Cazic Thule Alligator Pit

Introduction

The Cazic Thule alligator pit is a difficult place to hunt if you're not familiar with it. In part it's the location: the pit is located in the middle of a dungeon ... one containing mobs that can see through invisibility, and kill you in only a few hits. But also, it's because the pit is filled with water ... and alligators!

So why would anyone go there? Well if you are a Druid and use Enduring Breath and Superior Camouflage ... and you navigate correctly, the path to the pit is completely safe. This also means that if you die, retrieving your corpse is a breeze.

More importantly, you'll have a great place for a level 28-31 druid to combine Charm Animals and a Goblin Gazughi Ring to get great steady experience (Editor's Note: Even better now thanks to recent ZEM changes!) You'll also get a quiet spot that you rarely have to compete for and the blue mobs there have a *much* lower resist rate than the blue mobs in The Overthere (at 31 at least).

You also get a small chance per gator that you'll loot one of the four bases for the Magician Focus Items (A Broom, A Shovel, etc.). Finally, someday if you want to charm in Kedge Keep, you'll be able to use your underwater fighting experience from the alligator pit.

Getting to Cazic Thule

Ring of Ro will take you to South Ro, and from there it's just a short run through Innothule Swamp and The Feerrott to get to Cazic Thule. Or you go directly to the Feerrott druid ring, in the North East side of Feerrott. Unless get off track and blunder in to an Ogre or Troll guard everything along the way should con green, and none of it should be able to see through Superior Camouflage. The same is true of *most* of the mobs in Cazic Thule itself.

Cazic Thule

• NOTE* The three-dimensional nature of the dungeon makes it look like the path above doubles back on itself. However, when it looks like you are "doubling-back", you're actually proceeding below the area you first came through.

The Safe Path

Once you arrive you may want to refresh Spirit of the Wolf. You'll probably want to apply Enduring Breath now too, and then Superior Camouflage. Meditate for a bit to make sure the camo doesn't fail right away, then head through the double doors, which open in to a courtyard.

Here's the really important trick for avoiding see-invis mobs: go past the doors in to the courtyard, but don't go any farther. Turn around and look at the direction you came from. You will see two ladders. It doesn't matter which one you pick, but climb up it and go through the door at the top.

Again, just to emphasize, do not go anywhere else in the courtyard. If you go through the door to the right you'll wind up in a maze. If you go through the door across the courtyard and to the left it leads to mobs that can see through Superior Camouflage. But if you stick to the wall you came in on (and your Superior Camouflage doesn't fade) none of the lizard men will have the slightest clue that you were there.

Follow the hallway down until, on your left, you see a hallway leading down in to the pit room, which looks like this:

Dive in!

The Pit

As you'll see when you swim down, the initial pit leads down in to a small room with a short corridor, which in turn opens up in to a large (alligator-filled) room. A few of the alligators path through the corridor, but only one paths in to the entry room itself (and they can't see through Superior Camouflage). This entry room is a great spot to fight in, that is relatively safe.

The image below shows the view looking from it down the corridor (with a couple of battling alligators for good measure):

An alligator

Fighting Techniques

Stay in the Corner

The first, and most important thing to remember about fighting underwater is that corners are a necessity. There are only two true corners in the entry room (ie. ones that are sharp enough to keep you from moving if you are hit): you'll want to find these when you first arrive.

If you do not move to a corner before starting your cast and an alligator hits you, it's likely that you will get moved, and that your spell will be interrupted. Even when you pull you should always run back to the corner right away: if the pull went well you can cast from there, and if something went wrong you're already ready to gate away.

Bind Nearby, Gate Often

Which raises another point: bind yourself at the entrance of Cazic Thule (or right outside) and then gate early and gate often (from a corner). With a pit full of alligators it's very easy to have things go from bad to dead in only a few seconds. If you gate out at the first sign of trouble it will only take a minute for you to zone out and come back (to clear agro) ... but if you hesitate, you can lose a lot more time than that.

This especially applies to pulling: even if you use Harmony (which you must) you'll still get more than a couple alligators from time to time. The moment you see that, don't wait: gate!

Level 32

Once you reach level 32 almost all of the alligators in the pit will be green or "light blue" (ie. their consider message is "You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though"). If you keep killing in the pit at this point your XP will be very slow. Don't worry though, your Cazic Thule alligator-killing days aren't over yet: it's just time to move on to the Cazic Thule Alligator Alley.