It was stated in beta that Kael is designed to be the height of heroic progression, above all the instances in reward and difficulty.
Morghus wrote: Oh ... so it's intended ? Wrong choice, if you have a group for hard content you can raid x2, x4 or do hard instances. An open place should be pick up friendly, and pick up friendly is quite different from solo friendly (like the hole). Anyway we knew that it was foolish but we wanted to have an idea ;-)
Odys@Storms wrote: Who says it should be pickup friendly? You? Most of the instances in this xpac are pickup friendly, run those instead. Its nice having a challenging zone with rewards to match (soon).
The update notes seem to be unreliable as to what gets done. Never saw anything about the fixes to the horribly bugged doors in Kraytoc's, but they are fixed, or at least they seem to be, and a QA person finally stepped into a weeks old thread indicating that some changes were made and asking if there were still problems.
Gorock@Storms wrote: Went in there with a Templar and Warden. I'm in a mix of PQ gear, instance legendary, 1 piece of X4 raid gear and few pieces of X2. Fights with 1-2 trash were mostly fine, occasionally ended up with 3 and was usually able to power through it. As a Berserker though, I generally had either Adrenaline or Battle Frenzy up through the whole fight. Major point of frustration was ending fights with zero power because of the Double Headbutt from the Ettins. Couldn't find anyway to interrupt it and it is uncurable. Did run into a problem in the Keep with one of the named in the side rooms being up twice in the same place. Didn't even notice it at first, but when he turned you could see the copies overlap. Ended up pulling it and got one down to about 45%, but the AEs from 2 named just overwhelmed us. The key to the trash was having the Dirge save CoB for the last 20% of the fight, so the rampage, etc would be interrupted. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to help for Double Headbutt. I'm not sure what a group without a Dirge would do, the interrupt proc on CoB is a lifesaver. One of the trash mobs standing guard at the Keep entrance did not lose his Rampage when he reset. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the mob. Needless to say, he wasn't killable when we pulled him the 2nd time.
I will get an update as to what went in and I will post today as soon as I have it. I believe most if not all of this is in though, let me confirm it for you. PoI Quests have been made repeatable once a day (6 quests) and grant faction and shards Trash drops, including rare fabled drops are being added to the zone tables. Bosses now have a chance to drop shards. Trash now has a chance to drop shards. The experience has been raised significantly. Most if not everything loot oriented is tradeable.
Nt as hard as i imagined, with some basic DOV gear and two healers we only died due to our stupidity (messing pull, not seing a roamer). Some mob are super annoying : uncurable heavy mana drain that stun you .... Lovely. apparently some bypass aoe blockers, or may be they autoattack at 360 .... Nice ;-) You get shard quest from item that drop and you can unlock some teleporters. It would be better if we had like in sebilis various area with various named. Apparently named are just random. Those bad guys are super annoying : Curse that stun .... Lovely, with a single healer you are screwed. 360 KB + a random fear
The agro range in here is just WAAY to far. It's longer than a thrown weapon using shurikens. I understand they're giants and they can see a long ways, but being as long as it is unfairly penalizes those that are stuck using throwing weapons.
Gotta say, this zone is really a masterpiece. I just finished the portal quests and unlocked the Temple, and I love how rewarding that was even disregarding the armor the quests gave. It's a nice touch having a banker and such in the Hypogeum...I kinda wish I could just live there Too many cool things about the zone to really go into detail about them all, but you guys did an amazing job with this one.
0ppression wrote: Since we geared up, we went back to Kael, how dare you calling it challenging ? Yes it's brutal but way easier than instances, no script madness. Named are easier than Lord Djinn or the armor guy in TOFS2 ;-) It's funny to restrict tank and spank content to well geared people only.
A contested dungeons (if only one available) should be aimed to average players. The main enemies should be other players, not the mobs. I maybe see once per day a request for Kael in the T9 chat. Most people do always the same, Tower 1, Pool 1, rinse and repeat. Ask yourself devs: Can this be good for EQ2 in the long run? I guess with the current policy you will soon have again empty servers until the next expansion.
Raviel@Guk wrote: The hotfix said it was added, however it was not. We will try to have that corrected as soon as possible. I am extremely disapointed myself. Sorry about that all.
Kander wrote: I'm assuming they'll be pretty rare stuff (on the order of 1% or less), probably all jewelry and no main armor pieces, but what quality will they be? Iceshard Keep quality or higher? I actually had a lot of fun exploring Kael Drakkel with a group a bit ago, we couldn't do the nameds (we tried one and he did knock back, knock up, mem whipe, 40k-50k dmg AoE, next one we tried mem whiped and one shotted both healers right near the start, next one didn't mem whipe but he kept summoning adds and we failed with him at 5% then he despawned), but maybe if the trash drops good loot it'll gear people up to be able to do the named. (Or at least that's my hope) Even though we didn't get loot it was still fun though, and we learned a lot about the layout of the city. I suspect there's several things we don't know yet - like maybe more than just those primary teleport spots. I noticed an escaped thrael gorr in kennel area that wouldn't speak, but that seemed like a perfect location for a teleporter. Maybe you just need like 40k faction with them or maybe there's a quest giver somewhere else we haven't found. It'll be fun figuring all this out, and hopefully the trash mob's dropping loot will entice more people to do so.
Spent 4 hours in there tonight with a reasonably geared, balanced group. We wiped a few times, only to be expected. The power drain is a pain but bearable and it only mildly irritated. I don't know if the notes from 17th are correct but in 4 hours we slogged from the arch to the Hypo twice, cleared the cages got one trash exquisite and saw one named (disregarding the x2 in the arena). This rather took the edge off it for me. It wasn't even smart loot for the master we got. The zone is awesome, the mobs a challenge, much better than a regular zone plod 3 times a day. I am looking forward to doing the quests and exploring it all. From what I've seen it is a great place and will make a big change from zones or raiding all the time. Please get the changes in soon though. 4 hours with so little reward is a very poor return on effort.
Kander wrote: That's good news, because as it stands, Kael is just not a fun zone. Very few people in my guild want to run the zone, because honestly, it's not worth the effort. Risk vs reward in this zone ( as well as some others in this expansion) is practically nil.
