My friend Roulph/Belzur was able to log in during the day to run a few quests with me, in between all of the other things he has going on in the middle of the day. And, we decided to take our lowbies, his Krinjen and my Trinarias, through Redfang the Unruled, with the difficulty set to Hard.
I'd tried to solo this quest earlier in the day with Trinarias, also on Hard, but found the CR:7 Troll to be a bit more of a challenge than Trin was up to at the time. Especially since he didn't have an appropriate weapon for such an encounter, and was relying solely on the fire traps to bypass the Troll's natural damage reduction.
Mind you, that didn't stop Trin from making three good attempts at the Troll, before finally dying by the swing of the Troll's club.
Still, it was far more interesting when Krinjen joined me later in the day.
As we made our way through the quest, I'd noted to Krinjen that in my earlier attempt to complete the quest, I finally discovered why it was not possible to earn the Conquest bonus for the quest. As I learned by paying close attention to the Experience Report, the Baby Glass Spiders that spawn from the many spider eggs within the quest are *not* counted in the report's Monsters Killed section.
In previous attempts to complete the quest, both Krinjen and I had made a point to try to force each and every spider egg to spawn into a Baby Glass Spider, in an attempt to finally earn the Conquest bonus. As careful attention to detail revealed, it was a wasted effort.
Which is why I submitted a Bug Report on the issue.
I mean... why put them in there if they aren't going to be counted!?!
But, Trinarias still needed the Favor granted by the quest, so we set out for another go.
As we made our way down through the chambers, we found we'd earned the rare encounter for Goliath the Gargoyle.
This is always an interesting encounter, since Goliath likes to curl up into a regeneration cycle after he's suffered a certain amount of damage. Meaning that if you can't beat him down quickly enough, you might not survive the encounter.
So, Trinarias took swigs from several potions to buff-up his Strength and Dexterity, and threw a Shield spell on himself. Krinjen similarly buffed himself and summoned a Gray Wolf. Then, we initiated the encounter...
After what seemed to be only a couple of hits landed on Goliath, he curled up into his regeneration cycle.
And he continued to regenerate.
Over and over again.
In fact, he became stuck in his regeneration cycle.
How disappointing.
For some odd reason, I decided to attempt to contact a Game Manager to see if someone couldn't help us out with this bothersome little glitch. Mind you, I wasn't necessarily expecting anything, as in-game Customer Support has been notoriously slow and ineffectual in the past. Still, I decided to give it a shot.
To my surprise, in less than two minutes, I received a message from Sparker, on of the Senior Game Managers. Clearly, he took the time to read the ticket I had submitted, as he asked to verify whether Goliath was still stuck in his regeneration cycle. Which I promptly confirmed.
Then he asked me what seemed to be the strangest question...
Had there been any other members of the party who were no longer in the quest?
Huh... no, just the two of us, which I conveyed to Sparker by reply. But I thought it an odd question, so I let Krinjen know what question I'd been asked via voice-chat. He thought it a bit odd, too. But, then he said something that clued me in to why Sparker had asked such a question.
"Nope, just you, me and my wolf..."
The wolf...
It had been active when we initiated the encounter.
And, then, shortly after Goliath entered his regeneration cycle, the wolf disappeared, as his timer had run out.
Quickly, I typed a reply to Sparker that, while there hadn't been any other Player Characters in the quest with us, there *had* been a Gray Wolf with us that had since "left" our group.
While Sparker didn't formally confirm this was the problem, I suspect that the wolf had somehow pulled Goliath's aggro shortly after we initiated the encounter, and that, once the wolf had disappeared, the focus of its aggro was gone, so it got stuck in its regeneration cycle.
How funny.
It's often difficult to tell what a computer program will become hung upon until you put it into play.
But, it was more interesting that Sparker went the extra step to help us complete the optional encounter by attempting to re-spawn Goliath for us. Notice what happened...
Notice the inactive form of Goliath still perched upon the crates in the top-left corner of the image, while the newly spawned version on the floor has suddenly entered a regeneration cycle, even though his health is nowhere near the threshold used to start such a cycle.
Sparker noticed that Goliath had bugged out on us again, when the second Gray Wolf finally disappeared. So, Sparker killed Goliath for us. And, his action gave us credit for the encounter and unlocked the chest.
I thanked Sparker for his assistance while he finished out the support incident.
But, as we moved over to see what Goliath had kept in his chest, he spawned for a third time.
This time, without any Gray Wolf, or any other buffs, both Krinjen and Trinarias managed to defeat Goliath without any unexpected surprises.
It was funny how Sparker had noted that Goliath just wasn't interested in playing nicely that day, as Goliath had become stuck a second time.
I have to tell you, I was rather surprised by the timeliness of Sparker's response, his helpfulness, and his sense of humor through the encounter.
*THAT* is the kind of customer service I can really appreciate.
Thanks, Sparker!
Keep it fun, folks!
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