A lockpicking rogue is the only way to get through the doors, yes, short of pushing something through and letting it summon you. I don't know what the skill requirement is, but it's certainly out of reach for bards. Probably 200ish.
What are the precise behaviors when an NPC lands a charm on a summoned pet and a player's charmed pet?
Summoned pets: When charmed, stops obeying its master. Stops attacking whatever NPC(s) it was fighting, and vice versa. Attacks entities that attack its new master. Is essentially treated as an NPC (players can attack and kill it), though it probably poofs if it's killed. When charm wears off or is dispelled, it goes back to being a pet. Obeys its master, drops aggro on friendly targets, etc. Charmed pets: NPC charm overwrites PC charm and not vice versa (attempting to cast charm on the NPC-charmed pet gets a red "this NPC cannot be charmed" message), regardless of the spells involved (i.e. a chanter NPC can overwrite a higher-level chanter charm spell with a lower one). Just as with the charmed summon pet, it stops obeying its former master and "switches teams." When NPC charm wears off, it goes back to being a regular NPC. I'm not sure what happens to its hatelist at this point. (i.e. does it still hate the player who charmed it initially? does it hate the NPC that charmed it? Probably best to at least drop the other NPC, so as not to start faction wars.)
I encountered situations where the summoned pet was charmed then once new master dies it doesn't go back to its previous master, it finishes hatelist then goes indifferent. Not sure when this was fixed, and it didn't always happen.
Oh, interesting. I actually have no idea what should happen if the new master dies before charm actually wears off. In the scenario you describe, does the pet go back its master once the charm actually expires, or is it permanently bugged? Edit: it also occurs to me that there remain some unanswered questions I hadn't even thought of: for example, I *think* that if my summoned pet is charmed, it remains my pet in the sense that I can't summon another, but I don't know what happens if I die or go invisible.
Does the original pet owner keep his pet window and is unable to summon another one? Does /pet get lost work?
Good questions, and to be honest, I'm a little iffy on the mechanics, having much more personal experience with charmed pets than summoned ones. I'm certain /pet get lost doesn't work. I *think* the pet still counts as yours in the sense that you can't summon another, you keep the green bar under your name in group, and presumably the pet stays in the pet window. But confirmation from somebody with more summoned pet experience than I have would be good. Edit: and thinking further along these lines, I have absolutely no idea whether you can buff or heal the pet while it's charmed; I assume you can't suspend it, kill it with invis, or use reclaim energy!
I went hunting through the patch history to see if I could dig up anything pertinent re: NPCs charming pets, and came up with a couple of tidbits. 1. Players can't charm other players' pets in PVP as of September 2002 (http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20020724.html) 2. A February 2003 patch included a bug fix for an issue where charmed warder pets couldn't be controlled or re-summoned after charm broke. (http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20030224.html) This would at least seem to confirm that NPCs *do* charm summoned pets, and that working properly, control of the pet reverts the player when charm wears off.
In my described situation the pet sometimes goes back, other times does not. I remember needing to log out and back to get a new pet to summon. Pet commands didn't work even after charm unless i logged out. This was before the pet window was a thing on live and not had an issue with summoned pet being charmed when it was put in as i had main switched to cleric at that time.
Sounds like a mess! Maybe a clean implementation (or even just dodging the issue by preventing NPCs from charming PC pets in the first place) would be preferable to an accurate one.
Nah. I'm determined to make this work, because Dragon Charm is a significant factor in the difficulty of the VP encounters. Also that snake in Ssra that AoE charms would be trivialized by pets otherwise. /pet attack then AFKing outside of AoE range should have some drawbacks.
lol, taking out the game mechanic that grants NPCs the ability to charm PC pets is antithetical to Torven-ModeTM. <3 (no homo) If NPCs were able to charm PC pets on AK then that mechanic needs to be in. I would however be in favor of fixing the mechanic so it works properly. I.E. If an NPC charms a summoned pet (and the owner can't /pet go away), when that charm wears off or the mob dies the pet should revert to the owner. It makes no sense that the pet would not revert to the owners control if /pet go away doesn't work and it still counts as a pet (green bar).
What were the distinct attributes between the different colored drakes? I found two possible hit damages for drakes in logs, but beyond that I don't have enough logs to prove any more inconsistencies. I also can't say which colored drake(s) should have the higher damage.
Anything useful here? (Yes it's A'K ca. 2006 I'd say) http://www.frivolity.com/eq/movies/vp.html Some additional comments... 2 minute respawn on trash, so always a named and some trash. "The trash, although they didn't hit too fast, they hit pretty hard. Guardian Wurms hit me for 1060 a few times. That's harder than VT trash mobs! I think we all found out that VP is not going to be like a walk in Sleeper's Park..er..Tomb. Hosh's AE just plain sucks. Slow with a DoT (Disease based and took like 3 casts of my best disease cure)....NERF VP" "Ok, so we wiped a few times, but man was that fun. I think I like a zone that low level mobs hand us our asses. We didn't get far or actually didn't move from zone in, but it was fun. I can't wait until we try this again." ca.2004 "Basicly what Oom said but when we did VP duel corpses still lasted as along as a normal corpse so we did it that way. Originally the idea behind those keyd zones was they were DESIGNED to make players loose their corpses. VP especially. In fact they went on to specificly state that a GM would in no way help to get any corpses locked away in VP. I'm glad we never had to try VP before soul bound keys Two seb keys and a corpse outside the bubble was enough hehe. You CAN zone out, but you can only zone out after Phara Dar is killed (or can you avoid her? I don't know we always killed her). Even than the journey out is kinda dangerous. Come too think of it are there two zone outs? I think there is. " Also a mention that all mobs can be Pac'd, and that nothing sees through Rogue SoS
Walls do NOT block aoes in VP, it is an outdoor zone...SOW ect can be cast...and taking the aoe's in the face made it one of the hardest raid zones in all of EQ. Also dragons all gate(We raided here quite a bit on AK and the gating hurt) See invis was relatively low % aside from drakes they had a much higher rate. Hope this helps!
Being flagged outdoors doesn't mean LoS checks are necessarily disabled in zones. Mistmoore and the Temple of Cazic Thule are proof of that. I had already simply flagged the dragon spells as ignoring LoS (and put in the code to allow it) because from my experience in the zone on Live, the zone was 'semi-LoS' in that some walls blocked but many/most did not. I believe hateplane was similar. Sony clearly had less complicated maps for LoS checks-- many rocks or bumps would not block LoS in zones for example. Our LoS maps are generated by a tool which reads the geometry files, so even the slightest obstruction will block LoS like trees, rocks, bumps etc. This makes it difficult to make a precise recreation at times.
Hello friends! Sorry to bump a really old thread... I was reminiscing about the good ol EQ times this evening, googling stuff, etc. (you know how that goes) and imagine my surprise when I came across my old characters name (Indie) brought up in discussion here! I am sure you guys probably figured things out and answered your questions long ago, but I think I still have a good amount of information on VP from back in the day, along with a ton of screenshots that I took. I led more raids and visited that zone way more times then I could ever count to get that damn Robe of Invocation. I would not be surprised if I killed Xygoz over 100 times. I went to VP. A lot. It did drop for me, but it took a lot of farming and I only saw it once. I'm not sure if anyone else ever got it, something vaguely makes me think that Gnostica did, but I am not sure about that. To be honest, once I got it I don't think I ever went back, and AK shut down within a year (or less). Please let me know if I can help answer any questions about VP or PoM. That is where I spent 90% of my time. I think I was the only one to have a Wily Warlock Robe (PoM wiz robe) as well. Take care! Indie
If you have a log or screenshot to share, I'd put it back in immediately. Although I'd probably be inclined to do so regardless. Where the hell is Gnostica anyway? Will need his brain for Luclin.
Gnostica has not been heard from in quite a while. But Tigertugger also spent time doing some of the pain in the ass luclin questings and if someone can dig up Lyrad or cromis they also have plenty of luclin info.
Sorry it took a while to get back to you. I went through the screenshots I was able to find and pulled quite a few that show me using the robe. It seems that I never bothered to take a pic of the stats itself, but the detail in the pics should be more then enough to show that it existed and was being used on AK. I don't know if I had logging on or not when any of these were taken, and if I did if I even still have those logs. I will need to check. Hopefully these upload okay...
Looks like it worked. I had to convert my .pict files to .jpg so they would upload here. They lost quite a bit of quality when I did that. If you want me to email the .pict versions I can, let me know what email to send them to.
We could always use more input regarding loot tables and drop rates for PoM. Magelo cannot be used for that zone, so player feedback is all we have to go by for the drop rates.
I don't know if I still have the screenshot, but on AK, I saw Someone's pet that had a pet in the water area of Dragon Necropolis. I can't remember exactly how the name tag went, but it was really odd.
It happened with the necromancer Wake the Dead AA, Bast - the temporary pet takes on the class of the woken mob or player, and will summon a pet if it's able and gets some time out of combat to do so before the timer expires. So you'll see someone WTD a druid, for example, called "Sathaim's pet,"which will in turn summon a bear called "Sathaim's pet pet."