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Originally Posted by Enygma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Essence Lens

*** All research done by myself and Alarti shows that this was not in game until later velious. Looking at the way back machine ( http://web.archive.org/web/200012051...llakhazam.com/ ) the following are the items listed as of June 17, 2001 on Allakhazam.


*** No mention of Essence Lens until November 28, 2001. Malalafen was removed from game in 2003 and subsequently it is impossible for us to attempt to complete this quest on Live.

*** No mention of Malalafen on Way back Machine as of April 9, 2001. Alarti determined through comments that Malalafen originally Malalafin(sp) was removed two (2) months after velious release due to him being killed and dropping the Essence Lens which was not intended - and as a result he was removed until later. First back up that includes Malalafen in the Bestiary is March 26, 2002, first comment can be seen on January 29, 2002 on current ZAM - http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=7288

Mobhunter Archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/200110071....com/index.jsp

The Safehouse: Sleeper News At Last filed by Moorgard
09/13/2001 11:50 AM CDT
As reported over at The Safehouse, a new dragon has appeared in Western Wastes. Melalafen, a follower of Kerafyrm the Sleeper, roams south of the ToV valley. He has a few things to say about where the Sleeper has gone.
Kudos to Verant for getting some more quests relating to the Sleeper into the game, and for reviving interest in the Mobhunter staff's favorite topic. MORE

Direct link to story:

http://web.archive.org/web/200111210...leid=562709230

This story orginates from a discussion thread at The Safehouse.
Melalafel, a red dragon who is level 63+, is a new addition to Western Wastes, roaming south of the valley that the Temple of Veeshan occupies. He apparently sees invis and cons indifferent to everyone, though he will assist another dragon if you are attacking or being attacked by one.

More interesting than what he looks like, however, is what he has to say. Ratamah provided the following quest dialogue:

[Tue Sep 11 19:19:19 2001] You say, 'Hail, Melalafen'
[Tue Sep 11 19:19:20 2001] Melalafen says 'We are aware of your presence, fleshling.
[Tue Sep 11 19:20:14 2001] You say, 'who are you ?'
[Tue Sep 11 19:20:15 2001] Melalafen says 'We are those who have been in hiding. We are those who have been in waiting. We are those who await the return of our Master.
[Tue Sep 11 19:20:28 2001] You say, 'who is your master ?'
[Tue Sep 11 19:20:28 2001] Melalafen says 'Our Master? Surely all know of our Master now. It was he who was sleeping. It is he who is now freed. We give him honor, loyalty, and our lives. Jaled'Dar, first of our order, set in motion the events that freed our Master. But the Master has departed quickly, perhaps to challenge the Mother herself, such is his power. We wish to aid our Master, but we fear he is not aware that we exist, for his last memory of Wyrmkind was one of treachery and defeat. We believe we know where he has gone, but we do not know how to reach him.
[Tue Sep 11 19:36:11 2001] You say, 'where has he gone ?'
[Tue Sep 11 19:36:11 2001] Melalafen says 'We believe that he is in a far distant plane, beyond the powers of even the mightiest dragon to reach. He goes places only Veeshan herself was able to visit. We believe he searches for our long departed Mother, to challenge her for rule of the very heavens. If only we had some means of reaching him, we would give him all our aid! We doubt your pitiful mammal brain is capable of devising a plan where we have failed, but we will listen to your chatter, such is our desperation.

Merileaf added the following:

What scale?
Melalafen says 'You have a scale? A scale from Kerafrym himself? His long slumber, or the battles after he was freed, must have weakened him a great deal! One such as our Master does not shed. If this is true, and you possess what you say, there is hope for us. With his scale, we can create a focus which gives us a chance to locate him in the far ether. But wait! If you have his scale, you must have been in his tomb! You are the ones who were responsible for freeing him, yes? If this is so, we owe you a great debt, for carrying out Jaled'Dar's plan. Give us his scale, and we shall reward you well. We also require the key Jaled'Dar crafted for you to enter the tomb. His tomb is a holy place, and the likes of you should not be allowed to further defile it. We shall not compromise, the key and the scale, o'

The quote seems to end abruptly.

So Kerafyrm is off to do battle with Veeshan herself. The Wurm Queen is the ruler of the Plane of Sky, though she doesn't actually live there; her size (watch the movie that comes with the original EverQuest CD) prohibits her from fitting into any zone imaginable. The Sleeper must be eating his Wheaties and buffing up for the big fight.

Interestingly, the things Melalafen says sound a bit like what I suggested Verant should do with the Sleeper quest. Call me a prophet if you like.

What's unclear is whether Melalafen was intended to be up on all servers, or just the Rathe--the only server on which the Sleeper was actually awakened. Clearly, Mel shouldn't be talking about his Master being off fighting Veeshan while Kerafyrm is still snoozing in his tomb on most servers.

And what about the quest he gives? Besides a scale that is apparently left behind when the Sleeper leaves his tomb, the quest requires the player to turn in the key to Sleeper's Tomb. While replacing a key isn't a big deal to any guild capable of obtaining one in the first place, giving up a hard-earned key to Sleeper's Tomb--which required giving up a hard-earned dragon talisman--has to sting a bit.

I'd imagine some folks on the Rathe server will be attempting this quest, assuming Kerafyrm left some scales behind when he took off.

Now that Mobhunter's favorite.. uh... mob is back in business, expect updates as soon as we get them.

Article from the first person to complete the Melanafen Quest:
http://web.archive.org/web/200111121...eid=1970146835

BotS: Sleeper's Quest Revealed... to be a Sleeper filed by Moorgard
09/22/2001 12:59 PM CDT
Emil, member of Blood of the Spider and only person to have completed the Melalafen quest, has posted and essay detailing exactly what is required to get a guild to Sleeper's Tomb as well as his feelings on what is wrong with the outcome.
Some highlights, along with our comments, follow.

Requirements to enter Sleeper's Tomb:

Nonetheless...for us to conquer ST, we needed 54 keys: this translates into what, 25 weeks if we got 2 keys per week? I should say that we most likely got more than 2 keys per week; I should also say we had 81 keys in the guild when we took the 54 to release the sleeper. There is no argument... to release the Sleeper is a MASSIVE time and people investment.

On Verant's response:

Then last June we managed, after quite a bit of time and work, to take out the 4th warder and release the sleeper. This time there was no punishment to be had. In fact there was not much of anything to be had, as far as Verant responses - with the exception of an occational GM /tell of congratulations.

We were met with a bugged trigger of 2 kerafyrms in the zone, then the Sleeper heading to Skyshrine to kill everyone and everything there, then having west wastes and kael crash...

Then silence.

The only acknowledgement of us waking the sleeper was the !warders in sleepers for about 3 weeks. Then our lead GM was ordered to keep the warders /killed.

It took over a month, and a volatile report on Lum the Mad's website to even get any form of Verant official response.

On trying to find the next step in the quest:

Somewhere between here and there, I got into an email dialogue with Verant, offering all I knew, hopefully facilitating the 'debug' process of the script, and perhaps finding out if there was any more to it.

There is more to it, although to this day I beleive its 'off the cuff', that is ad lib - making it up as they go along. We were told on the Lum the Mad site, to check out sleepers, we may find something interesting. We went ahead and killed every single mob in sleepers. All of them. We (I) looted a prismatic dragon scale. So, now we had some substance / hint that there was more. Ironically, there was no one to give this scale to at the time...

About 4 weeks later (last patch) Melalafen was introduced into west wastes.

Emil then proceeds to list the multiple rewards for turning in the scale to Melalafen. The results are pretty damn good, but far from the best items in the game.

His take on the results of the quest:

So, there you have it... the rewards for waking the sleeper... 5 average items that are all COMPLETELY dominated by the loot drops from most mobs in north tov, or dozekar. Bear in mind, you are NOT rewarded with these items WHEN you release the sleeper, but rather you are given the joyous task of FARMING the snot out of sleepers tomb to acquire these EXTREMELY rare scales. Added to this, you don't even have to release the sleeper to receive the reward, you just need to be on a server that has had the sleeper awakened... Where is the justice in someone who has never seen a warder much less taken a part in such a monumental occation as releasing the sleeper - to be given the opportunity to loot a scale, and be given the reward (albeit anticlimatic to say the least)?

How the Melalafen quest is bugged:

After testing the mace, I decided for the time being, the ring was the best suited item for my set up. I went and found Melalafen, isolated him and proceeded to hand him the mace. As I pressed trade, a trash mob in ww aggroed me and, yes you guessed it: Melalafen assisted and killed me. When I was ressed back, I had no mace heh. I have since petitioned, and emailed everyone from Sony GMs, testing, customer support, even abashi. I have received no reply after 9 days (I am aware and sensitive to the events in NY, and am still patiently waiting for at least a reply). The only discernable response, is the Dragon being removed from the game, so I am still hoping that this will be deemed a bug, and not played off as some malevolent trap, which would be ridiculous as well as unbelievable.

Why the Sleeper's quest needs extensive re-thinking from Verant:

It is a fact: When you release the sleeper you remove clawed guardian bracers, dainty gloves, caster masks, sceptres of destruction, gnome illusion masks, the 4 resistance stones, smolders and the monk robe from that server - seemingly forever. You also lower the drop rate of primal weapons by over 75%. Yes, primal (all kinds) will now drop off the 3 named golems, and they in fact have a quicker repop. Even with these 2 factors, primal drops are far far lower than they were when the warders existed. Basically the quest, in its current form punishes anyone on the server who did not get there first. It is a catalyst for major intra-server fights / threats / hatred. Take note of the server-wide spite and hatred taking place on Mith Marr boards today...

To see what he's talking about, you can read all the flack that Afterlife, the second guild to wake the Sleeper, has gotten from other guilds on their server.

Mobhunter has been following the Sleeper story from day one, no doubt boring many of our readers with our refusal to let it die. Why have we stuck to it? Because, I guess, we love an epic story. Even more, perhaps we were clinging to some desperate hope that EverQuest, the game we so love to play, had some compelling, well laid-out story behind it. I was hoping for a really good narrative in a computer game, that gave me the rush of solving a mystery and made me appreciate the skill of the designers, like I felt with Ultima IV and VII, or an old Infocomm game.

But it looks increasingly like there is no grand design, and that content is often added to EverQuest merely to keep players occupied until the next expansion. Granted, there was a lot of work put into the backstories of Kunark and Velious, but the inconsistencies make it hard for us to immerse ourselves as deeply as we'd like.

Will the questionable outcome of the Sleeper's quest keep us from playing EverQuest? Not likely. But does it take something of the luster away from our dreams of the high-end game? Sadly, more than a bit.

Thanks to the reader who posted the idea for the title of this story.