Every Player Character cannot satisfy requirements for Witches Festival Achievements

Shadowshire · October 2018

When my characters obtain the Crow Caller from the Crown Store and use it, the gameware outputs a mesage: "You have already done this quest." So I cannot follow the "Witchmother's Bargain" quest to gain use of the Witchmother's Cauldron. Is there some other way to do that wich I have not found?
There is not one delve in Tamriel in which at least one or more of my four characters has not killed the delve boss. (The fifth character is a mule toon.) In my experience, a character ordinarily doesn't receive any recognition for doing the same thing twice. So, it is impossible for more than one or two of them (if any) to satisfy the criteria for the Witches Festival: The Plundered Masses achievement. If your work-around is to create another character and level-them up enough quickly enough before the festival ends, then think again. I don't have time to make the effort regardless of XP Bonuses. Even if I did, then what would be the point?

In my experience, there is always something that your design team overlooks, isn't there? In this case, you evidently forgot that at least some of the players have played TESO for more than a year, and have continued to play one or more characters which they created -- some created when they began the game. On the face of it, such players do not matter to ZOS. Either that, or evidently the marketing department has adopted "agile marketing" like the management for the software development team has fallen for "agile development". Right?

VaranisArano · October 2018

If you've already done the Witchmother's Bargain, you should have the Witchmother's Whistle Memento in your Collections to summon the Cauldron.

The Plundered Masses just requires you to kill a delve boss (among others) and loot the Dremora Plunder Skull from it. I don't believe it requires it to be a new delve boss. So I'm not sure what the problem is that you are seeing here?

SirAndy · October 2018

VaranisArano wrote: »

If you've already done the Witchmother's Bargain, you should have the Witchmother's Whistle Memento in your Collections to summon the Cauldron.

The Plundered Masses just requires you to kill a delve boss (among others) and loot the Dremora Plunder Skull from it. I don't believe it requires it to be a new delve boss. So I'm not sure what the problem is that you are seeing here?

The OP seems confused on both accounts ...

Shadowshire · October 2018

VaranisArano wrote: »

If you've already done the Witchmother's Bargain, you should have the Witchmother's Whistle Memento in your Collections to summon the Cauldron.

FYI: I checked each of the four characters (ones which I play almost every day). Each of them has obtained the Crow Caller "quest" from the Crown Store, and when each one uses it, the megaserver responds: "You have already done this quest."

Granted, I forgot to mention in the OP that the Witchmother's Whistle is not in the Memento Collection shown for any character. That said, I remembered using the Witchmother's Whistle to fetch the Cauldron during past festivals, and I looked in the Memento Collection for it, before obtaining and attempting to use the Crow Caller "quest" from the Crown Store.

Regardless, the Witchmother's Whistle is not there now. Suffice it to say that we all should know by now that the megaserver(s) occasionally "lose" inventory and previously-recorded Achievements, among other things. Why would a player's Collections record be any less subject to corruption? Or maybe the Witchmother's Whistle remains recorded in the Collections, but the megaserver host software fails to do whatever it is supposed to do nonetheless.

Only God knows until ZOS bothers to investigate. Then perhaps ZOS will find out why currently the Witchmother's Whistle is not displayed in my Collections.

VaranisArano wrote: »

The Plundered Masses just requires you to kill a delve boss (among others) and loot the Dremora Plunder Skull from it. I don't believe it requires it to be a new delve boss. So I'm not sure what the problem is that you are seeing here?

Granted, I don't know what happens after your character kills a Delve boss. However, after my character (a) kills the principal Delve boss, and thus receives an Achievement for "completing" the Delve; (b) departs the Delve, then (c) subsequently returns to the Delve, the boss is not present and does not respawn upon my character's arrival at that boss's location.

For example, occasionally a character returns to ascertain whether a missing Lorebook has been placed there by the ZOS developers, since I reported it missing. Sometimes it is subsequently available, and the character can read it. Insofar as a missing Lorebook is sometimes near the Delve boss, I have never seen a boss respawn simply because my character returned to search for the Lorebook.

The boss has never been present when my character arrives, unless another player's character is already present at the boss's location. The boss has never respawned while my character was present, unless another player's character arrives before my character departs. Presumably, when the boss spawns, then their character has not killed the boss previously. I cannot recall any Delve boss ever respawning simply because my character returned to the Delve after killing its boss.

Also, in my experience (IIRC), when my character participates in killing a Delve boss that spawned because another player's character is present, looting the dead boss afterward produced only 78 (?) Gold Pieces for my character.

By the way:

You are aware that (in TESO) Delves, Public Dungeons, Group (4-player) Dungeons, and Trials are distinct categories, right?
If you investigate this, then you might have to re-log your character, or even Quit the game session, to discover for yourself what happens after your character kills a Delve boss, departs the Delve, then returns to the boss's location in the Delve.

For what it's worth, I've been playing TESO for over 3 years. So, as I stated in my OP, one of my characters has conquered each and every delve in Tamriel. For that character, only the Public Dungeons in Vvardenfell and in Summerset, respectively, have not been conquered. For another character, only the Delves and the Public Dungeons in Summerset remain.

Consequently, the character which has killed every Delve boss currently in Tamriel cannot acquire a Dremora Plunder Skull by killing a Delve boss that isn't present.

In any "instance", perhaps you see what I see, maybe you find what I don't find, or maybe I find what you don't find.

Or maybe ZOS has investigated and rectified both of these problems with tonight's maintenance patch, so writing or reading this message has been a waste of time. We should be so lucky.

Katahdin · October 2018

Delve bosses always respawn in the delve regardless of whether you did them or not. You can kill them over and over 100 times if you want

VaranisArano · October 2018

Thats bizarre.

1. I haven't heard of players losing Mementos from collections, but I suppose anything's possible in this buggy game. Is it showing up in the "Not Obtained Yet" section of the Mementoes menu or not at all? Anyway, I'd suggest opening a Support Ticket and asking them to unlock it for you, since you've done the quest already. This is a bug, since many other players and I correctly have access to the Witchmother's Whistle and the cauldron.

2. Delve bosses always respawn, though you may have to wait.

Thats why most of us here are confused, because at least for us, delve bosses respawn, whether another player is present or not. I've certainly had delve and public dungeon bosses respawn in the past when I was alone. For this event, I've had a character logged in right at a delve boss and killed it 3 days in a row, got my Dremora Plunder Skull each day. Same thing for the public dungeon boss - it respawns, I kill it, 3 days in a row, 3 dremora plunder skulls. If your delve bosses are never respawning even when you wait (about 3 minute max, in my experience) you've got a much bigger bug going on, and again, write a Support Ticket. What you notice when other players approaching may just be refreshing the timer and make the respawn trigger faster? But the respawns should happen in time anyway in delves and public dungeons as I've never had a problem with delve bosses respawning. (And no, I'm not confused between delve, public dungeon, group dungeon, and trial bosses.)

Chykimonkey · October 2018

My main character has killed all the bosses in all the delves in Tamriel and Cyrodiil (for the achievement) and I'm still able to kill delve bosses to get the Dremora Plunder Skulls. Sometimes you have to wait a while for one to spawn in, especially right now when they're being farmed a lot. The exception is that delve boss will spawn in right away if the boss area is approached by a player who has never killed it before. I remember that change being made quite some time ago, to keep people new to the delve from having to wander around wondering where the dang boss is.

As for the Witchmother's Whistle, I have no idea... You shouldn't need to use the Crowcaller whistle from the crown store or do any quest if you've done it previously, but you should definitely have a memento called "Witchmother's Whistle" that will give you the xp buff and summon a cauldron. If you don't, I would submit a ticket.

Shadowshire · October 2018

VaranisArano wrote: »

Thats bizarre.

1. I haven't heard of players losing Mementos from collections, but I suppose anything's possible in this buggy game. Is it showing up in the "Not Obtained Yet" section of the Mementoes menu or not at all? Anyway, I'd suggest opening a Support Ticket and asking them to unlock it for you, since you've done the quest already. This is a bug, since many other players and I correctly have access to the Witchmother's Whistle and the cauldron.

After yesterday's patch, the Witchmother's Whistle now appears in my Collections and summons the Cauldron.

VaranisArano wrote: »

2. Delve bosses always respawn, though you may have to wait.

Thats why most of us here are confused, because at least for us, delve bosses respawn, whether another player is present or not. I've certainly had delve and public dungeon bosses respawn in the past when I was alone. For this event, I've had a character logged in right at a delve boss and killed it 3 days in a row, got my Dremora Plunder Skull each day. Same thing for the public dungeon boss - it respawns, I kill it, 3 days in a row, 3 dremora plunder skulls. If your delve bosses are never respawning even when you wait (about 3 minute max, in my experience) you've got a much bigger bug going on, and again, write a Support Ticket. What you notice when other players approaching may just be refreshing the timer and make the respawn trigger faster? But the respawns should happen in time anyway in delves and public dungeons as I've never had a problem with delve bosses respawning. (And no, I'm not confused between delve, public dungeon, group dungeon, and trial bosses.)

As to the The Plundered Masses Achievement, all I can say is that I cannot recall any occasion whatsoever when a Delve boss re-spawned after my character returned to a Delve which they "completed" -- except when another player's character was in the Delve at the same time, as I described before.

Of course, on occasion, a Delve boss re-spawns after the fight while my character loots barrels, crates, sacks, etc., in the vicinity of the boss before leaving. Sometimes the character can avoid triggering an attack by the boss, else the character may be forced to either flee or to kill the boss again. But after my characters have left the Delve, then returned for some reason or another -- usually to search for a Lorebook -- they have never encountered the boss again, except under the circumstances that I described before.
Note that since my character receives an Achievement for killing the primary Delve boss, there does not appear to be anything wrong when the character returns and doesn't find the boss again. Since a character cannot be awarded that Achievement for "completing" the Delve more than once, why would the boss respawn? For what it is worth, I can imagine several reasons as to why this could occur with my characters, whether it also occurs with other player's characters who also have had no reason so far to question why the game works as it works for us.
Also, quite often my returning hero doesn't find any other NPCs or MoBs after re-entering a Delve that they have "completed". On occasion, my character encounters another player's character upon re-entering a completed Delve while the other is leaving. So it is possible that the departing character has killed the boss and/or other NPCs and MoBs that have not respawned yet. Frequently, however, I don't encounter any other player's character while my character is in the completed Delve -- except, perhaps, one or more who are arriving as my character is leaving.

In conclusion, I suppose that I must send the character who already has Achievements for "completing" all of the Delves into one or more of them to see whether they can find and kill the boss, regardless of whether another player's character(s) participate in the fight. If my character cannot find any primary boss in a Delve which they completed, then I suppose that I must submit an inquiry to Support about it.

Sometimes, it seems that God has cursed me with the ability to discover arcane bugs in software that no one has ever found before. Sometimes they are caused by a change(s) -- perhaps a mistake in making the change -- in a feature of the software which often has no readily evident relation to the bug that I find in some other feature. Yeah, I could tell you a lot of stories about that. <sigh>

PraeliatorPNW · October 2018

Have you ever tried waiting 5min or more by the boss to see if it will respawn? Delve bosses are on a 5min respawn timer, sometimes, very rarely, a little bit longer (by a couple of seconds - less than a minute). Public dungeon bosses, i think (could be wrong), are on the same respawn timer of 5min from being killed.

Loot timers vary as well, I've noticed if it hasn't been the 5min from the last time i killed the delve/public dungeon boss because someone who's never completed it comes in, and i get a tag on the boss, i won't get any actual loot aside from gold. If the 5min have passed and the boss respawns on its own, I'll get the full loot. And then I'm pretty sure there's a global container loot cooldown for the character (not the account) for delves and maybe public dungeons (i haven't tested that one) of approximately 10-15min, I'm not sure exactly how long it is.

I could be wrong on some of these, but this is what I've personally experienced while farming various bosses and delves for gear sets and furnishing plans. It's been this way for as long as i can remember.

Jayne_Doe · October 2018

If you've not encountered a boss in a delve on subsequent re-entry then you've either entered when the boss has recently been killed and the timer is still counting down to the re-spawn, or you are the only player to encounter some extremely rare bug.

I'm pretty sure it's the former, but yeah...go into a delve where you know where the boss spawns, and wait for it to respawn if it's not already there waiting for you. Then, kill it for the Dremora skull. You can then camp there and kill it multiple times over for the regular plunder skulls, which the rest of us have done in this and every previous Witches Festival event.

Also, if you do the Undaunted daily that sends you to a delve, or a delve daily in Orsinium, Morrowind, or Summerset, you can encounter the delve boss again if it's not on cooldown. I've killed many of the delve bosses multiple times in Summerset while doing the delve daily, not to mention Morrowind and Orsinium. I've even waited for a respawn if I arrive just after it's been killed, if I feel like killing the boss again.

jaws343 · October 2018

Shadowshire wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Thats bizarre.

1. I haven't heard of players losing Mementos from collections, but I suppose anything's possible in this buggy game. Is it showing up in the "Not Obtained Yet" section of the Mementoes menu or not at all? Anyway, I'd suggest opening a Support Ticket and asking them to unlock it for you, since you've done the quest already. This is a bug, since many other players and I correctly have access to the Witchmother's Whistle and the cauldron.

After yesterday's patch, the Witchmother's Whistle now appears in my Collections and summons the Cauldron.

VaranisArano wrote: »

2. Delve bosses always respawn, though you may have to wait.

Thats why most of us here are confused, because at least for us, delve bosses respawn, whether another player is present or not. I've certainly had delve and public dungeon bosses respawn in the past when I was alone. For this event, I've had a character logged in right at a delve boss and killed it 3 days in a row, got my Dremora Plunder Skull each day. Same thing for the public dungeon boss - it respawns, I kill it, 3 days in a row, 3 dremora plunder skulls. If your delve bosses are never respawning even when you wait (about 3 minute max, in my experience) you've got a much bigger bug going on, and again, write a Support Ticket. What you notice when other players approaching may just be refreshing the timer and make the respawn trigger faster? But the respawns should happen in time anyway in delves and public dungeons as I've never had a problem with delve bosses respawning. (And no, I'm not confused between delve, public dungeon, group dungeon, and trial bosses.)

As to the The Plundered Masses Achievement, all I can say is that I cannot recall any occasion whatsoever when a Delve boss re-spawned after my character returned to a Delve which they "completed" -- except when another player's character was in the Delve at the same time, as I described before.
Of course, on occasion, a Delve boss re-spawns after the fight while my character loots barrels, crates, sacks, etc., in the vicinity of the boss before leaving. Sometimes the character can avoid triggering an attack by the boss, else the character may be forced to either flee or to kill the boss again. But after my characters have left the Delve, then returned for some reason or another -- usually to search for a Lorebook -- they have never encountered the boss again, except under the circumstances that I described before.

Note that since my character receives an Achievement for killing the primary Delve boss, there does not appear to be anything wrong when the character returns and doesn't find the boss again. Since a character cannot be awarded that Achievement for "completing" the Delve more than once, why would the boss respawn? For what it is worth, I can imagine several reasons as to why this could occur with my characters, whether it also occurs with other player's characters who also have had no reason so far to question why the game works as it works for us.

Also, quite often my returning hero doesn't find any other NPCs or MoBs after re-entering a Delve that they have "completed". On occasion, my character encounters another player's character upon re-entering a completed Delve while the other is leaving. So it is possible that the departing character has killed the boss and/or other NPCs and MoBs that have not respawned yet. Frequently, however, I don't encounter any other player's character while my character is in the completed Delve -- except, perhaps, one or more who are arriving as my character is leaving.

In conclusion, I suppose that I must send the character who already has Achievements for "completing" all of the Delves into one or more of them to see whether they can find and kill the boss, regardless of whether another player's character(s) participate in the fight. If my character cannot find any primary boss in a Delve which they completed, then I suppose that I must submit an inquiry to Support about it.

Sometimes, it seems that God has cursed me with the ability to discover arcane bugs in software that no one has ever found before. Sometimes they are caused by a change(s) -- perhaps a mistake in making the change -- in a feature of the software which often has no readily evident relation to the bug that I find in some other feature. Yeah, I could tell you a lot of stories about that. <sigh>

Based on this comment, I am sure that you really do not have any idea how delve bosses spawn.

So, point by point:

Delve bosses are on a respawn timer from the last time a player killed the boss. Unless, you haven't already killed the boss. So there are only 2 possible scenarios that can ever happen in a delve with a delve boss.

Scenario 1: Boss does not appear when you approach it's location.
Reason: You have already killed the boss in that delve and another player recently killed the boss prior to your arrival. The boss is still within its cooldown period and should appear within a few minutes. Unless, another player arrives who has not yet killed the boss, then it spawns immediately.

Scenario 2: Boss is not there when you arrive, but immediately respawns when you approach.
Reason: You have never killed this boss before so it respawned the moment you arrived.

In both of these scenarios the boss will always respawn after a set ammount of time. There is no possible way that this is a glitch with your game. Why? Because delves are not instanced, so if it happens to you, it has to happen to every player. And you seem to be the only one who has the unlucky timing of following someone else's footsteps who killed the boss.

The Achievement for finishing the boss is irrelevant to the boss respawning on cool down.

Why would the boss respawn? So you can farm gear off of it... Pretty obvious.

And in any scenario where mobs aren't there, its pretty clear that another player killed them before you arrived. Just because you don't see them, they could be somewhere else in the delve or they could have left already, doesn't mean that they weren't there.

There is nothing to submit to support here. Again, Delves are public, if you are having a "bug" that doesn't allow delve bosses to respawn on timers, every other player must be experiencing that "bug." And they are not. You just need to have more patience in delves.

Veinblood1965 · October 2018

The whistle was gone a few times when I looked under mementos but after a few minutes it showed back up. Not sure why.

Shadowshire · October 2018

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

The whistle was gone a few times when I looked under mementos but after a few minutes it showed back up. Not sure why.

That is probably what was occuring with my character(s). The first character was created when I began playing TESO in 2014, the second was a character that I created about two years ago. With the first character, I did look for the Whistle more than once but never found it. With each of the other four, I looked in Collections > Mementos at least once, usually shortly after I selected them to play.

Since the Whistle wasn't displayed for any of the four characters when I looked for it, I obtained the Crow Caller from the Crown Store. Of course, when they used it, the software replied with "You have already done this quest." With at least one character I checked the Collections > Mementos again after receiving that message, but no joy.

However, since the most recent maintenance patch, the Witch Mother's Whistle has been displayed consistently when I access the Collections Mementos, and I have had no issues with using it (so far).

Shadowshire · October 2018

@Chykimonkey @PraeliatorPNW @Jayne_Doe @jaws343 @Veinblood1965

Thank all of you for your civil replies, and for sharing the information that you have. My primary activities in TESO are (a) developing characters by completing Quests, and (b) selling crafting materials, loot, furnishings, glyphs, etc., in the Guild Stores and with Guild Traders of the five guilds to which I belong. (Each of my four characters is a crafter.) Those two respective activities keep me pretty busy, and for a "time out" my character(s) go fishing.

In that context, the primary reasons to enter a Delve or a Public Dungeon are for the Skyshards (to combine for Skill Points) and for Lorebooks, and to loot just about everything that the character can -- backpacks, crates, boxes, barrels, sacks, etc. Searching for a missing Lorebook is ordinarily the reason to re-enter a "completed" Delve (unless re-entering is required by a repeatable daily Quest). A character that completes a chain of Quests in a zone sometimes gains a Skill Point, and may eventually Achieve a status which includes a Title. So, some actions which I undertake are to earn Achievements.

As you may be aware, many "Delves" such as caverns, tombs, mines, and ruins cannot be entered until and unless the charcacter is following a Quest which is not repeatable. So, all Delves are not "public" with respect to being accessible to each and every player's character at any time the player chooses. Further, often such a Delve cannot be re-entered after the player character has received the reward for completing the associated Quest. In my experience, the NPCs, MoBs, and bosses do not re-spawn in those which a character can re-enter -- unless there is another player's character present who is following the Quest.

Frankly, I have never "farmed" a Delve boss for any reason, with the exception of completing a daily Quest. Although I have repeated "dailies" in Wrothgar, I have not been aware of "daily delves" for the Undaunted, for Morrowind, or for Summerset. Nonetheless, my characters have undertaken daily Quests in Vvardenfell and in Clockwork City. Some of those Quests require re-entering a "delve" in which the boss respawns. With one character, I expect to begin Summerset daily Quests in the near future.

Finally, last night Ace Adeya re-entered a Delve in Eastmarch which he had completed a long time ago. Another player's character arrived at the same time, and we took turns fighting the NPCs and MoBs along the route to the boss. The boss was not present. So Ace Adeya played a lute near where I expected the boss to respawn, while the other character impatiently ran back and forth in the chamber. Eventually, the boss respawned and we promptly killed him without any challenge at all. I doubt that the poor creature ever knew what hit him. So each of us was rewarded with a Dremora Delve Plunder Skull -- mine had two motifs. .....

The issue with the vanishing and reappearing Witch Mother's Whistle, though, troubles me. (See post #12 above.) As time goes on, the output of the game software has gradually become increasingly unpredictable and often defective. There is no assurance as to what will happen when I press a key or a mouse button. I have resigned myself to the fact that eventually TESO will become infeasible to play, while ZOS extracts every dollar of profit that they can get before that happens.

Sigtric · October 2018

idk · October 2018

Shadowshire wrote: »

[*] When my characters obtain the Crow Caller from the Crown Store and use it, the gameware outputs a mesage: "You have already done this quest." So I cannot follow the "Witchmother's Bargain" quest to gain use of the Witchmother's Cauldron. Is there some other way to do that wich I have not found? Right?

Each character should be able to do the initial quest once, and that is all that is needed for the achievement.

Shadowshire wrote: »

[*] There is not one delve in Tamriel in which at least one or more of my four characters has not killed the delve boss. (The fifth character is a mule toon.) In my experience, a character ordinarily doesn't receive any recognition for doing the same thing twice. So, it is impossible for more than one or two of them (if any) to satisfy the criteria for the Witches Festival: The Plundered Masses achievement. If your work-around is to create another character and level-them up enough quickly enough before the festival ends, then think again. I don't have time to make the effort regardless of XP Bonuses. Even if I did, then what would be the point?

The criteria for the festival has nothing to do with getting the achievement for clearing a delve, dolmen or anything for the first time. It clearly states getting the dremora skull from each of the activities is all that is required.

With this it does not seem Zos overlooked anything , but OP did.

jaws343 · October 2018

Shadowshire wrote: »

@Chykimonkey @PraeliatorPNW @Jayne_Doe @jaws343 @Veinblood1965

As you may be aware, many "Delves" such as caverns, tombs, mines, and ruins cannot be entered until and unless the charcacter is following a Quest which is not repeatable. So, all Delves are not "public" with respect to being accessible to each and every player's character at any time the player chooses. Further, often such a Delve cannot be re-entered after the player character has received the reward for completing the associated Quest. In my experience, the NPCs, MoBs, and bosses do not re-spawn in those which a character can re-enter -- unless there is another player's character present who is following the Quest.

Here is the problem. in order to have an intelligible conversation, you need to use the correct terminology. Those are not Delves. Delve is a specific name given to public instances that are just under Public Dungeons in difficulty. The private quest boss instances that are only open when you have a quest are not Delves. This confusion of terminology is what results in a 16 response thread talking about Delve boss mechanics, when your real issue is with quest boss mechanics. Two different things.

Mix · October 2018

Delves are the Torch icon on the map and they are always accessible to all players.

Public Dungeons are the Cave icon on the map and they are always accessible to all players.

Unmarked quest areas do not function the same as either of the above. Some quest areas become locked after quest completion and some don't, but they also have nothing to do with how Witches Festival works.

I hope your Whistle sorts itself out though!