Wow, just read through this thread, and it's quite interesting I must say. Just wondering if Del did get any answers.
Yes, I agree. There are many clues which lead to the same conclusion : we're not doing it the right way.
But although it's a real PITA (I mean, we were nearly 300 for our last raid, the lag was so huge that the only thing you could rely on was the combat window), it seems that a lot of people will stick with the current technique and don't want to investigate anything else.
Thus the need for some 'international' brainstorming and eventually, if needed, shared on-the-field research.
I haven't thought much about it yet, but my first impressions is that I'd concentrate on the ruins first and forget the cave doors (someone spoke about them releasing water ; I don't think so but they might open to let something else out).
But first I'd like to know if the devs replied with a clue or not.
For the number of people needed, for what it's worth, yesterday we ran a small event with two dozens of Kheldians, and we already got lag (not terrible, but noticeable). My guess is that Hami was designed be done with about the maximum of players experiencing normal conditions. So 30 seems like it. And the TF in COV looks like 'not doing the same mistake twice'.
I haven't hit Hamidon Level yet and have gotten Altilitus suddenly....
I'm sure there must be a way to defeat Hami easily... or at least easier.
The Dev's couldn't possibly have created the CoV End Task Force that's going to give a equivalent HO for an 8man Team if the CoH Hami is soooo hard to do.
I also doubt sincerely that they meant for more than one team to go at it.
8 man team is as 8 man team does. They must've worked with the limit of a 8 man team since that's the limit they enforced.
Why should Hami need more than 8 people to do if nothing else (that I know of 
) needs more than 8 people to do.
I'm pretty darned sure that there's a way for Hami to be beaten with just 8 pple. If not, the Dev's need to seriously make one.
Now, I guess I should prolly start trying to hit Hami levels so I can come and explore with you. 
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I also doubt sincerely that they meant for more than one team to go at it.
8 man team is as 8 man team does. They must've worked with the limit of a 8 man team since that's the limit they enforced.
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There was a post from a dev/moderator/whatever that works for Cryptic that said that he can be taken down with(the number he said)27 peoples.
My general impression of the hive is that it looks like a huge Sewer Trial, with the 3 woods acting as the shield generators...But that's all I can think of, I would really love to find something out before TEH AMERICANS!
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My general impression of the hive is that it looks like a huge Sewer Trial, with the 3 woods acting as the shield generators.
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In fact, the map doesn't work like any other map. So, it might really be special. Somewhere between a zone and a mish.
I also think that there's some sort of trigger somewhere. Although my money goes for the ruins instead of the woods.
And sure... the first people to find the 'way-it-meant-to-be' (if there's one, of course) are going to be famous 
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I also doubt sincerely that they meant for more than one team to go at it.
8 man team is as 8 man team does. They must've worked with the limit of a 8 man team since that's the limit they enforced.
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There was a post from a dev/moderator/whatever that works for Cryptic that said that he can be taken down with(the number he said)27 peoples.
My general impression of the hive is that it looks like a huge Sewer Trial, with the 3 woods acting as the shield generators...But that's all I can think of, I would really love to find something out before TEH AMERICANS!
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From what I remember it was a test done by the devs with (about) 27 Rad/Rad defenders during I3 - they debuffed the hell out of hami 
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I also doubt sincerely that they meant for more than one team to go at it.
8 man team is as 8 man team does. They must've worked with the limit of a 8 man team since that's the limit they enforced.
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There was a post from a dev/moderator/whatever that works for Cryptic that said that he can be taken down with(the number he said)27 peoples.
My general impression of the hive is that it looks like a huge Sewer Trial, with the 3 woods acting as the shield generators...But that's all I can think of, I would really love to find something out before TEH AMERICANS!
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From what I remember it was a test done by the devs with (about) 27 Rad/Rad defenders during I3 - they debuffed the hell out of hami
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It was a strategy they used to farm Hamidon, before they increased his damage, range and resistances.
It's in the US forums still, the post about the 27 people to kill him was post I5.
Must...level.
Must...join...theorists.
So many questions, so few answers. I'm pretty sure the portal corp building isn't there just for badge, there must be something doable with it as there are the 3 "accessable" doors mentioned earlier. They must serve some purpose. Also it looks wierd as it is only building in the whole zone.
well and of course the fact why create a complete new zone just to house a monster? It isnt used for mishes, nor is it used for unting the monsters there, what use is it?
Must say i myself am still one of those conspiracy theorists
"god, how many devs did hami have to sleep with to get ED?"
Total Cat @Stagefright
Curiouser and curiouser. I don't know if anyone has seen this before. Someone must have. But while havinf a butchers at the Hive this evening I came accross this mob (see linky)
Now a litte further investigation showed 4 or five similar spawns of DE all walling off an entrance to the center of the hive (at ground lvl at least) and at the approximate four corners of the depression inside which Hami resides.
Two thing strike me about this:
1) the distictive formation, almost like they are guarding the jelly.
2) the only spawns I can see in the whole of th Hive that have non-monster DE in them.
Could these mobs be linked to a way to limit Hamis power so fewer peeps can take him?
Your thoughts.
Guys, guys... please read the thread from the beginning. Thanks.
Just posting this here so I won't forget it - has anyone tested Hamidon's reactions to Ambrosia? Just wondering if there is some special reason they remain in our inventory even after the Spire Trial is completed.
[b][color=blue]Coldest War /[color=red]/ Omega Patient[/b]
[url="http://www.the-cow.net/"][color=red]The CoW Network (Blog) /[/url][url="http://www.collegeofwar.com/"][color=blue]/ College of War[/url]
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Curiouser and curiouser. I don't know if anyone has seen this before. Someone must have. But while havinf a butchers at the Hive this evening I came accross this mob (see linky)
Now a litte further investigation showed 4 or five similar spawns of DE all walling off an entrance to the center of the hive (at ground lvl at least) and at the approximate four corners of the depression inside which Hami resides.
Two thing strike me about this:
1) the distictive formation, almost like they are guarding the jelly.
2) the only spawns I can see in the whole of th Hive that have non-monster DE in them.
Could these mobs be linked to a way to limit Hamis power so fewer peeps can take him?
Your thoughts.
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These are the 'GM Walls' I mentioned and mapped before in the thread, near those walls there's also a small spawn of Eminators summoners of lvl 41-43.
That's why we're sayin it looks like a big mission/trial rather then a simple,huge and useless zone(but we can be wrong, given the uslesness of RCS and Faultline)..
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well i actually done some more research into it. There are 8 hills surrounding hamidon which are surrounded by "super swarms" On all those 8 hills but 1 (the one with the tiny forest on it) I found those cave doors. However they arent clickable. I've mapped em all here: clicky - the cyan lines are the lines of super swarms, the red dots are the doors.
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After some hours of exploration in the Hive there's some stuff I found at least weird, I'll use THIS image to explain some of my thoughts..
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This is very strange... The lines of swarms ( with -fly ) seem to indicate we are not meant to attack Hami by the most direct route. The positions of the lines GMs seem to indicate going around the edge of the map clockwise. Also that there is less guarded route to Hami that requires going pass all 3 forests and the portal buildings is suspicious.
Someone mentioned 3 doors on the portal corp building, has anyone tried opening them simultaneously?
Has anyone successfully cleared any of the woods?
I'm up for some investigation at some point, daytime at the weekend perhaps? I have to test my Hami-O after all.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
OK you caught me, I only skim read the post as it started over 3 months ago. Will be mroe careful in the future.
Apologies for repeating points that have been made.
OK read the whole thing now and done some more snooping in the hive.
Found the cave doors, no blue zombie hand when hovered over.
Found two entrances in the Portal Corp base which do have the blue hand icon but say "you cannot enter" when clicked.
Some theroies:
1) The cave doors are ALL on high ground, maybe something can be triggered to open them and something come out to damage/nerf/change Hami.
2) Clickable entrances in the PC base. Must be there for something surely
3) I am guessing here but the swarms and the GM walls seem to indicate a definite route through the hive. Could 3 teams of 8 take out 20-25 DE GMs? I don't think so I don't think that defeating the walls will be the solution as that is the brutre force approach again.
Will continue my investigations.
EDIT: Said there were three clickable entrances in abandoned base when there are in fact only 2.
Did a couple of runs around The Hive today, and I agree, the "walls" and swarms make a clear route to move in The Hive.
Anyone happen to remember the command that was used in City of Villains to find the bomb drop sites before they were fixed, it was /target_somethingorother (target next in-game object in sight, be it foe or object or whatever) - if there is some sort of an object that can be interacted with in the Portal Corp area, that could be used to locate it.
[b][color=blue]Coldest War /[color=red]/ Omega Patient[/b]
[url="http://www.the-cow.net/"][color=red]The CoW Network (Blog) /[/url][url="http://www.collegeofwar.com/"][color=blue]/ College of War[/url]
After having a visit in Hive, I checked all 3 forests on map (there actually are 4, one is small and right north of Hami) I noticed that the forest in lower left corner is only one on map that has monsters in it and that can be accessed. I marked the 4th forest and the accessable forest on this map.
/bind F12 "targetcustomnext notmypet" however it will target enemies too.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
Did a targetcustomnext -run around The Hive, and discovered the following three things (not really big, but for completeness sake, should be mentioned):
There are indeed 3 clickable doors in the Portal Corp area - one of the doors is half-way buried under soil. All of the doors give the standard "You cannot enter" -error message. They appear to be, in every possible way, very ordinary doors.
The 9 "doors" in the spires aren't interactable objects - if they have some function (they do look suspicious...), it isn't active. This means that it is unlikely they are the key to our dilemma.
There doesn't appear to be anything that could be interacted with in the forests either, but I was unable to get close enough to get a 100% confirmation to any other forest than the small patch north of Hami.
[b][color=blue]Coldest War /[color=red]/ Omega Patient[/b]
[url="http://www.the-cow.net/"][color=red]The CoW Network (Blog) /[/url][url="http://www.collegeofwar.com/"][color=blue]/ College of War[/url]
I've made a map of Hive containing all that was posted here(or at least most of it). Click here.
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I've made a map of Hive containing all that was posted here(or at least most of it). Click here.
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All 3 of the forest are accessible, however there's always 3-4 monsters inside.
We tried to clear one a while back but we found out nothing useful..
Don't forget that the PC area isn't at all filled with monsters like the rest of the Hive, it's the _only_ place in the map where you can stay put without danger.
Forget about clearing all of the GM walls, been tried in the US, leaving people where the walls used to be to avoid respawns but even after cleqaring them all they came to no results.
We even tried to clear a whole hill guarded by the swarm but looks something like impossible because as soon as you go far enough a new GM spawns where you previously cleaned..
The cave doors are indeed unclickable and they don't even open with the Power of the Scrapapocalypse summoned by Chives, so something REALLY big must be done to open them 
Ok, lets look at this logically:
First lets assume that a way to weaken Hami to the point at which he is defeatable with ~30 Heros exists and is self contained within the Hive.
What do we know?
1) There GM walls in place such that Hamidon can only be approached from the north and require a runner to travel 3/4 way round the map to get there.
2) There are 9, seemingly non-interactive, cave entrances dotted relatively evenly around the hills around Hami.
3) There are three, interactive, doors in the abandoned portal Corp Base to the far north west.
4) There are four forests dotted around the map.
OK now some suppositions.
1) The GM walls, IMO are not defeatable by 30 heroes (or four teams of 8 to make 32 heros).
2) The route defined by the swarms and GM walls, lead a through all the significant points in th hive before ending at Hami himself. This includes all the cave doors, forests and the abandoned base, possible indicating an order that things need to be done in.
3) I do not believe the entances in the abandoned base are merely for show.
4) I am not certain the forsts are significant and there are no suspicious entrances or anomolies within them.
All this is leading me nowhere anyone else want to have a crack?
EDIT: just noticed some obvious but possibly significant things about the zone itself:
1) The map resets whenever I leave/die/log (this could be a bug).
2) It has no 'areas' within it it is all just 'the hive'.
Not sure if these have any real meaning but thay do serve to make the map unique. Maybe it is unique in other ways as well.
Never gave up on this opinion, there MUST be something more about the Hive that's still undiscovered, because it's unlikely for the devs to put something in this game that would focus so much on a single AT since they always tried to make any AT not needed(basically you could hami raid with just 50-60 trollers), a way to take him down is there, hidden but there's a way other than the brute force, they tried everything to avoid the brute force approach by pumping Hamidon up countless times, another go at pumping him up to try and avoid that would make people complain too much I think so they'll leave him as it is.
But it's unreal that they thought a thing THIS bad: stressing a server to the point it crashes for an end-game challenge for wich you need at least 80-90 people....
I'm always up for some more investigation, tests and whatnot; if you're willing to arrange something on test I'm up for that, just send a tell to @Jiaozy or post somewhere in these boards and I'll join in.
My opinion that there's an easier way to take him down is backed up by the fact that they're putting in CoV a TF that needs only 8 people to accomplish to get the equivalent of an Hami-O.