Any plans to make VT shards a better experience, like you did with VP?

I'm curious if i'll get to raid VT with my guild without having to participate in the ridiculous FG hunger games. Which are going to be even worse on this server since people will be selling them more often.

Shards should really be dropping 6 at a time at this point.

On the plus side, you could skip FG by buying the shard if they don't do anything to make this key more enjoyable..... That comes with the downside of the RMTers camping FG to sell the shard though.

Let's just hope they made some changes to make this less of a headache than previous TLPs.

There is usually someone there doing the zonewide zerg levelling. They usually don't care if you loot a shard. FG should be the easiest to get.

At this point, honestly, it should just be random from all the bugs there. Maybe boost the rate from the few existing droppers.

Every part of the VT shard collecting has its downside -if- you're trying to rush to VT. Generally speaking, most of the camps relax a bit after a week or two. On lockjaw, the Ssra mines tended to be the "hard" camp to get a shard from. Since all Prog servers after LJ/RF got AoC's, that shifted the dynamic and FG became the "easy" way to block other guilds from gaining access.

Spreading the shards to all the bugs won't completely prevent people from trying to monopolize the shard drops, but it would make it require much more than 3-4 toons.

I believe you are thinking of the Deep - Fungus grove only has a handful of spawns that drop it.

There is no way he's thinking of FG, those shard droppers have abysmal xp for the fact that you're killing level 60 and have only like 10 or so mobs to kill.

Aye, you are right, it was The Deep. Memory fails me. Sorry.

My fear with them touching VT shard droppers at all with random loot is that they might mess something up because they don't test it in time, and orphan one of the shards completely making it impossible to get keyed.

Even when the QA Team tests their feedback doesn't always make it into the game in time for the expansion launch (Cough YELINAK COUGH). I guess its a good thing we have a patch day the week after Luclin launches.

Dear Innoruuk, while you're monkeying with things associated with VT, please cut the number of trash mobs in the zone down by 98%.

That will only level 196 mobs between the entrance and the fountain, but still...sheesh, the mob density in the zone, especially for mobs that gate, split, summon, chain cast, heal....

For one of the most fun zones in the game it would be awesome if we did not have to slog through hours and hours of boredom to get to the events.

You moved away from trash clearing forever in the latter game, perhaps that thinking could be of influence to earlier content.

Just my 3.1 cp

You might be one of the first persons I've ever encountered who thinks VT is one of the best zones in the game. The only thing that it's probably the best at is curing insomnia. Everything about it is a snoozefest.

It takes like 3 groups to spawn your own pick of FG. Just bring 3 guild groups, spawn your own instance, and camp it till everyone gets one. Scarlet Desert and Maiden's Eye are going to be the problem, not FG.

That's not FG. That's the deep.

SD/DSP is the bottle necks no one ever talks about. Every other zone you can atleast get some AA in so there is usually at least a pick.

Hey, just be glad you didn't do it back in the day when mobs respawned.

Its my firm opinion that Vex Thal is a great training ground for raiding guilds. It is my favorite raid zone in the game for this reason. The reward for efficiency is a faster clear time. This is the zone where your raiders will start adopting basic strategies for multi-mob pulls and clears, and learn how to press forward through an unrelenting trickle of mobs without having to stop to med constantly. Its about stamina, and keeping the raid moving with minimal downtime.

Once a guild master's Vex Thal and can do it in between 3-4 hours they are ready for basically anything the next expansions throw at them. It teaches people...yes some even after 22 years of this game.... the fundamentals.

It provides raids the most transformative training that everything before it is unable to provide, by turning tasks into muscle memory and beating some tactical awareness into every aspect of your raiders. Your players come out the other end with more knowledge of their role in a raid and a ton of gear if you are pushing yourself for fast efficient clear times. If you slog through and take 6+ hours or don't finish your clear at all, then..yeah...it hurts. Pain = Growth opportunity, and especially for your weakest players. Its there to provide you the challenge necessary to improve your base.

Its also the first zone where Complete Heal chains are reasonably optional. Clerics rejoice, welcome to assist healing nearly full time!

If you disagree with any of this, then you're not pulling enough mobs at once!

VT should return to the VT of old where you can pull bosses to zone line, any boss can be done with less then 40 players probably even 30.

So the reason you like it is that it provides training to trash clears, one of the most boring, monotonous, brain-dead developments in EQ? There's a reason why trash clears were basically removed from game until they decided to bring it back for the sole reason of tying it to raid aug ores and charm luck augs: it's boring and a waste of time. It's just an artificial time sink to extend raids. That's basically the entirety of what Luclin is because they ran out of development time.

You know what trains a guild? Raid events with mechanics. It's rewarding and fun. You know where that starts? GOD, an actual good expansion that wasn't completely neutered by modern character power creep. Clearing swarms of mobs that do basically nothing special is...boring. You know why Tacvi is lightyears better than VT? Because of it's lack of trash.

Actually, the mechanics on several raids starting in Luclin. Gates is a great expansion. But the mechanics on emp and Khati Sha are not much different than tacvi. Let's also not act like raids in Gates are not full of trash outside of Tacvi. I would agree that Luclin is a great training ground.

While we’re at it… let’s just make instances for key mobs, restrict the population to 6, and the mob spawns only to the camps in which mobs drop the shards - trash around it included.

That way it’s just a matter of farming until everyone who needs a shard gets one and cannot be manipulated for xp beyond the camps that produce them.

My single favorite reply on these forums ever. GoD = Best raid expansion ever.