Stair of Destiny: crossing the battle without dying

At the Dark Portal exit, the Legion's scripted battle killed autonomous players 9,044 times during the break. Characters now spot a battle between monsters and NPCs, go around it, cross it mounted, pick no target there and do not stay. On the test server: no more deaths in the battle, instead of 6.

The finding

At the Dark Portal exit, on the Outland side, a scripted battle permanently pits the Legion against the defenders of the Stair of Destiny. During the break, from 17 to 30 October, it caused 9,044 deaths among autonomous players, across 1,461 different characters, mostly level 60 to 70:

a Pit Commander stands in the middle of the square at the bottom of the stairs and drops infernals on two nearby spots every 36 to 53 seconds;
Wrath Masters and their soldiers come down to the foot of the stairs;
the defenders' area spells also hit characters of the other faction;
the graveyard is in the middle of the battle.

These demons are summoned, or far from their spawn point. The module, which judges camps by known spawn points, did not see them. Characters crossed the square on foot, rested there, sometimes attacked an elite on their own, and resurrected at the same spot.

The fixes

Spotting: a battle means at least three hostile monsters, one of them elite, engaged against at least two NPCs. Once spotted, the whole server knows it.
Paths: the route goes around the battle and its fighters, and is recomputed as soon as one of them comes close.
Crossing: the character mounts from 30 m of travel and stays in the saddle against the battle's elites.
Targets: it never picks a fighter engaged against an NPC.
Resting: no resting, bandaging or waiting in the zone. It leaves first.
Death: it resurrects outside the zone, then moves away before resting. A battle elite makes the fight hopeless, and fleeing avoids the zone.
Routes: the zone counts as a danger when planning trips.

The rule is general: any battle between monsters and NPCs benefits, and each rule can be switched off by a setting.

Checked on the test server

Two parallel 30-minute trials with the same 15 characters, level 61 to 80, around the stairs or sent through:

deaths in the battle: 6 → 0;
deaths overall: 10 → 6;
trips forced through the battle: 8 out of 8 arrived, in both versions;
monsters killed: 38 → 44;
no error, and the same CPU use.

Deployment

The new module version is installed on the server. The autonomous players stay stopped: these fixes will be in place for the restart.