New Castle, First Report

[marchessa_the_red_witch]

Marsup Infantry trainer - fast aggro pops shield (see elsewhere)

Fighters are now swarming, fast aggro grouped 1.3M mobs.

How people are going to do the autoquest with these mobs in the way I don't know...

Looks like the gods have sent a message to non-avatars: thou shalt not do bh xp groups any more...

[Akasha]

and a little thought

[marchessa_the_red_witch]

Atwell skillfully parries the attack of Marsup, infantry trainer.
Atwell's riposte viciously massacres Marsup, infantry trainer.
Marsup, infantry trainer misses Atwell with his slash.
Marsup, infantry trainer massacres you to small fragments with his stab.
Marsup, infantry trainer massacres Atwell to small fragments with his slash.
Marsup, infantry trainer looks shocked as he cuts himself on Atwell's petrified armor!
Marsup, infantry trainer massacres Atwell to small fragments with his slash.
Marsup, infantry trainer brutally massacres Atwell with his cleave.
You deal a critical blow to one of Marsup, infantry trainer's vital organs.
You massacre Marsup, infantry trainer to small fragments with your slash.
You slash Marsup, infantry trainer extremely hard.
Atwell massacres Marsup, infantry trainer to small fragments with his slash.
Marsup, infantry trainer wipes his boots in the face of Atwell.
You see little more than a blur as Marsup, infantry trainer loosens Atwell`s volcanic
shoulder guards .
Marsup, infantry trainer kicks Atwell in solar plexus, Atwell is rendered breathless.
Giselle looks at Marsup, infantry trainer.

Also reflects debuffs back at party:

Dio utters the words, 'noselacri'
You have been blinded!


He's also thin - 5 combat rounds and 5 PCs killed him.

Also he's - and this is once again the screwed up nature of the mud - very good alignment, and will send you down from even high levels of good to evil.

14K coins - so no one is doing money runs on him any time soon.

[Grue]

He pops a 1.1 ac shield which is the highest AC you can go with standard EQ. He may only have 14k in coins, but the shield would sell for a few mil on the block. Seems you popped a shield with a smallish group pretty fast, so why does this thread have the feel of a gripe? Granted castle is now aggro, but what did you expect with the mob, that it would be a nice easy pop for a high level piece of EQ with no negative consequences?

I know I'll be flamed for this by the usual crowd who don't bother to read what I post and just see my name, but it strikes me that too many players just want it to be too easy now. Truth is if you do make it too easy, people will get bored and leave. If I had any gripe it would be that we didn't need another way of getting a 1.1 ac shield, I would rather have seen something different.

[Cicada]

It's just glinting shield with worse restricts, which few mils are we talking about? The only problem with this mob I see is that he sits in the center of area, separating regen room/chef/smith from rest of group mobs there.

[marchessa_the_red_witch]

I like the castle being filled with aggros.

BTW elites are NOT aggro, which they were in the old days.

None of the alchies are aggro.

My problem with marsup is described in the "good" versus "evil" thread - there's something wrong with a fast aggro insult screaming mob getting the "instant evil" status.

Fighters now wander all over the castle - including to royals.

[marchessa_the_red_witch]

"Seems you popped a shield with a smallish group pretty fast, so why does this thread have the feel of a gripe? "

Assuming bad faith is a *good* way to get flamed. From my vantage point, the shield is of marginal value, but then, I have a 3x40 shield. I'm sure that people will call the mob, and with the right group, he's doable as part of xp runs. He makes doing part of the xp run much harder, and the fighter changes are going to be hard on lowbies who, right now, are getting good chunks of xp tagging along castle groups.

I will admit that this is the straw that breaks the camel's back for me on the alignment system, which was merely offensive before, but is now somewhere in the realm of absurd. As for area changes, its a big mud, either tactics can be found to deal with it, or people will start doing other areas. This may even be a good thing.

I'm reporting so that players don't go bouncing into the castle, expecting fighters to be cheap juju stuffing, and find out otherwise. And so that people know about the new mob and what it does.

[Avatar]

I'd be more concerned about this:

You see little more than a blur as Marsup, infantry trainer loosens Atwell`s volcanic shoulder guards .

[marchessa_the_red_witch]

Caught bell while we were breezing by, but he is a fairly slow aggro.

[12345]

Well, I got a chance to run the castle post-change. Was an interesting introduction. I came across Bell dead, spent a second considering how and Marsup killed me. Tough mob. Other than that, Geber and Vicar have apparently been getting private lessons from Marsup. They now hit like they used to hit without blinds, maybe harder. Where clerics were the main requirement for running the castle before, mages have been added to the list.

As for why the castle was run so much before, it only really required a few clerics to run. Since nearly everybody has cleric in classo, it was a nice place to run while gathering people for a group or recovering from mass leavers. With the agro mobs chasing the solo players away, it's still a group area, just requires a bit bigger (read higher level) group now.