PoP Progression encounters for Solo Server

[bad_captain]

I was wondering if anyone has made some adjustments to PoP progression scripts to be more suitable for a solo server, as I play by myself with a few groups of Bots on my own private server. I am currently working my way through PoP progression using the standard PEQ DB, and there will be a few encounters that I have to tweak to be doable by myself. First was Manaetic Behemoth. I couldn't get my bots to target and attack the spiders quickly enough to get him to activate. I could kill a few of them, but eventually one would always get through. I also just got to the HoH trials, and I'm not sure I will be able to do them as is.

I want to keep these (and any others I have yet to reach) as close to live (or at least challenging in some other way) as I can, but I think I will have to make changes to be able to progress any more. Basically anything that requires kiting adds, multiple groups in multiple places, etc would need some edits.

If there is any one who has gone through this already and made changes and would like to share, or anyone who would just like to offer suggestions, I would appreciate it. My current progression:

PoJ Trial DONE
PoN Hedge DONE
PoI Factory Key, MB (with edits) DONE
PoD Grummus DONE
PoS key to BoT DONE
PoV Aerin'Dar DONE
PoNb DONE
CoDecay Carprin DONE, Bertoxx not done
BoT Towers DONE, Agnarr not done
PoTorment not done
PoTactics Tallon DONE, Vallon DONE, Rallos not done
HoHa not done
HoHb not done
Elementals not done
PoTime not done

[blackdragonsdg]

For the Manaetic Behemoth fight you might try changing the timers in the quest script so that the spiders do not spawn as quickly or maybe decrease the amount of hp that the spiders have. A simply 5-10% change could have a big impact on your ability to succeed.

You mentioned the HoH trials, imo the hardest one is keeping the maidens alive. Sorry I don't remember the trials proper name. Anyway you might try increasing the maidens hp slightly so you have a bit more time to save them from death. You could also try decreasing some of the mobs damage output or attack speed. And surprisingly Rydda-Dar is not that hard with bots.

[bad_captain]

For the Behemoth, I basically removed the signal from the spiders , so he would activate regardless, and reduced their damage so that they definitely do damage, but not kill all of my bots if one got through. I could look into changing the timers on them, as the biggest problem I had was that every once in a while, there would be a double spider from one side, so one would get through, or one would leave a corpse with an etheral parchment on it, and it would mess up my targeting macro. I may mess around with editing the Bot's guard command to attack anything that comes near them.

For the HoH trials, I was thinking of staggering the spawns a little bit.. Room one would spawn immediately, while room two would spawn 1 or 2 minutes later, then room three after that. That way I still have to finish quickly to have success in the next room. Another option that would probably be easier would be to spawn them with a trigger once I enter the room. That may be a little too easy, though.

My problem is that I'm already past where I made it on live (I didn't even pass a PoJ trial), so this is the first time I'm seeing these encounters and don't know exactly how some of them work.

[blackdragonsdg]

Tell you what I will do a write up of the tactics my guild used when I did PoP progression on live. This might take some time but I will try to post it some time tonight.

[blackdragonsdg]

Well that didn’t take as long as I thought it would. All the tactics that are mentioned below are based on being level 65 with PoP and VT Gear. Tactics for raid events can vary wildly from guild to guild as class composition and raid numbers often varied considerably. My knowledge of Planes of Power stops in the Elemental Planes as that is when I stopped playing the first time.

---- Ruins of Lxanvom (Crypt of Decay)----
Once you have completed all preflags, trigger Bertox event and enter his chamber. This event consists of a whole bunch of timed or triggered spawns. These spawns occur in groups in the four sides of Bertoxx’s chamber. There are multiple waves of spawns that occur and each wave gets progressively harder. No real tactics needed for this as it is like clearing trash mobs. Bertoxx is initially immune to spells so you have to melee him down. As his health drops his resistance to spells decreases as well. I believe you will see emotes as this occurs. 

----Plane of Torment----
You have to start off by doing a key quest to get into the main tower. I never did this part so I have no information on it. Once in the main tower start fighting your way to the top. Be sure to take out the Keeper of Sorrows on the way up. The Saryrn fight is a bit annoying because of Sorrowsong casts silence on the raid party. Initially Sorrowsong is untargetable but that changes as Saryrn’s hp decreases. As soon as Sorrowsong becomes targetable kill the bird as quickly as possible. Once Sorrowsong is dead the fight is much easier. 

----Halls of Honor----
Halls of Honor A consists of three trials, the most straight forward is Rydda-Dar which is a pure dps fight. Make sure your MA gets agro quickly. I always like the tactic of MA sitting on Rydda-Dar’s spawn point and the SA triggering the event. Since the MA is sitting he/she should immediately get agro when Rydda-Dar spawns.  Be sure to rune your MA and SA and have them use defensive disc’s right before the event is triggered. This fight won’t take long no matter which way it turns out. 
The second is the villagers, if I remember correctly when this event is triggered the villagers and some angry npcs will spawn in each of the three rooms in that section of the basement. The angry mobs will start killing the villagers and if they succeed the event ends.  Ideally you would have a group or two in each room killing the angry mobs as quickly as possible. Once all of these mobs are dead, a second wave of harder npcs spawn in each room which have to be killed in a similar fashion.  I am pretty sure this event is on a timer but I could be wrong.  This is not easy to do by yourself using bots. 
It is possible I am mixing up the second and third events but that covers one of the two and I do not remember the last one.
Halls of Honor B(Temple of Marr), is fairly straight forward, start by clearing a path to Mithaniel Marr. Once in Mith Marr’s room kill all trash in his immediate area and then wait for them to repop. I think these mobs on  15-20 minute timers. Once you kill them the second time engage Mith Marr as quickly as possible. This is done to avoid repops in the middle of the fight. Mith Marr is almost a straight forward dps fight except he has a very nasty 3500 proc that can easily kill your MA if it triggers in rapid succession. 

----Bastion of Thunder----
Once you have gone through the towers and completed the Agnarr key. Port into Agnarr’s area, you will actually be in a room upstairs away from Agnarr. Be sure to buff up your resists as you will need it. Agnarr will be standing in the room below you along with one or two portals like you experienced in one of towers. I don’t remember if these can be killed or not but by all means try it. While you are fighting Agnarr, named giants will start poping out of portals. I do not remember if these are timed or based on an hp event occurring. So try off tanking them or just kill them and see what happens.

----Solusek Ro's Tower----
To start off you have to complete your Sol Ro Chamber flag by taking out the five different raid mini’s, one in each tower.  I don’t remember the details of these fights but most are fairly simple. Sol Ro has a very nasty damage shield that will eat through your melee like acid. You have to debuff him prior to zerging him or the fight will be short lived. I am pretty sure he recasts the damage shield during the battle so be careful. As long as you keep the damage shield in check he should be an easy kill. 

----Drunder, Fortress of Zek (Plane of Tactics)----
Once you have taken out Tallon and Vallon Zek you should be ready for Rallos Zek.  The real Rallos Zek will spawn in the large pit near zone entrance. This event is triggered by two separate npc’s being killed. Once you kill one of these npc’s a timer will start so must kill the second one very very quickly or the event will end prematurely. You will have to look up the exact names of these npc’s as I do not remember. Both npc’s are located near the fake Rallos Zek. You may have to locate him ahead of time. Once you have killed the two trigger mobs engage the fake Rallos Zek, his hp will drop to around 60% before he depops. Once the fake Rallos Zek depops get back to the large pit near zone in. You will find the real Rallos Zek standing in the middle of the pit. Rallos Zek is a melee fight but he is easily the hardest mob in PoP outside of the Elemental Planes. 

----Doomfire, the Burning Lands(Plane of Fire)----
Plane of Fire is straight forward. Take out the minis if you feel like it then take of the Guardian of Doomfire to start the Fennin Ro event. Once you trigger the event many mobs will spawn on the path in front of you. The mobs consist of normal trash and named mobs. Fennin Ro is initially untargetable so you have to kill everything in the area to make him targetable. Fennin Ro is mostly melee but he has a nasty fire AE so you should find a way to hide/protect the squishy casters. 

----Vegarlson, the Earthen Badlands(Plane of Earth A)----
This is a bit of a grind so get comfortable. PoEartha has multiple dust events that involve waves of mobs on timers leading to a named mob. I don’t remember if these were required or not. Do the events if required then head to Tantisala Jaggedtooth, kill the giant croc and take his/her key. The key is needed to access the Mystical Arbiter of Earth.  When you enter the Arbitor of Earths area be careful as I think the trash mobs have mana drain effects. The Mystical Arbitor of Earth is no fun to play as he uses some very nasty AE’s, one of which will drain your hp and mana very quickly.  I don’t recall there being any way to avoid the AE’s in this fight so kill the mob as quickly as possible. 

----Ragrax, Stronghold of the Twelve(Plane of Earth B)----
There are multiple raid mini events in this zone and I do not remember if these were required or not so do them if needed or skip them if possible. Now the real fun begins. You are about to meet the Rathe Council and the Avatar of Earth.  The Rathe Council consists of 12 npc’s in close proximity. Six of these are mezzable and six are not. Each council member’s strength is based on its hp level.  The strategy for this fight is simple but implementation is not. Pull each council member to the raid party one at a time then beat the mobs hp down to around 15% or just outside of enrage.  When the council members hp is low mezz it if possible or off tank but DO NOT KILL IT. Rinse and repeat that same strategy for the remaining eleven council members. Once all council member are at very low health start killing them in rapid succession. Obviously kill the non mezzable council members first. All council members must die within 7 minutes of each other in order for the Avatar of Earth to spawn.  I believe the Avatar of Earth is a melee fight but I do not know for sure….might want to look this one up.

----Eryslai, the Kingdom of Wind(Plane of Air)----
This zone requires you to kill multiple Avatars in order to get to Xegony the Queen of Air. I do not remember the run down on the Avatars. The strategy for Xegony the Queen of Air involves tanking Xegony while killing multiple waves of mobs that are triggered based on Xegony’s hp level. Position a someone between zone in and Xegony’s spawn point then position another person on the opposite side of the zone. The point of this is to watch for mobs running to aid Xegony. All the trash mobs in this event are untargetable at first and become active as Xegony’s hp falls. Pull Xegony out of her little enclosure to a nearby tree or wall. Put your MA’s back against said wall or tree during this fight to prevent the battle from moving around the zone. When a wave becomes active have all non-essential groups engage and kill the mobs then re-engage Xegony. Rinse and repeat the engage, destroy and re-engage tactic until Xegony is dead. When a wave of mobs becomes active Xegony’s hp will lock at a certain percentage and remain locked until that wave is dead. This occurs approximately 5-7 times. 

----Reef of Coirnav----
If I remember correctly some of the raid minis in this zone must be dead before you can trigger the Corinav event. When the event is triggered you have approximately 14 minutes to complete the following and engage Corinav. Corinav is untargetable and non aggro throughout most of this event. Multiple waves of mobs will spawn around Corinav. These spawns are timed. You must pull and kill roughly 100+ trash mobs and 3 raid minis. The trash mobs need to be pulled in large numbers to a waiting group of AE casters. AE all waves of trash mobs to death as quickly as possible. The final wave will consist of 3 raid mini’s. Fighting all three at once is suicide. Either off tank or root two of them somehow and then kill them one at a time. When the last raid mini falls Corinav will become targetable so engage and destroy. Corinav has relatively low hp in comparison to the other EP Gods.

[bad_captain]

Thanks for the info. This should prove helpful. If I get the trials working how i want, I'll post changes here for others.

I wanted to try Bertoxx last night, but once I got into the basement, there were only a couple of mobs up, and no others spawned, even after killing the Spectre. I got tired of running around and waiting. I'll have to check again later to see if I messed something up.

Good news is, I think I have a workable bot heal rotation, so I should be able to try it out on some of these encounters. After testing on a few lesser targets, I'll try on single hard hitters or encounters where I don't need to micromanage my groups to pick up adds and such.

[bad_captain]

Rydda'Dar down, Agnarr down..

Interesting issue though. Agnarr fight and way up was a little odd. There were no adds, nothing came through the portals, and when I clicked on the door to go to the steps to Agnarr ( I assume this is what you do, no info anywhere about the door??), it ported me back down to the bottom floor of his tower. After two times going up, I just moved myself to the other side of the door and took Agnarr on.

I'm not sure I could have taken him down with the adds though, as I had a little trouble on the level before him with Emmerik Skyfury. He took out a couple tanks, then began summoning me until my pet got agro then finally another bot got agro, then I finally took him down.

I didn't try my heal rotation as my last test crashed the zone if the heal rotation target died, so I didn't want to have to start over if my MT went down. Rydda ate my 9k HP MT with a poorly timed FLURRY of attacks before slow was landed. It was kind of funny to see my tank at 60%+, then just gone. I may see if I can get Warrior /defensive or whatever to work. That would help a whole lot.

[blackdragonsdg]

The only doors in that section of the zone should open up and allow you to run downstairs to Agnarr. They are not suppose to port you anywhere. I don't remember to clearly about any port objects in that room but it is possible that one is in there and the information on it and the doors has gotten crossed up.

Rydda'Dar is one of several named that will slice your tanks up with little to no effort. Defensive abilities and rune spells almost become necessity as you advance.