List of Epic Time Sinks and Bottlenecks

Hello, I am creating a list of Epic 1.0 Time Sinks and Bottlenecks with suggestions to alleviate pain points in any starting TLP. I am not familiar with some epics (SK/Necro/Paladin/Wizard/Shaman) so please advise if I missed something there or for the other classes.
Most of the suggestions here are to reduce respawn / wait times to at least an hour or have a different outlet for drops. Fairley extreme changes for sure but I believe difficulty does not equate to time wasted.

Bard Epic
-Kedge Backbone – Increased drop chance or always drops or has a chance to drop from rares/mobs in zone.

Cleric Epic
-Shmendrik Lavawalker (Lake Rathetear) – 3h Respawn to 1h (Current meta is to spawn a pick)
-Zordak Ragefire (Nagafen’s Lair (SolB)) – 24h Respawn to 1h (Current meta is to spin up a DZ)
-Naxot Deepwater (Burning Woods) – I believe this is a 1h respawn.

Paladin Epic
-Lich of Miragul (Everforst) – 24-26h respawn to 1h. Current meta is to spawn a pick of Everfrost and wait 2-4hours.

Shadow Knight Epic
-Marl Kastane(Toxxulia Forest) – 7-9h respawn to Always up.

Warrior Epic
n/a

Ranger/Druid Epic
-Giz X`Tin (Kithikor Forest) – 4h respawn to 1h
-Althele (East Karana) – This entire quest chain needs to be reworked, it is very easy to have someone else brick your quest or fail the quest. Item that starts chain is Worn Dark Metal Coin.
-Venril Sathir’s remains (Karnor’s Castle) Respawns 20h after Venril Sathir is killed to 1h.
-Jaeil the Wretched (The Hole) – 6h? respawn to 1h. (Current meta is to spawn a DZ)
-Ulump Pujluk (Swamp of No Hope) 2h respawn to 1h
-Dolgin Codslayer (Timorous Deep) 12h respawn to 1h

Rogue Epic
-Book of Souls (Plane of Hate) – 10h respawn to 1h (Current meta to grab on raid night)
-Yendar Starpyre (Steamfont Mountains) - 4h 15min respawn to 1h
-Gigantic Zweihander – Increased drop chance to always drops. (Friend and I had to kill 10 times before 1 dropped)

Shaman Epic
-spectral courier (City of Mist) – Can spawn from any point in stables area instead of his two spawn points.

Monk Epic
-Brother Zephyl (Rathe Mountains) – Removed from current cycle of PH (Hasten/Grizzly Bear/Drake ect…) and put on another PH or be a 1h respawn or spawn more often on current cycle.
-a presence (Plane of Sky) – 2h? respawn to 1h (Current meta to kill on raid night in DZ)
-a sleeping ogre (Nurga) – 90min respawn to 1h
-Astral Projection (Overthere) – 2h? respawn to 1h
-Astral Projection (Lake of Ill Omen – 2h? respawn to 1h

Enchanter Epic
-Vessel Drozlin (East Cabilis) - 7h(+) respawn to 1h
-Verina Tomb (Neriak Third Gate) - 7h(+) respawn to 1h
-The One Key (ground spawn in Overthere) – 6h respawn to 1h
-Lost Scroll (ground spawn in Dalnir) – 6h respawn to 1h
-Wraith of the Shissar (Plane of Fear) – 7h(+) respawn to 1h also spawns at DZ start.
-Essence of a Vampire (Plane of Hate) – Increased drop chance.
-The Tangrin (Field of Bone) – 7h(+) respawn to 1h.


Magician Epic
-Staff of Elemental Mastery: Water – Increased drop chance or always drops or has a chance to drop from rares/mobs in zone.

Necromancer Epic
-Manisi Herb – Increased drop chance or always drops.
-Black Silk Cape – Increased drop chance or always drops.
-Spiroc Feathers - Increased drop chance or always drops.
-Slime Blood of Cazic Thule – Increased drop chance or always drops.


Wizard Epic
-Blue Crystal Staff – Increased drop chance or always drops or has a chance to drop from rares/mobs in zone.
-Broken Golem (Plane of Fear) – 6-8h respawn to 1h, always spawns on DZ start

a shady goblin
Warsliks Woods – 24h respawn to 5m respawn

Perfectly reasonable changes, now let's figure out which effects are too powerful for the new changes and adjust accordingly

I mean if you guys think the simple fact of sitting and waiting for needless bottleneck mobs to spawn makes your epic weapon better or more "epic", more power to you. I personally think that is a silly way to think, but hey - to each their own.

If you can kill the required mobs and collect the required materials you should be able to get your epic. It should not require sitting anywhere in the game doing nothing for hours on end.

I can see both sides but there is a reason games moved away from camping a single spawn for 8-36 hours. But here we are all back to play again so /shrug

These would be good changes for TLP. There are many more people on a TLP server for one and its a compressed timeline.

The people who think that epics need to be gate kept to keep them epic is laughable. It was an accomplishment back in the day. If its your first time ever doing an epic I could see people hold them in special regard. I personally don't. I act like I have been there before, because I have, multiple times. Nobody thinks you're special if you have your epic (maybe special ed) if you think it does.

Nobody is saying it should be given away, you still have to do the quest, people are just saying its dumb to gatekeep them through artificial time sinks and those people are correct.

As a necro main, I honestly have no problem with the drop rates for the necro epic. My complaint is with the garbage like Marl Kastane because my buddy plays an SK. It would be nice if he could enjoy his epic while in era but he won't be able to because there are 20 people poop socking the damn turn in mob that despawns for some reason only some long gone dev knows why.

Wanted to respond to this and add some additional info after I spent a RL week, spending 8 - 12 hours at a time camping for the Lich.

1. The spawn time is more like 24h - 26h, not 35h
   
   Still a very long spawn timer, but slightly less time that what Alla states. The last 4 days of my camping Lich, I was able to almost accurately predict when Lich would spawn down to the hour. Day 3 (of my camp), he had died at ~3am CST. Day 4, died at ~5am CST. Day 5, died at ~6am CST. Day 6, died at 7:42am CST (other paladin beat me by mere milliseconds at turning in the Phylactery). Day 7, I was able to kill him at 9:10am CST.
2. He does spawn in picks, and for most of the time, spinning up a new EF pick was the better option.
3. Same as with the spawn time being incorrect on Alla, the spawn time in new picks is also incorrect. Alla states that he spawns ~5 to 14 hours after pick is opened. During my camp, I was able to get into half a dozen newly opened EF picks, and each time, Lich spawned anywhere from 2 to 4 hours on the pick's uptime!

On a side note, the location that Brewall's Maps says where the Lich spawns is hugely inaccurate. Lich doesnt spawn in the northern section of the cave tunnels, instead he 100% spawns in the south / southeast circular cave room. I wasted 3-4 days of my camp sitting in the wrong area.

Instead, he spawns here: https://ibb.co/W6pqYkB at the red X, and then starts pathing following the blue line.

Roadblocks that are exploited by cheaters are not roadblocks. They're problems that need to be addressed.

You are not good at this game and your posturing is transparent.

With the server being so packed with players I see no reason not to help us out on epic respawn times. Some of these camps are being held by automated botters who can kill the mob before anyone even noticed it was up.....example being the Neriak Enchanter mob. These epics are just paperweights in a few expansion let us all get them please.

The issue with Marl for the SK epic would not be so bad if you did not need him TWICE. At the very least, turning in the Blood (does not despawn Marl) should be a different mob than the Shroud (despawns Marl). DBG is allowing a cycle of Toxxicity (yes, pun) to persist for no sound reason.

Thank you for the info, updated original post.

Also to the vending machien arguement. It's already incredibly easy to get epics. I have epic'd out a Warrior/Enchanter/2monks/Ranger/Druid/Rogue/Mage/Cleric and will epic out two bards and a shaman soon enough. All on Teek.

It's already a vending machine. I just don't see the point of waiting 7hours for my A&W cream soda.

So, in less than 2 months you have levelled and will have gotten epics for 12 characters and you are here posting that these systems are too onerous and need to be made more accessible. Lets see if it works.

I am definitely an outlier.

These changes are more for casual player base and to hopefully set a precedent when it comes to big time sinks.

I really only read the cleric and bard proposed changes... and stopped reading because I think you are pushing too hard to trivialize all of the epics by just reading those two.

Cleric Epic -
Zordak in SolA feels dumb, he should probably just stay up or have fast respawn. You aren't killing him, just trading stuff in. Multiple SolA picks tend to go away in Kunark, and some guilds still do smaller man naggy/vox for scales, so burning a DZ (even though now you just get a 20hr lockout if you don't kill stuff) seems silly, but a valid workaround. Pick threshold is still small, so you could have your guild just zone in to spawn it before they small man naggy/vox.

The only real change to make the epic require time to farm, but also no major roadblock would be making Lord Gimblox's Signet Ring tradeable. By the time classic finishes, there would be enough floating around on the server, where this camp for those who didn't pick one up and want to farm it, wouldn't be nearly as contested. But the counter argument is get it during classic when there are sooo many picks for SolA.

Bard Epic -- It's fine.. the finished lute is completely tradeable, and phinny is a 1 group mob when you are level 60, two groupable at level 50. I really don't see this backbone as a stopper for the epic.
Trak guts are usually the bottleneck anyway, not the backbone. People farm the backbones in classic so when you hit kunark most bards already have it. If you were to 'fix' the bard epic to make it more attainable, you would just make it so you can spawn a Gut's only loot for bard epic like you can do on live servers, but I still feel that trivializes the accomplishment too much, it would be Raid day 1 of Kunark all bards have epics - and that is dumb imo.

These epics should still require effort and time for farming stuff, they shouldn't be handed out, the enjoyment of the game is through achieving things, and the larger the barrier, the bigger the dopamine hit is when you succeed, and the more memorable the experience is. Trivializing it just makes it into a joke. I know not everyone has the time to invest in the game, but epics were designed for raiding characters, not casual players, and I don't want to be holly and say casuals don't deserve things, but they may need to wait until things are less contested, and I think that is a totally fair ask.

There have been so many changes to 1.0's over the years to make them more convenient. The game really doesn't need anymore. You want epics to turn into the VP key?

The game also doesn't need artificial limitations on how many people can get an epic. Epics are not made trivial by not having to sit around waiting for things to spawn.

AoCs and pick zones completely removed any limitation of how many people can get an epic(in era) so that is a non issue and has been for years.

It was a reduction, not a removal of the issue.

What is limited to a finite number, that would simply be impossible to get via DZ or a new pick?

which effects are too powerful? oh plz.. the only two useful epics are Cleric and Bard... the 2 less useful than the top two are mage and monk but at least one of those is only good til PoP... The rest of the epics effects are either a joke or last til velious then their usefulness basically goes to almost nothing

He still wrong cause I sat in a fresh pick of everfrost for 5 and a half hours and no lich spawned.. I gave up cause i was going stir crazy and a auto clicker person came which only came with his non 60 pally and a chanter... so clearly he was gonna kill it...