BMV Ararat - Tamers

[Jimmydeanbean]

So a group of us tried doing the BMV Ararat last night. We did this as a group of tamers and I'm wondering if anyone else out there does this with a group of tamers or if this is purely Sampire territory?
Since the loot is supposed to be equal to the Roof and acquiring the keys for it takes far less time, we figured it would be a good time.
Sadly a good time it was not!

As I mentioned we did this as a group of tamers. Now being you cannot bring in your own pets, you are forced to tame the crabs that surprise attack you. This is pretty easy and I've had a 100% success rate on first attempt to tame them. Off to a good start right?

We found however the crabs are bugged. The tamed crabs will act as if they are wild and randomly attack other players, yourself, other tamed crabs, it's very annoying. Especially when it attacks you because it will damage you. Beyond that, it's annoying because mid battle your crab is hitting something it shouldn't be, which means it's not damaging the target.

We made the mistake and took all of our crabs to the top deck, a hydra killed all but one of them.... We decided to go into the encounter anyways, figuring the tamers could summon EV's to help the fighter we had in our group.

The one crab that survived the hydras was killed by the boss in the first minute.

The boss will insta dispel your summoned EV's, or maybe it was just insta killing them? Either way they did nothing.

I ran out mid fight and got a new crab. Came back, ran consume on it. Even with running consume, and I'm a true 120/120 tamer so no jewels, I had to heal it constantly. Then. 3 wisps killed me in like 2 seconds. And without my constant heals and consume the crab died immediately. It would have died eventually because I can't run comsume and constantly heal without running out of mana. For the couple minutes it was alive it barely touched the boss. I think maybe a 4% drop in hp.

We had 5 total players for this.

Is this encounter really possible with tamers? What strategies have you used to complete this encounter? Any help would be very much appreciated.

 

[gwen]

Looks like tamer is no longer a king of underwater. They fixed bug with taking pets there but Paralithodes are bugged, true. I tried to camp tamer there to bond the crab with tasty treat and failed because of it biting me . So it is event for warriors now I think .Wth X-healing it wiorks . I never took my mystic there , don't know if RC will survive when mastery is on or dispelled, but my mystic is pretty weak , so I use her for Blackthorn and white nets mostly.

 

[Scott1234]

the Crabs are an exercise in futility.
make sure you have small black rock in your pack, use area effect spells/attacks on the wisps.

 

[Maith Ceol]

the Crabs are an exercise in futility.
make sure you have small black rock in your pack, use area effect spells/attacks on the wisps.

I am still sad about the loss of my lucky Blackrock! I wish pirates transported them ...

 

[Keven2002]

I am still sad about the loss of my lucky Blackrock! I wish pirates transported them ...

You can dig up small pieces of blackrock...

 

[Maith Ceol]

You can dig up small pieces of blackrock...

I know ... I just haven't been mining in FOREVER!

 

[Laura_Gold]

don't know if RC will survive

My RC was lasting longer than my EVs, but still got dispelled eventually. EVs were one-shot dispelled. Earth Elementals died in two melee hits from the boss.
If we could keep three or more RCs going, that might work. How's your mysticism?

 

[MalagAste]

I know ... I just haven't been mining in FOREVER!

No need to mine... just go walk around any mountainous area tram or fel you should find more than plenty laying about on the ground.

 

[gwen]

My RC was lasting longer than my EVs, but still got dispelled eventually. EVs were one-shot dispelled. Earth Elementals died in two melee hits from the boss.
If we could keep three or more RCs going, that might work. How's your mysticism?

Mysticism and focus are at 120 (115 if I use melee weapon)
She just uses 'leftover' gear and I am still changing her skills here and there. On Asuka where I most play this event is not very popular . Especially after fix.

 

[Keven2002]

My RC was lasting longer than my EVs, but still got dispelled eventually. EVs were one-shot dispelled. Earth Elementals died in two melee hits from the boss.
If we could keep three or more RCs going, that might work. How's your mysticism?

Using mystic/magery mastery 3 will also help your summons (both HP and dispel rate).

 

[Amber Witch]

If we could keep three or more RCs going, that might work. How's your mysticism?

Based on what I was seeing I don't know if the RCs would do enough damage to kill off the boss before we died of old age.

 

[Laura_Gold]

do enough damage

It looked to me that the RC was doing as much damage as our sampire. Having three of them up would keep the baddie focused on the RCs and not coming after the spellcasters, I think. I'm only grandmaster mystic. If we're going to try for RC takedown, I should see if I can increase my skill. A barrier to that might be needing a scrool.

 

[mihali]

Is it silly not to allow pets in there? Why pets for roof and no pets in Ararat? Any rationale?

 

[gwen]

Is it silly not to allow pets in there? Why pets for roof and no pets in Ararat? Any rationale?

May be they forgot to make Hydra tameable.
It is still nice place to farm Dark sapphires , white pearls and other gems from tree mobs *forgot their name* down there if you don't like running from volcano lava wave and back in Eodon .

 

[Nero]

No need to mine... just go walk around any mountainous area tram or fel you should find more than plenty laying about on the ground.

Just for clarification, blackrock does not just spawn on the ground, as far as I know. It was mined and thrown on the ground by players mining nearby. It just does not decay, unlike most other items in game. At least that's how I understood the comment. It is not like reagents or lost (honesty) items randomly spawning in certain areas in the wilderness.

 

[Keven2002]

I decided to check out UW after seeing this post (on ATL) since it had been a while (pre Deceit). I took my sampire since it was early and I wasn't sure who would be there; sure enough nobody was there and I had to farm the keys. I gave a few shouts in Gen Chat that I needed people and within maybe 10min there were 6 people or so (might have just been 3-4 people controlling 6 accounts). I think the make up of toons was one other sampire, an archer, a bard, a mage, and 2 mystics. The bard partied the fighters for the buffs and all mages/mystics healed the fighters while throwing summons. Overall it wasn't too bad.

My thoughts on this encounter is that outside of the crabs not working like they should it's fine. It wasn't designed to be a thing where 2-3 people could do it by themselves (and honestly never was even with pets) and that's where it differs from Shadowguard which can now be solo'ed. It probably takes a minimum group of 6-7ish toons with the proper skills to synergize (ie everyone can't show up as a mage) but you really only need 1-2 good warriors to take the damage and everyone else can just heal. I think this is a something challenging but doable for guild hunts and during peak hour play shouldn't be an issue on most shards (as long as people actually want to do it).

Just for clarification, blackrock does not just spawn on the ground, as far as I know. It was mined and thrown on the ground by players mining nearby. It just does not decay, unlike most other items in game. At least that's how I understood the comment. It is not like reagents or lost (honesty) items randomly spawning in certain areas in the wilderness.

You are correct.

 

[Amber Witch]

The OP is asking how tamers can do it as intended. I think the answer, per the posts on this forum and the UO forum, is that it's broken for tamers until the Devs decide it's worthy of their attention and efforts.

 

[gwen]

The OP is asking how tamers can do it as intended. I think the answer, per the posts on this forum and the UO forum, is that it's broken for tamers until the Devs decide it's worthy of their attention and efforts.

Allow tamer to tame and bond Hydra with bond potion or food =>problem solved .

 

[Anon McDougle]

Allow tamer to tame and bond Hydra with bond potion or food =>problem solved .

We haven't had a real actual tameable creature in years ..

 

[Keven2002]

The OP is asking how tamers can do it as intended. I think the answer, per the posts on this forum and the UO forum, is that it's broken for tamers until the Devs decide it's worthy of their attention and efforts.

Yes and no.

While the crabs are indeed bugged for attacking owners and others (obvious defect) and will not allow for a tamer to solo UW; they would work towards getting credit for killing the UW boss (you just need a larger group). It's just like any other template/event arc, certain templates might not be the most efficient but it's possible to use them.

I'd be willing to bet that if the crab attacking bug was fixed tomorrow but they kept everything else the same (ie damage) people would still complain that tamers couldn't do it with the crabs because it would take forever.

 

[mihali]

Yes and no.

While the crabs are indeed bugged for attacking owners and others (obvious defect) and will not allow for a tamer to solo UW; they would work towards getting credit for killing the UW boss (you just need a larger group). It's just like any other template/event arc, certain templates might not be the most efficient but it's possible to use them.

I'd be willing to bet that if the crab attacking bug was fixed tomorrow but they kept everything else the same (ie damage) people would still complain that tamers couldn't do it with the crabs because it would take forever.

So it is a Sampire/Melee character content as it is now. What are some of the things that would help samp/melee chars? Any slayer susceptibility? Technique ? Ty in advance.

 

[Scott1234]

Yes and no.

While the crabs are indeed bugged for attacking owners and others (obvious defect) and will not allow for a tamer to solo UW; they would work towards getting credit for killing the UW boss (you just need a larger group). It's just like any other template/event arc, certain templates might not be the most efficient but it's possible to use them.

I'd be willing to bet that if the crab attacking bug was fixed tomorrow but they kept everything else the same (ie damage) people would still complain that tamers couldn't do it with the crabs because it would take forever.

if you lore the crab, you’ll see they are no match, numbers wise, for Shadowlords. hit and defend Rate is poor.

you are better off using summons, as well as stoning off the taming and lore Skills.

 

[TirNaNo'g]

Yes and no.

While the crabs are indeed bugged for attacking owners and others (obvious defect) and will not allow for a tamer to solo UW; they would work towards getting credit for killing the UW boss (you just need a larger group). It's just like any other template/event arc, certain templates might not be the most efficient but it's possible to use them.

I'd be willing to bet that if the crab attacking bug was fixed tomorrow but they kept everything else the same (ie damage) people would still complain that tamers couldn't do it with the crabs because it would take forever.

We tried the encounter with three tamers and one warrior. The crabs were obliterated by the Shadowlord immediately and there was no magic healing, vetting, or consume damage that could keep them alive. The underwater tamables are a neat idea, but not useful as they are currently. Either allowing them to be bonded and trained (maybe limiting them as the only creature that can reenter the encounter) or giving the ability to be trained up with advanced animal training while underwater would at least make it them usable. If there was a spawn of pirates down there at least you could theoretically level them once.

 

[Anon McDougle]

We tried the encounter with three tamers and one warrior. The crabs were obliterated by the Shadowlord immediately and there was no magic healing, vetting, or consume damage that could keep them alive. The underwater tamables are a neat idea, but not useful as they are currently. Either allowing them to be bonded and trained (maybe limiting them as the only creature that can reenter the encounter) or giving the ability to be trained up with advanced animal training while underwater would at least make it them usable. If there was a spawn of pirates down there at least you could theoretically level them once.

Just another area with so much potential wasted..

 

[Keven2002]

So it is a Sampire/Melee character content as it is now. What are some of the things that would help samp/melee chars? Any slayer susceptibility? Technique ? Ty in advance.

Number of toons/summons hitting the boss will be key for UW; we did it pretty easily with 7 people the other day (includes myself). We had 2 melee chars (and 3 people summoning) which worked out well for the boss changing targets which made it so one of us wasn't taking full damage the entire time. That said, I was able to stand toe to toe for a minute or so when people were kind of organizing while being healed by a couple people but I was taking some pretty hard hits and one well timed poison or dark wisp spell dump would have probably killed me.

I haven't fine tuned anything for this arc because it really is pretty easy on ATL given the population but I think some key things for technique would be ensure you have 145+hp (I have 145 but 150 would be better) / 120 resist is a must unless you are really good with remove curse because he does blood oath / if you will be the main tank as a sampire then be sure to get honor on it (higher damage = higher life leech) / weapons with HLA/HLD would be helpful. Essentially you want to be able to get back chunks of HP in addition to all the mages healing (I think mystic heals do more and cure too so probably would be better than straight magery heals). None of the cameos work but I haven't tried something like a mage slayer so maybe? I also think that a ninja could be used and probably make use of mirror image?

We tried the encounter with three tamers and one warrior. The crabs were obliterated by the Shadowlord immediately and there was no magic healing, vetting, or consume damage that could keep them alive.

Like I said, I haven't tried to push it and see how few people it takes to do UW but on ATL even they wait for more than 4 people to do the arc which tells me that 4 players probably isn't enough (tamers or not) unless it's some super uber cross healing warrior group (even then idk). I think the minimum would probably be 6 players and they would need to work well together (ie every spell caster should be healing everyone). I agree that tamers (using crabs) isn't the most efficient template but that's just like any other thing in UO where some templates aren't ideal (ie melee warriors aren't ideal against Scalis). The good news about this arc is that it behooves people to have more people do it; there is no decrease to loot or drops so there is no reason not to call out in Gen Chat that you need people to help. For me the biggest PITA about this arc is doing the initial quest to be allowed to do UW and then getting the keys (which only 1 person needs to do but nobody ever wants to).

 

[Lord Nabin]

Just throwing this out there, Has anyone tried Herding instead of Taming?

Seems I remember watching a video a few months back around some turtles or something being herded to fight a champ solo. Only reason I thought of this was the comments on how the crabs attack each other and others while tamed. Could just be their nature that needs to be guided.

Anyways just an odd thought from an old Sage.

*tips his glass of Good Ole Moonglow Red in your direction as if in salute and settles back to his old book by the fire*

 

[mihali]

Number of toons/summons hitting the boss will be key for UW; we did it pretty easily with 7 people the other day (includes myself). We had 2 melee chars (and 3 people summoning) which worked out well for the boss changing targets which made it so one of us wasn't taking full damage the entire time. That said, I was able to stand toe to toe for a minute or so when people were kind of organizing while being healed by a couple people but I was taking some pretty hard hits and one well timed poison or dark wisp spell dump would have probably killed me.

I haven't fine tuned anything for this arc because it really is pretty easy on ATL given the population but I think some key things for technique would be ensure you have 145+hp (I have 145 but 150 would be better) / 120 resist is a must unless you are really good with remove curse because he does blood oath / if you will be the main tank as a sampire then be sure to get honor on it (higher damage = higher life leech) / weapons with HLA/HLD would be helpful. Essentially you want to be able to get back chunks of HP in addition to all the mages healing (I think mystic heals do more and cure too so probably would be better than straight magery heals). None of the cameos work but I haven't tried something like a mage slayer so maybe? I also think that a ninja could be used and probably make use of mirror image?



Like I said, I haven't tried to push it and see how few people it takes to do UW but on ATL even they wait for more than 4 people to do the arc which tells me that 4 players probably isn't enough (tamers or not) unless it's some super uber cross healing warrior group (even then idk). I think the minimum would probably be 6 players and they would need to work well together (ie every spell caster should be healing everyone). I agree that tamers (using crabs) isn't the most efficient template but that's just like any other thing in UO where some templates aren't ideal (ie melee warriors aren't ideal against Scalis). The good news about this arc is that it behooves people to have more people do it; there is no decrease to loot or drops so there is no reason not to call out in Gen Chat that you need people to help. For me the biggest PITA about this arc is doing the initial quest to be allowed to do UW and then getting the keys (which only 1 person needs to do but nobody ever wants to).

Nice info!
Are archers any good there? Can they kite around and shoot effective damage to the boss?

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

I haven't fine tuned anything for this arc because it really is pretty easy on ATL given the population but I think some key things for technique would be ensure you have 145+hp (I have 145 but 150 would be better) / 120 resist is a must unless you are really good with remove curse because he does blood oath / if you will be the main tank as a sampire then be sure to get honor on it (higher damage = higher life leech) / weapons with HLA/HLD would be helpful. Essentially you want to be able to get back chunks of HP in addition to all the mages healing (I think mystic heals do more and cure too so probably would be better than straight magery heals). None of the cameos work but I haven't tried something like a mage slayer so maybe? I also think that a ninja could be used and probably make use of mirror image?

Shadowlords have no Slayer, so you need Honor+EoO to get near 300% damage cap on them. They also have all resists in the 70s, so AI performs better than DS against them. They just introduced a weapon with Treasures of the Archlich that is perfect for AI spamming the Shadowlord, the "Expor Malas Flamus" Bladed Staff. Searing Weapon/50% HLA/100% HLL/100% HML/50% HSL/70% Fire Area/30% DI.
A crosshealing Macer+Fencer duo can also take on the Shadowlord. Fencer hits the Shadowlord with Pierce 3 times over 30 seconds to drop his Stamina to nothing, then Macer keeps him under Stagger effect for -60% SSI (can't stack Stagger+Pierce debuff at same time, so have to Pierce down his Stamina first). Fencer uses a Leafblade to tank the Shadowlord with Feint while sitting on top of him and spamming AI.
Whenever the Shadowlord uses FWW, it would destroy all your Mirror Images.

Are archers any good there? Can they kite around and shoot effective damage to the boss?

The Shadowlord has the habit of pulling in ranged attackers to him. He frequently spawns groups of Dark Wisps too.

 

[Nyses]

Is it silly not to allow pets in there? Why pets for roof and no pets in Ararat? Any rationale?

Characters need to acquire a diving suit to be able to "go underwater" to get there. There is not such suit for pets, I suppose.

 

[Victim of Siege]

Characters need to acquire a diving suit to be able to "go underwater" to get there. There is not such suit for pets, I suppose.