People's Army of Sonoma

i propose we skip our scheduled events and do the new ter mur quests for a few days. it looks like its going to take a lot to finish this one

I agree. The more we can get to do this together then the better for the guild.

I agree. In fact, I was just logging in to suggest this same thing.

A few of us logged into Test Center last night to try out the quest. Here are some pointers...

Talk to the Gargoyle Queen to get the quest. Then take a new teleporter in extreme Southwest Ter Mur that takes you across the void river to an area we could not previously access. The ruined town there is overrun with the new demon mobs, which you must kill at least 10 of. You also must find 10 different gargish writings that are supposed to be leftovers from when these demonic forces destroyed the old garg library in this area long ago.

The writings are going to be the hard part as they do not spawn on every demon, and since you have to get 10 different ones I think it will take a lot of trading to get the full set in any reasonable amount of time. On the plus side, all the top damagers of a demon are supposed to get looting rights and kill credit even if not in the same party, so hopefully it will still be possible to work the quest if the place gets overrun by obnoxious spawn hoggers.

As for the demons, they have some nasty tricks.

• 30,000 hitpoints
• Physical 55 - 65
• Fire 50
• Cold 100
• Poison 100
• Energy 50

• They do NOT teleport players to them, which is nice
• Move fast
• Frequently target switch
• Breath fire like a dragon or fire demon, which can do like 80 points but drops as they drop in health
• High wrestling
• High magery
• Dispel frequently (though it's not impossible to use an RC against them)
• Poisoning skill which does lethal poison (cleansing winds failed to cure it about 50% of the time)
• Reverse life leech like Corgul does -- sampires or anybody using a life leach weapon or curse weapon will find the demon leeches life from them, rather than them from the demon. If not for this, a sampire or necrodexer could pretty easily solo them with a feint weapon.
• AOE damage of some kind, but it's not a lot. Mostly makes it target switch more.

Tactics:

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Solo -- you likely won't do this unless you have discord, in which case disco tamers or mystics would likely both do well. I didn't get a chance to try them out on TC, though. Soloing with a regular mystic (maybe even a tamer) would probably be possible but would take a couple of hours.

Groups -- they go down easily with a sampire to kill and a mystic to heal, but the sampire must NOT be in vamp form. In fact, just stone off necro for anatomy to increase damage. Mystic can supplement with RCs. I'd guess this takes about 10 minutes per kill.

Add in a disco, another mage to just cast arch cure (since cleansing winds fails a lot at curing) and then any number of sampires or dragons for dealing damage, and an organized group should be able to tear through these really fast. Should make for an excellent guild activity.

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE, READ THIS: I would strongly discourage archers or throwers from going at all. When an outside shot comes in the demons love to target switch and chase, which causes all sorts of chaos and makes it nearly impossible to keep dealing damage to them. Mages that go should stick only to healing and summons, never direct damage, until word of death range. ALSO, sampires (and any other direct melee fighters) must use a feint weapon and keep feint up all the time, or they will likely be dead more than alive.

Sounds like a plan

REVISED TACTICS:

The spawn area is filled with low plateaus which you can only access in a few places. By picking the right spot to fight, you can leave the demons up on a plateau while you are below (or vise versa) allowing archers and mages to do direct damage from range. They will still potentially get hit with spells and firebreaths, but can back off and heal as needed. Plus you can cast RCs and EVs up where the demons are. Tamers sometimes bring a dragon but leave it on the safe side so the dragon can only cast spells, as they die pretty fast when taking melee damage from the demons.

You need to be sure to pick a spot well away from one of the access points, or the demons will pathfind and get to you. This is bad.

We also found last night that it seemed to work best when partied. At first we were unpartied, but that meant everybody had to loot the corpse themselves and the respawn is so fast that many people died, and who knows how many documents might have been lost on unlooted corpses. Plus the bard often didn't get enough kill credit to earn looting rights. If you party, you will need to roll for the documents later, as only one document ever drops on any one demon.

The demons "rubber-band" back to their spawn point very quickly, so you can't pull them more than about a screen away. They respawn instantly, so you often have to loot while attacking the next one.

Although all top damagers get kill credit, you will have to kill WAY WAY more than the required 10 before you get all the needed documents, but only one document drops. So I highly recommend trying to take your party to a spot where you can fight alone and get every document, rather than joining the random player mobs.

Speaking of kill credit, realize that once you have killed at least 10 demons, the quest log will start giving messages saying you are done. HOWEVER, you are not really done until you have collected all 10 gargish documents. Expect that to take MUCH longer.

We were successful last night using a sampire (not in vamp form) to pull and tank the demons, while everybody else stayed safe up on a plateau. This also allowed the RCs and EVs to last much longer as the sampire usually held aggro. Much healing and curing was needed for the sampy. Works best when one person is dedicated only to curing with at least one other only to healing. That way no matter what happens, at least one person has the right spell precast.[/b]