TBL Trials - Tell me your stories

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Niskin, Jul 29, 2021.

  1. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    The crew I've been running with lately has been giving these a shot and they turned out to be more fun than we expected. Now that's not completely surprising, we're in the 111-115 level range, in Snowbound with some Ice Encrusted sprinkled in there, and we have the strats and videos to prep us for the encounters. The Trial of Three took us a few tries, but Wending Ways and Eternal Cyclone were pretty smooth and were completed on the first try. I think we saved the hardest two for last, so we'll see how those go.

    These experiences had me wondering what it was like when they first came out, with a 110 level cap and RoS gear being the best available. I remember what it was like trying to handle The Overthere at 105 in T1 EoK group gear, and I get the feeling this was similar or maybe worse. I know it's said a lot that people just skipped the trials, as there was some way to access Empyr without completing them, but people did go back and do them eventually. We wouldn't know how they work otherwise.

    So what's your TBL Trial story? What level were you? What gear were you wearing? How many times did you have to run one until you figured it out? Was that what made the difference, or did it take more tries to beat it once you knew how it worked?
  2. Metanis Bad Company

    For me it's still tough figuring out the riddles for the Trials of Three in the time they've given you. And that is true even with the riddles loaded up on a web browser on my 2nd monitor.

    And back in the day the Wending Ways was more a test of your PC and Internet not being laggy than any code in the game.
    Niskin likes this.
  3. Conq Augur

    Ran them and completed all the challenger achievements in era. Then helped push guildies through for the next 11 months. I liked them, especially Ashes. I would get asked to help push non-guildies through and that was fun taken in small doses - seeing group geared folks get melted by the AE's we healed through. So we figured out how to avoid the phoenix bombs, but ended up finishing the mission with some of the lesser geared folks dead for the duration most times. It was just easier to rez them after we won. The achievements make all the trials more fun and at least challenging.
    Conq
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  4. Tucoh Augur

    When TBL came out the trials were, rightfully so, the most contentious part of them. Stratos is a geometrically challenging zone and unsuitable as an "entry" level zone like Western Wastes, Frontier Mountains etc, but it's all you have access to until you beat the trials or sneak into Esianti. The trials themselves are more mechanically involved than the other missions, which make them unsuitable to less organized groups.

    TBL would have been a much better expansion if they exposed Esianti / Meataras / Empyr / Doomfire (missions) as T1 zones that anyone could access, and then had Stratos + Trails as T2 zones with Aalishai / Chamber of Tears as T3 and accessible only after going through all of the Trials.

    For the trials themselves, they're not that hard with a regular group. For most of them you just need to learn the quirks and then execute. Wending Ways is, stat-wise the easiest, but is the most annoying. The lava trial is the hardest. The cyclone trial can be difficult if you don't have ranged DPS.

    Personally, getting the Don't Trip achievement in Wending Ways is all I can think about when I think about the trials.

    Ssdar likes this.
  5. Niskin Clockwork Arguer


    Absolutely, and my understanding is that the longer it takes to engage, the stronger the AoE DoTs will hit. We had a couple failures initially because we would forget to invis before we ran in, or didn't run into the room at the same time. Once we beat it with a full group (1 merc), I went back with one other player and we tried it with 3 characters and 3 mercs. Made the decisions right, but too slowly, and lost mana too quickly from dealing with the incoming damage. We wiped near the end of the second fight.

    It's just as hard to quickly identify what you should be looking for, as it is to identify that you are looking at what you are looking for, in some cases. I think that gets better with more runs of it, we'll probably try it again with the 3/3 setup once we're more comfortable, since that guy's alt still needs the achievement.

    I didn't really think about the advances in technology that would affect how the trials ran on one's PC, but that's a good point. I have a Ryzen 7 2700X, which was available in mid 2018, before TBL released, but my RX 5700 GPU didn't come out until 8 months after TBL, in 2019. The Nvidia RTX 20x0 line was out a few months before TBL, but they were pricey so most would have had something in the 1050 - 2070 range. Since the 2070 is slightly faster than the RX 5700, that would put my current card near the top of what was available at the time.

    Intel was still very dominant in the CPU market in 2018, so most probably had an i3 or an i5, likely maxed at 4 cores. The upside is that with EQ being single core, Intel having the best single core speeds would have been a benefit for most at that point. But it also means that not much has changed since then. AMD just beat Intel in single core performance for the first time with Zen 4, and Intel's single core performance has barely budged for several generations. The i7 9700k that was available in October 2018 isn't much slower than the 11900k in single core performance.
    Metanis likes this.
  6. Sissruukk Rogue One

    When I went through it on my original toon, all I had left was the 3-for-1 in the Trial of Three. Now my two hang ups are the 3-for-1 and the Keep them separated (I believe that is what it is) in the tornado event. The frustration with the second one is that when the initial two mini-elementals spawn, they beeline it straight to one person and when they get there they merge. We have tried to split them on their popping, but that has yet to work out as they still beeline it to one person and merge. We have even cheesed it by popping over the barrier with rocket boots to prepare for the pops.
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  7. Liin Edud (Tunare) Augur

    We don't talk about "Don't Trip". That achievement is garbage and is still bugged to this day as far as I know. I have it completed but it's broken beyond belief.

    Our guild was through the trials and farming lamps and named in Empyr for gear week 1 of TBL. Just for getting T2 access, Wending Ways and Trial of 3 were our go to. The other trials were doable but weren't worth the effort if you were just trying to get to the other side so you could set a campfire.

    We don't raid but our whole force was pretty close to max AA and using all ROS T2 gear with some EOK/ROS chase items thrown in the mix. We figured them all out pretty quickly (1st month) and knew which ones to avoid if we could.

    Now we typically pick amphitheater if a recruit just needs a win for a genie mask. I'll pick ashes if they've got a set of droppable TOV T1 gear because I'd rather just knock the hardest one out right away but if they can't survive the AE then amphitheater it is.

    I went back and did the challenger achievements much later just to say I'd done them but again I don't raid so it wouldn't make any difference to my evolve items.

    If you have specific questions or need strat help let us know.
  8. Liin Edud (Tunare) Augur


    This really just requires a second toon to stand in front of one tanking it and pull them way apart from each other immediately. These days just about any pet could off tank it or hybrid could flash/weapon shield/whatever till you got the other one killed. If you fail to pick it up, just reset and try again. Think it only took two maybe three tries for us the time we actually sat down to do it.
  9. Accipiter Old Timer


    It's as if an anti-boxer got tasked with the job of creating TBL trials.

    Spot on.
    Elyssanda likes this.
  10. Cicelee Augur

    The trials were fine. What was not fine was locking the majority of the expansion behind them, requiring a full group to complete one of them, and then being allowed past the zone for only IIRC two days before you were locked out again if you did not have all six completed.

    If the trials got you into just Mearatas, cool.

    If completing one trial gave you seven days in TBL instead of just two, cool. Could require all six for Mearatas.

    If one of the six could be completed by a solo or duo person and then have a two day lockout, cool.

    It got to a point where people got tired of doing the trials. And if you were not done by March or April, then it was near impossible to find people to help you get past them. Which basically blocked off most of the expansion.
    Elyssanda, Endorek and Metanis like this.
  11. Conq Augur

  12. Niskin Clockwork Arguer


    I'll have to check to see if I got the "Keep them separated" achievement, we never had any merge that I know of. On incoming I mezzed one, or both--don't remember which mez I cast--so they never ended up in the same place and awake. If you don't have an Enchanter or Bard, a Ranger might be able to split them up with Vinelash or something that moves and roots the mobs. The initial spawn was the only time two were ever up together for us, but we had a pretty ideal setup for this trial and it ended up being one of the easiest we've done.
  13. Sissruukk Rogue One

    When my group comes back from summer time stuff, we will give the ranger thing a go. Normally we send the ranger topside to start, but keeping him down may be the way to go while we deal with the first two right away. I am not sure if there is an engage timer on the boss, though. After the first two we are good about keeping them down to a single spawn at a time, especially with the DPS now.
  14. Niskin Clockwork Arguer


    Amphiteater will likely be next for us, then Ashes, but we have the gear and levels to deal with the AoE most likely. I didn't think mercs would group heal, but ours kept beating me to it on Wending Ways the other night. Oddly enough it didn't do that on the Trial of Three, my Cleric had to spam group heals while the merc kept the tank up. Wending seemed to be lighter on the damage output so maybe the merc got bored and decided the rest of us deserved to live also.

    I'll definitely be coming back here with questions if we hit any roadblocks, thanks!
  15. Knifen Augur



    If ya like for this trial, or for anyone. I can shoot you the GINA triggers I made for every possible riddle and their solutions are put on screen and in audio as soon as he asks the riddle.
    Stymie likes this.
  16. Knifen Augur

    On this one you dont need to cheese you can walk right up to the area the first of the 2 mobs spawns before trial starts. Have one toon go to that spot (it is always the same never changes) then have a second toon a little bit west of first toon. His only goal is to charge the other 2nd mob and get aggro asap. There is a chance this one spawns extremely close to the first one and odds are youll fail if so. After the first set are beaten the next few come solo and long as you kill relativly quick youll never see 2 mobs at once after that.
  17. Knifen Augur


    On the don't Trip one, it got much easier once pointed out what to look for. Some said make sure everyone ports in one a time and move away from port pad, meh maybe but we still had fails with that. What we ended up doing was getting setup at the port pad, look around for the flying worm or whatever it is in the center of the map, make sure where you are to start and where you want to be at end are not putting the flying mob in your path.
  18. Windance Augur

    Like many said at the time. Going into TBL with group EoK was painful. The AE's and push back (off) the islands in stratos was horrible. Combined with forcing everyone into the same small zone made the first few weeks miserable.

    After the 2nd or 3rd time through the trials I just made sure I could set a campfire and skip past them.

    Then continued doing progression and gearing up until I'd gotten my entire group done with AA's / gear and went back to kick the trials out about 3-4 months after the expansion was live.

    I probably should go back and try to get some of the achievements done.
  19. Niskin Clockwork Arguer


    Depending on which models you use, and your configuration, that could make sense. If you raid then you probably already have a config that can deal with Wending Ways. I'd imagine the portal smokes could hit a GPU decently. Just because EQ doesn't need a powerful system doesn't mean it can't tax one to some of its limits.

    I've rarely seen EQ use more than 50% of its single core of a processor, so any CPU in the last 10-12 years should handle that just fine. But if you turn up your FPS limits and go heavy on particle effects, you can peg the GPU in some scenarios. Modern GPUs can brute force the DirectX9 content into submission, but they need a lot of cycles to do it I could keep my GTX980 at 100% utilization just fighting Frost Giants in GD with my bard behind the mob shooting particle spam into the air. That same situation maxed at 70% on my RX 5700.

    People can certainly adjust for that though, and turn stuff down, if they know what to adjust. Shadows are important, particles are important, and framerate is too. But since I have this 144hz monitor I really want to see the fluid movement, as it's one of the few things about EQ that can be made to look better without making changes to the game. My cleric box is running on a fairly beefy version of a potato, but with old models, shadows off, particles off, and all that. It had no problems with Wending Ways, but with that config there isn't much it can't handle. The Guild Lobby lag pile is still a pain, but that crushes my main PC also.
  20. Niskin Clockwork Arguer


    Yeah, we sent our Ranger up top right away also, so I'm not sure if it's viable to leave the top mob unengaged at first. If you have any other Ranged DPS you could start them up top and then swap after the first one is handled. It's also possible to hit stuff on the ground from some places on the ramp, but you have to be in the exact perfect position, and you may not know if you are until it's too late.

    If any other toon has root then the Ranger could Vinelash on incoming, run up the ramp, and let the other rooter keep the mob away until the first one is down. I don't know if any other classes have abilities like that, other than the Enchanter, but that doesn't matter since they can mez anyway.