Next patch items that will affect TLP

Adding a respawn variance to a spawn means there's now some randomization to the spawn's respawn time. We generally set it to +/- 15% of the spawn's normal respawn time, but it can technically be anything. There was previously a 0 in the respawn variance for Marl Kastane's spawn. If we were talking about randomizing a spawn's spawn location, we'd word that something like this example that was in the July update's notes: "The medallion pieces in the Swamp of No Hope and Kaesora now spawn in multiple locations."
Thanks!

So we can now farm for hours to get a half strength spell instead of RGC that is needed by just about every toon capable of casting it for raiding in a 12 week time frame.

You people are unbelievable - how is this fun? You just did this with alchemy without any understanding of the changes you were making and had to go back on it. Yet here you go chasing another opportunity to make things worse.

It seems like they believe raids are "too easy" but have no strategy to solve the problem so they just target simple 'classic-like' changes here and there to try making the content more challenging.

I don't know what a real solution would look like besides difficulty modes/raid size caps for old content and that would be a massive amount of work to implement

oh boy... enchanters prepare your bodies for this one

In a thread a while back I asked if current progression raiders felt a lower raid cap size would be an issue. Many guilds are doing these encounters in-era with much smaller than max raid sizes. People responding in that thread seemed to generally concede that raid size could be much smaller. The harder part is getting heads around the idea that EQ is a 24 person (or whatever) raid game until the much later content like Underfoot.

But... that small size limit, if intended to "make it challenging in the era" is kind of hard to set until the early eras of the game are done being "balanced" (cleaned up, or whatever word one likes) as the current amount of player DPS & ease of gear acquisition + player brains could lead to a very small raid size being the "correct tuning". Unless of course that balancing is done?

Maybe the solution is something simpler like "in era raid size is X", once the next expac drops raid size becomes X + 12".

My Little Pony: Island Adventure is finally getting that major expac?

Once an enchanter sinks 9 AAs that’s possible. But by that point your clerics could all buy Purify Soul and be on your way to defeating any relevant raid content without any Remove Curse Type spells. They can also flag The Great Saprophyte immune to charm if they want.

Rhag Zhezum is Rhag 1 - https://eq.magelo.com/npc/98292/Rhag`Zhezum
Rhag Mozdezh is Rhag 2 and he doesn’t drop it. So I don’t know what you’re talking about.

I believe the wand still drops but is just quite rare. If Devs would be able to confirm its dropping that would be nice. If it isn’t dropping I think it should be added back to his loot table immediately, and be effective immediately upon Luclin release on TLPs.

Again, not everyone in your raid needs Remove Greater Curse. There are basically two events where you need to cure regularly and it’s only 2 targets you need to cure at most. XtC has a 9 Curse counter heal Debuff on the tank and ramp tank. For this Remove Curse does fine. Same for the two Rhozth and the two Empeeor offtanked adds that proc this Debuff, just 2-3 priests or Paladins with Remove Curse do fine to remove this from the people who get it. Emperor has a 36 Curse counter proc on the MT every minute. Either you need ONE person capable of RGC or you need to make a Purify Soul chain among your clerics and remove it that way.

In the end maybe 2-3 copies of Remove Curse for your Druids, Paladins and Shamans, and either 1 Remove Greater Curse for someone in your raid or Purify Soul AA on several clerics will get you through Luclin content in the first week no problem.

It’s really a non-issue but it may require your prioritize some kills, spawn some picks as a guild and make sure he people getting these spells for you are going to attend your raids.

GE has been revamped at least once and TBH i don't know much about the different versions. But what i do know is the past 4 TLPs haven't gotten the version of GE that drops this wand and things like Beer Goggles . This is kinda the point i'm getting at here, they're adding a bunch of things to make the game "feel more classic" but actually aren't classic and those changes end up being really just a nuisance. While things like the Broken ring of fire event and drops that were taken out of the game like http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=16157 don't get added back to the game or fixed.

So your argument is the encounters are still hella easy and taking away RGC crafting just makes encounters like Arch Lich/THO have super annoying long unnecessary downtimes afterwards because "classic"

So basically abuse a bunch of non-classic mechanics too make the game "feel" more like classic without actually being more like classic in reality, while lining the pockets of the Chinese RMT crew.

Seems really good man.

Perhaps Remove Greater Curse has been adjusted because the next wave of raid tweaks is going to make that really matter in the events, rather than just after-kill cleanup?


Just throwing that out there.

My point kind of being, single changes in isolation don't illuminate the big picture. For something to get to the top of a dev's to-do list and get done means it must matter for some reason.

Hard to know when there is almost 0 communication from them on the priorities or general direction they want to move in.

I'd say the recent alchemy debacle where they had to revert 90% or more of the changes they made conclusively demonstrates the ridiculousness of this statement.

I think the reversal of the alchemy distillates was more a "Everybody is upset we removed the distillates but still have the distillates equivalent on the dbg store, which they're crying out that we're doing it to RMT. To prove that we're not, we removed them, and we need to probably retool and reintroduce distillates if we're going to sell the same things in the store."

I give them credit for that.

Personally, I like to think that my post for reintroducing distillates a while back helped to convince Ngreth to allow them back into the TLPs, but I'm probably just yankin' my own chain, there.

So they at first removed all distillates till PoR, removing the only viable route of skilling up alchemy to the levels required to use the gem drops in OoW. Then ppl pointed this out, along with a general discussion of how it was the HoT pots that were actually OP. Things were left as they were for a whole month. Then they come out with restoring every single distillate they removed except Distillate of Spirituality until Luclin. The OP potion was restored too. The marketplace had its items restored in a weaker form.

How is that not reverting 90% of the changes? Some 11 dimensional chess going on there.

It isn't, though.

Not sure where the number 24 comes from, but there is quite a bit of content that needs more than that before Underfoot, even as currently tuned. And even content that can be beaten with 24 in era, most guilds would really have a hard time.

Either way, the devs should not tinker with player caps. There is no good reason to limit it further than it already is limited, other than to provide additional difficulty and challenge. Unfortunately due to varying raid difficulty, there is no set # that would be ideal to provide the right level of challenge. And it would make a mess of guild rosters , recruiting and retention.

Remove melee from game, melee added in much later era.

That would be ok, but wizards are too click-intensive. If they revamped all their nukes into like 3 nuke types and made them all cost like 1/3 of your mana bar that would be a good start. Then you don't need to click so much.

There would have to be some serious tuning changes done for 24 player raids. And how would you limit those? Open world would be steamrolled by larger groups of people if things were tuned down, since only instanced stuff would be able to be limited.

Also, would most likely lose at least 1-2 pieces of loot per boss, since the numbers would be cut by 2/3rd.

While there is a lot of stuff that can be done by smaller groups like 24 people, much of it counts on them being either completely raid geared in the previous expansion or partially geared from end game in current expansion. Obviously you can’t get end game geared to beat progression mobs to get to said end game.

The only possibility would be instances that are tuned down with reduced drops, I guess. The amount of development and changes to make it global would be well beyond current capabilities.

You both make good points. I'm intrigued by this idea, not hard lobbying that it must be done.

If raid cap was going to be changed, it would be changed to make most guilds have a challenging time in era. That is the only reason to do it. If it was going to be done, the trick would have to be a simplistic method of the raids not being so challenging once the next expac opens.

Supposing a number (24, 30, 36...) is the "hard mode in era" number, then allowing that raid cap to boost by 12 out of era (often coupled with power and/or level cap increases) should create "normal mode". This is probably a global thing, which is too bad... because it would be a great thing to test drive on a single new server. (Thus avoiding the disruption to existing guilds).

If this was a toggle a guild could switch on (we do 24 hard mode raiding) and the benefit was more loot drops off the loot table...

The Rthozth's curse is going make the first few Cursed cycles run interesting for a bunch of guild. Mid-tier raiding guilds won't be able to slack on the Rhag cycle to save time.

Other than that just have Bards and Rogues spend a little extra time disarming traps, and kill/rez people who get hit with problematic curse effects that last hours. Have your guild end the raiding day by running to EC to force a new pick to spawn.

Raid sizes are fine... guilds who want to challenge themselves and do content with less can do so, and people who want to steamroll with 72 can.

True. This same argument holds true for allowing lava-fast XP on progression from the start... Lava fast doesn't prevent a person going slow if they want (just kill non ideal targets, etc.).


However, if the theory that early era progression is too easy*, and too easy is deflating the depth of the game while contributing to accelerated attrition for every expac that opens has merit then tuning the top-end content of the game to capture authentic challenge becomes a discussion point. Raid cap size is going to logically come up in that discussion.


*not too easy in Crushbone, that doesn't matter or a winning argument could even be made that it should be nearly trivial to get to level 30s. It's the 40ish plus game where the challenge should set in on early progression, otherwise we end up with the toughest slog of the game being the slow XP server 1-5 grind killing rats and spiders...