Raider's Digest - February 2021

Hello, Norrathian Raiders!
Tis that time again for another Raider’s Digest. We wanted to give you a bit of insight into what is upcoming for raids and to answer a few questions we have been getting often. You know who you are!

Let’s go ahead and address the elephant in the room… The Shadowed Balanzite Crystal and the access to the Vex Thal: Labyrinth of Solace [Raid].

As many are aware access to this zone requires a specific level of progression in the raid progression quest. Part of the quest is crafting yourself or having someone commission the Scepter of Illumination. Many have expressed their feelings about the harvesting requirement, and we felt it needed to be addressed to at least explain our reasoning as well as address the valid concerns raiders have with the process to obtain them. First, we will start with some reasoning behind what we were trying to achieve with this. The main goal was to promote guilds and/or raid forces to work together out in the world to gain access to the zone rather than tucked away in an instanced zone somewhere. This became very difficult to achieve due to an oversight, making the crystals too rare with the expansion launch. The intent was having everyone go out and try to get the crystals and giving them to one or two of your members gaining access for the entire raid force. We do want to preserve that intention; however, we also agree and feel it should be a bit easier once that part has passed. Especially for those who do not partake in tradeskilling by choice.

To address this, we will be adding a new type of crystal to the boss drop tables in Vex Thal: Labyrinth of Solace [Raid]. This crystal will be able to be used in place of the Shadowed Balanzite Crystal within the Vibrating Phantastic Core recipe with the main exception that it is no trade. The reason for the no-trade flag is we do not want folks to run the zone just to farm crystals for the broker. We hope for this to go out with next week’s update on Tuesday 2/9/2021. As some might already be aware the recipe for the Phantastic Weapons which will be used in an upcoming GU, have had their recipe changed to no longer require the Shadow Balanzite Crystals in both the main recipe and the recipe for the Vibrating Phantastic Core. After the change, the Shadow Balanzite Crystals should only be required the Vibrating Phantastic Core and the additional crystals have been replaced with any type shadow harvestables.

Along the same lines of the recipes, the Precarious Lashings, which are also used in the Vibrating Phantastic Core recipe, have been added to the drop tables on Grieg Veneficus and Khati Sha the Twisted. These will be 100% drop at one drop per kill. The previous raid targets that dropped the item before will continue to drop them for chances at additional drops. This should help with the randomness of obtaining the item.

On to the next topic! Many of you guys have been asking for a way to gear up your alts like in some previous expansions. We are going to be adding a new, once a day mission crate much like there are for the solo and heroic zones on to the currency merchants. These will be purchasable with raid currency and the rewards will increase in quality as you make progress in the raid progression quest. They will not require defeating raid targets. This should allow raiders to get a little extra help for gearing up and provide an extra source of gear for giving to alternate characters.

We have more in the pipeline as we inch closer to our next Game Update with more raid content but more info on that will come out as we announce the particulars of the new update. We hope to see you there!

~Gninja

Could you clarify this a little bit? Is the "progress in the raid progression quest" an account flag or are we to raid with our alts to increase the quality of the box?

I can safely say that majority of us do not want another RNG crate for our alts. We get repeated items a million times over for our mains and then to add insult to injury adding another crate for alt does not fix any issue with how loot is given. If anything it brings you back to where we are right now.

You made good strides in the area of alt gearing up in BoL where once an item was unlocked on the main, it was available for alts. No idea why would you not want players to do that when you have a mountain to climb in terms of the other RNG we need to battle with to ready alts, just to jog your memory, it includes the following:

Red Runes
Mount upgrade
Familiar upgrade
Spell upgrades
Ascension upgrades (hoping they are done away with soon with their reduced effects now)
Celestial items (lopsided RNG to say the least where there is no concept of risk vs reward).

It’s a good thing last expansion was a clear indication of how much preparation you guys would need for this one. I can only imagine how this xpac would turn out if none of you put any thought into it.

I couldn't agree more with Arclite. This is a insult to the intelligence of your players. You have the alt gear mechanic already coded and could be implemented in the new expansion. Instead of adding back something that was working, you instead pick a way to use up the raid currency on a random box reward? Meaning, players will have little to no control on what they get, but must spend currency over and over again with a slim to nil chance of getting something they can use.

Creating a merchant to allow players to pick what they need/want for their mains and alts would let us play the game with those toons. But instead, you don't want us to be able to get the gear we want with the currency we earned. You want to slow down progression with a Marketing spin idea. Absolutely to many things in this game are being based on random roll chances. Players are tired of random ruling what and how they get geared. And you want to use up a currency you never provided any options to use any other real way. And while I really appreciate the changes to the crystals, the alt gear solution has only added frustration with this game.

So there is a very good reason that gear isnt an account unlock for alts anymore;. It is very easy to exploit loot in this manor, as items are coded for being tradable for the zone inside the zone;. and then you can loot a mage set of feet to a templar, to unlock the piece, then trade it to a mage and essentially get 2 times the amount of armor;. the crate is far less ab le to be abused

I so made the right decision unsubbing and uninstalling. The wife said EQ2 was becoming "like an abusive relationship" and frankly, it just gets worse and worse. It was nice to pop my head back in on the forums and see our decision so roundly justified. More RNG! hilarious.

More info will be given when they get added. I don't have all the details, just that its in the works.

The way gear unlocked last expac had many issues aside from being exploitable they were also prone to bugs. Just because it was done last expac does not mean its just a flip of a switch this expac either. There is still quite a bit of work that goes into making them able to do that and with the exploit concerns it didn't work out.

I am unsure what style the crate will be, whether its pick from a few items or if you can pick an armor type, or just random (Believe it or not, we aren't overly keen on it being random btw, we will see what time allows) I dunno. Once more info is available I will let you guys know.

Side note: I will try to respond to any questions you guys have but if your question/post is not constructive I will not be replying to it.

This made getting resolve quicker, however, that mage then had to live with that piece or would still need to loot the mage item first to unlock account wide and unlock all three items. Exploit...meh..having to wait for another piece to unlock all items account, still was long enough. The Templar got the account unlock and gear unlock but that sacrificing mage...had to wait. Can look at it like the guild helping each other out, you know, like crystal farming and passing those around...some people are willing to do it and some are not.

Thanks for the updates.

I appreciate that you are addressing some of the important issues! One item I did not see mentioned is the “twisted rod of Balanzite” requirement for Vibrating Phantastic Core and ultimately for the scepter of Illumination. The RNG on the T7 crate has proven to be really frustrating for me. About ready to give up on the twisted rod. Will that be added to the Raid crate you mentioned?

Ok exploit is a problem but surely there a million and one other options to give loot other than RNG.

Put a merchant on, put the item on it and let people grind for coins to get the item they need.

I am sorry but the argument of exploits being the root cause for this extensively laborious method of giving loot out does not make any sense.

This goes in the same vain as turning off an entire mechanic of auto attacks because pet classes could not be balanced.

Once again, I agree with Arclite. A Merchant, with the ability to spend the coins I have in a way that makes sense for my toons, is much better option than the Random. If you can't use the code from last expansion, you surely have merchants that can be setup quickly.

Inc same 5 items from raid box like heroic one

If the issue with doing it is that it allowed exploits, why not add gear unlockers to the quest reward for the Raid Weekly?

It would be more random than I'd like, still, but at least it would be something.

Sorry, I should have included that. Currently there is a requirement of having the "Spiritual Bedlam" quest completed before it will be given in the mission crates. That specific quest requirement is being removed next week.As far as it being in the raid crate, we will discuss it. No promises

A modest request:

Please make all hard mode (challenge) raid loot infusable.

the way gear unlocking worked at the end of BoL was great, so sad to see it not come back

Appreciate the information. That said, I have a couple of observations to make. First, forcing a player into TSing who hasn't had to do much of that to the extent we're having to do it is a mistake. Provide other options to the player base. Right now, we have hosts of players rambling across the landscaping shadow harvesting for literally HOURS a day with nothing to show for it. All due to the lack of players ability to harvest the crystals due to a virtually non--existent drop rate isn't an oversight, it's a mistake. An oversight is having the knowledge ahead of time of what should be included in a item and forgetting to rectify it before it's sent, made, etc. A mistake is failing to catch a spelling or grammar error or the car you just sold someone only had 3 tires on it. An extremely rare drop rate that makes it virtually impossible for the majority of players to gather a necessary item fits into that category.
Speaking of drop rates, Orb of Brilliant Energy, fits into the above category. We have yet to see even one drop. Would love to see that addressed. Actually, what I'd recommend for this whole issue is three-fold:
1) Reduce the urge to overcomplicate matters and hold people back with multi-faceted recipes involving 4-5 ultra rare items that seldom drop due to a poor performing RNG system that's been discussed ad nauseum in the forums for years.
2) Make the recipe simple and here's one suggestion I think we could all get behind---make the components part of the rewarded loot when you kill the boss; in other words, EVERYONE gets it. That's how you get raiders involved and working together. There's too much stuff being hidden or constrained by RNG. A lot of us are just tired of it.
3) Too much reliance on gear/stuff/needed recipes being tied to RNG. I detest the crates because they're tied to a mess of a loot table system. Let me say one word, "Awakened Abilities" still dropping in this xpac as a current reward. You can't do anything with them but destroy them. Four in a day for TSing is nonsense, haha.. talk about vomitus prolificus.

You may not find this "constructive," but there's a lot of truth in these statements. There's way too much effort making way too much content gated to hold players back. People are here to have fun and avoid all the current travails available in the real world.

Have you not killed the last name in Shadethicket yet? Seems to be a "everyone receives one for killing name" thing