The secret zone events of Nova Praetoria

[Veracor]

So we all know (or at least badgers know) that Nova Praetoria has a zone event called The Protest where you fight either seers or civillians.  What people don't know is that there's a hidden second event in this zone!  I looked into this a year ago and dug around the files for a better explanation, and then promptly forgot about it after making a quick summary of my finds on a Discord somewhere.  The recent discussion of Praetorian Hamidon here on the forum reminded me of it, so here it is:

 

It started off with someone on another Discord mentioning they ran into a weird popup in the middle of nowhere in Nova Praetoria.  I checked it out and noted that this popup looked suspiciously like the default text of an iTrial or zone event box, with a timer that continually went up:

 

 

It's still there today.  If anyone thinks I'm goofing on them, here's the location to check it out ingame:

 

 

On top of this building, there's a rectangle of 4 square-like vents.  On the east-most one, stand in the center of it and then jump/hover about 20 feet straight up to get the popup (this screenshot is facing due west).

 

 

So what is this second hidden zone event?  Judging from its text and volume trigger size/placement, it was probably only intended for the developer to check its progress when testing it.  When I asked, some people on the Discord mentioned they distinctly remember Hamidon's tentacles flailing in the distance of the zone on live, but nobody knew how it was done.

 

Wanting the full answer, I dug into the files to get a detailed explanation of what this was and I got pretty confused when I found there was a third zone-wide event for Nova Praetoria that was never implemented!  It appears the original developers were looking to make a Devouring Earth invasion event in Nova Praetoria but didn't come close to finishing it -- just some bits and scraps that reused existing mapmarkers.  They had retooled this event into the Hamidon tentacle waving that people remembered from live, and that is indeed the event tied to this mysterious popup window.

 

To avoid retyping, this is the summary of the two hidden events I sent to the Discord before forgetting about it for a year:

 

 

So there it is, the hidden second zone-wide event in Nova Praetoria: Kill 12 seers and 100 police within 10 minutes and you get to see tentacles waving in the distance for 22 seconds.  Your memories from live were not false!  The truthHamidon is out there!

 

...

 

Bonus screenshot: The tiny physical size of the zone event volume.  It fits only one player, or rather their feet, since that seems to be how volume triggers work.  Crazy to think that someone actually stubbed their toe here on accident!

 

 

Thank you for coming to my Praetorian TED talk about "???" and "What is this?"

[Six-Six]

@Darmian Did you know about this? 

[Snarky]

You got WAAaaaaayyyyyyyyy too much time on your hands

[huang3721]

12 Seers in 10 minutes would pose a challenge. I rarely meet one in Nova.  Maybe someone should locate them before attacking?

With current population, accidentally triggering the event is unlikely. 

[ZemX]

Aren't there a bunch in the protester event if you side with the protesters?  I can't recall.

[A Cat]

Yes. They continuously spawn in groups of like, five? and you have to get 25 of them too advance. 

[ChzBoi]

6 hours ago, Veracor said:

........they distinctly remember Hamidon's tentacles flailing in the distance of the zone on live.....

This totally happened on live, as I remember seeing it on Goldside launch week and thinking it was just a cool, random background animation....or the devs launched it whenever they wanted. My "OldManBrain" still has some memory cells left! Thanks for finding @Veracor!

[Glacier Peak]

So, lemme get this straight. I need to do the following to get this event to activate:

 

1. Proceed to the location of the cube

2. Defeat 12 Seers & 100 PPD (while remaining in this location?)

3. Success - Watch the Hamidon arms flail around

 

Edited September 30, 2021 by Glacier Peak

[huang3721]

17 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

(while remaining in this location?)

 

I hope it is unnecessary. Maybe, one team member stays in that location while others rough up the PPD and Seers?

 

edit

one more: Is there any progress bar?

Edited September 30, 2021 by huang3721
info

[InvaderStych]

How fortuitous that I recently started another Praetorian alt ....

[Darmian]

Ok, once you fill that bar it vanishes and then...cue hunting for a tentacle or whatever. Didn't see one that time.

[Darmian]

See now I'm curious.  Are there similar for Imperial and Neutropolis?

[Veracor]

It's entirely possible that even if the conditions are met, that it still waits for the full 10 minutes before making the tentacles wave.  It's also possible that if the 10 minutes pass without it happening that it waits 30 minutes to start the next attempt at it.  Someone did confirm shortly after I made that Discord summary that the tentacles could wave, but they didn't mention how long they waited for it to happen.  Since the counter only shows the 100 police defeats, it might be easiest to test this by defeating the 12 seers in the Protest event first so that you can check back at the popup progress window for how many police are still needed, then watch the horizons on the 100th defeat.

 

I'd have to go digging again to see if there's a similar event for Imperial City and Neutropolis, but it's been a year.  I do vaguely recall seeing that scrapped DE invasion event being referenced in the IC and Neut files.  Might have just been something very early in design similar to Rikti/zombie invasions.

 

6 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

1. Proceed to the location of the cube

2. Defeat 12 Seers & 100 PPD (while remaining in this location?)

3. Success - Watch the Hamidon arms flail around

 

Shouldn't need to go to the location of the cube to start or progress it; it's supposed to run on its own every 30 minutes.  It appears that's just where they decided to shunt a possibly-mandatory progress window for the zone event (which they wanted hidden).  Or maybe the developer put it there on purpose to make sure the event was working, then forgot to remove it afterwards?  The latter seems more likely with how it is perfectly situated above the center of a square texture.  We may never know the real reason for the cube's existence.

[Shenanigunner]

7 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

So, lemme get this straight. I need to do the following to get this event to activate:

 

1. Proceed to the location of the cube

2. Defeat 12 Seers & 100 PPD (while remaining in this location?)

3. Success - Watch the Hamidon arms flail around

 

 

See: the Tannis easter egg in Borderlands 2. 😄

 

[Techwright]

I've been wondering why I've not seen any Praetorian zone event recruitings in LFG recently.  Now I'm really interested to do those again, and see this and anything else hidden.

 

[Glacier Peak]

Any devs care to chime in on what they see with this event on the back end? Is it left over testing? Is it supposed to be an event, but was never finished?

 

I really have no idea who does zone work or modifications so I'll just tag 'em all @Faultline @Captain Powerhouse @Cobalt Arachne @Piecemeal

[Cobalt Arachne]

2 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Any devs care to chime in on what they see with this event on the back end? Is it left over testing? Is it supposed to be an event, but was never finished?

It's a real thing and is active right now; Just a weird easter egg though, essentially.

There's a Hamidon tentacle in Nova Praetoria that sits hiding in the trees somewhere outside the sonic fence, it waits for 12 Seers and 100 PPD to be defeated within 10 minutes of the first being defeated and if you get them all in time, it pops out of the trees and flails around a bit for awhile.

If the event is successful, it goes onto a 30 minute cooldown before returning to the stage where it waits for the defeats.

If the event fails, and you don't get the defeats within 10 minutes, it resets back to the stage where it waits for the defeats and the 10 minutes start again after the first new defeat.

These are all internal timers, there's no way to tell in-game. As far as I can tell, kills anywhere in the zone should count.

[Glacier Peak]

1 minute ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

It's a real thing and is active right now; Just a weird easter egg though, essentially.

There's a Hamidon tentacle in Nova Praetoria that sits hiding in the trees somewhere outside the sonic fence, it waits for 12 Seers and 100 PPD to be defeated within 10 minutes of the first being defeated and if you get them all in time, it pops out of the trees and flails around a bit for awhile.

If the event is successful, it goes onto a 30 minute cooldown before returning to the stage where it waits for the defeats.

If the event fails, and you don't get the defeats within 10 minutes, it resets back to the stage where it waits for the defeats and the 10 minutes start again after the first new defeat.

These are all internal timers, there's no way to tell in-game. As far as I can tell, kills anywhere in the zone should count.

Lightning fast response! Thank you for your time answering my silly questions. 

[Dazl]

Is it something the current devs could bring to full life?

[Dazl]

You know what would be interesting if you trigger the tentacles and that would spawn a couple waves of DE attacks. After defeating the DE that would spawn a Lady Gray TF size hami in the zone. Defeat the hami and get 40 merits, 4 emp, or 1 hami-o.

[Glacier Peak]

36 minutes ago, Dazl said:

You know what would be interesting if you trigger the tentacles and that would spawn a couple waves of DE attacks. After defeating the DE that would spawn a Lady Gray TF size hami in the zone. Defeat the hami and get 40 merits, 4 emp, or 1 hami-o.

Level 1's be like... 😱

[ZorkNemesis]

2 hours ago, Dazl said:

You know what would be interesting if you trigger the tentacles and that would spawn a couple waves of DE attacks. After defeating the DE that would spawn a Lady Gray TF size hami in the zone. Defeat the hami and get 40 merits, 4 emp, or 1 hami-o.

 

I think with Praetorian Hamidon, it would probably be more ideal to summon a GM level Avatar of Hamidon instead of our giant single-cell Hamidon from Primal Earth.

[cranebump]

18 hours ago, Six-Six said:

@Darmian Did you know about this? 

He likely created it.:-)

[ZorkNemesis]

I tried to trigger this event out of curiosity but I ran into a issue.  Where the hell are the Seers in Nova?  I ran up and down the whole zone while my timer was running and I could only find maybe four of them outside of the Protest event, which i'm not sure the event Seers even count.  You'd think they've be all over the Magisterum or near the Precints, but nope. Nada.

 

Edited October 1, 2021 by ZorkNemesis

[huang3721]

Maybe invite more people in the protest? I wish I could join now.