Plane of Fear
Okay, this is the scoop that so many people have been waiting to hear. I can't tell you how many people ask me in game Perdunk just how do you do it. Well.. it is way to complex to explain in a tell or a say. And it is too dangerous just to try and show someone as it is going on. So let me see if I can accomplish the impossible and explain to everyone just what fear plane is all about. *Please don't try this at home -Smiles-*First of all, lets try to describe the make of fear plane and how you must think of it as you are entering or walking about. There are numerous mobs in there and each pretty much has its own section of the zone. Each section is made up of roamers and stationary targets. For this writing I'm going break the zone down into 7 sections. Fear itself is basically one big square pied out into those 7 sections. Unless you spend hours upon hours in the zone you will probably only see parts of 3 secs while your puller might actually spent a great deal of time in 5 section. There are 2 sections of the zone that are just extremely hard and more then like you'll never get to (sorry druids, warrior, and Sks because the bulk of your drops are in these two hardest sections to get too).
*okay time for everyone to switch their minds into a geometric kind of view*
As you break in, the safest spot to start out at (and we will call this the SW corner or Camp 1) is Camp 1. This is absolutely the hardest single one thing for a group to do, that is getting the mass numbers you need to this spot so you can make your presence know. You see the gate in or portal is the apex of 3 of the section. Roamers from the first 3 sections like to meet up at the portal. So when you zone if your not careful, fast and have a head on your shoulders it is very possible that you attract mobs that roam from all three sections. Which isn't fun because once you do this you have effectively stirred up the zone and make it twice as hard to get in. So people say you need to go in with invis, invis undead, and invis animals, but in my opinion this doesn't work at all if you make it to camp one that way its because you happen to have caught the mobs in there open spot as they roam to other locations in there respective section. You see when a mob roams it moves for about 30 secs then stops and looks around then decides to move again to there next nav point in their section (standing still time is about 30 secs also).
The three sections that you deal with when you first zone is a long stretch the goes from portal past the yellow scareling town through all the boogiemen to the back gorgon nest, then there is the portal section or about 5-6 mobs that actually spend their whole life circling the portal (the meanest being the singular scareling in that section), and last of the first three sections that you encounter is the section that goes from the portal past the Fitted house back along the fire wall till you reach the section that houses Cazic himself. The mobs you will encounter that roam to toward the portal are Scarelings (huge agro radius 1 in portal section 1-2 in boogie section, and 2-3 in section that leads to cazic), spine chiller spiders found in portal area and section to cazic, Shiverback apes found in portal area and section leading to cazic, Fitted fiends found in all three areas, Amygladan warriors found in portal area and boogie section.
Okay now that you know the make up. Easiest way to make it to SW corner or camp 1 is to first try to take in a group of 12-18 that actually know where this spot is so they can get there quickly. Then don't bum rush the spot with all 18 because you know people just aren't made to walk in tight groups. Go one at a time where at all possible with other trying to let people behind them know how the gap in the 3 sections just are. Then zone in. One you have zoned in do a turn to you left head to the spot just next to portal and look down if you see nothing on hill to your right or left then run straight down till you hit zone wall. Once at zone wall you need to STOP LOOK AND LISTEN (this is very important to everyone in your group). If you see nothing coming at you (make sure you realize scarelings have a huge agro area and you might not see them on your tail at first) head slowly to camp 1 hugging the zone wall all the way there. Along the way there always take a time out to make sure you are not dragging anything with you. If you happen to pick up something along the way for god shakes don't run it to the Camp 1 spot. Don't run off into the zone just gracefully sit there and try to gate out. If you cant just die right there and when you try to come back in again to get to camp 1 spot just corpse your body with you. If people do die it is very important that you tell them to FORGET about their corpse they will get it later as zone clears a bit. Last thing you need is people wandering around the zone once they are in and already at the camp 1 spot.
Okay you have assembled your army at camp 1 (what ever the numbers may be. the more people the better but I would suggest at least 18 people if you want to mark that spot as your permanently but you can pull it off with 12 people). Time to set up the camp 1 rules:
Rule #1 no one leaves the spot.. always keep your pulls as far up in the spot as possible and avoid runners
Rule #2 if you get feared or teleported. Stand there like you were coming in for the first time and make sure you having picked up anything else if you have been fun having you in the group but you better die or gate out and we will let you know when its safe to try to come back in. Don't not run through out the zone you maybe with out your corpse till your puller things its okay for him to drag it back to you, which could be a long time.
Rule #3 Don't bicker in OOC about who isn't or is in your group at the time or what the loot order is. most important thing right now is killing about 7-9 mobs so if you do die you can come back in safely. Just keep your mind on the killing machine and bicker in your respective groups till you are safely out of camp 1 when there is more time to have conversations because zone is about to be mastered.
Rule #4 DO NOT succor or evac unless you absolutely have too because if you can take a couple of death or maybe even have the entire party wiped out but you get that extra mob that normally you wouldn't of because you succored it makes the take over of the zone a lot easier because once again zone back in if you die is that much easier.
Now that the primary of the rules are made up and everyone is itching to get to business its time to pull. The puller should be someone that you trust and that you know if they will die before they bring back too much stuff to the group. This could be someone of any class. Although I prefer clerics over any other class because (opps I forgot to mention the worry warts that are in section portal and boogie) if a frog jumps them they can DA (divine aura) so that on the way back with pull the frog cant evoke fear them all over the zone. But I'm sure each person has their ideal of which class makes the best puller. And it really doesn't matter as long as the puller always acts with the group best interest over their own.
Okay now the puller jumps down from camp 1 and begins to look. Never pull anything from the section leading back to boogies and imp tower. Imp tower is a bad thing because some times there is 4-5 imps sitting there having lunch. always try to pull singles from some where in between portal and up to but not including the fitted house in the section leading to cazic. Be patient you might have to wait for some stuff to come into that area but who are we kidding we aren't in a marathon here we want to clear and stay alive *smiles*.
Okay going forward lets say you have now successfully killed about 9 mobs around the portal from parts of all three first sections. Now the puller uses his judgment to look around the portal area once you can determine that there is no mobs between camp 1 and the fitted area. Be patient again for the roamers to come to you and you should never move till you have at least killed about 9 mobs. Its time to move to a spot we call Camp 2 or THE TREE.
The location of camp to is along the zone wall on your left as you look at the portal from camp 1. It is a big open area that can fit 30 or more people comfortably for then next saga of your POF experience. In fact you will more then like spend the rest of your time in POF at camp TWO.
At this time you can elect to do 1 of 2 sections. *COMPLETELY FORGET ABOUT boogie section at the moment (once again sorry druids and bards we will get to your stuff eventually).* You can either clear your way back to cazic and the cubes (there is another name for them but they look like huge cubes) or you can proceed to the next section or the section I call the dragon area (dracholice). If you pick back to cazic your are going make your mages happy if you pick dragon area you'll make everyone but mages and bards happy. Normally because you get a lot of mage stuff at camp 1 I chose going to the dragon area because this area needs to be pretty dam clear before you think about going to the boogie area again.
In the dragon area there really is only 2 spots to pull from. The best spot is the ruin thing that is right next to hour glass bridge. *first thing you must clear for this spot is the 2-3 tentacle terrors on the right side of hour glass bridge (merry xmas rangers). Then that pull spot is completely open to pull from. When you get so your standing in that spot just look back through the dragon area till you see the closest thing in spell cast range that is virtually by itself so you continue with single pulls. You are not all ways going to get single pulls from there but I will tell you that you can out run Fitted, warriors, knights so if you get a lot of stuff coming at you just run and hope only the fastest stuff comes the other slow stuff will return to spot till you get close to that spot again (this is called auto pull and ill explain about that in a bit). Just keep pulling from that spot next to ruin till you no longer can see a mob in spell cast range. 2nd spot in this area is just ahead of you the hump at the bottom of the hill you cant see over (very dangerous spot, in fact this spot kills me so many time because before you can see what's over the hill 4 frogs jump you and its all over *remember da*) Another thing you have to watch out for while in dragon area is the dragon himself. Never pull from this area when dragon is up from because it will wander back to the back of the area soon enough. This is when I take the time to switch between dragon area and section that leads to cazic.
Once you have the large amount of dragon area cleared you can start on boogie area, finish the to cazic area or pull the dragon himself. I would advise that you first clear the beginning of boogie area and the major part of to cazic area before pulling the dragon so you don't get area feared into bringing more mobs back with you while fighting the dragon.
Okay to start the pull in boogie area.. you are standing on the spot you started pulling dragon areas and you turn to your right you see a house. In this house is 3 mobs. They all will come and they will be either all boogie men or a mixture of boogie men and samhains. Careful you can out run all these mobs and you will have to kind of stop go hand feed them your flesh on the way back to camp 2 for the pull. Once you have pulled the boogie house. Its time for your group to med up full with their buffs because the imp towers is next. While attempting to pull the imp tower you just kind of try to get as close as possible without actually hitting any of the imps you will usually get 2-3 imps if you pray kill those and go back for the last 2-3 imps. Then the back side or boogie area is open for you to wander through and pull singles. Always remember the pathing in PoF is not just smack and run because mobs don't care how you get to where your going they will go on their own lil pathing area unless your are feeding flesh all the way.
Once you have cleared PORTAL, TO CAZIC, DRAGON, and BOOGIE sections you can either move in closer with group to a spot of your choosing to the gorgon next in back or you can start to pull the CAZIC section himself. *CAZIC has a HT that will kill someone with 2133 hps instantly so be careful when pulling from cazic area because his agro range is the largest of all mobs. Once you have gotten all the stuff from cazic area and cleared the back section or gorgan nest area you are ready for the 7th and hardest section. Remember at all times you haven't cleared cazic area because if you bring cazic you will bring the entire zone because he calls them all. 7th area is the temple behind the fire wall. Best thing to do to pull this area is to send someone with good magic resist through the fire wall near the fitted house (camp 2). You will get HTed by all the knights in temple and causing a auto pull because I don't suggest you stick around but beat feat back to camp 2. Nothing will mostly come because you out ran them just start heading back to cazic along firewall you'll see one and two knights/warriors coming most times till you clear the temple.
Now once you clear the zone ... good luck you are ready for cazic. I say good luck because my server has yet to kill him and it will be along time before we do probably because by the time you get to this point you have been in fear for 12 hours and stuff is already respawning. AND OR people have come and gone and your numbers are depleted.
*********** AUTO PULL*********
Auto pull happens when you out run something back to pull spot or for what ever reason something that argoed you didn't follow you back off pull but returned to their spots in their section. Once this happens they transfer the agro flag to everything around them. So when you get into a range witch you will have to determine through your own test, stuff just comes at you. Normally in ones or 2's depending on how deep you are.
In closing I would like to say I also use my should to pick up the Doppler effect the mobs are making so I can tell if there is a mob coming or going near me. And good luck to all servers I hope this helps.
*** BE KIND TO YOUR PULLER*** it is not unlikely that they will
die repeatedly in a matter of mins.