Mabar Endless Night Festival

Overview
The Mabar Endless Night Festival is a special event introduced in Update 7 during the Halloween season.

The Mabar Festival allows characters to kill respawning undead in the Delera's Graveyard and harvest collectables to buy / upgrade festival-specific unique weapons and items with a flavor of undeath. By turning in collectibles you can first craft then upgrade the items of your choice.

When players trade in 20,000 collectables, the Summoning Chamber opens and players fight an Undead Spectral dragon named Eternity. After killing the dragon, you are rewarded with a Spectral Dragon Scale.

All weaponry and items unique to the Festival are Bound to Character on Acquire, upgraded or not. Collectibles are freely tradeable.

Delera's Graveyard


Update 7 modified Delera's Graveyard into a public area. Free to Play accounts may enter the graveyard and participate in the event, but remained restricted from accessing the Delera's Tomb quests inside the area without purchasing the Adventure Pack.

Items that can be collected from killing undead:


 * Collectables (trade in for Motes of Night, the basic "currency" to purchase special event items. Motes do not count towards the 20,000 total turn-ins needed to open the Spectral Dragon Summoning Chamber)
 * Burnt-out Black Opal (generated 1 to 23 Motes) - Unbound
 * Chipped Skull (generated 4 to 25 Motes) - Unbound
 * Cursed Fingerbone (generated 15 to 66 Motes) - Unbound
 * Collectables used in item upgrades
 * Spectral Dragon Scales: Acquired by defeating Eternity in the summoning chamber or purchased for 10,000 Motes from the event vendor. A scale is needed for each of the third, fourth, and fifth tier item upgrades. - Bound to Account
 * Vampire Fangs: These drop only when killing vampires, and are needed for the fourth tier upgrade - Unbound [Oct 2013 event update: Lich Dust no longer drops in the slayer area; it must be obtained by trading in Motes of Night (100).]
 * Lich Dust: This drops only when killing a lich, and is needed for the fifth tier upgrade - Unbound [Oct 2013 event update: Lich Dust no longer drops in the slayer area; it must be obtained by trading in Motes of Night (200).]
 * Other
 * Ethereal Key. This is needed to enter the Summoning Chamber when enough collectibles have been turned in. These drop from undead, but they can also be purchased from the DDo store for 50 TP, or from the Mote of Night Collector for 1000 Motes of Night. Ethereal Keys are BtA.

Everything other than Motes go into your Collectables Bag under "Festivals / Mabar Items". Motes go into your Ingredients Bag. Ethereal Keys and Spectral Dragon Scales are Bound to Account, all the rest are unbound (including Motes).

Farming strategies
The level of the undead that spawn is dependent on either your level, or the level of your party leader. To get higher CR enemies to spawn, the leader of the party should be the highest level. Certain kinds of enemies will only spawn when the CR is high enough (Vampires, Lichs, Whelps, Giant Skeletons etc). Fighting enemies of a higher CR increase the quality of the drops. Also, fighting enemies that are more than 2 CR levels below you will result in "Enemy was too weak" message and no drops.

There are some good places to farm; These areas have the most spawn points as well as the largest mob spawns. Joining a raid party will also increase your likelihood of getting a drop because the kills are shared between the whole party, and you can take on larger mobs.
 * By the pond at the bottom of the hill near the Delera's Tomb
 * On the hill above Joe Lantern and the entrance to the summoning chamber
 * Around the stone bridge to the south from Joe Lantern

It is not confirmed whether using AoE spell reduce the number of collectible drops, but party members seem to get more drops when the bulk of the fighting is done hand to hand. Drops seem to be more likely when you are physically closer to the enemies when they die.

You can increase the number of motes that you receive by buying a Draught of Midnight from the store (25 TP) or the Mote of Night collector (500 motes). Buying from the store makes more sense, because you will not necessarily get 500 extra motes with the use of the 1 hour potion.

Summoning Chamber


When players trade in 20,000 collectables, the DM announces it to everyone in Delera's Graveyard and the Summoning Chamber will open. The dungeon entrance is near Joe Lantern. You cannot select difficulty, you are automatically assigned to an instance depending on your level. Level spreads are:


 * Levels 1 through 8 (Summoning Chamber A)
 * Levels 9 through 14 (Summoning Chamber B)
 * Levels 15 through 19 (Summoning Chamber C)
 * Level 20 through 25 (Summoning Chamber D)
 * Level 26 through 30 (Summoning Chamber E)

An Ethereal Key to enter the Summoning Chamber; it is consumed at the end of the quest whether it succeeds or not; if you leave before the dragon is killed or an altar is destroyed (or failure because an altar was left attuned for 10 minutes), you regain your key. You will spawn in one of 4 randomly chosen corners of the map.

Players must get organized and cover eight positions on the map - two in each corner:
 * Altar room
 * Lever room

Communication with other players in the Summoning Chamber is done by using General Chat.

These are the priorities in the first 10 minutes:
 * Attune/activate each altar. This must happen within 10 minutes of starting the event; if this is not done, the quest fails. However, once all four altars are activated, the instance is sealed preventing more players from joining.  This can lead to one or more instances being short players.
 * Get organized and cover all 8 spots by self-sufficient characters or teams. Forming a raid party to talk to each other helps. However, each instance of the dungeon will have its own general chat channel, allowing communication that way.

After the 10 minutes introduction, the fun (and/or lag) starts. Eternity appears in one of the altar rooms; generally, this will be the room with the fewest people in it. After a while Eternity will teleport to a different altar room. Additionally, gargoyles spawn in both altar rooms and lever rooms. These are the priorities:


 * Protect the altar. Gargoyles attack it. Destroyed altar = game over, you fail.
 * Keep levers active. This will light up the altar room. When the dragon is in an unlit room, it gets much stronger, gaining DR, etc. Gargoyles in the lever room will deactivate the lever.
 * Kill the dragon.

Once the dragon is killed, you will get a victory message. After a few seconds, everyone is booted from the instance and a Spectral Dragon Scale appears in your backpack. Anecdotal evidence suggests the person who landed the actual killing blow may get two Scales. It has been confirmed, however, that anywhere between one and three scales will be awarded regardless of who strikes the killing blow.

A Signet of the Endless Night will also be awarded if it was your character's first successful run that day. (Limit one Signet of the Endless Night/character/day).

Halloween 2010

 * During the first run of the Festival, a serious glitch that would make kobolds appear occurred that caused the event to be stopped before the scheduled end. The glitch was fixed for later runs.
 * At least one major tweak has been a massive reduction in the drop rate of vampire fangs, which drop less regularly.
 * In earlier iterations, a glitch left players unable to gather 10,000 Motes of Night to purchase a Spectral Dragon Scale from the event vendor. The 9,999 stack limit on motes was since raised to 10,000 in later sessions.
 * Wheeps seem to be tossing around level drains and their 10 minute fear debuffs much less frequently.
 * Mass banning around Dragon Chamber exploit forum thread

Halloween 2011

 * Oct 2011 version: Summoning Chamber maintains party make-up (within level restrictions), so Summoning Chamber D:1 (the first instance of the level 20 version of the Summoning Chamber) gets a lot more players than later instances, because the first players in the door will bring their entire parties with them. You can also move to a desired instance by joining a party that is already in that instance before you enter the door (or exit and re-enter to join their instance before the door closes). Every player could be shuffled into a single instance quite easily, but players should avoid over-filling a single instance (around 40-60 players can work OK, but 100+ basically froze the instance for 20 minutes until all the summons expired and some of the players died and got dumped out of the instance).
 * In October 2011, the event returned for "a special sneak peek" from the morning on Wednesday October 19th through Thursday October 20th (ending the morning of the 21st) (link to announcement), and the Halloween weekend from the morning on Thursday October 27th through the evening on Wednesday November 2nd (emailed announcement and dev confirmation).
 * Ran from October 27th - November 2nd as well after the sneak peek on the 19th/20th.

Halloween 2012
Tolero: Post script, we do intend to extend the festival once we call in the Kobold exterminators to make up for lost time. 
 * It was announced in U15.1 and 15.2 that changes would be made to Mabar to accommodate epic levels (new monsters and loot, changes to the Summoning Chamber).
 * On Thursday, September 27, there was a preview of the changes on the Lamannia server.
 * Mabar was launched on October 25, planned to run until November 4. However, issues caused it to be shut down - kobolds spawned instead of undead.
 * On October 30, a Hotfix restored the event.


 * On November 2, mob spawn rates on Epic (level 20-25) instances have been reduced by 75%, due to some performance issues. This has had a significant impact on the number of Motes of Night which epic-level players can gather. Other level range instances are unaffected.


 * On November 2, Mabar Schedule. The Festival will end on Tuesday evening, November 6th.  There will be an encore of the festival closer to the Thanksgiving holiday - while pumpkins are still fashionable before Festivult time rolls into town.  Mabar II 2012 spans  November 21, 2012 and extends until November 27, 2012.

Halloween 2013

 * It was announced in 19.2 that changes would be made to Mabar to accommodate players level 26+ (new L26-30 instances of the graveyard and the Summoning Chamber). Giant Skeletons were removed, and replaced with new monsters for levels 21+, and Draughts of Midnight would grant motes for non-undead monsters in Delera's Graveyard (unclear if that includes within the quests or just running around the graveyard).  BtC Signets of the Endless Night were also introduced, which players can earn once per day (from the first successful dragon fight); forum posts revealed that this was per character, not per server.   These can be used to purchase new cosmetic helms, +5 tomes (limited to one per character), and new Ruby augments.  19.3 brought still more changes, notably monsters in a level-banded instance counting as of appropriate level for rewards, as long as the player isn't over the maximum level.  Additionally, Vampire Fangs and Lich Dust will no longer drop from monsters; the only source for these will now be from other players or from the Mote of Night trader; the cost for fangs and dust were "significantly reduced".  It was also announced that failed Spectral Dragon runs (due to an altar being destroyed) will return players' Ethereal Keys.
 * Opened for a 6-hour preview on Tuesday, September 24th, from 6 PM to Midnight Eastern.