(65) Death from Below

[GoNzOTW]

Please fire whoever difficulty tuned this quest.

As a champ you have only two options.

Let your useless NPC "friends" take some aggro and watch them die.

or

Take all the aggro and die yourself.


If you're going to make a quest that requires me to fight twice the normal amount of mobs I can solo on a good day then make the NPCs able to deal or take enough damage to be useful. Right now they are completely useless as they can't even double team one normal mob while I solo the sig plus one regular without dieing with the mob at half health.

Also, the brain dead AI. When a sapper throws a fire pot on the ground, DON'T JUST STAND IN THE FIRE TAKING DAMAGE. When you are close to death so I shout the aggro to myself, DON'T THEN SHOUT IT BACK ON TO YOU.


Worst quest experience I have ever encountered in this game.

[Snoman73]

yea, ive failed this a couple times and gave up for now. will try again at 65 with better weapons

[Elrendos]

Which part are you having difficulty with, just staying alive during that last big fight? I did not really have an issue on this quest as a level 65 Hunter, but I could see where one would with no rooting or CC capability. For a Champion, perhaps let the NPC's run in several seconds before you and then go agro the 4 non-elite Goblins. As a Champion you should be able to dps the 4 of them down fairly quick. All I did was root them and take out the Elite first since the other little guys heal while he is alive. Just a tip!

[Toot]

I failed this 3 times as a burglar at 65. I gave up too.

[MithrilSoul]

I actually survived it as a guardian, only because I was able to force-taunt the mobs off the tissue-paper-durability dwarves and then burn every long cooldown skill I had to keep myself alive.

I was *shocked* at how difficult this was compared to virtually any other quest in Mirkwood. Something with it isn't right, methinks.

[C_Obscura]

Please fire whoever difficulty tuned this quest.

As a champ you have only two options.

Let your useless NPC "friends" take some aggro and watch them die.

or

Take all the aggro and die yourself.

If you're going to make a quest that requires me to fight twice the normal amount of mobs I can solo on a good day then make the NPCs able to deal or take enough damage to be useful. Right now they are completely useless as they can't even double team one normal mob while I solo the sig plus one regular without dieing with the mob at half health.

Also, the brain dead AI. When a sapper throws a fire pot on the ground, DON'T JUST STAND IN THE FIRE TAKING DAMAGE. When you are close to death so I shout the aggro to myself, DON'T THEN SHOUT IT BACK ON TO YOU.


Worst quest experience I have ever encountered in this game.

I can't say that I agree with you.... As a champ.... I found this quest was pretty much ez-mode.... had to burn dire need, but was able to complete this one on the first try.

Although, I did have to give it 3 shots as a hunter before I was able to complete it. I actually give props to the designer of this quest for giving us something that we can't sleep through. I look forward to quests like this.

[StavroMuellerBeta]

I managed to complete it as a 65 burg after more attempts than I'm willing to admit.

On my failed attempts, during the 5-mob pull, I would run in to get the aggro, use confound (mez four targets), and focus on the boss. As soon as that mez took effect, the dwarves would jump OFF the boss and onto two of the mezzed goblins, then once I pick up aggro from those two goblins, the dwarves would swap to the other two.

When I finally did finish it, I ran far ahead of the dwarves, aggroed and mezzed four of the goblins while the dwarves were still in the hallway, dragged the now solo boss to the dwarves, then soloed the four soon-to-be unmezzed goblins, and finally, ran back to the dwarves and used enrage to pull aggro back. When it was all done, the dwarves each had ~100 morale, I had ~50, and I was down by a superior rack of lamb, and three steeped athelas potions.

My reward for all of this? Three feathers, 5.5k IXP, 28 silver, and a few hundred rep (I'm already at kindred).

Personally, I would either give the dwarves each 2k more morale (bumping them to 7k each, same as the sig orcs), or leave the instance as-is and bump up the reward.

I do enjoy a good challenge, like the tier 2/3 skirmishes, the Sad Doldur quests, and so on. This instance is not challenging, it is just hard, frustrating, and a money sink, for no real reward aside from removing a ring from your minimap.

[GoNzOTW]

I finally managed to do it. It was cheap, but i did it.

For the final fight I ran in first burned the sig down as far as I could in a very short time, and did some quick AOE to get everybody's attention.

I then proceeded to run back and fourth across the dungeon over and over trailing all these mobs. When I would pass the helpers they'd get a couple hits in and eventually pull a mob off. I would continue to run back and forth getting a heal and a hit or two in as I passed them. they would eventually get that mob down and then get another.

No reason I should have had to resort to this.


And yes, my OP is a little harsh, but I was very frustrated when I made it. I do hope the frustration didn't show.

[brunnhilda]

Failed it 3 times on my burg....till I tried a new way to go about it, and that worked fine:

On the last grp, you MUST pull aggro as both the dwarves are idiots (like all escorts all). I ran in and mezzed (in misc) one of the sappers, and ran into the mass and threw a confuse at all the others. Then you MUST burn down the boss first, which traited dite and conj helps out with. And, yes I know you can't use a conjunction on him...but you use it for the stun. Burn down boss alone, as dwarf idiot 1 and 2 will attack the walls..are whatever they do....popping evasion helps alot . At this point you have a confuse going off and you've remezzed your sapper. This means you have the boss and 1 or maybe 2 4ks active. Burn the boss. I won't say it was easy...and I did food up before the fight...and burned both pots and all my skills to make this work out...including burning hips to get the aggro off of me and to set up a trip on whomever.

Anyhoo, my 2 cents. Wasn't easy for burgs..and like ALL escort quests is a pita. Devs show NO LOVE for burgs in escort missions or escort skimrishes (dont even get me started on the FOB skirmish....could those 2 idiot elves hit mezzed targtes MORE??).

[SaintBass]

I failed it twice at 64 and haven't bothered to do it since. The NPCs getting a simple damage and mitigation upgrade and not self-immolating would help a lot. Even allowing for little breaks to regen would go a long way.

[Fatefoot]

Which part are you having difficulty with,

I just LOVE helpful responses like this. If I could range the sappers, I could simply ensure that the dwarves didn't get too much fire on them. If I also had rain of thorns, I might feel like this hunter feels.

On any of my other top toons, I can't see having a problem with this - my guardian can ensure the dwarves don't get aggro while they CAN do damage. On my hunter, as above. On my captain, I can taunt the mobs off the dwarf taking too much damage and I can heal.

But on my main, level 64 burglar, the dwarves insist on breaking any worthwhile mezzes even when I ensure they are well out of range. After 5 consecutive tries the other night with one dwarf insisting on dying on the last fight, I gave up (5 instances per hour limit). Went in again just now. On the last fight I actually managed to get 3 mobs mezzed while the dwarves weren't anywhere near reaching the final fight. I then provoked every other mob but one and kited the provoked mobs - returning to re-mez anything I could and then continuing to kite. Naturally the big goblin was always one of mine.

Each time the dwarves killed something, I made sure to hand them something else well-debuffed so they could kill it before I moved off on the kite/re-mez cycle.

Fine until one mob resisted a re-mez, a dwarf then ran across the cave to break the only remaining mez and the second dwarf finished off the last add they were fighting and started on my big goblin. He died before I could change the balance.

I am sure there is a nice trick that a burglar can use on this, but I think it will take several sets of 5 instance repeats before I can find it lol

But OH! what great fun trying. Gotta love a challenge. Please don't fire the dev who designed this - it has to be a great practice area for level 64 burglars with level 60 LIs!

And btw, if my calculations are correct, I will have levelled from 64½ to 65 before I succeed at this which is kind of sad as I would love to do it before then!

Take care all - won't be back to read this as a spoiler at this stage would ruin the fun

P.S. SPOILER ALERT! Finally managed to beat it before it levelled me to 65. Tore up my traits to do it - as it is all about aggro management which meant all the CC I could get. So Confound the Fools to max out the Confound targets, Trickster to max out the Dust targets, Perplexing Riddle to help the dwarves find a better target than my riddled one and enough Mischief-maker traits to get increased Riddle duration.

After that, it was just a question of getting aggro before the dwarves arrive at any large fight (first main chamber and final main chamber especially) and getting as much of that CC on the chamber crowds as I could then running the mobs away so that the dwarves weren't fighting in the flames or around the mezzed mobs. The big guy in that final room has a healing aura so you need to keep him away from anything that is being damaged. I was so clever enough - well, actually I was darned lucky but then I did do it a bunch of times before that last retrait so I earned some luck lol - and got one of the dwarves helping me kill the healing boss so he went down even faster. After that, it was simply a matter of dragging everything off the dwarf who had been solo to avoid him dying and that was it.

Did I use the word "just" and the word "simply" just then? Don't you believe it! There is no just or simply for this one on a 64 burglar with level 60 weapons! Good luck and hope you had as much fun as I did! (Looking forward to doing it the easy way on my guardian, hunter and captain lol)

[lessmeaningless]

I just LOVE helpful responses like this. If I could range the sappers, I could simply ensure that the dwarves didn't get too much fire on them. If I also had rain of thorns, I might feel like this hunter feels.

On any of my other top toons, I can't see having a problem with this - my guardian can ensure the dwarves don't get aggro while they CAN do damage. On my hunter, as above. On my captain, I can taunt the mobs off the dwarf taking too much damage and I can heal.

But on my main, level 64 burglar, the dwarves insist on breaking any worthwhile mezzes even when I ensure they are well out of range. After 5 consecutive tries the other night with one dwarf insisting on dying on the last fight, I gave up (5 instances per hour limit). Went in again just now. On the last fight I actually managed to get 3 mobs mezzed while the dwarves weren't anywhere near reaching the final fight. I then provoked every other mob but one and kited the provoked mobs - returning to re-mez anything I could and then continuing to kite. Naturally the big goblin was always one of mine.

Each time the dwarves killed something, I made sure to hand them something else well-debuffed so they could kill it before I moved off on the kite/re-mez cycle.

Fine until one mob resisted a re-mez, a dwarf then ran across the cave to break the only remaining mez and the second dwarf finished off the last add they were fighting and started on my big goblin. He died before I could change the balance.

I am sure there is a nice trick that a burglar can use on this, but I think it will take several sets of 5 instance repeats before I can find it lol

But OH! what great fun trying. Gotta love a challenge. Please don't fire the dev who designed this - it has to be a great practice area for level 64 burglars with level 60 LIs!

And btw, if my calculations are correct, I will have levelled from 64½ to 65 before I succeed at this which is kind of sad as I would love to do it before then!

Take care all - won't be back to read this as a spoiler at this stage would ruin the fun

Run WAY infront of them. Mez one of the sappers, hit Ready and Able (I was not running Gambler, so I didn't have the MG mez - you could possibly do both MG mez and riddle, then again after Ready and Able), mez another, hit touch and go. Get confound off on the others. Start dragging the mobs towards the entrance so when the idiots join, they are far enough away to leave your two mezzed ones alone. Target the Big Goblin. Burn him down. Target whatever the idiots dwarves are hitting. Mez as often as you can.

It was still a relatively hard fight (one of the dwarves died the first time, thus I knew I needed to get in before them.), but is doable. I did it without MG mez, so running that trait set might help out a lot.

[GeppititusC]

Please fire whoever difficulty tuned this quest.

As a champ you have only two options.

Let your useless NPC "friends" take some aggro and watch them die.

or

Take all the aggro and die yourself.


If you're going to make a quest that requires me to fight twice the normal amount of mobs I can solo on a good day then make the NPCs able to deal or take enough damage to be useful. Right now they are completely useless as they can't even double team one normal mob while I solo the sig plus one regular without dieing with the mob at half health.

Also, the brain dead AI. When a sapper throws a fire pot on the ground, DON'T JUST STAND IN THE FIRE TAKING DAMAGE. When you are close to death so I shout the aggro to myself, DON'T THEN SHOUT IT BACK ON TO YOU.


Worst quest experience I have ever encountered in this game.

I'm a Champ, did it no problem. Just have to take some aggro, not all.

[Turekz0r]

What's up with this quest not being marked solo? I tried it a couple of times and decided to move on. Last night I grabbed a couple of kinnies who were having trouble with it as well and we couldn't get in. Kept saying you can't be in a group to do this quest. Funny but it doesn't say that any where when you accept this quest. Should have /bugged it. As a side note it wouldn't be bad if at least one of the dwarves could throw out a heal every now and again. Meh just have to leave this one alone.

[brainith]

As far as a champs concerned, I agree it was tough.

It required a fine balance of taking aggro. It took me 4 attempts to finish it. I found the trick was to get all the aggro and take out the big Gob first. Hopefully your NPC's help a little. Once he's done all the healing buffs wear off. Oh I also used a shield.

[Bodkin]

Easy as a 65 mini. I know that's cold comfort and of no use to those classes having difficulty with it, but I wanted to mention it anyway for any mini's who read this thread and might skip it. Go for it. Big pull at the end. Manage threat, keep your NPC's up and you're golden.

[kermie-lee]

Tried & failed this one 4ish times last night on my 64 hunter. Burned lots of consumables to no avail. Grabbed a buddy to help and found the same thing, that the instance couldn't be entered while in a fellowship.

I think tonight I'll try running way ahead of the dwarves on that nasty fight, Rain of Thorns the place and bring the elite back into the hallway with the dwarves. If we can take him out quickly, that method should be a winner. I didn't try getting ahead of the dwarves last night before I decided to take a break & go skirmish.

[IronJake]

Yeah gotta agree it's a pain quest. Don't really see why it has to be done solo, especially with mez-breaking, 2 low-morale npcs. They would break mez and roots from my LM. Didn't think about running ahead and pulling the boss back before they get there, may do that but don't think the rewards are worth finishing this quest.

[cchopin]

This is the worst tuned quest I have ever seen in this game. Its just stupid how difficult it is, and especially how different it is from one class to another. If its intentional, fine, but then you really need to look at the rewards. A quest so hard you end up spending several gold on consumables trying to keep the most suicidal npc in history alive should not reward you with less than the cost of one run's stuff. Please take a look at this!

[cchopin]

Just went and tried this one another 3 times. I can't agree more. You need to not only review the quest itself, but the competence and perhaps sanity of whoever it is that tuned it in the first place. This is beyond the pale.

[revoked]

Anyone who can help with strategies for an RK, I would appreciate it. I am in the "failed more times than i care to admit" category here.

The most successful time I ran ahead and killed what i could as much as possible (went too far one time and found the mobs had spawned behind me and were beating on the npcs, who were already near death...). I still had switch to heal the npcs full time for one of the fights. Tried that with what i profoundly hope was to be the last fight, but with so many mobs and no help from npcs when i got aggro, I still couldn't keep both them and me up...though maybe if i used All Fates Entwined....

Honestly I felt that there was something in the mechanics for the npcs that made HoTs very difficult to use -- my Prelude to Hope should last quite a long time, but for the NPCs it seemed to drop immediately after the first tick. Same with Writ of Health. Building HoTs when I wasn't traited for healing was much harder than it has been in armour runs when I had to change to healing because a mini went down or dc'd. Nor do i really want to retrait for healing just for the quest...

[wjchristenson2]

65 Hunter

I failed this quest 2 times now w/ 2 different strats to realize something is not right and looked online to find this thread. I think I'll shelf this quest until I either get better gear or they tone it down.

1st strat - Failed - Raid of thorns + burn the elite. Couldn't burn the elite down fast enough and the other mobs broke their roots and trained me.

2nd strat - Failed - Let the dwarves pull and feared 1, rooted 1 and then tried to burn another down as fast as I could. By the time I got close to killing the 1st mob, a dwarf already had died.

The only way I could see doing this as a hunter would be to rain of thorns the entire group and have good enough gear to burn the elite down super fast. Then when the thorns expires... fear 1 while kiting the group until the dwarves get enough agro to take 2-3 off you. Then use consumables and burn, burn, burn /crossfingers

[Eseven]

I am a 64 minstrel and have failed this quest five times today. I tried it in heal mode, in offensive mode and in a mixed heal and offensive mode. I tried killing just the end boss mob; I tried killing all the adds first. I have come to the conclusion that there is just no way I am going to finish it. When I hit 65 I will give it another try. Oh, and I even thought maybe there was some sort of trick I was missing, like training the mobs into the other room or clicking something nearby.

[TCinDAUK]

65 Guard, failed prolly 4 times now @ final mob, they overwhelm me. I've just switched from l60 1st age to l65 3 age weapons. I'm gonna leave it a while & work on getting my weapons raised (DPS etc). I'm not convinced (ditto some of my kinnies) that this is a solo quest.

[vlaeminck]

This quest was very difficult and is in desperate need of changes.


Leave instance exactly as is because it was hard but fun and make it a daily quest so I can do it again.

In fact how hard would it be to have a system set up so you can repeat any of the solo instances already in game for exactly the same loot they give now? In most cases the loot will just end up as vendor trash because you already have it but there are many instances in this game I would like to run again even with no loot. Including this one.

Nice work on making this instance, even though I failed it twice before I worked it out. But that is what makes it fun and not just a boring grind.