Couldn't agree more with Wellard on that one, if I'm going for stones I tend to give a shout when I arrive at the inn a) to see if anyone knows if they're still there and b) they can let me know if they are already working towards it.

Happened the other night with someone already on their way down, I jumped down to 12, for which I alraedy have a stone, and worked my way up to lend assistance to their quest. It does feel good to help (and the xp are always useful).

Yes! It really is nice to know in advance that a stone or a quest is gone, if that's one of your main reasons for bringing a particular character in to play sometimes. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I wonder if it would be possible to replace the actual stone with a permanent trigger event that would give you a stone if you didn't have one already? Maybe a lever you would pull or a spectral figure of Halaster?

That way everybody who fought the way to that area would get a stone regardless of how many people had previously been.

I had another thought about that. Everybody in Undermountain is required to have a pass. If every area with teleporter set a variable to 1 on the pass, then a simple portal in the Yawning Portal, with a small convo script, could send players to the required area. Make the contract undroppable, since it weighs nothing, and store the appropriate level info on it. No passing, no putting it in bags. If you want to teleport a char to lvl 10, you had to have been there to set the variable.
We do a similar thing with a blink dog taxi in my other server, and once the char that owns the whistle gets to certain areas, they are saved to the whistle, and the dog can teleport them there. All from convo. The server was busy, and crowded yesterday, and chars that made the journey didn't get stones. With the above system in place, it wouldn't matter, since they had been to the area, there would be a variable set on the contract/pass, and they could teleport to it.