I’m aware of the recent changes, but I’m trying to get the Karokta mount. Groups have dried up for it and every time I hang out long enough for the spawn (which can be a long time), I get sharded off the server when it spawns. I’ve also sat long periods of times on shards where no rares WHATSOEVER are spawning.
Really annoyed at how much this is wasting my time. Anyone have any info or how to beat this problem? Thinking just giving up and playing something else might be in order.
The strategy is probably to wait one or two expansions. Quite a thoughtless decision.
Zaralek Cavern is a waste of time until they make it soloable. I’m not even bothering with the Renown much at this point. I wanted to max them all out, but even just doing the weekly is abysmal.
The entire zone needs to be nerfed, and the rewards need to be buffed. It’s shocking how different Zaralek Cavern is from the rest of the expansion.
Well I don’t disagree. The zone isn’t great. But as a collector with OCD, the pre-bugged state felt crappy, but the bugged state is tilting. There’s usually enough people around to kill rares now, but you can’t kill stuff when you’re sharded away from the rares you wait 1.5 hours for.
Maybe Rita is right. Maybe in 2-4 years, they’ll fix what they broke.
Blizz seems reluctant to do the simplest fix, reduce the rares health to be reasonably soloable. They seem to still be in this mindset that everything in the open world and I mean everything in the open world should require huge groups. That mentality has gotten all these big community events that are mostly dead outside the latest one.
Camped the zone for 5 hours straight today, waiting on Caldera and Aberrus rares to pop for a chance at a few missing manuscripts.
Not a single rare spawned anywhere in the zone
Again, not a single rare has spawned in 5 hours (and counting).
I’ve camped for the last few days and the results are similar (shorter sessions however).
Oddly enough… I do see some rares in Warmode come and go.
So either I’m constantly being phased around, or the rare timers are broke post-“fix”.
Either way, please look in to this!
Blizzard’s choices in relation to that zone and the rares would have to be some of the most hairbrained i have seen from them in a lot of years, they really defy logic and common sense 
A lot has gone on with the Caverns and nothing good has come of it. The community as a whole, not just us council members, gave our feedback on the subject when they asked for it and they completely ignored it and implemented the bad changes they devised themselves.
I’m trying hard to get them to look into it and reverse the changes that were made on the 22nd but I am just one very vocal fish in a small school trying to go up against a megalodon.
Even if I get a 2nd tenure I’m going to fight for the changes to be reverted because this is not going to be a fun zone to go to when Dragon Isles becomes leveling content.
I’d also like to add that the rares now despawn 15 minutes after they spawn. I believe its bugged currently because they’re supposed to stay up if someone is near by or engages it but there have been unsettling reports of the rares despawning WHILE engaged. And no matter how much I puff my cheeks Blizz isn’t paying attention.
Not sure if it’s happening outside ZC too but something weird is happening with rares.
I’ve fought several rares like Cauldronbearer Blakor in Obsidian Citadel. I either phased or the rare despawned mid fight.
I had hoped being engaged with the rare means I’m attached to it until either I die/disengage or it dies.
Posted a bug report with proof (chat logs showing no rare callouts for several hours, at least). It’s definitely busted.
That is highly unusual since the hotfix they implemented was for Zaralek Caverns and Forbidden Reach alone. Wonder if someone somewhere messed with the wrong sphagetti code and it affects all rare elites and not just those in the Caves or the Reach.
I’d recommend submitting a bug report because it’s not a “You were bumped to a different shard” issue as I believe that is impossible while you are engaged with a mob.
Edit: I’d like to refrain from making a CC post until I’ve heard of more people experiencing Rare/Elites despawning mid fight across other dragon isle zones. I know the Superbloom end boss has been doing this for some people.
The Karokta farm is officially dead. They killed it with the ZC rares spawn change.
Before, you could get a Karokta kill on several characters, usually all of them in one sitting (depending on how many characters you play. Personally I was only trying on my level 70s- non-70’s seemed like too much hassle).
Now? You’re lucky to kill Karokta on one or two characters once before its reset. What they did with the ZC rares really butchered the chances for anyone still trying to farm the mount.
Exactly the same here. It is a tremendous waste of time now.
Once the change went live, I wanted to see for myself how it affected the farm. So far I’ve parked a toon there and didn’t see it spawn for ~4 hours… Also managed to get in a group that someone had listed, only for the shard to change mid-fight and Karokta disappeared… Yeah, it’s not even remotely fun anymore lol.
Have seen Karokta in Warmode, listed a group that no one joined, and had to solo it as a Tank lol.
Nah, it’s definitely something on Blizzard’s end. Even in the new SoD, the Ashenvale PVP event boss just despawns mid-fight. So it’s happening all across WoW…
Are you sure it was a shard change though? I’m curious if you have an addon that tells you what shard you’re in like RareTracker. The reports I’ve heard have been of them just despawning mid fight. It should be impossible to shard change while you’re engaged with an enemy or in a group. (from what I’ve experienced anyway)
I definitly need more information before I bring it to the CC forums.
I don’t know for a fact if it was just a despawn or a shard change.
I had joined a group of about 7 people or so. Karokta was at about 53% health, and one more person joined, and the rare just disappeared. I had assumed it was a shard change, due to the number of players all being from the same realm. (Like we phased over onto Illidan or something like that.)
I think whatever happened when they made the change on the 22nd, they fudged it up. How they said they would work and how they are working now are not the same. Despite people being in the vicinity or engaged to them they still despawn.
Shard changes shouldn’t be happening unless the lead of the group changes/leaves. Something for sure happened that wasn’t supposed to and I feel like a corpse sized mess has been swept under a rug to be ignored despite several people already tripping on it.
It’s already late in the evening for me and I have work tomorrow but I’ll try to gather more information and post something soonish on the CC forums. If you have any other details please share them.
Along with the colour changing transmog, this seems to be a reoccurring thing these days, despite all the big talk at blizzcon.
Awful zone. You can actually do things in it around reset time each week(people ARE there), for like some hours. But after that nobody is there because why would they be?
I would LOVE to find the “murderballs” they mentioned right now. Can we call them in somehow for an air strike?
Yep, pretty much! Not sure what the issue was when it despawned, that only happened once while I was in a raid group. There was another time it spawned while I was in the zone, listed a group and had 4 people total and it didn’t despawn.
So far since the 22nd, the times I’ve seen Karokta are:
-Joined a raid group for it and it despawned mid-fight.
-Spawned once organically in non-Warmode.
-Joined an Auto-Accept group for a different rare and Karokta was there.
-Have seen it twice in Warmode now, once when I zoned in, and again tonight it spawned organically. I announced I was going to Tank it in General and actually had someone come join in!
Overall, the encounter rate for Karokta/rares in ZC in general has lowered drastically… Have seen it a total of 5 times since the change. However, in Warmode, a lot of the rares are spawning more frequently in comparison to non-Warmode (it seems). Kinda stinks. 
the play is to bank up rep tokens and wait for dark moon faire on a human character and get as much out as you can, then repeat the process on another human alt since you will have a bonus to rep gains from hitting 10 which im sure you can do with all of the tokens you get from the zaralek questlines