A moment of clarity

[Merlaina]

Ok, I think this task deserves some special mention because it can be fairly easily boxed/duoed by a mage and another class. Here's the breakdown:

1 - Several "Look for books" steps. These just update as you walk around the library. These will update on their own as you progress through the task so no need to really pay them any mind.
2 - 4 (I think) turn in 3 XXX books. These are all over the library on the ground or on tables. Overall there are a few more books than you need in the instance.
3 - Kill 10 listless librarian
4 - kill 8 librarian assistants
For steps 3 and 4, well these guys are all over the place. A few of the assistants see invis, but they are in locations where you can just charge them and kill them singly. For the rest of your kill count just find singles and pull them to a safe-ish spot. Those little side staircases that just go down to a dead end usually have one mob at the bottom (and often a book you need to pick up anyway) and then become nice camp spots.
5 - Get information from sage blahblahblah. Really you just need to kill him and loot a book. This is the only tricky part of the task for a mage because the sage is flanked by two other mobs. I was boxing a chanter when I did this, and just did a beguilers banishment through the wall. The adds rooted and blurred while the named came to me (and admittedly killed the chanter, but I got the mob single!). I'm not sure if the named is just immune to run speed changes and thus can't be rooted, or if he just resisted the root from the chanter roughly 9 levels below him. Unless you're really good with CoN I'm not sure how a mage can get him solo. He is a bit of a nasty fight. Even with two healer mercs up I had to burn hard and blow most of my pet AAs to win this one. On a spike he can take an EM8 / max defensives 86 air pet down to half from full. He also has some kind of DoT or DD that he hit my pet with several times, but I'm not sure what precisely the effect was.

The reason I wanted to highlight this task is the mobs are all 91+, so you have a chance for fantastic silks/pets (got several silks myself when I ran this last night), the mobs are single pullable so long as you watch pathing, and the reward at the end is a median-glowing dream fragment and a piece of T4 loot. As a 90 mage with a mish-mash of Tower gear, HoT T2-T4 gear, and EM 8 with a 86 chanter box (mostly for slows/auras) I got this done in around 2 hours with only 2 deaths. One death was from not seeing a mob I had invised past previously path up behind me (top of the circular staircase) and the other was the chanter getting pwned by the named on pull becuase I couldn't switch boxes fast enough. I also know a mage/druid combo that run this task fairly often. Since it's only T2 this is a great way for those not flagged for T4 to get some T4 loot, not to mention fantastic silks/pelts and higher level dream fragments.

Edit: Loots worth mentioning:
Conjuror's Orb - Corruption based sympathetic DD proc
Guardian's Greaves - Nice HME but no spell haste focus.
Malleable Core of the Guardian - +185 HME and +8 hSta aug. Sexy.
Nesalie's Spell Gem - +75 HME, +8 hAgi, 34 AC and 2% shielding. Not as sexy, but can go in a shield so nice if you don't already have Bayle's Heraldic Crest.
Quentin's Outfit - Extremely nice chest item. No RS focus or emblem slot, but great stats otherwise.

There are other loots of course, but those are the mage usable ones.

[sharrien]

I've done this one twice myself, once with just my mage/beast and the other time with a couple other folks. Definitely good risk vs reward. First time I got a sweet back http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=121547. The other time we got the damned rogue-only dagger that no one could use other than for decorating his house.

I split the named at the end using CoH. It's still tricky since that room isn't very big for running around in and at least one of the mobs in there (think it was an assistant) was a corpse-camper. Named has a knockback but isn't really difficult, I nailed it to a corner with my pet armies and never got close to losing, pretty sure it didn't even enrage.

[Merlaina]

I'm curious: how exactly did you split them with CoH? Just pathing and tagging? It seemed to me like it would be too close of quarters for CoH to clear aggro. I did this mission again today at lunch (ended up being a looong lunch) and had far more problems pulling him this time than I did last time. I got to him and everything else cleared out in around an hour, but then spent another hour just trying to get him single. Turns out the last time I did it I would beguilers banishment through the wall and only he would come (since it was just him and his two guards). This time there was another behind the wall behind him, and BB was hitting him, one guard, and the far back mob instead, so I would get him and an add every time. I finally wised up and and moved into the room and used BB at an angle so it didn't hit the back wall guy, but still had issues switching quickly enough to send the pet in and ended up pulling him right on top of my mage. My final solution was to make a hotkey of:

/pause 50
/pet kill

I'd assist the chanter, hit the hotkey, and then immediately switch over, BB, and run back to camp. Worked like a charm. But I did learn the hard way he does hit for 9.4K against a fully shielded mage.

All that effort and I got the @##$%$ 75HP aug AGAIN! But now I think I have all the bugs out and should be able to complete this in under 90 minutes from now on.

[sharrien]

I positioned the mage a step or two down the stairs, also making sure merc healers were behind him. I would begin casting CoH and then tag one of the trash standing next to the named and run around to the back of the room. On one attempt, two of them ran after me and one stopped to cast or something and so ended up in a good spot to pull. Definitely not easy and I did wipe once, but that's how I did it. There isn't enough room in there to have a "sure" direction to tag them from, it was probably more a matter of them casting or randomly running into geometry that spread them out. The window of opportunity was very small, so I used Raven's Claw (casts instantly) to tag the one I wanted to bring back.

The second time I did this one I tried the same method a couple times and wasn't getting anywhere, so an SK working with a chanter stepped up to try. Still wiped once (yay for beast FD!) but we finally got them split up and finished the task.

Another alternative might be to go all the way down the stairs and run them further, hopefully giving them enough room to spread out enough to pull singly. But I hate running down those spiral stairs, so probably won't try it unless I have to.

[Merlaina]

I have since discovered that the named mob doesn't actually spawn until you get the update for exploring the top floor. That part updates about 3/4 of the way down the short hall leading to the last room. You can position yourself at the end of the hall by the top of the stairs and eye of zomm/pet pull all the mobs in that room (you will get both guards together, which is rough but doable). Once you clear that out (you don't have to get the mob way in the back) you can spawn the named and get him by himself.

[sharrien]

Nice....might try that next time. If I can get a pet on each guard it shouldn't be hard to keep them alive. Several of the drops are complete doo-doo, but it would be nice to get a http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=121374" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;!