Solteris Access #1: Knowledge for Power  

I have found that you can not only lev over the doorway in the big room, as mentioned below, but you can lev over any doorway, even on the second floor, and the seekers never find you. hope that helps some.

I discovered today that if you are found, you can retrigger the search. So all of the clearing time is not wasted if you fail.

Edited, Jun 9th 2007 2:24pm by banguril

Just finished it and if I knew then what I know now, I would have saved a lot of time...

C'est domage!

So my pain is your gain:

The zone-in to the instance is at the top of a pyramid in the regular Jewel of Attiki zone. Follow the tunnel north till you get to the open desert area and then follow your compass to the top of a pyramid. Zone into the laybrinth.

The efreeti all SI and the scarab beetles do NOT. If you can avoid killing the scarabs, to save time, do so. They are kos and I think they assist the efreeti (not sure since the adds could have been due to proximity aggro on a pull.) The aggro range is small. Pulls that I feared would bring 2-3 would sometimes bring just 1. But you can definitely get adds, especially on the more crowded second floor.

You come in on the first floor and have to move up to the third floor to hail the sphinx. Each floor is progressively smaller, of course, since it's a pyramid, duh. The reason people advise clearing the first floor entirely is because you will need to be able to move around on the floor to avoid the seekers during the final challenge. You do NOT need to clear all the efreeti to get the sphinx to respond. We left the 4 mobs in the 1st floor SW room alone and got him to respond. BUT you do need that room to evade the seekers so, unfortunately, for that reason, you need to clear the entire first floor.

Mobs run, they're mostly casters, so they dispell. They hit fairly hard but don't have a lot of HPs. Easily handled by a decent group. I'd say the tank should be able to buff to 14k with 2500 ac. Could be done with less if the healers are on the ball.

The layout is obvious and you're moving up all the time. So no getting lost. Some of the rooms are crowded with mobs, with 2 guarding the entrance but as I said, aggro and aggro-assist ranges are small. There are hallway wanderers so best to wait on those and clear them, unless you're comfortable coping with potential 3- or 4-pulls.

Once you get to the top, the Sphinx is in a room with the non-aggro seekers, a couple of other non-aggro nameds ("for atmosphere") and 4 SI aggro mobs. You might want to clear a couple of the KoS mobs so you have elbow room in talking to the Sphinx. But you don't NEED. We left 2 of them alive and the Sphinx was happy to respond.

These efreeti will drop the armor needed for questing the illusion:spectre mask. We got 2 pieces during our run. Otherwise drops are standard vendor junk. If zone rares drop from this instance, we didn't see any.

Okay, the challenge. The mechanics are as described on this page. The specifics on how to get this done without driving your groupmates NUTZ and wasting several hours. Because you can get TO the Sphinx in 60 minutes or less, but doing the challenge can consume the rest of the 6 hours allocated to the mission, if you don't know what you're doing.

Here's what to know...

The first floor large room south is where to park your group mates. Do the hiding before hailing the Sphinx for the challenge. The Sphinx does allow you enough time to run back down and hide but why have 6 people running like decapitated chickens if you don't need to. As stated elsewhere here, the best strat is to hide behind the pillars along the middle portion of the south wall. Do NOT hide in any corners. The front corners of the room will be picked up under either A or B search patterns so they're useless. The entire room IS safe under "C", "D" and "E". The whole room will be picked up under "A".

So your problem is when the "A" search pattern is called. As suggested here, when A is called, your group should run to the SW room. Yes, you may stumble into a searcher, it's all the luck of the draw, or more correctly, the luck of what previous search pattern letter was called. BUT! It appears to me at least that if several toons run past a searcher, he will only report the FIRST toon he spots. I think the search discovery AI is derived from mob aggro... as long as your group is in motion, only the lead group member will be "aggro'd", or in this case, detected. So if all 6 run to the SW room together, the lead runner is reported and the rest make it safely.

Then when a "non-A" pattern is announced, run back to the south room and reoccupy your middle-south-wall hiding places. Since the odds are 1 in 5 that "A" will get called, with a 6-person group, there's a good chance your group will win, since only one group member needs to evade.

Note that there are three "waves" of searching, each involving 4 search pattern calls. BUT you don't have to survive three waves IN A ROW, just three waves TOTAL. So if you succeed in evading 4 search patterns in WAVE 1 but you're all detected in WAVE 2, you can try again (the Sphinx allows unlimited attempts at the challenge, limited only by the mission's time limit) and if you successfully evade WAVE 1 of the second try, the quest log updates it as WAVE 2. Using the tips given here, assuming you have enough time, it shouldn't be hard to successfully complete the mission. Yes, it's a bit of a PITA, certainly not something I'd wanna do regularly to pharm faction and orux.

BTW, IF there is one hiding spot which is ALWAYS safe, I never found it. I got intrigued enough to map the large south room and place a toon in each cubby and behind every pillar. I discovered that search pattern A finds them all, and if A did miss any, B picks those up. If there ever was such an absolute safe spot it's been nerfed out of game. More likely someone just lucked out and pattern "A" was NEVER CALLED during their mission, an occurrence which is unlikely but far from beyond the realm of possibility. That would lead one to conclude that there was indeed an absolute safe spot.




Edited, May 31st 2007 4:20pm by Sippin

am I right no mobs in this mission summons so a 75 necro should be able to solo it?? I mean all I need is two others get mission and go solo it before soe nerfs it!

Edited, Apr 28th 2007 1:19am by cjguy

As of the 3/14 patch, saying 'ready' results in the text: "You cannot possibly hope to evade my seekers with so many of my savage Efreeti roaming the halls below..."

While the listed tasks haven't changed, it's apparant a quantity of kills is required to initiate the Hide & Seek portion now.

You say, 'You are great, wonderful, clever and intelligent.'

Yinihortinkah smiles smugly, 'Well I suppose you are so clever that I will allow you one more question.'

You say 'What is causing the powersource to fail?'





When I ask him this question, his response is, "That is an interesting question, however, that is not the question you should be asking".

The easiest way to complete this is to take everyone back to the entrance and hide them behind the firepots in the alcoves.

A rogue kicks off the hide-n-seek part then hides behind the throne. If everyone stays small and still, the mobs will enter the room, but can't see you there.

DONT READ IF YOU WANT TO FIGURE THE PUZZEL ON YOUR OWN

If you stay in the South Center room on the south center part of the room you will be safe for all but Azia (spelling?) If that search pattern is called head out the room and to the west into the SW room. This isn't guarenteed every time as sometimes they roam around between the SW and south room.

It also helps to turn on particals and turn the opacity up, watch the blue bubbles and avoid them.

I was able to Duo the mission with a paladin and shaman pretty easily, I think there was 2 or 3 pulls that weren't single and and I just rooted. Mobs dont summon so you can root doot, kite (though till you clear some there isn't much room), or tank.

Mobs can hit up to around 1483 max, usually much less, but watch for spikes, there were times it would do a round or two of very hard hits.

When you get to the Sphinx, hail it, say Challange, say Ready then hide. You need to have at least 1 person in the group not found (the yellow text means your found). If you make it past wave 1, wave 2 starts automaticly, those who have not yet been found keep playing (if you're found you wont get the yellow text till you restart a wave) if everyone is found then then simply say Ready again to the Sphinx to restart that wave (at which time all can hide again).

Once all 3 waves are done, hail the Sphinx again, then say Words then you need to tell him how charming he is (I forget the exact text but follow the stuff in the [ brackets ]) something like You are so Great, Wonderful, Clever and Intelligent then he will say you can ask another question, ask the question listed in the bottom of the quest text (alt & q) but make sure when asking you put the words power and source together. Its something like What is the cause of the powersource failure this may not be exact but check the text in the quest.

In the mission as a group at 75 you can gain about 2 aa's or so, solo about 3 and plan on spending 2 hours in the mission, it might be faster with a quick group.


I hope this helps

Merchant Faction is raised or can get 50 Onux at Completion of task. I don't have all the dialog, but basically you get the quest and head to the Jewel of Atikki (sp) and instance zone. Clear ALL the Kos mobs then Hail a named Sphinx. You basically play hide and go seek, with his blind seekers, who search for you in various patterns. If one person manages to stay hid through 3 full waves you win get to ask the Sphinx the question from the quest, after you have the answer go back and hail the researcher guy and complete task. Yuor reward options are Faction or the 50 Onux. Oh By the way mobs hit like Plane of Fire castle 2 mobs, mostly in the 500's but upto 1400 on a 3k ac pally. They have a very small aggro and assist range.