts and stops it involves. That means that the tile the runner is running across or standing on is not about to disappear (it turns red for about 2-3 seconds before disappearing). A case where the runner must run quickly across a red tile, or move from a red tile to one that just appeared is bad, as far as I am concerned. If I can run one tile at a time, always being safe, I am happy.

3) Practice the route.
The leader, once deciding on the row to take, should practice the route at least once (I usually do twice). Find out any dangerous spots, and make sure you picked the right route.

4) Line up with runner.
Tell the runner which row to take. There are pillars on the starting platform indicating the break between the rows. So the runner needs to stand between two pillars. That way, he is smack in the middle of the row. Due to the tiles being lower than the platform, it will look to the leader like the runner is too far back. Trust the runner's perspective. After a couple of runs you'll see they are right.
The next step is to face each other. You want to be looking directly north/south. Again, I can't stress it enough, take the time to get this right. Use /loc to find out which way you are facing. The last number, indicated with "h" tells you that. to face south, you want to see h180.0. To face north, you want h to be 0, at which point it doesn't print at all.
Once you are facing the right direction, lift/lower your mouse cursor. The leader should have his cursor on the row that the runner is going to use. The runner should have his cursor on the leader. Once you done that go into mouse look mode (T), and DO NOT TOUCH your mouse. Let each other know you are ready.

5) Take a deep breath
I tell my runner - "from now on, we are live"

6) Run
There isn't much more at this point. The leader knows the route, and needs to stick to it. Using strafing (Q/E for me), start/stop as appropriate and KEEP YOUR FOCUS. Having the cross hair on the right row, as I suggested above, makes it easy to stop in the middle of the tile. that gives the runner a bit of error room to overshoot you by a step or two and come back. If the runner is on a safe blue tile, let them know. It lets them relax a bit.

7) Break sarcophagi, and switch rolls.
Congratulations! you made it across. the runner picks up the goggles at the top of the bridge, and the leader gets ready to run.


Closing remarks...

I got my guild to do some practice runs. we went in with 4-6 people on norm. You need a minimum of 4 people - 2 spotters, and 2 runners. I had the spotters go in one at a time. That way, if the first spotter gets goggles, all 4 of us (or 6, or w/e) can practice.

The practice runs are crucial. You get to practice on norm (where the puzzles tend to be a bit easier), and there is no pressure. Failure is understandable and expected.

At this point, myself and another guildy have it down. Since our first successful run across, we are 7-1, and that one was on an extremely difficult one. Two other guildies are getting close, but tend to get impatient or rush at one point, and make mistakes...

I think that the legit method can be just as reliable, and more fun, than the exploit. We get a real rush out of it, and there is a wonderful sense of accomplishment when you finally "get it". In our last raid run, we had two pugs end up in goggles (one spotter, one mistake). We ended having them run with the runner, just trying to keep up. Both made it across. I plan to keep on doing that, so that we don't have to lose the spotter, and that's one more live person at the start of the fight.

If you play on Sarlona, and want to practice, I plan to have my guild practice for the next couple of Fridays. Send us a tell, and come join us.

Cornth - Ascendants.

[Absolute-Omniscience]

A good guide.
+1


I've run phase a LOT of times, guided people across so many times, and I've developed this tactic to make it as fast as possible:

Equip the goggles. Look for the row with the most blues spread out. Try to run as far as you can, stopping when you have to. And typing down the number of the tile you stopped on.
Keep doing this till you're at the end, if at any point you find yourself standing on a red one; simply change row, or if possible mark it as a "jump start".

Usually it works on the first try, and you'll end up with something like
2,(6),8> @ 2
() means blue
8> means jump start from 8.
@ 2 means on lane two.
And the number means the tile, not so many tiles between. So tile 2 is the second tile, and tile 6 is the 6'th tile, (4 tiles after the second).

Run it once more to make sure that those stops were correct.


On a good run that won't take longer than 30 seconds to find a route and have it typed out. On an average it's about 1 minute, and on a REALLY hard one it's about 2 minutes.

Now, simply guide the person across. Barely takes more than 3 minutes from jumping in till I'm done guiding.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Didn't even know there was an exploit for that one...

One thing you left out, the runner should know what to expect. Most group's I've been in have done something like

2 3 (1) go!

to tell people 2 tiles, stop, 3 tiles, stop, 1 tile-permanent, then RUN to end.

Harder to screw up if you know what to expect.

[KillEveryone]

I've seen a couple different variation on how it is listed in text.

I like having someone on voice tell me what to expect since there are different variations in the text form.

[ulticleo]

Thanks for the comments.

As you can see from our record, we are still new to goggles, having gone the practice and raid over the weekend. The strategy I laid out worked for us, and hopefully, with more practice, we'll get it down to 3 min ourselves. Until then, I plan to take my time.

As far as letting the other person know what's coming - I suppose this could be useful once you have a good sense of how big the tiles are as you run across them. However, when I run, I want to focus my attention on the leader, rather than think about what's coming. That was our crucial Eureka! moment. Once we stopped trying to figure out what's going on, and just trust each other to lead, we got across.