Captain_Crunch
03-15-2004, 11:57 PM
Taelrie's Guide to Colbalt Scar :D
Colbalt Scar map (http://www.eqatlas.com/velious/cobaltscarmap.html)
Background information: WHY you would like this zone
For those of you who know what CS (Colbalt Scar for those of you who don't know the initials) is you might be asking yourself "CS is for quad kiting druids who think they can camp the entire zone!" Well we might not be able to make as much exp or farm as much as druids, but trust me this was the single best place I found from 44-54 (disregarding HHK but nobody likes the armpit of norrath). Also loot is not bad either, trust me you will LOVE this place once you get the hang of it
What you can expect from this zone
At this time of the game I was stuck in a rut. My hopes were dashed when I came to PoJ and found out that "phat exp" that everybody was telling me about PoP did not include soloing, and despite trying I found that every other pull id get nuked to death of have 20 rat adds. Anyway I was wondering around, looking on every site in existance that ever MENTIONED a necromancer, and I came on a vague description of wyverns in CS. Deciding to try this out I gained faction (more on this later) and spending forever getting a port trundled over to CS.
EXP:
Exp here is not the best exp you can get in the game (aka hhk) but it is pretty damn close. at 46 I was getting 1-2% exp a wyvern and they went down easy and fast. Except when a druid took most of the kills and I had to pull from the other side of the peninsula (more on this later) there was NO adds and definitely no trouble.
LOOKS:
The looks of this place is spectacular. It is (like the zone name suggests) a claw shaped land surrounded by a greatly textured beach and beautiful waters where sirens whow ould kick your ass sit and laugh at you. If it wasn't below zero I would take a vacation there! The mobs them-selves look kickass, if nothing else you can admire the model of the mob you are kiting :D .
LOOT:
This is pretty much the BEST loot you can get while XPing (with the exception of once again HHK). Aside from the vendor loot (they often drop gems that sell for about 60pp) the pelts that drop sell for AT LEAST 100pp a pelt, up to 150pp and they drop quite often (which is why there are so many jackass druids up there every now and then, more on that later) and the wyvern meat makes a tasty meal. Very rarely a spell will drop but in my entire time there that only happened once
CONVIENTNESS.... I think thats right...:
Preparation(in other words faction) for this place is a bitch. If you can get past that though you are home free. The only way to get there is either through Sirens Grotto or port, but getting a port here is rather easy. Once you are there as long as you haven't killed otters the othmirs will love you and you can sell to them the gems you get and the like.
Ok we know why you would want to go there, now lets get there!
Preparation is a Bitch: getting enough faction to be non KoS
The first part of this is getting enough faction. I HATED this. Nearly killed myself getting enough faction :angry: . There is two ways to do this, one of them requiring "Leeching".
The Slow Way: doing it yourself
In GD there is some weak wolves that your 44 pet can RIP through. However fast you kill them though you need to do this A LOT (I estimated around 300-400 wolves OUCH). These guys are easy however and all you have to do is run around and tell your pet to attack everything in sight, and give your pet health every once in a while.
The faster way: Bumming faction in a faction group
There are two faction groups that can arise in velious: regular faction groups in Kael Drakkal and the "giant" faction group by the giant fort in GD. I suggest disregarding the second one as they still give only "one" point of faction, but slower. The other way you have to travel to the giant city Kael Drakkal and get into a high level group there: it might take a while as you are absolutely worthless at your level there but when you get one you will be killing these giants at a reasonable rate, and these giants here are worth three "faction" points. What does that mean? that means that for the same time ur pet can kill one wolf you can get 3 times that amount, which means you will be getting faction at 3 times the rate!
The Fastest way: Kael Ring War: Getting HUNDREDS of giants pissed off at you
This is probably the best way to get faction. Every once in a while an uber guild will do something called the ring war, where the entire GD zone will depop and HUNDREDS upon HUNDREDS of giants will spawn and battle with the coldains. These giants spawn very close together, so there is two ways to do this. First way is to target each one individually and do your 5 damage lifetap and get faction from each. The next way is A LOT more dangerous and DEFINITELY more fun. There will almost ALWAYS be a high level enchanter in the zone. Now this part is a bit expensive (a peridot a cast) but if you ask for them to rune you they will for the cost of the peridot. That give you around a 600 damage shield which will let you take a couple seconds of invulnerability. But for what you say? well... you got this very neat little blank AE spell a while ago and for once you have a USE FOR IT! After getting a rune Invis yourself and run into a mob of these guys. Now lets put this spell to use :D. when you are in as far as a concentration of giants as you can go cast that spell and watch as 20-30 giants come running after your blood and you lag all the way to hell. With luck you didn't LD and your rune will live long enough for you to run out of that mob and in circles waiting for some high level to help you.
Checking Faction:
There is a named wurm in GD (in the wurm caves) that is on colbalt scar faction (I forget the name it starts with a K, I think its like karadakor or something but except for scar... something he is the only named in the area.) this is the best way to check it but be careful wurms are chosen at random and given true sight, so con every wurm before going close to it! The wurm is static (staying in one spot) so it should be pretty easy to find when you find him for the first time. I suggest getting at least dubious before going to colbalt scar and this is the best way to do it.
Buffs: What you should get before you go.
Although you CAN do this before 46 I would advise you not to. why? Despite this being sacreligious to the Necro Nature I would advise you get KEI and PoT9 until you have arch lich. A good necro can limit their mana cost/health cost to a point where it can ALMOST compare to these two before 49 but Id still suggest getting it: it will make your job A LOT easier. Also you might want to grab some mage toys for your pet, if you don't know why read my other guide at This Thread (http://www.necrotalk.com/index.php?showtopic=852).
So you Got that faction: Now for the meat of the place!
Well you are in Colbalt Scar now. Now what? Well Once you are out of the dragon port buff yourself up and your pet (note you will need DMF up at all times). After that turn right and head to the beach over there. You will NOT be setting up in any place in particular but you will be pulling to the beach. Once there head all the way to the left, and prepare to pull the first mob.
Pre 49:
Target the first mob you can see (make SURE it isn't a drake or a named) and pull with dooming darkness. It doesn't matter if you can't see the creature despite the cliff "blocking" your vision the game dosn't recognize you can't see it for some reason. Jump back on the beach until you are just in spell range and cast VoS. Once cast send in pet (make sure taunt is off) and cast Asystole, then Invoke fear. After that the wyvern doesn't have a chance. When fear breaks it will almost be to the point where it is about to run, and your pet can afford to take a couple hits (they hit for suprisingly low) and just let pet tank for the rest of the time. Don't worry about adds they run to the sea when feared (if they are lucky they will actually make it to the sea but it still doesn't matter if they do) and the othmirs will NOT add. When he is done move to the next one and rinse and repeat. By the time you finish with the last single pull (you probably won't make it to the double pull and if you do read how to split ahead) the first one will start spawning. And the best part of this? as long as they aren't named you have NO faction hits!
Post 49:
Here you get the best pet you get until EoT (spectre pet) which means you can cut down on some of the spells you are using. Really all I used at this point was asystole: I threw out VoS, and every other mob BoD to counter Lich. This is about as mana efficient as you can get, I NEVER ran out of mana with this combo. Also now with BoD and your new pet if you want you can pet tank here! Just turn on taunt doing this and let the pet wail upon the wyvern, then BoD and pact of shadow when necessary. Of course you WILL be killing wyverns faster and thus you will probably make it to the 2 hidden wyverns at the end. The best way I found to do this was use that nice little mezz spell to mezz the other one and pet tank the first. Of course you don't have to pet tank the first, you can just fear kite, but heres the nice little thing of being non-KoS to the wyverns. You can tell when they have forgotten you! if they con threateningly to you after you have STed them they have not forgotten, so if you do it again (you don't have to wait until it wears off before trying to mem blur again) and they con dubious (or whatever your faction currently is) u can run off without worrying them following you! this works with all non-kos mobs and I find it very useful to avoid adds while fighting.
Also if there is a druid or wizard quad kiting everything in sight here you might have to pull from the other side. Except for the quad spawn over by the statue and the 2 spawns together (which you can use the same method that you did with the first 2 spawn mobs) you can single pull everything over there. Until you are 53 though I would wait before trying the quad spawn (leave that to the druid/wizard). The real danger though is getting a drake as an add. Thus I would instead of pulling with dooming darkness pull with another dot (asystole of BoD) and pull it over to the other side before snaring, to make sure you don't conflict with a drake. Why would you not like to take a drake as an add? because they have a NASTY breath that does 500 damage and then dispells you! I once got dispelled while floating over the beach and fell to my death (OW). Basically you can pull everything from the other side except the quad spawn but once again look out for the drakes and names.
Problems you might encounter
1. If you have hunted othmirs recently and are KoS you might have trouble kiting the wyverns on the beach. For one you can't loot the corpses since they have a huge aggro range and they are social!
2. Jackass druids and wizards might sometimes pop up for cash and pelts. there is a lot of spawns but they are SLOW spawning, and since the wizards quad kite and they might decide your taking 1 spawn every once in a while you are KSing their "camp" (it is a FFA zone btw) they CAN and WILL try to steal your kills. Now basically you can do whatever you do to deal with KSers, I like to out nuke them since all they are doing is AE nukes. Of course dont' get heated up immediately if a druid they might be happy to share the spawns and you can always bum some buffs off them, so "feel" them out before trying to rectify KSing.
3. If a drake aggros on you ST them until they forget you. That is pretty much the only way to get rid of them. An alternative is ST then fear THEN snare, as long as they don't have a chance to get off their dispell you won't have a problem with that.
4. if a named aggros FD and wait the 2 mins. They are resistant to everything, cannot be snared or mem blurred, and if you manage to kill one you take faction hits and BIG faction hits at that. These are the only mobs that will give you faction hits however so just steer clear if a name spawns (with luck a high level wil kill).
Wrapping up
From 49-53 people might prefer HHK to colbalt scar. However except for DSP (edit: ever since I spent 10 levels charm kiting here with my enchanter this has become the zone from hell. People like those rockhoppers even more then they like wyverns... and when they see free pelts they assess how much of ability you will be able to KS rather then if you are camping it or not) this is my single favorite zone in the game. the place is beautifully textured, the monsters look awesome, the exp is great, the loot is great, and in general you will have a lot more fun here then in HHK (as you might have noticed I do not have a very high opinion of HHK). if you are bored of the dreadlands and plaguebones, and kaesora just scares the (#*@(# outta you this is the place for you.
Colbalt Scar map (http://www.eqatlas.com/velious/cobaltscarmap.html)
Background information: WHY you would like this zone
For those of you who know what CS (Colbalt Scar for those of you who don't know the initials) is you might be asking yourself "CS is for quad kiting druids who think they can camp the entire zone!" Well we might not be able to make as much exp or farm as much as druids, but trust me this was the single best place I found from 44-54 (disregarding HHK but nobody likes the armpit of norrath). Also loot is not bad either, trust me you will LOVE this place once you get the hang of it
What you can expect from this zone
At this time of the game I was stuck in a rut. My hopes were dashed when I came to PoJ and found out that "phat exp" that everybody was telling me about PoP did not include soloing, and despite trying I found that every other pull id get nuked to death of have 20 rat adds. Anyway I was wondering around, looking on every site in existance that ever MENTIONED a necromancer, and I came on a vague description of wyverns in CS. Deciding to try this out I gained faction (more on this later) and spending forever getting a port trundled over to CS.
EXP:
Exp here is not the best exp you can get in the game (aka hhk) but it is pretty damn close. at 46 I was getting 1-2% exp a wyvern and they went down easy and fast. Except when a druid took most of the kills and I had to pull from the other side of the peninsula (more on this later) there was NO adds and definitely no trouble.
LOOKS:
The looks of this place is spectacular. It is (like the zone name suggests) a claw shaped land surrounded by a greatly textured beach and beautiful waters where sirens whow ould kick your ass sit and laugh at you. If it wasn't below zero I would take a vacation there! The mobs them-selves look kickass, if nothing else you can admire the model of the mob you are kiting :D .
LOOT:
This is pretty much the BEST loot you can get while XPing (with the exception of once again HHK). Aside from the vendor loot (they often drop gems that sell for about 60pp) the pelts that drop sell for AT LEAST 100pp a pelt, up to 150pp and they drop quite often (which is why there are so many jackass druids up there every now and then, more on that later) and the wyvern meat makes a tasty meal. Very rarely a spell will drop but in my entire time there that only happened once
CONVIENTNESS.... I think thats right...:
Preparation(in other words faction) for this place is a bitch. If you can get past that though you are home free. The only way to get there is either through Sirens Grotto or port, but getting a port here is rather easy. Once you are there as long as you haven't killed otters the othmirs will love you and you can sell to them the gems you get and the like.
Ok we know why you would want to go there, now lets get there!
Preparation is a Bitch: getting enough faction to be non KoS
The first part of this is getting enough faction. I HATED this. Nearly killed myself getting enough faction :angry: . There is two ways to do this, one of them requiring "Leeching".
The Slow Way: doing it yourself
In GD there is some weak wolves that your 44 pet can RIP through. However fast you kill them though you need to do this A LOT (I estimated around 300-400 wolves OUCH). These guys are easy however and all you have to do is run around and tell your pet to attack everything in sight, and give your pet health every once in a while.
The faster way: Bumming faction in a faction group
There are two faction groups that can arise in velious: regular faction groups in Kael Drakkal and the "giant" faction group by the giant fort in GD. I suggest disregarding the second one as they still give only "one" point of faction, but slower. The other way you have to travel to the giant city Kael Drakkal and get into a high level group there: it might take a while as you are absolutely worthless at your level there but when you get one you will be killing these giants at a reasonable rate, and these giants here are worth three "faction" points. What does that mean? that means that for the same time ur pet can kill one wolf you can get 3 times that amount, which means you will be getting faction at 3 times the rate!
The Fastest way: Kael Ring War: Getting HUNDREDS of giants pissed off at you
This is probably the best way to get faction. Every once in a while an uber guild will do something called the ring war, where the entire GD zone will depop and HUNDREDS upon HUNDREDS of giants will spawn and battle with the coldains. These giants spawn very close together, so there is two ways to do this. First way is to target each one individually and do your 5 damage lifetap and get faction from each. The next way is A LOT more dangerous and DEFINITELY more fun. There will almost ALWAYS be a high level enchanter in the zone. Now this part is a bit expensive (a peridot a cast) but if you ask for them to rune you they will for the cost of the peridot. That give you around a 600 damage shield which will let you take a couple seconds of invulnerability. But for what you say? well... you got this very neat little blank AE spell a while ago and for once you have a USE FOR IT! After getting a rune Invis yourself and run into a mob of these guys. Now lets put this spell to use :D. when you are in as far as a concentration of giants as you can go cast that spell and watch as 20-30 giants come running after your blood and you lag all the way to hell. With luck you didn't LD and your rune will live long enough for you to run out of that mob and in circles waiting for some high level to help you.
Checking Faction:
There is a named wurm in GD (in the wurm caves) that is on colbalt scar faction (I forget the name it starts with a K, I think its like karadakor or something but except for scar... something he is the only named in the area.) this is the best way to check it but be careful wurms are chosen at random and given true sight, so con every wurm before going close to it! The wurm is static (staying in one spot) so it should be pretty easy to find when you find him for the first time. I suggest getting at least dubious before going to colbalt scar and this is the best way to do it.
Buffs: What you should get before you go.
Although you CAN do this before 46 I would advise you not to. why? Despite this being sacreligious to the Necro Nature I would advise you get KEI and PoT9 until you have arch lich. A good necro can limit their mana cost/health cost to a point where it can ALMOST compare to these two before 49 but Id still suggest getting it: it will make your job A LOT easier. Also you might want to grab some mage toys for your pet, if you don't know why read my other guide at This Thread (http://www.necrotalk.com/index.php?showtopic=852).
So you Got that faction: Now for the meat of the place!
Well you are in Colbalt Scar now. Now what? Well Once you are out of the dragon port buff yourself up and your pet (note you will need DMF up at all times). After that turn right and head to the beach over there. You will NOT be setting up in any place in particular but you will be pulling to the beach. Once there head all the way to the left, and prepare to pull the first mob.
Pre 49:
Target the first mob you can see (make SURE it isn't a drake or a named) and pull with dooming darkness. It doesn't matter if you can't see the creature despite the cliff "blocking" your vision the game dosn't recognize you can't see it for some reason. Jump back on the beach until you are just in spell range and cast VoS. Once cast send in pet (make sure taunt is off) and cast Asystole, then Invoke fear. After that the wyvern doesn't have a chance. When fear breaks it will almost be to the point where it is about to run, and your pet can afford to take a couple hits (they hit for suprisingly low) and just let pet tank for the rest of the time. Don't worry about adds they run to the sea when feared (if they are lucky they will actually make it to the sea but it still doesn't matter if they do) and the othmirs will NOT add. When he is done move to the next one and rinse and repeat. By the time you finish with the last single pull (you probably won't make it to the double pull and if you do read how to split ahead) the first one will start spawning. And the best part of this? as long as they aren't named you have NO faction hits!
Post 49:
Here you get the best pet you get until EoT (spectre pet) which means you can cut down on some of the spells you are using. Really all I used at this point was asystole: I threw out VoS, and every other mob BoD to counter Lich. This is about as mana efficient as you can get, I NEVER ran out of mana with this combo. Also now with BoD and your new pet if you want you can pet tank here! Just turn on taunt doing this and let the pet wail upon the wyvern, then BoD and pact of shadow when necessary. Of course you WILL be killing wyverns faster and thus you will probably make it to the 2 hidden wyverns at the end. The best way I found to do this was use that nice little mezz spell to mezz the other one and pet tank the first. Of course you don't have to pet tank the first, you can just fear kite, but heres the nice little thing of being non-KoS to the wyverns. You can tell when they have forgotten you! if they con threateningly to you after you have STed them they have not forgotten, so if you do it again (you don't have to wait until it wears off before trying to mem blur again) and they con dubious (or whatever your faction currently is) u can run off without worrying them following you! this works with all non-kos mobs and I find it very useful to avoid adds while fighting.
Also if there is a druid or wizard quad kiting everything in sight here you might have to pull from the other side. Except for the quad spawn over by the statue and the 2 spawns together (which you can use the same method that you did with the first 2 spawn mobs) you can single pull everything over there. Until you are 53 though I would wait before trying the quad spawn (leave that to the druid/wizard). The real danger though is getting a drake as an add. Thus I would instead of pulling with dooming darkness pull with another dot (asystole of BoD) and pull it over to the other side before snaring, to make sure you don't conflict with a drake. Why would you not like to take a drake as an add? because they have a NASTY breath that does 500 damage and then dispells you! I once got dispelled while floating over the beach and fell to my death (OW). Basically you can pull everything from the other side except the quad spawn but once again look out for the drakes and names.
Problems you might encounter
1. If you have hunted othmirs recently and are KoS you might have trouble kiting the wyverns on the beach. For one you can't loot the corpses since they have a huge aggro range and they are social!
2. Jackass druids and wizards might sometimes pop up for cash and pelts. there is a lot of spawns but they are SLOW spawning, and since the wizards quad kite and they might decide your taking 1 spawn every once in a while you are KSing their "camp" (it is a FFA zone btw) they CAN and WILL try to steal your kills. Now basically you can do whatever you do to deal with KSers, I like to out nuke them since all they are doing is AE nukes. Of course dont' get heated up immediately if a druid they might be happy to share the spawns and you can always bum some buffs off them, so "feel" them out before trying to rectify KSing.
3. If a drake aggros on you ST them until they forget you. That is pretty much the only way to get rid of them. An alternative is ST then fear THEN snare, as long as they don't have a chance to get off their dispell you won't have a problem with that.
4. if a named aggros FD and wait the 2 mins. They are resistant to everything, cannot be snared or mem blurred, and if you manage to kill one you take faction hits and BIG faction hits at that. These are the only mobs that will give you faction hits however so just steer clear if a name spawns (with luck a high level wil kill).
Wrapping up
From 49-53 people might prefer HHK to colbalt scar. However except for DSP (edit: ever since I spent 10 levels charm kiting here with my enchanter this has become the zone from hell. People like those rockhoppers even more then they like wyverns... and when they see free pelts they assess how much of ability you will be able to KS rather then if you are camping it or not) this is my single favorite zone in the game. the place is beautifully textured, the monsters look awesome, the exp is great, the loot is great, and in general you will have a lot more fun here then in HHK (as you might have noticed I do not have a very high opinion of HHK). if you are bored of the dreadlands and plaguebones, and kaesora just scares the (#*@(# outta you this is the place for you.