The 5th Quest and Zanthus

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cjt
Posts: 135
Joined: Fri May 11, 2012 8:54 pm

The 5th Quest and Zanthus

Post by cjt »

Howdy,

I asked a bunch of questions in the Facebook group and pieced together information about the Zanthus encounter. Some of the information provided was incorrect and some very helpful. Since I just killed him, I wanted to write a one-stop synopsis of what to expect along your route. The 5th quest seems like a mystery to many players. So here's what I learned. This will only cover from the Rotting Beholder and on as steps before that can vary per alignment. I was told in the Facebook group that he can't be killed in a stock realm and that I would need a dumb amount of witchunters to do it. That just isn't so. Can a stock realm kill him at lvl 50? Probably not. We waited a long time to attempt the quest.

The party that killed him included a lvl 75 HOG warrior wearing pure damage/crit gear and a Feyr, 69 HOG Paladin with Darkbane, 55 Priest, 69 kang mystic, 70 kang ranger, 69 mage, 65 druid, 52 priest, 68 HOG Ninja. So a party of 9. The warrior, ninja, mystic, ranger, mage, druid, and lvl 55 priest were all evil questing and wore Black Stained Tunics for the +150HP. We lost the Paladin and the lvl 52 priest during the encounter. It took about 5 rounds total. When entering the portal, we had macros to re-establish the group such that the link between the two groups was the lvl 52 priest. The priests were set to DMER for every heal so everyone received healing. There was no single target healing. Since the lvl 52 priest was the link, his DMER hit both the main damage dealing group and the second group, which had the less important classes (druid/ninja/paladin). We put the group together such that the highest melee damage dealers were getting healed by both priests in hopes that they stayed alive the longest to successfully kill him. Everyone should know how to daisy chain groups, but if you dont, just establish your main group with 5 characters and have the second leader establish their group. Then invite the second leader with the main leader and now the groups are daisy chained. Any party spells the second leader casts will hit both groups. Why was the mage in the damage dealing group (the more important group) you ask? Well we wanted to get Mass Frenzy up immediately for the melee classes. After re-establishing the group, which we did before the first round landed, we also had a macro to have the mage get Mass Frenzy up and the evil priest put up Unholy Fanaticism. These are the only two bless spells we prioritized during the fight.

Ok so with that recap of the classes and approach to the fight, here's the stuff you should know to make this easier and less of a mystery.

1. For evil questers, the hardest pre-quest is really the Dreadlord of Blood. You need a stout party with roomers to make this easy. The group described above wipes him out pretty easy, but even at high level, we tended to lose the mage or druid. They did enough damage to the warmongers before dying to make cleaning up the warmongers pretty easy. Dreadlord is a really tough fight without roomers. Black Stained Tunics are great for evil Mages/Druids for this encounter to give them a little more HP to sustain.

2. For good questers, Ozrinom is really the big pre-quest challenge. Again, you need roomers to make this easy. The mage/druid combo was perfect here. A mage/mage combo would be better as their room spell lands for over 500 (Eldritch Storm I think?) and the druid caps out around 300 with Acid Tempest. MAKE SURE to setup megamud in the way described in the alignment quest section of this forum. It prioritizes the mobs to help you be successful in clearing the rooms leading up to Oz and his room also. Basically, you target the mobs that cast room spells first and work down from there. The group had no problem getting to Oz. We took a lot of damage in some of the rooms, but nothing the 2 priests couldn't heal through. We didn't lose anyone to Oz and killed him in 2 rounds. DO NOT HANGUP during this fight or you'll be teleported out. Best to just risk it and die versus missing the quest trigger.

3. Rotting beholder is a pushover for this group...1 round. We faced him 6-8 times in this whole process because of what i'll describe later, but he never casted his instant death spell. Don't be concerned with this fight with a stout group, its not hard. Follow the quest walk-through after you drop him to land yourself on the island. Pull lever in his room, talk to the old man, ask him portal, easy peasy. There's no mobs on the island, just walk around the circle to the place where you put the tongue and eye in their orifices and another portal will spawn. When you go portal here, it takes you the the Wraith Knight hallway. There is no regen in the room where you land after you go portal.

4. This was the hardest part of the whole quest.....Wraith Knights. They're brutal. You have 2 groups that need to be cleared. The quest walkthrough's say bring roomers. That tactic just didn't work. They rounded the druid and mage over and over. It's not a big deal to lose a sneaking class here because they land in the Arlysia halls of dead and can sneak their way back to the old man, go portal, and get back to portal on the island before it closes. But when you lose a non-sneaker they can't get back in time. This is due to 3 lairs between the Old Hermit and the Rotting Beholder's room. One of those is filled with animated chains and you will most certainly get held if you're not sneaking and rounded. So because we lost the mage or druid, we had to start again waiting 2 hours for rotting beholder to respawn. Here's what we learned. The map is shaped like this:

X----L
| |
X P
\
X
|
C - L

The L's are the lairs and they have 6 wraith knights. The P is the room you land in when you Go Portal from the island. The C is the Colossal Midnight Dragon, whose room you enter by just walking through the wall to the West. The absolute best way to clear these rooms is by timing rounds and pull a wraith knight at a time. I suggest for the first room, if you have sneaking classes, you use them to clear this first room. For us it was Ninja, Ranger, Mystic, Mage (elf), and the 2 priests. The 2 priests cant sneak, but you need the heals so no way around it. The goal here isn't to sneak through the room, but rather if you're going to lose someone, hopefully its a sneaker that can make their way back to rotting beholder for the reasons mentioned above. We timed the rounds and ran N, W making it through the first Lair room without getting hit. From there, we timed arounds again to go in to the lair room, attack, and back out before the round to pull 1 wraith knight at a time. Even with this approach, party members got randomly held in the lair room. Be quick on the trigger to hang them up if this happens so they dont get rounded. The rest of the group should still be able to handle the 1 wraith knight that gets pulled out. We whittled the lair down to 3 wraith knights and then just pounced on the room with the original sneaking group, and group still sitting in the P room. 3 Wraith Knights is much easier to handle than 6. When you clean it up, bring any characters back online that may have gotten held during your pull sequence and were subsequently hung. This would be far less of a headache if you could pull in to room P, but they just won't follow to that room.

For the second L room, get your whole group down to the room north of it and do the same thing with your sneakers. Again, the point of using a sneaker is if they somehow get trapped in the room (our experience was the Wraith Knight was able to cast a hold even if we timed the round perfectly - not sure why) you can bring them back by sneaking to rotting beholder and getting back to the portal on the island before it closes. Pull the wraith's 1 by 1 until you're down to 3 and then dive in and clean it up.

I'm uncertain if the Wraith Knights see-hidden. MMUD Explorer is saying no. So another solution to the first L room might be to just use all sneakers with super stealth and just not bring a priest with you. You should be able to kill a single wraith without healing and rest-up before pulling another. On a different note, I read some walkthroughs that said the Wraith Knights spawn quickly. It was my experience that quickly may be a little aggressive of a description. I'm fairly certain I had at least 5 minutes before the room would respawn as we were able to bring back sneaking classes that died through the beholder room, through the portal, and come back without triggering a respawn.

5. The colossal midnight dragon is a pushover. Just walk in and smack him. BTW, all of these rooms starting with the P and even the colossal midnight dragon room is dark. Very dark. With a room full of people with +illum gear we could see, but when a single person went in to a room, there wasn't enough room light to see. Keep that in mind as megamud won't attack if you cant see. A good way to ensure you can see with at least one character so that character's attack will trigger everyone else to attack is to stock up on a few beholder eyes. If you 'use' the eye of the beholder it gives you like 1000+ illum for a significant amount of rounds. Starlight is also great to increase the illumination for the room. Your only concern for the dragon is who has enough inventory to carry the chests, especially if it's a game-first kill. It will drop 3 chests. Remember, you don't want to make your melee heavy as you need their damage for Zanthus.

6. The tapestry is just a high-health no damage waste of space. Megamud will auto-attack the Animated Tapestry and will break off once you 'kill' it and turn it in to a shredded tapestry. Once it's shredded, it's time to "go tapestry" for the Dark Mage

7. The Dark Mage. First and foremost, don't hangup during this fight. Just uncheck 'Allow hangup when not afk' on all the megamuds. If you hangup, you get booted out of his room. The dark mage is actually the only kill you need to complete the 5th quest so it's a better bet to just die and take a group back to kill the Dark Mage again. Why I recommend this is because he's going to plague your party and it hits hard. You may kill him with everyone standing only to have someone hangup when their HP drops below their hangup threshold and that player will now be teleported out and won't be able to help with zanthus. Dark Mage took about 3 rounds for the group mentioned above. Unfortunately a priest hung up during the encounter and then subsequent to the fight, because the plague was killing other characters, they hungup. So that attempt at Zanthus was done. We had to go back again for the Dark Mage without hanging-up or losing anyone to have a full party to fight Zanthus. Also important to note is that you can't just go straight back to the Dark Mage's room and 'Enter Portal' with the whole party if part of that party hungup during the Dark Mage fight. A player that did not get flagged with the Dark Mage kill is unable to enter Zanthus' room. Instead, that player will be teleported out to the Dirt Path in the Blackwood Forrest. This room also has a scatter effect for gear. Any gear dropped in the room when someone is killed is pushed out to rooms 1-10 of map 17. These rooms are easily accessible in the Blackwood Forrest and gear retrieval is simple.

There's nothing special about the Dark Mage, just blast him down and have heals to keep the team alive. Remember that once you Go Tapestry from the dragon's room, your party will be split and your blesses will be removed. You need macros to reassemble your party and do whatever blesses you feel are warranted. This goes back to my mentioning of the Mass Frenzy and Unholy Fanaticism above. There's no place to run. It's a single room.

8. Zanthus. The portal that spawn once the Dark Mage is killed is the entry point to Zanthus. Here's where some misinformation came in from Facebook. I was told it would be like a cross shaped area and you could exit Zanthus' room to regroup. This isn't true. The game was updated after Zanthus was soloed by Deathcow to make Zanthus' room a single room. There's no exits. When you 'Enter Portal' from dark mage, your party is split and blesses are removed. Also important to note is that you cannot go in his room using the 'Go Portal' command from the Dark Mage room. You MUST use 'Enter Portal'. For this reason, if you're making macros for going in to portals and regrouping on the other side, just use 'Enter Portal' for those macros as 'enter' will work for all portals on this quest line, but 'go' wont work for the last one. For the Zanthus encounter, we once again tried to time the round such that we could enter and at least regroup prior to the first round. We were able to do that. Unholy Fanaticism and Mass Frenzy hit the group between round 1 and 2. To make this a done deal, you should try to target about 2500-3000 damage per round. This will still allow you to out-pace his damage and HP leaching abilities before he kills your group. If you can put up 2500-3000 damage a round, the encounter will last 3-4 rounds. I think it took us 4. Like the Dark Mage room, any gear dropped in his room will be scattered to rooms 1-10 or map 17.


Honestly, getting the proper macros setup and learning to execute them quickly and getting through the wraith knights was the hardest part of this quest. Hope this information helps others. I'll refine this post if anyone has specific questions. Wrapping up, here's a couple overarching recommendations.

1. Make macros to rejoin your party. Learn to use them quickly.
2. Time rounds with a character sitting at the practice dummy...don't use spell casting as it's not as fast as watching the swings in real time.
3. If possible, join the parties with a priest so you can double-dip on room-spell healing.
4. Turn your hang-ups off after Colossal Midnight Dragon
5. Don't be afraid of dying and losing your gear forever, it will get spit out and retrievable. The only caveat to this is I've heard that if no one is in the room, the 'Lich Scatter' spell doesn't get cast. This effectively means that the last person to die won't have their gear spit out. Because of this, make friends with your sysop and ask him to teleport to Zanthus' room if you have a party wipe so that the remaining gear gets pushed out.
6. Zanthus can only be attempted ONE (1) time. Once you enter portal in the Dark Mages room, you are flagged with a quest advancement that will not let enter Zanthus' portal again. If you have casualties at the Dark Mage, it's best to regroup, wait the 4 hours for the Dark Mage to spawn again, and make another run and hopefully have your full party this time.


brewbs
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri May 08, 2020 2:49 am

Re: The 5th Quest and Zanthus

Post by brewbs »

Holy shit you just about put me off the 5th let alone Zanthus. We have about 14 50-75 charas but it sounds like we will get crushed just by the wraith knights. Not enough hps or damage dealing:/

Guess there’s only one way to find out.. soon as I can find out why the gold chain gift part at the hermit isn’t working.

Thanks! 🙏🏽


brewbs
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri May 08, 2020 2:49 am

Re: The 5th Quest and Zanthus

Post by brewbs »

Do you feel like doing a step by step to supersede what is on here? 😬


LordNikkon
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed May 10, 2023 7:24 pm

Re: The 5th Quest and Zanthus

Post by LordNikkon »

I used to roll through the wraith knights and CMD with a cleric, mage, druid trio all 60+. Druid was back-rank and mage was mid-rank so that the druid with their much higher DR attacks after the mage. Also, spells like blit and para were a good way for the cleric to get the knight's attention. Same group did kill the mage, but hung/failed more often then they succeeded.


LordNikkon leaps in the air foolishly!
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