New Ahgram Volt Star Crafting Quest

[Vorrio]

I tried doing the new Ahgram crafting quest tonight, and I'm not sure it's working as intended.

My crafter is a lvl 14 psionicist/lvl 35 leatherworker who is aligned with the Society of Invention. They asked me to create a Volt Star Detector to help steal the Volt Star back from the Cabal. I made the Volt Star Detector easily, but then things got messy.

According to the questgiver, there five ways to get the volt star: fasttalking a Cabal member (diplomacy, I assume), bribing someone, fighting your way through, asking Society of Technology soldier Ralaan to help fight your way through, or getting help from Ahgram residents that you've helped in the past. Also, the detector should do something when you get close to the volt star (which is apparently in or near the Cabal HQ).

The big problem is that when my crafter got within 10 meters or so of the Cabal entrance, the twin lvl 35 3-dot guards on the roof of the building across from the entrance aggroed and killed me instantly. Sometimes, they also aggroed the two lvl 50 guards at street level. When they aggro, they shout something about protecting the Volt Star, and they don't aggro on characters who aren't doing the quest (I checked). They also don't con red until they aggro (because my Cabal faction isn't KoS).

As far as I can tell, there's no way for someone without heavy duty support (group of lvl 35+ . . . . 45+ if the ground guards aggro) to get close enough to whoever you need to bribe/talk to if you want to get the Volt Star peacefully. I tried climbing up to the rooftops to get closer that way, but the guards still aggroed).

Maybe the person to talk to isn't in the Cabal building but someplace else, but I did talk to a lot of people nearby and there didn't seem to be anyone I could interact with (including the guards themselves - the top ones instantly aggro and the bottom ones don't say anything useful). There's a strange person on the roof above the Cabal, but there's no green shield over his head or sign that he can be diplo'd or interacted with. I couldn't check for sure because he's over the HQ and getting near him aggroes the guards.

There may be ways to get other ahgram residents to help, but I've never seen a relevant quest in Ahgram (lvl 14 may be too low, but I didn't see anything with a lvl 30 character either - though I admit I didn't look very hard).

Finally, I tried talking to Ralaan because the questgiver said that he might help, but Ralaan only says something like "nice job getting back the Volt Star" even though I haven't gotten it yet.

Anyway, I may be missing something obvious, but as it is, the quest is a death trap for crafters (at least low level ones).

If ya'll confirm that this is how it's supposed to be and I just haven't figured out a more subtle trick, I'd be happy to try it again. Otherwise, I'll probably stay away for a bit to avoid racking up even more deaths. Still, thanks for trying to put in what looks like it might be a pretty entertaining crafting quest.

- Vorrio

UPDATE - I snuck up on the roofs one last time to see if I could find a better vantage point and I managed to get close enough to catch a glimpse of a chest on the roof which seems to have the Volt Star. The non-Cabal man up there seems to have nothing to do with the quest.

It may be that the guards on the roof are supposed to aggro on people who come close to the chest on the roof but have too high a radius so they are aggroing on characters on the ground too. It appears that players are supposed to be able to get inside the Cabal HQ to talk to the people in there. (When I opened the door while dying once, the NPCs inside started talking in /say about the quest). Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, there's no way to sneak past (on the ground) the roof guards and talk to the people inside Cabal HQ.