Difference between revisions of "Cazic Thule Alligator Pit"

Revision as of 23:47, 15 February 2017

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, a dungeon which contains mobs that can see through invisibility and kill you in only a few hits. But it's also because the pit is filled with water ... well, and alligators.

So why would anyone go there? Well IF you use Enduring Breath, Superior Camouflage, and navigate correctly, the path to the pit is completely safe, which also means that if you die retrieving your corpse is a breeze. More importantly, you'll have a great place for a level 31 (or a few levels lower/higher) druid to combine Charm Animals and a Gobling Gazughi Ring to get great steady experience. You'll also get a quiet spot that you'll almost never have to compete for, and the alligators have a *much* lower resist rate than the (also blue) mobs in The Overthere.

Oh, and someday when you're much higher level and charming fish in Kedge Keep you'll be able to use your experience from the underwater fighting in 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. 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, so let's say choose left. 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 the throne room (with 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 none go through the entry room itself (plus they can't see through Superior Camouflage). This entry room will be your hunting spot.

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

Fighting Techniques

The first, and most important thing to remember about fighting underwater is that corners are a necessity. The entry room is somewhat rounded, but does still have a few usable corners. The usable ones are the ones that are sharp enough so that if you are pressed against them you can't be moved, even while being 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.

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 clear ago and come back, but if you hesitate you can lose a lot more time than that (especially since high level clerics don't pass through the zone often).

This particularly applies to pulling: even if you use Harmony (which you must) you'll still get more than a couple alligators from time to time. Don't wait, gate ;)