^^I meant Argin-Hiz. Is it intentional that these are like, zero xp? I mean, I've been killing zero xp crap for a solid week doing Tower of Rot progression, then decide to take a night off to work on the pre-launch tasks. I note that the mobs are low xp, and figure that well, the quest xp reward must be decent. Nope. I mean, considering that one of the most annoying EQ "features" is involved (fighting in water), you could at least toss us a bone.
Not for me, but I dragged three people away from xp groups they were in for them to gain a total of 20% aaxp killing 30 mobs and completing three quests. It's bad design.
The tasks are pretty crappy, risk vs. reward. Hardly any experience, only quest loot. These new mobs are literally giving a strikethrough in every single hit.
I mean, there are a lot of other things that bear complaining about, but the xp is the last nail in the coffin. Like, whose bright idea was it to make it so that the forlorn ashes could only be hailed for quest credit by one person ever?
You're going to love the fire giants in North Ro. They cluster so if you don't have a class that can single pull, you might as well leave. Tons of HP each, flurry, rampage, and strikethrough like crazy. Assist range is big, and they run fast. You can't pull away or you might get Corpse Seekers assisting them. Killing 20 of them isn't THAT big of an issue. Just takes time. It's their droprate. 1 in 5 chance. That means even a good group might just be able to farm enough for one person to get theirs before they get fed up with this crap. All this for just a title.
While I appreciate the devs taking their time to try and do something a little different, I really wish they would stop doing these pre launch tasks. Maybe if it was a pre-task to introduce an entire expansion but not for every staggered zone release. The Tower of Rot prelaunch tasks were really buggy, had no flavor at all, no exp and were pretty much slay mobs. I can only assume these are similar. Either way, again I appreciate the devs time but I'd prefer it went to more to creating the new expansion or real bug fixes.
Good luck splitting ash giants without using a Hates Attraction type ability. They seem to be immune to all forms of CC. Tag one, get them all. The ember drop rate is horrible. I have killed 38 thus far and seen a whole 7 embers drop. At this rate, only need to kill another 27-ish to finish the task for myself. Oh, plus then need to kill another 300 of them to finish a full group of players. Total of 12 spawns exist, btw. Wonderful implementation.
They're susceptible to mez. The freeport guards that constantly run out to attack are basically a poor man's single pull technique. You pull a bunch, run around until a guard gets close and fade. The guard might keep the giant occupied long enough to separate him from the others, but it doesn't always work out very well. In fact, very unreliable. Droprate is between 1/4 and 1/3, I thought it was worse since we had a string of kills with nothing to show. But still, it's taking over 3 hours to get ONE PLAYER they're 12 ashes. Gee, can't wait for Argin-Hiz!
At this point it's mostly just OCD. There is no real reason to complete these quests. No excuse for poor design though.
Where is that " i want to play EQ in its entirety !!!!! ROAR!" guy? He could pretend these are "required" to be "flagged" for Argin-Hiz. You can always pretend!
I can't say this for sure since it would require observing them for several hours, but the fire giants might be clumping at the edge of the zone because of the constant stream of Freeport guards attacking them and pushing them back. Either that, or there are a bunch of fire giants whose pathing destination are extremely close together.
Don't do that until I can send you my laundry list of grievances, Elegist. By the way, how did these get live in this state? Isn't Test Server supposed to catch stuff like this before it goes live? Nevermind, I know the answer to that. Test players went out, saw there was no xp and decided it wasn't worth their time.