Hammer's Hoard Treasure, no plate from Graveling/Purple Room (minor map/puzzle spoilers)

For the Hammer's Hoard PoI, I combined my two pieces of the LoD plate and traded that to Frodak. I did the first puzzle (the one with the dredge laser guns) to get the purple plate. I've been back to that room and killed the Graveling over half a dozen times and am not getting the next plate.

Any clues on how to continue?

For the immediate moment, that character got the POI by accepting a mesmer teleport into the room (Teleport to Friend isn't enough, because you are booted out of the room.)

Recommended work-around:

• Before starting the puzzle, arrange for a port to the green room.
• After ensuring that, exchange the plate-item to the dwarf for the LoD effect
• Take the port and grab your hidden treasure in the green room.
• You then can start the puzzle in its intended fashion, without worrying about any bugs in the system.

If you arrived to this thread midway through, use LFG to find someone porting to the green/treasure room and start at the third step (i.e. take the port, grab the hidden treasure).

It is not worth trying to kill the Graveling and force it to drop its plate; it simply wastes too much time that you don't have.

This is a bug for me too! the veteran is not dropping the plate! i've been stuck for ages redoing it. I quit the story as a test, this did not help, i a pretty sure it's bugged.

@BlackDeath.4398 said:This is a bug for me too! the veteran is not dropping the plate! i've been stuck for ages redoing it. I quit the story as a test, this did not help, i a pretty sure it's bugged.

In another thread, someone said that the plate only shows for a single player, on the ground, immediately after the graveling's death. So it might just be random (and you might want to try dealing the killing blow if you can). Hopefully that was not intended and either way, hopefully they'll change it so it's not so random.

Exact same problem. Npc gave me a blue plate. Blue room gave me a purple plate. Purple room Vet gave me nothing. Defeated the vet at least 10 times or more but no drop. got very upset with game and map chat... sorry.

I don't see any point in doing map metas until I know for sure the rooms/plates are fixed.

Yeah seem bugged. And you can get plate from wrong room... i get purple plate from purple room and gold plate from gold room...

Same problem. My situation is that I completed the Gold Gate room. Then the Purple Gate room let me in; I defeated the Graveling solo, but there was no plate dropped (I wonder if I should have tried to defeat the Graveling again). I did this solo. Subsequently I was not able to enter any of the other rooms and can't get back into the gold gate room.However, before I even knew anything about the sequence of events necessary to complete the Hammer's Head POI events I had talked to the Dwarf as part of the "All or Nothing" story line. I was checking out the gates and somehow (was it a mesmer port?, I don't remember) I got into the purple room and helped a group kill the Graveling. I wonder if this somehow was related to my inability to get the plate this time.I notice that there is no glowing aura on my back to indicate which room is next. I also did the 'north meta' after writing the two paragraphs above, but it did not drop another key; my intent was that perhaps I could start this sequence over again, but this did not work (no key the second time).

@"Ryandrand.8649" said:Same problem.Very unlikely, as the problem to which you are responding was fixed earlier this week.

Based on your description of your situation, it sounds like you're still missing a piece of the puzzle, literally and figuratively. I'll do my best to explain what is supposed to happen and afterward, try to explain what I think happened in your case.

In brief, it sounds as if you were completing all/part of the puzzle without the LoD buff present, in which case all bets are off about which rooms you'd gain access to, or which plates would be available to you. (The good news is that doesn't hurt your future options.)

Puzzle Room Mechanics

There are six locked rooms and a hallway that contain hidden dwarven treasures. The only way to expose them is to obtain a 30 minute buff that gives your character the Light of Deldrimor special action key. You do this by giving an item called a Light of Deldrimor Plate to the ghostly dwarf. He also gives you a random 'key' to unlock one of the rooms, in the form of a 'plate' that appears on your back. Placing the plate on the appropriate entrance creates a teleporter allowing you access to the room. Each room contains a unique 'puzzle' to traverse, at the end of which you'll find a second random key, again in the form of a plate. The second room leads to the third, which is always green and has the most important hidden treasure as well as two non-hidden chests.

Each puzzle room has two randomly-placed hidden treasures, one closer to the entrance, one closer to the end. The LoD skill exposes hidden treasures if close, and shows "swirled light" effects pointing (sort of) to the nearest hidden locations. If none are nearby, you get a neutral circle of light, without swirls. An addition two hidden treasures are located in the hallway leading from the top of the ramps in the same room, towards the mastery point.

Under normal circumstances, a player has access to 6+1 hidden: two random from each puzzle area you need, the two random in the hallway, and one guaranteed in the green room. The guaranteed one has three serpentine jewels; the random hiddens have a decent (not guaranteed) chance of one.

The randomly available rooms are:

• Upstairs near green: blue & red
• Downstairs, near dwarf: yellow, orange, and purple.

In summary, you give a plate to the dwarf, solve two (of five) puzzles to gain a green plate, and expose hidden treasures along the way.

Story Mechanics

The story also leads you to the puzzle area and the same dwarf. In this case, he gives you a plate to the purple room and you kill the graveling for an item you need for the story. This works with or without the rest of the puzzle, although I would recommend that people do them one at a time, just in case.

Supplementary Mechanics & Porting Tricks

The puzzle order and location of hidden treasures is identical for everyone entering the specific instance of the map. If I enter Map Instance A and follow blue → red → green, then if you join me in my map, you'd also have blue & red as your puzzles. Likewise, if I find a randomly hidden treasure at location x|y|z (e.g. on top of a wall in the sonic room), then you'll be able to expose the same treasure if you're in the same instance as I.

Once you unlock a room, it's available to you until the LoD buff expires. That means you can leave the area via WP (e.g. if you died from a fall) and return to continue. You can also swap map instances to one that offers a different set of puzzles to unlock. Continuing the example above, if we were in Instance A with blue → red and used a meta taxi to get into instance B, we might find that it offered up yellow → purple instead. Lacking either the yellow or purple plate, we'd be locked out...

Except, in the new instance (B), we still have access to blue and to red. If we complete those, we'll find that they might offer different keys than they did in our old instance (A). In this example, Blue might drop Blue key and Red might drop the Red key which doesn't do us much good. However...

We can swap to instance C, which might offer better options. Or a friendly mesmer can get us into to any of the otherwise-locked puzzle areas, which would allow us to expose two more hidden treasures each.

We can't, however, get duplicate treasures: the game remembers which areas gave up their hidden treasures to you, just as we are limited to e.g. two orichalcum nodes in Frostforge per reset, regardless of how many map instances we enter.

In summary, using a clever and/or lucky combination of mesmer ports and map swapping (via LFG taxis), in addition to the 6+1 hidden treasures normally available, we have access to as many as 12+1 hiddens.

Bugs & Oddities, Past & Present

Hidden treasures can get bugged. One random location (in the sauna room) is "outside the area" that the LoD works in (although it shouldn't be). You can pinpoint the location, but can't expose the treasure. The only work-around: swap maps and return to that same room, hoping it spawns in a different spot.

Another bug happens after you open it and it gives you nothing. This is rare, but there is no work-around. If you try to get the treasure in another instance, the game acts as if you have already earned it.

That brings us to the third bug with hidden treasures: sometimes the game says you have earned the treasure already, when you haven't. One theory is that there's a cooldown, in addition to waiting for reset. The problem with the theory is: people weren't see it before and... some people are reporting that it's happened to them after 24 hours (and there are no known resets that work like that). Regardless, it's still a bug that appears to be more common since LNY launched on Tuesday

There was a bug in which people with the buff could kill the graveling without getting the relevant key-plate to drop. This was fixed and I can find no examples in which anyone has seen it again. (I don't think this post is either, see below.)

I've already mentioned the biggest oddity: if you map swap, the room can drop a key to itself, e.g. red could drop red.

Ryandrand's Situation

Finally, the OP's situation.

My best guess is that you got mesmer ports without having the LoD buff. In that case, you would not retain access to rooms you had previously entered and you wouldn't necessarily be able to get a key to a 'next' room, because you weren't participating in the puzzle itself

tl;dr make sure you provide the dwarf with the Light of Deldrimor Plate before working on the puzzle rooms. Try not to work on it while the LS4.5 story, Dragonsblood is active, just in case (I don't think it matters, but why risk it?).