Caffeinated Skritt Chests - Exercise in frustration!!

It's impossible to do without a group, but it's also impossible to get a group together before someone opens the damn chest. I have tried 9 times JUST TODAY to get a group together to get a skritt kill and every time someone walks up and opens the chest before we have enough, letting the skritt easily get away and wasting my time and the time of all those who I have managed to gather. I have been trying to get a single skritt kill for since Episode 2 came out, and EVERY TIME since then this has happened. The event as it stands is badly designed and poorly executed. It's not on a timer or at a fixed location, so you CANNOT gather people before the chest spawns, so you have to stand around essentially screaming at anyone how comes by to not open it while you try to gather a group, which of course does not work. Either the skritt needs to scale so it isn't an exercise in LFG frustration or there needs to be some mechanism to prevent it from being triggered by7 a random person walking by.

Get a group together in squad and then split up over the map to the known areas of spawn from the wiki. One it's spotted, type in squad chat, then all grp members collect at the chest. This is how I've done it in the past. It usually succeeds. Plus, the coffee pot is there for approximately 5mins, so you can port your alts to the location. Good luck!

Tried. No one interested in grouping until you already have a chest. And for the golem collection you have to KILL, not just get the pot. Ignoring the fact that 99% of the time the result of this is not "damn, I didn't get the kill", it's "damn, the event failed because there were too few people to kill it fast enough and it escaped".

4 people are enough to kill it, just ask in map chat for a few randoms to come over

@Blocki.4931 said:4 people are enough to kill it, just ask in map chat for a few randoms to come over

And while I do that one person comes up and opens it and the skritt gets away.

And having CC is super important. You need to slow that kitten skritt. Ranger with entangle and spike trap could be your friend.

I did most of the ones for my classes solo so it’s not impossible nor do you need a group.

I did it with my sister, so even two people are enough. It wasn't that hard. Just bring a lot of hard cc and then burst it down. I think a good player can probably solo it.We did the one in Elon Riverlands in the water/islands area, I don't know if they have different difficulty.Edit: Maybe it gets harder if you are more people due to bad scaling?

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I did most of the ones for my classes solo so it’s not impossible nor do you need a group.

I did one for the collection too. and ONLY 1. Since the expansion dropped. That is all I have EVER been able to get it done. Any other time I have encountered it it has been getting away from other people or from me. And that one took me WEEKS of trying every day to get.

There is a webpage dedicated to the caff skritt with locations for all the PoF maps. I gave up some while ago trying to get group together as there would always be one individual that wanted to open it and spoil it for everyone else.

@Boogiepop Void.6473 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I did most of the ones for my classes solo so it’s not impossible nor do you need a group.

Then it’s bad luck on your part as I have almost always been able to find the chest when helping others on the map.

What I suggest is that you get all of your classes onto the map, have teleport to friend stones on each, and then kill it within a small group. Have someone in the group remain in that map instance and just use the teleport stones while cycling through each class. You should have enough time to unlock most, if not all, of them that way.

@Neworder.7981 said:There is a webpage dedicated to the caff skritt with locations for all the PoF maps. I gave up some while ago trying to get group together as there would always be one individual that wanted to open it and spoil it for everyone else.

Where they are is not the problem, though the random spawn contributes to the issue since it means you CAN'T preemptively gather people at a spot/have people spontaneously gathering at a spot waiting for spawn.

They are at fixed locations. There are five locations per map. The skritt burglar's travel path is also static.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Boogiepop Void.6473 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I did most of the ones for my classes solo so it’s not impossible nor do you need a group.

I need the recording for the golem collection. That comes from the kill, not the coffee. I already used the cycling trick to get the sp[ec weapons collections after weeks of trying.

@Khisanth.2948 said:They are at fixed locations. There are five locations per map. The skritt burglar's travel path is also static.

But you never know which it will be so people don't gather up on their own, nor are they willing to group till you already have a chest in front of you.

If you are playing on EU I can help you when I'm online. I find the skritt to be quite easy.

@Boogiepop Void.6473 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:They are at fixed locations. There are five locations per map. The skritt burglar's travel path is also static.

But you never know which it will be so people don't gather up on their own, nor are they willing to group till you already have a chest in front of you.

I am sympathetic to your concern, but I don't believe repeating this will make it any more convincing to others. I'd strongly suggest that you either (a) work with people as described, possibly taking advantage of your guild to find folks willing to, y'know, actually help, and (b) focus on working out how to get it down solo.

For the later case, I don't think I'm really that good of a player, and all. With only a 600 range weapon, and condition application, I was able to bring it down solo, and with one other person, at different times. I feel like this should be realistically in reach for pretty much any player, though I'm respectful of the idea that you may not have a spec that can achieve that.

If that is true, you really have no other option than to find it and not have someone spoil things. I certainly found that /y announcements with a fixed time (~ 3 minutes) warning were very effective at getting people to wait, which may help. If that hadn't I'd've turned to my guild to get some folks to help my, by camping the spots, until I was able to get the chest and complete the task.

Good luck. I know how frustrating this can be after spending several evenings hunting through all the maps in all the spawn locations to finally find the skritt.

What I do is to fly over the map visiting the spots where the chest spawns, THEN I shout "Caffeinated Skritt free in this location!", and when people are starting to appear, I activate the chest. Then I focus only on CC the skritt of him. (I have 5 hard CC on my skill bar).People usually shows very soon and helps to kill it.It can take some time to find an active chest, but with the griffon and a map with the locations is not that hard.

I've yet to need to resort to this for skritt chests but if I did I would just put a different character at each possible spawn location for that.

@Neworder.7981 said:There is a webpage dedicated to the caff skritt with locations for all the PoF maps. I gave up some while ago trying to get group together as there would always be one individual that wanted to open it and spoil it for everyone else.

HA ! so its not just me!! My resolve was using map chat, then revealing location to avoid the rando opening. (and don't stand right next to it)

Follow Up...is the class-specific drop from these skritt an automatic drop?I realize the collection needs to be Active, but how do I know if it is? (I was assuming the fang collection was what needed to be active, and since I'm an active soulbeast..)Thanks so much for your time and this thread!

Define active. You just need the collection to be unlocked which should be done by unlocking the first trait.

That's what I was wondering!! And since I'm using the SB trait I'm not sure what I'm missing for the active collection. But its been maybe 9x and no drop.*scratchinghead

@doogal.9368 said:That's what I was wondering!! And since I'm using the SB trait I'm not sure what I'm missing for the active collection. But its been maybe 9x and no drop.*scratchinghead

It's a guaranteed drop from opening the chest after the skritt has been... decaffeinated. You must be on the relevant profession (with or without the elite spec equipped). You do not have to participate in the killing; just open the chest.

If you think you're doing all that and you're not seeing the unlock, please post a screenshot of your Fang collection; maybe we can troubleshoot from that.

Yup, soloed them too. With ele, guardian, warrior, engineer, thief and ranger. Dps them down while dodging their pots.