Caspian's Halloween Tips (Better Late Than Never?)

[PrinceCaspian]

Hurry, there's only 2 more days for our Halloween activities! This is kind of late, but I thought I'd post what I've learned. I'd put this in Encyclopedia Britannia (new version coming out this month, folks!) but this may well be a one-off event.

At any rate, enjoy:

PART I: GRIM REAPER

1 - Luna is a good place to bring Grim because there's usually a crowd waiting to attack, plus guards will appear to whack those pesky Revenants.

2 - When someone brings Grim into Luna, your job should not just be to kill Grim but to protect the bringer. The bringer will constantly be re-targeted, and if he gets killed, Grim will disappear. Keep it a goal to keep the bringer alive.

3 - Grim appears to be on a Tokuno arty timer. In other words, the more times you kill him without being rewarded with an arty, the better your chances for the next time, even if it's slightly so.

4 - Keep Grim's lifebar up during the fight. You should get a notification the nanosecond before it disappears that you have gotten an arty, if it happens. Don't bother checking your pack unless you see the words happen precisely then.

5 - With your extra firepower comes cost. Your payout on Grim's corpse will be paltry at best. With 700 luck, I get like 100-200 gold plus 3-4 pretty worthless trinkets.

6 - When Grim targets you, your only relief is to lead him into a crowd and hope he targets another attacker, or to be killed. I hear Remove Curse untargets him, but that never works. Grim teleports with you and teleports on top of you (with a free hit), so ironically, running from him will only make you die faster. If you are alone, teleport to Luna. It's your only chance.

BOOTY - The booty from Grim is either a cursed Doom Artifact or, if you are lucky, his scythe. They seem to appear somewhat near the frequency of a Tomartie on an Oni.


PART II: THE RED UNDEAD SPAWN

1 - Moonglow is a perfect cemetary to fight the undead, because it has a clearly marked gate that you can open and close to lure out the undead in waves.

2 - Sniping from behind the fence is a safe way to hunt, for the most part, and you can look on the corpses to see if you got anything good. However, you ARE going to have to run in to actually loot the bodies. In this method, take out bone mages, skeletal mages and liches as targets of priority, as they can hit you back from behind the fence.

3 - Don't leave looting until the spawn disappears because red undead corpses decay VERY quickly. Plus, Grim will appear, and once he targets you, you will have to deal with him, which could take a while.

4 - As a courtesy, put in time and work the graveyard spawn. Don't just pop around and work other spawns that other players have farmed up.

5 - The red spawns have graduated difficulty depending on how quickly the last spawn was wiped out. If folks wiped it out handily, they will be much tougher. If there wasn't enough firepower, and the timer just took them away, they will be weaker next time. Due to the overcamping at the graveyards, always assume the next wave will be tougher.

BOOTY -- There are three items you are looking for on the red undead corpses. First is the orange twilight lantern: Odds about 1 in 100. Next is the black twilight lantern: Odds about 1 in 200. The third is the big bonanza, the ghoul statuette. I have never seen one on Sonoma... ever. Stratics say the odds are 1 in 500.


PART III: Trick Or Treating

1 - Don't waste time wandering around. It seems to make no difference who you ask, so stick to highly populated areas like Taverns and especially Paladin Isle in Trinsic.

2 - It appears that there is a 10-20 second timer linked with about a 2 screen proximity check to reset if a giver can give candy again. So if you teleport away and give it about 20 seconds, you can come back and hit them up again. Me, I simply alternate between Paladin Isle and Blue Boar Tavern: one resets while I work the other.

3 - Remember that candy is stackable: so it makes no difference in your lockdowns if you have 1 or a million. Thus, get as much as you possibly can!

4 - There are various tricks, but there's only two that really mean anything at all. First, the nasty kill trick means you will have to go get ressed (see #5): pain in the butt but only happens like 1 in 20 times. The other is the Evil Twin. You have two options for dealing with the twin: simply ignore him (the twin will never kill you and will disappear when you are down to 1 hp -- and since you are in town, this makes no difference whatsoever) or just hire a fighter (make sure he's got a weapon) NPC who will dispatch him in a few seconds.

5 - The perfect solution for the death trick is to use a newbie throwaway character. When you die, instant res. The stat penalty means nothing to this character, so why not?

BOOTY: The wonderful thing about this particular event is, even if you lose, you win! Even if you don't get the wonderous 9th Anniversary Item (seems like about a 1 in 200 chance.. sometimes easier, sometimes harder), you will get candy which will presumably be a seasonal rare.


PART IV: PUMPKIN FARMING

1 - Know your fields. Work the Britannian Farm fields and the Skara Brae Farm fields. They are your best bets.

2 - You are just looking for black pumpkins. They are true black, so you can't miss them: they are like a hole on the screen. So just run through a field and ignore all other pumpkins.

3 - Working a field: the pumpkins seem to regenerate every 10 minutes or so, but you can speed that up by destroying the pumpkins. The best ways I have found is to break out my GM Cook and make pumpkin pies like crazy... or use the Necromancer to summon a horde demon, load it up, and then just dismiss it. Both methods destroy pumpkins quickly and spur on a fresh spawn.

4 - Don't use trashcans to dispose of the pumpkins, because they take too long to void. Plus, if you add something else in there, the timer resets!

5 - If you come to a bare field, chances are good that someone is working the field (#3) be courteous and move on. Also, if you see someone is already there, move on to somewhere else.

BOOTY: The prized black pumpkins appear 1 in 90 times, Stratics says. In my experience, they are much rarer. More like 1 in 200.

[Brianna]

okay time for mrs knowitall to correct you

1. the ghoul statues are in fact real i have 1 myself
2. the chances at getting a cursed artie or the scythe is not due to luck or how many times you killed him without getting one...its all about who does the most damage to him......no matter how many you help kill if your or your party arent doing the most damage your just helping joe blow and his 17 friends get the artie faster...thank each and every one of you who have helped me and my friends get them

3. moonglow is not the best cemetary to hunt red undead at...you want to find a cemetary that isnt over camped and that the grim spawns far far far away from where your playing....if you check out each cemetary you will find the perfect one for yourself

4. only way to get grim to untarget you is to either die or invis and hope he dies before you become visible

5. the red undead spawns every hourish doesnt matter how many regular undead you kill they red only spawns hourly and they only last 10 minutes

6. doesnt matter how much you trick or treat find an area and stay there you dont have to recall away just make sure you have plenty of npcs to bug make it a big circle and just go around them one at a time the timer is about 15 to 20 seconds so with a big enough group of npcs your good to go

7. EVIL TWIN CAN AND WILL KILL YOU they can cast poison and you will die if they cast it while your low level and dont realize due to the fact they take you down to 2 health and most poisons cause 2 damage before you can cure yourself

8. the wonderous 9th anniversary items are glitched and can change back into regular items so guard them with care lock them down and hope the dev team still likes you each day

9. all the fields are able to spawn black pumpkins so it doesnt matter which one you pick just make sure you are prepared to die if you chose a fel field which ironically is where they seem to spawn fastest at for me.

10. well im thru being mean so now thanks for the advice PC and by the way how much are you gonna charge for your uber new game after you hire all the new people.....LOL

[PrinceCaspian]

Grrr... you are SO off the Swiss Colony list this year, hon. ;P

Just kidding. Let's see whatcha got:

1. the ghoul statues are in fact real i have 1 myself

I never said they didn't exist. I simply said I've never seen one.

2. the chances at getting a cursed artie or the scythe is not due to luck or how many times you killed him without getting one...its all about who does the most damage to him......no matter how many you help kill if your or your party arent doing the most damage your just helping joe blow and his 17 friends get the artie faster...thank each and every one of you who have helped me and my friends get them

Didn't one of the developers say it DOES increase the chance each time that you kill and don't get an artie, just like Tokuno? Didn't he say they were thinking about implementing this for Doom?

And yes, Top Attackers are considered. Good point, and I didn't say that.

3. moonglow is not the best cemetary to hunt red undead at...you want to find a cemetary that isnt over camped and that the grim spawns far far far away from where your playing....if you check out each cemetary you will find the perfect one for yourself

These are tips, hon -- in other words, my opinions. Your mileage may vary. For me, Moonglow is best for the reasons stated.

4. only way to get grim to untarget you is to either die or invis and hope he dies before you become visible

Did not know about the invis part.

5. the red undead spawns every hourish doesnt matter how many regular undead you kill they red only spawns hourly and they only last 10 minutes

Hmmm..... OK. I thought it was a CS deal. But this makes sense too.

6. doesnt matter how much you trick or treat find an area and stay there you dont have to recall away just make sure you have plenty of npcs to bug make it a big circle and just go around them one at a time the timer is about 15 to 20 seconds so with a big enough group of npcs your good to go

Tips. Again. These work best for me. Tomato, Tomahto.

7. EVIL TWIN CAN AND WILL KILL YOU they can cast poison and you will die if they cast it while your low level and dont realize due to the fact they take you down to 2 health and most poisons cause 2 damage before you can cure yourself

I use my GM cook to Trick or Treat. No magic skill, no weapons, period. I never have a problem, ever.

8. the wonderous 9th anniversary items are glitched and can change back into regular items so guard them with care lock them down and hope the dev team still likes you each day

Hasn't happened to me, and this is the first time I've heard about this.

9. all the fields are able to spawn black pumpkins so it doesnt matter which one you pick just make sure you are prepared to die if you chose a fel field which ironically is where they seem to spawn fastest at for me.

Again, TIPS. I am recommending those two places.

10. well im thru being mean so now thanks for the advice PC and by the way how much are you gonna charge for your uber new game after you hire all the new people.....LOL

(sticks tongue out) Nyeeeeh!

No problem, seriously. Looks like I was indeed wrong on some of these, and I myself and still learning the ins and outs.

[Tracy]

2. the chances at getting a cursed artie or the scythe is not due to luck or how many times you killed him without getting one...its all about who does the most damage to him......no matter how many you help kill if your or your party arent doing the most damage your just helping joe blow and his 17 friends get the artie faster...thank each and every one of you who have helped me and my friends get them

Didn't one of the developers say it DOES increase the chance each time that you kill and don't get an artie, just like Tokuno? Didn't he say they were thinking about implementing this for Doom?

And yes, Top Attackers are considered. Good point, and I didn't say that.

Yes. But that was later on, in the last few days. That wasn't the case when they first came out, so you're both right.

7. EVIL TWIN CAN AND WILL KILL YOU they can cast poison and you will die if they cast it while your low level and dont realize due to the fact they take you down to 2 health and most poisons cause 2 damage before you can cure yourself

I use my GM cook to Trick or Treat. No magic skill, no weapons, period. I never have a problem, ever.

Basically, they take whatever skills you have. So if you have magery, expect to get poisoned. If you have a weapon skill and poisoning, or are carrying a weapon with bleed attack as a primary or secondary weapon ability, have no fear. The evil twin doesn't use weapon specials.

[Brianna]

tips tips tips i have to have someone to bug and since jr just hasnt been posting anything good for me i had to chose some one new......wooohoooo PC you are the lucky whinner i mean winner

[PrinceCaspian]

tips tips tips i have to have someone to bug and since jr just hasnt been posting anything good for me i had to chose some one new......wooohoooo PC you are the lucky whinner i mean winner

*Uses Brianna's Chap Stick on a cat's butt when she's not looking*

[Brianna]

good thing that was mikes chapstick and not mine seeing as how i dont use the nasty stuff...lol

[Tracy]

ROFL...
Bri, you miss me and you know it.

[KDSonoma]

excellent info PC and Bri! Thanks for posting that, and glad to hear only 2 days left.

KD

[Valkyrie]

I got pumpkins and that's it. LOL

I'm not good at timing the graveyards and not interested in cursed artis.