The following is a write-up of one of my favorite exploits, that I am not using anymore, as the rewarded gear is very much obsolete now. It allows to kill the Avatar of Steel, the boss of the Argath Raid, without enganging it and without using any active hacks. It allowed to kill the Avatar of Steel when VoA had just launched, and even decent raid guilds were struggling with this raid. Now its just nice to have, as the raid gear is still superior to group gear in terms of AC and focus effects. The cultural aug that drops 50% of the time is nice too.
Preliminaries:
It takes a while to learn this strat. It took me at least 50 attemps at this raid to finally master it - trying all kinds of different strats - till I finally found one that worked. It's pretty complex, but once you understand the mechanics, it will be impossible for you to fail it.
The most important rule of this strats is:
Never aggro the Avatar of Steel
As long as the Avatar of Steel has never aggroed, his scripts will not activate. Thus, he will not spawn any adds below 60%, he will not summon damage auras at 20%, he will not become unkillable at 70%, and most importantly, he will not cause instant-fail if he is unaggroed.
If you accidantly aggro him - even if you survive by clearing aggro - you need to get a new instance.
Be sneaky!
Doing the Avatar of Steel this way basically is a two-phase raid. The phases are entirely different to the phases of the raid script normally has.
Phase 1: 100%-5%
Setup:
Your character have to fill three roles:
1. Shard killer group.
2. A shard spawner.
3. A water tower floater.
1. The shard killer group requires to kill low-hp level 91 mobs fairly fast. You will be spawning about 800 of these mobs. This group needs to be able to kill 800 of those within the time-limit of 6 hours. This means you have constantly kill 3 of those per minute, if you want to have some time left in the end to loot the chest. The splinters you are killing are low-hp low-damage. Much weaker than Argath group mobs. Its very important to have your killer group in a good spot. The spot has to be down the ramp (so shards dont have to far to walk) but has to be out of range and LoS of the Avatar of Steel. The spot that I use is down the ramp, go left about 400 locs, then hide behind a corner of a small building. You need to loot the golem splinters to get their shards. Then you target the tower-mover and rightclick a shard to "pass" the shard to the tower-movers curser.
I'm not giving you a macro here, just use your bot macros to kill stuff that rushes your group. Make sure you tell you macro not to leash to far from the camp to avoid aggroing the Avatar of Steel. Then just add this to your looters macro
to pass a shard to your tower mover.
2. The spawner must have a way of frequently clearing aggro. I used a bard.
The spawner will sit at one of the Bolt Gun thingies, and click it to spawn new golem shards. In the first phase, the frequency should be about one shard every 30 secs, such that you get enough shards to fuel the water tower. You can also decide to go much faster, as about 75 Bolt clicks do 1% damage to the Golem. Since you will have to go at full speed in phase 2, you can just spawn the shards as fast as you can kill them in phase 1. Here is the macro I use for the bard. Its just hacked - bad code style. Make your own macro if you like. If you use this macro, have your character stand in front of a Bolt Gun such that the "u" button will trigger the Bolt Gun.
Edit the variable minwait and mintwo as you need. The variable minwait defines the minimum delay (in seconds) between subsequent spawns. The variable mintwo defines the delay if there is already two spawns up. Note that the spawns take about 10-30 seconds (random) to reach your group. Since the spawns aggro a random person in the zone (but not the tower-mover) they can also aggro the spawner - the macro fades off aggro if that happens - the spawns will instantly take a new random target (which may again be the spawner).
3. The tower floater has to be a FD class. He will be standing on the water tower for the first three hours. This task allows you to power a water tower by standing on it and using one of the drops from the splinter to more the water tower on top of the Avatar of Steel. Once in position, the water tower does 2,000,000 damage (about 1.3%) to the avatar. The shard spawner will constantly click his shards until the tower stops moving, when it stops, he clicks a new shard. Once he gets close to the Avatar, he must FD, otherwise the Avatar will aggro and summon the tower floater, and activate his scripts and end the raid. Thus, you have to click one more shard at the right moment when you get close to the avatar. For this final clcik you must be far enough to avoid getting aggro and you must to be close enough to allow one final shard take the tower to the avatar (you the tower stops just before reaching the avatar, you will have to un-FD to click another shard, this has a high chance of catching aggro and failing). He is my macro to fully automate the tower floater. It makes no mistakes. Note that you can "throw" new shards to the tower-floater by targeting him, and right-clicking the shards, this way the shards will appear on the tower-floaters cursor. This way you dont have to walk to the shard-killer-group to get new ammo.
Note that this macro assumes a monk. If you use another FD class (it has to be FD - simple aggro clearing wont save you) you have to use other means to FD than /alt activalte 420 and /alt activate 773. Note that in the group version and the normal raid, there is Fireball-thingies flying around, hitting and stoping your tower. These don't exist if you don't start the script.
steelshard.mac:
Phase 2:
Repeat moving the water tower until Avatar of Steel is as low at 5%. At this point the water tower will no longer do any damage. So take your tower-mover to the kill-group (use campfire to move, or CoH - dont walk or you will trigger the Avatar of Steel). At this point the only thing that damages the Avatar of Steel is the Bolt Guns. That means, you have to trigger 6x70=420 Steel Shards and kill them. If you just spawn them without killing them (which you can), then after a while, the Shards will be absorbed by the Avator of Steel and heal him for as much as the Bolt Gun damage him for. So you have to kill them.
This phase, despite being 5% only, takes a long time! Took me about 2-3 hours, but that was with level 95 chars. Its just a dps test at this point.
Remember at what time you obtained the raid task. Always keep in mind that you should have 30 mins left to loot the chests. If you can estimate that you will only barely win the task, and not have enough time to loot, you may just restart and be more efficient next time.
I'm not playing EQ anymore, so I'm not checking this forum often. Anyways, post your experiences with this starts, and post questions. But it may take a few days for me to reply.
Preliminaries:
It takes a while to learn this strat. It took me at least 50 attemps at this raid to finally master it - trying all kinds of different strats - till I finally found one that worked. It's pretty complex, but once you understand the mechanics, it will be impossible for you to fail it.
The most important rule of this strats is:
Never aggro the Avatar of Steel
As long as the Avatar of Steel has never aggroed, his scripts will not activate. Thus, he will not spawn any adds below 60%, he will not summon damage auras at 20%, he will not become unkillable at 70%, and most importantly, he will not cause instant-fail if he is unaggroed.
If you accidantly aggro him - even if you survive by clearing aggro - you need to get a new instance.
Be sneaky!
Doing the Avatar of Steel this way basically is a two-phase raid. The phases are entirely different to the phases of the raid script normally has.
Phase 1: 100%-5%
Setup:
Your character have to fill three roles:
1. Shard killer group.
2. A shard spawner.
3. A water tower floater.
1. The shard killer group requires to kill low-hp level 91 mobs fairly fast. You will be spawning about 800 of these mobs. This group needs to be able to kill 800 of those within the time-limit of 6 hours. This means you have constantly kill 3 of those per minute, if you want to have some time left in the end to loot the chest. The splinters you are killing are low-hp low-damage. Much weaker than Argath group mobs. Its very important to have your killer group in a good spot. The spot has to be down the ramp (so shards dont have to far to walk) but has to be out of range and LoS of the Avatar of Steel. The spot that I use is down the ramp, go left about 400 locs, then hide behind a corner of a small building. You need to loot the golem splinters to get their shards. Then you target the tower-mover and rightclick a shard to "pass" the shard to the tower-movers curser.
I'm not giving you a macro here, just use your bot macros to kill stuff that rushes your group. Make sure you tell you macro not to leash to far from the camp to avoid aggroing the Avatar of Steel. Then just add this to your looters macro
Code:
/target *nameOfTowerMover*
/delay 8
/itemnotify ${FindItem[Energetic Steel Shard].InvSlot} rightmouseup2. The spawner must have a way of frequently clearing aggro. I used a bard.
The spawner will sit at one of the Bolt Gun thingies, and click it to spawn new golem shards. In the first phase, the frequency should be about one shard every 30 secs, such that you get enough shards to fuel the water tower. You can also decide to go much faster, as about 75 Bolt clicks do 1% damage to the Golem. Since you will have to go at full speed in phase 2, you can just spawn the shards as fast as you can kill them in phase 1. Here is the macro I use for the bard. Its just hacked - bad code style. Make your own macro if you like. If you use this macro, have your character stand in front of a Bolt Gun such that the "u" button will trigger the Bolt Gun.
Edit the variable minwait and mintwo as you need. The variable minwait defines the minimum delay (in seconds) between subsequent spawns. The variable mintwo defines the delay if there is already two spawns up. Note that the spawns take about 10-30 seconds (random) to reach your group. Since the spawns aggro a random person in the zone (but not the tower-mover) they can also aggro the spawner - the macro fades off aggro if that happens - the spawns will instantly take a new random target (which may again be the spawner).
Code:
Sub Main
/declare looptimer timer outer 0
/declare zonename string outer ${Zone.Name}
/declare minwait int outer 14
/declare mintwo int outer 15
/declare killcount int outer 0
/declare lastpercent int outer 100
/declare mintimer timer outer 0
/declare twotimer timer outer 0
/if (!${Plugin[Mq2rez].Name.Equal[Mq2cast]}) /plugin mq2rez
/rez accept on
:loop
/if (${Me.CombatState.Equal[Combat]}) /alt activate 212
/if (${Me.PctMana}<20) {
/delay 5s
/if (${Me.Standing}) /sit
/delay 3m
/if (${Me.Sitting}) /stand
}
/if (!${mintimer} && !${twotimer}) {
/keypress u
/varset mintimer ${minwait}s
/varcalc killcount ${killcount}+1
/echo Avatar bei ${Spawn[${Me.XTarget[1].ID}].PctHPs}. Kills: ${killcount}
/mqlog Avatar bei ${Spawn[${Me.XTarget[1].ID}].PctHPs}. Kills: ${killcount}
/if (${Spawn[${Me.XTarget[1].ID}].PctHPs}<${lastpercent}) {
/echo New percent!
/mqlog New percent!
/varset killcount 0
/varset lastpercent ${Spawn[${Me.XTarget[1].ID}].PctHPs}
}
}
/if (${Me.XTarget}>3) /varset twotimer ${mintwo}s
/delay 2
/goto :loop3. The tower floater has to be a FD class. He will be standing on the water tower for the first three hours. This task allows you to power a water tower by standing on it and using one of the drops from the splinter to more the water tower on top of the Avatar of Steel. Once in position, the water tower does 2,000,000 damage (about 1.3%) to the avatar. The shard spawner will constantly click his shards until the tower stops moving, when it stops, he clicks a new shard. Once he gets close to the Avatar, he must FD, otherwise the Avatar will aggro and summon the tower floater, and activate his scripts and end the raid. Thus, you have to click one more shard at the right moment when you get close to the avatar. For this final clcik you must be far enough to avoid getting aggro and you must to be close enough to allow one final shard take the tower to the avatar (you the tower stops just before reaching the avatar, you will have to un-FD to click another shard, this has a high chance of catching aggro and failing). He is my macro to fully automate the tower floater. It makes no mistakes. Note that you can "throw" new shards to the tower-floater by targeting him, and right-clicking the shards, this way the shards will appear on the tower-floaters cursor. This way you dont have to walk to the shard-killer-group to get new ammo.
Note that this macro assumes a monk. If you use another FD class (it has to be FD - simple aggro clearing wont save you) you have to use other means to FD than /alt activalte 420 and /alt activate 773. Note that in the group version and the normal raid, there is Fireball-thingies flying around, hitting and stoping your tower. These don't exist if you don't start the script.
steelshard.mac:
Code:
#Event flowing "#*#flowing from the tower#*#"
Sub Main
/declare clicktimer timer outer 0
/declare fdtimer timer outer 0
/echo Waiting for invites.
/echo Version Wait 1.1
:mainloop
/delay 3
/if (!${clicktimer}) {
/itemnotify ${FindItem[Energetic Steel Shard].InvSlot} rightmouseup
/varset clicktimer 31s
}
/if (!${fdtimer} && ${Me.X}<-200 && ${Me.Z}<160) {
/itemnotify ${FindItem[Energetic Steel Shard].InvSlot} rightmouseup
/alt activate 420
/alt activate 773
/delay 3
/alt activalte 420
/alt activate 773
/delay 3
/alt activalte 420
/alt activate 773
/delay 3
/alt activalte 420
/alt activate 773
/delay 3
/alt activalte 420
/alt activate 773
/delay 3
/alt activalte 420
/alt activate 773
/delay 3
/alt activalte 420
/alt activate 773
/delay 3
/alt activalte 420
/alt activate 773
/delay 3
/alt activalte 420
/alt activate 773
/delay 3
/alt activalte 420
/alt activate 773
/delay 3
/alt activalte 420
/alt activate 773
/delay 3
/alt activalte 420
/varset fdtimer 100s
/delay 73s
/stand
/delay 5
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}<10) /destroy
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}>9) /autoinv
/delay 3
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}<10) /destroy
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}>9) /autoinv
/delay 3
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}<10) /destroy
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}>9) /autoinv
/delay 3
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}<10) /destroy
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}>9) /autoinv
/delay 3
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}<10) /destroy
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}>9) /autoinv
/delay 3
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}<10) /destroy
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}>9) /autoinv
/delay 3
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}<10) /destroy
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}>9) /autoinv
/delay 3
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}<10) /destroy
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}>9) /autoinv
/delay 3
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}<10) /destroy
/if (${Me.FreeInventory}>9) /autoinv
/delay 3
}
/goto :mainloop
:end
/return
Sub Event_flowing(string line)
/delay 48s
/returnPhase 2:
Repeat moving the water tower until Avatar of Steel is as low at 5%. At this point the water tower will no longer do any damage. So take your tower-mover to the kill-group (use campfire to move, or CoH - dont walk or you will trigger the Avatar of Steel). At this point the only thing that damages the Avatar of Steel is the Bolt Guns. That means, you have to trigger 6x70=420 Steel Shards and kill them. If you just spawn them without killing them (which you can), then after a while, the Shards will be absorbed by the Avator of Steel and heal him for as much as the Bolt Gun damage him for. So you have to kill them.
This phase, despite being 5% only, takes a long time! Took me about 2-3 hours, but that was with level 95 chars. Its just a dps test at this point.
Remember at what time you obtained the raid task. Always keep in mind that you should have 30 mins left to loot the chests. If you can estimate that you will only barely win the task, and not have enough time to loot, you may just restart and be more efficient next time.
I'm not playing EQ anymore, so I'm not checking this forum often. Anyways, post your experiences with this starts, and post questions. But it may take a few days for me to reply.
