Yesterday I completed the achievement that awards the rhino mount which means that I have completed all mercenary, partisan, and group missions in the game. At this point, I thought I have now seen enough of the game to be able to give it a fair assessment. Partisan Quests: To be honest, I like the TBM quests a lot more. Solo quests are a pain because it is difficult to find people willing to help you and for those that have already completed the quest there is little reward to doing them a second time. At least with a group quest you can do it together, although TBM did award currency for all group quests while EOK did not. On the positive side, the kill spots for the solo quests did overlap a lot, so if you needed someone to help you kill drachnid, there were several solo quests that would bring people back to the cave. I also found that the group quests that did exist were a little longer than ideal. IMO group quests should take about 30-60 minutes which for the most part TBM held to (Crypt of Decay not withstanding). Heroic Adventures (awards currency but no chest at end) These HA are just plain too long. I have found one that can be done in under an hour, but most are 2 hour affairs. You have to navigate large zones populated with hundreds of monsters each. Trying to bypass areas is hard (at least Droga HA left half the map unpopulated) and usually the HA requires you to kill lots of mobs anyway. Once again, I think 30-60 minutes is right for a HA. The reward for completing a HA is not that great (80-100 Sathir Gems where one aug will cost 500). I guess it will give me plenty to do over the next year. On the positive side, since sathir gems are untradeable and it would take a long time to collect enough gems to fill out all of the slot 5 augs on your gear, the end result is that TBM remnants are still valuable. It is nice to see that there is still a reason to do TBM content. Missions (no currency but a chest is at the end) Overall I found these to be well done. The length of these were about 30 minutes, and the difficulty seemed about right with the exception of the first one - Lcenium. The Lcenium one is the second hardest and gives the worst loot (T1 armor). Only one of them (Laboratory) requires a raid geared tank, although the Lcenium pretty much demands it (have done once without). I suppose the high end raid crowd preferred the challenge of TBM missions, but for the rest, these seem a lot more doable. Some additional thoughts: Non-mezzable mobs - A bit more than I like, although I accept that making some enchanter proof is fair. My biggest complaint is that in Chardok, they have high density unmezzable mobs (especially the fungus men). I also think that Lcenium group mission and raid should have had at least some mezzable mobs. Spin stun in Droga - This happens way too much and just makes it no fun to play in the zone as a puller. Either make it less common, or take away the spin aspect. As it currently stands, it is a zone I like to avoid as much as possible, because in a game it is supposed to be fun, not nausea inducing. Green sarnak AE DOT in Laboratory - Basically you need to complete the second partisan quest in Korsha Laboratory or you will be hit with a frequent severe AE dot. So basically for those that have completed the second partisan, it gives you a major advantage in the game, which I like as it is a nice reward. It is probably a bit late in the game to have such an advantage awarded, but you can just avoid that area in one zone if you don't want to deal with it. I am not sure if raiders will need to have it though. If they do, it will basically force raid guilds to run all of their raiders through almost all of the EOK content to do those raids - which I assume won't be popular with them. Overall difficulty of expansion - I think mob difficulty was about right. I remember the ambush of the 2 in Lcenium for the first partisan mission. It was an immediate notice that this expansion was harder than TBM. I have found EOK to be challenging but not overwhelming.
I thought that TBM had learned a good lesson from TDS in that regard which seems to have been reversed. I'm wondering if the difference was Ngreth being gone for TBM and being back for EoK. I'm probably in the minority, but I wish they'd just dump partisan tasks. Seems like a lot of dev effort spent on content that realistically is done once per character and rarely, if ever again. Not sure they're getting the full value of their dev hours out of designing these tasks versus other content with more re-play value. Fungus men in Seb were not mezable either. This is not new and fits with past mob traits. As an enchanter, when camping fungi tunics, my cc spell set was stuns and charm. Notice they were kind enough to mix in some blue cons. Banishment punts should also work. It's refreshing to have to use more parts of the toolbox for different mobs. I don't like it when they block every single form of crowd control. But removing some to make you switch up your tactics is good in my opinion.
I will have to look at charm for the fungus men. Root does work, but doesn't seem to last long/along with punts. Thanks for the input.
is there a list of group missions with chests? I surely hope that there is more than just the 4 "Hero" missions. They are always the most fun things to do.
