Haven't read most of the posts here, so this is mainly a comment to the OP. While I can sympathise with why you would want to get rid of some of the key issues with such a quest, I feel that they are buried amongst some things that are really non-issues. As such, I feel the whole argument in general is weakened as you just seem to be complaining about certain parts of a quest being hard to do (which is intentional in many cases).

For example, the harlots are a non-issue. If you don't take care in quests, especially those which are long, you will find yourself making mistakes that lead to loss of a lot of progress. It is debatable whether that is a good thing or not, but this is not an issue that is unique to this quest and there is little point in bringing it up as a "bias" in any way because it isn't going to be changed.

Hallifax's side of the quest is definitely superior to Gaudiguch's (but still mindnumbingly boring).

The three key issues here:
1. Shibuchi is in Dairuchi.
2. The ebony wakabi, which takes hours to raise, can be killed in mere seconds and without any repercussions to the killer.
3. Sandojins are required by Hallifax side to be killed, while Gaudiguch requires them to be alive.

I can't comment on the randomness of the coloured eggs, because I have no idea on Hallifax's version of this stage, but this stage is really the most annoying, because how long this stage lasts depends entirely on luck and more luck.

Issues about the Hand of Tzaraziko that affects both sides:
1. When the fighting breaks out, nothing stops them from 'war mode'. Not even killing all of the opposing side and trying to hand it to the war leader. Only thing that works is waiting for them to reset.
2. When someone does the opposing Mirror Army quest, you need to clear the deformed/twisted mobs twice. The deformed/twisted mobs are very very tough. As a circle 90, Trans Resilience, Paradigmatics Fusion on and using sparkleberries and scroll, I still die to them. So basically, you have to wait for two resets.
3. Winter stops any progress on the stage that requires kouseki. Only thing you can do is to wait for three RL days before you can resume progress on an already tiresome quest.
4. When one side completes the Hand quest, the statue for the opposing side is destroyed. Completely. Resetting all and everything you have done.

@Ilyssa: You're right, most of the Hallifax's players wouldn't purposely go out of their way to sabotage Gaudiguchians doing the quest.
The problem is, because of the statue-destroying property of the quest, if a Hallifaxian and a Gaudiguchian both wants to complete the Hand quest, it becomes a race to see who can complete it first. And even if both sides are amicable and do not purposely attempt to sabotage the opposing side, simply by -doing- their side of their quest, they will hinder Gaudiguch's side.

When I did the Hand quest twice, I encountered almost all of the issues mentioned above. Someone killed my ebony chick. Someone repeatedly completed the Mirror Army quest while I was doing the Hand quest. (Apparently on purpose, but I can't prove that, so, benefit of the doubt to whoever was doing the quest) And when I was doing my second attempt at the Hand quest, Maellio happened to be doing his side at that time, and when we discussed it, I had no choice but to give up on the quest until he completed it. (Although, much thanks to him for telling me about the statue-destroying thing so that I didn't waste more time)

While there are plenty of valid points in this discussion, this particular one makes me want to laugh. It takes a bare minimum of something like 160 hours to complete the five prophecies for Serenwilde (and probably Glomdoring), assuming you're around every 32 hours like clockwork. Since it rotates between 4am, noon, and 8pm EST last I checked, there's a good chance you'll miss 2/3 of them if you have a full time job or go to school. Assuming you make one moon out of three, that's 20 days to complete the five prophecies, assuming no one else grabs it from you.

That's not to say I think ours is so much more ridiculous than the city quests (it's actually not all that bad if you know what you're doing, and our follow ups are much easier), but I just can't see "I have to wait three days" as a huge drawback, in comparison.

Apples to oranges there. The Hand quest isn't part of getting prophecies. If you had to turn in the Hand 5 times to do the Hallifax/Gaudiguch epics, nobody would ever do them because that would be horrific.

You can't really take one point out of the discussion, compare it with another quest, and then say it's laughable. You can't say that 'just three days' is laughable when you have to consider that this three days are on top of all the other factors that also work together to lengthen a already tedious quest.

As much as I sympathise with your prophecy quest, your point seems to be, in short, 'Serenwilde has it worse, you shouldn't be complaining about it'. While the Serenwilde prophecy quest has it's own issues, that does't have any bearing on the fact that the Hand quest has issues of its own.

The second stage of the Hallifax end of the quest requires that you turn in cobras to the researchers in order to get red, blue or yellow flasks. These flasks are dropped two at a time onto a kouseki to get red, blue, yellow, green, orange or violet kouseki flowers. Indiau always wants the flowers in a set order which he cycles through. IIRC, it's the same order as the colours of the rainbow, minus indigo.

The net result is that you know exactly how many of each flower type to make and what order to make them in.

Just so that others can get a better idea of why the second stage is really frustrating:
1. Teaka requests for eggs in a random order. My highest streak is 5 of a single colour in a row.
2. Wakabis lay eggs randomly. I know I've gotten three blue eggs in a row before.
3. You can only have 6 eggs existing ever. So, you have 6 eggs, but Teaka asks for a colour that you don't have? You have to destroy one of your eggs. But you have no idea which egg to destroy, because he asks for a random colour, so you may destroy the colour that he will ask next. I try to keep at least one egg of each colour, but Teaka asks for streaks just as often as he likes variety.
4. There's no way to destroy the eggs except to give them to Teaka. This means that when you don't have the colour Teaka wants, you have to feed Teaka one egg, head back to the wakabi and feed them a snake, and hope that your egg is what Teaka wants. If not, repeat this step until you get an egg that Teaka wants.
5. If you've exhausted your supply of cobras but still do not have the egg Teaka wants, you have to give in all of your remaining eggs, because they don't last long enough for the next cobra reset.

In terms of time required to complete, the statue-building stage takes way longer. However, the egg spawning phase is definitely the must frustrating.

The statue building stage takes longer uh what?

You get 2 blocks of marble per reset of gila lizards, while you get, on average, 3-5 eggs per reset of sand cobras. Both phases require 30 of their required items.
Also, winter stops the statue phase while it doesn't affect the egg phase.

It's apples to apples if you're talking about them as part of the epic quest cycle, which I think Sylphas was, but which perhaps the OP and the rest of the thread aren't. Those of us who haven't done the Halligaudi quests don't necessarily know whether that's why people are doing this or not.

Oh right. For some reason I read that as the Gaudiguch statue taking longer to build. Which... I'm pretty sure it doesn't. (In fact, going on the gefühl, it seems Hallifax is ever so slightly longer, but that could be an effect of it being a much longer walk.)

The Hallifax side of statue building is 33 rods iirc (though I'd have to go back through my logs to be sure), with 2 available every 45 minutes, approximately, and being unable to turn in sandojins while the two groups are fighting (which is something like 45 minutes every 5 hours or so? I never timed this out, though I did almost throw my monitor when it would start in the middle of turn-ins).

EDIT: I did the lucidian mirror quest hoping that wiping out the nomad camp would stop the mesa raids. I was sorely disappointed when it didn't.

As a minor note attached to the above, I recall getting all three scientists to follow me once, but I'm FAIRLY certain that was because of an incomplete cycle beforehand.

This entire thread is moot. The quest is supposed to be like this, it always has been, it's difficult.

Here's why.
One, you raise a power node. Yay, free power.
Two, it's the last quest in the Gaud/Halli epic quest.

There are things on both sides you can do to screw over someone else. Will these things happen to you? Yes, they will. Actually, if they don't happen at least once, then you are being protected by some divine right of god. Are these things fair? No. I complained about them before you. And a thousand other people complained about them before me.

The only serious problem I see, that might not be exactly fair all around. Is the Gaudi side not being possible if you're enemied to Dairuchi or the city/commune that owns it. Everything else is given on the situation and who feels like being an ass when you're doing the quest.

Actually it isn't as people are trying to adress the discrepency between the Hallifax side and the Gaudiguch side meaning the situation leading up to it is the same, and the result is exactly the same.

And at least 3 of the arguments are very real problems in a competative quest (let us not forget that it really meant to be a race to get it done first):
- Random item drop that only occurs for one side
- One side having a required denizen that is located in a village while the other side does not have this. (guards, enemy territory etc)
- One side can be forced to redo part of the quest while the other just has to wait for the respawn.

Had they designed the quests specificly for epic then this would probably not have happened, but alas they recycled the quests based on storyline without evaluating them for mechanical bias.

It is not uncommon for competing quests to use some of the same resources - particularly, the sandojinn in stage 1.

It's important to remember that the Nomads were a bunch of warriors who have been wandering the desert for /three hundred years/ - the fact they act like a bunch of gross, inbred idiots is probably a good indication that they very well may be just that. It was Dairuchi that was founded by the Wisdom of Gaudiguch, and they tend to be a lot more... Hmm... Together.

The only point that may need changing, as I look over the thread, is that you need to go into Dairuchi so many times - but Est'll need to look over the quest to make that call.

On the Wakabi dying, IIRC, it can be near insta-rezzed (next egg will cause it to hatch), or something - which, while probably not the best solution, I remember it being an attempt to address it, one done probably during the design stage of the quest. That it's not loyal sounds like a bug, so I've loyaled it.

The statues are both destroyed when the energy of the Hand is unleashed - such is the nature of the chaotic energies! You join the older cities in the world of 'we have a long final epic quest quest', and I suspect the quest isn't too much worse than the Inner Sea Battle (what it lacks in outright confrontation it makes up for in questing!).

Hate. So. Much. :rage:
Happy I got it done though.

Awsome to see that this is getting looked at! Thanks.


This too, is awsome. Did you loyal all 3 ebony wakabi mobs? ie. Chick, adolesent, full grown wakabi?


This I can't really object to. While somewhat annoying, it happens to both sides equally. It would be another thing if just Gaudiguch's or just Hallifax's statue were destroyed by the Hand, but that's not the case here.