Underfoot changes for Phinny?

I've heard there's some bottleneck with keying (only X keys per week), plus it'll be a short expansion (only 8 weeks because no level cap), so without changes, you won't have time to really farm Underfoot gear.

Is that correct? Can anyone explain the issue?

There are definitely some expansions incoming, which had their raid tier flaggin system prolonged (6-18 flags pr raid event that can be very hard or impossible to split raid), in order to stretch out the lifespan of the new content.

While this may have made your first tier of raid-drops more long-lasting before getting access to the final tier raid-gear and the feeling of progressing your character through the expansion more immersive - for the unlock rules on Phinigel TLP, this may resort to very few weeks of if any gearfarm before next expansion unlocks.

We're especially "vulnerable" during the expansions of very fast lv unlocks. Mostly speaking of the Haul from Underfoot till Rain of Fear. (Underfoot lv 85 > House of Thule lv 90 > Veil of Alaris 95 > Rain of Fear 100).

However, some may also argue that this may bring a fresh new challenge to the server. Thus from our current overgeared superiority will actually move on to being worse and - or under geared compared to when people initially broke into these expansions in their respective eras.

I think there should be a balance, though. By the looks of it, there is also issues and complaints on live-servers about the flag progression on expansions 2 years or older. Maybe DBG should just massively increase Flag output for any expansion that's 2 releases older than current content.

Underfoot events drop 3 keys each generally.

You need Coin of Brell from T6 Phase 1 events to participate in T6 Phase 2 events.
You need Emblem of Brell from T6 Phase 2 events to participate in T7 Phase 1 events.
You need Amulet of Brell from T7 Phase 1 events to participate in T7 Phase 2 event (Audience with Brell)
You need to have credit from Audience with Brell to Raid Convorteum.

Tier 6 - Phase 1 (3 x Coin of Brell):

• Fippy's Revenge (Brells Rest)
• The Unburrowing (Pellucid Grotto)
• Beast Bellow (Cooling Chamber)

Tier 6 - Phase 2 (2 x Emblem of Brell + 1 x Coin of Brell):

• Masked Invaders (The Foundation)
• The Wrath of Brath (Underquarry)
• Guardians of the Hive (Arthicrex)
• The Cliknar Queen (Arthicrex)

Tier 7 - Phase 1 (3 x Amulets of Brell + 1 x Emblem of Brell):

• Cunning Plan (Lichen Creep)
• Fungal Corruption (Fungal Forest)
• The Trial of Creation (Brell's Temple)
• The Trial of Deconstruction (Brell's Temple)

Tier 7 - Phase 2 (1 x Emblem of Brell):

• Audience with Brell (Brell's Temple)

Tier 8 - Convorteum:

• The Gatekeeper
• The Stone Warden
• Unstable Creation
• The Keymaster
• The Hall of Records
• Magus Sisters
• The First Creation

So basically, if you are following above...

Immediately you can farm the first three Tier 6, Phase 1 events. Fippy / Unburrowing / Beast Bellow. This results in 9 keys per week if you aren't splitting the events. So done naturally, they expected you farm these fights for about 5 weeks to get 45 keys (and push in the remaining part of your raid). At which point you can jump into Tier 6, Phase 2 events.

At this point you get about 9 Emblems per week if you are clearing all events, which again takes you 5 weeks to do naturally. Then you can raid Tier 7 Phase 1 events.

Here you can get about 12 Amulets per week allowing you to have enough to get a full raid into Audience with Brell after 4 weeks.

In summary, 5 weeks for T6P1, 5 weeks for T6P2, 4 weeks for T7P1. About 14 weeks to flag into the end zone *assuming* you are raiding weekly, not splitting, and not taking any time to learn or beat events (IE you are one-shotting them the first week you do them).

I will add... some of these events you can easily split raid or get by with less than a full raid. For example Fippy and Masked Invaders guilds would often split or do with less than a full force when they were short keys. So it can be accelerated slightly without massive splitting. But most guilds will experience at a minimum a 14-week timespan from launch to Convorteum access

I am sure the most hardcore of guilds will be completing Underfoot in under 8 weeks because they will split Fippy / Unburrowing / Beast to start off, they will do Masked Invaders with probably 12-18 characters each. They will split Deconstruction trial and they will beat Brell with less than a full raid. But for *most* guilds, they won't even beat the 2nd tier before the next expansion launches.
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I think the obvious solution is to just increase the amount of keys dropped to about 15 Keys per kill. This allows a guild clear each tier, get 45~ keys at a minimum, and then be able to push into the next tier without having to farm the tier for several weeks.
The original way it was set up makes sense for a year-long expansion. But for accelerated TLP servers with 8-12 week spans, we need 4-6x the key drop rate to progress at relatively the same rate.

Is all of that assuming a single run of an event each week or would raiding on lockouts (not at like 6am but standard primetime) speed it up a bit?

This is not accurate. Not every raid in each tier gives the same # of flags.

All of that assumes you raid like *most* guilds raid, 1 event per 7 day period. Raiding on lockouts would accelerate the process. I'd have to figure out how much, not by a huge amount but if you are racing it would shave time off.

A LOT of it can be split for more flags. Some of it with ~2-3 groups max. So you can do a lot faster than what he posted. But the overall gist is correct.

Yea I was trying to simplify it.

Cliknar Queen drops 3 Emblems instead of 2 from the rest of the raids.

In the end, Tier 6 Phase 2 is still 2+2+2+3 = 9 Emblems per week.

Fungal Corruption and Cunning Plan drop 2 Amulets instead of 3 from the Brell Trials.

In the end Tier 7 Phase 3 is actually 2+2+3+3 = 10 Amulets per week instead of the 12 I quoted above, but still 40 after 4 weeks is generally enough to push in 8 and you can do Audience of Brell down a group.

Outside of Masked Invaders, I'd love to hear what events pre-Convorteum you are doing with 12-18 characters in era.

Split raid with 36-man splits, sure there's a few you can get by with. As I mentioned, I am sure the most hardcore of guilds will do this. But other than those 2 or 3, the other 15 guilds on Phinigel won't have the numbers to support 72+ character forces in Underfoot to split the easier raids.

Here is some back of the envelope math I did last year:

Creation, with the right strat.

Fippy we came very close to doing with 18.

Beast below was in that ballpark too.

And that was on Fippy with less dps and tanking and all sorts of things than we'll have this time around.

So yea, other than the guilds with 120 raiders and 10-12 geared warriors... most will not finish Underfoot in era in its current state.

This is a common problem in most raids going beyond Underfoot as they follow similar Keying patterns. HoT has keys. VoA did the book evolution thing, which you can't even bypass with splitting. Hell I think it starts before Underfoot with SoD? Needing Tower keys from Korafax to do Discord Tower?

The most obvious solution is to go back through and change the drop rate on keys to reflect TLPs going through the content in 2-3months instead of having 12 months when it was current. Increase the key drop rate 5x from about 2-3 keys per kill to about 10-15 keys per kill. This way guilds can clear a tier and move on to the next one assuming their keyed continually attend raids.

For VoA you'd need to rework how the book evolves.

Thanks for all the detailed info guys. Here's to hoping devs are reading and will up the key drop rate.

I don't think that "technically completeable in era with zero event failures and massive splitting" is a reasonable goalpost for expansions.

They really need to look at these intentional progression slowdowns and remove them for 2-3 month progression unlocks. Noone will ever be taking a year per expansion for these expansions again, so leaving it balanced for that is silly.

I think more keys per raid makes good sense, I also thing DB should extend the life of each expansion by one month once we get into the Annual expansions that were meant to last an entire year. Move non level ones to 3 months and ones including level increases to 4 months.

I think both would help extend the life of the server as I think you will see people quit in droves if we start seeing expansions unlock before the majority of raiders have finished the current one, no one likes to fall behind.

I would love to see one of those "we've seen this and we'll think about it" noncommittal posts we sometimes get on this kind of topic.

There is one, somewhere around a year and a half ago if you search for it--maybe older, back around Phinny launch. It was discussed pretty extensively prior to the launch. They are aware of the issue and will consider addressing it as we get closer.

Did you do it on a napkin, or on the back of an envelope?!?! How can we believe anything you say now!

Careful what you say, he may claim it as his original work and say you stole it.

I don't think they changed the POR raid roadblocks, so I wouldn't hold your breath on this.
Hopefully i'll be wrong