Mabar Sneak Attack Preview!

[Rinnaldo]

I like the new signet trader. However, I noticed that I will not be able to add the Solar Festival damage to my essentially randomly generated Cormyrian challenge weapon. If these are to be treated as Named items, it would be nice if that were noted somewhere.

The dragon fight went okay for me, with no noticeable lag (level 20-25). The fight went pretty fast, and I didn't see any problems. We got the signets and scales at the end of the fight, but it was not easy to figure out which bag my signet went into. Apparently, a green one (ie, it's an ingredient).

Most annoyingly, my Greater Creeping Cold spell STILL DOES NOT WORK in public areas. I have reported this bug for the last three festivals. The lesser version works, the greater version does not. I use this spell a lot, so I test it every time. I am surprised it is still not fixed.

Assassins: I like that there is a break from undead, and that the laggy giant skeletons are gone. I kind of like the flavor of having assassins pop up in the graveyard, and they are somewhat fun to kill. However, I realized (again), that if you want to have non-undead in this festival - due to clerics using healing bursts, wizards nuking with meteor swarm, or whatever - the logical choice is WEREWOLVES. I mean, now that they exist in the game and all. It would be perfect. Halloween motif, right? Right...? Huh? Werewolves!

It got a little tedious, as it tends to, after a few hours. But then, I guess I played it for a few hours, so that says something. Overall, good. B+.

[mna]

As someone has said before - invisible vampires who can still attack, although possibly they've just appeared in the scenery - hard to tell.

Yes, the vampires are completely invisible EXCEPT when they're in the "cloud of bats" form. They can be attacked while invisible but you never see any numbers in the main screen... yes, I did have True Seeing on. You do hear a "hit" kind of sound and it does show up in the combat log, but, well...

Apparently I did kill a couple of them, according to my combat log. Headphones help. Didn't get any fangs though.

So... is this WAI and meant to be an extra challenge, or is it a bug? (Have they been invisible like that during previous Mabar events? I wouldn't know...)

Also getting the message about some spawns not being high enough level - given that the instances are now split by level this should not really be happening for a character who's in that level range.

Still seem to spawn based on what level player characters are around, not on instance level. I saw a bunch of CR 8 mobs when there was a level 8 guy looking for a better challenge... (I was on my level 14 mostly-cleric, in a level-appropriate instance.)

You can also run into level+10 CR mobs. There were several CR 22-24 ones at one point at least (Shadar-Kai, even). Could it be that some epic-level guy ended up in that instance after the dragon fight and that caused those to spawn?

[Mixlepix]

Tonight only (6:00 PM until 12:00 AM Eastern, -4 GMT!) Visit Delera's Graveyard in House Jorasco to see a special preview of the Mabar Festival of Endless Night! Once you're done, come back here and tell us about your experience! Thanks, and have fun!

Not quite done, but I am having fun and am unlikely to return to the forum by the time I am. Aside from the (I'm sure) already mentioned buggy creatures, my only complaint is my usual complaint when so many players are in a small area. Graphics errors pitching me out to my desktop... This did happen more than usual during my recent foray into the graveyard...
Mixlepix
"I would never join a club that would have me as a member." Groucho Marx

[Scuddy]

No +6 Tomes, real bummer.

CR's seems low. In a 16-20 instance if I am only level 19 seems kind of lame I keep getting messages that stuff I fight is to low to give rewards. I would like to see everything in the zone beefed up to drop rewards on a lucky kill and not messages that they were to weak. The zone should be a challenge. It sucks when I waste SP and time killing things not worthy of dropping rewards.

Also is it just me or are the mummies dragging themselves around the zone like a coffin in a 90's Beck video?

[Backley]

Tonight only (6:00 PM until 12:00 AM Eastern, -4 GMT!) Visit Delera's Graveyard in House Jorasco to see a special preview of the Mabar Festival of Endless Night! Once you're done, come back here and tell us about your experience! Thanks, and have fun!

My experience on Orien server just now on a level 25 (dragon instance D): Smooth until dragon appeared, not terrible for a bit, then lagged and couldn't move until altar dead and we were all expelled. Fail.

So, pretty depressing.

Suggestion: make the door like crystal cove: open for 20 minutes so you can re-try when this happens.

[SlowDM]

No problem with lag in or out of Mabar 11pm-1am uk time. Strange having shadar-kai but i can deal with them. I did'nt get many 'rewards' for kills. It felt easier than an explorer zone.
Haloween is ghosts ghouls phantoms and all manner of Undead...................

I love this game but only been playing 2 1/3 yrs but I WANT TO UPGRADE MY MABAR CLOAK/S. It's the only item i've ever TRUELY treasured(still not found anything to replace my lev 16 one on my lev 27 arti)now its DEAD for a +6 tome *Cynicism on* available in ddo store this week only.

Did you spoil crystall cove items No. Mabar is a special event, sorry but you've spoiled it a little/medium for me.

Sorry for being negative, the special events even though i don't play the other's more than av a few goes, i can appreciate others enjoy.

I want to upgrade to a lev 28 Mabar Cloak please. PRETTY PLEASE :-)

[UurlockYgmeov]

Ran a lv9 FvS (Soul Survivor) in a raid group for several hours.

kept having to move up in difficulty band (lv16-20) in order to get mobs that spawned enough / dropped enough to make it not - well, as the entire group said - boring with really low drop rates.

Vampires - cannot see, even with see invis / true seeing; Vampires spamming attacks ok - if we can kill. When we did kill them - no fangs. (dejavu?)

Only saw one lich - so the spawn rate seems very low - had full raid group on the puddle for hours.

Raid - takes key and doesn't return if fail. thought that was supposed to return key if fail. several members bought keys with TP and didn't get back.

Raid itself failed within 3 min - let us try again (Like crystal cove)! Failed because only those who ran it before had a clue. no one realized public instance and had to use zone chat to communicate.

Like it overall - will miss the +6 tomes - unhappy didn't complete raid today.

Also - spend 15 min healing party during mass melee and got almost no drops - which *sigh* ok - miss my arty life for this.

[Dmnqwk]

Level 20 with a proper ED, I had to move to the 25-30 area to kill things because I could maintain a full MB there and wreck them. Which is nice considering it's normally casters and divines only!

As for the dragon, Lagfail and lost our keys - I hope you pull the event since you are unwilling to fix it, complete waste of time for the tome.

Utterly disgraceful festival that you've ran for what, 4 years now? And still cannot run it successfully.

[Cardonam]

Just wrapped up after a couple of hours in 20-25 instance on a favored soul. Liches hit hard which is how it should be and I did enjoy the event for the most part. I did not make a dragon instance.

Two items of note

1. The 1st group I joined was scattered and confused as to how to get into the correct instance. User error no doubt but can maybe made easier to find the correct instance by placing both group instances and level specific instances into the map drop down.

2. The other item was that we did hit a lag spike that crippled the entire group. I was casting but could not move and apparently the spells were not effective as when the spike subsided most of the party was dead and we had no extra shinnies.

Oldguy

[Shadow7375]

First attempt at dragon .... All three players at South-West lever lagged out the moment the dragon showed up and unfortunately died. Got teleported out to bind point and key we used to enter was lost. Not sure if this is WAI. Remember from last year that you kept your key when you did not complete / failed on dragon.

[Ladislaio]

I started with the CR 20-25 instance on my level 23 monk. Following getting almost nothing but 'Too low level to give mats' messages I move up to the 26-30 instance, where I STILL got 'Too low level to give mats' for the next two and a half hours. During this time I got enough mats to turn in to purchase almost two keys, but not a single key by itself. My client then crashed while just before the door opened, and by the time I got back in the door was closed again, so I didn't even get to take a look at the dragon.

I will say the largest problem with this was the 'Too low level to give mats' messages when playing the instances AT and ABOVE my level. If you are in the instance for your level, all of the mobs should drop mats.

[DrunkDwarves]

Allowing players under 26 into the 26-30 instance is ****. All they do is spawn low level stuff we can't kill for credit, or they tag all the mobs in an area in order to get credit for kills other players are working at.

Mobs should spawn according to instance, NOT according to the players around them.

You guys need to do a better job in addressing lag. Instance on Orien just wiped because no one could move, cast, or hit anything so the dragon broke an alter in under a minute after the encounter started. This is not a new issue either.

[MoonRunner]

Like any other time Mabar has run there is way too much traffic to run it during Prime Time. Only dragon I had time to fight lagged early everyone froze but the guys beating alters. If this is the norm please make gate more like CC so we can re-enter a new instance right off. I know there are some issues with us not being in a private instance for that to work so if you cant work that out then PLEASE drastically reduce the amount of turn ins needed between dragons.

[Vengeance777]

Orien's level 26-30 Dragon just lost due to instance lagging out. This event isn't going to be fun if we have to farm the wilderness for 4+hours just to see it wipe as soon as the mobs spawn in the dragon instance because of lag.


Here's what keeps happening:

When the mass of Gargoyle mobs spawn'd in, pre-aggroed on the alter the players can no longer move. The only chance players have is if enough firewalls and bladebarriers are on the alter that mobs die as they hit it thus removing the mobs, stopping the lag.

This same bug has been happening since Mabar's inception and still happens in many raids.

STOP making content where mobs spawn in pre aggroed on an object. Your servers can't handle pre-aggroed mobs and so many players in one spot.

Replace the half dozen gargoyles that spawn in the alter rooms with 2 big mobs instead and have them spawn in like the ones in the Litany of the Dead's ambush room where they look for the object/player to attack for 1 second before doing so. The mobs with preset aggro freeze the players when they spawn.

Your game's engine can not handle 24 players in an instance calculating 24+ mobs instantly spawning already aggroe'd on the alters. It can barely handle LOTB's mob spawn in at the end of that raid.

Your game handles the wilderness well with dozens of players and mobs up at once. The difference is the wilderness mobs spawn passive, there's something seriously bugged with the aggressive mobs spawning in. Maybe the game can't handle all the threat tables being calculated at once? In the wilderness they only aggro on what attacks them and that seems to keep lag down.

Maybe redo the mob ai in the dragon rooms so they spawn in, wait a few milliseconds then attack the alter instead of having them spawn in gunning for the alter before they even appear fully?

[trevitt]

Tonight only (6:00 PM until 12:00 AM Eastern, -4 GMT!) Visit Delera's Graveyard in House Jorasco to see a special preview of the Mabar Festival of Endless Night! Once you're done, come back here and tell us about your experience! Thanks, and have fun!

Unfortunately same as last year. I spent 3 hours in the graveyard only to lag fail on the dragon. Could you please reinforce the server to accommodate the number of players you know will be entering the quest.

[thegreatfox]

I noticed while running my level 25 toon that the liches in the 20-25 instance never drop lich dust like the level 26+ instance liches. Other than that, not much wrong with the graveyard part of it. But just a few minutes ago the dragon opened and the 20-25 instance lag wiped. It should have been real easy, the gargoyles only took a few hits to kill, but the lag made it impossible. To have such cool rewards based off of something you get in such a laggy encounter is pretty frustrating. Its frustrating to know that you didn't fail because of a lack of skill, or manpower, or resources, but because of lag.

Oh! I also noticed that cosmetic helms now cover up pumpkin heads! Fix it!

[User164]

Tonight only (6:00 PM until 12:00 AM Eastern, -4 GMT!) Visit Delera's Graveyard in House Jorasco to see a special preview of the Mabar Festival of Endless Night! Once you're done, come back here and tell us about your experience! Thanks, and have fun!

Lag is so bad, unable to walk from one side of airship to other on "T" server. Tried for 10 min's then gave up and logged onto "W" server and no lag, ran Mabar for 1 hour killed lots of undead, Not one drop, lvl 15 area. Oh and the left overs from last time taking room in my bank, worthless with new changes, thanks for that. My experience Mabar Fail.

[burningwind]

sometime vampire become completely invisible 100% of the time.. cannot be find through true seeing or any means. they cast spell at player far away while hidden... have to run around like mad and swing every corner to hopefully kill them... though not always so lucky to be able to find them.

[trevitt]

Level 20 with a proper ED, I had to move to the 25-30 area to kill things because I could maintain a full MB there and wreck them. Which is nice considering it's normally casters and divines only!

As for the dragon, Lagfail and lost our keys - I hope you pull the event since you are unwilling to fix it, complete waste of time for the tome.

Utterly disgraceful festival that you've ran for what, 4 years now? And still cannot run it successfully.

I agree fix it or bin it

[GoRinNoSho]

Wrt 26-30 instance:

The Liches and Vampires do not drop dust and teeth respectively. Please up the drop rates on these.

Strangely the harm in upping the drop rates is that more people will be able to get items out of the festival and encourage attendance. I forget if the teeth and dust are bta or not bound, but going back to the original high drop rates would promote teeth/dust for motes trades between low and high level. Higher drop rates would lower the value of the teeth/dust to where they would be more accessible to newer players if trade-able. (Higher level players have teeth/dust and lower level players have more motes.)

CR 26-30 dragon instance was crippled by lag. 2 at levers and 6 in chambers estimated. Wipe resulting from lag.

Adjusting max players per instance or detecting and adjusting mob spawns during this time may help correct that. Possibly dismiss monsters if they land several hits on a player without retaliation. That idea may be exploitable; however, given how rare the event is and how it is typically boring up front (low drop rates combined with long waits for dragon runs) with a sometimes frustrating dragon fight, some mechanism to detect and circumvent at least one of the two issues would be well received.

Otherwise:

Lack of lvl 28 upgraydds to the equipment may make this an event to ignore by veteran players. I expect people will run it in waves until they've reached signet count for the day and then ignore it. Once they have their +5 tomes and any other novelty items then business as usual will return for veteran players with newer players fending for themselves.

That's my $0.02.

Lastly, from a lore perspective, why were the Shatner-kai selected for an Ebberon event? I know they are hip, trendy, and now, but to them, Mabar is the place they go drinking when they get off work.