Merry Mayhem 2012 - 2013 – What will it be this year

There are many interesting things coming in the next content update. A lot of effort has gone into improving this year’s Merry Mayhem which will work in a completely different way compared to previous years. For example it is now an instanced experience with unique monsters, bosses and loot and there are also separate categories for solo hunters and hunters with support teams.

It is also far less complicated to participate in this year’s event than previous years. If you want to sign up for Merry Mayhem simply talk to a quest giver and you'll get a set of instance key based on what category you fit in. These 30 keys are untradeable and can be used to gain access to a merry mayhem instance 30 times (1 hour sessions).

There are actually 8 different instances, categories 1-4 (team) and categories 1-4 (solo). Each avatar will get 30 team keys as well as 30 solo keys. You will indeed be able to play as much as you want this year outside of the event and there will be no restrictions on skill chipping.

The event time frame is extended to a month starting Dec 14 and ending Jan 14.

There are some limitations. You can only enter support instance "arenas" 30 times, a key will be consumed for every player that enters the arena and not just the leader. When you enter a team instance you're placed in a prep-room and to proceed from there to the arena itself you need to sacrifice a key to father lootius (plastic Santa statue). Also, you can only enter an instance at or above your category to ensure that category 4 players can't spoil the fun for category 1 players etc.

If more than one player enters a team arena each player needs to spend one of their 30 team keys.

The arena is built in the shape of a torus with half of the area alloted to "easy mobs" and half to "hard mobs", each side has three packs of 10 mobs and each pack respawns about 30 seconds after being killed. Killing the hard mobs will be a little more efficient than killing the easy mobs in terms of HP per mission point earned. The mobs themselves have been balanced specifically for this event and don't really have any equivalents out in the regular world although they share graphics with Kerberos and Araneatrox.

The counter is only visible in your quest log during the event, it will however be made public once the results are announced. There are two quests with their own counters, one quest for the team event and one for solo. You can't eave the arena during a 1 hour hunt session, but there are auctioneers, trade terminals and repair terminals inside. The loot works just like regular hunting loot. Points are awarded per-kill. You need to make actual teams to enter the instances which effectively caps the player count at 12. The points are given to the avatar who does the most damage. Arena's won't be PVP. The mobs for team will have about 3x the HP, 3-5x regen and about 1.3x DMG compared to a solo mob of the same category.

There are numerous factors that will influence your result that don't have much to do with having simply having the best gear although gear definately should and does play an important role.

Here's a couple...

• Do I hunt the easy monsters for safety or risk death by hunting the more efficient hard mobs?
• How fast can I find out what damage types the mobs do and adapt my gear accordingly?
• Do I risk going after the boss for nice loot and bonus points or stay safe grinding?
• Do I share the same support team in a single instance with someone else? Perhaps I can put a stronger team together that way that can help in bad situations. Or do I want my own dedicated force?
• Is it worth having dedicated fappers and mindforce buffers as support team members?