scrat
12-17-2008, 12:56 PM
I have done quite a few sarnak recovery tasks while lfg or bored or simply refusing to leave SoD to xp when I've only got an hour to game. The number I've solo'd is somewhere in the 30-50 range. Though the info is at raspers, I figure I'll spill out my strategies that are necro centric.
Sebsilian Messengers will drop a Sealed Message every kill, along with random vendor loot. These have distinct paths, but when I prefer to hunt them along the sparsely populated area near the zone-out to Swamp of No Hope (if you downloaded maps from mapfiend.net, it says Emerald Jungle...fix it.) There are a variety of messages that will drop, but only two types are for the tasks & worth keeping: they will say
You must recapture that sarnak. Failure will not be acceptable.
*The dragons may be interested in an escaped sarnak. You should show this note to one of them.
The creation of the undead army you requested is underway my lord. Our necromancers are hard at work in the mausoleum, and by this time next week an entire legion of fearless and tireless warriors will rise to your command against the dragons.
*The dragons may find this of interest. You should show it to them.
When you loot a message, right click to open it to read it. If it says something other than those two lines above, delete it. If it's one of those, put the message in a bag for safekeeping.
note Raising Cabilis Messages stack, but do not look like it. So don't shift-grab a message to hand to a dragon, they'll eat all of them. Use ctrl.
note Sarnak Recovery messages no longer stack. They are also hard-tied to a specific recovery task, and there is no way to know which one you have are for which. The text is identical, the response using Identify spell is identical, they share the same Item ID# on lucy. This means unless it has been 6 hours since you've done any tasks, you risk your message getting eaten by a dragon, seemingly randomly due to the inability to know which message is for what task. I have bugged and feedbacked this recent change to make similar messages stack, or some way to differentiate them.
warning If you hand a dragon a message without first waiting for the lockout timer, they will eat the message and leave you empty handed. If any member of your group has a shared task, or has not met the lockout timer, the message will get eaten.
Warning Shared tasks with Unlimited time duration are never removed automatically. You must remove yourself from the task. So if you are running a few of these tasks, be sure to always remove the old task from you & all group members.
Back to where I hunt these messengers - along the sparsely populated area near Swamp zone. Something odd happens after you start killing them...they respawn faster. And faster. You start out with one leaving kaesora and kill it, a minute later you see one on the way to kaesora and kill it. Couple minutes later, another pops by and you grab - then mid-kite another paths by. After 10 minutes or so it's uncommon to not have more than you can safely deal with (6+). I've never seen this kind of spawn mechanic. If you got the mana to deal with them, these actually ramp up into respectable xp due to zero downtime caused by repop delay, pulling, splitting, etc.
Anyways, when I do these I kill as many as I can take before having to escape for some rest. I'll usually wind up with 2-10 task messages in a 30ish minute time frame.
Now that you've gotten a bunch of messages it's time to take advantage of them. Message #2 (the undead army, Raising Cabilis task) is super easy, killing 8 bonetroopers and 2 bonecasters - it's a great, fast task. The other messages are all sarnak recovery types.
Hand a recovery message to any dragon. You'll get the shared task sarnak recovery and be sent off to kill 3 sebsilian trackers. The task will now say "Sarnak Recovery (Sokokar) or Sarnak Recovery {Burynai) etc. There are two places for trackers - the north end of the zone or the south end. There is always a dog version + 2-4 sebsilian iksar versions that follow it. These are linked to follow each other but have no leash or special immunities. I like to tag the dog and dot it up while the iksar follow it stupidly, and then nab the iksar types as the dog gets low on health. Sometimes I'll just bang all 3 and fire off spire if I'm rushed for time or space. If you kill the dog and do not aggro the iksar trackers following it, they will warp to their spawn location within seconds.
Next is to find the sarnak and retrieve the information. This part kind of sucks, or can. There are escaped sarnak footmen, escaped sarnak oracle and an escaped sarnak. I've never seen the an escaped sarnak but these are supposedly 100% update rates. The key to getting these mobs to update your task and give you the information is to melee them from 30% down to around 15-18%. If you aren't meleeing them during this period of their death, you will never get an update. If you are too far away, you won't get an update. If you get a savage DoT tick and their health goes from 40% to 6% you won't get an update. So bust out your merc, dot these up and pet tank (or kite) until 35-40% and jump in swinging and lifetapping. I've got around a 20% success rate of getting the task update, on average. The sarnak will emote: you'll get nothing from me, I fight to the death! which is the boob prize- or it will go non-combative / non-targetable and update your task. Bingo, time to move on.
caution It is very possible to kill these too fast to get an update. I strongly suggest not using chaotic power procs, spires, glyphs, etc - you want a slow, steady burn on these guys. If their health goes from 35% to 13% on one tick - you just wasted your time. Slow kills. Yes, I just repeated what I already said in the previous paragraph. Because if you ignore this, you will spend hours and hours and get nowhere.
Once you've gotten that update, your real task is upon you. The options are:
find kurn
find the meeting place
find the hatchery
Find Kurn. - At kurns tower there are 3 possible different roaming iksar patrol leaders. Kill them. You will first get a yellow update text saying kurn is definately not among those leaving the tower. Then you will get the task update (finish). Both of these updates can happen on the same mob, or different. I've heard it's totally random, but I stick with the sarnak kill method (kill it slow in the 35%-15% range) and I've never, ever had to kill more than 5 mobs. These have no special immunities. You do not have to be melee'ing them to get the update.
Find the meeting place. -extreme north of zone is an island with your mob, the emissary. You'll get the loc update, then told to kill the emissary. It has a guard which is aggro linked, but not chained. Neither have special immunities though the guard does hit pretty hard. Kill them to finish. Or if super lazy, kill the emissary and feign on the guard.
Find the hatchery. - inside kaesora directly through the gates is a building with a bunch of sokokar hatchlings (same building with the entrance to the hatchery zone). You'll get updated as you enter the building, then told to kill 4 hatchling. Fun stuff. Simply aa snare a hatchling and flee like a screaming girl, then feign. Because the sokokar are well inside the building, sometimes you have to run accross the entire fort to feign to allow them time to path out of the building. After aggro dump, go pick off your split hatchling and kill it. No special immunities. That is the finish.
However, you will finish this a lot faster if you camp the back of the building (along the wall) and kill the two guards at the door - then the iksar inside. Sometimes the sokokar path funky and never make it outside the building before you feign your train otherwise.
All of these recovery tasks are "shared tasks" for groups. So if you solo one, before you update the final step talking to the dragon - invite some friends. Fill 'em up even with ooc invites or whatever - it's empty seats that you can't get credit for anyways, and good deeds come back on ya. /taskadd for the win.
Since they are group tasks, the reward varies in chrono's - though I've never paid too much attention to the xp. As the masses have gotten flagged and moved on - the reward for these tasks increases. I've seen rewards nearing 250 chronos or as little as 60. Now that chrono's have an alterior purpose (purity augs) these missions are ideal for farming them as a necro.
Maybe somebody will find this useful.
Edit: updated some info
Sebsilian Messengers will drop a Sealed Message every kill, along with random vendor loot. These have distinct paths, but when I prefer to hunt them along the sparsely populated area near the zone-out to Swamp of No Hope (if you downloaded maps from mapfiend.net, it says Emerald Jungle...fix it.) There are a variety of messages that will drop, but only two types are for the tasks & worth keeping: they will say
You must recapture that sarnak. Failure will not be acceptable.
*The dragons may be interested in an escaped sarnak. You should show this note to one of them.
The creation of the undead army you requested is underway my lord. Our necromancers are hard at work in the mausoleum, and by this time next week an entire legion of fearless and tireless warriors will rise to your command against the dragons.
*The dragons may find this of interest. You should show it to them.
When you loot a message, right click to open it to read it. If it says something other than those two lines above, delete it. If it's one of those, put the message in a bag for safekeeping.
note Raising Cabilis Messages stack, but do not look like it. So don't shift-grab a message to hand to a dragon, they'll eat all of them. Use ctrl.
note Sarnak Recovery messages no longer stack. They are also hard-tied to a specific recovery task, and there is no way to know which one you have are for which. The text is identical, the response using Identify spell is identical, they share the same Item ID# on lucy. This means unless it has been 6 hours since you've done any tasks, you risk your message getting eaten by a dragon, seemingly randomly due to the inability to know which message is for what task. I have bugged and feedbacked this recent change to make similar messages stack, or some way to differentiate them.
warning If you hand a dragon a message without first waiting for the lockout timer, they will eat the message and leave you empty handed. If any member of your group has a shared task, or has not met the lockout timer, the message will get eaten.
Warning Shared tasks with Unlimited time duration are never removed automatically. You must remove yourself from the task. So if you are running a few of these tasks, be sure to always remove the old task from you & all group members.
Back to where I hunt these messengers - along the sparsely populated area near Swamp zone. Something odd happens after you start killing them...they respawn faster. And faster. You start out with one leaving kaesora and kill it, a minute later you see one on the way to kaesora and kill it. Couple minutes later, another pops by and you grab - then mid-kite another paths by. After 10 minutes or so it's uncommon to not have more than you can safely deal with (6+). I've never seen this kind of spawn mechanic. If you got the mana to deal with them, these actually ramp up into respectable xp due to zero downtime caused by repop delay, pulling, splitting, etc.
Anyways, when I do these I kill as many as I can take before having to escape for some rest. I'll usually wind up with 2-10 task messages in a 30ish minute time frame.
Now that you've gotten a bunch of messages it's time to take advantage of them. Message #2 (the undead army, Raising Cabilis task) is super easy, killing 8 bonetroopers and 2 bonecasters - it's a great, fast task. The other messages are all sarnak recovery types.
Hand a recovery message to any dragon. You'll get the shared task sarnak recovery and be sent off to kill 3 sebsilian trackers. The task will now say "Sarnak Recovery (Sokokar) or Sarnak Recovery {Burynai) etc. There are two places for trackers - the north end of the zone or the south end. There is always a dog version + 2-4 sebsilian iksar versions that follow it. These are linked to follow each other but have no leash or special immunities. I like to tag the dog and dot it up while the iksar follow it stupidly, and then nab the iksar types as the dog gets low on health. Sometimes I'll just bang all 3 and fire off spire if I'm rushed for time or space. If you kill the dog and do not aggro the iksar trackers following it, they will warp to their spawn location within seconds.
Next is to find the sarnak and retrieve the information. This part kind of sucks, or can. There are escaped sarnak footmen, escaped sarnak oracle and an escaped sarnak. I've never seen the an escaped sarnak but these are supposedly 100% update rates. The key to getting these mobs to update your task and give you the information is to melee them from 30% down to around 15-18%. If you aren't meleeing them during this period of their death, you will never get an update. If you are too far away, you won't get an update. If you get a savage DoT tick and their health goes from 40% to 6% you won't get an update. So bust out your merc, dot these up and pet tank (or kite) until 35-40% and jump in swinging and lifetapping. I've got around a 20% success rate of getting the task update, on average. The sarnak will emote: you'll get nothing from me, I fight to the death! which is the boob prize- or it will go non-combative / non-targetable and update your task. Bingo, time to move on.
caution It is very possible to kill these too fast to get an update. I strongly suggest not using chaotic power procs, spires, glyphs, etc - you want a slow, steady burn on these guys. If their health goes from 35% to 13% on one tick - you just wasted your time. Slow kills. Yes, I just repeated what I already said in the previous paragraph. Because if you ignore this, you will spend hours and hours and get nowhere.
Once you've gotten that update, your real task is upon you. The options are:
find kurn
find the meeting place
find the hatchery
Find Kurn. - At kurns tower there are 3 possible different roaming iksar patrol leaders. Kill them. You will first get a yellow update text saying kurn is definately not among those leaving the tower. Then you will get the task update (finish). Both of these updates can happen on the same mob, or different. I've heard it's totally random, but I stick with the sarnak kill method (kill it slow in the 35%-15% range) and I've never, ever had to kill more than 5 mobs. These have no special immunities. You do not have to be melee'ing them to get the update.
Find the meeting place. -extreme north of zone is an island with your mob, the emissary. You'll get the loc update, then told to kill the emissary. It has a guard which is aggro linked, but not chained. Neither have special immunities though the guard does hit pretty hard. Kill them to finish. Or if super lazy, kill the emissary and feign on the guard.
Find the hatchery. - inside kaesora directly through the gates is a building with a bunch of sokokar hatchlings (same building with the entrance to the hatchery zone). You'll get updated as you enter the building, then told to kill 4 hatchling. Fun stuff. Simply aa snare a hatchling and flee like a screaming girl, then feign. Because the sokokar are well inside the building, sometimes you have to run accross the entire fort to feign to allow them time to path out of the building. After aggro dump, go pick off your split hatchling and kill it. No special immunities. That is the finish.
However, you will finish this a lot faster if you camp the back of the building (along the wall) and kill the two guards at the door - then the iksar inside. Sometimes the sokokar path funky and never make it outside the building before you feign your train otherwise.
All of these recovery tasks are "shared tasks" for groups. So if you solo one, before you update the final step talking to the dragon - invite some friends. Fill 'em up even with ooc invites or whatever - it's empty seats that you can't get credit for anyways, and good deeds come back on ya. /taskadd for the win.
Since they are group tasks, the reward varies in chrono's - though I've never paid too much attention to the xp. As the masses have gotten flagged and moved on - the reward for these tasks increases. I've seen rewards nearing 250 chronos or as little as 60. Now that chrono's have an alterior purpose (purity augs) these missions are ideal for farming them as a necro.
Maybe somebody will find this useful.
Edit: updated some info